I’ve been following these posts with interest, having suspected a similar problem to the Cartesianism you rail against. My beef is a little different, though: it relates to the fundamental categories of perception. Going back to Cai: cyan, yellow, and magenta are the only allowed categories, and there are a fixed number of regions of the visual field. This is not how naturalized agents seem to operate. Human beings at least occasionally re-describe what they perceive, at any and all levels. Qualia? Their very existence is disputed. Physical objects? Ditto.
Any perceptual judgment we make can be questioned. Labels can be substituted: “This soup tastes like chicken,” I say. “No, it tastes like turkey,” the woman next to me says. She’s right, I realize, and I change my description. Or, entire categories of labels can be substituted, as with philosophical ontological battles.
I’m not sure whether this indicates additional problems for AIXI, but it seems like part and parcel of the problem of Cartesianism.
I’ve been following these posts with interest, having suspected a similar problem to the Cartesianism you rail against. My beef is a little different, though: it relates to the fundamental categories of perception. Going back to Cai: cyan, yellow, and magenta are the only allowed categories, and there are a fixed number of regions of the visual field. This is not how naturalized agents seem to operate. Human beings at least occasionally re-describe what they perceive, at any and all levels. Qualia? Their very existence is disputed. Physical objects? Ditto.
Any perceptual judgment we make can be questioned. Labels can be substituted: “This soup tastes like chicken,” I say. “No, it tastes like turkey,” the woman next to me says. She’s right, I realize, and I change my description. Or, entire categories of labels can be substituted, as with philosophical ontological battles.
I’m not sure whether this indicates additional problems for AIXI, but it seems like part and parcel of the problem of Cartesianism.