Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.philosophy,alt.consciousness,comp.ai.alife
From: David@longley.demon.co.uk (David Longley)
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Subject: Re: Computers--Next stage in evolution? Hmmmmmm.....
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:30:55 +0000
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In article <1995Apr8.064731.17329@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
           jd007d@uhura.cc.rochester.edu "Joshua Drake" writes:

> I would say that the original point was well taken!  The post was not
> "abusive".  I have yet to see a machine that can fully function as a human!
> I'm not saying it can't be done just that I haven't seen it... therefore my
> best foundation of human behaviour or "Real Life" is just that!  The sorse
> is the key... not the machine you are programming to immitate it.
> 
> Joshua Drake
> 

There's another angle to this. AI may be mistaken in trying to emulaute real
life (research in the psychology of judgement by Tversky & Kahneman (1974),
and others summarizing empirical human behaviour in social psychology have 
not painted a very rational picture of what we get up to most of the time.
Instead, I suspect we have turned to extensional systems sych as mathematics
and the predicate calculus to help us build a more stable environment, hence
AI's late appearance on the scene (and Computer Science for that matter).

If one wants to model human behaviour (possibly to undertake less invasive/
deceptive experiments), then perhaps Neural Network technology is the answer.
Modelled on the simple behaviour of the single neuron, such adaptive networks
seem to replicate many of the daft things that we get up to when making 
decisions not according to extensionalist principles.

As an applied psychologist, trying to sell my discipline to Government adminis-
trators as a hard nosed behaviour science and technology, I find myself using
real life as a source of examples of bad-practice-without-the-benefit-of-science
and science here is the GOFAI in all its guises.
-- 
David Longley
