NilObject

Without further adeu, I introduce the first version of my PHP code that will take an XML REALbasic project and display the code in a nice way. Not available to the public yet, but

Class Window1
Inherits Window
End Class

Class App
Inherits Application
Implements Interface1
  // New events
  Event NewEvent()
  
  // Event implementations
  Sub Open() Handles Event
    hookInstance
  End Sub
  
  // Methods
  Protected Sub AMethod()
    amethodline
  End Sub
End Class

Interface Interface1
  // Methods
  Sub SomeInterfaceMethod(foo As Integer)
  
End Sub
End Interface

Module Module1
// Properties
Protected Dim myproperty As Integer

// Methods
Protected Sub PublicMethod()
  
End Sub
Private Sub PrivateMethod()
  
End Sub
Sub GlobalMethod()
  
End Sub
End Module

Download this project

Give me a few hours to wrap it up nicely into its own page on here…

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This weekend I was presented with the opportunity to spend some time with my stepbrother, whom I roomed with while at college, and so I took him up on the opportunity, which meant about 6 hours of driving for me. Luckily, I am a happy Audible.com customer, and so I just had to pick out a book to listen to. I chose a wonderful book, called “On Intelligence“. It was written by Jeff Hawkins, the founder of the Palm.

If you have ever been interested in what makes intelligence or how our brains work, this is a great book for you. I’ve always been captivated with making a truly intelligent program — not artificially intelligent. From the beginning, I was hooked on the book. He presents a new way to think of how the brain works, focusing mainly on the neo-cortex. His theory, so far (I’m not quite finished with the book), makes sense. Unlike his most-likely average user, it got me thinking about how to make a computer program that has an auto-associative lookup mechanism.

The first portion that got me thinking was when he refuted was Alan Turing’s belief that intelligence can be determined based on his infamous Turing test. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the Turing Test states: (from Turing.org.uk)

As part of his argument Turing put forward the idea of an ‘imitation game’, in which a human being and a computer would be interrogated under conditions where the interrogator would not know which was which, the communication being entirely by textual messages. Turing argued that if the interrogator could not distinguish them by questioning, then it would be unreasonable not to call the computer intelligent.

However, Hawkins also informs us of a counter-example called “The Chinese Room.” It goes something like this: (Update: Here’s a good link describing the Chinese Room)

An English man is put into a room where there is only a slot, a book, and unlimited scratch paper. The book contains instructions, explaining what to do with certain symbols, arrangements of symbols, etc. A Chinese person pushes a paper containing a Chinese story through the slot. The English man takes the paper, and begins working through it by examining each symbol and using the book to determine what he should do. Sometimes he will write some symbols down on a piece of paper, other times he will jump to another area of the book to continue evaluating. Finally, he reaches the end and the book tells him that he is finished. He takes his piece of paper that has the newly written symbols and passes it through the slot. The Chinese person looks at it, and verifies that the answer is correct. However, can you truly say that the man inside truly understood what he was doing?

Now, in case the conclusion wasn’t drawn, consider the room to be a subject of the Turing test. A Chinese person will do just as well as the English person in this particular example, but only the Chinese person really understood what the story was and knew what his answer was. The English man was simply processing away. While both had the correct answers, only one understood the problem.

While there are many rebuttals to this argument, I agree with Hawkins in stating that the Turing Test isn’t enough. Intelligence isn’t defined by behavior. His theory goes into this in much more detail than my blog post can, for size reasons mainly. If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend putting it on your list of things to read. It’s entertaining and very thought provoking.

Earlier I mentioned auto-associative lookups. What did I mean? Well, the way a computer works is that it will always do things the tedious way and is very strict. For example, you or I can look at a picture and in less than half a second tell you that it contains a cat. However, the same operation for a computer would be nearly impossible, or it would at least take a very long time. The reason is that our minds look at the overall pattern and immediately recall that it is a cat. The operation, Hawkins argues, takes less than 100 steps in the human mind. For the computer, it would analyze every pixel of the picture before even trying to narrow down what it could possibly be.

I’ve been formulating a theory on how the behavior of the human mind could be achieved in a computer without having to compare images over and over, through a design that was inspired by Hawkins’ theories. It’s still at the abstract level. My original intent of this post was to outline it, but alas it’s time for supper (ordered some good Chinese food) and a nice relaxing evening watching a movie. Perhaps another day…

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