A.s.a.'s art

High up in the associative hierarchy, on long time scales, Asa's memory and extrapolation/interpolation generates stories, fiction, literature. Some of these patterns are identifiable as examples of Gozzi's 36 dramatic situations. (The Thirty-six Dramatic Situations, George Polti, Editor Co., 1917) (For example: pursuit, obtaining, daring enterprise, fatal imprudence, disaster, erroneous judgement.)  "Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity." (Rebecca West, Ending in Earnest, Books for Libraries, 1967) This may tell us something of how and why art emerges from intelligent systems.

In early experiments I taught Asa Boolean logic operations. Could a vision system allow Asa to develop a spatial logic? (Handbook of Spatial Logics, Aiello et al, Springer, 2007) Would this result in an internal picture language (Picture Language Machines, Kaneff, Academic Press, 1970) with visual art developing higher up in the hierarchical memory?

VEX IQ robotics platform

It may be possible to use the VEX IQ robotics construction system with my pain subsystem. (Depending upon how VEX IQ robots tend to fail.) Something like the VEX clawbot IQ might involve about one hundred pain sensors. A simpler design should be possible that would reduce this number.

Ground level

What is the best way to sense/define the ground/floor? An altimeter is easy but not very precise. I have placed force sensitive resistors on the foot pads of a walking Lego robot. These feel the push of the floor and the weight of the robot and any load it carries.

Education research

As a part of institutionalized learning assessment I am being asked to identify problems that the students have in my classes, measure their failure rates on these issues, find a fix, employ it, and then measure how well the fix has reduced failure rates.  To do this in a statistically sound double blind test would take years. We are being asked to cycle through all of the courses in 3 years.I do not wish to do physics education research. I have been critical of much of that work in the past and I do not see evidence that any silver bullets exist that might solve any of our problems in education.I work under capitalism. If someone really wants to improve education then they need to put some real money into the effort. I believe that fusion energy, artificial intelligence, a science of consciousness, and scientific pluralism are all topics that are more important than physics education research.

Qualia

Sensory receptor nerves respond to external stimuli like light and sound. These are exteroceptor  nerves. This defines what we mean by the concept "to feel." Sensory receptor nerves can also respond to internal stimuli like blood pressure. These are interoceptor nerves. Perhaps what we call qualia are the triggering of other interoceptor nerves, nerves that respond to various other types of internal stimuli. Again, they are what we "feel."The simplest example of this might just be the state of a hidden layer in a neural network feeding back to the input layer, i.e., an Elman network.

Legacy code

I have code and printout dating back into the 1970s. Most (all?) of the oldest electronic files will no longer run but I have hard copy of many programs. I have been unable to locate a couple of thick file folders of publications on case-based reasoning which also contained the first CBR programs I wrote. I suspect that these may have been discarded by mistake a few years back when there was a remodeling that tore the outer wall off the science hall (and my office). I've written too many hundreds of programs to want to spend the time needed to preserve them all.

Weltanschauung

I have been asked about my worldview. Many of my blogs on philosophy deal with my weltanschauung, among them my blogs of  1 sept. 2012, 17 aug. 2012, 1 Jan. 2012, 17 aug. 2013, 1 dec. 2014, 26 march 2014, 13 april 2015, 20 feb. 2015, 4 oct. 2016, 15 sept, 2016, 22 april 2016, 28 may 2016, 1 june 2016, 21 july 2016, and 7 Jan. 2017.