It is theoretically possible to construct an algorithm with a complexity growth curve that is shifted on the x axis. In other words, you might get part of the left side of a parabola as well as the right for an O(n^2) algorithm if the algorithm happens to have a particular value of n that it performs best at were you to graph the algorithm’s runtime.
This is a fairly unimportant point, but it’s one that traditional algorithmic theory doesn’t really touch upon.
My dissertation committee is actually freaked out because they believe that my work might be too novel. I find this funny, because my own opinion of the novelty is that it is minimal.
I’m having a hard time taking it seriously. Taking something that can be written about in 15 pages and blowing it up to 150… why?
(To graduate, that’s why)
If people keep pressing me to do their freelance work when I keep explaining that I have no time, insisting that things are quick jobs when they are not, then their projects will be late. Do they think I’m lying when I say I’m too busy?
A post I just made on Slashdot in the context of an article about improving computer “Go” opponents:
Intuition is something a successful AI (and a successful human Go player) will require, and while we can model it on a computer, most people haven’t thought of doing so. Most systems are either based on symbolic logic, statistics, or reinforcement learning, all of which rely on deductive A->B style rules. You can build an intelligent system on that sort of reasoning, but not ONLY on that sort of reasoning (besides, that’s not the way that humans normally think either).
I suspect that what we need is something more akin to “clustering” of concepts, in which retrieval of one concept invokes others that are nearby in “thought-space”. The system should then try to merge the clusters of different concepts it thinks of, resulting in the sort of fusion of ideas that characterizes intuition (in other words, the clusters are constantly growing). Since there is such a thing as statistical clustering, that may form a good foundation. Couple it with deductive logic and you should actually get a very powerful system.
I also suspect that some of the recent manifold learning techniques, particularly those involving kernel PCA, may play a part, as they replicate the concept of abstraction, another component of intuition, fairly well using statistics. Unfortunately, they tend to be computationally intense.
There are many steps that would need to be involved, none of them trivial, but no one said AI was easy:
1. Sense data.
2. Collect that data in a manageable form (categorize it using an ontology, maybe?)
3. Retrieve the x most recently accessed clusters pertaining to other properties of the concept you are reasoning about, as well as the cluster corresponding to the property being reasoned about itself (remembering everything is intractable, so the agent will primarily consider what it has been “mulling over” recently). For example, if we are trying to figure out whether a strawberry is a fruit, we would need to pull in clusters corresponding to “red things” and “seeded things” as well as the cluster corresponding to “fruits”.
4. Once a decision is made, grow the clusters. For example, if we decide that strawberries are fruits, we would look at other properties of strawberries and extend the “fruit” cluster to other things that have these properties. We might end up with the nonsymbolic equivalent of “all red objects with seeds are fruit” from doing that.
What I’ve described is an attempt to model what Jung calls “extroverted intuition” – intuition concerned with external concepts. Attempting to model introverted intuition – intuition concerned with internal models and ideas – is much harder, as it would require clustering the properties of the model itself, forming a “relation between relations” – a way that ideas are connected in the agent’s mental model.
But that’s for general AI, which I’m still not completely we’re ready for anyway. If you just want a stronger Go player, wait just a bit longer and it’ll be brute forced.
I think it’s very easy for someone at Level IV of Dabrowski’s model to assume he has already re-integrated (probably since the third factor is out and functioning by that point), but that mistake is quickly realized when one truly reaches Level V. I confess that I had thought I had reached this point about 4 years ago, but last year – my “dark year” – taught me otherwise. What I had mistaken for level V was actually level IV, as I was still not at peace with my values, despite taking charge of them.
The difference is one of friction – friction between one’s individual values and society’s, specifically. Mastery of innate first-factor trends seems easier to attain, perhaps because much of the body serves the mind without question. Society, however, refuses to budge to accommodate most individual values, and the resulting unsupportive environment often sets the backdrop for internal crises to manifest and project themselves upon the external world.
I realized that my problem was not failure to follow through on my values, but acknowledgment of society’s control over them. Self-sufficiency is one of those values, you see, yet I had chosen a path that required the aid of others, projecting an internal friction upon the outside world and refusing to acknowledge that, though initiated externally, my conflict had found internal reflections.
And then, last December, I did the proper thing to do anyway: I picked up the pieces, stopped saying “they have no right to do this”, replacing it with “they have no ability to do this”. Society prevented me from taking certain paths and coerced me onto others, but I simply chose a path that allowed accomplishment of my vision and a chance to attain my ideal, yet could neither be blocked nor herded onto.
Specifically, for the last two years, I was tied to a path that demanded I give up my free mind, yet at the same time demanded that I exert it. I simply refused to give it up and the contradiction that opposition would invoke prevented any opposition from forming in the first place.
I realized that I did not have to combat their gray indifference, merely to sidestep it, freeing me of their influence for good and setting me at peace at last. And what a peace it is! It isn’t the feeling of knowing that someone will take care of you, or that you have others to fall back on, but the knowledge that no one will take care of you, yet no one was ever required to: because society has no collective mind and no collective vision to counter your individual one.
To clarify: society exhibits collective behavior, which is why I tend to personify it, but it does not exhibit a collective mind. There is no vision underlying it, no pursuit of anything greater. Original, consistent thought is the province of healthy individuals only. There is so much momentum behind the status quo, but one need not climb a mountain if a path exists around it.
I can seek out novelty while they are tied to a status quo. I can be passionate while they are doomed to indifference. I can define my own meaning, while their meaning is defined for them. I can think outside of the box while they ARE the box.
All of these things made me think that pitting my own ability to enact change against theirs to resist it was the right way to go – but that way is doomed to failure; it would be like trying to move that mountain with my bare hands. My constant failure to do so in turn made me doubtful, led to insecurity in my own values, made it seem like a struggle.
The crucial insight that broke that pattern was that there need be no conflict between the values of the individual and those of society. On my new path, I simply expressed my vision in words too eloquent to be ignored and let other individuals make their own choice to join me or not. Those who did became my companions; those who did not simply became irrelevant to me. They aren’t antagonists or roadblocks, as I had viewed them until last year; they just have no role to play in the success or failure of my endeavors. There is no conflict, just those who care enough to play a part in shaping the realization of my vision and those who do not.
In short, there is no internal conflict and there is no external conflict. It’s actually not just something I noticed in myself – several people I had known said that my bearing became more content, less tormented over the past year. Someone even said I “gained the look of a leader”, whatever that means.
That is what Secondary Integration is: not just the courage to live by your own values, but the refusal to acknowledge a claim by or conflict with society’s values.
It’s empowering. And not the sort of thing you’d mistake once it happened.
My funding plan for the Polymath Foundation has always relied upon a combination of donations and tuition for courses. Although my upcoming stint as an adjunct at Monmouth University has shown me that adjuncts in general are underpaid and lack job security, this is actually positive at the same time – even as I’m on the receiving end of the poor benefits, I also realized that it only takes two to four students’ tuition to pay the course instructor’s salary.
If we assume classes of 20-30 students, this suddenly seems like an excellent way to bootstrap the university.
An Atlas Shrugged-style strike isn’t even necessary to “stop the motor of the world”, as John Galt put it. The world will actually stop its own motor, merely by living under the outcome of its decisions. All the strikers needed to do was comply to the letter, not withdraw, if that was their only goal (however, withdrawal was still required to prevent them from becoming sacrifices to the looters’ moral code, and thus remains the course they’d take if acting in rational self-interest). They only upheld the social order because they were too moral; they refused to comply with unjust laws.
(Of course, any system that forces such a choice between morality and freedom is one best withdrawn from anyway).
I noted yesterday that a possible definition of personal development was the minimization of cognitive dissonance through elimination of contradictions between values. Both actualization-based and disintegration-based theories provide for this: actualization brings acceptance that held values need not be contradictory, while secondary integration results from a rigid evaluation and rejection of values that contradict the Ideal.
I asked a radiologist this and he didn’t know the answer, so up it goes on my blog. Perhaps someone can answer it? I have a few hypotheses that depend on the answer.
When microcalcifications tend to occur in association with
unilateral cancer (in breast cancer, for example), why do they tend to
occur bilaterally in the same region of tissue?
I’m wondering whether this might indicate an underlying genetic or environmental factor that affects both organs and predisposes to, but is not sufficient for, carcinogenesis (if it were sufficient on its own, I’d expect cancers associated with bilateral calcifications to be bilateral themselves). Another possibility is that the presence of cancer itself causes the calcifications, but the only
thing I can think of that would cause them bilaterally is some sort of regional immune/inflammatory response to the cancer.
Inflation is now dragging the economy down directly.
It was time to raise rates a long time ago, but given this news, I don’t see how they can ignore the problem of inflation any longer.