My only reason for reluctantly writing this, knowing what kind of reaction I could receive is, because I abhor that some of the best minds on our planet are occupying themselves with this problem. It pains me to no end to see humanity squandering its power for a problem that, as it is currently framed, is unanswerable. It goes further than this though. There will come a time when questions such as this one will be cast upon the junk heap of humanity’s growth throughout history. It will take its rightful place along such ideas as phrenology.
Here’s why I say this:
The problem is firmly and completely embedded in Functional Reductionism. I say this, because the problem’s framing requires us to peel away the contextual embedding of the problems which it is supposed to clarify.
This is just one of its problems. Here’s another:
Since the data for this problem (and those like it) are themselves algorithms, they are compelled to be functionally reduced versions of mind problem solving (varying types of heuristics and decision problems) which reduces the problem’s causal domain and its universe of discourse even further. How can a specification based upon functionally reduced data be again used as data for the problem’s solution in the first place?
That means that this problem has no independent existence nor causal efficacy. Everywhere I have looked at this problem, the definitions of NP-Hard and NP-Complete do not lead to proving anything useful. We cannot ‘generalise’ the mind by reducing it to some metric of complexity. Complexity is also not how the universe works as Occam’s Razor[1] shows.
I am prepared to defend my position should someone have the metal to test me on this. Another thing: I wish I could have left this alone, but we all need to wake up to this nonsense.
[1] http://bit.ly/2GHbRkW How Occam's Razor Works
[Quora]
http://bit.ly/2EuRdP3
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