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> Searle uses a lookup table argument in the chinese room. I know that. I was asking about your claim that a lookup table can be Turing complete, as opposed to

by p4wnc6 11y ago

> Searle uses a lookup table argument in the chinese room. I know that. I was asking about your claim that a lookup table can be Turing complete, as opposed to merely able to pass a given Turing test. A lookup table does not express universal computation, at least not on its own. For instance, you couldn't use a fixed-size lookup table (with fixed, immutable content) to express some floating point number of precision N, where N is so high that even just the bits required to represent it outnumbers the available space in the lookup table. You'd need something "outside of" the lookup table that could mutate its memory, or hold state of its own while reading from the lookup table. The complexity class of doing any of this would be irrelevant to Turing completeness. On the topic of the complexity threshold for sentience, I think the reasons are extremely simple and obvious. If you take a Turing test to involve convincing a human being of something (as it was originally conceived), then there are inherent time constraints to performing actions. If you can adequately respond to any question posed in English, but it takes you longer than the age of the universe to do so, then as far as anyone is concerned, you actually can't do it. Imagine that one day we create an artificial being which we all agree is sentient. Suppose, without being too precise, that the entity "runs" in some amount of time -- like it can answer verbal questions in matters of minutes, it can solve complicated problems in matters of hours or days, and so on. Now suppose we can play around with the insides of that being and we have some sort of dial that lets us "slow it down." We click the dial once, and the being now takes hours to make verbal responses, and takes weeks to solve complex problems. We click the dial again and it takes weeks to make a verbal response, and months to solve a complex problems... and so on. I think it is reasonable to believe that after enough clicks the entity is not sentient even if the underlying software is conceptually similar and just differs by controlling its complexity class. I'm not saying I agree that this definitely defines sentience. I'm just saying it's extremely reasonable that it might and it's not at all obvious to me that an exponentially slow entity, if we could wait long enough to verify, is "just as sentient" as an entity that is verifiably more efficient. Even further, the particular argument that I pointed out actually used estimated numbers to come up with space bounds, not time bounds. Basically, the argument was that even if you truncate to considering merely 5-minute-long English conversations (or shorter), then creating a lookup table to be able to look up responses is physically impossible -- who even cares how long it would take to actually use it if you could create it -- you can't even create it, and so it is somewhat fallacious to even begin a thought experiment by saying "suppose there is this big lookup table that physics logically excludes from possibility." It's just not even useful, not even as a thought experiment, because it doesn't speak about what is possible, from first principles.

makebelieve 11y ago
Your points are all good. But they have nothing to do with meaning, or with semantics. Cellular automata are lookup tables, and Wolfram and others proved some cellular automata rules are Turing complete computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 My point was merely about the equivalence of computational mechanisms, not about lookup tables per se. And by corollary, that the computational complexity is equivalent regardless of the computational mechanism. (I think we agree on this point.) Searle's Room is a just to explain that what computers are doing is syntactic. Searle would posit that passing a Turing test in any amount of time is irrelevant to determining consciousness. It's a story we hypothetical use to "measure" intelligence, but it's only a story. it's not a valid test for sentience, and passing such a test would not confer sentience. Sentience is an entirely different question. What would be more interesting is if a computer intentionally failed turing tests because it thinks turing tests are stupid. We could test humans with Turing tests to determine their "level" of intelligence. But if you put teenage boys in a room and made them do Turing tests, pretty quick they would come up with remarkable ways to fail those tests, chiefly by not doing them! How could you write a program or create a system that intentionally fails Turing tests? or a program which avoids taking turing tests... because it thinks they are stupid? Could you write a program that knows when it fails? (it's a pretty long standing problem...) I like the speed (or space-bound question) you ask because it is not a thought experiment to me. It's an actual real problem I face! at what point does the speed of the underlying computing become so interminably slow that we say something is no longer sentient? In my work, I don't think there is some such slow speed. The slowness simply obscures sentience from our observation. In the excellent example: "I think it is reasonable to believe that after enough clicks the entity is not sentient..." How would you distinguish between the "loss" of sentience from reduced complexity, from the loss of your ability to perceive sentience from the reduced complexity? The question is, how could you tell which thing happened? If you don't observe sentience anymore, does that mean it's not there? (Locked in syndrome is similar to this problem in human beings.) And if you have a process to determine sentience, how do you prove your process is correct in all cases? I do not think of these as rhetorical questions. I actually would like a decent way to approach these problems, because I can see that I will be hitting them if the model I am using works to produce homeostatic metabolic like behavior with code. Computation is a subset of thinking. There is lots of thinking that is not computation. Errors are a classic example. The apprehension of an error is a representational process, and computation is a representational process. We may do a perfectly correct computation, but then realize the computation itself is the error. (As a programmer learns, it is exactly these realizations that lead to higher levels of abstraction and optimization.) Searle's point is that a lookup table or any other computational mechanism, can not directly produce sentience because it's behavior is purely syntactic. "Syntax is not semantics and simulation is not duplication." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg Aaronson's points are very well made, but none of them deal with the problem of semantics or meaning. Because they don't deal with what representation is and how representation itself works. All of the complexity work is about a sub-class of representations that operate with certain constraints. They are not about how representation itself works. > "suppose there is this big lookup table that physics logically excludes from possibility."... That is the point! Even if there were such a lookup table, it would not get us to sentience, because it's operations are syntactic. It is functional, but not meaningful. You are correct, it could never work in practice, but it could also never work under absolute conditions. That's why I figured Aaronson was poking fun of those critiquing Searle, because it would ALSO, not work in practice. Aaronson writes, "I find this response to Searle extremely interesting—since if correct, it suggests that the distinction between polynomial and exponential complexity has metaphysical significance. According to this response, an exponential-sized lookup table that passed the Turing Test would not be sentient (or conscious, intelligent, self-aware, etc.), but a polynomially-bounded program with exactly the same input/output behavior would be sentient." This statement supports Searle's argument, it doesn't detract from it. Hypothetically, an instantaneous lookup of an exponential table system would not be sentient but an instantaneous lookup of an algorithmically bound table system would be sentient? On what basis then does sentience confer, if the bound is the only difference between the lookup tables? Introducing the physical constraints doesn't change the hypothetical problem. Searle and Aaronson are just talking about different things. If Aaronson was actually refuting Searle, what is the refutation he makes? Aaronson never says something like "Computers will be sentient by doing x, y, and z, and this refutes Searle." The arguments against Searle (which I take Aaronson as poking at) are based in computation. So... show me the code! Nobody has written code to do semantic processing because they don't know how. It could be no one knows how because it's impossible to do semantic processing with computation - directly. That is my view from repeated failures, there simply is no path to semantics from symbolic computation. And if there is, it's strange voodoo!

by p4wnc6 11y ago

makebelieve 11y ago

Your points are all good. But they have nothing to do with meaning, or with semantics. Cellular automata are lookup tables, and Wolfram and others proved some cellular automata rules are Turing complete computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 My point was merely about the equivalence of computational mechanisms, not about lookup tables per se. And by corollary, that the computational complexity is equivalent regardless of the computational mechanism. (I think we agree on this point.) Searle's Room is a just to explain that what computers are doing is syntactic. Searle would posit that passing a Turing test in any amount of time is irrelevant to determining consciousness. It's a story we hypothetical use to "measure" intelligence, but it's only a story. it's not a valid test for sentience, and passing such a test would not confer sentience. Sentience is an entirely different question. What would be more interesting is if a computer intentionally failed turing tests because it thinks turing tests are stupid. We could test humans with Turing tests to determine their "level" of intelligence. But if you put teenage boys in a room and made them do Turing tests, pretty quick they would come up with remarkable ways to fail those tests, chiefly by not doing them! How could you write a program or create a system that intentionally fails Turing tests? or a program which avoids taking turing tests... because it thinks they are stupid? Could you write a program that knows when it fails? (it's a pretty long standing problem...) I like the speed (or space-bound question) you ask because it is not a thought experiment to me. It's an actual real problem I face! at what point does the speed of the underlying computing become so interminably slow that we say something is no longer sentient? In my work, I don't think there is some such slow speed. The slowness simply obscures sentience from our observation. In the excellent example: "I think it is reasonable to believe that after enough clicks the entity is not sentient..." How would you distinguish between the "loss" of sentience from reduced complexity, from the loss of your ability to perceive sentience from the reduced complexity? The question is, how could you tell which thing happened? If you don't observe sentience anymore, does that mean it's not there? (Locked in syndrome is similar to this problem in human beings.) And if you have a process to determine sentience, how do you prove your process is correct in all cases? I do not think of these as rhetorical questions. I actually would like a decent way to approach these problems, because I can see that I will be hitting them if the model I am using works to produce homeostatic metabolic like behavior with code. Computation is a subset of thinking. There is lots of thinking that is not computation. Errors are a classic example. The apprehension of an error is a representational process, and computation is a representational process. We may do a perfectly correct computation, but then realize the computation itself is the error. (As a programmer learns, it is exactly these realizations that lead to higher levels of abstraction and optimization.) Searle's point is that a lookup table or any other computational mechanism, can not directly produce sentience because it's behavior is purely syntactic. "Syntax is not semantics and simulation is not duplication." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg Aaronson's points are very well made, but none of them deal with the problem of semantics or meaning. Because they don't deal with what representation is and how representation itself works. All of the complexity work is about a sub-class of representations that operate with certain constraints. They are not about how representation itself works. > "suppose there is this big lookup table that physics logically excludes from possibility."... That is the point! Even if there were such a lookup table, it would not get us to sentience, because it's operations are syntactic. It is functional, but not meaningful. You are correct, it could never work in practice, but it could also never work under absolute conditions. That's why I figured Aaronson was poking fun of those critiquing Searle, because it would ALSO, not work in practice. Aaronson writes, "I find this response to Searle extremely interesting—since if correct, it suggests that the distinction between polynomial and exponential complexity has metaphysical significance. According to this response, an exponential-sized lookup table that passed the Turing Test would not be sentient (or conscious, intelligent, self-aware, etc.), but a polynomially-bounded program with exactly the same input/output behavior would be sentient." This statement supports Searle's argument, it doesn't detract from it. Hypothetically, an instantaneous lookup of an exponential table system would not be sentient but an instantaneous lookup of an algorithmically bound table system would be sentient? On what basis then does sentience confer, if the bound is the only difference between the lookup tables? Introducing the physical constraints doesn't change the hypothetical problem. Searle and Aaronson are just talking about different things. If Aaronson was actually refuting Searle, what is the refutation he makes? Aaronson never says something like "Computers will be sentient by doing x, y, and z, and this refutes Searle." The arguments against Searle (which I take Aaronson as poking at) are based in computation. So... show me the code! Nobody has written code to do semantic processing because they don't know how. It could be no one knows how because it's impossible to do semantic processing with computation - directly. That is my view from repeated failures, there simply is no path to semantics from symbolic computation. And if there is, it's strange voodoo!