1. ebaum@fastmail.fm

2. Meaning is the computational exploitation of the underlying structure of the world, and mind is execution of an evolved program, mostly encoded in the DNA, that is all about meaning. The program can only be so compact and so effective by code reuse, developing modules corresponding to real concepts in the world, reused in metaphor and pleiotropy.

3. The mind is a computer program Effective procedure = sequence of syntactic steps Church-Turing Thesis: any physical system simulatable by Turing machine

4. Problems ( Searle, Dreyfus,Chalmers…): How can my feeling of awareness etc come from syntax? How can syntax give rise to semantics? How can syntax correspond to events in the world? Why can’t computers understand?

5. Occam’s Razor Find a sufficiently compact description of enough data, and it corresponds to the world. Simplest example: curve fitting

6. 3 Formal Views of Occam’s Razor Vapnik-Chervonenkis Dimension Minimum Description Length Bayesian Probability Compactness sufficient, more or less necessary, for generalization. Need inductive bias to learn.

7. Extrapolated Occam A compact enough program that behaves effectively after enough reinforcement learning trials exploits underlying structure and will continue to behave effectively. It is compact by virtue of code reuse, developing modules corresponding to real concepts in the world, reused in metaphor and pleiotropy.

8. Why computers don’t understand AI programs not compact. List of answers not compact Expert systems not compact, because: Human programmers not capable of compaction. Academic field of AI splits world into vision, planning, learning, natural language,etc, throwing out structure before it starts. “The girl saw the dog in the window. She wanted it.”

9. Exploiting structure Is 7788779909777885687654 even? Extracting compact structure and exploiting it separate computationally hard problems. Discuss chess, Go, Blocks World, Rubik’s cube, traveling salesman… and real world. Show evolution of Hayek Machine to solve problems, model of insight.

10. Exploiting Structure AI approach: brute force search Human approach: build compact code using preexisting relevant modules Computer Science approach: learn new module, for recursion. Hayek: evolves program solving arbitrary instances.

11. Hayek Machine Approach Run artificial economy. Agents are computer programs. Insert new computer programs. Everything owned. Conservation of money. If agents rational, new agent can enter if and only if improves performance of the system Hope for evolution to rationality.

12. Cleaner Stacker 438 Stacker 46 Stacker 19 Closer Done Strategy Agents bid roughly A · NumCorrect + B Cleaner(s), Stackers, Closer. 19

13. Are there objects in the world? Why call a collection of atoms never before seen a cup? In what sense is a newspaper one object? Do electrons exist, even if you’ve never seen one? Does the platonic ideal of a circle exist?

14. Answer: mind code exploits structure in world Mind consists of modular program, with modules that exploit compact structure of world, achieving compactness through code reuse. Modularity from psychophysics, neuroanatomy, stroke victims, imaging,… Metaphor = code reuse. Metaphor pervasive eg time is money (Lakoff and Johnson)-- buy,spend,borrow,waste etc time.

15. Exploiting Structure is NP-Hard Example: Graph 3-coloring

16. Constraint Propagation (Blum)

17. Constraint Propagation

21. Compact Explanation is DNA 1-10 MB, a fraction of Powerpoint source code. Brain 100 million times larger. 10**35 creatures/RL trials, little computation in learning during life (LDL). LDL highly biased in– many examples, including grammar learning in humans. Evolution of learning to be expected, learning and development two faces of coin.

22. Evolution of Learning We are born stupid-- but learn? Answer: yes, but the crux is in the DNA. Inductive bias DNA programs development interacting with world- - learning is just sophisticated development, largely predestined. Ferret, critical periods, … Grammar is an excellent example. Once constrained to meaningful quantities only, built on top of programmed modules, learning is fast, almost automatic.

23. Evolution of Language Computational modules present in animals Words are labels for modules Solves Gavagai problem. Language evolution stuck in local optima till humans (Nowak). Language allows cumulative progress in building program.

24. Why people are different than apes. Grow huge modular program Because of language, progress cumulative Hard search problem, finding program… but we have invested cumulative effort comparable to that evolution invested in chimps. Affects everything, eg. Theory of mind.

25. Evolution of Consciousness Evolve: “sovereign agents” that maximize inborn rewards. Occam’s razor says: treat these as conscious. Self is agent that is the client of the mind-- namely the reified interest of the genome. Awareness is of semantic quantities: outputs of modules affecting our decisions directly.“Comes together” at CDU? All thought is execution of code, including qualia. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what isgoing on in a living brain and… you won’t have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy or about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise,... (F. C. Jackson) But in fact these are easy to explain...

26. What is Thought? Thought is execution of a program that exploits the compact structure of the world Our program built on evolved modules the learning of which is coded in DNA. Consciousness arises as coding of decision maker/learner Theory will make predictions for gene expression, imaging, psychophysics…

27. ebaum@fastmail.fm

28. How do you find a compact explanation? Hard optimization problem Local search/evolution.