On Intelligence and whether machines can have it.
He says we are prediction-making machines.
It felt a little like the part in Freud’s Dream Book when he explained that all of our dreams are exercises in wish fulfillment. And then he tells a story in which a woman’s dream, no matter how hard he pushes or pulls it, just doesn’t can’t won’t become a wish to be fulfilled. Until. Until, he realizes that the woman knows all about his theory, secretly loathes him, and therefore her unconscious spit out a dream that defied his theory just to spite him. But, of course, now his theory emerges. Stronger than ever.
Genius.
Still, Hawkins’ book does make me think (sigh). How hard is it to get a machine to make a prediction of what will happen based on what the machine experienced in the past? Is that what the crazy kids at Numenta are up to? And more to the point as a writing teacher. Should I think more about how I can have kids be more deliberate in how they think about their writing as prediction, as playing with the expectations of readers and finding ways to meet them and then surprise them. Somehow knowing when to do which?
