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Article 2411 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...")
Message-ID: <45452@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 26 Dec 91 19:23:24 GMT
References: <45307@mimsy.umd.edu> <45328@mimsy.umd.edu> <1991Dec22.010502.26831@news.media.mit.edu>
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In article <1991Dec22.010502.26831@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>In article <45328@mimsy.umd.edu> kohout@cs.umd.edu (Robert Kohout) writes:
>
>>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". )
>
>In all fairness, maybe you should read Perceptrons. We did complain in
>the book that there was no efficient algorithm for guaranteed
>convergence for multilayer nets.  I think this is still true.  

.....

>So please read Perceptrons, My thesis, and Society of Mind.  And
>please stop reading newspapers!  That's for the public, not for super
>specialized experts like the readers of this newsgroup.
>

I have read the first 150 or so pages of Perceptrons, and all of Society
of Mind. I doubt I will read Minsky's thesis, though I have often been
intrigued by its title.

My parenthetical was intended to deflect this exact response. I'm 
well aware that Dr.Minsky has been subject to a lot of unwarranted
criticism in this regard, but the association between the book
"Perceptrons" and the evaporation of interest in the area is an 
historical fact. Whether or not this association is fair is a completely
different matter. There is no doubt a basis for it; even though
it may have been completely unintended on the author's part. The
fact that funding for neural net research dried up after the
publication of Perceptrons may be largely coincidental, and I certainly
don't believe that it was completely due to the influence of the
book. On the other hand, I have yet to hear anyone but Minsky
and Papert assert that it had no influence whatsoever.

I am also somewhat at a loss as Minsky's specific objection. 
Does he actually consider himself the godfather of Perceptrons?

Bob Kohout


