artifical intelligence

[ajsiegel at optonline.net]

 >Arthur wrote:
 ...
 >> *Our* intelligence seems to give us a read as to where on the bell curve a
 >> particular event may lie, or a least some sense of when we are at an

>Wrong: human beings are *eager* pattern-matching devices, extremely prone
>to detect "patterns" that just don't exist in statistically significant
>ways. There's quite a substantial body of literature, by now, on the
>general issue of frequent fallacies on reasoning about probabilities.

I can accept a "poorly expressed".  Not sure I can sign onto a "wrong".

True, since there are an infinite number of unlikely things that may occur, it is a sure thing - statistically -  that unlikely things will occur, all the time. And human beings may have a tendency attach significance when seeing such an occurence, in isolation.  False significance.  It doesn't mean that they are wrong in having perceived the coincidence of events -  taken in and of themselves - to have been an actual occurrrence of an "unlikely" occurrence.  That sense that something unlikely has occurred is not wrong.  And it is hard to put a finger on everything that goes into coming to such a conclusion. And therefore, I would presume, difficult to program.

Art