Re: How the best people reason/beyond the limits of the human brain

Let me add a few more interesting facts - in relation to the example
provided below that

- the person mentioned in the case is not literate, never went to school or
sat any exam
- its very difficult to get any common sense out of her in general
conversations
- she does not remember half of the thing she says
- there are many other people like her, capable at times of
'supercognition'  a special ability that arises in some people under
certain circumstances, and not have a clue about much else-
-  such  abilities cannot be tested under lab conditions

Implications for science and technology?  we may not have the capability
yet to understand the complexity
and the far reaching possibility of human cognition and putting things in
boxes like school grades, or trying carry out lab tests on certain people
is a very superficial possibly inadequate way to evaluate intelligence and
understanding of reality and what is beyond the ordinary

P
-

On Tue, Feb 9, 2021 at 6:24 AM 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>