From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!ames!nsisrv!kong!mimsy!kohout Thu Dec 26 23:57:59 EST 1991
Article 2352 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kohout@cs.umd.edu (Robert Kohout)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Are we scaled-up slug-brains or not? (was "In the news...")
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Date: 21 Dec 91 18:19:44 GMT
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David Harwood writes:
>I make an offer, one time, if I hear from 7 honest individuals ;-)
>
I'm interested, though I wonder whether it is worth your time. You
won't find anyone willing to say that the human brain and the slug
have a whole lot in common. On the other hand, you'll find that most
researchers believe that the difference between humans and the "lower"
mammals is more a matter of quantity that quality.
>
>	I repeated all that the Washington Post quoted of Minsky, the
>godfather of Perceptrons. 
>
Let me be the first of what may be a hoard of posters to correct this
blunder. You may have a distorted sense of godfathering, but Minsky
& Papert's "Perceptrons" did not introduce the buggers in any sense,
and did a good deal towards killing off research in the field for 20
year. (In all fairness, it's most likely that the lack of adequate
computational resources had the field at the edge of a cliff, and
all it took was a little push from "Perceptrons". )

Bob Kohout


