Hang on, you are going to claim that my comments are obviously false then argue over definitions and when definitions are agreed upon walk away without stating what is obviously false?
I seriously feel that I gotten the run around from you rather than at any time a straight answer. My only possible conclusions are you are being evasive or you have inconsistent beliefs about the subject (or both).
You seem to have used the words ‘heuristic’ and ‘intuition’ to refer to terminal values (eg. a utility function) and perhaps occam priors, as opposed to the usually understood meaning “a computationally tractable approximation to the correct decision making process (full bayesian updating or whatever)”. It looks like you and lukeprog actually agree on everything that is relevant, but without generating any feeling of agreement. As I see it, you said something like “but such an agent won’t do anything without an occam prior and terminal values”, to which lukeprog responded “but clearly anything you can do with an approximation you can do with full bayesian updating and decision theory”.
Basically, I suggest you Taboo “intuition” and “heuristic” (and/or read over your own posts with “computationally tractable approximation” substituted for “intuition” and “heuristic”, to see what lukeprog thinks is ‘obviously false’).
Luke isn’t arguing over definitions as far as I could see, he was checking to see if there was a possibility of communication.
A heuristic is a quick and dirty way of getting an approximation to what you want, when getting a more accurate estimate would not be worth the extra effort/energy/whatever it would cost. As I see it the confusion here arises from the fact that you believe this has something to do with goals and utility functions. It doesn’t. These can be arbitrary for all we care. But, any intelligence no matter it’s goals or utility function will want to achieve things, after all that’s what it means to have goals. If it has sufficient computational power handy it’ll use an accurate estimator, if not a heuristic.
Heuristics have nothing to do with goals, adaptations not ends
Hang on, you are going to claim that my comments are obviously false then argue over definitions and when definitions are agreed upon walk away without stating what is obviously false?
I seriously feel that I gotten the run around from you rather than at any time a straight answer. My only possible conclusions are you are being evasive or you have inconsistent beliefs about the subject (or both).
You seem to have used the words ‘heuristic’ and ‘intuition’ to refer to terminal values (eg. a utility function) and perhaps occam priors, as opposed to the usually understood meaning “a computationally tractable approximation to the correct decision making process (full bayesian updating or whatever)”. It looks like you and lukeprog actually agree on everything that is relevant, but without generating any feeling of agreement. As I see it, you said something like “but such an agent won’t do anything without an occam prior and terminal values”, to which lukeprog responded “but clearly anything you can do with an approximation you can do with full bayesian updating and decision theory”.
Basically, I suggest you Taboo “intuition” and “heuristic” (and/or read over your own posts with “computationally tractable approximation” substituted for “intuition” and “heuristic”, to see what lukeprog thinks is ‘obviously false’).
Thank you for that, I will check over it.
Luke isn’t arguing over definitions as far as I could see, he was checking to see if there was a possibility of communication.
A heuristic is a quick and dirty way of getting an approximation to what you want, when getting a more accurate estimate would not be worth the extra effort/energy/whatever it would cost. As I see it the confusion here arises from the fact that you believe this has something to do with goals and utility functions. It doesn’t. These can be arbitrary for all we care. But, any intelligence no matter it’s goals or utility function will want to achieve things, after all that’s what it means to have goals. If it has sufficient computational power handy it’ll use an accurate estimator, if not a heuristic.
Heuristics have nothing to do with goals, adaptations not ends