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From: tony@hdl.ie (Tony Veale)
Subject: Re: Roger Penrose's new book
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Date: Thu, 27 Oct 1994 11:22:27 GMT
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will (will@news.scruz.net.) wrote:
: I'm surprised that a group with so many doctorates, grad students and
: scientist could be so liberal in bashing a peer without substantiation.
: I've yet to see one comprehensive review of the book which outline why
: Penrose's book is

: "a load of unsubstantiated crap".

: "the chump's new book is called "Shadows of the Mind"

: Other mindless comments have been ample. 

: If you know of a good review (postive or negative) please let me know.

: Thank you.


A peer?? Penrose isn't a computer scientist, and his first book has been
discussed long enough and hard enough to comprise suitable "substantiation"
for a good bashing.

I'm not claiming that it's anything special to being a computer scientist, it
just gets my craw that there's an implicit pecking order in science. Ok, so
most of the time computer science is an oxymoron (for instance, the work
I do isn't really science, at least not in the Baconian sense), but a
qualification in physics (and no one disputes Penrose is/was a great
physicist) doesn't necessarily make you knowledgeable enough to
pontificate in other person's field.

Physics seems to flying off the deep end, haunting the vegetable patch, etc
etc  [insert dismissive jibe here] nowadays. We've had the high-priest
mentality in A.I. for quite a while now, but folks are finally beginning
to come back down to earth. The high-priest fallacy in Physics, on the 
other hand, is still in full flight, and apparently Penrose believes that
only a change of "religion" is required to become a bona-fide computer
scientist. Penrose has become the defender of our "true humanity" and 
gate-keeper to that silly platonic heaven of his - he's welcome to it.

Also, in the Emporer's new Mind, I recall Martin Gardner referring to
Penrose as a philosopher of the first rank - bullshit! Christian philosophers
of the middle ages seem to have a more coherent view of the mind than this
man - I'd put Penrose's arguments right up there with the ontological
argument and other gems from our confused past. If you want some arguments
against AI, at least read some of the philosophically-inclined critics
such as Dreyfuss (not that I agree with him, but at least he doesn't
couch his most important points in "populist-babble").

Oh, what textbook did Penrose crib his section on the neurobiology of the
brain? It was interesting, but largely irrelevant to his "arguments" (if his
rambles deserve this label at all). Over all, I agree with the view that
Penrose hides his muddleheadness on the subject (A.I.) in a collage of 
interesting science, which doesn't cohere in the least, but makes for an 
infuriating read. Penrose is stuck in his own trap - he can't actually
describe a non-algorithmic process (then it would be seen to be algorithmic)
so he has to allude to it in a cloak of hermeneutic messages. The man should
read Wittgenstein - whereof one cannot speak, one should be silent.

One last piece of "substantiation" - Penrose's appalling Horizon (or was
it Equinox) documentary - Mr. Populism rallies the troops of ignorance 
against AI, and declares a resounding victory (which is easy to do if
you're both a combatant and the referee). Penrose came full circle with
this one - in his "Emporer's New Mind" he claims he was prompted to
write an anti-AI book after watching a BBC documentary which was smug
in its presentation of AI. Infuriated ("how dare they talk about the
mind without consulting a physicist" I imagine he fumed) he rattled off
a second rate science book, third rate philosophical manifesto and fourth
-rate read - the rest is publishing (and financial) history.


Jeez, I could go on all day! To close though, (because I have some AI to
get back to - I wish I could write "Judith Krantz science-books for a 
living") consider again the opening and closing "bookends" to E.N.M. -
some smarmy git called Adam (re: penrose) causes the great AI computer
to crumble in disarray when asked the question "How do you feel". Does this
remind anyone of a star-trek type scenario - robot's reeling around the
place, smoke issuing from their ears, mumbling "illogical, illogical"
because Kirk told them the Cretan Paradox or some such chestnut? This sums
up the book, though - Penrose doesn't understand his adopted subject or 
what his opponents actually believe in.

Consider this a rant, not a flame ...

Tony the_temporarily_sated
__________________________________________________________________________
Tony Veale                                             Tel: +353-1-6798911
Hitachi Dublin Laboratory, O'Reilly Institute,         Fax: +353-1-6798926
Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.                    e-mail: tony@hdl.ie

"Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent - that is what Wisdom wants us
to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior."

						Fred Nietzsche,
						Zarathustra, book I
__________________________________________________________________________

