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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Roger Penrose's New Book (in HTML) 1.0
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References: <37s8hp$mch@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com> <JMC.94Oct18150624@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> <Cy00ID.LzE@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994 22:22:07 GMT
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In article <Cy00ID.LzE@festival.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <JMC.94Oct18150624@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> jmc@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il (McCarthy John) writes:
>
>>I see nothing in mind that requires more than classical physics.
>>Indeed it can all be done with ordinary computer programs.  Penrose's
>>arguments to the contrary in his _The Emperor's New Mind_ are
>>fallacious and ignorant of the entire artificial intelligence
>>technical literature.  Not one of his more than 200 references is to
>>that literature.  I would be surprised if he has read any AI for his
>>second book.
>
>When Penrose visited our Dept of AI to talk about "Emperor's New Mind"

He was not received with an open mind.

>it was clear that his understanding of computation was about the level
>of Lady Lovelace's, i.e., very detailed, comprehensive, and correct,
>but at a very primitive level. He knew nothing at all about AI, was
>unable to understand most of the points we tried to make to him, and
>was quite unable to understand that there might be some important
>points among this stuff that he knew nothing about. He talked a lot,
>and we talked a lot, but there was very little communication.

But do his arguments go wrong because of this ignorance of AI or not?
If they do go wrong, please say where and how.

BTW, I was surprised that some people seemed to find his alleged ingornace
of genetic algorithms significant.  Do they believe his arguments are
right except for genetic algorithms?  If not, what's the point of
mentioning them in particular?

-- jeff
