reckless intuitions of an epistemic hygienist ([info]gustavolacerda) wrote,
@ 2005-05-24 13:27:00
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Entry tags:ai, cogsci

Robert Hecht-Nielsen presents his theory of cognition: "cogent confabulation"
Robert Hecht-Nielsen presents his theory of cognition

For him, the fundamental mechanism of cognition is what he calls "cogent confabulation":

Hecht-Nielsen noted that the common method used in search engines, data mining and drug trial analysis -- maximum a posteriori probability -- is not the mechanism of cognition. "Humans and animals don't do this," he argued. "Instead, animal cognition maximizes cogency, and in a non-logic environment, cogency maximization implements what I call the 'duck test': if a small animal waddles like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and flies like a duck, we conclude that it is a duck because that is the conclusion which most strongly supports the probability of the assumed facts being true."


Here is a nice summary about him and his theories.

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[info]brkvw
2005-05-24 04:22 pm UTC (link)
Not to attack here, but humans, and animals, from a purely empirical point of view, are very poor at searching, or identifying things.

So, make some very poor cognition software and yow will win a prize.

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[info]gustavolacerda
2005-05-24 04:32 pm UTC (link)
or identifying things
it depends what you mean here. AIs still have a hard time telling a pair of glasses apart from a chair.

The IT industry exists precisely because humans are so limited. While we can store tons of information in the form of stories, we have very small memories for exact information (which is why memory wizards work by encoding numbers as stories). Not to mention our pathetic working memory, which is only partially alleviated by paper.

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[info]brkvw
2005-05-24 07:38 pm UTC (link)
Hmmm, I don't think of our memory for details being poor, I think of our memory as being very good at storing things we recognize in context.

Things that have high impact have a high value, and things we see a lot also have a high value.

So if I ask you to think of something generic, like a Mercedes, you will picture a specific model, colour, etc. Even though I did not give you that info, or question.

You build a blurry picture form a tree of impacts and impressions. Perhaps a Mercedes Taxi for you, and for me when someone says Mercedes I think of the first car I owned, or a dump truck in Africa.

We know our brains can be wired differently though. I have a pictographic memory, so I know I'm wired wrong, but that the brain can be wired this way.

Also, I think IT exists because programmers don't do their job correctly.

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