🧪 PET Walkthroughs: From Observation to Belief
This section walks through how PET-based systems evolve understanding through pattern exposure.
The goal is to illustrate the steps that occur before and during formal pattern encoding in the schema.
🧭 High-Level Stages of Pattern Development
PET walks through the world like a child learning to name and relate what it sees. The stages below form the cognitive arc:
1. Observation
A pattern is received via one or more sensory inputs (e.g., visual, audio, tactile).
Patterns: shape, color, sound, motion…
2. Association
A label or name is applied (e.g., “Dog”) — sometimes guessed, sometimes taught.
3. Reinforcement
The same pattern shows up repeatedly — strengthening the label.
4. Generalization
The system starts noticing shared properties across similar patterns and begins forming implicit categories.
5. Anomaly or Contradiction
A new input violates the assumed pattern (e.g., a dog statue). The system adjusts confidence or context.
6. Conflict and Refinement
Conflicting experiences (e.g., Dog → Friendly vs Dog → Pain) force the system to split contexts or downgrade beliefs.
🔍 Browse the Example Gallery
To see how these stages appear in real scenarios, consider the following:
- Observation Walkthrough
- Dog Encounter: A foundational example showing initial sensory input, danger inference, and early node formation.
- Visual Recognition: A basic example of a child recognizing a face using sensor input and associating it with familiarity.
- Associating Sounds: Demonstrates how children learn to differentiate between sounds and link them to meanings.
- Reinforced Dog Encounter: Shows how a new, positive experience (e.g., a dog licking kindly) reshapes an earlier fear-based interpretation.
- Time-Based Association: Highlights how sequences and timing of events influence the structure and reliability of associations.
- Exist vs. Non-Exist Dilemmas: Explains how concepts like pain or danger can be interpreted as non-existent or suppressed within certain contexts.
But most of these deal with human level issues, what about a machine or constructed consciousness? What is the most important thing to a machine to survive?
Scenarios include:
- Recognizing a face
- Learning “Dog = Dangerous”
- Rewriting beliefs after new experiences
- Recursive conflict resolution in belief systems
📘 Next Steps
Once familiar with how raw patterns become beliefs, Explore the Schema to see how this is structured using nodes, edges, and understanding history.