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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 14:37:56 GMT
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References: <39d8g2$dlm@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de> <39eaqk$nn9@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> <gyroCysG7u.8Hs@netcom.com> <784316303snz@chatham.demon.co.uk>
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In article <784316303snz@chatham.demon.co.uk>,
Oliver Sparrow <ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Both camps are right. Let me come to this crabwise.
>
>Knowledge comes in the declarative and tacit flavours. Declarative knowledge
>can be explicitly captured, written down, tranmitted without loss. One can
>read a book on how to change a transmission, program in C, fix a plug and, 
>more or less falteringly, perform the task. Tacit knowledge cannot be so 
>transmitted: one can offer hints on wine appreciation, on how to play a violin, 
>on how to excite an audience; but in having read the best composed book 
>conceivable, few who could not already do soi would feel that they can pick up 
>their bow and begin to fiddle. 
>
>This issue is a major problem for fields - such as commerce - in which 
>*judgement* is more broadly appropriate than *analysis* as the basis of action. 
>How is one to bring the distinct tacit models which people have across a team, 
>a firm or an interest group into some modest harmony? Mostly, of course, people 
>talk a lot to each other, but it is notable that in larger organisations, this 
>will fail to serve. Innovation, for example, flows when those who have the 
>experience and breadth of vision which comes from years of exposure the 
>realities of affiars are able to encapsulate what they know in ways which set a 
>challenge for those who - however narrow either circumstance or youth may have 
>made the perception - nevertheless have acquired mastery of technologies, 
>markets, networks and other  connectivity. Innovation arises when those who 
>know what is possible - if only they knew what was wanted - come into dialogue 
>with those who know what is wanted - if only they knew what was possible. At 
>issue is how to solve this set of simultaneous equations on a machine made of 
>people.
>
>It turns out, therefore, that there are recognisable phases in which 
>aspirational, visionary but focused statements of what might be are gradually 
>clothed with the flesh of reality or consigned to the wind, as phantoms. It is 
>necessary to have these visions, however, for without them, we are trapped with 
>the pedestrian pursuit of ever-narrowing specialisation. Commercial research 
>is, typically, governed by the disciplined and top-down parcelling out of 
>chunks of work which contribute to and are assembled to make a broader whole. 
>Academic science, by contrats, may often consist of the piecemeal exploration 
>of what individuals deem to be interesting; and their results add up to 
>coherence through a combination of social interaction and the fact that they 
>are scraping coral off a common treasure: reality. Where this treasure does 
>not yet exist - which is to say, in new product development, or, for example, 
>in the creation de novo of artificial intelligence - then there **is** no 
>buried treasure and the top-down schema must run. One must invent - at least 
>in concept - the treasure for which one is hunting.
>
>That Marvin feels it appropriate to strike a visionary note is, therefore, 
>entirely valid. That others wish to seek substance - or a bridge which leads to 
>a place where substance may be found - is also valid. What this Usegroup 
>signally lacks, however, is any sense of an intermediary position. There are 
>those areas of deep difficulty and of trembling, latent potential which one 
>can, at least in principle, explore. 
>
>There are accessible tools of exploration: one can envision what a saleable PC 
>with AI built into it look like. Would it speak chirpily to me in the morning 
>and think deep thoughts all of its own or would it, by contrast, have 
>background systems which unobtrusively strove to understand what I had done and 
>my motives then, what I was doing at present and my ostensible motives today 
>and thus guided, set out to dig for relevant material? Would it be "sentient" 
>or would it be useful? I have no desire for a system at home or in my car, 
>traffic lights or in the collar of my dog which has attitude, needs to be 
>wheedled, wants the vote... so I wonder if I *want* artifical sentience. What I 
>probably want is an anticipatory heuristic which can search vast volumes of 
>precedent, test for logical contradiction and remind me that I said that at 
>*last* year's convention. So how do I get it? By contrast, I would deeply like 
>to know how the brain works, how to think about the phenomenum of awareness and 
>to understand ways in which this can be augmented; but this does not 
>necessarily lead me to seeing an aware machine as the route to what I want from 
>IT. It may be that there is a phase in the evolution of sentients when they 
>cast aside biological things and find better seats of awareness in something 
>which it would be hard to call a machine: a "matrix", perhaps. Doubtless inate 
>in the nature of technological evolution, this is an interesting speculation 
>but more than somewhat beyond the realms of the helpful guide for the issues of 
>today.
>
>Does anyone else want to try a bit of analysis of the nature of the prblem at 
>which we are all hacking? What would the various facets of the various answers 
>look like, if we were to envision them? Might this be a useful exercise?
>  Oliver Sparrow
>  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
-----------------------------------
I have to say in all honesty, Oliver, that I am embarrassed for you to have
taken so lily-livered a tack in trying to either mollify both sides or
supposedly transcend them. I found no successful mollification here, and no
transcendence. Actually what you sounded like more than any other single
thing was a managerial pragmatist, with no real stake in anything that does
not earn a greater company profit or benefit you! Either you missed the
depth of the discussion completely, or else you simply do not have the kind
of mind which questions such things. The thing you may wish to deal with in
your spare time is whether if your daughter fell in love with a robot or
android, would you mind if she married one! Or whether an android moving
into the neihborhood might affect property values!
Sorry. Really.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com 

