"It's nice to know that there's such a thing as a friend for life."

I'm enjoying this card so much!

هيچ چيز به بدی آن نيست که ميگويند مگر در نظر کسانی که با آن ميجنگند: بخشی از قدرت آن: آن چه با آن ميجنگيم بايد قدرتمند بد باشد، لااقل به بدی آنچه ديگران با آن ميجنگند.

و من فيلم اکشن دوس ت ميدارم. عمدتا اتفاقی که افتاد بازگشت کرد به اهميت، هيجان انگی زی حتی،  -ِ بدن برای من. اين روزها اتفاق افتاد. حرکاتش، قدرتش، موفقيتش، مرا به شوق ميآورد. ن ماز هم از پيچ و تابش شيرين شده. ع جيب است. همه چيز عوض ميشود. اما ه نوز از مرلوپونتی خوشم نيامده. از من هم.

کسی آنجا حرف می زد. پس بيرون صبر کردم. ۱۵ دقيقه گذشت. سرش را از نيمه پايينی در بيرون آورد. منتظر من هستی؟ چند دقيقه ديگر. باز صبر کردم. فکر کردم. همان فکری که با ديدن دانشگاه برکلی از خيابان آکسفورد از ذهنم گذشت. تو بايد عضو اين جامعه شوی. چه به تو می آيد. چه به آن می آيی. احساس می کردم برگی ديگر ورق خورد.

مردی کوچک و لاغر. پرانرژی و شبيه به کانت. خوش گذشت. تو را آن جا خواهم ديد.

وقتی روحيه مصرف گرايی در جامعه ای ريشه دواند، به بسياری از کنترلها نيز ديگر نيازی نيست. مثلا به راحتی ميتوان سوار caltrain و يا streetcarها شد بدون اينکه بليطی داشته باشی. ولی عادت به خريد مردم عادی، مانع از آن ميشود!

جالب است. در عمق دردی که دلتنگی تو دارد، و در احساس نيرومندی که نسبت به دو دارم،‌ ماجراهای ساده اين روزها را نگاه ميکردم، شب قبل از خواب، قدم زنان، لبخندم آمد: خدا چقدر رحيم است. ابروهايم به هم نزديک شدند. لبم حالتی گرفت. چطور آخر؟ هيچ روشی برای معقول کردن اين احساس نيافته بودم، سالها تلاش. اما اين احساس، آن لبخند احترامم را برانگيخت، هرچند معقول نبود. پس ماند. تا شب ديگر.

50 years ago, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon showed that computers can do more than just calculation, they are in fact “physical symbol systems whose symbols could be made to stand for anything, including features of the real world, and whose programs could be used as rules for relating these features. In this way computers could be used to simulate certain important aspects intelligence. Thus the information-processing model of the mind was born.”

Many of the past philosophers where thrilled by this idea: “For Descartes, understanding was forming and using appropriate symbolic representations. For Him these were complex descriptions built up out of primitive ideas or elements. Kant added the important idea that all concepts were rules. Frege showed that rules could be formalized so that they could be manipulated without intuition or interpretation.”

“Given the nature of computers, AI took up the search for such formal rules and representations. But then a problem showed it self: Common Sense. It simply turned out to be much harder than one expected to formulate, let alone formalize, the required theory of common sense. It was not, as Minsky had hoped, just a question of cataloguing a few hundred thousand facts.”

“Given this impasse, it made sense a year later for researchers to return to microworlds - domains isolated from everyday common-sense intuition - and try to develop theories of at least such isolated domains.”

Thus “emerged a new field called knowledge engineering”. “What the knowledge engineers claim to have discovered is that in areas, which are cut off from everyday common sense and social intercourse, all a machine needs in order to behave like an expert is specialized knowledge of two types: The facts of the domain - the widely shared knowledge.”

Now if “almost all the thinking that professionals do is done by reasoning we can see that, once computers are used for reasoning and not just computation, they should be as good or better than we are at following rules for deducing conclusions from a host of facts.”

But not quite, here is how: “The experts are poor at recollecting their compiled heuristics. The experts do not know enough about the mental processes involved.” So is it like what happened to Socrates after asking Euthyphro about piety? “Socrates ran into the same problem with craftsmen, poets and even statesmen. They also could not articulate the principles underlying their expertise. Socrates therefore concluded that none of these experts knew anything and he didn't know anything either”. So what does this show?

That because “the basis of common sense is our skill for coping with everyday materials. It is a knowing-how, not as knowing-that”. This is how experts are superior to expert systems. So “if one asks an expert for the rules he is using one will, in effect, force the expert to regress to the level of a beginner and state the rules he learned in school. Thus, instead of using rules he no longer remembers, as the knowledge engineers suppose, the expert is forced to remember rules he no longer uses”.

“This would explain why research in AI has been stalled and why we should expect the attempt to make intelligent computers by using rules and features to be abandoned”.

“In this idealized account of skillful expert coping it might seem that experts needn't think and are always right. Such, of course, is not the case … An expert will try to protect against this by trying to see the situation in alternative ways, sometimes through reflection and sometimes by consulting others and trying to be sympathetic to their perhaps differing views. The phenomena suggest that the expert uses intuition not calculation even in reflection”.

Claim: experts rely on intuition, expert systems on rule following, that's "the power of experts in the era of the computer".

Proof: intuition is the final result of learning, rule following the first step.

Conclusion: “correcting the traditional account of expertise by replacing calculative with deliberative rationality”.

Danger: “The increasingly bureaucratic nature of society is heightening the danger that in the future skill and expertise will be lost through over reliance on calculative rationality”.

A summary of Prof. Dreyfus’s article “From Socrates to Expert Systems:
The Limits and Dangers of Calculative Rationality”

I was walking Market St. toward 2nd St. for an interview, listening to Pink Floyd when I saw this young man talking to me and showing a piece of paper. So I stopped and heard him say: Do you need someone to pray for you? It's free? Maybe a problem, family, ... I smiled, Luther came to my mind: If it was free back then, he couldn't have stopped it! And I said no thank you, I'd rather continue walking. I walked and wondered why in the wealthiest part of the town offer free praying?

اگر آن چيزی که ميخواهيم تجربه کنيم، خود جزوی از بستری شود که تجربه کردن در آن امکان بروز و تحقق می يابد ...

اگر بخشی از آگاهی ما در بستری که در آن آگاهی می يابيم حل شود ...

خب نخواهيم فهميدش و نخواهيم فهميد که اصلا نديديمش.

I so much wanted to talk to you, so I called and you were sleep, I waked you up. So it'll be till your morning when we will talk again.

The idea that I have to wait so the earth would move enough for that, was new to me. The earth has to turn, not time should pass.

One of the things I wanted to tell you is why I liked "Before Sunset" so much. I think for one thing it reminded me of how we talk: jumping from one subject to another, with laughter in between, little jokes about each other, and willing to answer any question. Second I learned a lot; what words to use in these sorts of conversations. And third how you might write a book just to communicate with only one person. Also as always I got new ideas about life, what to do with it and how much it's worth to me.

Sleep well my Love; I hope I'm living your dream now.

In this book, Dreyfus is To show what human mind has that makes it a superior to any artificial intelligence. And he approaches it by comparing analytical reasoning to intuitional reasoning. Stating that artificial with all of its lengthy LISP programs can only capture the analytical part of reasoning.

Now, with articles like “Intelligence without Representation” and with AI considering non-representational intelligence, and when modeling Merleau Ponty Intentional Arc with feed-forward neural networks, should we consider the consequence that finally we found a computational model for what we thought belonged only to the embodied mind?

بايد منتظر ماند

تا زمين بچرخد

و تو دوباره بيدار شوی

سپس خواهم گفت.

Understanding this is the key to understanding modern AI and many modern philosophical views. But what does it mean? Is this what intelligence without representation means?

"Not all that long ago, artificial intelligence was viewed as almost entirely separate from control theory and statistics. It had to do with logic and symbols, not numbers. Artificial intelligence was large LISP programs, not linear algebra, differential equations, or statistics. Over the last decades this view has gradually eroded. Modern artificial intelligence researchers accept statistical and control-theory algorithms, for example, as relevant competing methods or simply as tools of their trade. The previously ignored areas lying between artificial intelligence and conventional engineering are now among the most active of all, including new fields such as neural networks, intelligent control, and  reinforcement learning." Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto

This article "A Phenomenology of Skill Acquisition as the basis for a Merleau-Pontian Nonrepresentationalist Cognitive Science" is of my favorite kind: providing computational models for philosophical claims.

CLAIM:

Merleau Ponty claims: learning and skillful actions do not require mental or brain representation.

In his time, there was no mental model to manifest this. Professor Dreyfus says that now there is:

·        Feed-Forward Neural Networks model “intentional arc” and;

·        Walter Freeman’s brain dynamics model “maximum grip”.

PROOF ONE

To show this, different phases of learning are set forth: as beginners you just follow the rules and feel no responsibility toward the actions. But as we pass this phase and become a competence, we’ll have to choose a perspective to solve the problem. This emotional investment in the choice of action is the switch point between analytic approach and holistic approach. At this point intuitive reactions will replace reasoned responses. Now as with more experience the competence becomes proficient, and she will quickly see the problem, but must decide on the solution. And this is natural because the set of solutions has many more members. With the proficient being able to discriminate more possible solutions, she will become an expert where she will see the problem and the solution.

So as Merleau Ponty puts it: “What learner acquires through experience is not represented in the mind, but is presented to the learner as more and more finely discriminated situations.” And learning is: “If the situation does not clearly solicit a single response, or the response does not produce a satisfactory result; learner has to further refine his discriminations”. This feedback loop between the embodied agent and the perceptual world is what Merleau Ponty calls “Intentional Arc”.

CRITIQUE OF PROOF ONE

I'm still not sure about this, it's an intuitive critique and not a reasoned one!

Mental representation and skillful acting or learning are not at the same level of abstraction.

Neural network is a fine computational model for intentional arc, but the very fact that they are a good match, shows that mental representation is not needed at the final stage of skill acting; not that it is not required in this behavior at all.

Merleau Ponty shows the mechanism of how responses become automated and routined. What is missing from this explanation is consciousness.

·        Consider a master piano player, easily playing a piece, the automated mechanism takes care of the playing, she doesn’t think or decide what the next note should be, or how far she should reach. Suddenly a door slams, environment changes dramatically, in Baars model, Global Workspace, two new coalitions form, gain high priority, enter consciousness space, one processes the new environment, the other takes over playing the piano, in an non-automated way, according to the rules, until it’s priority falls down and the coalitions for automatically playing  the piano take over again, and she then just listens to what she’s playing, and not conscious of how she plays it.

As Merleau Ponty puts it: “The agent sees things as affording a certain action.” And this is what is done in another layer than the one that performs those actions.

·        A master chess player makes a move. Now she is asked to justify her move. She has to use the metadata that are used by the met management layer in Sloman’s model.

ما که باشیم ای تو ما را جان جان           تا که ما باشیم با تو در میان

ما چو چنگیم و تو زخمه می زنی           زاری از ما نی تو زاری می‌کنی

ما چو ناییم و نوا در ما زتوست             ما چو کوهیم و هلا در ما زتوست

ما چو شطرنجیم اندر برد و مات            برد و مات ماست زتوست ای خوش صفات

ما عدم هاییم و هستی نما                      تو وجود مطلقی خواهی نما

ما همه شیران ولی شیر علم                  هم نشان از باد باشد دم بدم

هم نشان پیداست و ناپیداست باد             آنکه ناپیداست هرگز گم مباد

لذت هستی نمودی نیست را                  عاشق خود کرده بودی نیست را

لذت نام خود را وا مگیر                      نقل و باده و جام خود را وا مگیر

وربگیری کیست جست و جو کند           نقش با نقاش چون نیرو کند

منگر اندر ما مکن در ما نظر                اندر اکرام و سخای خود نگر

ما نبودیم و تقاضامان نبود                    لطف تو ناگفته ما می‌شنود

گاه نقش دیو و گه آدم کند                     گاه نقش شادی و گر غم کند

زاری ما شد دلیل اضطرار                  هجرت ما شد دلیل اختیار

تو ز قرآن باز خوان تفسیر بیت             گفت ایزد ما رمیت اذ رمیت

So they say, but remember what Jason Jay said: "You can make flapjacks (pancakes) out of cow pies, but they'll still smell like bullshit."; so don't just say it, because it's not.

It does, but saying that it does, just like that and with that tone, covers much too deep, sad, fun and memorable feelings and thoughts. After all this is the functionality of daily talks: bring up an emotion, thought, idea but only to cover it in something else; words and sentences that are simple enough to be overlooked (I sometimes think it's better to write vague or that is why we have poetry).

It does but we have to find another way of saying it; like this blog.

So don't just say that, you're not watching a movie, nor describing a movie that you saw.

You may have heard postmodernist celebrated when hypertext where at work. They liked multiple, decentered and fragmented selves; and they believed that a hyper textual web is in fact based on this concept of self; because, as Friedman said: “we live increasingly in a style of multitasking and ‘continuous partial attention’”! But he concluded “in a world where we're constantly being bombarded and interrupted, I think you're going to have to find more and more ways to actually wall yourself off to do the work of creativity.”

This sentence alone says a lot. But Winograd and Flores clarified it more: "Tools are designed with the goal of making specific actions and processes easier and thus their design reflects a range of assumptions, including worldview assumptions regarding what is valuable, what is possible and easy for the users involved, and what are the preferred ways of facilitating these processes. As they make certain actions and processes easier, tools thus embody and embed these assumptions, while excluding others. In doing so, they thus bias their users in specific directions and, in this way, shape our possible ways of being" (Charles Ess)

When anonymity is discussed say in implementing eCash systems or other payment methods, a complete anonymity is never considered desirable: we won't trace what you bought, we won't break your blind signature or put togather the acquirer and sellers information; until you're not important to us, until nobody cares of what you did or did not do! Now that's the real world meaning of anonymity!

من جرات نمی کردم آن چه را فکر ميکردم،‌ اعلامش کنم، به ادبياتی که دوست دارم در آن گزينم بيان. دلايلش را گفتم به تو، تکرار را نيازی نيست.

ميگويم آن چه را ميگويم: سوالی دارم: کدام را انتخاب کنم: او را به جهنم، درستش ميکنيم خودمان يا که چنانچه تکرار ميکرد مارتين، بارها، من تو را ام، دريابم. ؟ و سوالی ديگر:‌ چرا اين دو را می يابم اين گونه: نافی. ؟

امروز، وقتی در بالا پازدن از تپه ها نفس پی در پی می زدم، فکر کردم شديدا. اما احساساتم شديدتر بودند. ميل به لذت بردن از زندگی، حقيقت تو، خيالات آينده. پس پرسيدم:‌ انتخاب کن. نمی توانم. ساعت های روز بين شان تقسيم شده. بخشی نزار، بخشی مصمم و خودبسنده. ولی هيچ احساسی نيست تنها، آن ديگری با وی است، می نمايد خود را.

ولی موفقيت در انتخاب است: کدام را؟ نمی توانم ديگر، دير است ديگر: ميل به بودنش سر برآورده. هر قدر که مصمم آمدم، اما اينجا اتفاقی افتاد که ميل بودنش مرا نيازمند ميخواهد. گفته بودم خودم را شناختم. خب اين من. سر برآورد در تنهايی فيزيکی. من هم ديدمش.

پنهانی از اين ميل خوشحالم. دوستش دارم. حيرت آور است.

دوچرخه رانی در سانفرانسيسکو الحق چه کار پر کيفی است و تو می دانی چه چيزی آن را لذت بخش کرده.

هيچ وقت از جنسيت خودم خوشم نيومده، به اندازه کافی لطيف نيست. ترجيح ميدادم از جنس سيب بودم.

يک اتفاق جالب ديگر اين است که متدلوژی فکر کردنم بيشتر تصويری شده است و ديگر کلمات چندان مهم نيستند مگر اينکه خيلی کوتاه باشند. مثلا اين جمله:‌

God is. ........... so quick.

کيف ميکنم که کلمه کم دارد ولی کلی تصوير و احساس در پس آن «برای من» بار کرده است. اگر کس ديگری هم آنها را ببيند کلی خوشحال خواهم شد.

صبح پشت تلفن به تو گفتم که ديشب فهميدم که چقدر خودم را ميشناسم. فهميدم که چه کسی ميتوانم باشم، چه عکس العمل هايی در چه محيطهايی نشان خواهم داد و چگونه خودم را کنترل کنم. جالبه نه؟!

I like it!

Patience, as I experienced it, is the state where you will not allow yourself to complain, because overall you’re contempt, fabulous, but something annoying keeps slapping in your face. Still you stand your ground, without the benefit of showing anger or complaining. But then again since there IS something much sweeter, it’s overall nice.

[Mondays are one of those slap in the face, you wake up and there: BAM, you're still unemployed. Be patient!]

The example above is a description (not a complain) of a personal experience I had and lead to the conceptualization above: when and under what conditions patience can occur for me.