NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (05/27/88)
Date: Wed, 4 May 88 10:28 EDT From: M.BRILLIANT <attcan!houdi!marty1@uunet.uu.net> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!? References: <3200014@uiucdcsm>, <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Sender: ailist-request@ai.ai.mit.edu To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu In article <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, Anurag Acharya writes: > In article crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Gilbert Cockton writes: > ... > > Your system should prevaricate, stall, duck the > >issue, deny there's a problem, pray, write to an agony aunt, ask its > >mum, wait a while, get its friends to ring it up and ask it out ... > > Whatever does all that stuff have to do with intelligence per se ? > .... Pardon me for abstracting out of context. Also for daring to comment when I am not an AI researcher, only an engineer waiting for a useful result. But I see that as an illuminating bit of dialogue. Cockton wants to emulate the real human decision maker, and I cannot say with certainty that he's wrong. Acharya wants to avoid the pitfalls of human fallibility, and I cannot say with certainty that he's wrong either. I wish we could see these arguments as a conflict between researchers who want to model the human mind, and researchers who want to make more useful computer programs. Then we could acknowledge that both schools belong in AI, and stop arguing over which should drive out the other. M. B. Brilliant Marty AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858 Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1 Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer explicitly claims them; then I lose all rights to them.
NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (05/27/88)
Date: Mon, 9 May 88 10:12 EDT From: Stephen Smoliar <trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!? References: <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, <May.6.18.48.07.1988.29690@cars.rutgers.edu> Sender: ailist-request@ai.ai.mit.edu To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu In article <May.6.18.48.07.1988.29690@cars.rutgers.edu> byerly@cars.rutgers.edu (Boyce Byerly ) writes: > >Perhaps the logical deduction of western philosophy needs to take a >back seat for a bit and let less sensitive, more probalistic >rationalities drive for a while. > I have a favoire paper which I always like to recommend when folks like Boyce propose putting probabilistic reasoning "in the driver's seat:" Alvan R. Feinstein Clinical biostatistics XXXIX. The haze of Bayes, the aerial palaces of decision analysis, and the computerized Ouija board. CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY AND THERAPUTICS Vol. 21, No. 4 pp. 482-496 This is an excellent (as well as entertaining) exposition of many of the pitfalls of such reasoning written by a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine. I do not wish this endorsement to be interpreted as a wholesale condemnation of the use of probabilities . . . just a warning that they can lead to just as much trouble as an attempt to reduce the entire world of first-order predicate calculus. We DEFINITELY need abstractions better than such logical constructs to deal with issues such as uncertainty and belief, but it is most unclear that probability theory is going to provide those abstractions. More likely, we should be investigating the shortcomings of natural deduction as a set of rules which represent the control of reasoning and consider, instead, possibilities of alternative rules, as well as the possibility that there is no one rule set which is used universally but that different sets of rules are engaged under different circumstances.
NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) (05/27/88)
Date: Thu, 12 May 88 15:18 EDT From: Anurag Acharya <centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu!acha@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!? References: <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Sender: ailist-request@ai.ai.mit.edu To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu In article <86@edai.ed.ac.uk> rjc@edai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes: >> Imagine Mr. Cockton, you are standing on the 36th floor of a building >> and you and your mates decide that you are Superman and can jump out >> without getting hurt. >Then there is something going wrong in the negotiations within the group!! Oh, yes! There definitely is! But it is still is a "negotiation" and it is "social"!. Since 'reality' and 'truth' are being defined as "negotiated outcomes of social processes", there are no constraints on what these outcomes may be. I can see no reason why a group couldn't conclude that ( esp. since physical world constraints are not necessarilly a part of these "negotiations"). >Saying that Y is the result of process X does not imply that any result >from X is a valid Y. In particular 'reality is the outcome >of social negotiation' does not imply that "real world" (whatever that is) >constraints do not have an effect. Do we have "valid" and "invalid" realities around ? >If we decided that I was Superman then presumably there is good evidence >for that assumption, since it is pretty hard to swallow. _In_such_a_case_ >I might jump. Being a careful soul I would probably try some smaller drops >first! Why would it be pretty hard to swallow ? And why do you need "good" evidence ? For that matter, what IS good evidence - that ten guys ( possibly deranged or malicious ) say so ? Have you thought why would you consider getting some real hard data by trying out smaller drops ? It is because Physical World just won't go away and the only real evidence that even you would accept are actual outcomes of physical events. Physical world is the final arbiter of "reality" and "truth" no matter what process you use to decide on your course of action. >To say you would not jump would be to say that you would not accept that >you were Superman no matter _how_ good the evidence. If you accept consensus of a group of people as "evidence", does the degree of goodness depend on the number of people, or what ? > Unless you say that the >concept of you being Superman is impossible ( say logically inconsistent with >your basic assumptions about the world ), which is ruled out by the >presuppositions of the example ( since if this was so you would never come >to the consensus that you were him ), then you _must_ accept that sufficient >evidence would cause you to believe and hence be prepared to jump. Ah, well.. if you reject logical consistency as a valid basis for argument then you could come to any conclusion/consensus in the world you please - you could conclude that you (simultaneously) were and were not Superman! Then, do you jump out or not ? ( or maybe teeter at the edge :-)) On the other hand, if you accept logical consistency as a valid basis for argument - you have no need for a crowd to back you up. Come on, does anyone really believe that if he and his pals reach a consensus on some aspect of the world - the world would change to suit them ? That is the conclusion I keep getting out of all these nebulous and hazy stuff about 'reality' being a function of 'social processes'. -- Anurag Acharya Arpanet: acharya@centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu "There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about" -- John von Neumann