Re: BEYOND LOGIC: [was How the best people reason/beyond the limits of the human brain]

Charles, there are a lot of deep questions about learning, education, AI
opportunities and what is right

I was brought up in a city, with kind of middle of the road values and
belief of a middle european society, and nobody really able or interested
to teach me much
*with a few exceptions

but had all the personal anxieties that intelligent children feel when they
see dichotomies of the real world, a world that preaches  one thing and
then does another, then
expected me to behave rationally

but had access to a few opportunities
*the library, hitchhiking was fairly fashionable in my days, and open roads
waiting to be walked on, someone who had more experience
willing to sit down for a chat occasionally came up *thank you Gerald who
taught me to apply for my first grant at UCAS one rainy night in London as
I did not have any better plans

Even Africa is not just one thing, It is made of many peoples, cultures,
traditions, places, and ultimately every individual is different from
another,

Learning from under trees is a privileged spot, contact with the bare
earth, bare feet,  Of course, comes with challenges
These kids know how to catch snakes, how to make a sling with an elastic
band stretched across two fingers that will down a bird or a fly with
100 percent precision *I witnessed this   and was astonished,  by the range
of life skills schools do not teach

This is why our evaluation methods cannot be standardized to suit the
models of the one percent in the world who have access
to facilities that a few others have, and also have values and beliefs that
may not be fit for every other person in the universe

AI is not just one thing, its BIG and can be used in many ways
I am learning how to use it my way,  honestly children have the best
learning style, because the have natural open minds, innate curiosity

so I am having fun making
tutorials for myself

but so can children under trees

with our compliments, share the sheet below with children under trees in
every country
and let's make more tutorials for them

https://starborn.github.io/AIlessonsforkidsundetrees/


Paola

On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 3:50 AM CHARLES WAWERU <cmukabi@aol.com> wrote:

> Dear Paola,
>
> This is a major issue, particularly in Africa, where the same national
> exam is taken by children in large cities and by those in rural villages
> who study under a tree. How can we expect them to achieve high scores when
> some have never had access to literature books—or even electricity to
> revise after nightfall?
>
> Returning to AI, I would propose the following approaches if those
> resources were not available at the time:
>
>    1. *Reinforcement Learning (RL):* Focus on evaluating what has
>    genuinely been learned rather than relying solely on standardized testing
>    performance.
>    2. *Replica Models:* Develop training sets or models that reflect the
>    specific conditions and contexts of each environment being evaluated.
>    3. *Reporting Bias Detection:* Build systems capable of identifying
>    divergence or bias in reported outcomes.
>    4. * Re-ranking: *Scores should not rely only on formal or
>    machine-based criteria. They can be reviewed using alternative
>    frameworks.
>
>
>
> Charles
>
> On 19 Feb 2026, at 04:23, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just adding  context perhaps:
>
> the research note is shared here ad part of a body of knowledge
> referencing different logical modalities
>  to complement an old thread started on this list that deserved more
> digging, but was never  expounded further
>
> As  new material becomes available on the topic, I am appending it to the
> thread
>
> research note
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v5_bejXQKaEbZCF8q8Sy7yBIq9ULErGc-ZpOgq7LOLI/edit?usp=sharing>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 1:33 AM Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings AI KR CG
>>>>
>>>
>> Following up on a thread exchanged on this list  five years ago, reposted
>> below and never properly discussed
>>
>> This research note
>> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v5_bejXQKaEbZCF8q8Sy7yBIq9ULErGc-ZpOgq7LOLI/edit?usp=sharing> summarizes
>> the arguments  and and provides a bibliography
>> with the invitation to expand on reasoning modalities
>>
>> 10.6084/m9.figshare.31356424
>>
>>
>> Paola Di Maio
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 2:25 PM Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Picking up on something Dave said in response to the thread. COGAI vs
>>>>> AIKR
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 11:52 PM Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> wrote:
>>>>>     *If we can successfully reproduce how the best people reason, we
>>>>> will be in a strong position to improve on that by going beyond the limits
>>>>> of the human brain.  *
>>>>>
>>>>>   Dave also pointed out that he would consider best people those who
>>>>> score well during school exams
>>>>>
>>>>> There are clear arguments to show that scoring well at exams is often
>>>>> the results of good training and many conditions, including physical
>>>>> fitness, lifestyle, emotional environment and that furthermore, often the
>>>>> best reasoning ability cannot be captured by passing tests
>>>>> (in the case of people who can catch a snake, or navigate without
>>>>> compass or GPS etc)
>>>>> ie, reasoning is not always related to good exam results
>>>>>
>>>>> But those arguments aside,  I d like to bring up a well known and
>>>>> documented example of a woman who was
>>>>> very sick and left for dead.  without going too close to her, for fear
>>>>> of fetching a disease, people asked her at some distance
>>>>> if she had any dying wish,  any last minute wish  . she left a message
>>>>> of farewell to be delivered to her family
>>>>> and also requested her urine to be taken into a bottle and handed over
>>>>> to the first person who would cross the gate
>>>>> at a certain given place.  This was agreed and done
>>>>>
>>>>> *":So ... I asked them to take my urine in a bottle and give it to
>>>>> whomever they met first at the Boudhanath Stupa entrance. By now I was
>>>>> semi-conscious, but they were kind enough to do this favor for me. The
>>>>> person who took my urine met a man at the gate who turned out to be a
>>>>> Tibetan physician. He tested my urine and diagnosed that I had been
>>>>> poisoned with meat, prescribed some medicine and even sent me some blessing
>>>>> pills. My health improved dramatically and I had many good dreams. .”*
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Now, I know this is not your typical reasoning, and we cannot expect
>>>>> this from  everyone nor our future AI systems
>>>>> but we should keep these examples in mind when considering what is
>>>>> possible for an enlightened mind and beyond the ordinary
>>>>>
>>>>> She is now alive and well and in Kathmandu, if anyone wants to look
>>>>> her up sometimes and learn more about beyond ordinary reasoning,
>>>>>
>>>>> https://nalanda-monastery.eu/index.php/en/teachers-of-nalanda/khadro-la?start=1
>>>>>
>>>>> PDM
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 11:52 PM Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 5 Feb 2021, at 13:11, Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> an afterthought
>>>>>>
>>>>>> in respect to mimicking how humans reason and communicate well,
>>>>>> each human  is different, we can generalize up to a point
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and mimicking may result in some kind of parrot engineering ....
>>>>>> useful to start with but nowhere near intelligence at its best
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You’re missing the big picture.  If we can successfully reproduce how
>>>>>> the best people reason, we will be in a strong position to improve on that
>>>>>> by going beyond the limits of the human brain. The more we understand, the
>>>>>> further and faster we can go. This is an evolutionary path that will go
>>>>>> very much faster than biological evolution. At the same time we can make AI
>>>>>> safe by ensuring that it is transparent, collaborative and embodies the
>>>>>> best of human values.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Human-like AI will succeed where logic based approaches have
>>>>>> struggled. 500 million years of evolution is not to be dismissed so easily.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I remember the enthusiastic claims around “5th generation computer
>>>>>> systems” and logic programming at the start of the 1980’s, and had plenty
>>>>>> of fun with the prolog language. However, the promise of logic programming
>>>>>> fizzled out. Today, 40 years on, much of the focus of work on knowledge
>>>>>> representation is still closely coupled to the mathematical model of logic,
>>>>>> and this is holding us all back. We need to step away and exploit the
>>>>>> progress in the cognitive sciences.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I am especially impressed by how young children effortlessly learn
>>>>>> language, given the complexity of language, and the difficulties that adult
>>>>>> learners face when learning second languages. Another amazing opportunity
>>>>>> is to understand how some children are so much better than others when it
>>>>>> comes to demanding subjects like science and mathematics. Moreover, warm
>>>>>> empathic AI will depend on understanding how children acquire social skills.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Let’s lift up our eyes to the big picture for human-like AI.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
>>>>>> W3C Data Activity Lead & W3C champion for the Web of things
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>