How come there are no fortunes in fortune cookies?
There is if you have the vision to see it.
~BCX~
An 11 year old pointed out to me that what is in fortune cookies are actually statements.
I was slightly surprised to see the BCX won that philosophical exchange handily IMO. Impressed.
On the face of it, yes they are only statements and quite cheap to produce. But this ignores how knowledge is formed. BCX's reply eloquently captured Taleb's and my theories about the formulation of value (via knowledge). It is the (long-tail) chance meeting of information that causes symbiosis and genesis.
http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Algorithm_!=_Entropy
Quote from: me, myself, and I
However, the speed of the computing hardware and the sophistication of the software has no relevance because creativity can't be expressed in an algorithm. Every possible model of the brain will lack the fundamental cause of human creativity— every human brain is unique. Thus each of billions of brains is able to contemplate possibilities and scenarios differently enough so that it is more likely at least one brain will contemplate some unique idea that fits each set of possibilities at each point in time.
An algorithm or model can describe what and how to do and even be generalized to respond to unknown future scenarios by observing patterns and deducing rules about its environment, but it can't vary its imperfections nondeterministically, because the input entropy (to the algorithm) is known a priori and is finite. Whereas, for the collection of all human brains, the entropy is unbounded and thus the future can't be predetermined, i.e. isn't deterministic.
Imagine if life was perfect and without chance. Life would be deterministic and could be modeled with an algorithm, then failure couldn't exist, everything would be known in advance, and thus there could be no change that wasn't predictable, i.e. real change wouldn't exist and the universe would be static. Life requires imperfection and unbounded diversity, else life doesn't exist and isn't alive. Equality and perfection are the ambition of the insane who probably don't realize they must destroy life to reach their goal.
To make the computers as creative as the humans would require inputting the entropy from all the human brains. Yet there is no plausible way to extract the future uniqueness of human brains other than to allow them interact with the environment over unbounded time, because the occurrence of creativity is probablistic (by chance) as the dynamic diversity of human minds interact with the changing environment. The term unbounded means there is no way to observe or capture that uniqueness a priori other than through the future of life as it unfolds.
Inmates can be forced to do manual labor because it is possible to observe the performance of the menial tasks. However, it is impossible (or at least very inefficient and imprecise) to determine whether a human is feigning inability or giving best effort at a knowledge task. Manual labor is fungible, i.e. nearly any person with average IQ and dexterous limbs can be substituted to do the task. Whereas, knowledge production such as programming the computer, authoring content or developing marketing plans, requires diversity of thought.
Unsophisticated thinkers have an incorrect understanding of knowledge creation, idolizing a well-structured top-down sparkling academic cathedral of vastly superior theoretical minds. Rather knowledge primary spawns from accretive learning due to unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market. Top-down systems are inherently fragile because they overcommit to egregious error (link to Taleb's simplest summary of the math).
An algorithm or model can describe what and how to do and even be generalized to respond to unknown future scenarios by observing patterns and deducing rules about its environment, but it can't vary its imperfections nondeterministically, because the input entropy (to the algorithm) is known a priori and is finite. Whereas, for the collection of all human brains, the entropy is unbounded and thus the future can't be predetermined, i.e. isn't deterministic.
Imagine if life was perfect and without chance. Life would be deterministic and could be modeled with an algorithm, then failure couldn't exist, everything would be known in advance, and thus there could be no change that wasn't predictable, i.e. real change wouldn't exist and the universe would be static. Life requires imperfection and unbounded diversity, else life doesn't exist and isn't alive. Equality and perfection are the ambition of the insane who probably don't realize they must destroy life to reach their goal.
To make the computers as creative as the humans would require inputting the entropy from all the human brains. Yet there is no plausible way to extract the future uniqueness of human brains other than to allow them interact with the environment over unbounded time, because the occurrence of creativity is probablistic (by chance) as the dynamic diversity of human minds interact with the changing environment. The term unbounded means there is no way to observe or capture that uniqueness a priori other than through the future of life as it unfolds.
Inmates can be forced to do manual labor because it is possible to observe the performance of the menial tasks. However, it is impossible (or at least very inefficient and imprecise) to determine whether a human is feigning inability or giving best effort at a knowledge task. Manual labor is fungible, i.e. nearly any person with average IQ and dexterous limbs can be substituted to do the task. Whereas, knowledge production such as programming the computer, authoring content or developing marketing plans, requires diversity of thought.
Unsophisticated thinkers have an incorrect understanding of knowledge creation, idolizing a well-structured top-down sparkling academic cathedral of vastly superior theoretical minds. Rather knowledge primary spawns from accretive learning due to unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market. Top-down systems are inherently fragile because they overcommit to egregious error (link to Taleb's simplest summary of the math).
P.S. Taleb responded in email affirmatively to what I wrote in the last paragraph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Philosophical_theories
Quote
Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls "stochastic tinkering" rather than by top-down directed research.
