There is no doubt that the Chinese room is actually improbable -- I forget if it's Searle or Block who point this out -- since the rule book for a 30 minute conversation would require more matter than exists on Earth (or something like that, I forget the exact statement). This fact alone, however, does not make the statement paraxodical nor invalidate the conclusions.
It's a thought experiment, and it's not unique (Galileo was fond of them, as was Einstein). You might argue (and plenty of people do) that the logic is faulty, and therefore the conclusion is wrong and strong AI is possible, but revealing this as a thought experiment is not itself, IMHO, a counter argument to the claim.
As to the universe claim -- I'm "digesting" the idea. But looking at a much smaller scale -- what will it take to predict a hurricane that will form next week or next month (forget next year or in 10 years time!). I know we're not there yet -- I wonder if we ever will (we'd have to solve what seem pretty intractable problems). Of course, not being able to model a weather system (we have simplified models that are getting better) doesn't invalidate strong AI, but it does in my mind bring questions as to whether all of our math and sufficient CPU time is, actually, enough to model everything in this universe.
In fact, right now as I think about it, there's some pretty simple simple systems that defie all of our math. The Earth-Sun-Moon system is complicated enought for chaotic behavior (none or our math is sufficient for analytic solutions!) -- forget the rest of the cosmos, or n- body problems greater than 3. I think I can comfortably tell you that your assertion that our math is suficient to model the cosmos is not correct. We can get lost when you have gravitational interation with more than two bodies simultaneously!
As to neural nets that can learn and therefore achieve levels of complexity the designers didn't intend (if I understand you correctly), I can honestly tell you that I'm not sure what to say. The chinese room experiment does leave me wondering if what will one day emerge is a long complicated list of rules that will allow me to interact with Lt. Commander Data, but whose existense and "mental state" won't actually be anything more than what is happening in the Chinese Room; that is an outward appearance of intelligence, but an appearance only.
In fact, how will you know when you have strong AI? The Turing Test doesn't seem at all a sufficient (or even necessary) test for intelligence, so that's out...
The book, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has the introductory student write a full Scheme language interpreter in the Scheme language, then an assembly language register machine in the scheme language, and finally a scheme Interpreter in assembly language....
It's an interesting excercise that I went through as an undergrad (though I switched majors and became a mechanical guy instead of a software guy). I remember Scheme as a pretty fun language to program in, once I sort of got the hang of it, but this is an aside.
any universal computer can emulate any other universal computer.
As this applies to the AI argument, the problem is that you have to assume that the human mind is a type of universal computer, which is a statement disputed by detractors of strong AI. At any rate, it is an assumption that the human mind is software.
The Chinese room thought experiment only addresses weak AI, hence the distinction. First of all, it assumes that symbolic manipulation without understanding of context is even possible.
The Chinese room, actually addressed strong AI -- at least that's what it's intended to disprove, I'm not sure that the experiment says anything about weak AI, other than to say that *all* we can hope for is weak AI.
As to symbolic manipulation without understanding of context, that describes exactly what my computer right now is doing (unless you really want to argue that my laptop *is* a working mind, which I think would be a hard argument to make). That's the crux of the argument; computers don't have context and will never have context. As to the fact that they do (mindlessly and succesfully) manipulate symbols I don't think is arguable.
Turing formulated his famous test and no one has come anywhere close to passing it through context free symbolic manipulation.
A BASIC program running modified and extended versions of the Eliza program *have* passed actual Turing tests. The Turing test I don't think is taken seriously by anyone as a test for strong AI since it's hard to argue that a thousand lines of BASIC is sentient. See:
(you have to scroll down a bit where he describes the experiment).
after replying with questions to clarify finer points about the process, responded with it's ideas on new flourishes to the steps, then THAT would be indicative of intelligence in the system.
1st) The question that the Chinese room asks is this: does the person following the rules to shuffle and spit out Chinese characters speak Chinese? The answer is obviously no, as they have no idea what the symbols they're spitting out actually mean. In your example, the person, the person-room system, etc. has no idea whether they're telling a dirty joke, discussing the weather or asking questions about dance moves. That's the actual point -- appearing to understand a languge is not the same as understanding a language (think of it as additionally disproving the Turing test as a valid test for intelligence).
2nd) In the thought experiment, all possible answers to all possible conversations have been pre-programmed by the English rule-book the non-Chinese speaker inside is consulting and following. Would you argue that this is intelligence? Or does it just give the impression of intelligence (and the impression of being able to speak Chinese).
Without having thought much about your "universe inside of a computer" idea, I have to say that at the moment I can think of one thing that does make this impossible: chaos. A computer fed with all the laws of physics would not predict you, your preference in ice cream, McDonald's, human biology, etc. much less contain the human mind.
In fact, maybe chaos is just one example of complexity that can't be modeled with a "simple" universal computer: after all, it's a big assumption to say that the cosmos is just one big universal computer (which I think is exactly what your argument is based on).
OK -- first I'll just say that I mentioned that I took one class not to make the claim that I know what I'm talking about but more as a disclaimer that I'm just this guy who took one class once freshman year (and who didn't actually get it at the time).
At any rate, yeah -- there's the problem of understanding the mind so that we can re-created it in software.
Let's set that problem aside entirely though.
There's another "problem" (really, counter-argument to "strong AI"); this is summarized by the Chinese Room thought experiment:
It's an interesting idea, IMHO: basically stated it's that no matter what the software, the most that AI can accomplish is to ape human behavior, but will never be intelligent nor will ever have understanding or be able to think. The Chinese room, in my mind, is a pretty compelling argument why this is, and why strong AI is actually not possible. It's not just a matter of getting around the hurtle of understanding the mechanics of the human mind, nor of being clever enough in how we assemble our technology.
Ned Block goes on to argue (and I think this is where he disagreed with other "Strong AI detractors" like John Searle) that what we mean by intelligence, when you think about it, is actually very thoroughly grounded in the biology of our brain: Human intelligence is innately biological, and non-reproducible with hardware and software. The most that we can hope for is to ape it's behavior, but never actually replicate it.
Even if you disagree with the basic arguments (and of course, plenty of people do -- it is a weird idea to think about and it took me a couple of years to come about in opinion, personally), it's pretty interesting to sit there thinking about what it means to think...
My point is that the problem that remains to be solved isn't a problem of technology but a problem of understanding how our human mind works. This will come from someone studying the human mind, not someone studying technology (as in the universal human language analogy -- the hard part is figuring out human linguistics and how we commnicate, not being clever enough as a computer programmer).
On the other hand, the theorem of universal computing means that once that peice is understood, it will be capable of being modeled in any logical environment, meaning that indeed, all you need is the right program and "poof", as there is a proof to this effect.
There is a HUUUUGE assumption in this statement: basically (as I wrote) that the brain is hardware and the mind is software, so if we understood the human mind already (which we don't -- and again there are arguments that say that we never will; we can't. The argument basically says that it always takes a more advanced mind to understand a lesser one. A single intelligence is by definition not smart enough to understand itself.) it'd just be a matter of writing the correct software for your TSR-80 (or whatever computer).
However, once you start thinking about it, this model of the human mind as "software" starts breaking down quickly. I have come to believe that (forgetting the difficulties of understanding the workings of the human mind in detail) a software program will never actually achieve human intelligence in any form. It might be smart by some definition of intelligence, but it'd never be human intelligence as human intelligence is innately biological.
One cool thought experiment is "the chinese room argument":
Check it out: I'm sure that if you're willing to think about it it'll start challenging the assumptions that we *all*, as technology minded people seem to make about how things (our human mind in this case) work.
Another paper, by the prof I studied under, is unfortunately actually a bit dense reading IMHO (even though I'm familiar with what he's saying), but he makes a lot really cool arguments attacking the idea that all we need for strong AI is the "right" computer program:
Basically, I'd have more respect for the futurist if he'd actually acknowledge some of these questions regarding AI -- a lot of which are actually quite old (as old as Turing, who, as a techonologist, also made some proposals for strong AI that have turned out to be quite naive, as in the Basic program Eliza passing the Turing Test for intelligence.)
Oh, here's a better-explained (IMHO) link to the chinese room experiment:
Very true, I found this bit from the article silly:
The other side of AI says that "my brain is magic, and I'm really smart and you can't possibly produce a robot as clever as me". I don't subscribe to that one - I think that's nonsense.
At minimum he's misrepresenting "the other side" of AI. As one professor (in the only college class on philosophy I've taken, btw) recounted, in the 60's a universal human language translator was inevitable and right around the corner. The problem is that these predictions were being made by technologists and not linguists -- people who didn't understand the problem. And language, on the surface, is a simple problem: languages have rules, exceptions to these rules and vocabulary that can be exhaustively enumerated -- a custom-fit problem for computers, right?
Turns out that machine translation from one language to another was a tad more complicated -- all due to a lack of understanding of linguistics. It's a problem for a linguist to solve, not a programmer or "AI Researcher".
We'll first understand how our minds work, and then we'll be able to create strong AI. A shrink can better tell us when this might happen than a technology futurist (and of course, there's plenty of good arguments that this will never happen).
IMHO, you're very right in pointing out that you run into basic problems once you start out trying to define what we mean by human intelligence; in fact, there's a very good argument to be made that when you start peeling away layers, a lot of what we understand as human intelligence is innately biological. As in, no strong AI in 100 years, no strong AI ever -- not created by human intelligence at any rate.
This doesn't seem to be a popular view of intelligence with technology-minded people: we seem to assume that the brain is the hardware and that our mind is the software -- so all you need is the right program running on your 386 and "poof" you have human intelligence.
That's how I felt myself actually; the prof's arguments didn't make sense to me until after a few years after I got my C in his class during an discussion of AI that I finally understood what he was saying all those years ago...
I've been wondering for some time if the "high" road wouldn't actually be more effective as well: make commercials entertaining.
It's rare, but there are commercials that are so funny, witty, etc. that I actually find myself rewinding my Tivo to watch them in their entirety, or to show it to someone ("I shove my beer inside the crack of a turkey!").
Though I cannnot speak from experience, a friend who studied marketting did once mention that this is much more common in Europe: sometimes commercials just have interesting scenes even though they have nothing to do with the prodcut. I know I've seen surreal commercials for British Airways, for instance, that never even showed an airplane. In fact, if it didn't say British Airways (Airlines?) at the end, you would never know who paid for the commercial.
I'm not sure that I buy into this oversimplification. I'd say that *any* large bureaucracy is crap at running things, private of public.
If there's a modicum of competition, that might keep the very large private entity somewhat in check. If there is none, then the large private company is no better than a government, and quite likely worse since they are operating under a profit motive.
haha not that I know of -- the class was many moons ago (well over ten years ago).
But the professor who taught the class did consult for many firms (mostly American), and at the time he expressed constant frustration at the half-hearted implementation of modern quality manufacturing methods in the US. At the time he claimed that there was not a single worthwhile book written in English on sound quality manufacturing methods; our syllabus was almost entirely translated Japanese articles.
Of course, the key to lean production is to gauge demand and to prepare production to meet that demand -- which is admittedly tricky. I'm assuming you're refering to Xbox production shortages: these could be caused by unexpected glitches (which is exactly what Toyota production methods excel at preventing), or unprecendent and unexpected demand for your widgets which go beyond your own proyections (which is what I suspect happened with the Prius for example. I say I suspect this is the case only because it'd be pretty uncharacteristic of Toyota to have production delays due to manufacturing screw ups. They pretty much wrote the book on quality manufacturing and lean production after all, and the popularity of the Prius seems to have surprised everybody).
Sorry, I definitely sometimes suffer from humor-detection deficiencies.
That, and I've recently started re-reading my old notes from my manufacturing class (which really was a Toyota love-fest), so lean production methods are on my mind.
I'm not saying that I think this is what's going on with Sony, but going away from massive warehousing has been a "revelation" in modern mass production .
Warehousing is *bad*, you're paying for storage for stuff to just sit there, and when you're talking about millions of units the amount of money wasted can be huge. Of course, what you want to do is to have the manufacturing set up to meet demand with the minimum amount of storage possible. The concern isn't theft (maybe it's then 100th concern), but cost.
Here's a summary (copied from the above link) that summarizes Toyota Production Methods (now, of course, widely emulated with varying degrees of success by other companies, industries, around the world):
1. Eliminate waste 2. Minimize inventory 3. Maximize flow 4. Pull production from customer demand 5. Meet customer requirements 6. Do it right the first time 7. Empower workers 8. Design for rapid changeover 9. Partner with suppliers 10. Create a culture of continuous improvement
Vast warehousing is so 1980s! (and a sign of inneficient manufacturing).
Your point about Japan also seems to contradict your other point. On one hand you seem to believe that any country can produce a quality product if they're given the blueprint and the proper tools. On the other hand you seem to recognize that at one time Japan's quality sucked but then it got really good. (Which is well known... I mean, it was even a joke in one of the Back to the Future movies).
It's not a contradiction -- but you are still thinking along the same lines that I think are erroneous. To stick with the Japan example, take Toyota and Mitsubishi as examples. They are in opposite ends of the quality spectrum -- same people, same language, same workforce, different bureaucracy. That's where the difference in quality comes from, not from some phantom "quality of work" stat that the Japanese lacked and then acquired. The difference is that *some* Japanese companies (not just Toyota of course) took Deming and quality control to heart, and spent time improving how they go about building stuff.
Don't you think working your employees for way too many hours like they do in China affects quality?
Of course it does, and it's part of "The Deming" way; treat your employess with respect and they produce better quality - again it has zero to do with Chinese culture or Chinese people.
In other words, what I *am* saying is that you could replace the Japanese workers with Chinese workers (all else being equal) and the quality remains high (or vice versa, with low quality from Japan from overworked, undertrained, underappreciated workers putting together shoddy designs). Quality does not come from nationality is the only statement I'm making.
Yet another way of saying the same thing: a chinese factory managed through Toyota lean production methods (and all that it entails, including comfortable working enviroments, etc. etc.) would produce "Toyota quality" cars.
How much more would you be willing to pay for your iPod, so that Chinese workers didn't have to overwork themselves?
A non sequitor, but one that I agree with. More than iPods, in fact, I think I'd be willing to pay 12 bucks instead of 10 for a t-shirt and double the workers wages (but of course, what happens is that if you do pay 12 bucks instead of 10, that shows up as even more profit for the non-Chinese company, and not more pay to the workers).
I do think that one reason to go to China is for bottom-dollar costs (of course). If, as a manufacturer that is your goal, chances are that quality aren't your primary concern (cost is), so it's no wonder that that's where you go to have cheap stuff built cheaply. It also means that there is nothing stopping a Chinese car company (for example) from forming tomorrow that cranks out cars with the highest quality in the world. There is nothing innate to "made in China" that equates to low quality, as there is nothing innate to "made in Japan" that equates to high quality. There is, however, a correlation betwen "made by Toyota" and "made by Mitsubishi" and quality (and these are things that can chage in a heartbeat with the whims of management, engineers, etc.)
In fact (and I'm less familiar with the relative quality of consumer electronics than I am with somewhat recent car quality history), iPods seem to be a good example of a high quality product being made in China.
Exactly; with mass production quality comes from design (of the product, manufacturing processes), quality control, etc. and not the ethnicity of the people pressing buttons of the manufacturing equipment.
It made me laugh when I heard, for instance, that there were concerns about Toyotas made in the US (could they possibly be of the same quality as Toyotas made in Japan?). It seemed naive, as one of the key points about mass production is making products out of identical, interchangable, parts and taking the "human element" out of it. We're not talking about hand-made shoes here after all! One part of Toyota lean production methods (Toyota pretty much wrote the book on quality mass production btw) is studying and controlling small variations of your widgets as tool age, and designing products so that mistakes are impossible during assembly (error-proofing), etc.
I still hear comments,even from colleagues (who should know better!), about the quality of stuff made in China -- as if something in the water makes anything manufactured there bound to be of low quality. People still show surprise that quality stuff can come out of Korea (again, I'm not sure what the rationale is, makes me wonder how certain people view the world ).
Japan, early in its industrialization, was also synonymous with cheap low quality crap that'd fall apart if you looked at it funny or that would dissolve in the rain -- funny how perceptions change.
I will guarantee you that a car manufacturer in China building quality designs and manufacturing processes can turn out cars of Toyota quality (and the time can still come and maybe not too far in the future). Ironically enough, all they have to do is embrace Deming and study Toyota manufacturing methods.
If Sony's cutting corners with their quality control then issues like these are bound to come up. But these quality concerns have zero to do with the language of the workfoce.
Surpringsinly, a lot of people do consider Nixon liberal (Chomsky calls him "the last liberal president" in fact). Under his watch:
The establishment of the EPA Affirmative action (expansion of it, not the creation AFAIK) War on drugs (which focused on *treatment*, not law enforcement) Negative income tax for poor folk Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
IMHO all of these policies would put him left of even the most left-leaning elected politicians today (maybe on par with a green party member or something).
At any rate, shows how far right even the "left" is today in the US.
is an assertion of your preference, not an objective evaluation.
which was exactly my point -- I was mocking similar statements you made in your post claimin that non-conversation threading is superior. It's a matter of prefence, which I'm willing to grant you, even if it seems odd (like liking liver, or not liking chocolate -- these people do exist!).
Your first half is contradicted by your second half. It is like you are saying that some people don't like french fries.....but if they constantly had to eat them they would learn to LOVE french fries.
No, there's no contradiction -- you've misunderstood or are purposely misinterpreting (or I wasn't clear, which is likely enough).
But I will stand by the notion that not liking conversation-threading is like not liking chocotlate!:)
The old way of vieing e-mail might be comfortable, it's what you know, it's the standard way, but there's no way it's more useful.
In some ways I sympathize with you; I got a gmail account primarily because of the storage (hotmail was at, what? 2MB or something ridiculous?) but I missed my folders and didn't get this conversation thread thing. And hey, we're used to what we're used to, right?
Eventually it clicked, and I can't stand to have to look through things in yahoo or hotmail - to find an old bit of information or and old e-mail is an irritating experience compared to gmail. And since the others don't let me view e-mail in a more useful, conversation threaded way, gmail became my primary e-mail account. Let me tell you, it's a hassle to switch e-mail accounts but it was worth it to me.
If you don't like it, that's OK, there's people on this earth who don't like french fries or chocolate and that's fine too! But I am certain that if you did have to constantly peruse through old e-mails for info, you'd come to realize that gmail figured out a much much more useful, logical, way of organizing e-mail.
I 100% agree with you in one thing, I can't imagine that google couldn't find a way of adding a "break gmail" button to make it function like yahoo or hotmail for those who prefer it that way : after all, some people on this earth also enjoy liver, right?:)
Haha, then I speak for myself only. I'm ten years your senior (and don't you forget it!:) )
Though, I must say that even as a "college age" (young) adult you're still not the stereotypical gaming kiddie, and I remember seeing a report many moons ago that the "average" gamer was someone more my age than yours....
Despite all of this , it's still funny for me, as an "old dude" to be excited about a gaming console for the first time since I was 12 or so...
Yeah, Nintendo might be hitting a sweet spot with the "receding hairline" older gaming generation.
To add a "me too": this is the first time I'm personally excited about seeing the next-gen gaming system since the original NES and the first ever that I'm going to run out to see in action in stores the moment it's out. Funny thing is, I'm more excited about this as an "older dude" than I was about the previous console generations as a younger pc gamer kid.
If the controller works well, if Red Steel looks decent graphics-wise, then I'll pick it up.
Otherwise, I'll wait a few/several years and then consider possibly maybe picking up a used PS3 ( or even a 360, if there's something much more compelling than the Halo franchise ).
I agree completely; which is why I think this add-on form MS is a weak reply. Sony has committed to a new format, MS talks about commitment but they'll go wherever the wind blows.
You know, the strange thing is that Sony's worst-case scenario (from a PS3 perspective) isn't too bad either: HD-DVD becomes the next video standard and Sony is left with a gaming system that has tons more storage for games than its competitor. It's still left with a gaming advantage (thought of course they're hoping that PS3s also become cheap video players for consumers, but this is not required for PS3 success).
I myself aren't convinced that DVDs will continue to be "good enough" for games (especially if we're talking about high definition) in the years to come. I'm now left wondering if sticking with single-digit gigs of storage in DVDs won't come back to bite the Xbox 360 in the butt hard in the (relative) short term.
MS *has* to have thought about all of this (one would hope execs justify their massive salaries by being smart and diligent, but who knows), I'm just wondering what they (might) have up *their* sleeve, cuz (to beat a cliche to the ground), Sony is showing a pair of aces IMHO.
Addtionally, I love the fact that it respects your themes:
New UI adopts your theme The elegant UI design is based on GTK technology. That means the player adopts the theme you've chosen, and blends itself accordingly into your desktop environment.
RealPlayer 10 for Linux is here Play popular datatypes RealPlayer@ 10 supports RealAudio, RealVideo 10, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, H263, AAC and more. Get ready for accelerated video, full screen playback, and a lot more to play.
Sony's recent lack of success with the PSP format, would seem to bode badly for Blu-ray, I agree.
The difference in my mind is whether or not studios are licking their chops for the next video format so we can re-purchase our movie collections (Blu-ray or HD DVD, I'm sure they don't care), vs. supporting a video format with a limited market. I'm not sure that HD video is ready to take over the world, personally, but I would be surprised to see it fail completely in either flavor. In other words, it seems to me that for movie studios the PSP video format was optional: I'm not sure that HD is.
If we take it as a given that there will be a new video format in the next few years, then to me it seems a question of Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, not a question of "whether to provide a High Definition format or not" (the latter being the same question asked, and answered in negative, for Sony's PSP format).
You make a good point though, it seems that with the PSP Sony was trying the same formula, and it didn't work well for them there (I hadn't thought of that). The circumstances I think are different here though; they don't have to justify the existence of a whole new video format, they just have to "tilt" things their way and then feed the snowball.
Let's say that I agree with your statement that "studios like certainty". They will have that certainty; in what format are videos selling? and in what format are videos being rented in? -- that's their certainty, not "how many of these add on units does MS sell"?
If I own an Xbox and a PS3 and I have an HD TV and I want to test out the "next-gen" video format, do you really think there's a greater than zero percent chance that I'll end up renting/buying an HD DVD video instead of using the Blu-ray player I already own?
If I'm an owner of a PS3 and not of an Xbox 360, same thing applies.
Again, I'm not saying that therefore Blue-ray already won, but I do think that Blu-ray has an big advantage in trying to elbow itself in as the new format. If Sony can make sure that studios see that Blu-ray movies are 10 times more likely to get rented/purchased than a HD DVD version of their same movies (or a 100 times, I don't know what these numbers might look like, but it's hard to imagine they won't reflect the numbers of Blu-ray players in the wild vs. the number of HD DVD players in the wild), then the push would be to make sure studios take a side and stop making both formats. If by pre-packaging Blu-ray players Sony helps make the blu-ray format become the standard (which is all I'm saying is happening -- Blu-ray definitely has a big leg up over HD DVD *out of the gates*), this might snowball and in return, help sell PS3 units.
This assumes a lot of things, of course: mainly that technically Blu-ray and HD DVD, for the purpose of watching movies, is transparent to consumers and it's just a matter of which "flavor" the thundering herd goes for. Also, I'm curious to see what tricks MS and company have for pushing back with their format (they did think things through, one would assume).
Sony's play on the format has been obvious for some time -- what's MS's play going to be? Or did they forsake the format war just to be able to come out first with the next gen gaming system? Was their choosing of HD DVD simple naysaying to Sony's Blu-ray? That's the sort of thing I'm wondering...
This MS "add-on" HD DVD pack, to me, seems sort of a weak reply, in the sense that Sony's customers are 1) already commited to one format as opposed to 360 customers and 2) provide an early market of early adopters (more likely to have cash and HD TVs) for Blu-ray movies -- something the HD DVD format, as far as I can tell, lacks.
Here's what makes me think Sony went about this the right way (despite the constant lamenting I hear on Slashdot): if you're the backer of Blu-Ray, you have to like your worst-case scenario. This is that Sony (your partner in the format war) bombs out badly with the PS3, selling only single digit millions of PS3 units.
That's still millions of Blu-ray players out there, vs. how many HD-DVD players?
I'm not saying by a long shot that the format war is essentially over and Blu-ray won, but at this point I have to say that I like its chances much much better than HD-DVD.
Of course, if Sony's PS3 doesn't bomb out, then things only get better for the format.
I agree with you that there is little incentive right now to go out and buy the MS add-on, especially since the results of the format war aren't clear.
* of course, the flip side of this is that the new video format is adopted so slowly (say, in 10 years people are still selling good ol' DVDs and DVD players, and Blockbuster is still primarily renting DVDs), in which case Sony's positioning with Blu-ray and the PS3 is moot. Then Sony will have paid a high price for higher-capacity storage for games (maybe in itself, and independently of video playback and video formats, not a bad tactical decision -- who knows)
I'll stand here and admit that I think Guitar Hero is tons of fun (yes, I'm an adult and I play with a toy plastic guitar! And I get into it!).
Before that, I actually also got hooked on "frequency" and "amplitude", the precursors that were played with the regular ps2 controller. These were also tons of fun, also very addictive, and also gave you the sensation of "playing" the song. Admittedly, I haven't played either of the earlier versions since the guitar does add a lot to the experience, but I imagine even with just the keyboard the concept (if done well) can still make for a great game.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no doubt that the Chinese room is actually improbable -- I forget if it's Searle or Block who point this out -- since the rule book for a 30 minute conversation would require more matter than exists on Earth (or something like that, I forget the exact statement). This fact alone, however, does not make the statement paraxodical nor invalidate the conclusions.
...
It's a thought experiment, and it's not unique (Galileo was fond of them, as was Einstein). You might argue (and plenty of people do) that the logic is faulty, and therefore the conclusion is wrong and strong AI is possible, but revealing this as a thought experiment is not itself, IMHO, a counter argument to the claim.
As to the universe claim -- I'm "digesting" the idea. But looking at a much smaller scale -- what will it take to predict a hurricane that will form next week or next month (forget next year or in 10 years time!). I know we're not there yet -- I wonder if we ever will (we'd have to solve what seem pretty intractable problems). Of course, not being able to model a weather system (we have simplified models that are getting better) doesn't invalidate strong AI, but it does in my mind bring questions as to whether all of our math and sufficient CPU time is, actually, enough to model everything in this universe.
In fact, right now as I think about it, there's some pretty simple simple systems that defie all of our math. The Earth-Sun-Moon system is complicated enought for chaotic behavior (none or our math is sufficient for analytic solutions!) -- forget the rest of the cosmos, or n- body problems greater than 3. I think I can comfortably tell you that your assertion that our math is suficient to model the cosmos is not correct. We can get lost when you have gravitational interation with more than two bodies simultaneously!
As to neural nets that can learn and therefore achieve levels of complexity the designers didn't intend (if I understand you correctly), I can honestly tell you that I'm not sure what to say. The chinese room experiment does leave me wondering if what will one day emerge is a long complicated list of rules that will allow me to interact with Lt. Commander Data, but whose existense and "mental state" won't actually be anything more than what is happening in the Chinese Room; that is an outward appearance of intelligence, but an appearance only.
In fact, how will you know when you have strong AI? The Turing Test doesn't seem at all a sufficient (or even necessary) test for intelligence, so that's out
The book, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has the introductory student write a full Scheme language interpreter in the Scheme language, then an assembly language register machine in the scheme language, and finally a scheme Interpreter in assembly language ....
p apers/msb.html
It's an interesting excercise that I went through as an undergrad (though I switched majors and became a mechanical guy instead of a software guy). I remember Scheme as a pretty fun language to program in, once I sort of got the hang of it, but this is an aside.
any universal computer can emulate any other universal computer.
As this applies to the AI argument, the problem is that you have to assume that the human mind is a type of universal computer, which is a statement disputed by detractors of strong AI. At any rate, it is an assumption that the human mind is software.
The Chinese room thought experiment only addresses weak AI, hence the distinction. First of all, it assumes that symbolic manipulation without understanding of context is even possible.
The Chinese room, actually addressed strong AI -- at least that's what it's intended to disprove, I'm not sure that the experiment says anything about weak AI, other than to say that *all* we can hope for is weak AI.
As to symbolic manipulation without understanding of context, that describes exactly what my computer right now is doing (unless you really want to argue that my laptop *is* a working mind, which I think would be a hard argument to make). That's the crux of the argument; computers don't have context and will never have context. As to the fact that they do (mindlessly and succesfully) manipulate symbols I don't think is arguable.
Turing formulated his famous test and no one has come anywhere close to passing it through context free symbolic manipulation.
A BASIC program running modified and extended versions of the Eliza program *have* passed actual Turing tests. The Turing test I don't think is taken seriously by anyone as a test for strong AI since it's hard to argue that a thousand lines of BASIC is sentient. See:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/
(you have to scroll down a bit where he describes the experiment).
after replying with questions to clarify finer points about the process, responded with it's ideas on new flourishes to the steps, then THAT would be indicative of intelligence in the system.
1st) The question that the Chinese room asks is this: does the person following the rules to shuffle and spit out Chinese characters speak Chinese? The answer is obviously no, as they have no idea what the symbols they're spitting out actually mean. In your example, the person, the person-room system, etc. has no idea whether they're telling a dirty joke, discussing the weather or asking questions about dance moves. That's the actual point -- appearing to understand a languge is not the same as understanding a language (think of it as additionally disproving the Turing test as a valid test for intelligence).
2nd) In the thought experiment, all possible answers to all possible conversations have been pre-programmed by the English rule-book the non-Chinese speaker inside is consulting and following. Would you argue that this is intelligence? Or does it just give the impression of intelligence (and the impression of being able to speak Chinese).
Without having thought much about your "universe inside of a computer" idea, I have to say that at the moment I can think of one thing that does make this impossible: chaos. A computer fed with all the laws of physics would not predict you, your preference in ice cream, McDonald's, human biology, etc. much less contain the human mind.
In fact, maybe chaos is just one example of complexity that can't be modeled with a "simple" universal computer: after all, it's a big assumption to say that the cosmos is just one big universal computer (which I think is exactly what your argument is based on).
OK -- first I'll just say that I mentioned that I took one class not to make the claim that I know what I'm talking about but more as a disclaimer that I'm just this guy who took one class once freshman year (and who didn't actually get it at the time).
...
At any rate, yeah -- there's the problem of understanding the mind so that we can re-created it in software.
Let's set that problem aside entirely though.
There's another "problem" (really, counter-argument to "strong AI"); this is summarized by the Chinese Room thought experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Room
It's an interesting idea, IMHO: basically stated it's that no matter what the software, the most that AI can accomplish is to ape human behavior, but will never be intelligent nor will ever have understanding or be able to think. The Chinese room, in my mind, is a pretty compelling argument why this is, and why strong AI is actually not possible. It's not just a matter of getting around the hurtle of understanding the mechanics of the human mind, nor of being clever enough in how we assemble our technology.
Ned Block goes on to argue (and I think this is where he disagreed with other "Strong AI detractors" like John Searle) that what we mean by intelligence, when you think about it, is actually very thoroughly grounded in the biology of our brain: Human intelligence is innately biological, and non-reproducible with hardware and software. The most that we can hope for is to ape it's behavior, but never actually replicate it.
Even if you disagree with the basic arguments (and of course, plenty of people do -- it is a weird idea to think about and it took me a couple of years to come about in opinion, personally), it's pretty interesting to sit there thinking about what it means to think
My point is that the problem that remains to be solved isn't a problem of technology but a problem of understanding how our human mind works. This will come from someone studying the human mind, not someone studying technology (as in the universal human language analogy -- the hard part is figuring out human linguistics and how we commnicate, not being clever enough as a computer programmer).
p apers/msb.html
On the other hand, the theorem of universal computing means that once that peice is understood, it will be capable of being modeled in any logical environment, meaning that indeed, all you need is the right program and "poof", as there is a proof to this effect.
There is a HUUUUGE assumption in this statement: basically (as I wrote) that the brain is hardware and the mind is software, so if we understood the human mind already (which we don't -- and again there are arguments that say that we never will; we can't. The argument basically says that it always takes a more advanced mind to understand a lesser one. A single intelligence is by definition not smart enough to understand itself.) it'd just be a matter of writing the correct software for your TSR-80 (or whatever computer).
However, once you start thinking about it, this model of the human mind as "software" starts breaking down quickly. I have come to believe that (forgetting the difficulties of understanding the workings of the human mind in detail) a software program will never actually achieve human intelligence in any form. It might be smart by some definition of intelligence, but it'd never be human intelligence as human intelligence is innately biological.
One cool thought experiment is "the chinese room argument":
http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/chineser.htm#H1
Check it out: I'm sure that if you're willing to think about it it'll start challenging the assumptions that we *all*, as technology minded people seem to make about how things (our human mind in this case) work.
Another paper, by the prof I studied under, is unfortunately actually a bit dense reading IMHO (even though I'm familiar with what he's saying), but he makes a lot really cool arguments attacking the idea that all we need for strong AI is the "right" computer program:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/
Basically, I'd have more respect for the futurist if he'd actually acknowledge some of these questions regarding AI -- a lot of which are actually quite old (as old as Turing, who, as a techonologist, also made some proposals for strong AI that have turned out to be quite naive, as in the Basic program Eliza passing the Turing Test for intelligence.)
Oh, here's a better-explained (IMHO) link to the chinese room experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Room
Very true, I found this bit from the article silly:
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The other side of AI says that "my brain is magic, and I'm really smart and you can't possibly produce a robot as clever as me". I don't subscribe to that one - I think that's nonsense.
At minimum he's misrepresenting "the other side" of AI. As one professor (in the only college class on philosophy I've taken, btw) recounted, in the 60's a universal human language translator was inevitable and right around the corner. The problem is that these predictions were being made by technologists and not linguists -- people who didn't understand the problem. And language, on the surface, is a simple problem: languages have rules, exceptions to these rules and vocabulary that can be exhaustively enumerated -- a custom-fit problem for computers, right?
Turns out that machine translation from one language to another was a tad more complicated -- all due to a lack of understanding of linguistics. It's a problem for a linguist to solve, not a programmer or "AI Researcher".
We'll first understand how our minds work, and then we'll be able to create strong AI. A shrink can better tell us when this might happen than a technology futurist (and of course, there's plenty of good arguments that this will never happen).
IMHO, you're very right in pointing out that you run into basic problems once you start out trying to define what we mean by human intelligence; in fact, there's a very good argument to be made that when you start peeling away layers, a lot of what we understand as human intelligence is innately biological. As in, no strong AI in 100 years, no strong AI ever -- not created by human intelligence at any rate.
This doesn't seem to be a popular view of intelligence with technology-minded people: we seem to assume that the brain is the hardware and that our mind is the software -- so all you need is the right program running on your 386 and "poof" you have human intelligence.
That's how I felt myself actually; the prof's arguments didn't make sense to me until after a few years after I got my C in his class during an discussion of AI that I finally understood what he was saying all those years ago
I've been wondering for some time if the "high" road wouldn't actually be more effective as well: make commercials entertaining.
It's rare, but there are commercials that are so funny, witty, etc. that I actually find myself rewinding my Tivo to watch them in their entirety, or to show it to someone ("I shove my beer inside the crack of a turkey!").
Though I cannnot speak from experience, a friend who studied marketting did once mention that this is much more common in Europe: sometimes commercials just have interesting scenes even though they have nothing to do with the prodcut. I know I've seen surreal commercials for British Airways, for instance, that never even showed an airplane. In fact, if it didn't say British Airways (Airlines?) at the end, you would never know who paid for the commercial.
I'm not sure that I buy into this oversimplification. I'd say that *any* large bureaucracy is crap at running things, private of public.
If there's a modicum of competition, that might keep the very large private entity somewhat in check. If there is none, then the large private company is no better than a government, and quite likely worse since they are operating under a profit motive.
haha not that I know of -- the class was many moons ago (well over ten years ago).
But the professor who taught the class did consult for many firms (mostly American), and at the time he expressed constant frustration at the half-hearted implementation of modern quality manufacturing methods in the US. At the time he claimed that there was not a single worthwhile book written in English on sound quality manufacturing methods; our syllabus was almost entirely translated Japanese articles.
Of course, the key to lean production is to gauge demand and to prepare production to meet that demand -- which is admittedly tricky. I'm assuming you're refering to Xbox production shortages: these could be caused by unexpected glitches (which is exactly what Toyota production methods excel at preventing), or unprecendent and unexpected demand for your widgets which go beyond your own proyections (which is what I suspect happened with the Prius for example. I say I suspect this is the case only because it'd be pretty uncharacteristic of Toyota to have production delays due to manufacturing screw ups. They pretty much wrote the book on quality manufacturing and lean production after all, and the popularity of the Prius seems to have surprised everybody).
:)
Sorry, I definitely sometimes suffer from humor-detection deficiencies.
That, and I've recently started re-reading my old notes from my manufacturing class (which really was a Toyota love-fest), so lean production methods are on my mind.
Actually, this is one of the principles of modern manufacturing: Toyota lean production methods, just-in-time manufacturing, etc.
d 19_gci810519,00.html
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,si
I'm not saying that I think this is what's going on with Sony, but going away from massive warehousing has been a "revelation" in modern mass production .
Warehousing is *bad*, you're paying for storage for stuff to just sit there, and when you're talking about millions of units the amount of money wasted can be huge. Of course, what you want to do is to have the manufacturing set up to meet demand with the minimum amount of storage possible. The concern isn't theft (maybe it's then 100th concern), but cost.
Here's a summary (copied from the above link) that summarizes Toyota Production Methods (now, of course, widely emulated with varying degrees of success by other companies, industries, around the world):
1. Eliminate waste
2. Minimize inventory
3. Maximize flow
4. Pull production from customer demand
5. Meet customer requirements
6. Do it right the first time
7. Empower workers
8. Design for rapid changeover
9. Partner with suppliers
10. Create a culture of continuous improvement
Vast warehousing is so 1980s! (and a sign of inneficient manufacturing).
Your point about Japan also seems to contradict your other point. On one hand you seem to believe that any country can produce a quality product if they're given the blueprint and the proper tools. On the other hand you seem to recognize that at one time Japan's quality sucked but then it got really good. (Which is well known... I mean, it was even a joke in one of the Back to the Future movies).
It's not a contradiction -- but you are still thinking along the same lines that I think are erroneous. To stick with the Japan example, take Toyota and Mitsubishi as examples. They are in opposite ends of the quality spectrum -- same people, same language, same workforce, different bureaucracy. That's where the difference in quality comes from, not from some phantom "quality of work" stat that the Japanese lacked and then acquired. The difference is that *some* Japanese companies (not just Toyota of course) took Deming and quality control to heart, and spent time improving how they go about building stuff.
Don't you think working your employees for way too many hours like they do in China affects quality?
Of course it does, and it's part of "The Deming" way; treat your employess with respect and they produce better quality - again it has zero to do with Chinese culture or Chinese people.
In other words, what I *am* saying is that you could replace the Japanese workers with Chinese workers (all else being equal) and the quality remains high (or vice versa, with low quality from Japan from overworked, undertrained, underappreciated workers putting together shoddy designs). Quality does not come from nationality is the only statement I'm making.
Yet another way of saying the same thing: a chinese factory managed through Toyota lean production methods (and all that it entails, including comfortable working enviroments, etc. etc.) would produce "Toyota quality" cars.
How much more would you be willing to pay for your iPod, so that Chinese workers didn't have to overwork themselves?
A non sequitor, but one that I agree with. More than iPods, in fact, I think I'd be willing to pay 12 bucks instead of 10 for a t-shirt and double the workers wages (but of course, what happens is that if you do pay 12 bucks instead of 10, that shows up as even more profit for the non-Chinese company, and not more pay to the workers).
I do think that one reason to go to China is for bottom-dollar costs (of course). If, as a manufacturer that is your goal, chances are that quality aren't your primary concern (cost is), so it's no wonder that that's where you go to have cheap stuff built cheaply. It also means that there is nothing stopping a Chinese car company (for example) from forming tomorrow that cranks out cars with the highest quality in the world. There is nothing innate to "made in China" that equates to low quality, as there is nothing innate to "made in Japan" that equates to high quality. There is, however, a correlation betwen "made by Toyota" and "made by Mitsubishi" and quality (and these are things that can chage in a heartbeat with the whims of management, engineers, etc.)
In fact (and I'm less familiar with the relative quality of consumer electronics than I am with somewhat recent car quality history), iPods seem to be a good example of a high quality product being made in China.
Exactly; with mass production quality comes from design (of the product, manufacturing processes), quality control, etc. and not the ethnicity of the people pressing buttons of the manufacturing equipment.
It made me laugh when I heard, for instance, that there were concerns about Toyotas made in the US (could they possibly be of the same quality as Toyotas made in Japan?). It seemed naive, as one of the key points about mass production is making products out of identical, interchangable, parts and taking the "human element" out of it. We're not talking about hand-made shoes here after all! One part of Toyota lean production methods (Toyota pretty much wrote the book on quality mass production btw) is studying and controlling small variations of your widgets as tool age, and designing products so that mistakes are impossible during assembly (error-proofing), etc.
I still hear comments,even from colleagues (who should know better!), about the quality of stuff made in China -- as if something in the water makes anything manufactured there bound to be of low quality. People still show surprise that quality stuff can come out of Korea (again, I'm not sure what the rationale is, makes me wonder how certain people view the world ).
Japan, early in its industrialization, was also synonymous with cheap low quality crap that'd fall apart if you looked at it funny or that would dissolve in the rain -- funny how perceptions change.
I will guarantee you that a car manufacturer in China building quality designs and manufacturing processes can turn out cars of Toyota quality (and the time can still come and maybe not too far in the future). Ironically enough, all they have to do is embrace Deming and study Toyota manufacturing methods.
If Sony's cutting corners with their quality control then issues like these are bound to come up. But these quality concerns have zero to do with the language of the workfoce.
Surpringsinly, a lot of people do consider Nixon liberal (Chomsky calls him "the last liberal president" in fact). Under his watch:
The establishment of the EPA
Affirmative action (expansion of it, not the creation AFAIK)
War on drugs (which focused on *treatment*, not law enforcement)
Negative income tax for poor folk
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
IMHO all of these policies would put him left of even the most left-leaning elected politicians today (maybe on par with a green party member or something).
At any rate, shows how far right even the "left" is today in the US.
is an assertion of your preference, not an objective evaluation.
:)
which was exactly my point -- I was mocking similar statements you made in your post claimin that non-conversation threading is superior. It's a matter of prefence, which I'm willing to grant you, even if it seems odd (like liking liver, or not liking chocolate -- these people do exist!).
Your first half is contradicted by your second half. It is like you are saying that some people don't like french fries.....but if they constantly had to eat them they would learn to LOVE french fries.
No, there's no contradiction -- you've misunderstood or are purposely misinterpreting (or I wasn't clear, which is likely enough).
But I will stand by the notion that not liking conversation-threading is like not liking chocotlate!
The old way of vieing e-mail might be comfortable, it's what you know, it's the standard way, but there's no way it's more useful.
:)
In some ways I sympathize with you; I got a gmail account primarily because of the storage (hotmail was at, what? 2MB or something ridiculous?) but I missed my folders and didn't get this conversation thread thing. And hey, we're used to what we're used to, right?
Eventually it clicked, and I can't stand to have to look through things in yahoo or hotmail - to find an old bit of information or and old e-mail is an irritating experience compared to gmail. And since the others don't let me view e-mail in a more useful, conversation threaded way, gmail became my primary e-mail account. Let me tell you, it's a hassle to switch e-mail accounts but it was worth it to me.
If you don't like it, that's OK, there's people on this earth who don't like french fries or chocolate and that's fine too! But I am certain that if you did have to constantly peruse through old e-mails for info, you'd come to realize that gmail figured out a much much more useful, logical, way of organizing e-mail.
I 100% agree with you in one thing, I can't imagine that google couldn't find a way of adding a "break gmail" button to make it function like yahoo or hotmail for those who prefer it that way : after all, some people on this earth also enjoy liver, right?
Haha, then I speak for myself only. I'm ten years your senior (and don't you forget it! :) )
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Though, I must say that even as a "college age" (young) adult you're still not the stereotypical gaming kiddie, and I remember seeing a report many moons ago that the "average" gamer was someone more my age than yours
Despite all of this , it's still funny for me, as an "old dude" to be excited about a gaming console for the first time since I was 12 or so
Yeah, Nintendo might be hitting a sweet spot with the "receding hairline" older gaming generation.
To add a "me too": this is the first time I'm personally excited about seeing the next-gen gaming system since the original NES and the first ever that I'm going to run out to see in action in stores the moment it's out. Funny thing is, I'm more excited about this as an "older dude" than I was about the previous console generations as a younger pc gamer kid.
If the controller works well, if Red Steel looks decent graphics-wise, then I'll pick it up.
Otherwise, I'll wait a few/several years and then consider possibly maybe picking up a used PS3 ( or even a 360, if there's something much more compelling than the Halo franchise ).
I agree completely; which is why I think this add-on form MS is a weak reply. Sony has committed to a new format, MS talks about commitment but they'll go wherever the wind blows.
You know, the strange thing is that Sony's worst-case scenario (from a PS3 perspective) isn't too bad either: HD-DVD becomes the next video standard and Sony is left with a gaming system that has tons more storage for games than its competitor. It's still left with a gaming advantage (thought of course they're hoping that PS3s also become cheap video players for consumers, but this is not required for PS3 success).
I myself aren't convinced that DVDs will continue to be "good enough" for games (especially if we're talking about high definition) in the years to come. I'm now left wondering if sticking with single-digit gigs of storage in DVDs won't come back to bite the Xbox 360 in the butt hard in the (relative) short term.
MS *has* to have thought about all of this (one would hope execs justify their massive salaries by being smart and diligent, but who knows), I'm just wondering what they (might) have up *their* sleeve, cuz (to beat a cliche to the ground), Sony is showing a pair of aces IMHO.
Addtionally, I love the fact that it respects your themes:
New UI adopts your theme
The elegant UI design is based on GTK technology.
That means the player adopts the theme you've chosen,
and blends itself accordingly into your desktop environment.
All taken from:
http://www.real.com/linux/
From the Real Player Website:
RealPlayer 10 for Linux is here
Play popular datatypes
RealPlayer@ 10 supports RealAudio, RealVideo 10, MP3,
Ogg Vorbis and Theora, H263, AAC and more. Get ready for accelerated video, full screen playback, and a lot more to play.
AFAIK Real Player for Linux is one legal way to get MP3 playback for Linux in the US. Their latest incarnation on Linux is quite decent too, IMHO.
Sony's recent lack of success with the PSP format, would seem to bode badly for Blu-ray, I agree.
The difference in my mind is whether or not studios are licking their chops for the next video format so we can re-purchase our movie collections (Blu-ray or HD DVD, I'm sure they don't care), vs. supporting a video format with a limited market. I'm not sure that HD video is ready to take over the world, personally, but I would be surprised to see it fail completely in either flavor. In other words, it seems to me that for movie studios the PSP video format was optional: I'm not sure that HD is.
If we take it as a given that there will be a new video format in the next few years, then to me it seems a question of Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, not a question of "whether to provide a High Definition format or not" (the latter being the same question asked, and answered in negative, for Sony's PSP format).
You make a good point though, it seems that with the PSP Sony was trying the same formula, and it didn't work well for them there (I hadn't thought of that). The circumstances I think are different here though; they don't have to justify the existence of a whole new video format, they just have to "tilt" things their way and then feed the snowball.
Let's say that I agree with your statement that "studios like certainty". They will have that certainty; in what format are videos selling? and in what format are videos being rented in? -- that's their certainty, not "how many of these add on units does MS sell"?
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If I own an Xbox and a PS3 and I have an HD TV and I want to test out the "next-gen" video format, do you really think there's a greater than zero percent chance that I'll end up renting/buying an HD DVD video instead of using the Blu-ray player I already own?
If I'm an owner of a PS3 and not of an Xbox 360, same thing applies.
Again, I'm not saying that therefore Blue-ray already won, but I do think that Blu-ray has an big advantage in trying to elbow itself in as the new format. If Sony can make sure that studios see that Blu-ray movies are 10 times more likely to get rented/purchased than a HD DVD version of their same movies (or a 100 times, I don't know what these numbers might look like, but it's hard to imagine they won't reflect the numbers of Blu-ray players in the wild vs. the number of HD DVD players in the wild), then the push would be to make sure studios take a side and stop making both formats. If by pre-packaging Blu-ray players Sony helps make the blu-ray format become the standard (which is all I'm saying is happening -- Blu-ray definitely has a big leg up over HD DVD *out of the gates*), this might snowball and in return, help sell PS3 units.
This assumes a lot of things, of course: mainly that technically Blu-ray and HD DVD, for the purpose of watching movies, is transparent to consumers and it's just a matter of which "flavor" the thundering herd goes for. Also, I'm curious to see what tricks MS and company have for pushing back with their format (they did think things through, one would assume).
Sony's play on the format has been obvious for some time -- what's MS's play going to be? Or did they forsake the format war just to be able to come out first with the next gen gaming system? Was their choosing of HD DVD simple naysaying to Sony's Blu-ray? That's the sort of thing I'm wondering
This MS "add-on" HD DVD pack, to me, seems sort of a weak reply, in the sense that Sony's customers are 1) already commited to one format as opposed to 360 customers and 2) provide an early market of early adopters (more likely to have cash and HD TVs) for Blu-ray movies -- something the HD DVD format, as far as I can tell, lacks.
Here's what makes me think Sony went about this the right way (despite the constant lamenting I hear on Slashdot): if you're the backer of Blu-Ray, you have to like your worst-case scenario. This is that Sony (your partner in the format war) bombs out badly with the PS3, selling only single digit millions of PS3 units.
That's still millions of Blu-ray players out there, vs. how many HD-DVD players?
I'm not saying by a long shot that the format war is essentially over and Blu-ray won, but at this point I have to say that I like its chances much much better than HD-DVD.
Of course, if Sony's PS3 doesn't bomb out, then things only get better for the format.
I agree with you that there is little incentive right now to go out and buy the MS add-on, especially since the results of the format war aren't clear.
* of course, the flip side of this is that the new video format is adopted so slowly (say, in 10 years people are still selling good ol' DVDs and DVD players, and Blockbuster is still primarily renting DVDs), in which case Sony's positioning with Blu-ray and the PS3 is moot. Then Sony will have paid a high price for higher-capacity storage for games (maybe in itself, and independently of video playback and video formats, not a bad tactical decision -- who knows)
I'll stand here and admit that I think Guitar Hero is tons of fun (yes, I'm an adult and I play with a toy plastic guitar! And I get into it!).
Before that, I actually also got hooked on "frequency" and "amplitude", the precursors that were played with the regular ps2 controller. These were also tons of fun, also very addictive, and also gave you the sensation of "playing" the song. Admittedly, I haven't played either of the earlier versions since the guitar does add a lot to the experience, but I imagine even with just the keyboard the concept (if done well) can still make for a great game.