Replying to LO30595 --
At replies to Leo in LO30595:
>> Two brain activities seem important during thinking:
>> 1) making choices; 2) making connections.
> I agree. My reason is that both have to do with the bifurcative (forking,
> splitting) activity of knowledge. To make an intelligent choice (i.e., not
> to gamble) i first have to experience a mental bifurcation to realise
> which of the paths to choose. To make an intelligent connection i intend
> to create such a bifurcation from which something novel may emerge.
> But is knowledge merely about cognitive bifurcations? No, it is also the
> capacity to digest information so that it can grow.
Interesting; I would have thought that making connections is a digestive
activity, while bifurcations depend on breaking connections (creative
collapse). Of course, an emergence resulting from a bifurcation would be
characterized by new, often unexpected connections.
Hmm... perhaps one useful view of knowledge is through liveness: it grows,
evolves through digestions and bifurcations; information, however, will
never change, unless acted on by a knowledgeable agent.
A computer program is driven by information; the behavior of the computer
is limited by the information in the program. Some of the artificial
intelligence techniques (e.g., genetic algorithms) perhaps allow for
programs to grow digestively, within the limits of the "space" they're
embedded in, but can't escape or redifine the space (can't undero
bifurcations).
--Don Dwiggins d.l.dwiggins@computer.org "There are moments in history when the fabric of everyday life unravels, and there is this unstable dynamism that allows for incredible social change in short periods of time. People and the world they're living in can be utterly transformed, either for the good or the bad, or some mixture of the two." -- Tony Kushner, playwright
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