[comp.ai.digest] Two Points

gordon@stats.ucl.ac.UK ("Gordon Joly, Statistics, UCL") (08/27/88)

To: AILIST <@ESS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK:AILIST@ai.ai.mit.edu>
cc: gordon%stats.ucl.ac.uk@ESS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK
Subject: Two Points (ref AI Digests passim).
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 88 05:51 EDT
From: "Gordon Joly, Statistics, UCL" <gordon%stats.ucl.ac.uk@ESS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>

[a] More people died in the fire bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima;
    the atom bomb is a more powerful image than naplam and hence we forget.
[b] With regard to what Einstein said, Heisenberg's uncertainty princinple
    is also pertinent to "AI". The principle leads to the notion that the
    observer influences that which is observed. So how does this affect the
    observer who preforms a self analysis?

Gordon Joly.

bph@BUENGC.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) (09/05/88)

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From: Blair P. Houghton <bph@buengc.bu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Two Points (ref AI Digests passim).
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 88 15:33 EDT
References: <19880827040813.5.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: Blair P. Houghton <bph@buengc.bu.edu>
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In a previous article, "Gordon Joly, Statistics, UCL" writes:
>[b] With regard to what Einstein said, Heisenberg's uncertainty princinple
>    is also pertinent to "AI". The principle leads to the notion that the
>    observer influences that which is observed. So how does this affect the
>    observer who preforms a self analysis?

C'mon; Heisenberg said nothing of the kind.  He was talking about tiny
little particles with miniscule kinetic energies.  (...or maybe not |^D )

"Know thyself" is more like Shakespeare than Heisenberg, and likely
as old as Egypt.

Physical self-analysis on the scale for Heisenberg is moot.  Electrons
"know" where they are and where they are going.  They don't have, nor
do they need, self-analysis.

I do wish people would keep *recursion* and *perturbation* straight
and different from the Uncertainty Principle.  It's a very
poor metaphor (kindof like what Freud did to Oedipus' reputation...)

				--Blair