Cybernetics
Think of society as a system, and approach the social sxiences as systems sciences -- psychology, sociology, economics, political science. They have state, observation, processing logic, interaction, and some new state -- a basic control loop or OODA loop. That's the basic premise of Norbert Wiener (Cybernetics https://www.worldcat.org/title/cybernetics-or-control-and-co... and The Human Use of Human Beings https://www.worldcat.org/title/human-use-of-human-beings-cyb... -- horrible title, great book), Alfed Kuhn, The study of society : a multidisciplinary approach…
All areas of systems theory [0] whether in the cybernetics [1] of Norbert Wiener [2] or in complex real systems like those Meadows [3] and Forrester [4] studied, the divergence from equilibrium that occurs in positive feedback loops is both well studied, yet strangely hard to understand. We don't know quite what is going happen, because selective amplification of different components will lead to different effects. It's unpredictable. Sometimes we get oscillation. Sometimes we get chaos or noisy behaviour. This relates to "chaos theory" [5]. sometimes we get a discontinuity, either an…
So this is extremely complicated and nuanced with respect to intelligence acquisition, and I don’t think there’s a definitive right or wrong answer. I certainly acknowledge my own bias with this however, with respect to what Chomsky discusses, I make the distinction that most of the “code/data/information” that you need in order for the language capacity to develop is actually embedded in our biological mechanical systems. That is to say, if you were to take a human infant and never expose it to another human with respect to generating sounds for language, the infant would still develop some…
Suggestions: Read: Vaclav Smil, Robert K. Merton, Joseph Tainter, William Ophuls (esp. Ecology & Plato, and mine the hell out of his bibliogs), Bernhard J. Stern ("Resistances to Technological Innovation"), Robert Gordon (Rise & Fall), W. Brian Arthur (Technology & complexity economics), Robert U. Ayres (generally, energy & econ), M. King Hubbert, Howard & Eugene Odum, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (Entropy), Peter Turchin, Meadows et al, John Nicholas Gray (esp. on Pinker), Norbert Wiener (Cybernetics & Humans), Joseph Needham (generally, though not necessarily comprehensively), John Stuart…
That's a book review. Read the actual book.[1] Notes: - Prologue: (Behaviorism) ended up being a terrible way to do psychology, but it was admirable for being an attempt at describing the whole business in terms of a few simple entities and rules. It was precise enough to be wrong, rather than vague to the point of being unassailable, which has been the rule in most of psychology. - Thermostat: An intro to control theory, but one which ignores stability. Maxwell's original paper, "On Governors", (1868) is still worth reading. He didn't just discover electromagnetics, he founded control…
More precisely, the etymology of cybernetics refers to the steerer or helmsman of a ship (the kybernetes). The point is that in the middle of the sea, where there are no stable landmarks, the helmsman cannot navigate by means of pre-establish, static laws in the vein of a mathematician or philosopher. Instead, through interpreting the meaning of celestial bodies, winds, currents, birds, and so on, they have to continuously check their reasoning - they have to find balance. Navigation, medicine and military strategy all shared this mode of knowledge - cunning [metis] - for the ancient…
Q1) By the mere copying of behaviors, no. It is clear that there are at least the a priori intuitions of space, time, and causality necessary for humans to obtain any knowledge. It is within that a priori framework where concepts and then decisions are derived from. Q2) This would require the knowledge of what is sufficient & necessary for AGI. Q3) Minsky, Neumann, and most sophisticatedly, Norbert Weiner answered this question. Read page 33 of Weiner's Cybernetics. The real insight, where in what I will now explain in brevity is at the expense of the insight's resolution, is that in the…
> I dislike the cybernetic approach because I find that it first commits to epistemic helplessness The confusion here is that my statement has nothing to do with cybernetics. Although it’s taken from his book titled Cybernetics, almost 60% of the book isn’t about cybernetics but instead a philosophy and analysis of Science as it progresses through history. Though it’s fair to Wiener to preemptively note there is no failure in epistemology in one of the most successful theories which holds ground in neurons, to electrical circuits, traffic engineering, the abstract feedback loop. There’s no…
Earlier this year I wrote a fan letter to Daniel D. McCracken, crediting him for inspiring me: --- Some time in the mid-to-late-60s when I was a high school kiddie, I discovered to my dismay that I had succeeded in cleaning out my local public library of all its science fiction titles. I noticed an old-at-the-time volume, Wiener's "Cybernetics", and thought the title had a nice technical computer-y ring to it. Nevermind that I'd never seen a computer outside of NASA documentary films and didn't stand a ghost of a chance of ever meeting one. A week later I closed the cover, contemplating…
> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AGI -- another great believer in AI, scoffed and said that it will take at least five decades. That was seven decades ago, and we are not even close to achieving insect-level…