One way intelligence and goals might be related is that the ontology an agent uses (e.g. whether it thinks of the world it deals with in terms of atoms or agents or objects) as well as the mental systems it has (e.g. whether it has true/false beliefs, or probabilistic beliefs) might change how capable it is...
This is totally right as well. We live inside our ontologies. I think one of the most distinctive, and important, features of acting, successfully aware minds (I won’t call them ’intelligences” because of what I am going to say further down, in this message) is this capacity to mint new ontologies as needed, and to do it well, and successfully.
Successfully means the ontological additions are useful, somewhat durable constructs, “cognitively penetrable” to our kind of mind, help us flourish, and give a viable foundation for action that “works” … as well as not backing us into a local maximum or minimum.…
By that I mean this: “successfull” minting of ontological entities enables us to mint additional ones that also “work”.
Ontologies create us as much as we create them, and this creative process is I think a key feature of “successful” viable minds.
Indeed, I think this capacity to mint new ontologies and do it well, is largely orthogonal to the other two that Bostrom mentions, i.e.
1) means-end reasoning (what Bostrom might otherwise call intelligence)
2) final or teleological selection of goals from the goal space,
and to my way of thinking…
3) minting of ontological entities “successfully” and well.
In fact, in a sense, I would put my third one in position one, ahead of means-end reasoning, if I were to give them a relative dependence. Even though orthogonal—in that they vary independently—you have to have the ability to mint ontologies, before means-end reasoning has anything to work on. And in that sense, Katja’s suggestion that ontologies can confer more power and growth potential (for more successful sentience to come), is something I think is quite right.
But I think all three are pretty self-evidentally largely orthogonal, with some qualifications that have been mentioned for Bostrom’s original two.
This is totally right as well. We live inside our ontologies. I think one of the most distinctive, and important, features of acting, successfully aware minds (I won’t call them ’intelligences” because of what I am going to say further down, in this message) is this capacity to mint new ontologies as needed, and to do it well, and successfully.
Successfully means the ontological additions are useful, somewhat durable constructs, “cognitively penetrable” to our kind of mind, help us flourish, and give a viable foundation for action that “works” … as well as not backing us into a local maximum or minimum.… By that I mean this: “successfull” minting of ontological entities enables us to mint additional ones that also “work”.
Ontologies create us as much as we create them, and this creative process is I think a key feature of “successful” viable minds.
Indeed, I think this capacity to mint new ontologies and do it well, is largely orthogonal to the other two that Bostrom mentions, i.e. 1) means-end reasoning (what Bostrom might otherwise call intelligence) 2) final or teleological selection of goals from the goal space, and to my way of thinking… 3) minting of ontological entities “successfully” and well.
In fact, in a sense, I would put my third one in position one, ahead of means-end reasoning, if I were to give them a relative dependence. Even though orthogonal—in that they vary independently—you have to have the ability to mint ontologies, before means-end reasoning has anything to work on. And in that sense, Katja’s suggestion that ontologies can confer more power and growth potential (for more successful sentience to come), is something I think is quite right.
But I think all three are pretty self-evidentally largely orthogonal, with some qualifications that have been mentioned for Bostrom’s original two.