From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!warwick!nott-cs!ucl-cs!news Tue Apr  7 23:23:24 EDT 1992
Article 4837 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: On functionalism and implementation
Message-ID: <2442@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 29 Mar 92 14:54:52 GMT
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>> All the talk in the world won't convince a farmer that a rock and a tractor
>> are functionally equivalent no matter how well one maps factuals and counter-
>> factuals.
>> 
>> --gary forbis@u.washington.edu

The farmers in Asimov's foundation trilogy were mathematicians, of a
sort. They sorted out "psycho-history" (?) and found that they could
predict the course of history, which had a sort of intertia. That is
to say, they saw that, in a *very* complex system like society, the
path of human history tended to keep a fairly "fixed" and "unswerving"
course overall and over a long timescale.

However, one unforeseen input to their equations, which they kept
updating all the time, was "The Mule", a powerful figure who could
change the course of history (c.f. Gorbachev, Lenin, Hitler,
Churchill, etc). The real *intelligence* of the first has altered the
(First) World already beyond recognition, undoing the "action
research" of the second.

Rocks and FSA's: still fairly trivial stuff:-)

Gordon.
____

Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT


