Ultimate reality, on various scales

We don't have direct access to ultimate reality, we have only our sense impressions, our sensitivity to light, sound, pressure, temperature, and certain chemicals. (Some other creatures have sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields.) Like Mariam Thalos (Without Hierarchy, OUP, 2013) I do not believe that ultimate reality is reducible solely to the microworld, be it strings, or branes, or quantum fields, or Hilbert spaces, ...  The macroworld is also ultimate, be it a multiverse, higher dimensional, or whatever. There are also things like mind, thought, and consciousness which are patterns/processes. What these are patterns of, or processes in, is of less importance.  Asa's thoughts can be patterns of activity in an electronic computer or in an optical computer.  A computer, in turn, can be assembled out of matter in our world or equally well out of gliders in a universe like Conway's game of life.

Scientific pluralism, probability and statistics

There are a number of different theories of probability: objectivist, subjectivist, frequentist, Bayesian, etc.  (see, for example, AI: a Modern Approach, 3rd edition, 2010, pg 491) Statistical inferences are then made based upon a variety of competing approaches, each with its own different strengths and weaknesses. (See, for example, S. N. Goodman, Science, vol. 352, 2016, pg 1180)  In general one can not make claims based upon a single estimation of statistical significance, be it Fisher's P value, Bayes factors, or the like. Rather, one needs a pluralistic approach to value/assessment. (In a society of Asa H agents I have used various different value functions/networks.  See, for example, with Asa H light, my blogs of  10 Feb. and  19 Feb. 2011)

Subsymbolic?

Asa H can be taught names for the concepts it learns, for example:
Collision=(sense near, bump, decelerate) can be expanded to (taught):
Collision=(sense near, bump, decelerate, sound "collision")

Artificial neural networks, on the other hand, are frequently subsymbolic.

How many of the concepts (case vectors) that Asa learns should be named (symbolic)?

Going in the other direction Theodore Sider has suggested that complex linguistic entities be constructed as sequences or tree-structures of linguistic atoms (words). (Writing the Book of the World, OUP, 2011, page 295) This is exactly what Asa H creates (learns). We would certainly not want to assign names (words) to all of these larger scale case vectors. I.e., Vocabulary choice is required at this point.

Patom theory

John Ball's Patom theory (Speaking Artificial Intelligence, ComputerWorld, 2015) is quite similar to my A.s.a. H but has not yet been developed into code.  When it has been I will be interested in seeing just what design choices have been made and how it performs.

Downward activation in Asa H

In Asa H predictions and output actions are the result of downward (backward, top-down) activation.  They involve a flow of activation from upper levels in the hierarchical memory to lower levels.  It is also possible for an active case to send activity downward to all of its vector components.  This additional activity could then influence what other patterns (cases) might be or become active.

Lego NXT stigmergy

A swarm of Lego NXT colored brick (or beacon) seeking robots and brick (or beacon) dispensing robots can employ stigmergy to self-organize.

What is simple?

There are those who believe that our universe is not as simple as an empty one would be and that an explanation is needed as to why our universe is as complex as it is. There is more than one issue here but firstly, just what constitutes simplicity? Here are some possibilities:

1. What is more easily learned.  (But by which learning algorithm(s)?)
2. Shortest. (But in what language? Which representation?)
3. Have the greatest symmetry. (In which geometry? And which object properties are to remain unchanged by the transforms?)
4. Information-theoretic measures. (Which regularities should be counted?)

More likely what people mean by simplicity is a vector quantity again, a cluster of components. (Just like the concepts Asa H learns. For Asa most concepts are vectors.) And people won't even agree on those components.