Friday, October 31, 2008

Thought while reading a preface to GEB and trying to sum up for myself what it was about (which is a strange loop per se, by the way!):

The main criterion of self-conscience (of intelligence, if you want) is the ability to create models of the environment (outside world) in which the conscientous being eists (believes to exist, find oneself existing, to be utterly precise) and to use these models to guide one's existence in that world (which is also some sort of experimental verification / fine-tuning for these models). It's that simple. Turing test describes exactly this, but from the point of human, and taking the world where only humans are considered to be legitimate intelligent beings, as a premise.

So simple.

Upd: but it is also something that animals do. The essence of intelligence (I've just read the next chunk :) ) is that it can model its own way of modeling the Universe, and then model this modeling, and so on. This is called "self-reference" and this is something that divides inteligent beings from merely sentient ones... something that makes what is already alive even more alive, so to say. The deeper the reflection can go - according to GEB - the higher is the intelligence level.

But what about finding patterns where they are not present, then? (which is the common sign of mental illness...) How does this fit in there?..

Sunday, October 26, 2008

"A miracle" is just a description for the parts in the clockwork of the Universe which we still cannot access, or even notice. Ergo: there exists a valid reason for every miracle, but may be we are not always supposed to get informed about these reasons ;)