[Zero]

Hi all,

Do you think that a mind can be seen as a land? Instead of woods, and mountains, and lakes, and deserts, it would be made of memories, reflexes, opinions, knowledge... Instead of being populated by animals and vegetals, it would be populated by imagined / perceived / planned things, thoughts, actions...

If so, a programming language similar to Inform7 could be built, and used by non-programmers to create sharable parts-of-mind. Inform7 is a DSL dedicated to interactive fiction creation, with a simple built-in class hierarchy:

Code

object
        direction
        room
        region
        thing
                door
                container
                        vehicle
                        player's holdall
                supporter
                backdrop
                device
                person
                        man
                        woman
                        animal 

To create such a mind-oriented language, another class hierarchy would be needed, that would describe mind components / objects...

[Art]

Interesting...Inform 7 looks interesting! Perhaps you're on a good track with this idea.

[Korrelan]

Do you think that a mind can be seen as a land?

Yes, the cortex is very much like a land, with maps/ areas devoted to representing very specific facets of a thought or sensory stimulus. 

There the similarity with your analogy ends though. A thought represented by an animal wandering would imply that all the required parts for a thought would be local to the animal. 

Each section of a cortex map is devoted to a specific attribute of a thought, so one region senses the ‘blueness’ another the ‘roundness’ etc.  It’s the combined results from these dispersed regions that produce the result.

So perhaps a very tall animal, with a leg in each relevant area?  Game of neural twister anyone? lol

Edit: Though the locations of a specific species would work.  So the collective locations of rabbits etc...

If the animals always moved relevant to the incoming sensory stream, and had a regular migratory route around the map, and always reacted in similar fashion, then their locations on the map at that point in time would represent the current state of mind.

If ever the animals are in the same locations in a future scenario then a match can be made to a past event/ occurrence.   Stimulus could be food appearing at set locations and the terrain etc would effect how they moved. Absence of stimulus would result in the animals defaulting back to their migratory routes.  Swarm intelligence?

[Zero]

Interesting...Inform 7 looks interesting! Perhaps you're on a good track with this idea.

maybe... I hope so!

Swarm intelligence?

Yes I was about to say "a tall animal or a pack of wolves" when I saw your edit...
I like the idea that "each section of a cortex map is devoted to a specific attribute of a thought". I think I agree with this.

(...) their locations on the map at that point in time would represent the current state of mind.
If ever the animals are in the same locations in a future scenario then a match can be made to a past event/ occurrence.

Yes and it also works with imagined things that "ring the same bells" than perceived things. In real brains, perception and imagination of something have a lot in common (waves?)

I also feel that somehow, thoughts can also point to something, to a place, to another thought, to a stimulus... I may be wrong. When I think "this idea is crazy", the "* is crazy" would be pointing to "this idea". So that would be a rabbit family... looking at or talking to (or something) another rabbit family. Or a wolf chewing a rabbit 

I could use some help, and I would love to make it a team work... if you like it, guys. We have a neuromaster, a mathematician, an ontologist, ...etc, ...etc. We should really all work together. (I'm taking a risk here, so please don't hit me on the head )

[Korrelan]

It’s really good to feel your enthusiasm (feeds like a Demon) and that you’re thinking outside of the box, a different approach.

In real brains, perception and imagination of something have a lot in common

They both use exactly the same ‘circuits’, inward sensory streams are pattern matched, which then fire imagination, perception… is imagination triggered by external stimulus.

I also feel that somehow, thoughts can also point to something, to a place, to another thought

Each thought is made up of very small facets (from the maps).  If the facets of one thought contain enough of the facets for another leading thought, or the facets from two or more consecutive thoughts produce a pattern similar to another thought, that next thought becomes the primary… and so on.

For emotions… you could use weather patterns to affect the local fauna and how they react.

You could alter migratory patterns depending on local animal populations, conditions etc.

I'd get rid of the 'animal' bit though... 'bots' sounds way better.

[Zero]

You're already working on your own creation, and I can certainly understand that 
I also think that there are several ways to do AGI. But don't you think that a winning solution would have to be created by a group of workers, rather than by a single person? I see 2 reasons here: 1- because concepts from different "knowledge bases" would have to co-exist in a same solution, which makes the solution stronger, and 2- because the solution also has to be accepted at least by a community of users (confidence matters).
But again, I understand that you don't want to be distracted (and I would love to see your work).

Also, how do you understand&create "acting" in your system?

[Korrelan]

But don't you think that a winning solution would have to be created by a group of workers

Yes I agree, I personally keep my whole design in my noggin, It's just easier for me to work that way... but I will help anyway I can.

and I would love to see your work

There are some old vids on my Tube.

The tag under my avatar image will link you.

[Art]

You keep the whole project in your head? You're beginning to scare me as you almost sound like that other person that had this outstanding AI that he wanted to show except that it was only in his head and could only be shown through some animation. Say it ain't so.

Theory is nice but one can think something to death and still never end up with anything useful, usable or concrete.

You surely have a working demo of some sort after all these years, right? Just asking....

[Korrelan]

Yes, I have a working system. 

You keep the whole project in your head?

This is not strictly true, I wrote a meta/ image/ database system years ago for keeping my notes etc.

Edit

I suppose I did kind of hijack the thread.  Art is right... extraordinary claims… require extraordinary proof and I shouldn't be posting in that manner until I show I have solid proof of my system. I will start a separate thread when I get the time to make an proper explanation and some vids. 

@Zero... I can see your theory being promising

[ivan.moony]

There is a possibility that every mind is just another sensor pointing to some other Universe lying inside us, a Universe of imagination. That Universe talks to us providing us with imaginary states of our other senses we already experienced in the real world (memory). Another aspect would be the imagination, a stream of thought of combinations of different states of our senses and checking how they are connected.

This stream is interactive, guided by our will in some extent... And in the other extent... Don't ask for more, this is just a theory of the wildest dreams, don't catch me up on this. I don't have another explanation of what's happening in our heads. Anyway, the theory is a mess, and to prove it, we would have to build a special probe and send it to this new Universe and back to reality to read measurements.

[ivan.moony]

We should really all work together

Well... maybe... if you have a time to possibly waste, try creating a project-fragments tree of tasks with the least branches possible, while letting others to extend and fill in the nodes they would be interested in to participate. If you fill in too much, you are telling us what to do too much, and if you fill in too little, no one would really understand what the plan is. Even if no one hops in, you would at least have your thoughts about the project cleared up.

It's just an idea, I'm not sure if it's the right way to start things up.

[Zero]

Hi all,

Maybe that's a new direction, one step towards higher level in OOP: instances working in packs. I have this feeling that anyway, strong AI has to be achieved through swarm activity. In classic OOP, you define classes, you use inheritance, and you instantiate objects you give orders to. Maybe the next step, an orthogonal one, is to allow the programmer to easily define how similar objects are organized in society. Like... you don't tell an object who it should give orders to, but rather which role matters in the current activity, like this:
instead of:

Code

Jack.SaveTheGirl();

you say:

Code

AlphaMale.SaveTheGirl();

Who is AlphaMale depends on the definition of the society the calling object is part of. If Jack is the Alpha Male of the "pack" the caller is part of, so be it.
I say this because of our idea of a "tall animal"...