User talk:Tkorrovi/archive1

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[edit] page size

Read Wikipedia:Page size. Pages are to be kept under 32 KB, except in special cases, such as Wikipedia:Village pump. ugen64 15:33, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Don't know where it is written, many pages are more than 32K, like artificial intelligence talk page (42K), and I didn't see nowhere splitting talk pages to archives. The text you mentioned only recommends splitting pages to sections, not archives. BTW the page is not accessible now. Tkorrovi 16:06, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Isolation of artificial consciousness

Until some consensus it agreed and the bit at the top of the artificial consciousness page is removed, i.e. the disputed objectivity of the article, it might be better to direct wikipedia readers to a straightforward exposition of the various experts in the field and a list of related topics in an article that cites its sources in every instance, rather than expressing unattributable opinions. I notice that Paul has already started copying some of his stuff from AC to the synthesised consciousness page, which I'm not particularly in favour of, as there's no need to duplicate what's already written. My intro on the simulated consciousness talk page attempted to make the distinction that the AC page is more about the philosophical aspects of what constitutes AC (and I'd have thought a good direction to go in here on the AC page is to explain Aleksander's theory in this respect, which I think you had started to do. I don't understand Aleksander's theories [1], so you'd be doing me a good turn if tou could explain them to the lay person), whereas the synthesised consciousness page is about practical implementations, e.g. Kismet, etc, which you didn't want included under AC. The synthetic consciousness page is new and therefore it is useful to draw readers' attention to it, which is why I diverted some of the links. You have now included both links, which seems fine, though it might be helpful perhaps to have a disambiguity page to highlight the different foci of the separate pages. Matt Stan 16:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

To enumerate the points above:

  • Paul is copying stuff from AC to synthetic consciousness - which I disagree with. Perhaps you will support me in this. The focus of the two articles is at present different, which is OK in wikipedia terms, provided we make clear the distinction, hence my idea of a disambiguity page. What do you think?
  • Igor Aleksander's theoretical paper on artificial consciousness, which he explicitly calls artificial consciousness, could do with some explanation. He mentions emotional aspects and the point about prediction, which we discussed some while ago. Are you going to cover his arguments under Artificial consciousness, or should I put a link to Igor Aleksander on the synthetic consciousness page?
  • You objected to my reference to Kismet on the AC page on the grounds that emotion was a psychological rather than AC topic. Nevertheless, Kitmet gives a close approximation to the type of test to which a machine consciousness implementation might be assessed. Whether it passes the test or not is aonther question. But it's at least a first step, which is why I want to cover it under synthetic consciousness. Any objections to that?

Matt Stan 16:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

To summarise the above, there are three questions:

1) To stop Paul wrecking the synthetic consciousness page and duplicating material that is already on the artificial consciousness page.
2) To give good encyclopedic coverage of Igor Aleksander's work
3) To decide whether the emotional components of a machine consciousness implementation should be on the AC or on the syhthetic consciousness page.

1, 2, 3: clear enough?

You used the argument that you started the artificial consciousness page and hence that that gave you some rights of proprietorial control of it. I don't think this is quite the spirit of wikipedia, but nevertheless you would no doubt grant me the same grace in that I started the synthetic consciousness page. We might at some stage merge the two, or at least delete one of them.

You mention that there is no link to artificial consciousness from synthetic consciousness. But what about vice versa? Matt Stan 16:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Paul had nothing to do with me starting the synthetic consciousness page. I just found the arguing on the AC talk page too distracting to build a good encyclopedia article. It is good practice from time to time to do a re-write, because there is a natural entropy in wikipedia with different people coming in in an unstructured way and resulting in articles that lose their focus. There is even a special namespace message {msg:inuse} to indicate that a rewrite is in progress. In this instance I thought it better to start again afresh and take a slightly different tack, i.e. to dwell on machine implementations of consciousness, leading to ideas about what the practical uses of stynthesised consciousness might be, along the lines that I have been discussing on the AC talk page.

Paul decided to come along and debate matters like the relevance of Leibniz's law to assessment of any implementation, and I hope this will be constructive, but you have seen what he is like! Are you saying you want Paul back arguing with you on the AC talk page? I'd have thought you would be grateful that I was distracting him elsewhere so you could get on with building a good encyclopedic article on the theoretical aspects of artificial consciousness and give some in-depth coverage of the proponents with whom you are familiar, eg. Aleksander, et al., while I dwell on the engineering aspects, which I find more interesting and easier to grasp. Matt Stan 17:53, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Who supports whom

I try not to make direct public criticism of anyone, and everything written here is in the public domain. Therefore I am neither going to support nor arraign Paul for his behaviour. I have, however, just given a reference on the AC talk page to Aleksander's notion of consciousness involving prediction, which you can construe if you like as me supporting you rather than Paul, thought it is just intended to take the discussion forward. In an academic context such as in the preparation of an encyclopedia, where all we are after is truth and certainty, it is a distraction to discuss one's own feelings or the motivations of others. I have already written that I don't think you are a troll, and made welcoming noises when you complained that no one was being welcoming. But writing here is occurring at a level of abstraction that is a step removed from personal encounters. I should much enjoy meeting you if you were to visit London, or if I travelled to Estonia, and I'm sure we could have a good laugh together as well as having a lively discussion about AC, etc.. It is far better to stick to the topic at hand here, though. Rather than complaining about how others treat you personally (which, as I've indicated is not so because of the detachment that one should apply in this medium) it is better to argue about the nature of artificial consciousness and make expositions of what leading thinkers have to say about the topic. You will get a lot further if you back your arguments up with references (always). Then people won't try to refute you, except perhaps to clarify what you mean. I think that is the crux of the problem actually. Your incomplete grasp of English leads me to puzzle about much of what you write, in order to determine what you are on about. I have made what I considered gentle criticism of your English, in the hope that you would take that on board. It was not intended as hypercriticism. As I've already shown, confusion in the usage of what and that can lead to differences in meaning, so that there can arise a discrepancy between what you mean and what you put. That is problematic, and the example I chose is not the only one. Since you are evidently sensitive about this issue I have not pursued it. But if I were attempting to write in Estonian (a language that I know not at all), and I made mistakes, then I would definitely not resent any criticism that others made about my usage, no matter how hypercritical, because I would see that as a path towards excellence. As for pretending to be your friend, I am trying to keep the peace, in order that we can make progress. (The fact that I take time to write this surely speaks for itself.) The dialogues on the AC talk page are, I think, viewed as entertainment by other wikipedians, but things have recently been getting out of hand, and we had lost sight of what the article should be about and making no real progress at all. I am hoping to move things on. There was a suggestion recently (not from Paul) that the AC page should be deleted. What is wrong now with having a little competition? You burnish the AC page, and I will attempt to develop the synthetic consciousness page. Then we can hold a poll to see which page other wikipedians think should be kept. Matt Stan 10:16, 5 May 2004 (UTC)


"I find the mediation necessary..."

Ok, in that case, I suggest you request it officially at wikipedia:requests for mediation. I was suggesting that you should enter mediation, but unfortunately, I won't be able to be the mediator as I am already involved in a case which is quite time consuming. There is a list of mediators at wikipedia:Mediation Committee. Do you have a preference for who mediates? I believe Anthere is currently too busy, and BCorr is involved in a different case but the others are available as far as I know. If you could let someone know who would like to mediate, they can contact Paul Beardsell about it. TUF-KAT and sannse are the current chairs of the committee, so you could contact either of them about it. Angela. 22:08, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Months of work

I agree that there is a great deal of material, as evidenced by your Google search. These are some names of researchers hat come up again and agan and there are various universities, e.g. Birmingham, that seem to publish more material than others. It would be interesting and, I think, useful to get some kind of overview of the field, perhaps by a simple statistical analysis of results of Google searches. I don't think the scale of the task should deter us, however, unless you are looking for a 'quick fix'. My concern, over a longer term project, is, as I mentioned, that we keep sight of a vision, namely to build an article that might one day be featured on Wikipedia's main page for a day. If you are in agreement with my classification, we might start to collate the research material, read it, and extract the summaries/overview to make a good article. The classification scheme I proposed was essentially:

  • a) material that provides the background (perhaps covering the philosophical debate)
  • b) early attempts (which may have failed or only go partly toward the ultimate objective), and I think criticisms of the early AI research have a bearing on this, highlighting the difficulties encountered by early implementations
  • c) current research topics and achievements, leading to predictions about future possibilities. Matt Stan 10:41, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I note that you took out the link to http://mind.sourceforge.net/conscius.html from the AC page. My feeling is that it's generally not helpful to remove links, unless they are clearly patent nonsense. The sourceforge resource is generally useful, so I'd suggest putting that link back, but perhaps with a qualifier suggesting that it may not be mainstream, i.e. category b) above. Matt Stan 10:41, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome back

Matt Stan 20:10, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial consciousness article

I re-read the stuff in there whaich hadn't been altered since May this year, and then read the contribution of our anonymous contributor. I must say that he is clear, concise and, I think, knowledgeable and right in the points he makes. I am not into having edit wars, but I agree with his notion of moving the original artificial consciousness stuff to Strong AI, and representing the AC stuff in the way that he now proposes. It moves us all forward. Don't you agree? Matt Stan 10:52, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

You asked on my talkpage, whether I would like to mediate the matter of the artificial consciousness article? I can try to help you and those who agree to the mediation; but it is as yet unclear who the other parties are that you would like mediation with, and whether they are willing to participate. -- Cimon 07:04, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] I can try to see what I can do to ease teh tension

Ok. Well, that is a bit more explicit. I'll definitely look into it. -- Cimon 17:09, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tkorrovi vs Psb777

Look, this is going to get messy. You know that as I point out the history, event by event, you will end up looking very silly, and already in the arbitration request you are looking ridiculous. Why not just withdraw your request for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 23:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitration Committee case opening

The request for arbitration involving you has officially been accepted. Please bring formal evidence to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Tkorrovi vs. Paul Beardsell/Evidence. Thank you. -- Grunt   ҈  00:18, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

[edit] Tkorrovi vs Psb777, again

If you don't like the way this is going you could just withdraw your request for arbitration. Paul Beardsell 08:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Paul, you really don't do yourself any credit by bullying people around like this. --Chinasaur 02:04, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Chinasaur, I think you misunderstand. I am preparing a mass of evidence which will show Tkorrovi in bad light. I think he is aware of it - it is available as a link from my Talk page. I am giving Tkorrovi a chance to back down, to say: "OK, let's forget it all, there is (no longer?) any real problem". Then we can all go home and I do not need to defend myself. You seem to forget that I did not bring this case. Nor do I think I really provoked its bringing - this is mostly all many months ago. All I did recently was (i) revert a deletion by Tkorrovi of some interesting material and (ii) delete an unparseable sentence he added. It's in the log. And upon his reversion of my changes I see someone else has done what I did without complaint by him. But I wonder if you are saying that Tkorrovi deserves some special consideration of which I am unaware. I at least credit Tkorrovi with "all the capabilities of a normal human" (to use one of his favorite phrases at artificial consciousness). Why do you patronise him so condescendingly? Paul Beardsell 07:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitration Committee injunction

The Arbitration Committee has passed an injunction related to your case; you and Paul Beardsell are hereby prohibited from editing artificial consciousness for the duration of the case. -- Grunt   ҈  14:34, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

[edit] Personal questions

Moved here from the ArbCom case

Chinasaur, you don't have to answer, and this has nothing to do with the subject whatsoever. But as my nationality was already mentioned here against my will, may I ask, are you not Russian? I mean the authors you like, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Turgenev, Gogol, Bulgakov. I again don't say that there is anything wrong with these authors, but just as much as I know, non-Russians usually don't have so many Russian authors as their joice.Tkorrovi 22:15, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No I'm not Russian. I just happen to have an interest in Russian literature. I will assume this is just a friendly inquiry; I also would like to know more about who you actually are since my knowledge of you is limited to these unfortunate circumstances. However, I'm sure you understand that I don't really know where I stand with you, and can't be sure whether you are acting in good faith, so it makes me a little uncomfortable to have you digging into my identity. --Chinasaur 02:03, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Tkorrovi is a customs officer. Ergo, he is not stupid. See [2] in this regard. Matt Stan 07:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moving comments

I felt like the comments, especially your argument with Paul, are pretty tangential to the case itself. That's why I invited you to select some points that you think are relevant and summarize them in close proximity to my original comments. But having that whole huge chunk at the bottom is just going to discourage people from reading any of the page.

But if everyone has already agreed not to do any moving or summarizing then I apologize. Or if this is standard for ArbCom cases, I didn't know any better.

--Chinasaur 03:03, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just feel bad for anyone who has to read through all of that. I don't agree that the information content is all that high. Especially no one is going to want to read you and Paul arguing with each other. But actually I don't really care much; I was just trying to be helpful by creating a summary and saving people time. Feel free to change it back. Actually, better than changing it back would be to move my original comments to the side page; at least that would declutter the talk page, and you wouldn't have to worry about my comments getting preference. What do you think about that? --Chinasaur 03:26, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Again, again

If you don't like the way this is going you could just withdraw your request for arbitration. Paul Beardsell 22:02, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of English

I studied anthropology at university many years ago, but I am not an anthropologist. I am an engineer now - testing software mostly. There is an old Czeck proverb: Learn a new language and get a new soul. I did not suggest that people whose language does not use a particular construction, e.g. future tense, are necessarily deficient in their gasp of the concept of the future, though I can't remember which language it is which sees the future as behind us and the past in front, wherease English uses the opposite metaphor. The justification for putting the future behind is that you can visualise the past whereas the future is hidden. Things that stand behind one are hidden from view whereas things in front one can see. So there's good logic in switching past and future round like that. It is generally easier for English people to learn Indo-European languages than, say, Japanese, because those languages are more closely related and hence present fewer difficulties in translation. Some of the Baltic languages are not from the same stable. Finnish, I gather was invented a century or so ago. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are quite closely related, and Estonian is more closely related to Turkish. My disussion of the future tense in relation to Estonian was merely to enquire whether English might present particular difficulites for learners because, if so, there might be other difficulties, which a native spreaker could then be sensitive to when interpreting that writer's text.

As for relevance to the AC, article, I think the main difficulty there has been one of interpretation. 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass. That is a famous quote because it makes the point that Humpty Dumpty is an idiot. Though English is not formally defined - there is no English equivalent to the French Académie Françcaise to control the language - we do generally accept words to have particular meanings in particular contexts, and if an utterance is ambiguous or unclear then that is the writer's error and not the reader's. But one does need to know what words mean - as the grammar book that you copied parts of into wikibooks explained - before one can expect to use them correctly. Perhaps a better example than usage of future tense would be the distinction between proprietorial and proprietary - two entirely distinct adjectives with no overlap in meaning. But someone who had only ever lived under a communist government might be forgiven for finding proprietary (and perhaps even proprietorial) difficult concepts to understand because they refer to cultural phenomena that do not exist in communism: if there is no such thing as copyright/trademark then there is no such thing as proprietary. English has about ten times as many words in it as Norwegian. That doesn't in any way imply that English is a superior language or that there are things incapable of being expressed in Norwegian, but it might make it more difficult for an English speaker to learn Norwegian (because there woud be some words that couldn't be translated), and vice versa (because Norwegian writers would need to find the 'right word', which might not exist in their language). But I suffer from another problem, as evinced in this quote: "A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws in hopes he may hit." Matt Stan 19:33, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial consciousness

It is hard to say how your arbitration case will turn out. If you can continue editing it, let me make some suggestions regarding references. If you use information from any source in the article, set forth a brief quotation, the page, author, title, ISBN, url or what ever would help a knowledgeable person to find the passage you are relying on. Those references can be commented or put in a references section. This should include even difficult to find or access material, if in fact, you use them in the article. Other material which is easy to access should be the section other reading or external links. Fred Bauder 20:04, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bully

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Tkorrovi_and_Paul_Beardsell/Proposed_decision#Bullying. Paul Beardsell 19:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] You made a good post on Jimbo's page

Hello, Tarvo Korrovits:

I think you made a good post here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=18551597&oldid=18540927#.3D.3DA_concern.3D.3D

You have difficulty in the English language, but you tried hard and did well.

I tried to rephrase your concern, so it would be more easily understood, and I also tried to offer some suggested solutions. Thank you for your effort. I hope that I did well. If your language is listed here: http://world.altavista.com/tr then you can translate my message to you. Thank you. Have a nice day,--GordonWattsDotCom 20:46, 10 July 2005 (UTC)