4 ms·
Isn't This a Category Error?
Lisp has been criticized as a language that cannot handle all of the
type classes.
The essential claim, as I understand it, is that Lisp could
not handle type union, intersection, and negation. I've been slowly
working to better understand that criticism.
In this paper (p3) the author writes
( https://www.irif.fr/~gc/papers/set-theoretic-types-2022.pdf )
The more precise is a type the fewer functions
it types, the most precise type being one that, as
(¬false→false)&(false→true)
completely defines the semantics of a function.
While I agree with the first half of the sentence about
the precision of a type, it seems to me that "type" and
"semantics" are categorically different.
Trying to claim that types capture semantics seems to
extend an essentially mechanical process (typing) to an
essentially philosophical one (semantics).
So my question is, "Am I incorrect in claiming that types
and semantics are categorically different"? This matters
in the kind (pun) of work I'm trying to do, especially in
the struggle of defining specifications.
Like Godel, I keep struggling with self-referential and
self-modifying systems (self-reproducing robots being my
actual domain of research). Systems with these properties
have types and semantics that can "move" over time.
A self-modifying system (e.g a neural network) could start out
properly classifying inputs (e.g. cat vs dog) but over time add a
third "type" of "don't know" as more training occurs. That isn't a
temporal logic or fuzzy logic but more of a "morphing(?) logic".
Here time is not the subject of logic reasoning but the essence of the
mechanism of reasoning.
The game gets even worse as my neural nets can change
structure, get feedback from their own output as input,
split into and/or join with other nets, and accept their own
structure as input and output (similar to genetic algorithms).
The physical model is closer to yeast cells than neural nets.
( https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Yeast%3A+Molecular+and+Cell+Biology%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9783527332526 )
(Lest you think I'm joking, yeast can find optimal paths in graphs and
optimally solve mazes.)
All of this nonsense sits on self-modifying hardware (FPGAs).
Godel considered self-reference but not self-modification.
Might a system that can't currently solve a problem slowly
self-modify into one that could?
- DemocracyFTW2 3y ago> yeast can find optimal paths in graphs and optimally solve mazes One should be amazed by this but then one shouldn't. As youtube person Masakazu Matsumoto observes: Water and milk can solve the maze faster than the slime mould. 水も迷路を解けます。しかも粘菌よりも速く。 It is a counter-example to the advocacy that the slime mould may be intellectual. [...] Note that this is NOT the evidence for the fact that water and milk are more intellectual than the slime mould, but showing that solving a maze is an easy (i.e. non-NP) problem.
- daly 3y agoLanguage is a self-referencing, self-modifying system. What it lacks is agency. Embodied systems like robots fix that. Perhaps this is what the AI people like Hinton fear.