perm filename F89.OUT[LET,JMC] blob
sn#880613 filedate 1989-12-31 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
∂31-Dec-89 2349 JMC re: Best wishes
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Sun 31 Dec 89 17:02:56-PST.]
Thanks for your kind words. I too am looking forward to new
exchanges. Happy new year.
∂31-Dec-89 1732 JMC
To: CLT
20.
∂31-Dec-89 0115 JMC re: Imagen message
To: LES
[In reply to message rcvd 31-Dec-89 00:59-PT.]
No, it came from Lathrop. Thanks anyway.
∂31-Dec-89 0056 JMC
To: LES
The error msg 88 is not in the Imagen manual. Do you know what it is?
∂29-Dec-89 2107 JMC re: After the Cold War
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Fri 29 Dec 89 15:12:48-PST.]
Two further matters.
1. I have now read the Barnet article. He doesn't dismiss the collapse
of communism in one sentence; he dismisses it in several pages. He
recounts it, but draws no conclusions whatsoever.
2. Indeed the victory in the Cold War is not an American victory.
Contrary to Barnet, it wasn't a German or Japanese victory either.
We played the largest role in containing communism, but we didn't
cause its collapse. What caused its collapse was disgust with
its corruption, mendaciousness, incompetence and other facts
by people in the communist countries including people making
successful careers in the communist parties of these countries.
President Ford in his debate with Carter said that Poland was
free. He was fooled by propaganda and wishful thinking, but
the Poles weren't fooled.
By maintaining Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe we may have
contributed to the development of Soviet and Eastern European
public opinion.
3. Orwell was mistaken. The totalitarian system wasn't
self-perpetuating and depended on a tyrant.
∂29-Dec-89 1912 JMC
To: CLT
I want you home.
∂29-Dec-89 1647 JMC phone msg
To: CLT
Ina from Calif. Paint & Wallpaper would like you to call her @ 326-9285
regarding $188.81 deposit and some other details which were not as clear.
SMC.
∂29-Dec-89 1628 JMC re: After the Cold War
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Fri 29 Dec 89 15:12:48-PST.]
It takes Barnet one sentence to dismiss contemporary events and return
to the themes of his 5 books - assuming he's the Richard J. Barnet listed
in Socrates. Is he the Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies?
Now to his actual contentions.
1. In 1945 we had Stalin to worry about. Besides its military strength,
the Soviet Union had enormous political strength throughout the world.
Now it looks like communism is no longer a military menace. Of course,
Barnet seems to be the co-author of a 1971 book entitled "Washington
Plans an Aggressive War", so he apparently considered the U.S. as the
military menace.
Barnet likes to muddle concepts. Security traditionally meant military
security, and we now seem to be in the the most secure position we
have enjoyed since before the rise of Hitler. At least there seems to
be, for the first time since 1945, a general consensus that we can
afford to reduce our military expenditures. Naturally, we can quarrel
about how much we can afford to reduce them.
2. Barnet says,
[T]he United States is squandering capital to maintain
an ephemeral prosperity that is politically unstable,
because it is based on increasing inequality.
Having probably predicted economic catastrophe throughout the Reagan
Administration, Barnet is reduced to saying that the simultaneous
reductions in inflation and unemployment are ephemeral. It's also
hard to say what political instability he is referring to. Perhaps
he's expecting that the Democrats will win in 1992, and this will
end the prosperity, perhaps through an increase in Government programs.
It's doubtful that this is what he wants us to believe, although if
he's the IPS Barnet, he's far to the left of the Democrats.
3. As to education, we are spending a larger fraction of our GNP on
it, and getting less results. Moreover, the education establishment
is the part of the establishment whose views are closest to Barnet's.
4. As for drugs, the problem is mainly confined to a segment of the
population where law-and-order has broken down, thanks substantially
to people like Barnet and other strong liberals.
Just remember that there will be no opportunity for anyone to refute
Barnet's contentions in the pages of the New Yorker, a magazine that
tells intellectuals what to believe and doesn't confuse them by
printing more than one opinion.
∂29-Dec-89 1517 JMC Nonmonotonicity and scope
To: ether@RESEARCH.ATT.COM
I agree with the general idea, although I think that more than
one scope will be required, and I think it will integrate with
the idea of context that I have been exploring. More later
perhaps. However, please send me another copy of page 36 of the
November 1 draft (or a whole later draft). It got twisted in the
duplication.
∂29-Dec-89 1448 JMC Please make
To: MPS
a permanent paper file labelled TRAVEL for my desk file drawer. I'll
put things like frequent flier labels in it.
∂29-Dec-89 1429 JMC
To: MPS
unisci.tex[let,jmc]
∂28-Dec-89 1750 JMC
To: MPS
Access to Energy gets filed under Beckmann in person files.
∂28-Dec-89 1726 JMC delayed reaction
To: au.rmb@FORSYTHE.Stanford.EDU
to your note passed at Rosse meeting. I think that
organizations tend to grow regardless of whether
their purpose is to serve academic functions directly
or to serve administration. This relates to your
remark that administrative computing cut their
advising service and academic computing hasn't. There
needs to be a sunset on the academic computing
advisory service, but I don't know whether it should
be in the past or in the future.
∂28-Dec-89 1654 JMC Please decorate boyer.1[let.
To: MPS
Address in on letter in out box. Then file his letter.
∂28-Dec-89 1642 JMC letters
To: MPS
Also all letters should be in [let,jmc] not [1,jmc].
∂28-Dec-89 1638 JMC file names of letters
To: MPS
Please note that I name the letters <name>.1,<name.2> etc. and not <name>.tex.
The latter results in letters being deleted when I write a second letter
to the same person. Please rename the ones you have called <name>.tex.
Here <name> stands for the person's name.
ershov.tex should be renamed ivanni.1 assuming the latter file doesn't
already exist. If there are any problems with this, please tell me.
∂28-Dec-89 1627 JMC comments on articles
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
Sutherland on irrationality
I'm not convinced that his examples are quite examples of irrationality.
Many are rather examples of inadequate theories of the common sense
world. I assume Sutherland himself would claim to be rational. However,
he makes an error of the same kind as the ones he criticizes. Namely,
he refers to the irrationality of Americans in 1986 avoiding trips
to Europe for fear of hijacking when they face larger dangers from
crime by staying home. There are three errors.
1. Crime is concentrated in certain places. Many Americans face
very little risk of harm from crime and therefore justifiably
feel safe at home. This error is a bit analogous to the one
about smoking, heart disease and cancer.
2. The media offer little information about relative risks. People
who know how many flights there are will readily calculate that
hijacking presents little risk, but many people have no quantitative
information.
3. In an informatic situation in which little quantitative information
is available, it may not be an optimal strategy to require quantitative
information before accepting someone's opinion that an activity is
dangerous.
My opinion is that much of the problems are the fault of the media
not fulfilling their responsibility of providing quantitative information
when it is available and not advocating rationality. Not to speak
of the specific countercultural attacks on rationality.
Many of the anti-nuke organizations are specifically anti-rational.
****
Oatley on emotionality
Here's a preliminary haggle.
While Spock is depicted as being inhumanly rational, I believe he
is in fact the most popular of the Star Trek characters.
Certainly, there are more Spock paraphernalia sold than that
associated with any of the other characters. My opinion is that
this is because he is the character most like a real astronaut or
soldier. The other characters mug and emote repulsively in the
current convention of actors and show very little of the
discipline that ought to result from their training. Maybe Spock
is after all the most human character.
I agree in general with what Oatley and Johnson-Laird are trying
to do. It seems to me that their article oversimplifies. Some
aspects of emotion are useless and harmful. Discipline and
self-discipline in overcoming them are worthwhile. Others have
the values the authors claim. Part of the problem is that humans
have no overall goals to which all others are subordinate. That's
a rationalist's fiction. If only we did, then we could hope for
decision rules covering all situations.
Autism comments later.
∂28-Dec-89 1622 JMC Please get me
To: MPS
Keith Oatley and Philip Johnson-Laird. "Towards a cognitive theory of
emotions. Cognition and Emotions, vol. 1, p. 29
∂28-Dec-89 1545 JMC
To: JMC
I have renamed the file. You can deleter any foo's.
∂28-Dec-89 1529 JMC re: books
To: JMC
[In reply to message rcvd 28-Dec-89 15:08-PT.]
Yes on entering non-Socrates books. No on 5pm dinner. How about Saturday
night? I suppose the place is Chez TJ. Can we take the car over
this evening after they close and leave it there, either concealing the
key or pushing it under the door?
∂28-Dec-89 1508 JMC books
To: JMC
Do you want me to hand enter books which are not on Socrates, but which do
have their Library of Congress #'s in them?
∂28-Dec-89 1420 JMC cars
To: JMC
It seems to me that it might be a good idea to take my car over to Gary's
today so it does not have to be done at the crack of dawn tomorrow. How
about it?
∂28-Dec-89 1409 JMC dinner
To: JMC
The place that Whit & Mary had in mind is booked up and could not give us
a reservation after 5pm(which they said we could be a bit late for), if
this is too early, let me know, as the other possibility under consideration
is for Whit to cook dinner. It ought to be tonight though, becouse their
usual friday night affair is on for tomorrow night, and while you are
certainly always welcome to that, it is considered a separate issue from
tonights proposal. Also the Schroppel's will probably be joining us tonight.
∂28-Dec-89 1307 JMC I'm sending you
To: efreeman@USWEST.COM
three papers. Sorry for the delay. Your card got buried.
∂28-Dec-89 1258 JMC receipt for hotel
To: MPS
is in my out box. I did pay. Did MCC really also pay?
∂27-Dec-89 2243 Mailer Affirmative Action: A Worldwide Disaster
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
by Thomas Sowell appears in the 1989 December Commentary.
I'll leave it in the CSD lounge.
∂27-Dec-89 1615 JMC discrepancy
To: cn.mcs@FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDU
My daughter Sarah found this one. According to what you explained to
me if it's an edited collection, it should go under the title, while
if there are several authors, it would go under the first author's name.
Is that correct? If so, Socrates is correct and the book is wrong.
∂27-Dec-89 1603 SMC wrong number?
The book "Techno-bandits" by Melvern, et al, has the number HD38.7T43
printed in it inside. the Socrates listing (and therefore your home file)
has it listed as HD38.7M45.
∂27-Dec-89 1603 JMC wrong number?
To: JMC
The book "Techno-bandits" by Melvern, et al, has the number HD38.7T43
printed in it inside. the Socrates listing (and therefore your home file)
has it listed as HD38.7M45.
∂27-Dec-89 1554 JMC Livermore forms
To: MPS
I put the new batch in my file box. They renewed my
consulting contract. If I actually consult for them
this year, we'll need to be able to fill out the forms.
∂26-Dec-89 1109 JMC cash
To: CLT
I'm moving $10,880 from my money market and $7,000 from the joint
money market today. $11,000 in checks were deposited by me, you
have the $750 check from ucsd. The car cost a total of $27,399
including tax and license and the warranty extension to
seven years.
∂26-Dec-89 1104 JMC re: Final version of Networks considered harmful.
To: jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 26 Dec 89 13:54:20 -0500.]
I don't have the Wulf report. Thanks for the forwarding; I hadn't
thought of Bob Kahn in that connection.
Can I come and see you the next time I'm in New York? Both the
science policy and theory formation questions interest me.
Good luck with your research plans. I don't have to make
retirement plans yet. I'm 62 and will probably hold out till 70
if my health continues good.
∂26-Dec-89 1020 JMC car insurance done
To: CLT
I called CSAA and insured the BMW with the same coverages as the
Cadillac. I'll cancel the Mazda coverage when title is transferred.
The car broker was right; I was covered for 30 days by CSAA.
I put the policy above the file cabinet.
∂26-Dec-89 1008 JMC Final version of Networks considered harmful.
To: lederberg@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
This is more-or-less accepted for publication late this year in CACM.
Many thanks to everyone who commented. Some of the comments
have been incorporated.
NETWORKS CONSIDERED HARMFUL - FOR ELECTRONIC MAIL
Electronic mail (email), using ARPANET and other networks has
been in use for almost 20 years. The widespread use of telefax
is more recent. However, unless email is freed from
dependence on the networks, I predict it will be supplanted by
telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages over
telefax. These advantages include the fact that
information is transmitted more cheaply as character streams than
as images. Multiple addressees are readily accommodated.
Moreover, messages transmitted as character streams can be readily
filed, searched, edited and used by computer programs.
The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email
is separated from special networks is that telefax works by using
the existing telephone network directly. To become a telefax
user, it is only necessary to buy a telefax machine for a price
between $1,000 and $5,000 (depending on features) and to
publicize one's fax number on stationery, on business cards and
in telephone directories. Once this is done anyone in the world
can communicate with you. No complicated network addresses and
no politics to determine who is eligible to be on what network.
Telefax is already much more widely used than email, and a
Japanese industry estimate is that 5 percent of homes will have
telefax by 1995 and 50 percent by 2010. This is with a $200
target price.
Email could work the same way at similar costs, but
because of a mistake by DARPA about 1970, i.e. making a
special-purpose, special-politics network the main vehicle for
electronic mail, it was combined with other network uses that
require higher bandwith and packet switching.
Another mistake was UUCP. It uses the telephone network,
but three features inherited from its use within Bell Telephone
Laboratories made its widespread adoption a blunder.
1. It assumes that both parties are using the UNIX
operating system rather than using a general mail protocol. This
is only moderately serious, because some other systems have been
able to pretend to be UNIX sufficiently well to implement the
protocols.
2. It requires that the message forwarding computer have
login privileges on the receiver. This has resulted in a system
of relaying messages that involves gateways, polling and
complicated addresses. This results in politics in getting
connected to the gateways and causes addresses often to fail.
3. Today forwarding is often a service provided free
and therefore of limited expandibility.
There has been a proliferation of networks and message
services on a variety of time-sharing utilities. Some of them
are commercial and some of them serve various scientific
disciplines and commercial activities. The connections between
these networks require politics and often fail. When both
commercial and noncommercial networks must interact there are
complications with charging. A whole industry is founded on the
technologically unsound ideas of competitive special purpose
networks and storage of mail on mail computers. It is as though
there were dozens of special purpose telephone networks and no
general network.
The solution is to go to a system that resembles fax in that
the ``net addresses'' are just telephone numbers. The simple form
of the command is just
MAIL <use>@$<telephone number>,
after which the user engages in the usual dialog with the mail system.
The sending machine dials the receiving machine just as is
done with fax. When the receiving machine answers, the sender
announces that it has a message for <user>. Implementing
this can involve either implementation of protocols in a user machine or a
special machine that pretends to be a user of the receiving machine or
local area network. The former involves less hardware, but the latter
involves less modification to the operating system of the receiving
machine.
I have heard various arguments as to why integrating
electronic mail with other network services is the right idea. I
could argue the point theoretically, but it seems better to
simply point out that telefax, which originated more recently
than electronic mail is already far more widespread outside
the computer science community. Indeed it
is often used for communicating with someone who is thought to
have an email address when getting the forwarding connections
right seems too complicated.
The World of the Future
Eventually, there will be optical fiber to every home or
office supplied by the telephone companies. The same transmission
facilities will serve telephone, picturephone, telefax, electronic
mail, telnet, file transfer, computer utilities, access to the Library of
Congress, the ``National Jukebox'' and maybe even a national
video jukebox. In the meantime, different services require
different communication rates and can afford different costs
to get them. However, current telephone rates transmit substantial
messages coast-to-coast for less than the price of a stamp. Indeed
the success of telefax, not to speak of Federal Express, shows that
people are willing to pay even higher costs.
What about the next 20 years of email?
There are two kinds of problems, technical and political.
Guess which is easier.
The main technical requirement is the development of a
set of point-to-point telephone mail protocols. Any of several
existing network mail protocols could be adapted for the purpose.
Presumably the same kinds of modems and dialers that are used for fax would
be appropriate but would give better transmission speeds.
Perhaps the organizationally simplest solution would be
to get one or more of the various UNIX consortia to add a direct
mail telephone protocol to UUCP. Such a protocol would allow
mail to be addressed to a user-id at a telephone number. The
computer would require a dialer and a modem with whatever
characteristics were taken as standard and it would be well to
use the same standards as have been adopted for telefax. It
mustn't require pre-arrangement between the sending and receiving
computers, and therefore cannot involve any kind of login.
Non-UNIX systems would then imitate the protocol.
Fax has another advantage that needs to be matched and
can be overmatched. Since fax transmits images, fully formatted
documents can be transmitted. However, this loses the ability to
edit the document. This can be beaten by email, provided there
arises a widely used standard for representing documents that
preserves editability.
The political problem is more difficult, because
there are enormous vested interests in the present lack of system.
There are the rival electronic mail companies. There are the
organizers of the various non-profit networks. There are the
engineers developing protocols for the various networks.
I've talked to a few of them, and intellectual arguments have
remarkably little effect. The usual reply is, ``Don't bother
me, kid, I'm busy.''
It would be good if the ACM were to set up a committee
to adopt a telephone electronic mail standard. However, I fear
the vested interests would be too strong, and the idea would
die from being loaded with requirements for features that
would be too expensive to realize in the near future.
Fortunately, there is free enterprise.
Therefore, the most likely way of getting direct
electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of hardware
as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for
connecting to the current variety of local area networks (LANs).
The most likely way for this to be accomplished is for the makers
of fax machines to offer ASCII service as well. This will
obviate the growing practice of some users of fax of printing out
their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax,
whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them
back into computer form.
This is probably how the world will have to get rid of
the substantially useless and actually harmful mail network industry.
More generally, suppose the same need can be met either
by buying a product or subscribing to a service. If the costs
are at all close, the people who sell the product win out
over those selling the service. Why this is so I leave to psychologists,
and experts in marketing, but I suppose it has to do with
the fact that selling services requires continual selling to
keep the customers, and this keeps the prices high.
I hope my pessimism about institutions is unwarranted,
but I remember a quotation from John von Neumann to some effect
like expecting institutions to behave rationally is like
expecting heat to flow from a cold place to a hot place.
I must confess that I don't understand the relation
between this proposal and the various electronic communication
standards that have been adopted like X25 and X400. I only note
that the enormous effort put into these standards has not
resulted in direct telephone electronic mail or anything else as
widely usable as telefax.
I am grateful for comments from many people on a version
distributed by electronic mail to various BBOARDS.
∂26-Dec-89 1004 JMC re: E-mail
To: lederberg@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 26 Dec 89 08:31:00 -0500.]
The article just appeared as a Viewpoint in the December CACM. However,
last summer I sent it to some electronic bulletin boards. I got
many comments about the electronic publication (essentially all
favorable) and just one about the printed one. I'll go buy
the NYT and see if their reference is based on the electronic
or printed publication. If so, it will really indicate that
newspapers are dinosaurs waiting for the next asteroid.
The next message will be the article. What it deplores is that
electronic mail has been handled so badly that it is being beaten
by a technology that is inferior for electronic mail.
∂25-Dec-89 1840 JMC Imagen
To: tom@SCORE.Stanford.EDU
Our Imagen reports and error message of 88 which is not in
the book.
∂25-Dec-89 1831 JMC
To: ME
ns is garbling.
∂24-Dec-89 1050 JMC
To: CLT
Car phone 999-7297.
∂22-Dec-89 1626 Mailer Must be the greenhouse effect
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
a237 1612 22 Dec 89
AM-Weatherpage Weather,0275
Cold Spell One of Worst On Record
By The Associated Press
Record low temperatures were reported in more than 125 cities across
the nation Friday while readings above freezing were limited to
Florida, the Pacific Coast and southwestern deserts.
More records were expected to fall Friday night. The National
Weather Service said the number of record lows makes the cold snap
one of the most severe on record for nation's central and eastern
region.
∂22-Dec-89 0713 Mailer Castro?
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Now that communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe,
how much longer does Castro have? Or is he
different?
∂22-Dec-89 0240 JMC re: thesis
To: shankar@CSL.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Thu, 21 Dec 89 14:16:03 -0800.]
Thanks for the references.
I'll send you a copy of the review.
∂21-Dec-89 1921 JMC
To: CLT
TIMOTHY WANTS HIS MAMA.
∂21-Dec-89 1431 JMC re: thesis
To: shankar@CSL.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Thu, 21 Dec 89 14:16:03 -0800.]
Thanks. I now have the NYT review.
∂21-Dec-89 1152 JMC thesis
To: shankar@CSL.SRI.COM
What is the bibliographic reference to your thesis - or better to a paper
based on it?
∂21-Dec-89 1015 JMC re: autism and common-sense reasoning
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU, VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU sent Thu, 21 Dec 89 08:28:32 -0800.]
I left out a step in my reasoning. The chemical state sometimes
affects action directly or directly produces subgoals. For some
reason we tend to rationalize what we are going to do anyway.
All this needn't have much to do with AI. I can't see any reason to
build any kind of subrationality into programs.
∂21-Dec-89 0934 JMC re: autism and common-sense reasoning
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU, VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU sent Thu, 21 Dec 89 08:28:32 -0800.]
I will reply specifically when I read the article. However, it seems
to me that it will be like other situations in which a relatively
simple chemical or structural change in the brain has complex
ideational effects. Consider depression, which is a quite good
example of a chemical change causing beliefs, i.e. that life isn't
worth living. Here are some remarks.
1. In evolution the ideas are late. The direct effects of the
chemicals on behavior precede the ability to think about things.
2. Our reasoning is limited by the ability to take into account
only a small subset of our knowledge and beliefs. Moreover,
the reasoning is nonmonotonic. Therefore, our conclusions
depends on what subset of our knowledge we take into account.
3. In some way the chemical situation causes us to retrieve
persistently facts filed under a certain heading, e.g. gloomy
in the case of depression.
This isn't much of a theory. Maybe after I read the article, I'll
have an idea about what class of beliefs autism selects. However,
since autism develops from early childhood, it probably affects
what beliefs are formed in the first place.
∂19-Dec-89 1731 JMC re: nonmon90 workshop
To: konolige@AI.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue, 19 Dec 89 16:17:02 PST.]
Actually I don't know the place and time but would like to come
and make a small presentation.
∂18-Dec-89 0131 JMC reply to message
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 17-Dec-89 12:24-PT.]
First trivia: Mr. → Dr. and three misspellings.
Actually you can omit any title.
surprising,weighed,ostracized
Your chance of publication will be greater if you shorten it
by reducing its redundancy.
Maybe that was Sakharov's motive. Maybe, also, he didn't trust
Shipler quite apart from any risk to himself. Having read what
he wrote, I wouldn't trust him either to give an accurate sense
of what I would tell him. He has too many conceptions of his
own.
∂17-Dec-89 2251 JMC My ATM card didn't work at Safeway.
To: CLT
Either the change of card invalidated the PIN
or we're overdrawn.
I'll check tomorrow.
∂17-Dec-89 1105 JMC re: Water Hammer?
To: siegman@SIERRA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sat, 16 Dec 89 17:06:38 PST.]
I shouldn't reply, since I don't actually know, but I think that
a plumbing system contains some blind vertical pipes containing
air, and the momentum of water flowing in the pipes is
relieved by compressing this air. If the pipe has too little
air (or maybe too much), you get water hammer, and the solution
is to fiddle with some valves, e.g. turn off the water to
the house, open the valve at the top of the pipe, let some
water run out of a faucet somewhere thus letting air
into the pipe and then close the valve again.
∂16-Dec-89 2308 JMC
To: MPS
Please finish the MCC invoice without the hotel.
∂15-Dec-89 2334 JMC reply to message
To: jolle@PSUVAX1.CS.PSU.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 15 Dec 89 19:54:11 -0500.]
I have not thought about message passing architecture. Good
luck with your application.
∂15-Dec-89 1255 JMC re: Winter TA
To: paek@NEON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 15 Dec 1989 11:40:29 PST.]
I'll be in for the rest of the afternoon.
∂15-Dec-89 0915 JMC re: lunch
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 15-Dec-89 08:21-PT.]
Good, 1145 ok?
∂14-Dec-89 1445 JMC re: Winter TA
To: stager@SUNBURN.STANFORD.EDU, paek@CS.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from stager@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU sent Thu, 14 Dec 1989 14:39:49 PST.]
Mr. Paek: Please talk with me first.
∂13-Dec-89 1310 Mailer Bush
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I'm inclined to agree with the criticism of Bush over the
delegation to China unless there was some secret agreement
that was worth it. My opinion also is that
an agreement on continued facilities in China for
spying on the Soviet Union is probably not worth it.
∂13-Dec-89 1150 Mailer Did she or didn't she?
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Here are excerpts from an AP story.
I find no fault in El Salvador releasing her, given that
they have determined that having a large cache of explosives in
your back yard is insufficient evidence of responsibility for
them. I am interested in the probabilities people would assign
to her having known about the explosives before her arrest. This
depends on your subjective probability that someone who came to
El Salvador in 1985 "to work for Christian Education Seminars"
would be sufficiently sympathetic to the FMLN to hide arms for
them. Liberals and leftists can best answer the question, because
they can ask whether their sympathies might induce them to hide
such arms. Whether would have been virtuous or immoral to give
the FMLN such aid is not being asked. Since I'm a known conservative,
you can infer my opinion about that point. For what it is worth
I assign a probability of .7 that she knew about the arms and
.2 to the proposition that she knew her property was being used
for some anti-government purpose but avoided knowing details.
I'll give you .1 that there were no arms and it's a frameup.
That leaves .1 that the FMLN stashed the arms completely unbeknownst
to her and just happened to choose the backyard of an employee
of the Christian Education seminars.
A more general question. What's your subjective probability that
an employee of Christian Education Seminars would conceal arms for
the FMLN?
WASHINGTON (AP) - Salvadoran authorities intend to release Jennifer
Casolo, an American woman accused of storing weapons for rebels in
that country, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said today.
Cristiani ''informs me that the judge in her case has ultimately
concluded the charges against Jennifer were not fully supported by
the evidence, and that she could not thus be fairly prosecuted under
Salvadoran law,'' Dodd said in a statement released by his office.
Casolo, a 28-year-old resident of Thomaston, Conn., went to El
Salvador in 1985 to work for Christian Education Seminars, a group
that organizes tours for Americans to learn about the 10-year-old
civil war.
Casolo and two Salvadoran friends were arrested Nov. 26 after a
police raid on her house in San Salvador. From the walled garden
behind the house, police said, they uncovered 103 mortar grenades,
213 blocks of dynamite, 405 detonators, 150 feet of slow-burning fuse
and 21,945 rounds of ammunition for Soviet-made automatic rifles.
Casolo is to be expelled from El Salvador, according to the
agreement reached with Salvadoran officials, Dodd said.
On Tuesday, El Salvador's ambassador to the United States, Miguel
Angel Salaverria, said Casolo would be released promptly if she
provided police with information about the people from whom she
rented her house.
∂13-Dec-89 1048 JMC reply to message
To: fraenkel%wisdom.weizmann.ac.il@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 13 Dec 89 20:10:24 -0200.]
Newell, Simon and Shaw spoke at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project
on Artificial Intelligence in 1956 and described their language
IPL-I (Information Processing Language). It used list structure and
had list structure primitives. They made a point in their lectures
of using recursive procedures. Each such procedure had to provide
for its own recursion by saving data on push-down lists. I learned
about recursive subroutines from them. The IPLs, they got up to
IPL-V, were not programming languages in the sense made popular
by Fortran (announced 1954?, available 1957); IPL code looked like
machine language. In 1958 I introduced LISP, taking list structure
and recursion from IPL and an algebraic style from Fortran. However,
I decided to make the saving associated with recursion automatic
and to use a stack (I called it a public push-down list). However,
there is no way to establish that IPL programs were the first recursive
programs ever. Many programming ideas were incorporated in individual
programs without ever being written up for publication. For example,
LISP uses garbage collection and certainly popularized the idea, since
that bit of jargon comes from LISP. However, I was told that some
people used garbage collectors in individual programs before LISP
came along.
Here are three references to my work. I believe the former contains a
reference to the Newell-Shaw-Simon work. Otherwise, Newell or Simon
at Carnegie-Mellon can help you.
>\noindent {\bf McCarthy, John (1960)}: ``Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their
*Computation by Machine,'' {\it Comm. ACM}, April 1960.
*\noindent {\bf Cartwright, Robert and John McCarthy (1979)}:
>``Recursive Programs as Functions in a First Order Theory'',
*in {\it Proceedings of the International Conference on Mathematical Studies of
*TITLE: History of Programming Languages Conference, Los Angeles, 1978.
* History of programming languages / edited by Richard L. Wexelblat.
*IMPRINT: New York : Academic Press, 1981.
* xxiii, 758 p. ; 27 cm.
*L.C. CALL NO: QA76.7.H56
*SERIES: ACM monograph series
Here are co-ordinates for Newell.
>Newell (412) 268-2602, home 421-3668
* Allen.Newell@ri.cmu.edu
∂13-Dec-89 1020 JMC re: fruitfly
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 13-Dec-89 09:39-PT.]
You understood me correctly.
∂12-Dec-89 2016 JMC Please type
To: MPS
the fruit fly paper that is in my out box into the
file drosop[f89,jmc]. The file already exists so
make your addition a new page.
∂12-Dec-89 1640 JMC memorandum
To: hk.rls@FORSYTHE.Stanford.EDU
It seems my secretary got someone else to bring it over even
before I got there. Your secretaries have two copies. On reviewing
it, I see that the only important point in it that I forgot to
mention was that outside consultants reporting at a sufficiently
high level (if possible at least two levels above the positions
considered for elimination) should be used whenever personnel
reduction is contemplated as a possibility. This applies to
computer operations in particular.
∂12-Dec-89 1311 JMC re: cs499
To: scales@NEON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 12 Dec 89 13:08:00 -0800.]
Joe's happy, so I'm happy. I'd like to see you anyway, but there's
no rush. Just check the next time you happen to be by and have time.
∂12-Dec-89 1259 JMC re: BBS Penrose Book Review
To: harnad@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 12 Dec 89 15:04:07 EST.]
If I do the 1000 word piece, could I refer to my AMS Bulletin review?
The piece would be self-sufficient.
∂12-Dec-89 1208 JMC re: index
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 12-Dec-89 11:46-PT.]
Yes, please print me a copy. I won't be long with it. Most likely
no changes will occur to me.
What do you think of the following idea? Make a list of concepts
for which certain parts of the book are relevant even if the word
for the concept doesn't occur in that part. Such references could
be indicated by italic type in the index.
∂12-Dec-89 1159 JMC re: BBS Penrose Book Review
To: harnad@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 12 Dec 89 14:10:59 EST.]
As it happens I have a draft review of The Emperor's New Mind in
hand and have a deadline to finish it by February. The review is
being written for the Bulletin of the American Mathematical
Society. It seems to me that it would be useful to publish (if
the AMS agrees) the review in both places. The intersection of
the readership of the two publications is quite small (indeed
Penrose doesn't refer to the BBS version of the Chinese room),
and it would be interesting to have Penrose's response to my
comments - responses not being customary in the Bulletin of the
AMS. The main changes I intend to make for the Bulletin are
a preliminary exposition of AI with emphasis on the mathematical
problems it raises. Also if you or Protter find my review too
long I can delete some parts and include only those of especial
interest to the audience of the particular journal.
If you wish I can email my current draft. I would welcome additional
suggestions as to the issues to be addressed.
∂12-Dec-89 1024 JMC chapter 4
To: PKR
I scanned it including reading the theorems. Unfortunately, I don't
know what ghost elements are. Let me offer encouragement if not aid.
The questions you are investigating seem worthwhile to me. Two suggestions.
1. I suspect Goguen's colimits are likely to be a more complex concept
than you will need and a barrier to readers.
2. Lots of people are going to have to know about the combination of
theories with nonmonotonic features. When you are done making discoveries,
you should think about presenting what people should know in a usable
way. This may involve relegating proofs and even lemmas to appendices -
at least in an expository document if not in the thesis. Maybe there
should be a chapter, possibly the introduction, explaining what people
need to know. Don't worry about people thereby finding your results
less difficult than they otherwise would.
∂11-Dec-89 2133 JMC re: sabbatical
To: rabin@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU
CC: CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 6 Dec 89 11:38:14 EST.]
As a visiting scholar I would come for one Stanford quarter, starting
about Oct 1. However, I would be glad to teach a course in
Epistemological Problems of Artificial Intelligence if that
were wanted. In this case I would stay for the Fall semester -
whenever that starts and would take two quarter's leave.
I might need to be paid whatever is paid for teaching
one course in that case. In principle, I could come for the
whole year, but I'm not quite sure about financing yet.
My household includes my wife, my four year old son and his nanny.
When we spent the Fall semester of 1987 at the University of Texas
at Austin, she did a lot of work arranging housing and doesn't
want to do it again. Therefore, unless things work out exactly
right, she will stay behind. In this case, I think I'll be
motivated to stay for only one semester or quarter according to
whether I do or don't teach. If I come alone, I suppose the
housing problem will be rather easy.
I'd have answered sooner except that Carolyn was on a trip.
∂10-Dec-89 2317 JMC
To: MPS
If there's a call from Holland redirect it to my home number.
∂10-Dec-89 1545 JMC re: aij
To: hewitt@AI.MIT.EDU
CC: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message from hewitt@ai.mit.edu sent Sun, 10 Dec 89 12:46:45 EST.]
I have Latexed the version you put in a file at SAIL. I will be
glad to talk to you when you come, but I am still doubtful that
I will write a commentary.
∂10-Dec-89 1026 JMC
To: ME
I need (and have Carl's permission) access to aij.tex[1,cdr].
∂08-Dec-89 1608 JMC re: hewitt
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 8 Dec 89 15:51 PST.]
The current paper reads more like a proposal to some foundation
than a contribution to a symposium on the foundations of AI.
As the latter, I think it should be (have been) rejected.
I could imagine accepting a much shorter version that omits the
general propaganda and concentrates on saying what problems are
addressed. There are some ideas about approaches, but they are
vague and should be labelled such, e.g. it should have a title
like "Some problems of and approaches to programming open
systems". However, even as such, it probably isn't exactly a
candidate approach that everyone is urged by Hewitt to adopt.
∂08-Dec-89 1515 JMC cs499
To: scales@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
CC: ag@PEPPER.Stanford.EDU
I just got a grading form for you, but Joe Weening tells me
you are working with Anoop Gupta. If so, we need to change
the forms so that he grades you.
∂08-Dec-89 1423 JMC Lifschitz
To: VAL
∂08-Dec-89 1332 cliff%computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Lifschitz
Received: from NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 8 Dec 89 13:32:18 PST
Received: from sun.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by vax.NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
via Janet with NIFTP id aa17680; 8 Dec 89 21:17 GMT
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 89 19:21:17 GMT
From: cliff%computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
Message-Id: <8912081921.AA17941@ipse2pt5.cs.man.ac.uk>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Lifschitz
John,
The people involved in the committee have now been consulted
and the head-of-department has now been in touch with
Vladimir. I can only say how grateful I am to you for alerting
me to a problem that Vladimir was clearly not in a position to
bring up himself. I think that those involved see that a
serious mistake was made (there were all sorts of problems but
it is not my intention to make excuses). Vladimir has taken
John Gurd's apology very kindly and is even prepared to go on
discussing the alternative arrangement that we were working
on.
I'd just like to add that there was absolutely nothing
"dishonourable" uncovered in our investigation - but an
uncomfortable number of errors appear to have been made in a
position which required the utmost care.
thanks again,
cliff jones
∂08-Dec-89 1115 JMC re: cheap pun
To: shoham@HUDSON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 8 Dec 1989 10:43:24 PST.]
Some say "circumcision".
∂08-Dec-89 0843 JMC re: Fruitfly paper
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 08-Dec-89 08:35-PT.]
I'll send a fax to him later today with either the corrections
or a date when I'll have them.
∂08-Dec-89 0830 JMC Stanford costs and overhead
To: siegman@SIERRA.Stanford.EDU
I have been brooding about our meeting with Rosse. My conclusion
is that it was just a let-the-faculty-blow-off-steam meeting.
To get a mule to do something, it is first necessary to get its
attention. The way is to hit it over the head with a two by four.
Something drastic may be required in the present case.
It would certainly get their attention if some faculty met
with the Government auditors and got some expenditure
disallowed as part of overhead. Maybe even the threat to
do so would be adequate.
You know more faculty than I do. Would there be any sentiment
for such an action?
∂07-Dec-89 1234 Mailer eucalyptus
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I asked the foreman of a Stanford crew removing dead eucalyptus
trees after the big freeze what it would cost to remove my dead
one. He looked at it and said he didn't think it was dead. He
was right. Conclusion: some died and some didn't, and some
people could tell which was which.
∂07-Dec-89 1156 Mailer Jack-in-the-Box
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Suppose the fearless journalists of the Stanford Daily were
persuaded to investigate. Suppose they concluded that the
operation was *probably* a shakedown. Would they dare say so
in the current atmosphere at Stanford?
∂07-Dec-89 1148 Mailer Jack-in-the-box
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I happened to be in the neighborhood and went in. All conversation
among the staff was in Spanish. Even the manager seemed to have
limited English, although he might have been simply unwilling to
talk. I asked whether anything had been settled or whether the
pickets just went away. He said they went away. I asked whether
anyone had been paid any money, and he said no.
After I left I saw a van parked on a side street and some blacks
including the middle aged man I had seen picketing yesterday. I
asked him if he was Dr. Davis and he said yes. I asked him if he
was associated with an organization, and he said he was too busy
to talk but would talk in front of Jack-in-the-Box after he got
his picketing organized. I asked him for a phone number, and he
said he didn't have one that he was willing to give out, and he
also said he didn't have a business card. He gave me a copy of
their leaflet which say what was quoted on su-etc. It has no
address or phone number for inquiries.
In my mind, fact that the staff speaks mostly Spanish increases the
probability that an incident occurred. The American inhibition
against any expression of racial hostility is a product of education,
and the knowledge that such expressions are very bad for business
is also a product of the last 50 years. Someone from Mexico might
consider the remarks cited as just an expression of personal opinion.
Of course, what she said might have been exaggerated. However, the
quotes are strictly American English bad language, and I wouldn't
expect a recent illegal immigrant to have that much facility with it.
Dr. Davis's answers increase the probability of a shakedown.
Unless he is working alone, and his helpers are all young, the
shakedown would work better if some organization and not Davis
himself were to contact Jack-in-the-Box about settling the problem.
As Bob Floyd points out there is a California law (dating from the
turn of the century) against refusal of service. It was used in
the 1940s against barber shops refusing to cut blacks' hair.
While the fine is only $100, non-trivial in 1900, the bad publicity
from conviction is very large.
It seems to me that Jack-in-the-Box is in a difficult position if
they think they are being shaken down. Any kind of public
accusation can lead to a libel suit, and even if they think they
have good evidence, prosecuting an extortion case might not be
consistent with the career ambitions of a local district
attorney. Probably they would be advised by their lawyers to pay
if the amount asked wasn't too large.
Also the border line between an intervention to settle and a
shake down may be delicate to define.
An enterprising reporter for su-etc might talk further to Davis,
Jack-in-the-Box and (say) the NAACP. Davis could be asked where
he practices and whether any organization is helping him. The
signs were professional. Ask him if he knows Arthur Greer.
The Palo Alto Police or the Santa Clara County District Attorney
could be asked about complaints or lawsuits from either side.
Someone who speaks Spanish might get more information from
the local Jack-in-the-Box people.
Oh well, it's probably not worth the trouble.
∂07-Dec-89 1114 JMC re: FAX
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 07-Dec-89 09:42-PT.]
You can give anyone who isn't an obvious salesman my home number.
I'll be in today.
∂06-Dec-89 2225 JMC Please print this page and fax it to David Chudnovsky.
To: MPS
∂03-Dec-89 1748 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:rwg@RUSSIAN.SPA.Symbolics.COM [dbailey@ew11.nas.nasa.gov: Pi]
Received: from ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 3 Dec 89 17:48:48 PST
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Date: Sun, 3 Dec 89 17:41 PST
From: Bill Gosper <rwg@RUSSIAN.SPA.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: [dbailey@ew11.nas.nasa.gov: Pi]
To: "dek@sail.stanford.edu"@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM, "jmc-lists@sail.stanford.edu"@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Supersedes: <19891129020457.4.RWG@TSUNAMI.SPA.Symbolics.COM>
Included-msgs: <8911281619.AA29734@ew11.nas.nasa.gov>,
The message of 28 Nov 89 08:19 PST from dbailey@ew11.nas.nasa.gov,
The message of 28 Nov 89 08:19 PST from David Bailey
Comments: Retransmission of failed mail.
Message-ID: <19891204014151.9.RWG@TSUNAMI.SPA.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 89 08:19 PST
From: David Bailey <dbailey@ew11.nas.nasa.gov>
To: rwg@yukon.scrc.symbolics.com
Subject: Pi
You may be interested in the attached e-mail, which Kanada sent to
me while I was away for a Thanksgiving vacation.
DHB
--------------------------------
From z30058%tansei.cc.u-tokyo.JUNET@relay.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp Sat Nov 18 08:56:04 1989
Received: Sat, 18 Nov 89 08:55:55 PST from ew11.nas.nasa.gov by orville.nas.nasa.gov (5.59/1.2)
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Date: Sun, 19 Nov 89 01:56:24+0900
From: z30058%tansei.cc.u-tokyo.JUNET@relay.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Yasumasa KANADA)
Return-Path: <z30058@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.junet>
Message-Id: <8911181656.AA17203@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.junet>
To: dbailey@ew11.nas.nasa.gov, kanada@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.JUNET
Status: R
Hi! I have just now, 19 Nov. '89, 1 A.M. JST, about 40 minutes ago,
succeeded to generate pi little bit more than the
current record of 1 billion. Then, I would like to ask to Prof. Dr.
Chudnovsky for the last 100 digits of current record, 1,011,196,691, in
order to certify my calculation. Could you please re-direct this message
to them? Y. Kanada
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Machine used: S-820/80E with main memory of 512 MB and ES of 6 GB,
both are the same as before, but the machine is 10 to 20% slower
than S-820/80 because of SRAM access time used for the main memory.
Main and verification algorithms are the same as before, as you know.
Main job: Started time 9 Nov. '89 9h 36m, end time 13 Nov. '89 13h 31m.
Elapsed time is 99h 55m. CPU time is 74h 30m 34s.
Verification job: Started time 13 Nov. '89 13h 32m, end time 19 Nov. '89
0h 59m. Elapsed time is 131h 27m. CPU time is 85h 57m 28s.
Decimal digits: 2↑30-25=1,073,741,799.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
∂06-Dec-89 2134 Mailer re: Racism at local Jack-in-the-Box
To: RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, S.STONEKING@HAMLET.STANFORD.EDU,
SU-ETC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RWF sent 06 Dec 89 1839 PST.]
I checked the phone books for Palo Alto, San Mateo, San Mateo North County,
Los Altos and San Jose, white and yellow. There is no Maurice Davis listed
in the general listing under physicians or the psychiatry specialty listing.
There is a Maurice R. Davis in Cupertino, but he doesn't have M.D. after
his name. There is a Davis, Maurice-Bud in San Francisco. Of course,
this isn't conclusive; he might be new or not in practice.
One possibility is that this is a shakedown. A contribution of
say $10,000 by Jack-in-the-Box to some previously unheard of
organization with a name like Peninsula Citizens against Racism
might cause the pickets to go away. If Jack-in-the-Box concluded
that they were being shaken down, their lawyers might still advise
them to pay rather than risk having Davis charged with extortion.
Those were very professional looking signs. One wonders if this
has happened before.
If Davis turns out to be a sure enough psychiatrist (and not just
a patient of one), then I'd give his complaint the benefit of
the doubt on the grounds that psychiatrists have better ways of
making money than shaking down restaurant chains.
∂06-Dec-89 2032 JMC re: Qual
To: ash@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 6 Dec 1989 19:38:25 PST.]
I'm in most afternoons and am not traveling. Phone or come by when
convenient. I prefer that to making appointments.
∂06-Dec-89 1717 JMC re: Thanks
To: ortiz@ITSTD.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Wed, 06 Dec 89 17:10:20 PST.]
Good luck there, and give my regards to Ruzena Bajcsy.
∂06-Dec-89 1507 JMC re: MTC qual reading list
To: lincoln@CS.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 6 Dec 89 15:02:54 EST.]
A hard copy would be nice.
∂06-Dec-89 1446 JMC re: MTC qual reading list
To: hemenway@SUNBURN.Stanford.EDU, jcm@CS.STANFORD.EDU
CC: hemenway@CS.STANFORD.EDU, lincoln@GHOTI.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU sent Wed, 6 Dec 1989 13:23:13 PST.]
The 1987 syllabus will do. I want to send a copy to Fetzer, the
philosopher who criticized program verification and included no
technical references in his bibliography.
∂06-Dec-89 1239 JMC re: no comment
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 6 Dec 89 12:23 PST.]
I just received Federal Express the Nov 12 draft of Carl's paper. At
first sight, it doesn't seem enough different for me to want to comment.
I'll let you know definitely shortly. If you want me to do something
else, then we need to talk on the telephone, but let me think a little
first. For future reference my numbers are (home: 415 857-0672),
(office: 723-4430).
∂05-Dec-89 2138 JMC re: no comment
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 5 Dec 89 19:53 PST.]
Yes, I would be willing to read it, but I will comment only if
I can find something significant to say.
∂05-Dec-89 1810 JMC no comment
To: kirsh%cogsci-sun@UCSD.EDU
Did you get my earlier message saying I would not be able to
comment on Carl's paper?
∂05-Dec-89 1725 JMC re: [Takayasu Ito: Your Proposal]
To: peters@RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 05 Dec 89 17:20:47 PST.]
I dunno. It doesn't correspond very well to the conversation I had
with him Nov 1. Then he emphasized Nagao as the first invitee.
I suppose something has changed. Why don't you telephone him?
∂05-Dec-89 1448 JMC sabbatical
To: rabin@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU
It is now time for me to apply for sabbatical leave if I'm going
to do it. Is everything arranged? I was expecting some kind of
invitation from Harvard, but I don't need a piece of paper.
∂05-Dec-89 1233 JMC Chinese names
To: MPS
The man's family name is Ma; Xiwen is his given name. Here's how
you can almost always tell which is which. In Chinese usage they
put the family name first, but sometimes Chinese in Western
countries put the given name first. However, the family name is
always one syllable and the given name is almost always two
syllables. Of course, many Chinese in the West use a Christian
given name, either for convenience or for Christianity. Often
they have a Chinese given name as well.
I'll get around to answering his letter.
∂05-Dec-89 1127 JMC
To: VAL
Kowalski, Robert Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, University of London,
180 Queen's Gate, London SW72BZ, UK
011 44 1 589 5111.
86 Dora Rd. Wimbledon, SW 19
(home: 01-947-0419)
∂05-Dec-89 0043 Mailer re: Bozo Bush vs. Chinese students [was Re: Recent su.etc Statistics]
To: poser@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from poser@csli.stanford.edu sent 5 Dec 89 07:17:17 GMT.]
Putting I.F. Stone, Martin Luther King and Earl Warren together is
confusing. Stone put out a weekly magazine. The accusations that
he followed the Communist Party were based on specific things he
wrote, e.g. transition from advocate of collective security to
advocate of avoiding an imperialist war at the time of the
Soviet-German pact and the transition to beating Hitler at all
costs at the time when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The
charges against Martin Luther King were of a lesser magnitude
and were based on certain associations. How well founded they
were I haven't a clear idea. As for Warren, this required
a leap of faith from believing that the decisions of the
Warren court were harmful to inferring that he was therefore
an agent of the communists. Few made this leap.
If RWF has read what Lindbergh actually said, I defer to his
opinion.
∂04-Dec-89 2201 Mailer re: World War II
To: les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU sent 5 Dec 89 05:42:44 GMT.]
Les is right that the slogan was Wilson's, but both parties in 1940
were advocating us staying out. The 1940 election was after the
fall of France when only Britain and its dominions were fighting
against Hitler. Maybe it was after the Germans conquered Norway
too.
∂04-Dec-89 2158 JMC re: World War II
To: les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent 5 Dec 89 05:42:44 GMT.]
I think Les is right about the slogan, but both candidates in 1940
were advocating staying out.
∂04-Dec-89 1946 JMC Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence
To: phil@UB.D.UMN.EDU
I agree to being a member of the Editorial Board.
I'm pleased that the journal will welcome controversial
articles, but I hope controversy won't amount to more than
half the content, although what's controversy and what isn't
is perhaps harder to distinguish in philosophy than in AI.
I hope philosophers will be interested in AI points of view
and will help with some of the epistemological problems of
AI.
Let me make some incidental comments on your Sept. 1988 article
in CACM and the ensuing controversy.
1. Hardly any computer scientists read CACM any more. I only
noticed the controversy when I picked up Jon Barwise's comments
on the controversy at CSLI. When I mentioned the controversy
incidentally to a talk on a proposal for a programming language
called Elephant 2000 with a speech act i-o language, hardly any
of my audiences had noticed the controversy.
2. It came up in distinguishing illocutionary and perlocutionary
specifications of computer programs. The illocutionary specs
involve only relations between inputs and outputs. The
perlocutionary specs involve what the program accomplishes in the
world. A program that acts in the world, e.g. controls air
traffic, needs both kinds of specs. Verifying the perlocutionary
specs has to be based on assumptions about the world - on how the
program's inputs reflect facts about the world and on what the
program's outputs do. In Hoare's examples only illocutionary
specs were appropriate. Neither you nor the people who argued
with you made the distinction.
3. My opinion is that you should have paid attention to the recent
literature on program verification. None of your references is to
that literature, neither to textbooks nor to current papers. If,
for example, it was your opinion that the work of Boyer and Moore
and their students wasn't worthwhile, you should have referred to
the work and said so, however briefly. The referees should have
required such references.
Actually this comment applies also to articles in the
new journal. It seems to me that it won't dampen controversy
for the editors and referees to require reference and comment on
relevant work in the other field. Thus philosophers should refer
to relevant AI work and AI people should refer to relevant
philosophy. Enforcing this requirement may require extensive
changes in some articles without suppressing anyone's controversial
views.
I recently reviewed the book "The Question of Artificial
Intelligence" edited by Brian Bloomfield. It had hardly any
references to the technical literature. The article on
philosophy and AI had just one technical reference out of 160 and
that dated 1950. I am now reviewing Roger Penrose's "The
Emperor's New Mind", and that has no technical references to AI at all
- only references to philosophical controversies about AI.
There are plenty of physics and mathematics references.
∂04-Dec-89 1833 Mailer re: World War II
To: RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, poser@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RWF sent 04 Dec 89 1748 PST.]
Hitler invaded Poland on 1939 Sept 1 right after the Soviet-German
Non-Agression Pact. Britain and France promptly declared war on
Germany. The U.S. did not. The U.S. did not declare war on Germany
until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 1941 Dec 7 and
Germany declared war on the U.S. later that week. We had been helping
Britain and the Soviet Union with Lend-Lease, a program that gave
them supplies including weapons for IOUs which we eventually forgave.
Our not getting in earlier cannot be described as a mistake in
the sense of someone miscalculating. We did not get in because
there was widespread opposition. One of the Democratic Party's
slogans in 1940 for the re-election of Roosevelt was "He kept us
out of war". The Republicans also opposed entering the war in
the 1940 elections. In 1939 the coalition included communists
and people influenced by them who switched from advocating
stopping Hitler to becoming "anti-war" within a week of the
Soviet-German non-Agression Pact. It also included people who
didn't think Hitler was so bad, e.g. possibly Lindbergh. The
communists and the people they influenced switched when Hitler
attacked the Soviet Union on 1941 June 22. The right wingers all
switched when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. There was also
an isolationist movement traditional in American society. One of
them, Jeanette Rankin of Montana even voted against the
Declaration of War after Pearl Harbor.
From the beginning there were people on both the left and right
who were sure we would have to fight Hitler. This included
President Roosevelt, although he evaded saying it.
∂04-Dec-89 1343 Mailer communist rationalization
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
The latest Daily People's World on sale in Kepler's Bookstore
in Menlo Park has a long article by Gus Hall, chairman of the
American Communist Party, explaining how the events in East
Germany and Czechoslovakia are in accordance with communist
ideology. Try to imagine what it says.
Incidentally, it (or some other article in that issue) refers
to Walesa and Yeltsin as capitalist dupes.
∂03-Dec-89 2335 Mailer re: Bozo Bush vs. Chinese students [was Re: Recent su.etc Statistics]
To: RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, mdbomber@PORTIA.STANFORD.EDU,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RWF sent 03 Dec 89 2230 PST.]
Doubtless, one could find still other Axis mistakes and misfortunes.
An equally long list of our own could be found. "If only X" cases
can always be found.
∂02-Dec-89 1317 Mailer Perestroika news
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Direct dialing to the Soviet Union has resumed within the last
two weeks. Country code 7, Moscow area code 095. It existed for
a while in the 1970, was cut off in 1980 as part of a crackdown
on dissent.
∂01-Dec-89 2354 JMC
To: VAL, VYK
Direct dialing to the Soviet Union is re-established.
∂01-Dec-89 2339 JMC You're in Moscow News,
To: VYK
or I suppose it's you. In the Nov 26 - Dec 3 issue, p. 12, there's
an article about Leningrader Vladislav Kreinovich's complaint about
the KGB reading his letters. The writer, Andrei Bezruchenko, is
on your side.
I'll bring in the issue of Moscow News.
∂01-Dec-89 2159 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
CC: hewitt@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 1 Dec 89 18:10 PST.]
I have read Carl's paper and have decided not to comment.
My two main previous technical comments have been obviated.
The comment on the bank withdrawal parallel program has
been obviated by the omission of that example, and my
defense of logic has been sufficiently obviated by the
discussion of caveats. The ideas advanced in the
current paper seem too vague to benefit from technical
comment, and I'm not motivated to discuss methodology
at present.
There is a significant omission in the disciplines mentioned,
namely economics. Two aspects of economics are relevant.
The first is that many interactions between organizations are
made routine by the existence of fixed prices, e.g. I don't
significantly negotiate with the grocery when I buy a gallon
of milk. Second, game theory purports to deal with many of
the competitive and co-operative phenomena the paper treats.
Mentioning this omission could not possibly be spun out
to 12 pages or even two.
∂01-Dec-89 1827 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 1 Dec 89 18:10 PST.]
OK, I did receive it. I'm printing it, and will let you know what,
if anything, I propose to do.
∂01-Dec-89 1823 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 1 Dec 89 18:10 PST.]
I received your message. Perhaps I received the email copy of the paper
some time ago and forgot. I'll look through my mail file.
∂01-Dec-89 1346 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 1 Dec 89 12:27 PST.]
I am jmc@sail.stanford.edu. I don't even understand what text I am
supposed to comment on. I don't intend to comment on the Actors
book. Are my comments of two years ago now beside the point? Sorry
to have lost track since our last discussion, but I have been
concentrating on other things.
∂30-Nov-89 1838 JMC
To: CLT
Your CSAA card is in the kitchen. Mine turned up.
∂30-Nov-89 1625 JMC re: El Salvador
To: siegman@sierra.UUCP, su-etc@SHELBY.STANFORD.EDU,
jln@PORTIA.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from siegman@sierra.UUCP sent 30 Nov 89 17:39:31 GMT.]
The reason most Stanford liberal commentators don't answer the points
raised by Nedzel is that they are in rally mode rather than argument
mode. In rally mode, you rouse people who agree with you to action
rather than attempt to convince people who disagree or are even doubtful.
You can also often get people who are not really convinced to act if
they see their friends acting or are hearing people full of conviction.
In rally mode it is a mistake to mention any point raised by the
opposition unless it lends itself to jeering.
People often act in rally mode, because they are in an environment
in which that seems to be expected. I have noticed that some
liberal comment in su-etc by someone who has not commented before
are in a mode that suggests that the proposition advanced requires
no argument; people just have to be convinced to get off their
bottoms and do their obvious duty, e.g. to send telegrams.
I sometimes wonder whether these people ever talk with anyone
who dissents from their point of view.
By the way, I recently read a pamphlet attacking the ACLU that
was substantially in rally mode. I imagine that it went to
people inclined to support the conservative organization that put
it out and rallied them to send money. Probably most of its
statements listing specific ACLU actions were correct but
selective, but its ascription of motives would probably be
unrecognizable to a supporter of the specific ACLU actions.
∂30-Nov-89 0831 JMC re: MCC
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 30-Nov-89 08:24-PT.]
Yes.
∂30-Nov-89 0057 JMC Elephant programs as sentences
To: VAL
I now have a version I would like to discuss with you. ReTex
elepha.l[f89,jmc]. It has fewer errors and typos than the
copy on your terminal.
∂29-Nov-89 1058 JMC
To: CLT
∂29-Nov-89 0915 MPS Vacation
Good morning,
I would like to take the 27, 28, and 29th off
after Xmas, if that is okay with you. Thanks.
Pat
∂28-Nov-89 1811 JMC re: crap
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, su-etc@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU,
comments@KL.SRI.COM, MRC@cac.washington.edu
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Tue 28 Nov 89 17:49:43-PST.]
MRC is probably implying more than that ``they may have had political
opinions differing from US ... . I suspect he's implying that they
took part in organizing the supply of food, arms and recruits to the FMLN.
I don't agree with assassinations even the priests were doing these
things, but I would like (probably vainly) to understand the matter
better. (1) What were they doing? (2) If the Government thought they
were recruiting for or supplying the FMLN, why weren't they arrested?
Who killed them and why did whoever did it think this was the best
thing to do?
∂28-Nov-89 1327 JMC re: Daniel Scales
To: tajnai@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 28 Nov 1989 10:44:31 PST.]
Carolyn Talcott says Scales has been working mostly with Anoop
Gupta, although qlisp is paying him. Why not ask his opinion?
∂28-Nov-89 1012 JMC re: Daniel Scales
To: tajnai@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 28 Nov 1989 10:05:21 PST.]
I didn't know that. If it isn't too late have him come and see me.
∂27-Nov-89 2047 JMC re: CV
To: RPG
[In reply to message rcvd 27-Nov-89 17:22-PT.]
Pat has it.
∂27-Nov-89 1508 JMC Distinguished Lecturer Expenses
To: MPS
∂27-Nov-89 1216 ross%cs@ucsd.edu Distinguished Lecturer Expenses
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Date: Mon, 27 Nov 89 12:16:00 PST
From: ross%cs@ucsd.edu (Steve Ross)
Message-Id: <8911272016.AA00197@cseadmin.UCSD.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Distinguished Lecturer Expenses
Cc: ross@cs.UCSD.EDU
Dr. McCarthy,
We received your letter of expenses today, but no receipts were inclosed.
Please forward any receipts you have to me at the same address. Ms. Shores
has taken another postion and I'll be handling your reimbursement. Thank you.
Steve Ross
CSE Dept.
UCSD, C-014
La Jolla, CA 92093
∂27-Nov-89 1114 JMC
To: CLT
8:30, Steve Green, ACME Security Systems, NOTES[1,JMC]/2P/2560L
∂26-Nov-89 1734 JMC
To: VAL
How about lunch tomorrow?
∂25-Nov-89 2316 JMC re: Penrose
To: ginsberg@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sat, 25 Nov 89 22:10:43 -0800.]
November is nearly gone. Yes, I have just finished my first reading
for the purpose of reviewing it for the Bulletin of the AMS.
Since the editor said he would start prodding me in February,
there will be time to discuss it, if you're interested.
Is he a supporter of the Labour Party?
I assure you neither question is precisely relevant to the review,
but when you read the book, you may notice which statements
triggered the questions.
∂25-Nov-89 1827 JMC Please get from library and copy
To: MPS
Deutch, D. (1985). Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle
and the universal quantum computer. Proc. Roy. Soc. (Lond.), A400,
97-117.
∂25-Nov-89 1622 JMC
To: SJG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Is Penrose a vegetarian?
∂24-Nov-89 2050 JMC
To: ME
Many thanks.
∂23-Nov-89 2247 JMC
To: VAL
Schwartz and Kreinovich should have their own directories.
∂22-Nov-89 0948 JMC reply to message
To: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 22 Nov 89 07:18:50 PST.]
As far as su.gay goes, I suppose it's up to the people who
post on it.
∂21-Nov-89 2235 JMC
To: JJW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Exactly how did the idea of restricting bboards arise?
∂21-Nov-89 1841 Mailer re: Distribution of "su" newsgroups
To: usenet@SHELBY.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from usenet@shelby.stanford.edu sent 22 Nov 89 01:10:07 GMT.]
This strikes me as totally unnecessary meddling. I haven't seen
any su-etc messages demanding a limited readership. Since neither
Weening nor Kolkowitz contribute to su-etc, they shouldn't vote.
∂21-Nov-89 1057 Mailer re: Tet in El Salvador
To: gangolli@WOLVESDEN.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from gangolli@wolvesden.Stanford.EDU sent 21 Nov 89 18:04:12 GMT.]
Gangolli says:
A recent news release claims that the rebels have taken
an OAS official and 10-12 Americans hostage. This is
no way to garner American support from the right or the
left.
I dunno. The right will take it as calling for vigorous action.
The left won't be offended, of course, and will use it to campaign
among the indifferent for the view that El Salvador is just to messy
to bother with. Attacking Americans was a big political success in
Lebanon. It discouraged Reagan, and the communists can hope it will
discourage Bush.
∂21-Nov-89 1021 JMC re: Expenses
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 21-Nov-89 10:05-PT.]
I'll look for the Texas receipt. They paid the hotel bill themselves
in San Diego.
∂21-Nov-89 0940 Mailer Tet in El Salvador
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
The rebel offensive in El Salvador reminds me of the North Vietnamese
Tet offensive in 1968. In both the communists put everything they
had into an attack on the cities. In Vietnam Tet was a military
disaster for the communists but a political victory. However, this
victory depended on the American left doing its part.
In El Salvador the communist offensive has petered out, presumably
with heavy losses. However, the Amercan left has not succeeded in
using the offensive to get Congress to cut off aid. Not even the
(coincidental?) murder of the priests has done that. I ascribe
the difference to Gorbachev. Working up real enthusiasm for the
rebel cause in El Salvador would require some people with the
view that communism in some form is the wave of the future.
I am open minded about who murdered the priests. If it was rightists,
were they simply crazy or were these priests especially effective
supporters of the rebels? If leftists, the motive is obvious -
to accentuate the political effect of the offensive. However,
if the priests were on their side, it would have to be an
extremely desperate measure, because even one defector would
be able to jeopardize the leftist alliance.
∂21-Nov-89 0151 JMC Thanks for your paper.
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
Are suggestions still in order? The statement of proposition 1
will give most readers unnecessary trouble. It should read ``if
all of its angles have rational tangents'' rather than ``if all
of its tangents are rational.'' Some readers will go off on a
geometric wild goose chase wondering about the tangents to a
triangle.
∂20-Nov-89 2339 JMC book
To: VAL
I had hoped the book would be out by Winter, but this
is obviously impossible. Therefore, I want to have Pat
reproduce the draft for the class. Do you have a copy
from which this can be done?
∂20-Nov-89 2119 JMC Lifschitz
To: jones@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk
I think Manchester has treated him less than honorably. If you
were considering other candidates you should have told him so.
Please transmit this opinion to your Vice-Chancellor.
∂20-Nov-89 2119 JMC
To: ME
In the last two days SAIL has hiccupped in echoing to our home terminals.
∂20-Nov-89 1741 Mailer Moscow News
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Moscow News, a weekly published in nine languages including Russian,
is one of the things that has convinced me that the changes in
the Soviet Union are real. I have left two issues in the CSD Lounge.
∂20-Nov-89 1639 Mailer silver lining to the quake
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
With their usual arrogance and stupidity, the environmentalists
have been urging that the Embarcadero Freeway (480) be torn down.
Now it is temporarily unusable, and guess what, people and
businesses that depend on the people are discovering how much
they depend on it.
∂20-Nov-89 1555 JMC
To: ME
SAIL refuses the address cliff@uk.ac.man.cs. What's the tinker?
∂20-Nov-89 1548 JMC Lifschitz
To: cliff@uk.ac.man.cs
I think the Manchester University has dealt with Vladimir Lifschitz
in a less than honorable way. Please transmit this opinion to your
Vice-Chancellor.
∂20-Nov-89 1214 JMC re: Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
To: rz@CS.CORNELL.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 20 Nov 89 00:48:21 EST.]
Thanks for the invitation. I'll get back to you. I might talk about
qlisp and its orientation towards algebraic computation, but our
project hasn't done much algebraic computation, and what it has done
I'm not the best person to discuss.
∂20-Nov-89 1213 JMC Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
To: JJW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
∂19-Nov-89 2148 rz@cs.cornell.edu Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
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Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 00:48:21 EST
From: rz@cs.cornell.edu (Richard Zippel)
Message-Id: <8911200548.AA00694@algron.cs.cornell.edu>
Received: by algron.cs.cornell.edu (4.0/N-0.08)
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
Dear Prof. McCarthy:
I don't think we've ever met, but you might know of me through
Ramin Zabih (I was his thesis advisor at MIT) or from my work on Macsyma.
From Sunday, May 6, to Saturday, May 12, 1990, a group of persons
with a common interest in computer algebra are organizing two
contiguous workshops entitled ``Computer Algebra and Differential
Equations (CADE-90)'' (Sunday morning--Wednesday noon) and ``Computer
Algebra and Parallelism (CAP-90)'' (Wednesday afternoon--Saturday
afternoon) at the Mathematical Sciences Institute (MSI) at Cornell
University. The CADE-90 organizers are Micheal Singer at North
Carolina State University and Evelyne Tournier at the University of
Grenoble. The CAP-90 organizers are John Fitch at the University of
Bath in England, Jean Della Dora at the University of Grenoble, and I.
Both committees also include Richard Zippel at Cornell University. We
are combining efforts such that persons with overlapping interest can
stay for the entire week.
We would be delighted if you would agree to come to our CAP-90
workshop (or both) and present a 45-minute to one hour lecture on
parallelism in algebraic computation. The nature of the CAP-90
workshop is that we will ask approxi- mately 10 more persons to
present single lectures, and that we will strongly encourage students
to participate and give presentations on their work. Therefore, we
would like to encourage you to ask your students to also participate
in this workshop. Following a suggestion of John Fitch, we will
organize several discussion sessions, and we might try to publish the
script of these discussions as the workshop record.
The conference budget allows us to subsidize your expenses,
including all local hotel accommodation and meal costs. The remaining
funds we will distribute fairly among the invitees to cover travel
expenses.
I am looking forward hearing from you.
Yours, Richard Zippel
Replying-To: rz@cs.cornell.edu
Reply-Subject: re: Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
Reply-Text:
[In reply to message sent Mon, 20 Nov 89 00:48:21 EST.]
Thanks for the invitation. I'll get back to you. I might talk about
qlisp and its orientation towards algebraic computation, but our
project hasn't done much algebraic computation, and what it has done
I'm not the best person to discuss.
∂19-Nov-89 1442 JMC
To: MPS
presto.1
∂19-Nov-89 1338 Mailer Bush and the collapse of communism
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Bush has reacted to the events in the Soviet Union with statesmanlike
inactivity. I think this is the correct policy.
This is opposite to the view expressed by Senate Majority Leader Mitchell.
Here's an excerpt from an AP story of Nov. 13.
Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell urged President
Bush to travel to the Berlin Wall, convene a meeting of
the Western allies and suspend trade barriers against
the Soviet Union. ''To acknowledge the tremendous
significance of the symbolic destruction of the Berlin
Wall and to give voice to the exhilaration felt by all
Americans, I urge President Bush to travel to West
Berlin,'' said Mitchell, D-Maine.
That's a bad idea. What could Bush say in West Berlin? What
he would have to do is to crow over the demise of communism.
Anything less would betray the protesters in East Germany who
are demanding the complete dismantling of communist control.
However, to do that would distract the attention of everyone
in the East from their own affairs to U.S. meddling.
The U.S. should take the lead from the Europeans. Here's an
excerpt from a Nov. 19 story. ``She'' refers to Mrs. Thatcher.
She also said security matters should continue to be
conducted through the two military alliances - the
West's North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. ''At a time of great change,
it's necessary to keep the background of stability and
security,'' she told the news conference. The leaders
emphasized their commitment to support the democratic
reforms in Eastern Europe. ''We must do every single
thing we can to encourage it,'' said Mrs. Thatcher.
''We are ready to contribute by all our means to the
installation of a healthy economy, which is the sine
qua non (essential condition) of the return to
democracy,'' Mitterrand said. Mitterrrand, Irish Prime
Minister Charles Haughey and Prime Minister Felipe
Gonzalez of Spain were named to study a proposal for a
European development bank to help modernize the
backward economies of Eastern Europe. They also were
asked to look into setting up a European foundation to
train managers from Eastern Europe and to open up EC
community education and training programs to Eastern
Europeans.
We should get involved in good time, and Bush has made it
clear that we will. What is good time? Probably, in six
months, changes will have slowed enough so that leaders and
people in Eastern Europe will be interested in what we might
have to say and offer to do.
Incidentally, I asked a Soviet visitor, the Party secretary
of his section of his institute, what the U.S. might do to
help the Soviet economy if we were inclined to do it. He
said he didn't know, because he had never thought about it.
This is a man who has been intensively involved in the
politicking associated with the elections in the Academy of
Sciences. He was willing to give a talk at Stanford about
these elections, but the Stanford sovietology community,
both conservative and liberal, seemed to feel it had heard
enough from actual Soviets recently.
My conclusion is that we should wait a while before initiating
serious economic proposals to the Soviet Union. Naturally,
we should pay attention to any proposals they might make.
It will be interesting to see if Gorbachev makes any.
Mitchell's statement that Bush should go to Berlin is, I hope, just
politics. It's just a way of overcoming the President's advantage
over Congress in the conduct of foreign affairs. I hope he has let
the Soviets and the Western Europeans know that his proposal wasn't
serious. After all, he might be President some day, and he shouldn't
want them to think he is an impulsive flake.
Maybe the major difference between liberals and conservatives over
economic aid to the East is that the conservatives want to condition
it on a substantial degree of demilitarization. Above all
conservatives don't want to subsidize the Soviet economy if it results
in increased military expenditures. Evidence is gradually becoming
available that the Soviets are really reducing their military. The
conservatives remember that the Soviets consistently lied about their
military expenditures in the past and announced fake reductions from
time to time. The more the genuineness of the present reductions
becomes evident to all sections of the conservative community, the
larger aid package they will eventually agree to.
The liberals have always minimized Soviet military power, and never
worried that economic aid would increase it. Indeed they usually
don't even regard conservative worries on this score as sincere,
let alone justified.
∂19-Nov-89 0206 JMC
To: VAL
Let's discuss your presentation. 857-0672.
∂19-Nov-89 0205 JMC
To: RPG
Did you get any info from DARPA about what relative emphasis of topics?
∂17-Nov-89 2230 JMC connecting our line to TIP instead of SAIL
To: tom@SCORE.Stanford.EDU
Can that be done and still keep the printer usable?
∂17-Nov-89 2228 JMC
To: MPS
Order for me Statistical Abstracts of U.S. paper back.
∂17-Nov-89 2155 JMC re: job hunting news
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 17-Nov-89 15:33-PT.]
I would advise not considering Manchester further. I will inquire at
CMU.
∂17-Nov-89 1222 JMC re: possibility of a referee?
To: ceb@MIGHT.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 17 Nov 89 11:38:25 PST.]
If Joe is willing to express an opinion, I may be willing to endorse
it.
∂17-Nov-89 0823 Mailer re: Berlin@Deutschland
To: mrc@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU,
U.UNDERDOG@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU
CC: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU sent Tue, 14 Nov 1989 19:02:25 PST.]
I continue to be astonished at MRC's ability to tell us what people
in the different communist ruled countries want. Perhaps what he
tells us is what he thinks they ought to want.
∂17-Nov-89 0817 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, mogul@DECWRL.DEC.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RWF sent 14 Nov 89 1351 PST.]
I favor a more adventurous attitude towards having children. Intelligent
people are having too few children, and even the lower standards of living
in America today don't jeopardize the health and intellectual development
of children, although certain cultures do.
∂17-Nov-89 0811 Mailer re: Fitzwater speaks
To: holstege@NEON.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from holstege@Neon.Stanford.EDU sent 14 Nov 89 16:04:20 GMT.]
Mary Holstege writes:
You may not lay claim to any principle you are
unwilling to fight to uphold when it becomes
inconvenient to do so.
But Macaulay wrote:
But the experience of many ages proves that men may be
ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without
pity, for a religion whose creed they do not
understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.
- Macaulay, History of England, p.61
I wrote:
He's a man of principle. He'd cut his mother's throat
for a principle.
In our society, it is better that people be prepared to vote
for principles rather than fight for them.
∂16-Nov-89 1345 JMC
To: SJG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Welcome back to SAIL.
∂16-Nov-89 1336 JMC re: show and tell
To: CLT
[In reply to message rcvd 16-Nov-89 06:50-PT.]
This looks ok. I tried to reach Squires or Scherlis to ask about relative
emphasis of topics, but I didn't get either.
∂14-Nov-89 1641 JMC re: elephant 2000
To: sanu@CS.UTEXAS.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 14 Nov 89 18:38:27 CST.]
There isn't a published paper. If you provide a U.S. Mail
address, I'll send you a copy of a preliminary version when it's
ready.
∂14-Nov-89 1601 JMC Boehm
To: RPG
CC: CLT
is coming for a grand show-and-tell on Monday. I will be away the
rest of the week, and it snuck up on me. Therefore, I asked Carolyn
to arrange a meeting with you and Vladimir and Joe to discuss how
to present our stuff. I would be available by phone Thurs or Fri
and will be back Fri night.
∂14-Nov-89 1530 JMC
To: peters@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Stanley Peters
with Fuchi about after ICOT, nat. inst. in software and technology,
partly cont. of icot, Fuchi might be interested in Peters proposal
but it's fairly big money
Ito has escaped from being big shot but can talk freely to Toda (ntt) and Fuchi
recommend Nagao as consultant with some kind of title
invite Nagao to be be international colleague of csli (no money needed)
consulting professor?
visiting professor?
Ito would be interested but thinks Nagao should be clear first.
atr is between kyoto and osaka, supported by ntt stock
machine translation, vi ... biomedical (research company)
another near Sendai, maybe will start one related to ai
(intelligent cosmos) name for starting several co.s in Sendai
Nishizawa received national awards, including last week, prof at Sendai
national medal of science, usual received after retirement
3 possibilities, nagao, post icot, intelligent cosmos
joint with csd would make it more attractive
csli is perceived in Japan as not so strong in ai and software eng.
∂13-Nov-89 2203 JMC re: Stanford Visit
To: korf@CS.UCLA.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 13 Nov 89 10:46:32 pst.]
Jan 23 is good for me. I look forward to seeing you then.
∂10-Nov-89 1550 JMC Nov 10 Cross visit
To: VAL
We got the B letter, and he still hopes to fund our proposal.
He needs application info. I promised to send him some old proposal
material. He didn't get the papers I thought I sent him.
Specifically, however, he wants to know how our stuff would
fit into an intelligent agents program. He also didn't get the papers
I thought I sent him. He agreed that giving Boehm the presentation
we gave him would be appropriate. He said Boehm might be thinking that
AI was killing flies with a sledgehammer. (maybe, Why didn't you? is
worth fitting in.) However, Boehm has offered help with budget questions.
Can you think of anything else?
∂10-Nov-89 1330 Mailer re: Reunification of Germany [was Re: Thought for today]
To: singh@sierra.UUCP, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from singh@sierra.UUCP sent 10 Nov 89 17:29:09 GMT.]
That one's easy. I don't think we should oppose German
reunification if that's what the Germans on both sides of the
(former) Iron Curtain want. It certainly makes some people
nervous, but if the Germans are for it, a threat of war would be
required to prevent it. Anything less would merely make the
parties in Germany that might develop revanchist ideas more
inclined to get votes by peddling such ideas. It has become a moot
point anyway. Bush has said he doesn't care, Mitterand has said
he doesn't care and so has Shevardnadze or maybe Gorbachev himself.
Perhaps Galbraith is indeed a skeleton by now.
∂09-Nov-89 2253 Mailer Thought for today
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
"I am not particular about freedom."
"I think the Wall is a good thing, at least it has maintained the peace".
- J.K. Galbraith (in a (1977?) interview with Die Zeit. Cited by
Anthony Flew, University of Reading in American Spectator, January 1982
∂09-Nov-89 1606 JMC re: CS323 Winter Quarter
To: stager@POLYA.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Thu, 9 Nov 1989 15:31:39 PST.]
That's also ok.
∂09-Nov-89 1458 JMC Warren Thompson, nsf phoned
To: CLT
about Japanese collaboration.
We asked for 34.9k. He plans to give 28.8K which he figures will
cover 8 round trips. He eliminated the domestic travel according
to regulation. Is april fools day start still ok with us?
Amount isn't quite definite yet, but it won't be more than $28.8.
No need to call him if that's all clear. He now has your co-ordinates.
His are 202 357-9558 and wthompso@nsf.gov.
∂09-Nov-89 1441 JMC re: extra DD
To: ME
[In reply to message rcvd 09-Nov-89 14:13-PT.]
That's what I would like to do - control them with one keyboard.
∂09-Nov-89 1343 JMC dds
To: ME
I understand there are extras. If there is an available desk stand and
if no new building wiring is required, I'd like another right next to the
one I have. I want to experiment with its usefulness before SAIL goes
away.
∂09-Nov-89 1337 JMC re: SAIL DD monitors
To: JJW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, ARK@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from JJW rcvd 09-Nov-89 12:50-PT.]
If there is a stand available, and if no new building wiring would be
required, I would like a second dd screen right next to the one I
have. Although SAIL won't last long, I would like to experiment with
having a second screen. I have one of the larger monitors, but a small
one would be ok if large ones aren't available.
This doesn't answer the general question.
∂09-Nov-89 1054 JMC re: Elephant
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
[In reply to message sent Thu, 9 Nov 89 09:13:37 -0800.]
You are on the list for the next distributed draft.
∂08-Nov-89 1825 JMC re: re: Policies
To: POSTMASTER%McMaster.CA@FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from POSTMASTER%McMaster.CA@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU sent Wed, 8 Nov 89 20:25 EDT.]
I'll try to find the precise words used by the Library Committee.
Curiously enough, the dispute at Stanford never mentioned the much
raunchier newsgroups. The reason is that the underlings, who were
not enthusiastic about the censorship, didn't mention them. Also
no specific joke was ever complained about at Stanford.
Perhaps the authorities wanted to establish censorship as a principle
but quailed at the thought of going through 500 newsgroups.
∂08-Nov-89 1715 Mailer re: The education president
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM
CC: comments@KL.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Wed 8 Nov 89 10:53:29-PST.]
Ric addresses some of the issues but not all. Unaddressed are the
specific reasons for delaying actions - uncertainty about the CO2
cycle and its effects on temperature.
Ric doubts that our descendants will be richer. Note the date
on the following quotation.
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who
tell us that society has reached a turning point, that
we have seen our best days. But so said all before us,
and with just as much apparent reason ... On what
principle is it that, when we see nothing but
improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but
deterioration before us.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1830 in Edinburgh Review.
Ric has misunderstood me and probably also misunderstood the U.S.
and Japanese positions at the conference. It isn't proposed
to leave the CO2 problem to our descendants, but to do the research
needed to understand it.
(By the way I remember a conference on standardizing Lisp at which
the U.S. and Japanese were allied against European millenialism.
We were right and seem to have prevailed).
Since Ric's discussion is purely qualitative, he doesn't address
my estimate of trillion dollar costs.
As I have said before, worldwide CO2 emissions can be reduced if
necessary and CO2 removed from the atmosphere. To do the former,
we can go to nuclear power for electricity and heating and go
to electric cars after developing a suitable battery. Liquid
hydrogen powered cars will also work. Both automobile solutions
require an enormous source of electricity, i.e. nuclear again.
CO2 can be removed by cutting down forests, not burning the wood,
and replanting the forests. It would be necessary to do this
several times (more than two, less than ten).
Ric refers to my ideas as science fiction. They aren't intended
as fiction but as proposals for study. There inclusion in these
discussions has a lesser purpose. It is merely to show that
taking a different attitude than that of the environmentalists
is possible and necessary.
Humanity is likely to suffer greatly if we don't eventually think
ambitiously about how to rearrange our planet. However, the
consequences are unlikely to emerge in my grandson's lifetime, and the
understanding to decide what to do and the resources to do it will be
much greater then.
Ric says that no environmentalist takes the positions I
ascribe to them. Here are some quotes from my bad guys file.
I would be happy if Ric would read these guys out of the
environmentalist movement, but he should remember that
Train is the head of one of the major environmental
organizations (maybe the World Wildlife Fund).
"If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for
us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy
because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking
for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't
give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could
do mischief to the earth or to each other."
- Amory Lovins in %2The Mother Earth%1 - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22
"...Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent
of giving an idiot child a machine gun." Paul Ehrlich, %2An Ecologist's
Perspective on Nuclear Power%1, May/June 1978 issue of
Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report
"We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and
great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we
should be making anyhow for other reasons." - Russell Train,
%2Science%1 184 p. 1050, 7 June 1974
Finally, my position as to the direction of proper balance is the
reverse of Ric's. I think environmentalism has gone to far and
bears a nontrivial part of the responsibility for the fact that
my children can't afford to buy the kind of house I could afford
when I was their age. Bush has made too many concessions to the
environmentalists already.
∂08-Nov-89 1639 JMC re: ucsd visit
To: pasquale%cs@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 8 Nov 89 12:37:32 PST.]
The arrangements proposed are fine.
∂08-Nov-89 1638 JMC re: Policies
To: POSTMASTER%McMaster.CA@FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 8 Nov 89 16:34 EDT.]
Here is the sequence of events.
1. Brad Templeton finds the unmoderated
rec.humor too raunch and establishes the moderated rec.humor.funny.
2. Jonathan Richmond at M.I.T. finds a joke in rhf racist and
attacks Templeton.
3. Richmond gets no satisfaction from Templeton or from newsgroup
people or even from his fellow Jews.
4. A newspaper columnist in Waterloo, where Templeton lives, succeeds
in raising a flap at the University of Waterloo.
5. Compromise in Waterloo. University gets only G-rated jokes.
6. June Genis mentions the flap to John Sacks of Stanford Data Center.
7. Stanford Administration gurgles for two months, when Vice-President
for Information Resources makes two underlings ban the file and take
responsibility.
8. I hear about it and organize electronic petition.
9. President of Stanford refers issue to Academic Senate.
10. Academic Senate Steering Committee asks Committee on Libraries
for a recommendation.
11. Committee on Libraries says that electronic media shouldn't be
treated differently from print media, and the policy is universality
tempered only by cost.
12. Steering Committee of Senate asks Street if he wants to back down.
13. Street and President Kennedy back down and restore rhf with
grumpy remarks about the Committee on Libraries.
14. No further flap on this issue at Stanford.
∂08-Nov-89 1625 JMC re: global warming seminar tonight 7:30 in Cubberly
To: rick@HANAUMA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 8 Nov 89 16:23:40 PST.]
I'd go too but for a previous commitment.
∂08-Nov-89 0922 Mailer re: The education president
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Wed 8 Nov 89 08:34:44-PST.]
Steinberger says:
And thus we perpetuate a crisis where the unborn
citizens of the future will have all the more reason to
damn their ancestors of the twentieth century for their
self-centered short-sightedness.
I don't think our descendants with their robot servants and
20 room houses and 30 weeks of work per year will have any
more reason to damn us than we have to damn our ancestors
who worked 12 hours a day and saw half of their children
die.
Before that he says,
And so we postpone once again the day where significant
environmental laws are passed.
The environmentalists world-wide are on a ``power trip''.
Their leaders are on a real power trip and the followers
are on a vicarious power trip. What's the evidence?
They are more interested in getting ``significant environmental
laws'' than in deciding what to do. On CO2 they propose various
tokens, but can't bring themselves to agree that nuclear energy
is the solution to the electricity problem, because it would
spoil their "no enemy on the left" attitude toward their
extremists.
The CO2 problem really does require more study before expensive (many
trillion dollar) action is taken. That's right, trillion not billion.
There are at least two reasons. First the effect of increased CO2 is
unknown because the current models don't take into account several
relevant effects, e.g. they are only starting to take into account the
effect on cloudiness. Second the largest sources and sinks of CO2
seem to be geological (see a Scientific American article of the last
year), namely volcanoes and deposition of carbonates on ocean bottoms
followed by subduction.
However, we really ought to be taking a quite different long term
attitude towards the atmosphere and the global temperature
balance. If it is really true that small amounts of various
substances in the upper atmosphere affect the temperature
equilibria, then this means that we can control the
temperature by adding substances to the upper atmosphere.
In the long run we will need to do this in order to prevent
the next ice age. Our rich descendants will figure it out.
The environmentalist anti-earthman attitude is that Nature
is benign and that people are intruders in a wilderness
planet. Both propositions are false. The old image of
conquering nature is better, although regarding the
world as a garden to be rearranged to suit humanity
is still a better analogy.
If this seems to be a harsh assessment of environmentalism, it is
because it is meant to sound that way.
∂07-Nov-89 1524 JMC re: ucsd visit
To: pasquale%cs@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 7 Nov 89 14:34:39 PST.]
I will arrive in San Diego
Sunday usair, 2686 sj-san diego, 5:50-7:07pm.
Return Monday night aa 474 - 7:55-9:16
I will need a hotel reservation for Sunday night and instructions
or help on where and when to appear.
Here is my title and abstract, which I sent to Christos some time ago.
Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts (preliminary)
Abstract: Elephant 2000 is a vehicle for some ideas about
programming language features.
1. Input and output are in an I-O language whose sentences are
meaningful speech acts approximately in the sense of philosophers
and linguists. These include questions, answers, offers,
acceptances, declinations, requests, permissions and promises.
2. The correctness of programs is partially defined in terms of
proper performance of the speech acts. Answers should be
truthful, and promises should be kept. Sentences of logic
expressing these forms of correctness can be generated
automatically from the form of the program.
3. Elephant source programs may not need data structures, because
they can refer directly to the past. Thus a program can say that
an airline passenger has a reservation if he has made one and
hasn't cancelled it.
4. Elephant programs themselves are represented as sentences of
logic. Their properties follow from this representation without
an intervening theory of programming or anything like Hoare
axioms.
5. Programs that interact non-trivially with the outside
world can have both {\it illocutionary} and {\it perlocutionary}
specifications, i.e. specifications relating inputs and outputs
and specifications concerning what they do in the world.
∂07-Nov-89 1238 JMC Please send
To: MPS
my review of Bloomfield book to Daniel Dennett.
∂07-Nov-89 1200 JMC letter to
To: MPS
Dr. Sanjay Adanki
at IBM about expenses should read
Dear Sanjay:
I much enjoyed visiting the AI group at Watson, and it seems
to me that IBM is now on the track of doing good research in AI. I
hope people found my talk interesting. The one night hotel bill that
you agreed that IBM would pay comes to
$138.41.
Sincerely,
∂07-Nov-89 1154 JMC Please send to
To: MPS
David Sanford
National Humanities Center
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
copies of
Ascribing ...
Circumscription ...
Applications of circumscription ...
∂07-Nov-89 1151 JMC re: Message from Arcady Blinov
To: COLLEEN@SUWATSON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 06 Nov 89 16:29:44 PDT.]
I'll call Arkady at his hotel to discuss arranging his talk on the elections
and getting together. Does he have a phone number at Ventura?
∂07-Nov-89 1148 JMC re: Shrinking Lattice Polyhedra
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 7 Nov 89 07:17:39 -0800.]
I'll put you on the list for the paper. The language is called Elephant,
because Elephants never forget and are faithful 100 percent. By calling
it Elephant 2000, I give notice that it may not be fully implemented
until the year 2005. If you haven't seen the abstract, I'll email it.
∂07-Nov-89 1103 JMC Ito
To: peters@CSLI.Stanford.EDU
I had a long conversation with him and made some notes we could discuss.
3-4430.
∂07-Nov-89 0920 Mailer re: shame blame
To: karish@FOREL.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from karish@forel.stanford.edu sent 7 Nov 89 15:03:19 GMT.]
Too bad I roused Chuck Karish's indignation. Otherwise, he might have
made more thoughtful comments. We have
It's that Stanford owes some respect and commitment to all of its
loyal employees, not just to tenured faculty.
Since the Daily article doesn't have the other side, we don't know
what "respect and commitment" Stanford showed. Nor do we have
an answer about what kind of rule should apply.
I also have to respond to the irrelevant attack on tenure. Stanford
would have a worse faculty and a bureaucratically politicized
faculty if it didn't have tenure. I believe I've argued this
point in detail before.
Note that Prof. McCarthy hasn't fully participated in the laissez-
faire job market for 20 years.
Another attack instead of an argument. I have participated to
the extent of turning down an offer to go elsewhere for a more
than 50 percent pay increase.
The professors might find it politic to mute their smug, elitist
pronouncements about the worth of the janitors' labor.
What pronouncements does Karish have in mind about the worth of
janitors' labor? As to elitism, Stanford competes to get the
best faculty it can. When we lose people we wanted to keep or
get, we try to figure out why. I don't see how a university can
go after and keep the best people without policies that will be
called elitist.
∂06-Nov-89 2003 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: gds@SPAM.ITSTD.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from gds@spam.itstd.sri.com sent 4 Nov 89 04:07:22 GMT.]
If a good result in raising children were guaranteed by the
mother being at home or a bad result by there being no-one
at home when a child came home from school we'd know it by
now. Most of the time when they were children my daughters
lived with me (only), and no-one was usually home when they
returned from school. I forget from which age. I asked
my older daughter, who now has two children, what she
thought of the matter, and she had no definite opinion
about whether it made much difference. Her daughter (6)
comes home to a baby sitter, and her son (almost 3)
spends the day at a day school and with the baby sitter.
Both are cheerful children. Their personalities both
seem to be continuations of those they had as very small
babies. My son (4) also seems to have had about the
same personality from a very early age.
∂06-Nov-89 1822 JMC re: Thesis news AND questions
To: alex@JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 6 Nov 1989 18:02:54 PST.]
Velo-bound suits me fine.
∂06-Nov-89 1512 Mailer re: shame blame
To: rick@HANAUMA.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from rick@hanauma.stanford.edu sent 6 Nov 89 20:23:00 GMT.]
Assuming that 87 is not a misprint, and the family is correct that
he worked for Stanford for 20 years, then Stanford hired him at
the age of 67 and kept him on for 20 years. Everyone is too polite
to question whether he did a full job for 20 years. If he did, he
is an exception. Otherwise, Stanford was very tolerant. Now it
seems that Stanford isn't infinitely tolerant. Stanford will learn
its lesson; don't hire anyone 67 years old. If you do you will,
at least according to liberals, undertake a lifetime obligation.
Rick Ottolini considers contracting out an abuse of employees.
What is the general principle of which this is an instance?
It it that an institution should never use outside contractors or
just that it should never contract out work that it has been doing
internally.
Perhaps the principle should be to never pay better wages or
benefits than outside contractors in the same line of work are
paying.
I was recently told that in Germany since 1968, the janitors are
included in the university body that has a say in the hiring
of professors. It would be interesting to know what professorial
hiring policy is in the best interest of the janitors.
∂06-Nov-89 1410 JMC re: CS323 Winter Quarter
To: stager@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 6 Nov 1989 13:32:02 PST.]
Your new plan is ok.
∂06-Nov-89 0948 JMC re: Sunrise Club
To: NA.PHL@FORSYTHE.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 6 Nov 89 09:03:15 PST.]
I plan to come.
∂06-Nov-89 0940 JMC Re: When
To: VAL
∂06-Nov-89 0515 cross@vax.darpa.mil Re: When
Received: from vax.darpa.mil (darpa.mil) by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 6 Nov 89 05:15:15 PST
Received: from sun46.darpa.mil by vax.darpa.mil (5.61/5.61+local)
id <AA02808>; Mon, 6 Nov 89 08:14:57 -0500
Posted-Date: Mon 6 Nov 89 08:14:15-EST
Received: by sun46.darpa.mil (4.1/5.51)
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Date: Mon 6 Nov 89 08:14:15-EST
From: Steve Cross <CROSS@DARPA.MIL>
Subject: Re: When
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: CROSS@vax.darpa.mil, cross@vax.darpa.mil
Message-Id: <626361255.0.CROSS@SUN46.DARPA.MIL>
In-Reply-To: <S7Cr5@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(217)+TOPSLIB(128)@SUN46.DARPA.MIL>
John: Still planning on being there this Friday, Nov 10 around
2:00 PM. Steve
-------
∂06-Nov-89 0939 JMC re: Thesis news AND questions
To: alex@JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sun, 5 Nov 1989 23:00:05 PST.]
Yes, I'd like a copy too. I plan to be in town Nov. 28 to Dec. 2.
∂05-Nov-89 2149 JMC When
To: cross@VAX.DARPA.MIL
are you planning to come?
∂05-Nov-89 1012 Mailer re: Titanic
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Fri 3 Nov 89 10:06:43-PST.]
I always thought it was a risky proposition to announce 15 years
in advance the development of a bomber that was to be
undetectable when put into service. Nevertheless, many stages
of detection and tracking are required to shoot down a bomber.
Maybe some of them still can be foiled. Congress should look
closely at what the situation would be at the end of the
production phase of the Stealth bomber. There is another
possibility. It seems that the Stealth fighter was produced
secretly under the cover of the Stealth bomber project.
Maybe there were and are a few years during which it provides
us with a significant advantage.
From a larger point of view, I think there is a reasonable
probability that we can negotiate a disarmament agreement
that would save a significant fraction of the defense
budget. However, it is necessary to be patient. The
Soviets are mainly thinking about their domestic
problems, and their attention to foreign affairs is
rather fitful. I have some hopes that the Supreme Soviet
will eventually act like a real parliament in
limiting Soviet military expenditures.
The liberals are pressing Bush to "do something now" about
the Soviet Union. My opinion is that there is no rush.
It may take the Soviets five years or more to settle down
to a long term policy. One thing we have to do is to avoid
any action that might be seen by any significant group
in the Soviet establishment either as provocative or
as dropping our guard.
∂04-Nov-89 1856 JMC
To: ME
What is the problem with NS?
∂04-Nov-89 1456 JMC re: Shrinking Lattice Polyhedra
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sat, 4 Nov 89 10:37:38 -0800.]
I only proved the result in the plane using Gaussian integer gcds.
I only speculated about whether gcds in quaternions would be relevant,
but I didn't and don't know any actual theory of them. Landau heard
from someone about my interest in the problem, but I don't know whether
it was before or after they got their results. Please send me a
copy of your final paper.
I'm sorry to hear the quake is still giving you trouble.
Matijasevich's talks were not very exciting. In the first he presented
old results that the Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to some Diophantine
equation not having any solutions. I believe he had some improvement.
The second talk was a slicker and more elementary version of the reduction
of Turing machine computations to exponential Diophantine equations, i.e.
the result of Davis, Putnam and Robinson. It will appear in the Monthly,
but Feferman has copies.
There is a party for Matijasevich and Gerard at 7pm Tuesday night
at Vaughan Pratt's house, arranged mainly by John Mitchell. If you
would like to come, let me or him know.
∂03-Nov-89 1748 JMC re: CS323 Winter Quarter
To: stager@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 3 Nov 1989 16:10:29 PST.]
It's ok if it doesn't conflict
with the VTSS160 that I'm also teaching.
∂03-Nov-89 1546 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: gumby@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 3 Nov 89 15:47:23 -0800.]
You're on the list.
∂03-Nov-89 1542 JMC
To: chandler@Polya.Stanford.EDU
to: provost
attn: Mary Hanrahan
subject: Promotion of Carolyn Talcott to Senior Research Associate
This is to support the promotion of Dr. Carolyn Talcott
from Research Associate to Senior Research Associate. As is
apparent from her vita she has been doing research of the
appropriate quality and quantity both before and since she
received her second PhD in 1985. Her first PhD was in 1966
in chemistry from U. C. Berkeley.
She is one of the leading experts
in the semantics of computer programming languages and has
an international reputation in this field.
In addition she has been managing the projects of the
Formal Reasoning Group for the last two years and representing
this group (as directed by its Principal Investigator, Professor
John McCarthy) in dealing with DARPA and NSF.
∂03-Nov-89 1522 JMC re: One Week until Egg-Drop I
To: B.BSK@MACBETH.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri 3 Nov 89 12:59:29-PST.]
Can faculty enter?
∂03-Nov-89 1128 JMC
To: ME
NS seems to be down
∂02-Nov-89 2345 JMC Street as economizer
To: siegman@SIERRA.Stanford.EDU
AIR, which Street organized, struck me from the
beginning as an overstaffed organization of doubtful
utility. It had 10 people giving advice at a time
when LOTS was being run with 5 FTEs. He seems to
be an empire builder. Maybe the others are worse.
∂02-Nov-89 1331 JMC Berkeley
To: VAL
I talked with Bob Wilensky, who said he would be in touch with you
by email or phone about giving a get-acquainted seminar there.
∂01-Nov-89 1845 JMC re: Vlad Dabija
To: hayes@PARC.XEROX.COM
[In reply to message sent Wed, 1 Nov 89 17:43:15 PST.]
1:30 will be ok. Is there anything special to recommend him?
∂01-Nov-89 1627 JMC re: Elephant 2000 paper
To: paek@NEON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 1 Nov 1989 16:24:14 PST.]
You're on the list.
∂01-Nov-89 0830 JMC re: Boise
To: tom@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 1 Nov 89 06:47:47 -0800.]
Why does it need to be replaced?
∂31-Oct-89 2100 JMC Boise
To: tom@Polya.Stanford.EDU
I prefer the Boise for printing my phone number file, because it's
fanfold. On October 21 I printed the file but forgot about it.
Today I went to look for it, and it was still hanging from the
printer. I could switch to Maple of Boise went away.
∂31-Oct-89 1724 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: hsu@NEON.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 31 Oct 1989 17:17:40 PST.]
You're on the list.
∂31-Oct-89 1601 JMC re: Gelfond
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 31-Oct-89 15:53-PT.]
Yes, the usual $200. Mention it to Carolyn.
∂31-Oct-89 1600 JMC reply to message
To: SF@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue 31 Oct 89 15:53:52-PST.]
It's fine with Vladimir and me, since we usually lunch then.
∂31-Oct-89 1534 JMC reply to message
To: LEORA@IBM.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue, 31 Oct 89 16:23:59 EST.]
Yes, we have it.
∂31-Oct-89 0849 JMC re: driving
To: CLT
[In reply to message rcvd 31-Oct-89 05:36-PT.]
Both are agreed.
∂30-Oct-89 2358 JMC Shrinking Lattice Polyhedra
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
I think I once mentioned a report with this title by
John Cremona and Susan Landau. It gives a necessary
condition for a polyhedron to be shrinkable to a
smaller similar lattice polyhedron. In two dimensions,
it's just the gcd on Gaussian integers, and in 3 and
4 dimensions it involves computing gcds in the algebra
of Hurwitz quaternions.
There is some relation to our problem of what
triangles are possible. Anyway the report has
turned up, and I'll send it if you like. I
hope your habits have fully recovered from the
quake. Is 17 open yet?
∂30-Oct-89 2131 JMC Shrinking Lattice Polyhedra
To: beeson@ucsd.ucsc.edu
I think I once mentioned a report with this title by
John Cremona and Susan Landau. It gives a necessary
condition for a polyhedron to be shrinkable to a
smaller similar lattice polyhedron. In two dimensions,
it's just the gcd on Gaussian integers, and in 3 and
4 dimensions it involves computing gcds in the algebra
of Hurwitz quaternions.
There is some relation to our problem of what
triangles are possible. Anyway the report has
turned up, and I'll send it if you like. I
hope your habits have fully recovered from the
quake. Is 17 open yet?
∂30-Oct-89 1904 JMC Matijasevich
To: VAL
I mistakenly supposed the Matijasevich lunch was fixed for Friday,
because Carolyn asked me if we were free then. It seems that
Feferman hasn't fixed the time yet and hasn't invited anyone yet.
∂30-Oct-89 1739 JMC
To: sf@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
I'd like to bring Lifschitz to the Matijasevich lunch.
∂30-Oct-89 1342 JMC Please copy
To: MPS
the Pinker, Prince article and return the bound volume to the
Library. In general, when I ask for an article I want a copy,
because it makes me nervous to hold on to a bound volume of a
journal.
The volume is in my out box.
∂30-Oct-89 1052 JMC re: Hertz recommendation
To: rlg@AI.MIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 30 Oct 89 13:49:14 EST.]
They were received, and I'll send them today.
∂30-Oct-89 1025 JMC committee on administration
To: siegman@SIERRA.Stanford.EDU
If the Administration decides to include faculty on
the committee considering administrative costs, and
you are still on the Senate Steering Committee, let
me volunteer to take part.
∂30-Oct-89 1015 Mailer re: More on techers and teaching
To: MOSER@CRVAX.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from MOSER@CRVAX.SRI.COM sent Mon 30 Oct 89 09:08:34-PST.]
It is a convention of today's policy discourse that native ability is
distributed uniformly, and therefore all differences in result are
environmental. Oh, well.
If Ray Moser had more "psychology/sociology" training, he probably
wouldn't have much different opinions, and I can't even guess whether
he would be more or less sure of them.
Let me point out that the effect of student/teacher ratio is subject
to experiment, and maybe the experiment has even been done - perhaps
many times. Does anyone know of such experiments?
∂29-Oct-89 2036 JMC Russians
To: CLT
Perhaps Vladimir's visitors should use public SAIL terminals when
there isn't special reason to use his desk. They could also use
Pat's office at night and on weekends.
Would you like me to propose it to him?
∂29-Oct-89 2024 Mailer re: Busing
To: wab@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from wab@sumex-aim.stanford.edu sent Sun, 29 Oct 1989 15:05:08 PST.]
You mentioned a legal proposal for equal distribution of resources (not
saying where) and someone else said that there was equal distribution
of money to school districts in California with the State making up
for school districts with low tax bases. Do you know what the facts
are in California? I don't.
My own opinion is that some equalization of resources is ok, but
I think it won't solve the problem where there is a culture that
opposes the educational system.
I would also be against inhibition of volunteer parent activity,
although it's certainly ok to try to match it with volunteer
activity aimed at districts with difficulties.
Where did you go to school, and what was your experience?
∂29-Oct-89 0035 Mailer totalitarianism
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Some time ago there was a discussion on su-etc as to whether
Jeane Kirkpatrick's distinction between totalitarian and
authoritarian states was meaningful. For what it's worth,
the adjective "totalitarian" is used in the October 5
Moscow News to describe the Soviet Union under Stalin.
The article is a roundtable on corruption in the Soviet
economy, and one of the participants considers
totalitarianism the basic cause of the corruption, e.g.
bribery and extortion.
∂28-Oct-89 1245 JMC re: ucsd visit
To: christos%cs@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sat, 28 Oct 89 11:37:36 PDT.]
Thanks. That's fine.
∂27-Oct-89 1742 JMC ucsd visit
To: Christos@CS.UCSD.EDU
I see I have a contradiction in my calendar between the day of
the week and the day of the month for my UCSD lecture. Which
day is it?
∂27-Oct-89 1737 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: bobrow.pa@XEROX.COM
[In reply to message sent Fri, 27 Oct 89 17:20 PDT.]
I've put you on the list for a copy of the paper. I'm willing to
give a talk at PARC but not until January. The reason is to wait
till I have more done and can get reactions to that. As you saw
I talked at TINLUNCH emphasizing the speech act aspects this week
and will talk at John Mitchell's seminar on Tuesday emphasizing
the programming language aspects.
∂26-Oct-89 2351 JMC re: Elephant 2000 References?
To: young@NEON.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Thu, 26 Oct 1989 23:45:44 PDT.]
It isn't published, but I'll send you the version I plan to
distribute soon when I distribute it.
∂26-Oct-89 2244 JMC re: new earthquake concern
To: les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@SHELBY.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU sent 27 Oct 89 04:50:57 GMT.]
Did surveying give the two meter result this time?
∂26-Oct-89 2242 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU sent 27 Oct 89 04:57:37 GMT.]
Do you think that raising the pay of teachers to that of auto mechanics -
if indeed it is lower, would attract the same kind of people who
were teachers in the 1930s and 1940s?
∂26-Oct-89 2146 JMC
To: CLT
a268 1829 26 Oct 89
AM-Birth Control,0311
Panel Says Non-Smokers Over 40 May Use Pill
By DEBORAH MESCE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel
agreed Thursday that the advantages of birth control pills outweigh
the possible risks of heart attack and stroke for healthy women over
40 who don't smoke.
The Fertility and Maternal Health Drugs Advisory Committee thus
voted to recommend that the currently recommended age ceiling of 40
for healthy woman who don't smoke be abandoned.
But the committee said women over 35 who do smoke should not use
birth contorl pills and the FDA should maintain its recommendation to
that effect. Smoking has been shown to increase the risk of blood
clots in older users of the pill.
An estimated 3 million to 4 million women could be affected by the
end of the age 40 limit for pill use by non-smokers if the FDA
accepts the committee's recommendation.
''We feel now that with lower-dose pills being used the risks that
have been demonstrated in the past (with higher-dose pills) should be
much less,'' said Barbara Hulka, chairwomen of the panel and of the
epidemiology department at the University of North Carolina School of
Public Health.
''Older women need contraception, and you have to weigh the risks
and the benefits,'' she said. ''When you look at the whole picture,
oral contraceptives may be the best bet for some older, healthy
women.''
The committee agreed that while there may be some increased risk of
heart attack and stroke for women over 40 on the pill, the risks
associated with abortion as well as pregnancy carried to term are
greater for this age group. Studies also have shown that use of the
pill offers some protection against cancer of the uterus and ovaries,
and is the most effective method of contraception.
AP-NY-10-26-89 2123EDT
***************
∂26-Oct-89 2135 JMC re: Elephant paper?
To: ma@SRC.DEC.COM
[In reply to message sent 26 Oct 1989 2115-PDT.]
You're on the list.
∂26-Oct-89 2106 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: mrc@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from mrc@sumex-aim.stanford.edu sent Thu, 26 Oct 1989 18:08:51 PDT.]
I agree with all MRC's points about education and would add two more.
1. Some people are smarter than others, and there is no reason
to suppose this is evenly distributed. Equality of opportunity
is very important, but it cannot be expected to bring about
equality of result.
3. Increased opportunity for women has meant that teaching is not
the only job available to intelligent women. Consequently, the
teachers of today don't average as smart as they were 50
years ago. The only solution to this problem is automation to
make it possible for one smart teacher to handle more students.
∂26-Oct-89 1913 JMC
To: leora@IBM.COM
Book proposal
∂26-Oct-89 1553 Mailer re: new earthquake concern
To: rick@HANAUMA.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from rick@hanauma.stanford.edu sent 26 Oct 89 16:50:51 GMT.]
OK, I accept your advice to wait a while before asking for a
definite schedule of future earthquakes. One question. How is
it known that last week's slip was two meters? The newspapers
said the geologists were puzzled about the lack of surface slip.
∂26-Oct-89 1547 JMC re: December AI qual - AVAILABILITY DATES NEEDED FROM YOU BY TUESDAY
To: Winograd@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Thu, 26 Oct 89 14:25:21 PDT.]
I will be available that whole week. I consider myself competent in
knowledge representation and logics (nonmonotonic).
∂26-Oct-89 1026 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: JCMA@REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Thu, 26 Oct 89 13:20 EDT.]
You're on the list.
∂25-Oct-89 2233 JMC re: Re: Fibonacci Numbers and GCD
To: theorynt@VM1.NODAK.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 25 Oct 89 20:40:52 GMT.]
And yet the gcd of 2 and 8 is 2.
∂25-Oct-89 1346 JMC re: seminar next tuesday
To: katiyar@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 25 Oct 1989 12:38:55 PDT.]
\noindent Abstract: Elephant 2000 is a vehicle for some ideas about
programming language features. We expect these features to be
valuable in writing and verifying programs that interact with
people (e.g. transaction processing) or interact with programs belonging
to other organizations (e.g. electronic data interchange)
\hfill\break 1. Communication inputs and outputs are in an I-O
language whose sentences are meaningful speech acts approximately
in the sense of philosophers and linguists. These include
questions, answers, offers, acceptances, declinations, requests,
permissions and promises.
\hfill\break 2. The correctness of programs is partially defined in
terms of proper performance of the speech acts. Answers should
be truthful, and promises should be kept. Sentences of logic expressing
these forms of correctness can be generated automatically
from the form of the program.
\hfill\break 3. Elephant source programs may not need data
structures, because they can refer directly to the past. Thus a
program can say that an airline passenger has a reservation if he
has made one and hasn't cancelled it.
\hfill\break 4. Elephant programs themselves will be represented as
sentences of logic. Their properties follow from this
representation without an intervening theory of programming or
anything like Hoare axioms.
\hfill\break 5. Elephant programs that interact non-trivially with
the outside world can have both {\it illocutionary} and {\it perlocutionary}
specifications, i.e. specifications relating inputs and outputs
and specifications concerning what they do in the world.
The present draft is very incomplete, and not all the above
features are presented or even worked out.
\eject
∂25-Oct-89 0859 JMC re: A Sense of Direction
To: mkatz@SESAME.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message from mkatz@sesame.stanford.edu sent Wed, 25 Oct 89 08:44:59 PDT.]
I overgeneralized. However, I still think the Seattle initiative is
likely to be overthrown by the courts and that this would be wrong.
∂24-Oct-89 1934 JMC re: Daily editorial
To: paulf@BODEGA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 24 Oct 89 19:10:18 PDT.]
There's always another windmill.
∂24-Oct-89 1802 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM
CC: MRC@CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU, RIC@RML2.SRI.COM,
comments@KL.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Tue 24 Oct 89 16:44:43-PST.]
Reagan certainly made a change. Nevertheless, although Carter didn't
get to appoint a Supreme Court Justice, he did appoint a lot of judges.
Steinberger may be right, but I still won't be surprised if the courts
make Seattle give the money for bussing. There are a lot of bad old
decisions as precedents.
∂24-Oct-89 1733 JMC re: AAAI workshop grants
To: pollack@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 24 Oct 89 19:23:03 EDT.]
I'm not doing that any more. Ask the AAAI office for the current procedure.
∂24-Oct-89 1538 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: MRC@CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU
CC: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU sent Tue, 24 Oct 1989 15:11:41 PDT.]
Well, maybe. But the Board of Education isn't the only group of liberals.
Suppose some other group sues. I could see a decision that ends up using
the money to buy more buses.
∂24-Oct-89 1505 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: MRC@CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU
CC: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU sent Tue, 24 Oct 1989 9:14:22 PDT.]
The liberals still have the courts.
∂24-Oct-89 1450 JMC
To: MPS
gladwi.1[let,jmc]
∂24-Oct-89 0115 JMC strong AI
To: amr@IBM.COM
This message may have already been sent, but now that I'm
back to a machine I understand, I'll sent it again.
Your message raises several questions, which I will deal with
in sequence.
1. I don't know who has discussed the question of whether two
entities with the same i/o behavior are computationally
equivalent. It's one form of equivalence; there are others.
2. Besides the biological approach to AI, which attempts to
imitate human psychology or physiology, there is the
computer science or mathematical approach, which studies classes of
problems and devise methods of solving them. MOst
work in AI has taken the computational approach, and
this approach has had the most success.
3.Within the computer science approach, there is the
approach based on representing common sense knowledge
and reasoning in mathematical logic. With the discovery
ten years ago of formalized nonmonotonic reasoning, this
approach has become more popular.
4. What is your reference to "traditional AI rhetoric"?
Please not a journalist.
5. I found the Searle and Harnad arguments beside any
point that interests me once I discovered that they
were not interested in raising any problems of
performance for AI systems. For this reason I asked
Harnad recently to remove me from his mailing list.
6. I like the system answer to the Chinese room
problem. Searle's objection to this answer - that
the man didn't know Chinese makes an identification
between body and personality that is usually
legitimate but fails in this case as it does
when computers time-share or when one program
interprets another. In such cases it is
necessary to distinguish the knowledge of
the different levels of software and hardware.
7. Finally, your alternatives strike me as false.
The logic of common sense approach is neither
empirical science nor hacking.
∂23-Oct-89 2151 JMC Please get me a copy of
To: MPS
Pinker, S. and Prince, A. (1988) ``On language and connectionism:
Analysis of a parallel distributed processing model of language
acquisition,'' Cognition, 28, pp. 73-193.
∂23-Oct-89 2133 JMC
To: MPS
beckman.6
∂23-Oct-89 1844 Mailer re: A Sense of Direction
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Mon 23 Oct 89 07:44:11-PST.]
Consider the phrase "as it is seen by trained observers" from the
quote from the New Yorker. What is this pompous nonsense? Who
trained these observers, who employs them and what writings are
distinguished as having been written by these trained observers?
Does he mean sociologists, historians or political scientists -
and of what political or ideological persuasion? We have
"Diplomats are saying that America doesn't need targets but,
rather, a sense of direction". I don't know whether he refers to
American diplomats or others, but both owe their positions mainly
to politics in their home countries or to membership in their
country's foreign policy bureaucracy. If the former, they're
random, and if the latter they have learned not to make waves.
In spite of all that, I agree with Newhouse's main point.
America is in competition with other Western democratic countries
and not with communist countries. Please note, however, that
there is probably no other country in the world that has more
immigration from the U.S. than emigration to the U.S. Western
Europeans are still voting with their feet for the U.S. This
isn't a law of nature, however, and it might change.
As to Newhouse's subsidiary points, I see he has the usual New
Yorker habit of repeating Democratic Party talking points with
intellectual decorations. Otherwise, why does he emphasize the
budget deficit and not the rate of inflation or the rate of
unemployment, both of which went down during the Reagan
Administration.
The theory that the underclass is caused by defects in the
educational system is interesting. Newhouse says,
"... bloated deficits, an unstable dollar, and a deplorable
public-education plant, the last reflected in a large and growing
underclass of alienated, underemployed, and unemployed people."
This suggests the underclass could be eliminated by fixing the
educational system. It is a proposition that could be checked by
a local experiment, costing only a few tens of millions of
dollars, if the experiment were made in a small city, but one
with a genuine underclass.
I don't think the author is serious about what his words imply.
If some Democrat mayor offered to make him Superintendent of
schools and a Democratic governor gave him the money for an
experiment, I bet he would refuse the offer.
∂23-Oct-89 1818 JMC re: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 23-Oct-89 17:28-PT.]
Fine for now. Maybe I'll propose an elaboration, but I don't
have one in mind.
∂23-Oct-89 1110 JMC re: CS 499
To: scales@POLYA.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 23 Oct 89 11:06:45 -0700.]
When you're up here, please come and see me sometime. I'd like
to get an idea of what you are trying to do.
∂23-Oct-89 1103 JMC re: CS 499
To: scales@POLYA.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 23 Oct 89 11:02:15 -0700.]
That's ok. I assume Joe is actually supervising you.
∂23-Oct-89 1020 JMC re: Vote
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 23-Oct-89 10:03-PT.]
I didn't vote.
∂22-Oct-89 2136 Mailer re: political positions (Re: events in Hungary)
To: karish@FOREL.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from karish@forel.stanford.edu sent 23 Oct 89 02:55:06 GMT.]
Explain this part. How is my prosperity as a professor
at the expense of other people around the world? Exactly
which people, to what extent and by what economic mechanism?
Is, for example, India one of the countries I exploit?
It was a short step for many of those people to realize
that the wealth and prosperity of the privileged
classes in the U.S. were assured at the expense of
other people around the world.
∂22-Oct-89 2130 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci-sun@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sun, 22 Oct 89 17:01 PDT.]
I'm sorry, but my memory isn't good. Send me a copy of the informal
piece and the title of Carl's. I'll try to catch up.
∂21-Oct-89 2252 JMC re: Two Ways to Refute Searle
To: harnad@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sun, 22 Oct 89 01:35:34 EDT.]
I think it would be best to remove me from the
Searle/symbol-grounding discussion. Should anyone get around to
proposing a particular "performance fragment" that he claims AI
can't do, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
∂21-Oct-89 2000 JMC re: SLAC and the quake
To: connie@PSYCH.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent 21 Oct 89 21:58:07 GMT.]
On Wednesday or Thursday, there was a statement from Richter,
the Director, saying SLAC was ok.
∂21-Oct-89 1745 JMC re: Sci. Am., you and Searle
To: harnad@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU,
pschurchland@UCSD.EDU, P@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU
[In reply to message from harnad@clarity.Princeton.EDU sent Sat, 21 Oct 89 19:26:57 EDT.]
To people in AI, obtuse philosophers like Searle and Harnad are
too long winded and obscure to be worth trying to decipher. This
is especially true, because it seems they aren't trying to raise
any practical difficulties that would have to be overcome in
order to make useful systems at any level of performance. They
merely say that no level of performance would count as
intelligent.
If we avoid these distractions for now, there will be more hope of
an AI program during their lifetimes that will overwhelm their
arguments. It should be capable of following the most obscure
and lengthy arguments and refuting them at any desired
length, from a paragraph to a three volume treatise.
Maybe for debugging it, we will also need a program capable
of generating the arguments.
However, perhaps I have them wrong.
Do Searle and Harnad claim to have discovered any difficulty in
achieving any particular behavioral performance? If so, what
is the simplest thing they imagine we can't program
computers to do that humans can do?
∂21-Oct-89 1630 Mailer re: will there ever be short-term earthquake predictions?
To: rick@HANAUMA.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from rick@hanauma.stanford.edu sent 21 Oct 89 21:57:19 GMT.]
Predicting that there is a high probability of a major Bay Area quake
doesn't count for much. I don't recall a decade, i.e. since the
1930s, in which there wasn't such a prediction.
Rick has omitted an important alternative. Improved instrumentation
may make measurements possible that will permit a theory of short
term earthquake prediction. Possibilities include local tomography
based on propagation of sound or even instrumentation of deep holes.
The recent quake was ten miles deep. Holes that deep are feasible,
if expensive. The Soviets drilled to 13 km in the Kola Peninsula
as part of a research project.
A three day warning followed by a one hour warning would be very
useful. A two week warning with an uncertainty of a week might
do more harm than good with the present journalistic and
political irrationality. Think what Mayor Agnos would have
done in the way of accusing Washington and Sacramento under
such conditions. Think of the counterblasts.
∂20-Oct-89 1956 JMC
To: MPS
Is Dantzig dinner at the Faculty Club?
∂20-Oct-89 1539 Mailer re: Slingshot effect... (how does it work?)
To: felix@AI.SRI.COM, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
CC: felix@WARBUCKS.AI.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from felix@ai.sri.com sent Fri, 20 Oct 89 15:17:41 PDT.]
I am not supposing contact with the atmosphere, and the orbits
avoid it. Conservation of momentum (the English language term)
applies to the results of an interaction even when the
interaction is purely gravitational.
Here's the basis of an approximate calculation. Assume the mass of
the planet is small compared to that of the sun, and the mass of
the spacecraft is small compared to that of the planet. Assume
the spacecraft comes close enough to the planet for a substantial
gravitational interaction. What happens can then be calculated
with good approximation by assuming the spacecraft moves in
the gravitational field of the sun and has an elastic collision
with the planet. The collision can be computed by using the
so-called impact parameter, the velocity of the spacecraft
with respect to the planet when it is far away and the mass of
the planet. The impact parameter is the distance at which the
space craft would pass the planet were it not affected by the
planet's gravity. The smaller the impact parameter, the more
change in spacecraft momentum you get. How small it can be
is limited by the need to avoid contact with the atmosphere.
Impact parameters are more used in classical atomic
physics than in astronomy but still apply to astronomy. They
are discussed, for example, in Classical Mechanics, by Goldstine.
∂20-Oct-89 1524 JMC re: Sorry I missed you
To: bledsoe@CS.UTEXAS.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 20 Oct 1989 12:36:42 CDT.]
Dinner would be fine on the 16th. Thank you very much.
∂20-Oct-89 1350 JMC re: elephants
To: james@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 20 Oct 89 14:17:53 EDT.]
I'll send you a draft as soon as it settles down a bit. The abstract
advertises some features that haven't been designed yet, i.e.
that are still goals.
∂20-Oct-89 1348 JMC re: ok?
To: darden@CS.UMD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 20 Oct 89 10:33:06 -0400.]
We are all fine. No-one I know suffered very serious damage or
was injured. There were only minor injuries at Stanford, i.e.
no-one who was admitted to the hospital. A number of buildings
were damaged, some seriously. The remaining buildings that were
not reconstructed to modern earthquake standards are roped off,
e.g. geology corner. The Business School and Hoover Tower were
labelled unsafe. Perhaps this is pending further examination.
Kennedy estimates some tens of millions of repair costs. Margaret
Jacks is entirely ok, and all the computers are operating.
Yesterday's New York Times summary of the effects of the quake
was substantially accurate.
I hope to see you the next time I return to "the source from which
all blessings flow", i.e. Washington.
∂20-Oct-89 1327 JMC re: winter quarter course
To: nilsson@TENAYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 20 Oct 89 13:17:57 PDT.]
It substantially overlaps the catalog description of the course
that I will be teaching Winter quarter. On te other hand,
I intend to actually cover much more material from common
sense reasoning, having let the catalog description be
rewritten two years ago rather than attend the committee
meetings. However, having two courses with such similar
catalog descriptions will certainly confuse the students.
∂20-Oct-89 0400 Mailer re: events in Hungary
To: karish@FOREL.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 16:02:16 PDT.]
Rightists are plenty "willing to point out the ways that our government's
actions are at odds with the country's stated ideals." However, they
have a different notion than leftists about what these actions are.
For example, rightists vigorously complained about "operation keelhaul"
that returned Soviet citizens forcibly to the Soviet Union after
World War II, complained about the Yalta agreements selling out the
freedom of Eastern Europe, complained about the betrayal of the
Vietnamese, complained about the betrayal of the Contras, and
complain about the forced repatriation of Vietnamese by the British
in Hong Kong. The pro-lifers complain about Government support
of abortions as immoral. We complain about the current actions
against free speech at state supported universities in California
and Michigan, although here it's not only rightists that complain.
Actually Mr. Karish has an out. He uses the phrase "point out",
and you can't point out something that doesn't exist. Therefore,
the rightist complaints can be regarded as not "pointing out".
Come to think of it, let me be specific. Mr. Karish, did the U.S.
betray the freedom of the Poles in the Yalta agreements? The
lefists and many liberals at the time said we didn't.
∂20-Oct-89 0347 Mailer re: fire alarms
To: jester@jessica.UUCP, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from jester@jessica.UUCP sent 20 Oct 89 07:08:45 GMT.]
That would be a vial of mercury.
∂19-Oct-89 2209 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: mt@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 20 Oct 89 00:52 EDT.]
I don't want the current draft cited, because the ideas are
changing rapidly, and I would prefer that discussion of
the ideas be based on the version that will be published.
The abstract for the talk represents the goals of the
project, and I hope it is fairly stable.
I'll keep you on the list for the draft I hope to distribute
in a few weeks.
∂19-Oct-89 2200 Mailer re: events in Hungary
To: karish@FOREL.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from karish@forel.stanford.edu sent 20 Oct 89 02:56:04 GMT.]
Many communists are repenting their sins, and they are
acknowledging our moral (and other) superiority in many ways.
Read Moscow News for the latest. It is a weekly, published in
Moscow in nine languages, and a subscription is not very
expensive. It was started in 1931 in English by an American
communist, Anna Louise Strong, and contained only extremely
dull propaganda until a few years ago. I subscribed after
visiting the Soviet Union in April.
Conservatives are coming around to believing in the genuineness
of many of the changes. Almost no-one says they are a fake.
However, most conservatives still believe in Soviet military
superiority and don't see enough reductions in Soviet military
expenditures to justify reduction in ours. They are reluctant
to help the Soviet Union until convinced that the help won't
result in the Soviet Union diverting yet more of its GNP
into military expenditure. Incidentally, current Soviet
estimates of their military expenditure agree more with
those estimated by American conservatives a few years ago
than those the liberals were estimating.
There was a distinction between "a Stalinist fellow traveller"
and a liberal sentimental about the Soviet Union and
inclined to believe the worst of the U.S., although the
operational difference often didn't amount to much.
∂19-Oct-89 2146 JMC re: Slingshot effect... (how does it work?)
To: felix@AI.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent 17 Oct 89 20:59:28 GMT.]
Is "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" yours? If not, whose?
∂19-Oct-89 2141 Mailer re: Slingshot effect... (how does it work?)
To: felix@AI.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from felix@AI.SRI.COM sent 17 Oct 89 20:59:28 GMT.]
The spacecraft really can get a boost in velocity relative to the sun
and not just a change in direction. If one takes a co-ordinate system
in which the sun is at rest, then one can say that the planet contributes
part of its energy to the spacecraft.
The simplest case to compute is one in which the planet has velocity
v1 in orbit and the spacecraft has velocity v2 in the same orbit
but in the opposite direction, i.e. just missing a head on collision.
If the spacecraft could come close enough to the planet, it could
have its velocity relative to the planet reversed. This is
approximately equivalent to saying that the spacecraft has an
elastic collision with the planet. In that case the velocity
of the spacecraft relative to the planet is initially v1+v2,
and after the collision is -(v1+v2). This means that its velocity
relative to the sun is now 2v1+v2 in the opposite direction, i.e.
its velocity is increased by twice the orbital velocity of the
planet, just as the velocity of a ping-pong ball leaving the
a paddle is reversed and increased by twice the velocity of the
paddle.
This case cannot be realized for the earth, because the spacecraft
cannot come close enough to the center of the earth without hitting
it. Maybe it could be realized for Jupiter.
In the actual orbits the "collisions" are oblique and the velocity
gains are smaller.
Galileo is scheduled for one encounter with Venus and two with
the Earth. Can someone give a reference to an explanation of
what each encounter accomplishes?
∂19-Oct-89 2031 JMC Cindy Mason
To: korf@CS.UCLA.EDU
1. Is she ok? I got a message from her some time ago
saying she was ill and haven't been able to reach her
since.
2. Do you have a date to come up yet?
∂19-Oct-89 2027 JMC Elephant
To: shoham@HUDSON.Stanford.EDU
A current draft is elepha.dvi[1,jmc] on SAIL. If you're at MJH
and mail me accordingly, I'll print you a copy. Otherwise, I
or Pat Simmons or someone else can print it for you tomorrow.
∂19-Oct-89 1455 Mailer Nobel in literature
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I don't know whether this guy deserves a prize for literature,
but certainly the Swedish Academy deserves a prize for concentrated
book jacket cliches.
Camilo Jose Cela, 73, was cited by the Swedish Academy for his
''rich and intensive prose, which with restrained
compassion forms a challenging vision of man's
vulnerability.''
∂19-Oct-89 1440 JMC Gelpi
To: MPS
You seem to have the wrong Gelpi.
whois agelpi
gets you
Accessing database at Argus.Stanford.EDU ...
name: Gelpi, Albert J
organization: University
position: PROFESSOR
department: English
address: BLDG 40 RM 41F
mail-code: 2087
phone: (415)723-2635
home-address: 870 Tolman Dr, Stanford, CA 94305
home-phone: 493-6589
∂19-Oct-89 1139 Mailer re: events in Hungary
To: mrc@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 16:02:16 PDT.]
Indeed Hungary and Poland seem likely to become democracies. There's
a good chance that the Soviet Union will too. MRC says,
"We can assume that Poland and Hungary, upon completing
the transition into free countries, are still going to
keep those elements of the communist system that are
popular -- specifically, the social support programs."
It seems to me that MRC has told us before about how people in communist
ruled countries support various aspects of their system, and some of
those aspects have been abandoned. I wonder how he knows what the
Hungarians and Poles support.
My own opinion is that the situation is very fluid, especially because
populations that aren't used to having to make genuine choices in voting
regard Government policy the way we look at the weather. If we could get
our choice of weather by voting for it, it would be quite a while before
opinion stabilized, and we would doubtless vote for some bad ideas that
would later have to be abandoned.
Poland and Hungary might go farther right than the U.S. or they might not.
It depends on the half-baked ideas of the people elected.
I don't see the justification for calling Solidarity unexpectedly
getting the Prime Minister position a coup. What happened is that
some previously subservient minor parties deserted the Communists.
That's ordinary politics, and calling it a coup confuses people
real coups.
Finally, if the American position deteriorates enough relative to certain
other countries, we'll probably change something.
∂19-Oct-89 1127 Mailer further opinion on quake
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I heard a structural engineer on TV express doubts about whether there
should be double-decker freeways like the one in Oakland that collapsed.
Presumably, 880 in Oakland was built double-deck because of the high
cost of land. Forbidding double deck would mean fewer freeways. Here
is an old statistic. Ordinary roads suffer 10 deaths per 100 million
vehicle miles and freeways suffer 2.3 deaths per 100 million vehicle
miles.
There are several double-deck freeways in the Bay Area, one of which
collapsed. Therefore, the credit freeways get for saving lives from
traffic accidents should be awarded to all the double-deck freeways.
I don't have the data to make the comparative calculation, but if it
turns out that double-deck freeways save lives even when one collapses
every 80 years, we should continue to build them.
Side issues: It seems to me that the ripple effect whereby one
collapse spread over a mile could have been prevented. Consider
that when one 50 foot span on the Bay Bridge collapsed, it didn't
take anything else with it. Some diagonal bracing might have
prevented the collapse entirely.
These considerations are independent of the opposition to freeways
on the part of certain "environmentalists".
I note that the politicians have returned to normal. Lt. Gov. McCarthy,
not a relative, was shown on TV climbing around the damaged Bay Bridge
structure. It's hard to figure out how the public was aided by this.
He's a Democrat and took full advantage of the fact that
the Republican Governor was abroad. When Governor Deukmejian returned
on an Air Force plane, he promptly thundered about an investigation
of the freeway collapse in a press conference attended by as many
other publicity hungry politicians as possible. I don't suppose that
all this posturing cost any lives. The TV types pandered to it, because
they were out of useful or informative things to say anyway.
The national coverage of the quake was rather foolish in its
spirit. It magnified the disaster. We can conjecture that this
magnification might have caused a heart attack or two among
Eastern relatives of California people, but there isn't any way
of settling the point.
Here's the beginning of a particularly foolish article. Note the
substitute 2nd paragraph aimed at making it even more foolish.
Consider, however, the position of Mr. Foster. He is a staff writer,
and he has to produce a story a day, even if he has nothing much
to say. He gets career points for every "new angle" he can find.
a092 0828 19 Oct 89
PM-SF Quake-Dream, 1st Ld, a025,0126
Quake Tarnishes California's Reputation For Good Life
Eds: SUB 2nd graf to clarify that Tuesday's was not ''the big one.''
By DAVID FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - This week's earthquake didn't damage just
bridges and buildings. It ripped into a California Dream already
frayed by smog, crowding and soaring real estate costs.
Experts have warned for years that the Bay area would be hit someday
by ''The Big One,'' a catastrophic earthquake they say will be worse
than Tuesday's quake. Even the telephone book has instructions on
what to do after an earthquake.
The warnings have done little to slow a population explosion fueled
by California's famous sunny weather and a healthy economy.
''You hear: 4th graf
∂19-Oct-89 0905 JMC re: Quake
To: ito@ITO.ECEI.TOHOKU.AC.JP
[In reply to message sent Thu, 19 Oct 89 12:37:31+0900.]
My family is fine. No-one I know suffered more than having
some things fall off shelves and some bookcases falling over.
Here is a description I wrote for someone in the East. It
was written on the afternoon of the day after the quake.
Stanford was closed Wednesday while they checked buildings. However,
people went to such buildings as MJH which seem entirely
undamaged. Some student residences have suffered structural damage
and are closed temporarily. The campus proper did not lose
power, but the faculty residential areas did. Power was back
late Tuesday evening, but PG&E did not restore power to a few
places where gas leaks had been reported. The MJH computers
were variously not affected or quickly returned to operation.
The Stanford Daily came out Wednesday morning and reported
a rather spotty pattern of damage.
There were no deaths or serious injuries at Stanford.
Stanford Hospital had only 7 quake related injuries Tuesday
night, but apparently some head injury cases were diverted,
because Stanford's CAT scanner broke.
Most institutions and businesses, except restaurants, food
stores and others directly serving the public were closed
at the request of authorities. The reason was to reduce
traffic, including telephone traffic, and to permit buildings
to be checked. I would guess that most will operate on
Thursday, except perhaps in San Francisco, where power was
still out Wednesday morning in most places (probably to avoid
igniting gas leaks) and where the outage of the Bay Bridge
will cause continuing traffic problems.
The largest problems were in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Gatos
and the Santa Cruz mountains. Many freeways were out as of
Wednesday morning including 280 at 85, 17 to Santa Cruz 9 and 152
both East and West of 101. The most spectacular damage was in
San Francisco and the 880 collapse in Oakland. Apart from the
880 collapse, the number of dead seems to be more than 10 and
less than 25. They had only 7 bodies from the 880 collapse
this morning, but the estimates ranged from 50 to 250.
I would be surprised if the total were low considering
that it was rush hour and more than a mile of the upper deck
collapsed on the lower. The 880 segment was built in 1955,
a time of intermediate level construction standards. Naturally,
there will be a big investigation.
San Jose had only minor damage, and by Wednesday morning
some San Jose emergency people and equipment were being
diverted to help elsewhere.
San Francisco had extensive water main damage and probably
gas main damage as well. They had to pump water from the
Bay using a fire boat to put out the one big fire in the
Marina area. Naturally, this took time to arrange, but
not even a full block was destroyed.
People were asked to conserve power in the Bay area and water in
Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, etc.
The Bay Bridge is the only bridge that is out.
The idea that the break in the Bay Bridge could be repaired
temporarily with a military Baily bridge seems to have been
given up. Wednesday morning they talked about removing the
collapsed steel segment using a barge, repairing it somewhere
else and putting it back. This could take weeks.
An earthquake expert said that above 6.5 Richter, the intensity
of damage is constant; only the area of damage increases with
magnitude above that. This one is estimated at 7.0. Remember
that the magnitude measures total energy released.
Now some opinions.
The low casualties compared to annual traffic deaths in the same
area for a once in 80 years quake indicate that construction
standards are high enough. If increasing them reduced the
number of freeways built by even 10 percent, there would be
a net loss of life from the higher traffic accident rate
on non freeways.
The damage was almost entirely to buildings built before the
first construction standards were established in the 1930s
after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 in which some schools
collapsed. No high rise office buildings in San Francisco
were seriously damaged, so the standards for them seem to be
ok, but the intensity of the quake (i.e. ground acceleration)
in San Francisco itself was not mentioned, and presumably
not known, to the earthquake expert interviewed on TV Wednesday
morning.
The provision of information via TV and radio was very
disorganized. Each station operated independently, and
the various authorities obviously couldn't talk to each
of the mob of reporters besieging them. Consequently,
different stations gave quite different stories about
the damage in various areas, casualties, which roads
and bridges were open and closed, etc. I don't suppose
that this confusion cost any lives. However, they were
most consistent about the 880 collapse, which was indeed
the most significant event. If they care about doing it
better in the future, they should pre-arrange information
pooling and contact with authorities.
∂18-Oct-89 2306 JMC Is the following address likely to work?
To: ME
ito@ito.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp
∂18-Oct-89 1906 JMC re: aij
To: kirsh%cogsci-sun@UCSD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 18 Oct 89 17:24 PDT.]
Did I ever contribute anything?
∂18-Oct-89 1802 Mailer re: events in Hungary
To: mrc@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 16:02:16 PDT.]
What we are seeing is the worldwide ideological collapse of communism.
I doubt that it will be able to maintain itself for many years even
in China and East Germany.
So far as I know, no-one conservative, liberal or otherwise predicted
it. The closest anyone came was a Russian friend of mine, who
unfortunately died before saw it. He said that among younger Communist
Party officials were people with ideas quite different from the
people, i.e. Brezhnev, who were then in power.
I remember an article by Daniel Steele in the Nation saying that
conservatives, and I inferred he especially hated
neo-conservatives, would be chagrinned at the concessions the
Soviets were making to the Western point of view on disarmament.
I haven't noticed any chagrin, although some people remain very
skeptical. However, when it comes to policy, neo-conservatives
can say that major changes in the Soviet Union were *required* to
improve the situation, whereas I think it's fair to say that the
left generally felt that major changes were required only on the
part of the West, and the U.S. in particular.
I think the evidence from current Soviet publications is that
it was not possible to win the trust of Brezhnev and certainly
not of Stalin.
I'd pursue these who-said-what-when issues further, but it's hard
for me to believe that many readers of su-etc are old enough
to remember the early postwar era from which our present
left-right split is descended or have read enough of the history
to care.
∂18-Oct-89 1503 Mailer re: quake
To: pkarp@NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from pkarp@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 17:20:09 EDT.]
My understanding of the emergency broadcast system is that it isn't
something the radio stations can use but rather a system that allows
the Federal authorities to take over the stations. My guess is that
Congress hasn't appropriated enough money to staff information
offices in the various metropolitan areas. Therefore, if they
had taken over the stations, there would have been no-one to
broadcast.
∂18-Oct-89 1407 Mailer re: quake
To: pkarp@NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 11:08:55 EDT.]
Stanford is closed today while they check buildings. However,
people are going to such buildings as MJH which seem entirely
undamaged. Some student residences have suffered structural damage
and are closed temporarily. The campus proper did not lose
power, but the faculty residential areas did. Power was back
late Tuesday evening, but PG&E did not restore power to a few
places where gas leaks had been reported. The MJH computers
were variously not affected and quickly returned to operation.
The Stanford Daily came out Wednesday morning and reported
a rather spotty pattern of damage.
There were no deaths or serious injuries at Stanford.
Stanford Hospital had only 7 quake related injuries Tuesday
night, but apparently some head injury cases were diverted,
because Stanford's CAT scanner broke.
Most institutions and businesses, except restaurants, food
stores and others directly serving the public were closed
at the request of authorities. The reason was to reduce
traffic, including telephone traffic, and to permit buildings
to be checked. I would guess that most will operate on
Thursday, except perhaps in San Francisco, where power was
still out Wednesday morning in most places (probably to avoid
igniting gas leaks) and where the outage of the Bay Bridge
will cause continuing traffic problems.
The largest problems were in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Gatos
and the Santa Cruz mountains. Many freeways were out as of
Wednesday morning including 280 at 85, 17 to Santa Cruz 9 and 152
both East and West of 101. The most spectacular damage was in
San Francisco and the 880 collapse in Oakland. Apart from the
880 collapse, the number of dead seems to be more than 10 and
less than 25. They had only 7 bodies from the 880 collapse
this morning, but the estimates ranged from 50 to 250.
I would be surprised if the total were low considering
that it was rush hour and more than a mile of the upper deck
collapsed on the lower. The 880 segment was built in 1955,
a time of intermediate level construction standards. Naturally,
there will be a big investigation.
San Jose had only minor damage, and by Wednesday morning
some San Jose emergency people and equipment were being
diverted to help elsewhere.
San Francisco had extensive water main damage and probably
gas main damage as well. They had to pump water from the
Bay using a fire boat to put out the one big fire in the
Marina area. Naturally, this took time to arrange, but
not even a full block was destroyed.
People were asked to conserve power in the Bay area and water in
Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, etc.
The Bay Bridge is the only bridge that is out.
The idea that the break in the Bay Bridge could be repaired
temporarily with a military Baily bridge seems to have been
given up. Wednesday morning they talked about removing the
collapsed steel segment using a barge, repairing it somewhere
else and putting it back. This could take weeks.
An earthquake expert said that above 6.5 Richter, the intensity
of damage is constant; only the area of damage increases with
magnitude above that. This one is estimated at 7.0. Remember
that the magnitude measures total energy released.
Now some opinions.
The low casualties compared to annual traffic deaths in the same
area for a once in 80 years quake indicate that construction
standards are high enough. If increasing them reduced the
number of freeways built by even 10 percent, there would be
a net loss of life from the higher traffic accident rate
on non freeways.
The damage was almost entirely to buildings built before the
first construction standards were established in the 1930s
after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 in which some schools
collapsed. No high rise office buildings in San Francisco
were seriously damaged, so the standards for them seem to be
ok, but the intensity of the quake (i.e. ground acceleration)
in San Francisco itself was not mentioned, and presumably
not known, to the earthquake expert interviewed on TV Wednesday
morning.
The provision of information via TV and radio was very
disorganized. Each station operated independently, and
the various authorities obviously couldn't talk to each
of the mob of reporters besieging them. Consequently,
different stations gave quite different stories about
the damage in various areas, casualties, which roads
and bridges were open and closed, etc. I don't suppose
that this confusion cost any lives. However, they were
most consistent about the 880 collapse, which was indeed
the most significant event. If they care about doing it
better in the future, they should pre-arrange information
pooling and contact with authorities.
∂18-Oct-89 1316 JMC
To: MPS
I notice the letter to Schaerf is not logged in letter[let,jmc].
∂18-Oct-89 1304 JMC re: Sorry I missed you
To: bledsoe@CS.UTEXAS.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 18 Oct 1989 15:00:44 CDT.]
I'm hoping to see you when I am next in Austin, presently scheduled
for Thursday and Friday, November 16 and 17. My MCC consulting
contract is being revived by Doug Lenat.
∂17-Oct-89 1540 JMC Camargo
To: MPS
He is notified.
∂17-Oct-89 1518 JMC re: Calls
To: MPS
[In reply to message rcvd 17-Oct-89 15:16-PT.]
If you still have trouble tomorrow morning, call Cohn about him.
∂17-Oct-89 1118 JMC lunch with Lyman
To: RWF
That is Wednesday the 25th at noon at the Faculty Club. Apparently
I told some people the 26th.
∂17-Oct-89 1050 JMC re: elephant 2000
To: Winograd@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 17 Oct 89 10:49:29 PDT.]
I'll get it to you.
∂17-Oct-89 1043 JMC re: visit dates
To: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue 17 Oct 89 11:46:21-CDT.]
On October 30 itself, I have no other commitments. On the other
days I have short commitments - an hour or two.
Reactivating the old contract would be acceptable. The rate was $1000
per day plus expenses, and I wouldn't mind a small raise. The old
contract had a limit of $12K including expenses, so if you want most
of my time, you'll have to get that changed. As you know, Stanford
permits one day per week. I couldn't commit all my time, but I could
commit a bit more than half.
∂17-Oct-89 1038 JMC re: elephant 2000
To: Winograd@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 17 Oct 89 09:41:04 PDT.]
I would be glad to discuss it with you and am available most of this
week and next. I am giving a TINLUNCH talk about it next
week, but since I would like your reactions in more detail than I'm
likely to get at TINLUNCH, I'd be glad to meet separately.
I'll send you a draft tomorrow. I expect to revise it today.
∂17-Oct-89 1033 JMC re: AI Division meeting
To: jutta@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent 2 Oct 1989 1302-PDT.]
I forget whether I said so already, but I'll be at the Nov 1 meeting.
∂17-Oct-89 0758 JMC visit dates
To: lenat@MCC.COM
I note that Thursday and Friday are November 16 and 17,
not the 17 and 18 that are in my notebook. I assume that
Thursday and Friday are what would be convenient for you.
∂17-Oct-89 0756 JMC re: Elephant 2000
To: greene@MCC.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue, 17 Oct 89 08:46:30 CDT.]
Thanks for the interest. I'll send you the next draft. I will probably
be at MCC November 16 and 17 and will be happy to talk about Elephant
if anyone is interested.
∂16-Oct-89 1637 JMC re: IAP brochure
To: ingrid@RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 16 Oct 89 16:35:39 PDT.]
It's ok. common is misspelled in the message you sent me, however.
∂16-Oct-89 1501 JMC re: DARPA visit on Nov. 20
To: VAL
[In reply to message rcvd 16-Oct-89 11:22-PT.]
Yes, I guess we should do that.
∂16-Oct-89 1048 JMC re: Review of Akawa's paper on presupposition
To: ginsberg@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 16 Oct 89 10:46:26 -0700.]
Thanks. No, he just spoke to me once in Japan.
∂16-Oct-89 1031 JMC re: Lunch Meeting
To: HELEN@CSLI.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon 16 Oct 89 09:11:40-PDT.]
Don't care but where?
∂16-Oct-89 1028 JMC re: Tuesday seminar
To: jcm@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 16 Oct 89 10:08:19 PDT.]
The 31st, please.
∂16-Oct-89 0956 JMC re: Visitor
To: CLT
[In reply to message rcvd 16-Oct-89 09:42-PT.]
Ship it.
∂16-Oct-89 0028 JMC re: Tuesday seminar
To: jcm@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 11 Oct 89 12:07:13 PDT.]
I could do it on either Tuesday, but I suppose you already
have someone for the 17th. I was in Texas when your message
arrived. I'm talking about Elephant at TINLUNCH on the 26th,
but I suppose the audiences are different, and the TINLUNCH
talk will emphasize matters of interest to linguists and
philosophers.
∂16-Oct-89 0024 JMC re: Review of Akawa's paper on presupposition
To: ginsberg@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Wed, 11 Oct 89 16:51:51 -0700.]
I have written Brady that you would review the paper.
I'm startled by your promptness. I suppose the paper
must have had a sort of gloomy fascination. I suppose
you should see if you can find a constructive suggestion
or two to soften the rejection.
∂16-Oct-89 0018 JMC
To: VAL, CLT
Session 2; leader Jean-Claude Latombe
Monday, November 20, 1989
Robotics Laboratory
Cedar Hall
1:15 - 2:30 Foundations of AI and Related Projects
John McCarthy, Vladimir Lifschitz, and Carolyn Talcott
2:30 - 5:00 Stanford Robotics Projects
Jean-Claude Latombe, Tom Binford, and Bob Cannon
Session 3; leader Bob Cannon
Monday, November 20, 1989
Durand Building
∂16-Oct-89 0014 JMC re: employment
To: underdog@PORTIA.STANFORD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 13 Oct 89 20:36:14 PDT.]
I might have some work involving library research, i.e. finding
out facts and finding who said what when. I don't know whether
you would regard it as gopher work. It would be for some public
policy articles and a technological opportunities book I am
working on.
∂16-Oct-89 0011 JMC re: Question
To: feb6399@ULTB.ISC.RIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Sun, 15 Oct 89 14:23:21 EDT.]
I'm not the right person to ask these questions. I haven't worked
with natural language texts and haven't studied parsing.
∂11-Oct-89 0644 JMC Lyman talk, oct 26
To: elliott%slacvm.bitnet@forsysthe, RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
He will tell us his opinions at noon in the
Faculty Club on that day. Invite others. There
won't be printed publicity.
∂10-Oct-89 1540 JMC CIFE
To: nilsson@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
Would it be appropriate for me to make a CIFE proposal (by Oct.
26) to pay for some of the time I plan to spend this year on
Elephant? Elephant and CBCL are relevant to the question of
"representation standards for data and knowledge, user interfaces
to data, etc." I suppose I would include a graduate student
also. Do you know of one who might be interested? I have no
idea what the prejudices of the people responsible for CIFE
seed research.
∂10-Oct-89 1532 JMC re: Meeting?
To: leslie%teleos.com@AI.SRI.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue, 10 Oct 89 15:28:07 PDT.]
Please phone me next Monday about the appointment.
∂10-Oct-89 1402 JMC date, title and abstract
To: betsy@CSLI.Stanford.EDU
October 26 is best, but Nov 9 is also possible.
Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts (preliminary)
Abstract: Elephant 2000 is a vehicle for some ideas about
programming language features.
1. Input and output are in an I-O language whose sentences are
meaningful speech acts approximately in the sense of philosophers
and linguists. These include questions, answers, offers,
acceptances, declinations, requests, permissions and promises.
2. The correctness of programs is partially defined in terms of
proper performance of the speech acts. Answers should be
truthful, and promises should be kept. Sentences of logic
expressing these forms of correctness can be generated
automatically from the form of the program.
3. Elephant source programs may not need data structures, because
they can refer directly to the past. Thus a program can say that
an airline passenger has a reservation if he has made one and
hasn't cancelled it.
4. Elephant programs themselves are represented as sentences of
logic. Their properties follow from this representation without
an intervening theory of programming or anything like Hoare
axioms.
5. Programs that interact non-trivially with the outside
world can have both {\it illocutionary} and {\it perlocutionary}
specifications, i.e. specifications relating inputs and outputs
and specifications concerning what they do in the world.
∂10-Oct-89 1351 JMC re: test and ssx
To: 0002814144@MCIMAIL.COM
[In reply to message sent Tue, 10 Oct 89 16:19 EDT.]
I got your message and am replying to the 0002814144. Let's see
if that works. ARPAnet has changed its name to INTERNET and is
on different management (NSF I think). Many of the same
addresses work, but now have more structure. For example mine is
JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU. SAIL is the particular computer, and EDU
refers to educational institutions. There are also COM for
commercial, GOV and MIL. I should think the same address
structure that reached me would reach anyone on INTERNET.
Your account on SAIL was purged long ago during some financial
crunch. However, I can re-establish it if you want. SAIL has
gone private, so it wouldn't cost anyone money. On the other
hand, SAIL has a unique operating system and is scheduled to
disappear at the end of February, so I don't think it's likely to
be much use to you.
∂10-Oct-89 1217 JMC
To: nilsson@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us
Final version of Networks considered harmful.
This is more-or-less accepted for publication late this year in CACM.
Many thanks to everyone who commented. Some of the comments
have been incorporated.
NETWORKS CONSIDERED HARMFUL - FOR ELECTRONIC MAIL
Electronic mail (email), using ARPANET and other networks has
been in use for almost 20 years. The widespread use of telefax
is more recent. However, unless email is freed from
dependence on the networks, I predict it will be supplanted by
telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages over
telefax. These advantages include the fact that
information is transmitted more cheaply as character streams than
as images. Multiple addressees are readily accommodated.
Moreover, messages transmitted as character streams can be readily
filed, searched, edited and used by computer programs.
The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email
is separated from special networks is that telefax works by using
the existing telephone network directly. To become a telefax
user, it is only necessary to buy a telefax machine for a price
between $1,000 and $5,000 (depending on features) and to
publicize one's fax number on stationery, on business cards and
in telephone directories. Once this is done anyone in the world
can communicate with you. No complicated network addresses and
no politics to determine who is eligible to be on what network.
Telefax is already much more widely used than email, and a
Japanese industry estimate is that 5 percent of homes will have
telefax by 1995 and 50 percent by 2010. This is with a $200
target price.
Email could work the same way at similar costs, but
because of a mistake by DARPA about 1970, i.e. making a
special-purpose, special-politics network the main vehicle for
electronic mail, it was combined with other network uses that
require higher bandwith and packet switching.
Another mistake was UUCP. It uses the telephone network,
but three features inherited from its use within Bell Telephone
Laboratories made its widespread adoption a blunder.
1. It assumes that both parties are using the UNIX
operating system rather than using a general mail protocol. This
is only moderately serious, because some other systems have been
able to pretend to be UNIX sufficiently well to implement the
protocols.
2. It requires that the message forwarding computer have
login privileges on the receiver. This has resulted in a system
of relaying messages that involves gateways, polling and
complicated addresses. This results in politics in getting
connected to the gateways and causes addresses often to fail.
3. Today forwarding is often a service provided free
and therefore of limited expandibility.
There has been a proliferation of networks and message
services on a variety of time-sharing utilities. Some of them
are commercial and some of them serve various scientific
disciplines and commercial activities. The connections between
these networks require politics and often fail. When both
commercial and noncommercial networks must interact there are
complications with charging. A whole industry is founded on the
technologically unsound ideas of competitive special purpose
networks and storage of mail on mail computers. It is as though
there were dozens of special purpose telephone networks and no
general network.
The solution is to go to a system that resembles fax in that
the ``net addresses'' are just telephone numbers. The simple form
of the command is just
MAIL <use>@$<telephone number>,
after which the user engages in the usual dialog with the mail system.
The sending machine dials the receiving machine just as is
done with fax. When the receiving machine answers, the sender
announces that it has a message for <user>. Implementing
this can involve either implementation of protocols in a user machine or a
special machine that pretends to be a user of the receiving machine or
local area network. The former involves less hardware, but the latter
involves less modification to the operating system of the receiving
machine.
I have heard various arguments as to why integrating
electronic mail with other network services is the right idea. I
could argue the point theoretically, but it seems better to
simply point out that telefax, which originated more recently
than electronic mail is already far more widespread outside
the computer science community. Indeed it
is often used for communicating with someone who is thought to
have an email address when getting the forwarding connections
right seems too complicated.
The World of the Future
Eventually, there will be optical fiber to every home or
office supplied by the telephone companies. The same transmission
facilities will serve telephone, picturephone, telefax, electronic
mail, telnet, file transfer, computer utilities, access to the Library of
Congress, the ``National Jukebox'' and maybe even a national
video jukebox. In the meantime, different services require
different communication rates and can afford different costs
to get them. However, current telephone rates transmit substantial
messages coast-to-coast for less than the price of a stamp. Indeed
the success of telefax, not to speak of Federal Express, shows that
people are willing to pay even higher costs.
What about the next 20 years of email?
There are two kinds of problems, technical and political.
Guess which is easier.
The main technical requirement is the development of a
set of point-to-point telephone mail protocols. Any of several
existing network mail protocols could be adapted for the purpose.
Presumably the same kinds of modems and dialers that are used for fax would
be appropriate but would give better transmission speeds.
Perhaps the organizationally simplest solution would be
to get one or more of the various UNIX consortia to add a direct
mail telephone protocol to UUCP. Such a protocol would allow
mail to be addressed to a user-id at a telephone number. The
computer would require a dialer and a modem with whatever
characteristics were taken as standard and it would be well to
use the same standards as have been adopted for telefax. It
mustn't require pre-arrangement between the sending and receiving
computers, and therefore cannot involve any kind of login.
Non-UNIX systems would then imitate the protocol.
Fax has another advantage that needs to be matched and
can be overmatched. Since fax transmits images, fully formatted
documents can be transmitted. However, this loses the ability to
edit the document. This can be beaten by email, provided there
arises a widely used standard for representing documents that
preserves editability.
The political problem is more difficult, because
there are enormous vested interests in the present lack of system.
There are the rival electronic mail companies. There are the
organizers of the various non-profit networks. There are the
engineers developing protocols for the various networks.
I've talked to a few of them, and intellectual arguments have
remarkably little effect. The usual reply is, ``Don't bother
me, kid, I'm busy.''
It would be good if the ACM were to set up a committee
to adopt a telephone electronic mail standard. However, I fear
the vested interests would be too strong, and the idea would
die from being loaded with requirements for features that
would be too expensive to realize in the near future.
Fortunately, there is free enterprise.
Therefore, the most likely way of getting direct
electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of hardware
as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for
connecting to the current variety of local area networks (LANs).
The most likely way for this to be accomplished is for the makers
of fax machines to offer ASCII service as well. This will
obviate the growing practice of some users of fax of printing out
their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax,
whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them
back into computer form.
This is probably how the world will have to get rid of
the substantially useless and actually harmful mail network industry.
More generally, suppose the same need can be met either
by buying a product or subscribing to a service. If the costs
are at all close, the people who sell the product win out
over those selling the service. Why this is so I leave to psychologists,
and experts in marketing, but I suppose it has to do with
the fact that selling services requires continual selling to
keep the customers, and this keeps the prices high.
I hope my pessimism about institutions is unwarranted,
but I remember a quotation from John von Neumann to some effect
like expecting institutions to behave rationally is like
expecting heat to flow from a cold place to a hot place.
I must confess that I don't understand the relation
between this proposal and the various electronic communication
standards that have been adopted like X25 and X400. I only note
that the enormous effort put into these standards has not
resulted in direct telephone electronic mail or anything else as
widely usable as telefax.
I am grateful for comments from many people on a version
distributed by electronic mail to various BBOARDS.
∂10-Oct-89 1216 JMC
To: nilsson@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
%confer[f89,jmc] Fears about the strategic directions conference
Here is the message that has aroused my fear. It is followed by comments.
∂09-Oct-89 1853 @Neon.Stanford.EDU,@Polya.Stanford.EDU:THEORYNT@VM1.NoDak.EDU Strategic Directions in Computing Research Conference
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Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 20:43:18 CDT
Reply-To: Theory-A - TheoryNet World-Wide Events <THEORY-A@VM1.NoDak.EDU>,
Joseph Traub <traub@cs.columbia.edu>
Sender: TheoryNet List <THEORYNT@VM1.NoDak.EDU>
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From: Joseph Traub <traub%CS.COLUMBIA.EDU@VM1.NoDak.EDU>
Subject: Strategic Directions in Computing Research Conference
To: Multiple recipients of list THEORYNT <THEORYNT@NDSUVM1>
The Conference on Strategic Directions in Computing Research,
sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the
Computing Research Board (which represents the Ph.D. granting
computing science departments), takes place in Arlington, Virginia on
October 11 - 13, 1989. The purpose of the conference is to review
current research issues in computing, to critique existing programs,
and to discuss directions and priorities. The conference is organized
into six topical panel sessions, each centered on an existing or soon
to be released report on the topic and on major government
initiatives. Each panel will be composed of the report author, a
Government program manager, 3-4 distinguished scientists, and a
session rapporteur. Following is a copy of the program and
registration information.
ACM/CRB Conference on Strategic Directions in Computing Research
Final Program
WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1989
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Conference Context
This session will overview the objectives of the Conference. Particular
emphasis will be placed on overarching issues, including growth of
the discipline, Federal funding patterns, the taxonomy of the field,
priorities and balance in research activities, mechanisms for
educating and informing the public, the role and responsibilities
of professional societies and the need for a National forum on
computing research policy and issues.
Chairs/Organizers: David Gries, Paul Young
Speakers: David Gries-Cornell/CRB, Paul Young-Washington/CRB, Peter
Denning-RIACS/ACM, John White-Xerox/ACM
8:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Reception with light food
THURSDAY, October 12, 1989
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Welcome and Keynotes
David Wood, General Chair, Richards Adrion, Program Chair
Keynote Addresses: Congressman Bill Green
10:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. High Performance Architectures
High performance computing has been the subject of a series of
Federal Coordinating Committee on Science, Engineering and Technology
(FCCSET) reports of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
Major Federal programs of research, such as the DARPA Strategic
Computing Initiative and the NSF Computational Science Initiative,
and infrastructure support, such as the NSF Supercomputing Centers
Program, have been established in response to these reports. This
session will focus on many issues including: access to advanced
computing resources (centers versus high-performance workstations);
software and systems support; computing research and its role in
computational science; priorities and trends in architectures for
development of high-performance computing systems (distributed,
vector and parallel architecures, tightly- versus loosely-coupled,
special- versus general-purpose); and strategies for maintaining
and improving our competitive position in advanced computing.
Moderator/Chairman: J. C. Browne-Texas
Speakers: Steve Squires-DARPA, Gordon Bell-Ardent, Ken Kennedy-Rice
Larry Smarr-Illinois, Charles Seitz-CalTech
Rapporteur: J. C. Browne
1:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Algorithms and Theory
In a field as new as computing research, theoretical studies, while
underway since the beginning of the field, still face major
challenges. As noted in the National Research Council report
on the National Challenge in Computer Science and Technology, research
on algorithms is not only of fundamental importance to the field, but
has resulted in a wealth of important, practical algorithms. This
session will focus on trends in theory and algorithms research, the
need for substantial and stable support of the subdiscipline, the
role of theory in computing research, and the unique character
of theory in a science based on evolving technology.
Moderator/Chairman: A. V. Aho-ATT/BL
Speakers: Richard DeMillo-NSF, Robert Tarjan-Princeton, Albert
Meyer-MIT, Richard Karp-UCB, Juris Hartmanis-Cornell, Joseph
Traub-Columbia
Rapporteur: Arnold Rosenberg-UMass
3:45 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Artificial Intelligence
The subdiscipline of artificial intelligence has received considerable
attention over the last several years. AI technology is widely used
in commercial systems. AI has been the subject of numerous Government
reports and many significant initiatives, particularly in the Dept.
of Defense, have been established. This session will concentrate on
three areas in which major opportunities exist: the role of artificial
intelligence in scientific discovery; management of very large
knowledge bases; and intelligent learning environments. Recent advances
in these areas will be discussed and strategies for achieving rapid
advances in these areas will be proposed.
Moderator/Chairman: Raj Reddy-CMU
Speakers: Y. T. Chien-NSF, Douglas Lenat-MCC, Herb
Simon-CMU
Rapporteur: Raj Reddy-CMU
Reception/Banquet.
Speaker: William Poduska-Stellar Computer
FRIDAY, October 13, 1989
8:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. Systems and Software
In the evolving and complex systems upon which society depends
for financial management, social services, transportation, energy
delivery, production and defense, computers are beginning to
play a central and critical role. Advances in software and systems
have not kept pace with the rapid development of computer hardware.
Yet, it is the software and systems where the chief liklihood of error
exists and where the greatest development costs occur. This session
will analyze the challenges in software technology, evaluate existing
and proposed research programs, and sugest a strategy for the U.S.
in this most important area.
Moderator/Chairman: Vic Basili-Maryland
Speakers: William Scherlis-DARPA, Susan Gerhart-MCC, Lee Osterweil-UCI
Rapporteur: Mary Shaw-CMU
10:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Neural Networks
Modern computers do not simulate biological systems in the way
they compute, analyze and store information. Recently, research
in neural networks has gained substantial National attention as
a significantly different approach to computation. The subject of
a major, forthcoming DARPA report and the focus of several Federal
programs, neural network research is the subject of this session.
Research in this area draws on psychology, linguisitics, neuroscience,
computation, cognitive science and mathematics. The panel will
discuss trends and advances in the field, the practical import
of neural networks, and strategies for the next decade.
Moderator/Chairman: Michael Arbib-USC
Speakers: Barbara Yoon-DARPA, David Rummelhart-Stanford,
Jacob Barhen-JPL, Dan Hammerstrom-Adaptive Systems
Rapporteur: Michael Arbib
1:45 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Technology to Support Computer-Based Collaboration
Computer networks have become extremely important to science
and engineering research. However, they merely indicate the
possibilities for geographically distributed collaboration in
scientific research. This session will discuss a recent NSF
workshop on technologies and techniques to enable such collaboration
with an emphasis on access to information on the scale of National
online libraries, intelligent user support technologies, intelligent
instruments and the potential of telescience.
Moderator/Chairman: William Wulf-NSF
Speakers: Mark Stefik-Xerox,
Barry Leiner-RIACS, Robert Kahn-NRI, Lee Sproull-CMU
Rapporteur: Vinton Cerf-NRI
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Wrap-Up
The conference will be summarized with emphasis on plans, directions,
and priorities.
Chairman: Richards Adrion-UMass, David Wood-MITRE
Speakers: Michael Arbib-USC, J. C. Browne-Texas, Vinton Cerf-NRI,
Raj Reddy-CMU, Arnold Rosenberg-UMass, Mary Shaw-CMU, Paul
Young-Washington
4:30 p.m. Adjourn
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Fees:
ACM member or member of CRB organization $395
Non Member $495
Registration fee includes admission to technical sessions,
coffee breaks,luncheons,conference banquet and a post conference
report.
Make check payable to: ACM/CRB Strategic Directions
Send registration with payment to:
ACM/CRB Strategic Directions
ACM Conference Department
11 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
(212) 869-7440
FAX: (212) 302-5826
e-mail: meetings @ acmvm.bitnet
******
FEARS ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Preparing this conference was clearly a great deal of work.
To undertake their share of this work people had to be strongly
motivated to plan
``Strategic Directions in Computing Research'',
i.e. to plan other people's research. Those of us who
are too busy doing research or planning their own research
are going to find themselves with unpleasant choices.
1. Go to the conference and similar conferences and fight it out
with the people who have nothing better to do and get some
recognition of their own ideas. This won't be easy, because
victory in politics is like victory in any other field; it
goes to the people who are most professional at the field.
Here the field is politics.
2. Find themselves competing for a diminishing nominal dollar
pool devoted to peer reviewed research proposals in computer
science in general.
3. Carefully read the ``research initiatives'' resulting from
the round of conferences and either do what the planners
dictate or find some weasel words that will let them sneak
under the tent.
When large facilities are required for research, planning and
priorities are essential. For example, the particle physicists
had to reach an agreement on the Superconducting Super Collider,
and the astronomers have to reach agreement on new telescopes
and new spacecraft. The particle physicists and astronomers
have to accept the limitations on individual initiative that
such giant facilities enforce. They also have to accept the
limitation that good organizers will determine the direction of
research.
Such limitations are unnecessary and harmful in most of computer
science including AI. When I started in AI at Stanford in 1962,
a suitable computer for on-line AI research cost as much as 30
man years of researcher time. A large project with many people
was required to obtain the facility. Now most AI research can be
done with computers costing less than one man year of researcher
time. Only a small part of computer science requires planning
on the scale proposed here.
None of the work that I have done or plan to do in the near
future will easily fit under the three topics listed for
AI. They are all oriented towards applications and
pseudo-applications.
I see nothing in the conference that suggests any plan to
reverse the shrinkage in recent years of NSF support for
peer reviewed proposals unrestricted as to area of computer
science in general or area of AI in general.
∂09-Oct-89 2145 JMC Are you ok?
To: clm@ZAPHOD.ES.LLNL.GOV
Are you?
∂09-Oct-89 2059 Mailer free speech
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
There will be a renewed attempt this year to impose limitations
on free speech at Stanford like those imposed at Tufts, Berkeley and
the University of Michigan. The time is not yet, but it may
be necessary for someone, for example me, to publicly announce
his intention to tell a certified ``racist'' joke in White
Plaza at a specified time.
∂09-Oct-89 1913 JMC
To: MPS
Pls tex ershov[e89,jmc] and consult Phyllis on how to send it to Kotov.
∂09-Oct-89 1504 Mailer re: IN THE NEWS II
To: H.HARPER@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU, bboard@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU
CC: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from H.HARPER@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU sent Mon 9 Oct 89 13:13:52-PDT.]
Would someone explain what went on at Berkeley that gave rise to
the "speech police" issue? I don't read the Chronicle.
∂09-Oct-89 1105 JMC test and ssx
To: "jerry_pournelle"@MCIMAIL.COM
Basically this is a test to see if the address works from here.
However, I should report that I introduced Hunter to
Edward Teller, with a low but non-zero chance that
something will come of it.
∂09-Oct-89 1103 JMC test and ssx
To: pournelle@MCIMAIL.COM
Basically this is a test to see if the address works.
However, I should report that I introduced Hunter to
Edward Teller, with a low but non-zero chance that
something will come of it.
∂09-Oct-89 0944 JMC re: Dinner is on.
To: boyer@CLI.COM
[In reply to message sent Sun, 8 Oct 89 16:40:10 CDT.]
Here are my flights to Austin.
10-11 Lv SFO SW 957 11 oct 10:50-2:20, El Paso 2:35-4:55
If you can meet the flight, that will be fine.
∂09-Oct-89 0934 JMC re: last questions on arrangements for MCC visit
To: EATON@MAXIMILLION.CP.MCC.COM
[In reply to message sent Mon 9 Oct 89 11:19:51-CDT.]
I will have dinner with the Boyers on Wednesday. What is my
hotel? Embassy suites would be good.
∂08-Oct-89 2120 JMC phone number
To: clm@ZAPHOD.ES.LLNL.GOV
I tried to phone you last night at your office and
at home. I got your answering machine at your office,
but the home number I have is a wrong number. Perhaps
I'll try information.
∂08-Oct-89 1712 JMC re: Dinner
To: boyer@CLI.COM
[In reply to message sent Sun, 8 Oct 89 16:40:10 CDT.]
I'll email tomorrow with revised schedule.
∂08-Oct-89 1202 JMC re: Dinner
To: boyer@CLI.COM
[In reply to message sent Sun, 8 Oct 89 12:51:55 CDT.]
Alas, Thursday evening is when I'm supposed to perform.
I could try to come earlier Wednesday and have dinner
then.
∂07-Oct-89 1916 Mailer re: Quote for October 7, 1989
To: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from RIC@RML2.SRI.COM sent Sat 7 Oct 89 11:04:06-PST.]
Lord Zuckerman might be right that the changes in the Soviet Union
make the military confrontation an anachronism. But then he
contended that it was an anachronism long before the changes
occurred. I don't know whether he claimed it all the way back
to the Stalin era, but do remember is articles during the Brezhnev
era. Two points.
1. Perhaps we should wait a little longer before we conclude
that a Stalin cannot recur, say until the Soviet standard of
living starts to go up again. With a few more concessions
in the conventional armaments area, we could even afford to
help the Soviets improve their standard of living, confident
that we are not merely allowing them to divert resources into
the military.
2. We can continue to afford the 6 or 7 percent of our GNP that
we put into defense as long as it seems desirable. It was
10 percent in 1960 and a much larger fraction of the Federal
budget. I suspect that the political demands for more
Federal programs are so strong that halving our defense
budget wouldn't produce more than a temporary reduction
in the deficit.
∂06-Oct-89 1558 JMC re: Searle and Connectionism
To: harnad@CLARITY.PRINCETON.EDU
[In reply to message sent Tue, 3 Oct 89 14:46:54 EDT.]
I had seen the opus of which you sent me a second copy. I'm not
defending connectionism, merely the systems reply from an objection
based on confusing hardware and various interpretive levels of
program.
∂06-Oct-89 1348 JMC re: Free-Floating Intentionality
To: srh@FLASH.BELLCORE.COM
[In reply to message sent Fri, 6 Oct 89 13:45:17 EDT.]
Suppose the man in the Chinese room has memorized the procedures so
he doesn't need the book. He is then interpreting a Chinese personality.
This phenomenon is is common in computer use - one program interpreting
another. When it occurs, it is necessary to distinguish the information
used directly by the interpreter and that used by the program being
interpreted. It is necessary to distinguish both from the computer
hardware.
In discussing people, it is not ordinarily necessary to distinguish
between a person's body (including brain) and the personality
the brain implements, because there's only one. Searle has concocted
a case for which it would be necessary to distinguish between the
English-speaking personality and the Chinese-speaking personality
being interpreted. Since he doesn't make the distinction, he gets
confused. R. L. Stevenson avoided this confusion in his "Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde".
∂06-Oct-89 1343 JMC title and abstract
To: Christos@CS.UCSD.EDU
Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts (preliminary)
Abstract: Elephant 2000 is a vehicle for some ideas about
programming language features.
1. Input and output are in an I-O language whose sentences are
meaningful speech acts approximately in the sense of philosophers
and linguists. These include questions, answers, offers,
acceptances, declinations, requests, permissions and promises.
2. The correctness of programs is partially defined in terms of
proper performance of the speech acts. Answers should be
truthful, and promises should be kept. Sentences of logic
expressing these forms of correctness can be generated
automatically from the form of the program.
3. Elephant source programs may not need data structures, because
they can refer directly to the past. Thus a program can say that
an airline passenger has a reservation if he has made one and
hasn't cancelled it.
4. Elephant programs themselves are represented as sentences of
logic. Their properties follow from this representation without
an intervening theory of programming or anything like Hoare
axioms.
5. Programs that interact non-trivially with the outside
world can have both {\it illocutionary} and {\it perlocutionary}
specifications, i.e. specifications relating inputs and outputs
and specifications concerning what they do in the world.
∂06-Oct-89 1330 JMC re: Hertz Foundation Fellowship
To: rlg@AI.MIT.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 6 Oct 89 15:00:24 EDT.]
ok
∂06-Oct-89 1100 JMC overhead
To: siegman@SIERRA.Stanford.EDU
Caltech's overhead rate is 56 percent. In my opinion, Bill Massy
simply isn't interested in reducing administrative costs. Some
years ago there was a faculty committee appointed to study the
matter, but the administration got the committee in its pocket
to the extent that the committee recommended raising administrators'
salaries on the grounds that Stanford paid to hire the best professors
and so should compete for administrators. This is silly, because
Stanford professorial jobs challenge the best in the world, whereas
administering Stanford personnel is small potatoes.
When I suggested to Massy at that time that Stanford compare its
administrative operations department by department with those of
other universities, I just got a statement that things were
incomparable.
∂06-Oct-89 1039 JMC re: Programming language and MTC seminars
To: jcm@Polya.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 25 Sep 89 15:02:21 PDT.]
I volunteer to talk about Elephant 2000.
∂06-Oct-89 0129 JMC re: said article
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 6 Oct 89 01:13:55 -0700.]
I'll take you up on your offer of a copy. However, I'm skeptical of
the proposition advanced. It seems too computerist, although I'm
too sleepy now to formulate a precise argument. Does it purport
to cover the emotions of animals also?
∂06-Oct-89 0111 JMC re: hello
To: clm%zaphod.es.llnl.gov@LLL-LCC.LLNL.GOV
[In reply to message sent Sun, 1 Oct 89 15:32:06 PDT.]
Sorry to hear you were sick, and I hope you're better now. I
just got back from a two week trip, and I'll phone you at
some civilized hour tomorrow.
∂06-Oct-89 0047 JMC re: talk at harvard, october 2
To: menke@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU
[In reply to message sent Mon, 25 Sep 89 11:03:10 EDT.]
As I recall, I gave it to you, but here it is again.
558-30-4793
and 885 Allardice Way Stanford, CA 94305