From: Joscha Bach Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 11:42 PM To: S.M. Kosslyn Cc: Jeffrey Epstein Subject: Re: Today's discussion Dear Stephen, thank you for your so far unending patience in that discussion. --> =ttp://www.xkcd.com/386/ » I agree, and yet only a subset of animals can use symbols for =ommunication. > communication and intelligence are not the same thing (think about =ees etc) » Of these, only a small subset can make use of negation, conjunctions =nd disjunctions in symbolic communication (for instance, Irene =epperberg's famous grey parrots). It appears that only humans can learn =ich grammatical language, and I suspect that this is the primary =nabler of our superior problem solving capabilities. > I disagree. Einstein claimed that his greatest discoveries came from =ental imagery, and he later converted those thoughts to verbal =xpressions only with great difficulty. I think AI has vastly =nderestimated the role of "mental simulation/emulation" in thinking and =easoning. Nonverbal thinking is primary, and is poorly understood, and it has been =eglected by what we now often call "classic Al". (But if we look at the =riginal ideas, that was probably not intentional. Logic based systems =ere low hanging fruit. Once you have a paradigm and a community, you =nd up with a methodology that is bound to stay, unfortunately.) But nonverbal thinking is something that I suspect is quite similarly =owerful in other primates. I think that the most interesting difference =etween chimps and humans is how we can use grammatical language to =program" and organize our thought processes, and how we can use it to =uggest, transmit, create and manipulate new categories. I am on your side insofar as I think that the important research needs =o be done in mental imagery (or more accurately: on mental =epresentations and operations that facilitate mental imagery, among =ther things). But I think that human intelligence is shaped by the =dditions