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Mr. Howard Olson
1776 LaCassie #9
Walnut Creek, CA 94596

Dear Mr. Olson:

	Thanks for your kind words.

	It has been one of my long term aspirations that AI should
help people become more objective and carry out more objective
discussions.  This was also the goal of one of the early proposers
of mathematical logic --- namely Leibniz.  His goal was to replace
argument by calculation.

	My opinion is that AI is still very far from being able to
help with this goal.  The subsidiary goal that is on the way to it
is to develop the ability to express common sense knowledge in
some form of mathematical logic and to extend the logical methods
of reasoning to include the non-monotonic reasoning characteristic
of human reasoning to cover more common sense reasoning.  Unfortunately,
these extensions must involve giving up some of the certainty of
pure deduction.  However, one will know where assumptions are being
made.

	I doubt that self-deception per se developed in evolution,
because this seems to require that some part of the mind know the
truth in order to deceive the other part.  On the other hand, a
tendency to wishful thinking may have evolved, although I'm not
too sure what value it would have had.

	I'll ask the Computer Science Department to send you information
on the Master's in AI program.

Sincerely,