gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (05/17/88)
In article <5499@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >The problem comes in deciding >WHAT needs to be explicitly articulated and what can be left in the "implicit >background." That is a problem which we, as humans, seem to deal with rather >poorly, which is why there is so much yeeling and hitting in the world. Is this science? :-) Or is this a problem commonly encountered amongst intellectuals for whom explicit verbal communication becomes a deskilling modus vivendi? Is anyone in AI working on listening and watching? For people who haven't spent all their life in academia or intellectual work, there will be countless examples of carrying out work in near 100% implicit background (watch fire and ambulance personelle who've worked together as a team for ages, watch a basketball team, a steeplejack and his mate, a good jazz ensemble, ...) There are ways of determining the distribution of skills in the human population and the effect of training and experience on skill attainment. I hope AI researchers are aware of them, and the results, before they dive head first into skill acquisition programs (unless they're engineers into machine learning, in which case go where the spirit takes you). One of these days I'll see an AI posting being generous to human abilities.
tomh@proxftl.UUCP (Tom Holroyd) (05/31/88)
In article <1171@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: > In article <5499@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes: > >The problem comes in deciding > >WHAT needs to be explicitly articulated and what can be left in the "implicit > >background." > ... > For people who haven't spent all their life in academia or > intellectual work, there will be countless examples of carrying out > work in near 100% implicit background (watch fire and ambulance > personelle who've worked together as a team for ages, watch a basketball > team, a steeplejack and his mate, a good jazz ensemble, ...) No. Fire and ambulance personnel have regulations, basketball has rules and teams discuss strategy and tactics during practice, and even jazz musicians use sheet music sometimes. I don't mean to say that implicit communication doesn't exist, just that it's not as useful. I don't know how to build steeples, but I'll bet it can be written down. Articulate as much as you can. It's true we learn by doing, but we need to be told what to do in case it's not obvious (eating is obvious). Tom Holroyd UUCP: {uunet,codas}!novavax!proxftl!tomh The white knight is talking backwards.
kww@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu (K Watkins) (06/01/88)
In article <239@proxftl.UUCP> tomh@proxftl.UUCP (Tom Holroyd) writes: >Articulate as much as you can. It's true we learn by doing, but we need to >be told what to do in case it's not obvious (eating is obvious). > Life is too short; in the case of a sufficiently aware articulator, both articulator and audience would die of old age before the articulator explained _everything_ s/he could about how to write the letter A. I am not being facetious here; I agree with the desirability of making valuable information explicit. But I believe that the question of which information is valuable is a complex one. It may seem simple at first; but in many cases it is hard for the articulator to tell which behaviors are relevant even to his/her own performance, let alone the as-yet hypothetical performance of the audience. And the assumption that one thing is obvious but another is not is the source of much (most?) disgruntled contempt between teachers and pupils. For instance, it is not even obvious to me what you mean by saying "eating is obvious." Is _how_ to eat obvious? to whom? is what or when or why to eat obvious? Are the currently much-famed eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, etc.) instances of persons sufficiently defective (?) as to be oblivious to the obvious? Note: This subject fascinates me in part because I am often accused of articulating far more than "necessary"...so (obviously?) my sense of what is obvious could use some work. Part of this issue lies in the fact that, when I articulate more than "necessary," I tend to lose my audience, and that audience loses whatever "necessary" information I was going to impart further down the line. After all, this message is more than a screen long; how many people who read the first screen are still reading? :-) What have those who quit before this point lost that they would have valued? And what, in my discussion, has been "unnecessary articulation of the obvious" whose omission would have improved the sum effect of my communication?
smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) (06/04/88)
In article <239@proxftl.UUCP> tomh@proxftl.UUCP (Tom Holroyd) writes: >In article <1171@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert >Cockton) writes: >> In article <5499@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) >>writes: >> >The problem comes in deciding >> >WHAT needs to be explicitly articulated and what can be left in the >> >"implicit >> >background." >> ... >> For people who haven't spent all their life in academia or >> intellectual work, there will be countless examples of carrying out >> work in near 100% implicit background (watch fire and ambulance >> personelle who've worked together as a team for ages, watch a basketball >> team, a steeplejack and his mate, a good jazz ensemble, ...) > >No. Fire and ambulance personnel have regulations, basketball has rules >and teams discuss strategy and tactics during practice, and even jazz >musicians use sheet music sometimes. I don't mean to say that implicit >communication doesn't exist, just that it's not as useful. I don't know >how to build steeples, but I'll bet it can be written down. > Take a look at Herb Simon's article in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE about "ill-structured problems" and then decide whether or not you want to make that bet.