NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (05/27/88)
Date: Mon, 9 May 88 17:46 EDT From: Jeff Dalton <mcvax!ukc!its63b!aiva!jeff@uunet.uu.net> Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK Subject: Re: Sorry, no philosophy allowed here. References: <30502@linus.UUCP> Sender: ailist-request@ai.ai.mit.edu To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) says: > If you can't write it down, you cannot possibly program it. Not so. I can write programs that I could not write down on paper because I can use other programs to so some of the work. So I might write programs that are too long, or too complex, to write on paper.
NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (05/27/88)
Date: Tue, 10 May 88 13:31 EDT From: dogie!mish@speedy.wisc.edu Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center Subject: Re: Sorry, no philosophy allowed here. Sender: ailist-request@ai.ai.mit.edu To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu In article <414@aiva.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes... >In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk >(Gilbert Cockton) says: >> If you can't write it down, you cannot possibly program it. > >Not so. I can write programs that I could not write down on paper >because I can use other programs to so some of the work. So I might >write programs that are too long, or too complex, to write on paper. YACC Lives! I've written many a program that included code 'written' by some other program (namely YACC). The point is that the computer allows us to extend what we know. I may not have actually written the code, but I knew how to tell the computer to write the code. In doing so, I created a program that I never (well, almost never) could have written myself even though I knew how _____________________ ____________________________ ___________________ \ / \ / Tom \ / Bit: mish@wiscmacc \ / Univ. Of Wis. Mish X Arpa: mish@vms.macc.wisc.edu X Madison Jr. / \ Phone: (608) 262-8525 / \ MACC _____________________/ \____________________________/ \___________________
NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (06/06/88)
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 88 01:14 EDT
From: EBARNES%HAMPVMS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Sorry, no philosophy allowed here
To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.EDU
X-VMS-To: IN%"ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu"
Editors:
>If you can't write it down, you can't program it.
This comes down to two questions. Can we build machines with original
thought capabilities, and what is meant by `program'. I think that it
is possible to build machines which will think originally. The question
now becomes: "Is what we do to set these "free thinking" machines up
considered programing". It would not be a strict set of instructions,
but we would surely instill the rules of deductive reasoning in the
machine. Whether or not this is "programing" is an uniteresting question.
Call it what you will, one way makes the original statement true and
the other way makes it false.
Eric Barnes