Perceiving instead of representing: “The world is its own best model”
The world is its own best model. (Brooks 1990, 5) This is precisely to repudiate designs like the alternatives I mentioned earlier for Simon’s ant: that is, the ant should not contain any inner model or representation of the beach, nor an inner list of step and turn instructions. These alternatives would substitute complexity within the organism for intensity of interaction between the organism and its environment. But Brooks, as his slogan indicates, is very much against that. Why?
We can put the answer in another slogan that Brooks would probably like: Perception is cheap, representation expensive. Such a slogan might surprise many AI workers, who are acutely aware of how difficult pattern recognition can be. But the point is that good enough perception is cheaper than good enough representation—where that means “good enough” to avoid serious errors. The trouble with representation is that, to be good enough, it must be relatively complete and relatively up to date, both of which are costly in a dynamic environment. Perception, by contrast, can remain happily ad hoc, dealing with concrete questions only as they arise. To take a homely example, it would be silly, for most purposes, to try to keep track of what shelf everything in the refrigerator is currently on; if and when you want something, just look.
—Haugeland, J., 2000: Mind Embodied and Embedded, p. 13. Chapter 9 in Haugeland, J., 2000: Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Harvard University Press.
author:brooks-rodney author:haugeland-john book:haugeland-having-thought paper:haugeland-mind-embodied-and-embedded snip:world-is-its-own-best-model perception representation interaction complexity intensity intimacy list:mind-body-world
