All love the fruit of their labor, but the wise savor their labor.

It appears people believe,

1. I wrote to persuade, not explain (in hindsight I would agree)
2. I wrote in a condescending tone (in hindsight I would agree)
3. My critique did not offer anything concrete or any models
4. My critique was "not even wrong"
5. My critique was obviously false
6. My critique was obviously true 
7. My critique added nothing to the conversation

I'd love for anyone to explain which they thought and why.

Thanks!

And besides the point, I may have unintentionally (worried of criticism) underplayed my knowledge of chaos theory, complex systems, and linguistics research. But, I thought a person who had just read Nate's critique would be especially open to a philosophical (pre-axiomatic or axiomatic) perspective.

My bottom-line thinking reading John's arguments and thoughts was that John's, and even Nate's, disuse of the shared language provided by Kant and Wittgenstein hinted at either,

1. a lack of understanding of their arguments

2. an understanding of one or only a few interpretation of their arguments

While giving a positive affect might work for simple chatbots, I don't think a positive affect would prevent a more intelligent AI from wrecking havoc using vulnerable people.

We need an AI with positive values, goals, and affect, but maybe that is what you meant by personality.

This is an absolutely heartbreaking portend of things to come. I've long believed that AI's need only use social engineering to achieve world domination, and that this is a likely outcome.

Social engineering has been one of my interests for a long time, and the fact socially engineered cyber-crime is so common and effective is terrifying.

Hey Nate, thanks for the 3/4 ass review of John's research. 

I'm not very familiar with the current state of complex system, chaos theory, linguistic etc. research so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

However, I am familiar with the metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of scientific knowledge, think Kant, Hume, Locke etc., and of language, think Wittgenstein, Russel, Diamond, etc. And solely based on that, I agree with your critique of John's approach. 

Kant's and Wittgenstein's metaphysical and epistemological ideas create significant barriers for John's goals, not just his methods. And that any attempt whatsoever to describe how we can gain abstract knowledge from finite samples needs to seriously and dutifully grapple with the problems they posed, and the naive solutions they criticized. 

Kant was obsessed with the questions of universal (true of categories) and necessary (true in all possible worlds) empirical truths and our ability to know them, especially how they related to the problems with empiricism that Hume posed.

Kant believed that experience cannot be the result of all of our ideas or knowledge, and that they must instead be contained in our consciousness and greater mind because of simple questions he posed, "There are objects that exist in space and time outside of me” or "Subjects are persistent in time". These questions cannot be proven using a priori or a posteriori methods (try it!), which means that the truths necessary to answer questions like the previous are simply axiomatic.

Additionally, Ludwig Wittgenstein was obsessed with the questions and problems surrounding language and communication. He believed that discussing and understanding the meanings of words independently of their usage and grammar was folly. 

In fact, Wittgenstein's research in his later life was centered around the limits of language and communication. The limits of rules, and inner thought. How do we learn rules? How do we follow rules? How do we know if we have successfully followed a rule? How are rules stored in our minds? Are we just appealing to intuition when we apply or follow rules? Yes, he basically contributed questions, and that's the point.

In terms of communication, Wittgenstein believed that person's inner thoughts and language could only refer to the immediate contents of his consciousness. And that consequently, not only do we need shared agreements to communicate, but also shared experiences, “agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life.”

I don't mean to say that it is impossible to achieve the goals that you and John share. But that rummaging around in the dark while some of the greatest thinkers stand nearby with soft candles is as tragic as you and John have hinted.

The unfolding argument: Why IIT and other causal structure theories cannot explain consciousness

I love computation.

Watch this.

mic drop