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Comment by Borrible | Hacker News Reader

So...

You're saying it isn't easy to build a system, that, after about five years of learning a myriad of other things, can lace its shoes after about a dozend tries and showing him just twice?

That at the same time can explain why it is a good idea to lace them, if wearing them at all?

That insists stubbornly, that it is much more fun to wear no shoes when walking in the wet sand at the beach?

That about one or two decades later is bright enough and a lot more educated to grok applied knot theory and some basic topology with the help of some youtube videos?

And that with just 20 Watt?

Wouldn't have thought that.

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It took me way more than "four or five tries" to learn to tie my laces. From childhood to about age 30, I was tying a pair of half-hitches, sometimes making a granny, rather than using the superior "bunny-in-a-hole" method. I only learned the better method when I had to teach my kids.

Wether the "bunny-in-a-hole" method is superior, is quite debatable, sir! ;-)

Funny thing is, I had to invent the two-loop shoelace knot/bunny-ears/bowknot myself, because I couldn't be bothered to understand the bunny-rabbit/loop-swoop-and-pull.

Of course you have to do it right or you end up with an unbalanced granny knot, which is of course not acceptable ;-)))

Until my personal groundbreaking knot invention I used velcro and a double simple knot sometimes for three or four years. Since velcros came out of fashion for inexplicable reasons, I was under pressure to change my modus operandi...

Ah, and of course the influence and dynamics of raising children over a long period of time on intelligence is something seldom considered in AI.

Worth emphasising that the knowledge of how to do these things like tying shoelaces and writing topology papers is contained in the surrounding culture. So if a machine can learn this culture, much of the complexity is outsourced. The ability to learn just one piece of existing culture conveys the ability to learn any other part of it, if one is inclined to do so.

>And that with just 20 Watt?

It is amazing; however there's a school of thought that just as we evolved brains in order to reduce physical effort generally this included minimising power consumption by the brain itself. Intelligence was then a by-product of a more glucose-efficient brain!

'emphasising that knowledge...is contained in the surrounding culture'

This! And some more that is not in the brain. Not to say what is in the brain, but isn't considered as intelligence like emotions, that control large parts of the planetary biomass. Fear for example is a simple automatism that for the most part you don't need to replace with more 'intelligent' approaches and still has much more influence on human behaviour than abstract intelligence, whatever that may be. If it exists at all.

Personally, and I emphazise I am thrilled by what the AI crowd has done the last years, kudos to that, they look to me like someone quite bright, that pretends or even believes to understand the inner workings of a computer by simulation its GUI. If I'm right, my critisism would be, that's great and you're making really fun toys and gadgets and tools, but don't sell it to me as intelligence. That's just a marketing ploy.

That energy optimising theory of the brain you're mentioning sounds interesting, have to ponder that.

Many thanks!

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