Newsgroups: comp.ai
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news.dfci.harvard.edu!camelot.ccs.neu.edu!news.mathworks.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!metro.atlanta.com!cpk-news-feed3.bbnplanet.com!aplcen.apl.jhu.edu!news.abs.net!news.scn.org!scn.org!mentifex
From: mentifex@scn.org (SCN User)
Subject: Re: MISTIC: 350,008 Item Pairs
Message-ID: <E7pvpE.88w@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 19:34:25 GMT
Lines: 40


When my best friend Naiden and I played the game of kings as teen-
agers, Naiden laughed at my attempt to create a chess computer by
listing on sheets of paper all best responses to his chess moves.
He pointed out that I could never gather up a list of all gambits
and likewise people are now rushing to critique the MIST Project.

Thus Philip Jackson comments on what Christopher McKinstry wrote:

>> MISTIC is made by the public, for the public (it will be released
>> after we publish, of course).

> Which means it is still private, though it has been created by
> public contributions. McKinstry is like an inverted Robin Hood,
> taking from the public to give to himself, though he has little
> chance of doing anything useful with the input he is gathering.

Mr. McKinstry has the same chance that T. Edison had to invent an
electric light, or that U.S. President Jimmy Carter had to create
peace between Egypt and Israel.  Philip Jackson has a clever wit,
with his remark above about Robin Hood, but the world needs those
who dream and fail, and then dream again as perhaps Mr. McKinstry
does in his AI work.  Naiden laughed at Murray in 1962, but 1997:

  /^^^^^^^^^^^\ Web-borne Mentifex (q.v.) AI Meme /^^^^^^^^^^^\
 /visual memory\          semantic  ________     /  auditory   \
|      /--------|-------\  memory  / syntax \   | speech memory |
|      |  recog-|nition |          \________/<--|-------------\ |
|   ___|___     |       |  flush-vector|  spiral|    _______  | |
|  /image  \    |     __|___        ___V___ loop|   /stored \ | |
| / percept \   |    /deep  \<-----/lexical\<---|--/ phonemes\| |
| \ engrams /<--|-->/concepts\--->/concepts \---|->\ of words/  |
|  \_______/    |   \________/    \_________/   |   \_______/   |

Footnote to history:  Naiden's father, who taught at The Lakeside
School in Seattle, caused Microsoft to come into existence by re-
questing of the Lakeside Mothers Club that they give one thousand
dollars for the purpose of buying computer timeshare for students
with the result that Gates and Allen used up all the time and....
For photo of Naiden see NYT 25.MAR.1993 C-19, facing John Hersey.
