Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:09, 5 December 2004

page size

Read Misplaced Pages:Page size. Pages are to be kept under 32 KB, except in special cases, such as Misplaced Pages:Village pump. ugen64 15:33, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Don't know where it is written, many pages are more than 32K, like artificial intelligence talk page (42K), and I didn't see nowhere splitting talk pages to archives. The text you mentioned only recommends splitting pages to sections, not archives. BTW the page is not accessible now. Tkorrovi 16:06, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Isolation of artificial consciousness

Until some consensus it agreed and the bit at the top of the artificial consciousness page is removed, i.e. the disputed objectivity of the article, it might be better to direct wikipedia readers to a straightforward exposition of the various experts in the field and a list of related topics in an article that cites its sources in every instance, rather than expressing unattributable opinions. I notice that Paul has already started copying some of his stuff from AC to the synthesised consciousness page, which I'm not particularly in favour of, as there's no need to duplicate what's already written. My intro on the simulated consciousness talk page attempted to make the distinction that the AC page is more about the philosophical aspects of what constitutes AC (and I'd have thought a good direction to go in here on the AC page is to explain Aleksander's theory in this respect, which I think you had started to do. I don't understand Aleksander's theories , so you'd be doing me a good turn if tou could explain them to the lay person), whereas the synthesised consciousness page is about practical implementations, e.g. Kismet, etc, which you didn't want included under AC. The synthetic consciousness page is new and therefore it is useful to draw readers' attention to it, which is why I diverted some of the links. You have now included both links, which seems fine, though it might be helpful perhaps to have a disambiguity page to highlight the different foci of the separate pages. Matt Stan 16:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

To enumerate the points above:

• Paul is copying stuff from AC to synthetic consciousness - which I disagree with. Perhaps you will support me in this. The focus of the two articles is at present different, which is OK in wikipedia terms, provided we make clear the distinction, hence my idea of a disambiguity page. What do you think?
• Igor Aleksander's theoretical paper on artificial consciousness, which he explicitly calls artificial consciousness, could do with some explanation. He mentions emotional aspects and the point about prediction, which we discussed some while ago. Are you going to cover his arguments under Artificial consciousness, or should I put a link to Igor Aleksander on the synthetic consciousness page?
• You objected to my reference to Kismet on the AC page on the grounds that emotion was a psychological rather than AC topic. Nevertheless, Kitmet gives a close approximation to the type of test to which a machine consciousness implementation might be assessed. Whether it passes the test or not is aonther question. But it's at least a first step, which is why I want to cover it under synthetic consciousness. Any objections to that?

Matt Stan 16:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

To summarise the above, there are three questions:

1) To stop Paul wrecking the synthetic consciousness page and duplicating material that is already on the artificial consciousness page.

2) To give good encyclopedic coverage of Igor Aleksander's work

3) To decide whether the emotional components of a machine consciousness implementation should be on the AC or on the syhthetic consciousness page.

1, 2, 3: clear enough?

You used the argument that you started the artificial consciousness page and hence that that gave you some rights of proprietorial control of it. I don't think this is quite the spirit of wikipedia, but nevertheless you would no doubt grant me the same grace in that I started the synthetic consciousness page. We might at some stage merge the two, or at least delete one of them.

You mention that there is no link to artificial consciousness from synthetic consciousness. But what about vice versa? Matt Stan 16:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Paul had nothing to do with me starting the synthetic consciousness page. I just found the arguing on the AC talk page too distracting to build a good encyclopedia article. It is good practice from time to time to do a re-write, because there is a natural entropy in wikipedia with different people coming in in an unstructured way and resulting in articles that lose their focus. There is even a special namespace message {msg:inuse} to indicate that a rewrite is in progress. In this instance I thought it better to start again afresh and take a slightly different tack, i.e. to dwell on machine implementations of consciousness, leading to ideas about what the practical uses of stynthesised consciousness might be, along the lines that I have been discussing on the AC talk page.

Paul decided to come along and debate matters like the relevance of Leibniz's law to assessment of any implementation, and I hope this will be constructive, but you have seen what he is like! Are you saying you want Paul back arguing with you on the AC talk page? I'd have thought you would be grateful that I was distracting him elsewhere so you could get on with building a good encyclopedic article on the theoretical aspects of artificial consciousness and give some in-depth coverage of the proponents with whom you are familiar, eg. Aleksander, et al., while I dwell on the engineering aspects, which I find more interesting and easier to grasp. Matt Stan 17:53, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Who supports whom

I try not to make direct public criticism of anyone, and everything written here is in the public domain. Therefore I am neither going to support nor arraign Paul for his behaviour. I have, however, just given a reference on the AC talk page to Aleksander's notion of consciousness involving prediction, which you can construe if you like as me supporting you rather than Paul, thought it is just intended to take the discussion forward. In an academic context such as in the preparation of an encyclopedia, where all we are after is truth and certainty, it is a distraction to discuss one's own feelings or the motivations of others. I have already written that I don't think you are a troll, and made welcoming noises when you complained that no one was being welcoming. But writing here is occurring at a level of abstraction that is a step removed from personal encounters. I should much enjoy meeting you if you were to visit London, or if I travelled to Estonia, and I'm sure we could have a good laugh together as well as having a lively discussion about AC, etc.. It is far better to stick to the topic at hand here, though. Rather than complaining about how others treat you personally (which, as I've indicated is not so because of the detachment that one should apply in this medium) it is better to argue about the nature of artificial consciousness and make expositions of what leading thinkers have to say about the topic. You will get a lot further if you back your arguments up with references (always). Then people won't try to refute you, except perhaps to clarify what you mean. I think that is the crux of the problem actually. Your incomplete grasp of English leads me to puzzle about much of what you write, in order to determine what you are on about. I have made what I considered gentle criticism of your English, in the hope that you would take that on board. It was not intended as hypercriticism. As I've already shown, confusion in the usage of what and that can lead to differences in meaning, so that there can arise a discrepancy between what you mean and what you put. That is problematic, and the example I chose is not the only one. Since you are evidently sensitive about this issue I have not pursued it. But if I were attempting to write in Estonian (a language that I know not at all), and I made mistakes, then I would definitely not resent any criticism that others made about my usage, no matter how hypercritical, because I would see that as a path towards excellence. As for pretending to be your friend, I am trying to keep the peace, in order that we can make progress. (The fact that I take time to write this surely speaks for itself.) The dialogues on the AC talk page are, I think, viewed as entertainment by other wikipedians, but things have recently been getting out of hand, and we had lost sight of what the article should be about and making no real progress at all. I am hoping to move things on. There was a suggestion recently (not from Paul) that the AC page should be deleted. What is wrong now with having a little competition? You burnish the AC page, and I will attempt to develop the synthetic consciousness page. Then we can hold a poll to see which page other wikipedians think should be kept. Matt Stan 10:16, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

"I find the mediation necessary..."

Ok, in that case, I suggest you request it officially at wikipedia:requests for mediation. I was suggesting that you should enter mediation, but unfortunately, I won't be able to be the mediator as I am already involved in a case which is quite time consuming. There is a list of mediators at wikipedia:Mediation Committee. Do you have a preference for who mediates? I believe Anthere is currently too busy, and BCorr is involved in a different case but the others are available as far as I know. If you could let someone know who would like to mediate, they can contact Paul Beardsell about it. TUF-KAT and sannse are the current chairs of the committee, so you could contact either of them about it. Angela. 22:08, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Months of work

I agree that there is a great deal of material, as evidenced by your Google search. These are some names of researchers hat come up again and agan and there are various universities, e.g. Birmingham, that seem to publish more material than others. It would be interesting and, I think, useful to get some kind of overview of the field, perhaps by a simple statistical analysis of results of Google searches. I don't think the scale of the task should deter us, however, unless you are looking for a 'quick fix'. My concern, over a longer term project, is, as I mentioned, that we keep sight of a vision, namely to build an article that might one day be featured on Misplaced Pages's main page for a day. If you are in agreement with my classification, we might start to collate the research material, read it, and extract the summaries/overview to make a good article. The classification scheme I proposed was essentially:

• a) material that provides the background (perhaps covering the philosophical debate)
• b) early attempts (which may have failed or only go partly toward the ultimate objective), and I think criticisms of the early AI research have a bearing on this, highlighting the difficulties encountered by early implementations
• c) current research topics and achievements, leading to predictions about future possibilities. Matt Stan 10:41, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I note that you took out the link to http://mind.sourceforge.net/conscius.html from the AC page. My feeling is that it's generally not helpful to remove links, unless they are clearly patent nonsense. The sourceforge resource is generally useful, so I'd suggest putting that link back, but perhaps with a qualifier suggesting that it may not be mainstream, i.e. category b) above. Matt Stan 10:41, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Welcome back

Matt Stan 20:10, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Artificial consciousness article

I re-read the stuff in there whaich hadn't been altered since May this year, and then read the contribution of our anonymous contributor. I must say that he is clear, concise and, I think, knowledgeable and right in the points he makes. I am not into having edit wars, but I agree with his notion of moving the original artificial consciousness stuff to Strong AI, and representing the AC stuff in the way that he now proposes. It moves us all forward. Don't you agree? Matt Stan 10:52, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mediation

You asked on my talkpage, whether I would like to mediate the matter of the artificial consciousness article? I can try to help you and those who agree to the mediation; but it is as yet unclear who the other parties are that you would like mediation with, and whether they are willing to participate. -- Cimon 07:04, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

I can try to see what I can do to ease teh tension

Ok. Well, that is a bit more explicit. I'll definitely look into it. -- Cimon 17:09, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)