Priors: What We Believe Before We Look
No observation speaks for itself. What we conclude from evidence depends on what we believed beforehand, and two observers with...
Year: 2026
Modularity: Minds Built From Parts
A complex system is easier to build, understand, and repair when made of parts. Nature and engineering both favor modules,...
World Models: Prediction as Understanding
To understand something may be to be able to predict it. A system that carries an internal model of how...
Common Sense: The Knowledge We Never State
The hardest knowledge to give a machine is the knowledge no one bothers to say. That water is wet, that...
Systematic Generalization
Understanding a few combinations should confer understanding of many. Grasp that agents act on objects, and you should handle new...
Compositionality: Infinite Meaning From Finite Parts
From a fixed vocabulary we build endless sentences, and from known concepts endless thoughts. Meaning is assembled, not memorized, so...
Counterfactuals: Reasoning About What Did Not Happen
To ask what would have happened is to reason about a world that never was. Yet such questions ground blame,...
Causality Versus Correlation
That two things move together does not mean one moves the other. Prediction can ride on correlation, but action requires...
Symbolic Versus Connectionist: Rules or Patterns
Is thought the manipulation of symbols or the settling of a network? Two traditions answer differently, one prizing explicit rules,...
The Symbol Grounding Problem
A symbol means nothing by itself. The word for a thing is not the thing, and a system that shuffles...
