Tuesday, June 06, 2006

God is an Abstract Expressionist

In John Kotselas' book "Socrates in New York", God is referred to as the "Natural Artist" (as opposed to man, the "Artificial Artist", who simply imitates God's work). It's entertaining to read Norvig's classic "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" in light of that terminlogy:

...Most human learning takes place in the context of a good deal of background knowledge. Some psychologists and linguists claim that even newborn babies exhibit knowledge of the world. Whatever the truth of this claim, there is no doubt that prior knowledge can help enormously in learning. A physicist examining a stack of bubble-chamber photographs might be able to induce a theory positing the existence of a new particle of a certain mass and charge; but an art critic examining the same stack might learn nothing more than that the "artist" must be some sort of abstract expressionist.

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