3 ms·

Causality is not a trivial concept. If normal humans struggle making a difference between correlation and causation, you can expect ML will struggle even harde

by jokoon 6y ago

Causality is not a trivial concept. If normal humans struggle making a difference between correlation and causation, you can expect ML will struggle even harder. Same goes for intuition, inference, induction, deduction. I would surmise that scientists trying to implement causality are aiming to accomplish general intelligence. I remember that in math, a teacher would use the "imply" relationship to explain causality, with rain, grass and a garden hose. Rain or using the garden hose would always wet the grass, and the grass cannot be dry. The grass being wet would imply the hose or rain, but it's impossible to know which.

jillesvangurp 6y ago
There is some deep philosophy behind this. Actually reminds me about Anathem which is a science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson about alternate realities. He goes out of his way to create a world that has a very similar mathematical and philosophical history as earth. But everything is of course very different. Philosphers have different names, history is completely different, etc. A lot of the fun part of reading the book is figuring out what is what. It touches a lot of topics; including causality, quantum physics (and some popular interpretations of that like parallel universes), which is of course a fun topic to explore in a novel like this. One of the premises in the book is that consciousness is basically a form of quantum computing guided by causal relations between "nearby" universes. Which would explain why the brain is so quick at taking decisions. Probably not true but it's a fun thing to explore in a novel like this. But the notion that events are connected in time and that our brains are very good at spotting causal patterns between past, current, and future state of the observable world is a useful mental model. Most programmers are familiar with the notion of solving problems in their sleep or have experienced the magical "solved it in the shower" kind of moment that comes from having immersed yourself in the problem and your brain adapting to fit the problem and produce a solution while you were sleeping. We don't understand how it happens; it seems to be connected to our brains just doing some kind of garbage collecting and processing while we sleep. But somehow after that happens we have a clear notion of what caused what and why and what to do to rectify the situation. Once computers will be able to do this, the singularity might be a little bit closer.

by jokoon 6y ago

jillesvangurp 6y ago

There is some deep philosophy behind this. Actually reminds me about Anathem which is a science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson about alternate realities. He goes out of his way to create a world that has a very similar mathematical and philosophical history as earth. But everything is of course very different. Philosphers have different names, history is completely different, etc. A lot of the fun part of reading the book is figuring out what is what. It touches a lot of topics; including causality, quantum physics (and some popular interpretations of that like parallel universes), which is of course a fun topic to explore in a novel like this. One of the premises in the book is that consciousness is basically a form of quantum computing guided by causal relations between "nearby" universes. Which would explain why the brain is so quick at taking decisions. Probably not true but it's a fun thing to explore in a novel like this. But the notion that events are connected in time and that our brains are very good at spotting causal patterns between past, current, and future state of the observable world is a useful mental model. Most programmers are familiar with the notion of solving problems in their sleep or have experienced the magical "solved it in the shower" kind of moment that comes from having immersed yourself in the problem and your brain adapting to fit the problem and produce a solution while you were sleeping. We don't understand how it happens; it seems to be connected to our brains just doing some kind of garbage collecting and processing while we sleep. But somehow after that happens we have a clear notion of what caused what and why and what to do to rectify the situation. Once computers will be able to do this, the singularity might be a little bit closer.