Imagine

"Imagine there's no countries....
and no religion too...
Imagine all the people sharing all the world."      John Lennon

Theory of Thought

The following is an abstract I am preparing for a conference early next year.

I have decomposed thought into remembering, generalization, comparison, explanation, deduction, organization, induction, classification, concept formation, image manipulation, feature detection, analogy, compression, simulation, and value assessment. (Trans. Kansas Academy of  Sci., vol. 108, pg. 169, 2005, vol. 109, pg 159, 2006, vol. 109, pg 254, 2006, vol. 110, pg 302, 2007, vol. 111, pg 174, 2008, vol. 112, pg 143, 2009, vol. 113, pg 127, 2010) Previous AI experiments like SOAR, ACT-R, and CYC have all lacked some of these capabilities. In order to implement these processes on a computer each of them is, in turn, decomposed into sorting, searching, vector averaging, vector differencing, vector dot product, sensitivity analysis, renormalization, interpolation, extrapolation, concatenation, time warping, and image manipulations like rotation, shifting, scaling, etc.  These later are all well established algorithms for which there already exist efficient, error free, standard software components.  There is no claim that this decomposition is unique.  Hopefully it is adequate, or do we need explicit attention, affect, or language modules for instance?  Also, are the linkage paths between modules correct and adequate? 

In this fashion we hope to build minds which are more rational than humans and which possess better values. (Humans are not rational.  See, for example, Predictably Irrational by D. Ariely, Harper, 2009)  We should also note that we do not expect our AI Asa H to fill the same niche that humans fill.  Asa is better than humans at certain mental tasks but certainly not all.

Asa H 2.0 data structures

The XNOR pattern:

11    1
00    1
01    0
10    0

is recorded as:  (shown unnormalized)

caselist(1) = 1
timeactive(1) = 1
featureactive(1) =1
featurestrength(1) =1

caselist(2) = 1
timeactive(2) = 1
featureactive(2) = 2
featurestrength(2) =1

caselist(3) = 1
timeactive(3) = 2
featureactive(3) = 3
featurestrength(3) = 1

caselist(4) = 2
timeactive(4) = 2
featureactive(4) = 3
featurestrength(4) = 1

caselist(5) = 3
timeactive(5) = 1
featureactive(5) = 2
featurestrength(5) = 1

caselist(6) = 4
timeactive(6) = 1
featureactive(6) = 1
featurestrength(6) = 1

as opposed to the data structures used in Asa H 1.0 (see page 165 of Asa H: A hierarchical architecture for software agents, R. Jones, Trans. Kan. Acad. Sci., vol. 109, # 3/4, pg 159-167, 2006)

Being different

"You can't be better without being different."  John Horak

(But let's not use this as an excuse for anything and everything.)

Solid state Fusion

(Rather than the common term "cold fusion" I will use the term "solid state fusion" since "cold fusion"
was meant to refer to muon catalyzed reactions.)  We should not believe in solid state fusion because it requires at least  THREE "miracles."  First, the extremely good confinement of the fusioning nuclei in the solid state media.
Second, the large production of energy with very much reduced production of radiation (neutrons, gammas, etc.).  Third, the fusion reaction in light hydrogen (not just heavy hydrogen).  Any one of these is a near "miracle" and has a very low probability of occurrence.  The possibility of solid state fusion being true is then the product of these three!  We should not believe it without extraordinary evidence. (i.e., something well beyond the evidence we expect for normal scientific claims.)

Religion

"Religion is poison."  Mao Zedong

"Such extraordinary beliefs would require extraordinary evidence."  Carl Sagan

"If this world had a creator he would have to be an incompetent."  unknown

The Workplace should be more Democratic

The workplace is currently a dictatorship.  This is a mistake and makes a business less efficient.  It has been known for a hundred years that groups can make better decisions than an individual can.  This has been proven in many experiments over the last hundred years.  Businesses must be made more democratic if they are to succeed.  Currently most businesses fail in 3 to 5 years and 90% of businesses fail within about 10 years.
For every business in the United States that makes a profit there are four others that do not.

ESS, an economical space station

Is the international space station, ISS, worth its 100 billion dollar price tag? Unless the alpha magnetic spectrometer finds something spectacular the answer is probably no.  So what would an economical space station, an "ESS", look like?  Numerous trade studies suggest to me that it would have a "permanent" core providing electrical power, cooling, guidance, communications/data transfer, robotics, life support and living facilities for 2 or 3 astronauts, an airlock, propulsion, etc.  The ESS would be man tended, not permanently manned, but might support an experiment on long term "closed cycle" life support systems.  Many of the ESS's experiments would come as temporary/replaceable plug in modules rather like the russian MRM-2 on the ISS.  The ESS would be resupplied by something similar to the russian Progress freighters which would serve to dump garbage as well as provide upmass capability.  A Soyuz like shuttle (but without the Orbital Compartment which is not needed for short duration flight to and from the ESS) would bring up astronauts as well as bring back down mass.  These shuttles could fly up unmanned in order to increase down mass capability.

Freedom in the United States

Americans talk a lot about freedom.  The republicans talked a lot about freedom recently in the run up to the elections.  But most americans have very little freedom in the workplace.  Most of us are wage slaves in our professional lives.