I could be drawing too long of a bow, but this seems to recall the distinction Marvin Minsky makes between Logic and Common-Sense thinking. Logic is a single “thin” chain of true or false propositions, if any single link in the chain is false, the whole chain collapses. Commonsense, in his parlance, is less discrete, we can have degrees of belief in any part of a chain, some parts of the train will be deeper and stronger than others.
He also greatly admired a passage in Aristotle’s De Anima that shows how a single object can be represented in multiple ways, which Minsky saw as being very significant to operating in the world.
“Thus the essence of a house is assigned in such a formula as ‘a shelter against destruction by wind, rain, and heat’; the physicist would describe it as ‘stones, bricks, and timbers’; but there is a third possible description which would say that it was that form in that material with that purpose or end. Which, then, among these is entitled to be regarded as the genuine physicist? The one who confines himself to the material, or the one who restricts himself to the formulable essence alone? Is it not rather the one who combines both in a single formula?”
Am I conflating different things by saying this reads as similar to the idea of favoring Cross-Entropy rather than the shortest program?
Minsky extended to the idea of multiple representations to what he called Papert’s Principle—that it is how we administer and use these multiple representations together, or when we opt for one and exclude others which is the most important part of ‘mental growth’.
Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.
Returning to replacing axioms and how this relates to Minsky’s ideas about multiple representations, take for example making an omelette. I may use a stone bench-top, a tiled backsplash, a spoon, or any sort of ‘hard’ surface to crack the egg. The “crack the egg” part of the process/recipe stays the same, with the same anticipated result, but it becomes replaced by mental representations about the perceived hardness of many different objects.
Does any of this seem relevant or have I made some crude, tenuous connections?
I could be drawing too long of a bow, but this seems to recall the distinction Marvin Minsky makes between Logic and Common-Sense thinking. Logic is a single “thin” chain of true or false propositions, if any single link in the chain is false, the whole chain collapses. Commonsense, in his parlance, is less discrete, we can have degrees of belief in any part of a chain, some parts of the train will be deeper and stronger than others.
He also greatly admired a passage in Aristotle’s De Anima that shows how a single object can be represented in multiple ways, which Minsky saw as being very significant to operating in the world.
Am I conflating different things by saying this reads as similar to the idea of favoring Cross-Entropy rather than the shortest program?
Minsky extended to the idea of multiple representations to what he called Papert’s Principle—that it is how we administer and use these multiple representations together, or when we opt for one and exclude others which is the most important part of ‘mental growth’.
Returning to replacing axioms and how this relates to Minsky’s ideas about multiple representations, take for example making an omelette. I may use a stone bench-top, a tiled backsplash, a spoon, or any sort of ‘hard’ surface to crack the egg. The “crack the egg” part of the process/recipe stays the same, with the same anticipated result, but it becomes replaced by mental representations about the perceived hardness of many different objects.
Does any of this seem relevant or have I made some crude, tenuous connections?
Hmm… I’m not sure I see the connection, honestly. But thanks for the comment :)