Another popularity contest?

Ragone et al report* "a low correlation between peer review outcome and impact in time of the accepted contributions". Are measurements of such things accurate?

* On Peer Review in Computer Science, Scientometrics, vol. 97, issue 2, pp 317-356, 2013

Personhood

Anne Warren argued* that being a person involved:
1. Being conscious of objects, events external and/or internal, and pain.
2. Being able to reason to solve problems.
3. Exhibiting self-motivated activity.
4. Being able to communicate on indefinitely many possible topics.
5. Possessing a self concept, self awareness.
A.s.a. H. does all of these things to at least some degree.

* On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, The Monist, 1973.

Price of progress

My A.s.a. project (autonomous software agent) is 24 years old now and A.s.a. H. is nearly 16 years old. Over that period of time some upgrade of hardware and software was essential. Newer and faster computers, more memory, more sensors, better more realistic simulations, a larger casebase, improved pain system, etc. Other changes were more incidental. Migrating between MAC OS and WINDOWS and LINUX, adding LEGO eV3s, Arduinos, and Raspberry Pis, QB64, RobotBASIC, C++.  Each modification takes time and introduces bugs.* Because of such issues I’ve resisted migrating A.s.a. H. To Python.

* Including such things as the Raspberry Pi assuming a UK keyboard so that you have to use the \ symbol to get #!

Alternate realities: a quantum mechanical version

I have published various arguments in favor of the existence of alternate realities. (Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., vol. 121, 2018, pg 211 for example.) Proietti, et al, now claim to have performed a Wigner's friend experiment in which "two observers can experience fundamentally different realities." arXiv:1902.05080v1, 13 Feb. 2019

Robot simulator

I’m trying to make my simulations more realistic. Currently I find force and acceleration sensors to present the most problems.*

* The simulator that comes with RobotBASIC has a number of quite reasonable simulated sensors: rFeel, rBumper, rRange, rLook, rBeacon, rCompass, rChargeLevel, rGpsX, rGpsY, rGround

Personal Identity

The body theories, memory theories, and soul theories all attempt to tie our personal identity to an enduring entity, be it physical or nonphysical. Perhaps that entity is a complex causal sequence/network. A.s.a. H.'s self would be the evolving patterns in its hierarchical memory like those listed in my 21 July 2016 blog. The boundary between myself and the world would be fuzzy. Are my glasses and hearing aids part of me? What about my calculator, smart phone, and computers?
If this definition of self is accurate then uploading yourself into a computer might be possible.
Perhaps a better theory of the self would be a combination of a body theory, a memory theory, and a causal network theory.

Concept cleaning

I am trying to clean up some of A.s.a. H.'s concepts by manually editing its case base. This isn't easy. The concept "move", as learned by A.s.a., includes the sensation of "sound". A.s.a. has heard its motors/servos running as it moves its body or its manipulators. Should I delete "sound" as a vector component of  "move"? Similarly, should "pain" be a component of "damage" or not? As a compromise I can simply reduce the strength of some vector components but not delete them entirely. But reduce by how much?

RobotBASIC

I like RobotBASIC despite some syntax differences as compared with QB64. I like the simulator* and have used RobotBASIC to control LEGO NXT pbricks** and Arduinos.*** Unfortunately A.s.a. H. runs quite slowly in RobotBASIC (as compared with QB64 for example).

* See, for example, Robot Programmer's Bonanza, McGraw Hill, 2008

** See RobotBASIC Projects for the Lego NXT, Blankenship and Mishal, 2011

*** Interfacing the Arduino with a PC Using RobotBASIC's Protocol, Blankenship and Mishal, 2011