Of course, it would be nice if we could find a general “make-smarter-and-better extrapolation on a given pile of data” algorithm.
But on the other hand, a set of special cases to deal with merely human minds might be the way forward. Even medieval monks had a collection of empirically validated medical practices that worked to an extent, e.g. herbal medicine, but they had no unified theory. Really there is no “unified theory” for healing someone’s body: there are lots of ideas and techniques, from surgery to biochemistry to germ theory. I think that this CEV problem may well turn out to be rather like medicine. Of course, it could look more like wing design, where there is really just one fundamental set of laws, and all else is approximation.
This is a good point.
Of course, it would be nice if we could find a general “make-smarter-and-better extrapolation on a given pile of data” algorithm.
But on the other hand, a set of special cases to deal with merely human minds might be the way forward. Even medieval monks had a collection of empirically validated medical practices that worked to an extent, e.g. herbal medicine, but they had no unified theory. Really there is no “unified theory” for healing someone’s body: there are lots of ideas and techniques, from surgery to biochemistry to germ theory. I think that this CEV problem may well turn out to be rather like medicine. Of course, it could look more like wing design, where there is really just one fundamental set of laws, and all else is approximation.