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Article 2839 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Table-lookup Chinese speaker
Message-ID: <1992Jan17.171344.26824@spss.com>
Date: 17 Jan 92 17:13:44 GMT
References: <1992Jan14.172756.46284@spss.com> <qFVNeB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
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In article <qFVNeB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard 
Carlson) writes:
>Finally, however, don't even intelligent people "cheat" in this
>way, not necessarily to appear more intelligent or more learned or
>more cool (or whatever), but just because it is the path of least
>resistance, consumes the least energy, is "efficient" in some
>cost-benefit, survival sense?  Hence table lookup becomes
>interesting again and the kinds of considerations you advance,
>such as about database size, do become "worth discussing."

I think there's no question human beings use all kinds of tricks to appear
more intelligent than they really are.  Such things are certainly "worth
discussing."

My favorite examples come from Richard Feynman's _"Surely you're joking,
Mr. Feynman!"_  For example, he was teaching physics in a room overlooking
the ocean.  The students were good: they could immediately give the proper
definitions of (say) polarization caused by reflection off a surface,
and reel off the appropriate formulas.  What they couldn't do was to relate
such information to the real world.  For instance, they had absolutely no
idea that the sunlight reflecting off the water outside the window
was an instance of the phenomena they were discussing.


