Recently I described a possible alternative Turing test that looks for certain non-person like behavior. I’d like to try it out and see if it is robust and has any value.
Here is some data represented in an ordinary control chart.
It’s easy to see there is a recognizable pattern here. The line follows a downward trajectory till about observation 16 then it meanders around till about observation 31. At which point it begins an upward track that lasts till almost the end of the chart.
The data in question is real and public but obsolete. I won’t say what it’s source is right now to avoid any bias in your attempts see if we can infer design. I can provide the actual numbers if you like.
The question before the house is. Is the clear overall pattern we see here a record of intention or does it have a “non-mental” cause?
Using the criteria discussed in my “poker” thread I would suggest looking for the following behaviors and excluding a mental cause if they are present.
1) large random spikes in the data
2) sudden changes in the overall pattern of the data that appear to be random
3) long periods of monotony
4) unexplained disjunction in the pattern.
I have some other tests we can look at as well .
What do you say design or not? Are you willing to venture a conjecture?
peace
I would say the process could be designed but it is out of control or broken since it cannot remain in its control limits. So hypothesis is broken process or not designed.
I’ll wait for some more responses before I respond
fmm, The question before the house is. Is the clear overall pattern we see here a record of intention or does it have a “non-mental” cause?
In what sense is the pattern “clear”? It certainly isn’t crystal clear, if that’s what you mean, but if you mean that, then my follow-up question is – whatever gave you the idea that “crystal clear” is a scientifically meaningful term?
Seriously, define your terms. What does “clear” mean in this context? What is “intention”? Intention as distinguished from what?
ffs lol
It shows non-randomness. That’s it.
Common descent also indicates non-randomness, but it happens to indicate the kind of non-randomness expected of unthinking evolutionary processes. Designed non-randomness has looked quite different every time we’ve seen it happen.
Glen Davidson
I mean that you can see a pattern in the midst of the noise.
I’m not claiming it is or is not.
Something can be useful and accurate with out being scientifically meaningful.
I’m much more interested in developing a useful Turing test than in getting bogged down in the “But is it science?” question
Have you read the “poker” thread and watched the video?
peace
Erik:
fifth:
Has it truly not occurred to you that both mental and non-mental processes can produce “patterns in the midst of noise”?
It certainly has that is what the discussion is about.
Do non-mental processes behave differently than mental ones?
The professional poker players in the video think so. Are they correct?
peace
That’s an incredibly stupid question.
Poor Mung is still smarting from the shellacking he took yesterday on the Christianity thread.
fifth:
Considering that any pattern generated by a non-mental process can be duplicated by a mental process, the answer is “not generally.”
In specific cases, yes, which is why SETI researchers look for the patterns they do — specific patterns that are judged unlikely to be produced by non-mental processes.
But why on earth would you think that the following bizarre set of criteria could be used to distinguish the two?
Can I? What is noise and what counts as pattern? Why? I know what they are in statistics, that’s how I know that your “The line follows a downward trajectory till about observation 16 then it meanders around till about…” is sheer nonsense. Noise all the way, if that says something.
I am asking for a basic definition for a term upon which your whole “practical excercise” depends. This is your final answer?
Yes. It raises the exact same questions and answers none.
did you read the poker thread and watch the video?
how do you know this?
peace
Wouldn’t you agree that mental causes are not constrained by statistical metrics.
For the same reason that we can do things that are not quantifiable statistically I would say we can recognize patterns that are not statically obvious.
peace
Far too little information to settle the question.
Hmm, so you are just assuming, without any defined procedure, that there’s a pattern there and that’s the “practical exercise”?
Count me out.
Not at all, I thought I gave a satisfactory answer but am more than willing to elaborate if you will ask clarifying questions
look I’m not claiming to have all the answers here.
It seems pretty evident that we can recognize non-mental behavior at least in some instances. I want to know if that intuition can be generalized
peace
No, I have a defined procedure. Have you heard of my game?
peace
Yes, I have heard about it and taken a look. It is far from “defined”. We have evidently very different ideas about what that word means.
That is fair. How much do you think that it would take?
in the process that the data was taken from making this determination was literally a matter of life and death
peace
I think that the very nature of this endeavor prohibits the kind of “definition” you are looking for
if you could define it in that way an algorithm could be constructed to produce it
Don’t you agree?
peace
And therefore let’s not construct any algorithm, right? Great game. Have fun.
No feel free to construct an algorithm if you like
Just don’t expect that it will ever have an output that can be seen as “mental”.
If the creators of the poker bot removed the non-mental behaviors that the players identified they would be able to identify more ways that the program diverged from what a person would do.
At least that is my claim
peace
fifth:
The one that failed when it was tested?
Something other than just the same kind of data.
Maybe I am out of my league here, but is this a “Look, the emperor has no clothes” question? Surely a pattern contains repetition. I can’t see a pattern here. There are patterns better labelled as templates, for example, as dressmakers use, but that graph to me is just a series of events.
Erik:
Unsurprisingly, fifth hasn’t thought through the process of separating signal from noise.
No, The one that was subjected to an immaterial test that is was not designed for.
the test we are performing now is more up it’s alley
peace
Sure I have.
If you can’t to see the signal randomize the data and compare. As in the game.
In this case there is no need to do that. The signal is clear
peace
keiths:
fifth:
Take a set of data points generated by a non-mental process. Duplicate them. You have now produced the same pattern.
Instead of posting these threads, fifth, why not just wake us up if and when you finally come up with something that works?
Do you have the raw data?
No fair copying. 😉
Seriously have you ever tried to create random data with out utilizing a random number generator
peace
It’s at work. I’ll try and get it sometime this weekend
peace
fifth:
Says who? Copying can be a mental process, and humans do it all the time.
fifth:
What you hear is the sound of thousands of engineers’ and scientists’ faces contacting their palms.
Sure but in that case the mental part is not in the data but in it’s reproduction.
Copy a non-mental string and all you have is one “mental” data point (the one that corresponds to copy paste).
That’s hardly enough information to make the sort of determination we are looking for
peace
keiths is still functioning under the delusion that he had not been answered hours ago in that thread. But by now he should know* better.
fifth:
Hmmm… a triple ‘peace’. You must be getting flustered.
Is this the FMM equivalent of Joey’s ‘tat’?
ETA: I see you’ve edited it out. 🙂
Is that a rhetorical question?
fifthmonarchyman,
Off topic.
There has to be another way of commenting and posting on this blog.
I mean short versions. I personally don’t read most of the long-winded posts or comments because most of the times the last 2-3 sentences do it for me.
I’m a busy family man… Can anybody hear me?
No but it is data. The question is can we decide if there is intention behind it or if it was the result of a non-mental cause
peace
interesting like what?
peace
I try to keep it as short as possible.
My biggest problem is deciding which comments require response and which are best ignored.
peace
“The question before the house is. Is the clear overall pattern we see here a record of intention or does it have a “non-mental” cause?”
It is clearly a record of intention. Any idiot can see that.
For starters, we would need to know more about how the data was collected.
Are you asking for the measurements that were performed or the frequency etc? Be specific if you can.
It’s this sort of thing that I need to understand.
peace
“Posted on February 10, 2017 by fifthmonarchyman
Recently I described a possible alternative Turing test that looks for certain non-person like behavior. I’d like to try it out and see if it is robust and has any value.”
You don’t understand the terms you’re using.
Both. You need as much of the semantics of the situation as possible, if you want to try inferring intentions. Keep in mind that the people making the measurements are, themselves, acting on intentions. So you need to have a way to separate that from the intentions that might have produced whatever is being measured.
fifth, to Erik:
keiths:
fifth:
I’d bet a considerable sum that fifth’s working definition of ‘an immaterial test’ is ‘one that doesn’t produce the result I was hoping for.’
FMM posts a control chart and asks if the pattern in the control chart is the result of intention. Maybe I am daft, but control charts are, by definition, used to monitor and control intentional processes. Am I the only one here who knows this?