John C. Wright's Journal

The Cabinet of Wisdom

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Part VII
• Part VIII

PART IX

Emerging from the Emergent Property Argument

A frequent counter argument takes the form of a word fetish called ’emergent properties.’

The argument in some form, as best I understand it, runs as follows: the shape of the water molecule does not, for a single molecule, display the hexagonal crystalwork of a snowflake.

Nonetheless, the shape of the snowflake is a physical byproduct of the water molecule shape and the Van Der Waals forces adhering molecule to molecule. The snowflake geometry is an emergent property of the molecule shape.

Likewise, no one braincell, in isolation, is capable for thought, nor is a single letter (with the exception, in English, of I and O and A) able to form a word or sentence. But human thought is clearly the emergent property of many braincells acting in concert in the nervous system, and all sentences written in English, including this one, emerge from the combination of letter meaningless in themselves.

Therefore the mere fact that cogwheels or electronic circuits, in isolation, being inanimate and incapable of thought, cannot, by itself, justify the conclusion that electronic brains and artificial intelligence networks, with all parts acting in concert, do not, could not, and will never think as well as a human brain, possessing self-awareness and free will as much as any biological human.

Now, this argument, as far as it goes, is perfectly sound.
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The Cabinet of Wisdom

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Part VII

PART VIII

The Simple Error of the Argument from Complexity

There is one basic objection to the idea that non-self aware tools do not think, and it is expressed in two arguments. The first is the argument from complexity, and the second is the argument from emergent properties. Let us address the first and weaker one here, and the second in another column.

The argument from complexity, is the crux of the matter that causes so much woe and confusion.

A machine can mimic the motions produced by a man, when he is deliberately acting in a mechanical hence non-deliberate way, that is, he is plodding through a routine task limited to unambiguous options, as in a stack of Hexapawn matchboxes, a chessplaying cabinet, or a Chinese Room made by Fu Manchu that quotes Lao Tzu.

When his possible range of actions cannot be limited, he is not acting mechanically, and a machine cannot mimic him. This is because complex rote actions can be simplified into simpler rote actions, but unlimited, that is, undefinable actions, cannot be simplified into rote actions. See Goedel for details.
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The Cabinet of Wisdom

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI

PART VII

Trapped in the Chinese Room

John Rogers Searle, professor of Philosophy at the University of California, once proposed the following thought experiment: suppose there is a locked room. Into the mail slot of the back door a Chinaman slips paper cards written in black ink in the Mandarin language, containing questions. Each time, from the mail slot of the front door emerges a card containing an answer written in vermillion ink.

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The Cabinet of Wisdom

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V

Part VI: Learning about Machine Learning

Hexapawn is a simple game, simple enough that the mathematician Martin Gardner used it in famous column from the March 1962 issue of Scientific American to explain the basics of what is called machine learning to the public.

Let us establish at the outset that machine learning is not learning nor anything like learning, any more than a bootprint in the snow is like the booted Mountaineer Mailman from Maine crossing a snowy field. “Machine learning” is the phrase used when a machine is designed with several possible outputs of several different priorities, such that prior test-runs have altered the current outputs or priorities.

But first, let us mention the greatest invention of mankind.
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