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Ideas and notes on conversations

1983 March 11

1. People concerned with concurrent programs prove fairness about
their programs.  Is it possible to include statements in the
program demanding fairness and leave it to the compiler to say
how this is to be accomplished?

2. Conversation with Les Lamport
Interval logic by Richard Schwartz and Michael Melliar-Smith.

Pierre Wolper on generating synchronization from temporal logic
specs.  Alan Emerson student of Ed Clark.

*Quantum 1988 Aug 5

Quantum mechanics on a graph.
We have a particle moving on a graph.
What's the momentum operator?  Remember the theorem that the
quantum mechanical commutation relation cannot be satisfied by
finite matrices.  What about some other kind of finite system?
We can try the condition that the derivatives of the wave
function moving into a vertex sum to zero.  However, there
may be other forms of dynamics that simply moving in a scalar
potential.  Is there a vertex condition, e.g. a linear relation
among the wave function (assumed continuous at the vertex)
and its derivatives.  I'm doubtful about a relation involving
the current as the main relation, because of the conjugates.
It should be a consequence of the main relation.  What would
a vector potential reduce to in this case?

*CAI - 1988 Aug 5
For CAI.  Besides the student and the teacher, there are other
simulated students with knowledge and personalities.  The real
student develops competitive (and possible co-operative) relations
with the simulated students.  The theory is that he will be
encouraged to learn by the possibility of beating them.  Since we
don't care about the self-esteem of a simulated student, we can
optimize the reinforcement of the real student.
Some aspects of this should be patentable.

*Elephant - 1988 Aug 7
Slogan: Programming without one hand tied behind one's back.
We want to be able to say, as a specification, or possibly
in a program, that when we return from a subroutine, the
ac should contain f(contents(ac,when the subroutine was
entered corresponding to the exit)).
We need to be able to refer to all past events.
We need sets (of past events) and maximal elements.
Palindrome patterns (added to regular exps),
(pushdown automata?) (return from subroutine).
when I entered.  The matching entry.
The times in Old Elephant are just labels for what is
accessed through them.  With enough language, the times
themselves may not be needed.
Consider a Spider program.
Is "the corresponding entry" the linguistic construction
we need or is it just something programmed with the
needed construction?

*spider - 1988 Aug 7
List heuristics for spider before trying to determine framework for
program.
We also need a list of concepts.
1. predicates on moves.
2. predicates on columns in a position
movable
a move to a column makes the column not movable, it may be immovable
directly, but may be still movable because there are other places
to put the covering card

heuristics: we prefer moves that don't make any column immovable.
we prefer moves from short columns.
If all moves make a some column immovable, we prefer covering a
high rank card.
We prefer the move that is part of the longer sequence.
If we would make a move that gets more information after
a given sequence of moves that don't provide information,
make, if possible, the information providing moves first.
At least if there is any possible outcome of the
information providing move sequence that would cause
us not to make the other sequence.
We prefer  move that leaves a card of a certain rank
available to a move that makes it unavailable - given
the choice and ceteris paribus.

1988 Oct 12
	In a spider solitaire position, let there be two moves A
and B that can be made in either order.  Suppose A does not turn
over a card, and we can determine that if we made A, then B would
be the next move made.  Suppose B does turn over a card.  Then B
should be done first, since it gains information.  The problem is
to express this rule in a general way so that a program could
take it into account in addition to its other rules.  Note that
explaining the principle requires little information about
spider.

Oct 17
	Ascending to the metalevel by making an assertion about
the quotation of any subexpression of anything that has come up
in memory should be worthwhile.

Oct 19
	Genius and scientist social service agency
One reads about geniuses who commit suicide, e.g. Turing.  Suppose
there were an agency that would try to help genius in difficulty.
That Turing was about to commit suicide, if he did, was probably
unknown, but his friends probably knew he was in difficulty.
They could have asked the agency to help.  Maybe he would have
rejected help, and maybe nothing could have been done.  On the
other hand, they might have saved him for many more years of
productive activity.

More examples: Sylvia Plath, Janis Joplin, Arthur Koestler?,
Ramanujan, the Santa Cruz 11 year old college graduate.

What about marginal geniuses, e.g. Gunkel?  Obviously that
depends on resources.

Undoubtedly the agency would have to do triage, deciding it
couldn't help.

The first step might be a survey of biographical information to
try to identify cases which might have been helped.

The help should be unpublicized in particular cases.

1988 Nov 22
NYT has article referring to Phys. Rev. Letters paper by Kip Thorne
and others suggesting time travel through wormholes may be possible.
I should explore the hypertime idea to see if there can be relaxation
to ordinary space-time solutions that correspond to time travel.

We also need to ask what kinds of differential equations permit
the evolution of intelligence.

1988 Nov 28
Maybe it will help with YSP to postulate that changes must have
causes.  If the gun becomes unloaded there must be a cause of that.

1988 Dec 5
is-giving(x) ⊃ gave(giver(x),gift(x),recipient(x))
but what about time(x)?

1988 dec 5
If you say, ``Ponce de Leon was searching for the fountain of youth'',
and your hearer doesn't know the fountain of youth is nonexistent,
you have an obligation to supply that fact.

1988 dec 11
What science tells us that is relevant to philosophy.

	Almost all philosophers today believe in the conclusions
of modern science.  However, it seems to me that they ignore
much of what science has to tell us when doing philosophy ---
even when doing philosophy of science.

	1. Science tells us that we have evolved by natural selection
in such a way that the phenomena directly observable to us are many
levels of complexity away from the basic phenomena of the universe.
What is observable to our senses is metaphysically and physically
accidental.  By the first I mean that there is no philosophical principle
that says that intelligence and curiosity can only evolve in
forms that have access to the fundamental structure of the world.
The second means that our particular senses are also an accident.
In particular, there is no reason why there can't be structures in
the world that are fundamentally unobservable.  There can also be,
and experimental science tells us there are, structures that are
ultimately observable but which remain unobserverved for millenia
in spite of our best efforts.

	Given these facts, regarding the world as a structure of
appearance seems scientifically perverse.  It would be particularly
perverse to build robots that regarded the world as a structure of
their appearances.  AI poses a particular problem to metaphysics.
Build a language for the robot to use to express what we tell it
about the world and what it discovers and which is sufficiently
general that it doesn't presuppose anything that scientific
research, human or its own, might subsequently overturn.  That is,
it may have beliefs that it comes to change, but its very structure
shouldn't preclude changes.  In other words, it should reach
a level where it doesn't have to be educated by brain surgery.

	2. Our morality has arisen by genetic and social evolution.
This includes a set of second order predicates on moral system,
giving a set of desiderata that are not simultaneously satisfiable.
For this reason we can accept or reject behaviors that are based
on our biology.  (Make this better or leave it out).

	3. Cryptography tells us that long texts are usually not
ambiguous.  This tells us that we can indeed get semantics from
syntax.

∂24-Dec-88  0948	JMC 	simplifying autoepistemic reasoning
To:   VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, AIR@SAIL.Stanford.EDU,
      bmoore@SRI.COM
Bob Moore's ``If I had an elder brother I'd know it'' led
him to autoepistemic logic with its stable expansions
defined as fixed points.  Consider ``If I had an elder
brother, five minutes ago there would have been a sentence
in my database of the form  elder-brother(jmc) = x''.  Using
this fact does not involve a fixed point construction.

Also consider ``If I had an elder brother, it would have
been a logical consequence of my database of five minutes
ago''.  Using this involves a minimization rather than
a fixed point.

Subjectively, it seems to me that my own autoepistemic
reasoning is like these two examples and doesn't involve
fixed point considerations.

Comments?

1988 Dec 24
	Would the end of the cold war result in an increase in
other conflict that might even lead to nuclear wars?

Considerations:

1. If the Soviets would co-operate, there could be an effective
international police force.  This might lead to the evil of
world government.

2. An outlet for aggression may be better than letting it build
up.  Soccer riots, pro and anti abortion riots, riots between
Armenians and Azeris, protestants and catholics in northern
Ireland, Bloods and Crips.  The riots have less chance of turning
into wars if they are about something that doesn't interest most
of the population.  Also if the main conflicts are between
rioters and police rather than between opposing gangs of rioters.

3. The big danger appears to occur when intellectuals, i.e. people
with access to media, become involved as participants.  Perhaps
there doesn't need to be gang violence, i.e. even the most
violent can be restrained.

4. A scientific study of the matter is worthwhile.

5. Perhaps there ought to be a peace movement.

1989 Jan 5

I now suspect that a limitation of philosophy is an insistence on
complete theories.  A causally complete theory is one that predicts
the consequences of the future of any initial conditions, e.g.
gravitational astronomy.  The theory of clocked digital circuitry
is an incompletable theory, because flipflops can receive
ambiguous inputs.

1989 Jan 15
	Names provide access to their values.  However, they have
two other equally important roles.  Names
can be substituted for variables.  In general expressions without
looking down (on their property lists) for their values.  Moreover,
occurrences of names can be tested for equality, and this also
leads to further action without looking at the values associated
with the names.  This is at variance with some remark about names
that I vaguely recall Newell making.

1989 Jan 15
	Parametrizing circumscription.
	Suppose we define circum1(A) = (λ P;Z)circum(A;P;Z).  We
can then consider two minimal models by writing
circum1(P1;Z1) ∧ circum1(P2;Z2).  We can also write such things
as (∀P Z)(circum1(P;Z) ⊃ ...) and (∃P Z)(circum1(P;Z) ∧ ...).
This came up in Kurt Konolige's seminar in response to some remarks
that default logic could do some things circumscription couldn't.

1989 Feb 4

Some Linguistic Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence

A relatively decontextual formula is one in which the subformulas have
the same meanings in their contexts as they have in the context of
the formula as a whole.

1989 Feb 5

A possible project is a database for an expert system for foreign
travel.
1. travel documents
2. list countries to be visited
3. get back union of requirements
4. purpose of trip, activities in countries
5. citizenship, previous citizenship
6. must send passport and application to consulate in good time
7. check for strike at Heathrow
8. which airports are subject to most delays