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You can think of probabilistic tree search as creativity and the neural network as intuition. Like, what are you doing when you think of a cool new idea? You th

by newen 6y ago

You can think of probabilistic tree search as creativity and the neural network as intuition. Like, what are you doing when you think of a cool new idea? You think of a lot of ideas and narrow them down slowly until you reach a cool new one. It’s not magic.

TaupeRanger 6y ago
We have literally no idea what thoughts are or how they are implemented in human brains. This is such a silly argument at this point. For 50 years people have been saying "obviously humans are just doing a probabilistic search" or some other such evidence-free assertion, claiming "it's not magic", an obvious strawman since no one is claiming it is. And for 50 years we have not created any system capable of creating new explanatory knowledge. Yet still the same claims are made, week after week.
- newen 6y ago
  I’m not saying humans are doing probabilistic search (not saying they are not either). I’m saying that if probabilistic search produces a result that people see as creative, then we can regard probabilistic search as something that produces creativity. Furthermore, just because we don’t have the computational capability yet to replicate human thought processes using, for example probabilistic search, does not mean that probabilistic search is not part of replicating human thought processes.
Igelau 6y ago
IMHO creativity isn't really as conscious as people seem to think. I have had a handful of hyper productive songwriting sessions and by the end it always felt more like I was the horse than the rider. Neither was anything made so much as it was found.[1] There are constraints and limits and rules: rhyme scheme, meter, key, chord progression, genre, structure, and whether or not those things will support the consistency and coherence of the content... that's barely scratching the surface. The "choices" and the "thinking" are highly constrained. Few things are going to work. It's often either "this way" or "wo, back it up". Even in something like Jazz there are still intricate rules at play and the true greats were eccentrics and/or taking loads of drugs in order to push the boundaries where they could. [1] And then that one time where I finally cracked the melody at 3am, only to realize in the morning that it was Neil Young's "Heart of Gold". Even my creation was not my creation!

by newen 6y ago

TaupeRanger 6y ago

We have literally no idea what thoughts are or how they are implemented in human brains. This is such a silly argument at this point. For 50 years people have been saying "obviously humans are just doing a probabilistic search" or some other such evidence-free assertion, claiming "it's not magic", an obvious strawman since no one is claiming it is. And for 50 years we have not created any system capable of creating new explanatory knowledge. Yet still the same claims are made, week after week.

newen 6y ago
I’m not saying humans are doing probabilistic search (not saying they are not either). I’m saying that if probabilistic search produces a result that people see as creative, then we can regard probabilistic search as something that produces creativity. Furthermore, just because we don’t have the computational capability yet to replicate human thought processes using, for example probabilistic search, does not mean that probabilistic search is not part of replicating human thought processes.

Igelau 6y ago

IMHO creativity isn't really as conscious as people seem to think. I have had a handful of hyper productive songwriting sessions and by the end it always felt more like I was the horse than the rider. Neither was anything made so much as it was found.[1] There are constraints and limits and rules: rhyme scheme, meter, key, chord progression, genre, structure, and whether or not those things will support the consistency and coherence of the content... that's barely scratching the surface. The "choices" and the "thinking" are highly constrained. Few things are going to work. It's often either "this way" or "wo, back it up". Even in something like Jazz there are still intricate rules at play and the true greats were eccentrics and/or taking loads of drugs in order to push the boundaries where they could. [1] And then that one time where I finally cracked the melody at 3am, only to realize in the morning that it was Neil Young's "Heart of Gold". Even my creation was not my creation!