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\'3;↓Q\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\F3\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY\←L\-R\/'7;\+R\→.\→S   Telephone:
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT\←S\→.415-497-4430
\F0\C20 January 1975

Analog Science Fiction
Conde Nast Building
350 Madison Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10017

Dear Mr. Bova:

\JThe opinion expressed in your February editorial that
paying attention to the anthropologists would have averted the
Sahel crisis omits some possibilities:

1. Did all anthropologists give this advice, and was their other advice,
if any, also right?

2. Was the full advice of the people who recommended the wells
taken?  There is considerable evidence that relieving the
disaster was not the highest priority among the military
men who run the countries concerned.

3. The idea that man was in "balance" with nature in the Sahel
before modern times requires verification.
Very likely, there have been repeated
catastrophes as bad as the present one.

4. The physicists' becoming "accustomed to living with guilt"
has only done harm - by contributing to the arrogance of
much less qualified people.
So did their accepting responsibility in areas where they never
had authority.

Your proposal that the anthropologists appeal to the public
suggests that the American public is the ultimate authority
in the affairs of the Sahel.  The American public has never
had any authority in the Sahel.  Now that these countries are
independent, their governments have the responsibility that
goes with the sovereignty.  To pretend that we have responsibility
without authority only breeds illusion and eventual recrimination.\.

\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L
Sincerely yours,




John McCarthy
\←S\→L
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