Tuesday 11 November 2008

Inferences drawn by human individuals and bias built-in in perspective.

The abstract for the paper 'FROM SIMPLE ASSOCIATIONS TO SYSTEMATIC REASONING: A Connectionist representation of rules, variables, and dynamic bindings using temporal synchrony', which currently depicts the mode, I want to put my mind into, to go through the article 'World stocks down amid fears of deep recession', in yahoo.news. It followed up the technorati link Tag Page for: speculators that brought me into the post 'Speculators are not "Investors"' and the aforementioned article in yahoo.news.

"Abstract: Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency — as though these inferences are a reflex response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the results about the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuron-like elements represent a large body of systematic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that is a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables, and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred msec. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model achieves this by i) representing dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, ii) rules as interconnection patterns."

I want to use that ability of, as myself, a human agent, to draw and extract a variety of inferences out of the available body of background knowledge, but guided by my own unique perspective, unique defined as myself, as any other individual, I am a single unit.

The inferences derived by the author of the post

"If the "instruments" traded on Wall Street have no connection to a tangible economy, then what are they "investing" in? They aren't "investors," they are "speculators" in the worst sense of the term.

Let the speculative "instruments" die so that our society can rediscover an economics founded on fundamentals that benefit real people, not just the cuff-linked and spangled elite. There will be pain in the short run, but that sacrifice will build our character as a nation.
"

providing the co-ordinates of my perspective.

Relevant to perspective adhered, by any human agent, is that quote from the New Scientist, 24 June 2000, No 2244, article 'Wired like a human', page 11

"When the researchers tested the circuit, they found it processed information much like the brain. In particular, when multiple signals were fed in, the inhibitory neuron suppressed the weaker signals. This is akin to "sensory attention" that occurs, say, when you focus on an object, and everything else fades into the background."

Human agents assume that stance, in everything that deal with in life.