WALTER%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (09/20/84)
From: Walter Hamscher <WALTER%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
[Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.]
The Computer Aided Conceptual Art Laboratory
and
Laboratory for Graduate Student Lunch
presents
SLIMY LOGIC
or
INDENUMERABLY MANY TRUTH-VALUED LOGIC WITHOUT HAIR
by Lofty Zofty
The indenumerably many-valued logics which result from the first stage
of slime-ification are so to speak "non-standard" logics; but slimy logic,
the result of the second stage of slime-ification, is a very radical
departure indeed from classical logics, and thereby sidesteps many
fruitless preoccupations of logicians such as completeness, consistency,
axiomatization, and proof. In this talk I attempt to counter Slimy Logic's
low and ever-declining popularity by presenting a "qualitative" view
of slimy logic in which such definitions as
2
very true = true
and -3/2
not very pretty false = false
by the qualitative (i.e. so even people who don't carry
around two calculators can understand them) definitions:
very true = true
and
not very pretty false = ugly false
I will then use this "qualitative" slimy logic to very nearly prove
very much that Jon Doyle is probably not very right about nearly
extremely many things.
HOSTS: Robert Granville and Isaac Kohane
Refreshments will be served
Moved to the Third Floor Theory Group Playroomjaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods) (10/03/84)
# Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear...
This B-Board article is a master parody, right down to the "so to speak"
mannerism. Thanks for the entertainment!
I took a couple of courses from Professor Zadeh at Berkeley in the 70s,
not just in Fuzzy Logic, but also formal languages, where we all struggled
with LALR(1) lookahead sets. The fuzzy controversy was raging then, with
Prof. William Kahan, numerical analyst, being Zadeh's arch-enemy. Kahan was a
natural devil's advocate, himself none too popular for raving on, in courses
on data structures, a bit muchly about the way CDC 6400 Fortrash treated
roundoff of the 60th bit. Apparently, there's some bad blood over the size
of Zadeh's grants (NSF?) for his fuzzy baby. They both have had tenure for
years, so maybe a pie-throwing contest would be appropriate.
Anyway, looks like the fuzzy stuff is now making the rounds at MIT.
Zadeh, who ironically wrote the book on linear systems (circa 1948), at
least got the linguistics department hopping with the fuzzies, influencing
the Lakoffs (George, mainly) to trade in their equally ad hoc transformational
grammars for fuzzy logic. Kinda soured me on natural language theory, too.
I mean, is there life after YACC?
Old Lofti has left an interesting legacy via his children. Zadeh's
daughter, I understand is a brilliant lawyer. One son, after getting his
statistics Ph.D. at 20 or so, claims to have draw poker figured out.
Bluffing is dealt with by simple probability theory. As I remember,
"Winning Poker Systems" is one of those "just-memorize-the-equivalent-of-
ten-phone-numbers-for-instant-riches" books. He worked his way through school
with funds won in Emeryville poker parlors. Not too shabby, but not too
fuzzy, either ...
-- James A. Woods {ihnp4,hplabs,philabs}!ames!jaw (jaw@riacs.ARPA)olsen@wxlvax.UUCP (Neil Olsen) (10/05/84)
It seems that the Fuzzy stuff has been regaining ground lately.
Most East Coast universities, industry R-D centers and the like are
buzzing with fuzzy logic papers, seminars, applications....
>From the East-Coast, The fuzzy virus managed to cross the Atlantic
and get a hold on Europe. I have been lately to an AI seminar in
England, and have been surprised by the heated debate between the
pros and the cons of fuzzy logic and its usefulness to AI applications.i