I was exhausted, and I think I needed to think all of this deeply. I can try a reply now.
I, too, am aware that life is short, but somehow I draw the opposite conclusion. I don't think I have time to dissipate myself by sampling everything. I need to focus. Because, whichever path I choose, it's likely to demand a long input of hard work.
I understand that. I noticed you're creating
content when I just create engines, and this is what's fascinating in your work on Acuitas. I don't know if it's related though. But I often have a sensation that the thing I'm working on won't "explode", and is therefore useless. I usually know it from the beginning, but I still feel interested in the thing. Then at some point, it vanishes. Recently something different has happened, with a project named "Dejavu". I thought I would be able to keep this one, that it would be the good one. But no. There was something wrong.
1. Infurl beat me to the first reason. Maintaining a functional open-source project is more work than writing code for yourself ... especially when the project is nowhere near finished, and the code base is in a state of constant churn. Trying to, for instance, preserve backward-compatibility between different versions of all the modules would not be fun right now. And if anybody saw how messy and incomplete the code actually is, I'd be embarrassed.
A day may come when everything is tidied up and stable and has a documentation package. But it is not this day.
2. Acuitas has never really been intended as a tool. Not that it would be impossible for the software to do practical work, but that's not what it's primarily for. If I were merely inventing a new type of wrench, then I suppose I wouldn't mind stamping out hundreds of copies and handing them around. But Acuitas has aspects of ... an art piece, maybe. Releasing the code under present circumstances would be kind of like releasing the first half of my unpublished novel, and inviting other people to write the ending. No thanks.
Some projects just aren't meant to be collaborative, and this is one of them. I prefer to keep creative control.
3. IF my work ever does manage to grow into something innovative and great, then I would be concerned about the possibility of its being misused (or maybe even mistreated). I love humanity, but I don't trust it! So in that case, I'd want to be cautious about who got to see or expand upon the code. I'd pick people whose philosophical/moral alignment and personal character I admired, not just people of adequate skill.
All good understandable reasons. Thanks for sharing. It was a real mystery to me.
Zero, I see your work as mildly interesting: At least you're trying something productive. I saw your Levenshtein distance algorithm the other day and thought it was an interesting idea to apply it to word sequences instead of letters, but would still have very limited uses (Due to levenshtein algorithms being what they are). I almost commented on it but did not, because 1: I prefer to make things rather than talk about making things, and 2: Every word I type exacerbates the RSI in my fingers, I have to pick my battles.
I didn't know the meaning of the English word "mildly", and I'm not sure there's a direct mirroring word in French. But I got it I think. I'm not a genius, but every now and then, I can have a good idea. More important: I do things. Fine!
It's Ok not to comment everything, especially when it's physically painful. No problem.
It's true that you don't seem to break out of an endless cycle of experiments, but at every experiment you do gain something. I'm also an artist and know a lot of creatives. Whenever I get close to finishing a drawing, I stop, the challenge is over, and it just sits there for 5 years until I decide to just get it over with and draw the last three lines. Many creatives get new ideas faster than they can finish the old ones, it's a common problem, but they get better while doing it nonetheless. Every piece of code you type becomes another tool that might solve a later problem. I once wrote a stupid piece of code to detect insults from Loebner Prize judges, it was a waste of time in my eyes. But now an expansion of that code's principles runs my AI's ethical subroutine. It's still too crude, the kind of crude that might make you stop and try something else, but you could also think of it as a placeholder: I know it's not good enough, and I have an idea for a better system to replace it with, but until then it does a reasonable job, and provides practical experiences that will help design that better system later. It doesn't have to be perfect from the get-go, you can always change parts that don't work or redo the whole system if you want. I've overhauled my AI's knowledge structure five times. Every time took me two months, but I would not have figured it out without the insights I gained from using the earlier versions.
You really get the gist of it. You made an accurate description of what I can experience. There's one difference though with, say, painting. It's like I know I have my friend Mona Lisa who lives next door, and it would be great to paint a portrait of her, but for some reason, I keep painting dumb apples on a table. Don't know why. Not ready yet maybe, as you said, I need to gain insights from painting these apples again and again. But it also feels like not daring. Don't know.
As to the question of sharing, the effort doesn't gain me much. It could take months to explain everything I've programmed, longer if people are going to ask questions, and I'd rather use that time to work. Secondly, the field of AI attracts a lot of crazy people, and I've had my fill of them when I shared my progress in the past. I don't need that kind of attention.
Thanks for sharing, I understand your reasons. I still am afraid of the perspective of a huge quantity of work that would be lost if you don't take time to share it one day, at least to a few selected people.
About crazy people, well what can I say
My reasons are all of the above.
With regards to your input into the site and multiple personal projects… You are looking for something, trying to work something out, and you’re not sure what it is.
Any ‘thought’ is comprised of sub fragments/ facets, a base set of general bits/ tools are recombined to create other thoughts. Each project you start will have bits in common with previous projects but be combined differently. You stop the project when you have satisfied your curiosity, when you have gained insight. You then use what you have learned from all your experience so far, to think through the next iteration.
You might not be consciously aware of the process, or be misinterpreting it, but your sub conscious knows exactly what it’s doing… its working towards the goal… keep it up.
Thank you so much for this very optimistic and plausible way of seeing the situation. It gives me strength. It's true that these projects always re-arrange some previously explored bits, adding new stuff. I see patterns coming and coming again, I know they're important but I still don't know exactly how they fit in the global solution.
I will now try to trust my instinct, be true to what I am. I'll keep it up.
