clarke@utcs.UUCP (06/25/85)
In article <5726@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: >> ...Ric and Andrew feel ... that debating on Usenet accomplishes little. > >I disagree, but not for the obvious reasons. It is quite possible that >there is little chance of the debaters changing their views as a result >of debate. What such discussion/debate can, and sometimes does, accomplish >is to inform and educate the spectators. This is not trivial. Having at last found something I can agree with in what Henry writes :-), let me ruminate on my own, starting with the current wearing debate on whether or not we first-worlders got where we are by having our ancestors stomp on the third world. Obviously, regardless of its significance in wider circumstances, this debate conducted in can.politics has all the consequence of a Friday-night beer argument. However, I think the kinds of argument being used have unhappy implications about the assumptions underlying parts of the Star Wars discussion. Specifically, what we have come down to arguing is a variety of similar or even equivalent one-sentence summaries, provided by Henry, of the relations between European culture and all others over roughly the past millenium. (I think our earliest point so far has been the Renaissance, which will get you around 1100 A.D.) Things like, "The rise of the West to a position of technical predominance over other cultures was due in the first place to superior social structures," (not an exact quote, but I hope a reasonable paraphrase) are extraordinarily sweeping claims that one would expect to see only in the mature works of outstanding historians building on many generations of previous work. And one would expect to hear shortly afterwards a loud chorus of disapproval. So why do we see these assertions presented here, with no supporting evidence and with possibly-contradictory evidence rejected as trivia that obscure but do not disprove the point asserted? Well, there are other contexts where you meet claims like this: in novels, especially science-fiction novels, and on television documentaries like "Connections". Here the need to make a point quickly and have it swallowed like a pill instead of an indigestible powder of facts leads the audience to a willing suspension of disbelief. (Hah! at last... a benefit from my wife's work on Coleridge.) But why get upset about this? After all, it's been kind of fun trying to poke holes in a statement I probably secretly believe, hasn't it? Well, what makes me unhappy is that this kind of science-fictiony argument is the same thing being used in support of Star Wars; and it's being used by people who do have technical competence relevant to the idea of Star Wars. Unfortunately, nobody has technical competence covering the whole area, and we're seeing computer scientists arguing political science and (on a smaller scale) systems people arguing software verification and AI. The arguments they use are non-expert, and you can see that by their lack of complexity. This scares me. If we do have any public or political influence as computer scientists, let's make sure as we exercise our influence that we label ourselves non-experts in every area where we are non-expert. Such labeling has been conspicuously absent from discussion here.