Intuitively, a system is unpredictable if a lot of information about its past state tends to yield only a little information about its future state. There are many different ways to make this precise. Here we shall consider four different definitions of unpredictability, three of them original. Let us consider a discrete dynamical system…
Having just reviewed certain aspects of the psychological perspective on intelligence, it isworth observing how different the engineering perspective is. As one might expect, engineershave a much simpler and much more practical definition of intelligence. Control theory deals with ways to cause complex machines to yield desired behaviors.Adaptive control theory deals with the design…
In conclusion, let us now return to the question of intelligence. Assuming that the world isunpredictable and yet possesses the tendency to take habits to a significant degree, let us ask:how should a system act in order to approximately maximize the given "appropriateness"function A? In other words, let us ask the Kantian question: how…
The strengthened Peirce’s principle is only a beginning. It is a basic philosophical assumptionwhich ensures the possibility of intelligence through pattern recognition. All the standardmathematical methods for predicting the future are based on probability theory. In this section I will show that it is indeed possible to combine prediction based on pattern with prediction based…
The American philosopher Charles S. Peirce founded a vast philosophical system on theprinciple of "the tendency to take habits." By this he meant, roughly, the following:Peirce’s Principle: Unless restrained by the extension of another habit, a habit will tend toextend itself. Here "extend" is taken to refer to both space and time, and "habit"…
After reading a certain amount of philosophy, it is easy to become confused as to exactly whatthe problem of induction is. For our purposes, however, the problem of induction is very simpleand straightforward. Why is it justified for a system to assume that a pattern it has observed in its environment or itself will…