From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!europa.asd.contel.com!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Tue Jan 28 12:16:42 EST 1992
Article 3070 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Cargo Cult Science
Message-ID: <16980@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Jan 92 20:04:54 GMT
References: <1992Jan16.190930.14079nagle@netcom.COM> <16814@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan21.195107.133@lrc.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 34

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Cargo Cult Science
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <1992Jan16.190930.14079nagle@netcom.COM> <16814@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan21.195107.133@lrc.edu>
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In article <1992Jan21.195107.133@lrc.edu> lehman_ds@lrc.edu writes:
|In article <16814@castle.ed.ac.uk>, cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
|> In article <1992Jan16.190930.14079nagle@netcom.COM> nagle@netcom.COM (John Nagle) writes:
|>>      It's time to build a "slow mouse".  We have the compute power.
|>>We have a reasonable fraction of the techniques necessary.  NSF has
|>>some money available this year.  So let's get started.

|> A slow mouse? You really think that a slow beetle is too trivial to be
|> worth bothering with? I must be terribly out-of-date with my reading!

|   It's not that a "slow beetle" is too trivial, but the larger we go, the
|less BS we get from people who have nothing better to do but nit-pick.
|If we build a mouse as opposed to a beetle, we make more people happy and thus
|>get more money to continue... it's all politics.   :)

Errh... didn't this kind of optimism-for-political-and-funding-purposes 
get tried in AI already in the 1960s? Didn't that lead to the "1st AI
Winter" (e.g. the Lighthill report, funding contraction, and
separation of robotics from AI in the UK)?
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


