[FRIAM] have we moved on?

[Martin C. Martin]

Hey Phil,

Phil Henshaw wrote:
> Martin,
>> Hey Phil,
>>
>> If I understand you correctly, I think you're very right.  The 
>> information we have about the world is behavior and 
>> appearances, and for 
>> most interesting things the mechanism is completely hidden 
>> from us.  We 
>> can observe inputs and outputs, but not the source code.  We can see 
>> fuel go in and motion come out, but can't see the engine, let alone 
>> anything else.
> 
> The trickiest piece is proving in a comprehendable and comprehensive way
> that anything has any actual inside structure, largely invisible from
> the outside.

Well, I'd argue something slightly different.  We need a model of what's 
going on inside, but that's not the same as recovering what's actually 
going on inside.  In fact, a high level model may be more useful and 
important than a low level one.  For example, I can come up with the 
concept of pressure, temperature and volume for a gas without 
discovering molecules.  I can do all kinds of useful and interesting 
things knowing only about pressure, temperature and volume, like make 
air conditioners and refrigerators, and have no idea whether gas is 
continuous or made of molecules.

As another example, there tends to be more traffic on the roads during 
morning and evening rush hour.  This is an emergent phenomenon, and 
would be hard to prove starting from a wiring diagram of the human 
brain, plus whatever else about the environment you'd need to know.

So I don't see the job so much as recovering the actual structure that's 
inside, but discovering regularities in the observables.

- Martin