From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!jupiter!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!agate!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!hanauma!francis Tue Nov 26 12:32:38 EST 1991
Article 1608 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca rec.arts.books:10674 sci.philosophy.tech:1129 comp.ai.philosophy:1608
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!jupiter!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!agate!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!hanauma!francis
>From: francis@hanauma.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Philosophical Foibles of John McCarthy
Message-ID: <1991Nov25.235301.5346@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Nov 91 23:53:01 GMT
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Organization: Stanford University, Department of Geophysics
Lines: 48

Luke Wagner (?) writes:

	Francis Muir writes:

		John McCarthy writes:

			In a BBC debate with Professor Lighthill, I tried 
			to make an analogy saying, "Physicists haven't solved 
			the problems of turbulence in 100 years and aren't 
			giving up".  

			I was flabbergasted by Lighthill's reply, "They should 
			give up".  

		But back to the point. What makes AI and Turbulence so 
		interesting for me, and, apparently, so dangerous to some 
		others, is their shared sense of misdirection. It is not 
		the solutions that are troublesome but the feeling that the 
		problems are improperly posed. 

	Is there anyone specific whose work in turbulence you find 
	particularly misdirected?  

Some of the Chaos Theory Boys thought they were going to make a killing
in Turbulence.

	Is there any way to pose the problem that will save all the poor 
	sots working on it?
	
God no! That's the attraction of it. Properly positing the questions is what
science is all about. 

	Turbulence doesn't seem to carry much of the ideological baggage
	attached to AI, and proponents of this or that approximation
	scheme are rarely bothered by soi-disant philosophers about 
	sinister implications. 

I don't know what motivated John McCarthy's choice of Turbulence as an
example, but I might imagine that he has heard enough discussion of the
subject at The Member's Table at the Faculty Club to realize that it is
a lively subject of debate. For myself, all I can say is that in my own 
work with Lattice Boltzmann modeling  I use Reynolds' Numbers at least
10 orders of magnitude too small to be able to make a useful contribution
to the discussion -- except to say that turbulence does not scale!

							FM

francis@sep.stanford.edu


