Confusion over two Kinds of Coherence Hobbles Business and AI Development.

Keith E. McInnis commented on both my last posts implying that ...  I don't know what...; yet, I do know why AI fails and why science fiction writers were simply wrong.

The science fiction author Isaac Asimov. introduced (and later expanded upon) three laws of robotics in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Science fiction often turns into science fact. But as of today, there are no actual robots with a capability anywhere close to those depicted in recent movies like I, Robot, and Transformers, or foretold in earlier ones; such as 2001: a Space Odyssey. In this case, one is forced to conclude that futurists and producers have missed the mark. This is mainly because it turns out to be not so easy to fulfill even the First of the Three Laws above; for that alone requires “knowing when to take action and then knowing also what action will likely be successful”. This need is met by the Causal Explanation Methodology or CEM, the diagram in my earlier blog post.

To bring this first law into more relevant terms we might say: "A father may not injure his family, or through inaction, allow his family to come to harm." Would we charge a father with breaking the law if he invested in the market and lost all the family's savings for retirement? Of course not. In this day and age, with the volatility of the stock market and the failure of banks, can any father, any trading program or anyone at all, exactly know which patterns indicate which actions one should take and when? Many believe that to be a matter of experience and almost entirely a matter of chance if not fortune or blessing.

It is not possible to establish a hard law that asserts what is right in a monologue according to the practice of precisely asserting true language where each label has an ascribed meaning. People do not think this way. It is just wrong-headed to think that labels can serve in any semantic sense of true agreement with present context. For this type of agreement is not and cannot be legislated.

As the attempts to date have shown (conclusively, imho) it breaks down. It does this all the time without fail. Why? It is not resilient. This is not a glib answer. All ascribed agreement breaks under the weight of the very act of asserting and ascribing. When an agreements relies on labels it eventually breaks down. It does this because it cuts off the investigation for resonance, it not only observes, it creates and uses complexity as an excuse to assert or ascribe — to state as fact an incoherent relation or misguided notion.

Exponents of this school of thought make claims (stating as fact, speaking in monologue with mechanical and economic efficiency) the agreement to which observes no further affordance. it is not a dialogue: it is not even an agreement but with a label. That is no agreement at all. It is a ‘transmission of information.’ There is no exchange. It does not listen, it translates, it represents. It computes and outputs. It is not resilient; not creative. Questioning is not allowed. Correction is the order of the day. Course correction is commonplace. It does not add to or improve the environment: it restricts the neighborhood and controls, frames and compartmentalizes instead and rejects as noise all that is disagreeable.

It is a reduction to machine.

To make reasonable financial or macro-economic decisions at any interpersonal scale the size of a family or larger; ought one seek patterns, be prudent and have the skills and technical knowledge to trade securities in the chosen sectors and sub-fields? Networking and ‘neural-network’ or machine learning algorithms can sift through the data with the greatest of ease and efficiency. Statistical probabilities have been well-covered and have achieved impressive results. There are mature Bayesian networks as well. Though none of them solve the problem AI set out to solve. They failed due to the incoherence of representation and category errors. They also failed because they did not have the abstract science or the doctrinal function necessary to do any other than the most imperceptive reasoning.

Further, Bayes networks are hobbled by the independence assumption. Any research of human understanding and awareness based upon Bayes theorem is doomed before it begins. People do not have independent stories or narratives. That is false! On the face of it! I am not interested in Bayes theorem when what I need to know is if the abstract value of a trade-up or trade-off is equitable or fair. I am interested in the abstract postulates of geometry applied not to shapes but to forms of abstract currency or commodity.

In light of the good Count Korzybski’s program of general semantics, the mathematician R.D. Carmichael gave a partial definition of a “doctrinal function” when writing about the structure of Exact Thought in his book “The Logic of Discovery” (1937, pp 110-146). A Doctrinal Function is "a body of propositions made up of a consistent set of postulates by such processes as compel assent to the conclusions reached." (Ibid. p 122-123).

Doesn't that make more sense? Think of personal or motivated actions as composed of not just one disconnected action, but as a “pattern of actions” –like those involved in the exchange of cards for cards of different value in a poker game. Just like in the song, "you have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them" over the course of the game.

Which pattern of actions leads to success? In any given situation this has often been a bit of a holy grail --a mystical or mysterious object-- so many gambler's play, instead, with chance. Many people take actions for granted and still more are all preoccupied by chance. The words “you have to know when” may be grammar, may be letters, may be representations but that is not all.

The words speak to observing the complexity and affordance of the moment. They suggest one be vigilant and explore for an opportunity, investigate for resonance. The words suggest playing an active role in “you have to know when to fold them.” They encourage one watch and listen; ask questions. The words mark off a frame and environment where a dialogue takes place. It does not have to be one of talking or conversing: only a dialogue of play actions and exchanges. There is agreement between all players in the environment of the poker game. This is called agreement with present context and it is a characteristic of resilience. Poker is an aged and honored game of chance as are many others. It does not “break down” no matter who plays.

Modern AI or even university or government research has been working on ascribed coherence to labels. Can the entirety of human experience be anticipated, captured in a lable, grasped and understood? It does not have to be; if one has a doctrinal function. We cannot anticipate what kinds of geometric shapes we may be faced with in the future. Though no mathematician is the least uncertain that they can discover everything that can be known about the dimension, area and mass when they are encountered.

I did not go that way and I cannot speak to why anyone ever thought AI would work.  I have a new abstract science with a doctrinal functions that marks and grades the resilience of a given or present context. That is, I have an algorithm that seeks out and discovers the amount of resilience between a compression or other symbolic representation and a given or present context.  It is fully tested and proven effective.  I want to organize efforts to build more useful appliances.  That may be the wrong word, though what I have in mind is an appliance for processing exact thought according to a well-known doctrinal function of discovery.

I have conceived a fantasy game for teaching, abstract sciences (geometry, algebra and exact thinking) and how to recognize and use doctrinal functions.  I want to target dropouts and hard-case children already at risk or lost.  This 'game of life" has a mission to save lost boys and girls who have (against their nature) been caught in a whirling spiral and spectrum of dissonance caused by their nurturing in a system of ascribed coherence.  Anyone in the business of making games could score a big win here.  I will begin looking elsewhere for developers if no one nearby has interest in this sort of opportunity.



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Comment by Ken Ewell on February 4, 2012 at 3:38pm

To say that I see things differently than Roy, and perhaps everyone in this forum, is probably an understatement of the grandest sort.  All anyone can ask is they are not rejected as a crazy man or as being delusional.I see several problems with Roy’s definition of the measure of coherence being a wave function. First of all coherence of the human kind can be mathematical but it is not a function --it is a functional.  There is a big difference.  If you do not know: ask.

There is also a VERY BIG problem with applying anything Einstein or Von Neuman or Shannon, said; or applying any equations or mathematics having to do with particles or waves or probabilities, to issues of understanding and coherence in society.  Relativity itself is inadequate to and totally insufficient to understanding human beings or humanity.

First there is the clue that men are not woman, they do not have periods or periodic episodes at all.  Sorry women, this is a clue mind you, it is not intended to be sexist. Next comes the first fact: no system ever runs through truly identical phases, so this is an idealization that hides the true nature of duration (and incidentally distance). This is mainly because it lacks Poincare's insistence that only the universe and all that happens in it can tell perfect time.  

Second comes the fact that Einstein's clock cannot measure time continuously. It can only indicate that a given interval has elapsed when identical phases recur. It can say nothing about the passage of time in intervals within phases. Understanding runs not in periods but in a single duration.  The duration of one’s life.  Get it?

Since the universe is the only perfect clock, it seems nothing at all can be said about the passage of time unless there is recurrence of eons under identical conditions. No two understandings are the same. Get it?  Even then, one can only say that two people with the same length of life have the same length of understanding.  A wave function of coherence would show the difference between the understandings, but what would it mean?  That they are equally long?  What else?

In contrast, the ephemeris time defined by astronomers (e.g., Clemance, 1957) runs continuously and in no way relies on recurrence of identical phases. Finally, by relying on periodicity, Einstein's definition fails to identify the true dynamical basis of time keeping and the  importance of  understanding why clocks can ONLY march in step.

Understanding is not time-keeping is it?  Yet, it has a related function nonetheless significant to humanity.  That is record-keeping.

Understanding is hardly ever known to march in step.  Is it?  Is anyone, here, now, interested?


Comment by Roy Wagner on February 1, 2012 at 11:46pm

I was curious, I had no business jumping into the middle of your forum here waving my opinions about.

I was hoping for insight into a new A.I. about which I was mildly curious, I t turned into something else I tried humility, humor and humbug poetry apology reality none of these have worked.

You sir have refused to answer even one of the simple questions I have asked I understand that you may consider me unworthy or ignoble but all in all I have to agree with your wife I think your just obtuse. Thanks for the verbiage please don't bother to respond. Roy Wagner

Comment by Ken Ewell on February 1, 2012 at 3:28pm

There is an important implication here for how we communicate with each other.

If I am objectifying myself and am divided from myself, there is every chance that I’ll be doing the same in my relations with you (turning you into an object from which I am separate), whereas, if I can manage to be genuinely present to myself, this opens up the possibility of a new, unconventional or "bohemian" form of communication or dialogue in which I am genuinely present to you. Of the existential-phenomenological writers, Karl Jaspers seems most explicit about this possibility. Writing on the subject of communication, Jaspers says:

[T]he urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up….[A]gain and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance.…When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves….Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation reaches the path of communication.

…I myself was to blame for the insufficiency of communication. The insufficiency was indubitable fact. But the fault could not lie only with others. I, too, am human like them. The same sources of inhibition of communication exist in me as in them. The inner action, by which I train myself, had to illumine my self-concealment, arbitrariness and obstinacy, and to compel me to strive towards a revelation that can never be completed. (Jaspers, 1941/1975, pp. 172–173). Actually, I have working actively on this aspect of communications over the past three years. I was attracted to Karl Jasper and Martin Buber for their insights into dialogue, to Bohm, for other reasons.

So Jaspers was evidently calling for an unprecedented form of communication, one in which participants penetrate defensive structures to make contact with each other at the core, by, in the first instance, honestly acknowledging their own defensiveness. Decades later, the physicist/philosopher David Bohm—without mentioning Jaspers as far as I know—proposed a similar form of concretely self-reflexive communication referred to simply as Dialogue.

The Dialogue process can generally be characterized as an experiment in "radical honesty" in which participants relate to one another on the basis of an awareness of and willingness to share their "hidden agendas": underlying assumptions and motives, feelings and projections, defensive maneuverings, etc. Personally, I see the experiment as potentially resulting in (1) lowering the barriers that obstruct healthy and creative relationships, and (2) providing an antidote to the destructive consequences of living in a monological world—a world in which people talk without listening to each other, and don't really even listen to themselves.  It is true though that there are many possible ways to understand what such Dialogue involves. In fact, part of the Dialogue process is meta-dialogically exploring its meaning. 

I do not agree with Jaspers or Bohm in this regard. I much prefer the purpose and conduct of a Buberian dialogue that, I believe should be followed in this situation. However,. I do see Jaspers point and I think Roy and I have have demonstrated, here, why the Bohemian dialogues do not always work out. Honesty, like common sense, is not so easy to come by in a monological world.

Comment by Roy Wagner on February 1, 2012 at 9:49am

I appreciate your compliments? However the entire exchange between us has been me asking you to explain in terms an average man armed only with a dictionary and little or no understanding of the advanced mathematical concepts your theory is described in.

Can you answer these questions so I can understand.

My interpretation is irrelevant, However your Meaning and how that is interpreted to others is whats essential for explanation and understanding, 

Mathematics is a Universal Language correct but only between scientists and engineers a very small % of the population regularly use Mathematics to communicate ideas and concepts with each other.

What is the advantage of your system compared to traditional A.I.

What problems/ predictions that current A.I. systems cannot solve that yours can?

Is your system more accurate, or faster, fuzzier? what are the improvements it offers.

I am not asking you to prove it just describe it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_states#The_wavefunction_of_a_...

I cannot read these equations like I can English you however speak in these terms on a daily basis you know what they mean to me they are more like  hieroglyphics or logo-graphics.

The hieroglyphics made perfect sense to a literate Ancient Egyptian, Could you read them (hieroglyphics) and understand their meaning?

My understanding of waves are that they are in constant motion unless blocked or absorbed in some way.

It depends on the medium that they are operating in.

Light waves, Ocean waves, Sound waves, Vibrations, Oscillations, Harmonics, how they work in your theory I can only guess at.

Could you explain this to your wife? well enough that you could have a meaningful conversation about about how this is a better way compared to the more traditional A.I. approaches. lol Roy

Comment by Ken Ewell on February 1, 2012 at 3:58am

You are wrong Roy.  You suppose far too much.

Please try to focus on the question:  How does Roy interpret a wave in relation to coherence; -- given the two kinds of coherence mentioned in the title and explained by the chart below.  

Roy you are obviously a wise man, a poet with a worldly understanding.  I can hardly match my wits to your obvious sophistication. I do not want to disappoint by falling short of your expectation in as far as the veracity of any explanation I might be inclined to proffer. The Wikipedia reference looks as though it has the answer, but it does not speak to how Roy interprets it.  

I am as yet quite unsure and in rather large doubt about your definition of "the common man" and what he is capable of understanding. The fact that your understanding does not cohere with mine is a fact to which you have so graciously pledged with an ode.  

So, therefore Roy, unless I know how you interpret coherence I cannot determine your references well-enough to qualify as a valid "explanation" in that regard.  As I mentioned I would also like to know if you have a name for "invariance under a transformation."  Let me put that in terms you cannot mistake.  What is the nomenclature, or popular and unique term, defined as "invariance under a transformation?"

And since I have already explained two kinds of coherence, I ask only you grace your dissent with your interpretation of coherence, so that it may stand adjacent to, above or below, or apart from, those kinds I have already given, and; which are accepted by almost the entire scientific community according to the broadly accepted theories of truth I mentioned in another Blog post.

Savvy?

Comment by Roy Wagner on January 31, 2012 at 10:17pm

Dear Ken a coherence is a wave is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(physics) describes it.

Is yours an undulation a  ripple or a tsunami?  I considered your waves to be the searching for or affecting equilibrium as you described it. between  Ecological (Natural Forces) and Behavioral ( Rigid Formulas )

I could be wrong that's why I asked for an explanation for the common man.

Invariance under a transformation (NEWT Gingrich)  Something that seems to make changes but always reverts back to its true original. )" Bad Joke"

It is a lot like my sword analogy,

Once you have assigned a Value/Meaning to an invarience your kind of stuck with it no matter which way up you try to use it, I t was designed for one thing so it cannot be transformed by a computer program because it does not know all of its uses only the one you originally informed the program of.

What you need is a invarience that's an Impersonator allowed to wear a disguise or many different hats.

How did I do lol Roy 

Comment by Ken Ewell on January 31, 2012 at 6:57pm

Okay Roy, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  Why don't you tell me how you interpret a wave in relation to coherence.  I would also like to know if you have a word for describing "invariance under a transformation." Can you tell me what you call that when you also tell me what a wave is to you?

Comment by Roy Wagner on January 30, 2012 at 11:19pm

My point was about the language being used, People can't use what they cant understand it may be scientifically or mathematically correct but without that understanding it might as well be gibberish just like my poem.

How many people drop out of college or switch majors because of their inability to understand or be proficient in calculus?  I have tried to revisit calculus for some engineering specifications recently.

I did Algebra in high school and simple algorithmic formulas nearly 30 years ago. I can't get it I don't know the grammar of Calculus well enough, I need someone to take me by the hand and walk me through it.  I had to hire an engineer to do all the math and explain the results to me in plain English.

The dictionary explains coherence as waves, equilibrium to me means balance, behavioral in this context I believe means  rigid rules.

Ecological means the understanding of the environment that you are  dealing with,  What and how your actions and the actions of others are affecting it.

How you can and should be creating a sustainable ecology, that man made is not always better or more appropriate than what nature has taken millions of years to evolve into as the best use of a resource. 

If you have developed something that will help people make more logical decisions that's great I never said I was unfamiliar with the language or the concept of A. I.

I do have an understanding of how computers work and how people and computers interrelate I have spent many hours explaining their uses advantages and limitations to people.

An old computer adage is " Garbage in Garbage out " the syntax needs to be exactly correct for the computer to do what you want.

A computer engineer learns to speak machine code so he can teach the computer what he needs it to know and what he wants he wants it to do, the computer has to understand these instructions.

You are a scientific mathematician you speak in terms another scientific mathematician will easily understand and be able to follow, however if you are not a scientific mathematician the concepts you describe need to be in a less scientific form to be understood or they might as well be in Sanskrit and how many people are fluent in that these days. LOL Roy

Comment by Ken Ewell on January 30, 2012 at 1:41pm

@Roy, Please.  You are in a "green" business but you claim "ecological" is an unfamiliar reference for you.  You claim to be a father but see "behavioral" as a reference out of or above the league of the common man.  You claim to be a man that can stand and walk upright like a human being but you have no understanding of what "equilibrium" is.  It is clear you do not know what coherence is.  And that all in all I am taking over your head!   Come on, you are pulling my leg?  Is this a Turing test?  Are you a bot Roy? LOL

Comment by Ken Ewell on January 30, 2012 at 1:35pm

I can demonstrate it Keith.  Contact me with a note and we can schedule a date and time.  I will send you a peer-reviewed report and review of its performance.

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