perm filename W90.IN[LET,JMC] blob
sn#883544 filedate 1990-04-03 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT ⊗ VALID 00598 PAGES
C REC PAGE DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00071 00002 ∂01-Jan-90 2041 Mailer re: Castro vs. Ceausescu
C00076 00003 ∂02-Jan-90 0020 VAL
C00077 00004 ∂02-Jan-90 1027 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Alliant visit (reminder)
C00079 00005 ∂02-Jan-90 1406 Mailer re: Affirmative Action: A Worldwide Disaster
C00083 00006 ∂02-Jan-90 1525 MPS Nafeh
C00084 00007 ∂02-Jan-90 1633 ether@allegra.att.com Nonmonotonicity and scope
C00089 00008 ∂03-Jan-90 0738 Mailer re: Soviet public opinion
C00091 00009 ∂03-Jan-90 0817 @IBM.COM:CHAITIN@YKTVMZ Searle's Scientific American article
C00093 00010 ∂03-Jan-90 0857 finin@PRC.Unisys.COM email
C00097 00011 ∂03-Jan-90 0859 MPS
C00098 00012 ∂03-Jan-90 0942 wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU bookcase
C00100 00013 ∂03-Jan-90 0954 @IBM.COM:HALPERN@ALMVMA sabbatical
C00103 00014 ∂03-Jan-90 1101 JMC
C00104 00015 ∂03-Jan-90 2254 Mailer re: Soviet public opinion
C00106 00016 ∂03-Jan-90 2355 crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us The INTERNET CRUCIBLE v2.1
C00138 00017 ∂04-Jan-90 1017 MPS
C00139 00018 ∂04-Jan-90 1100 JMC
C00140 00019 ∂04-Jan-90 1322 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: Soviet public opinion
C00143 00020 ∂05-Jan-90 1117 rpg@lucid.com Romania
C00146 00021 ∂05-Jan-90 1428 Mailer re: Scandal
C00148 00022 ∂05-Jan-90 1610 Mailer re: Scandal
C00150 00023 ∂05-Jan-90 1617 pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
C00154 00024 ∂06-Jan-90 0141 @Score.Stanford.EDU:SYS@SAIL.Stanford.EDU Failed mail returned: user not accepting mail
C00157 00025 ∂06-Jan-90 0141 @Score.Stanford.EDU:MAILER-DAEMON@goblin.Stanford.EDU Returned mail: Host unknown
C00160 00026 ∂06-Jan-90 1127 danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU thank you
C00162 00027 ∂06-Jan-90 1514 CN.MCS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
C00164 00028 ∂06-Jan-90 1830 jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU Bibl. reference
C00166 00029 ∂06-Jan-90 2349 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU Re: Soviet public opinion
C00167 00030 ∂07-Jan-90 1812 jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU re: The eighties by the numbers
C00169 00031 ∂08-Jan-90 0653 jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU re: The eighties by the numbers
C00171 00032 ∂08-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00172 00033 ∂08-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00173 00034 ∂08-Jan-90 0922 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU re: Soviet public opinion
C00176 00035 ∂08-Jan-90 0930 JMC
C00177 00036 ∂08-Jan-90 1000 JMC
C00178 00037 ∂08-Jan-90 1020 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Diagnosis Workshop
C00184 00038 ∂08-Jan-90 1118 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00185 00039 ∂08-Jan-90 1344 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: ethical question?
C00187 00040 ∂08-Jan-90 1548 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU [JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU: Imagen at 885 Allardice ]
C00189 00041 ∂08-Jan-90 1608 emma@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: The electric heater
C00191 00042 ∂08-Jan-90 1711 jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU Bibl item
C00193 00043 ∂09-Jan-90 0749 CLT Imagen at 885 Allardice
C00194 00044 ∂09-Jan-90 0759 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Imagen at 885 Allardice
C00197 00045 ∂09-Jan-90 1207 ebr@doc.ic.ac.uk Re: Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence
C00201 00046 ∂09-Jan-90 1209 VAL Request
C00202 00047 ∂09-Jan-90 1249 hewitt@ai.mit.edu My contribution to the special issue on foundations of AI
C00205 00048 ∂09-Jan-90 1349 RWF re: Affirmative Action: A Worldwide Disaster
C00206 00049 ∂09-Jan-90 1618 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU Title and abstract
C00210 00050 ∂09-Jan-90 1618 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU
C00212 00051 ∂09-Jan-90 1710 ME NS
C00213 00052 ∂09-Jan-90 1901 ME NS
C00214 00053 ∂09-Jan-90 1904 ME NS
C00215 00054 ∂09-Jan-90 1936 ME NS really fixed
C00216 00055 ∂10-Jan-90 0813 MPS
C00218 00056 ∂10-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00219 00057 ∂10-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00220 00058 ∂10-Jan-90 1000 JMC
C00221 00059 ∂10-Jan-90 1013 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: Byers resolution
C00222 00060 ∂10-Jan-90 1020 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Voting on Promotions/Reappointments
C00224 00061 ∂10-Jan-90 1354 MPS Fruitfly Paper of JMC
C00226 00062 ∂10-Jan-90 1558 VAL Elephant draft
C00227 00063 ∂10-Jan-90 1712 pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Grad School
C00231 00064 ∂10-Jan-90 1728 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU re: "Mac Typewriter" Software?
C00234 00065 ∂10-Jan-90 1755 RPG re: white papers
C00235 00066 ∂11-Jan-90 1130 HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
C00237 00067 ∂11-Jan-90 1417 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:jcm@iswim.Stanford.EDU from Roy Jones
C00242 00068 ∂11-Jan-90 1529 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Vote
C00245 00069 ∂11-Jan-90 1826 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK
C00250 00070 ∂11-Jan-90 1829 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK Info
C00257 00071 ∂11-Jan-90 1833 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK Program
C00265 00072 ∂12-Jan-90 0536 Mailer re: At war with peace
C00266 00073 ∂12-Jan-90 0904 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU ride offered to Asilomar
C00269 00074 ∂12-Jan-90 0912 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Vote
C00270 00075 ∂12-Jan-90 1000 JMC
C00271 00076 ∂12-Jan-90 1000 JMC
C00272 00077 ∂12-Jan-90 1004 VAL lunch
C00273 00078 ∂12-Jan-90 1100 JMC
C00274 00079 ∂12-Jan-90 1235 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Combining Nonmonontonic Theories
C00276 00080 ∂12-Jan-90 1327 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU mental models
C00281 00081 ∂12-Jan-90 1331 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU triangle paper
C00283 00082 ∂12-Jan-90 1340 MPS Trip to Moscow
C00284 00083 ∂12-Jan-90 1442 MPS
C00285 00084 ∂12-Jan-90 1650 ME NS
C00287 00085 ∂12-Jan-90 2335 ME NS
C00288 00086 ∂13-Jan-90 0834 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: mental models
C00294 00087 ∂15-Jan-90 0820 @NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK,@syma.sussex.ac.uk:judithd@cogs.sussex.ac.uk AISB Quarterly Newsletter
C00300 00088 ∂15-Jan-90 0936 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Workshop on Expert Systems in Engineering.
C00308 00089 ∂15-Jan-90 1100 JMC
C00309 00090 ∂16-Jan-90 0439 rz@cs.cornell.edu Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
C00312 00091 ∂16-Jan-90 0831 Mailer re: Revising theories about Eastern Europe
C00314 00092 ∂16-Jan-90 0844 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Pat Simmons
C00315 00093 ∂16-Jan-90 0925 CLT popl coordinates
C00316 00094 ∂16-Jan-90 1056 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00318 00095 ∂16-Jan-90 1500 JMC
C00319 00096 ∂16-Jan-90 1524 rz@cs.cornell.edu Recruiting visit
C00322 00097 ∂16-Jan-90 1541 VAL re: Recruiting visit
C00323 00098 ∂16-Jan-90 1810 danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU your car
C00325 00099 ∂16-Jan-90 2323 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu do you have some free time?
C00327 00100 ∂17-Jan-90 0856 MPS mcc
C00328 00101 ∂17-Jan-90 1212 MPS Dr. Brown
C00329 00102 ∂17-Jan-90 1238 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu meeting time
C00330 00103 ∂17-Jan-90 1511 MPS
C00331 00104 ∂17-Jan-90 1632 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI Division lunches
C00335 00105 ∂18-Jan-90 0005 poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU AK-47s in the garden
C00336 00106 ∂18-Jan-90 0211 Mailer re: AK-47s in the garden
C00339 00107 ∂18-Jan-90 0800 JMC
C00340 00108 ∂18-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00341 00109 ∂18-Jan-90 1431 MPS McCarthy's Grades
C00343 00110 ∂18-Jan-90 1317 A.ERIC@GSB-How.Stanford.EDU Re: liberal? quotes?
C00345 00111 ∂18-Jan-90 1326 Mailer failed mail returned
C00346 00112 ∂18-Jan-90 1516 hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: McCarthy's Grades
C00348 00113 ∂18-Jan-90 1634 bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU
C00350 00114 ∂18-Jan-90 1734 bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
C00351 00115 ∂19-Jan-90 0919 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU lunch meeting
C00353 00116 ∂19-Jan-90 0945 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU re: lunch meeting
C00354 00117 ∂19-Jan-90 0954 VAL Apt
C00355 00118 ∂19-Jan-90 1009 VAL re: Apt
C00356 00119 ∂19-Jan-90 1013 VAL re: Apt
C00357 00120 ∂19-Jan-90 1100 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu Visit to University of Minnesota
C00359 00121 ∂19-Jan-90 1120 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU a problem in formalizing common-sense knowledge
C00361 00122 ∂19-Jan-90 1331 phil@ub.d.umn.edu CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
C00366 00123 ∂19-Jan-90 1346 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Corrigenda
C00368 00124 ∂19-Jan-90 1426 MPS elephant draft
C00369 00125 ∂19-Jan-90 1449 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Corrigenda
C00371 00126 ∂19-Jan-90 1516 VAL re: a problem in formalizing common-sense knowledge
C00372 00127 ∂19-Jan-90 1520 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU re: lunch meeting
C00373 00128 ∂19-Jan-90 1548 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu re: AI Division lunches
C00374 00129 ∂19-Jan-90 1614 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00376 00130 ∂19-Jan-90 1725 jullig@kestrel.edu ignore
C00378 00131 ∂20-Jan-90 0901 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU The trouble with that solution
C00380 00132 ∂20-Jan-90 2003 ME tape drives
C00381 00133 ∂21-Jan-90 0116 ME NS
C00382 00134 ∂21-Jan-90 0844 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU comparisons and the hunger example
C00385 00135 ∂21-Jan-90 2241 tiemann@Sun.COM League for programming freedom
C00394 00136 ∂21-Jan-90 2242 tiemann@Sun.COM League for programming freedom
C00422 00137 ∂22-Jan-90 0715 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
C00423 00138 ∂22-Jan-90 0937 ARK End of the world party?
C00425 00139 ∂22-Jan-90 1006 ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU Rich Korf
C00427 00140 ∂22-Jan-90 1128 VAL re: comparisons and the hunger example
C00428 00141 ∂22-Jan-90 1145 ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU Re: Rich Korf
C00430 00142 ∂22-Jan-90 1205 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU San Jose job for computational linguist
C00431 00143 ∂22-Jan-90 1449 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: San Jose job for computational linguist
C00432 00144 ∂23-Jan-90 0933 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU achievement
C00434 00145 ∂23-Jan-90 1026 @MCC.COM:msingh@mcc.com request for Elephant 2000 information
C00436 00146 ∂23-Jan-90 1112 HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
C00438 00147 ∂23-Jan-90 1319 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose book
C00440 00148 ∂23-Jan-90 1551 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Possible Orals date
C00442 00149 ∂23-Jan-90 1621 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00445 00150 ∂23-Jan-90 1627 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU this week and next
C00451 00151 ∂24-Jan-90 0932 CLT Timothy
C00452 00152 ∂24-Jan-90 1001 MPS State Department
C00453 00153 ∂24-Jan-90 1147 VAL reply to message
C00454 00154 ∂24-Jan-90 1300 JMC
C00455 00155 ∂24-Jan-90 1325 MPS
C00456 00156 ∂24-Jan-90 1622 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU 1990 Forsythe Lectures
C00461 00157 ∂24-Jan-90 1642 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Orals date and time
C00463 00158 ∂24-Jan-90 1849 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu,@ZERMATT.lcs.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu paper abstract
C00467 00159 ∂24-Jan-90 1854 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu,@ZERMATT.lcs.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu paper abstract
C00470 00160 ∂24-Jan-90 1854 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Pre-Orals
C00472 00161 ∂24-Jan-90 1856 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com Abstract for Path-Indexing Method Paper
C00475 00162 ∂24-Jan-90 1855 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com Abstract for Prolog Technology Theorem Prover Paper
C00480 00163 ∂24-Jan-90 1930 ME network problem
C00481 00164 ∂25-Jan-90 0848 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@peabody.teleos.com:stan@teleos.com Pre-Orals
C00484 00165 ∂25-Jan-90 0953 CLT DARPA request for Qlisp info
C00485 00166 ∂25-Jan-90 0957 albert@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Re: csdlists email address
C00488 00167 ∂25-Jan-90 1024 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Pre-Orals, Orals
C00490 00168 ∂25-Jan-90 1120 wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Assistant Chair search
C00492 00169 ∂25-Jan-90 1546 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU China bill veto override
C00494 00170 ∂25-Jan-90 1609 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: China bill veto override
C00496 00171 ∂26-Jan-90 0907 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Orals time and date
C00498 00172 ∂26-Jan-90 1000 @MCC.COM:ai.shepherd@MCC.COM consulting
C00500 00173 ∂26-Jan-90 1135 mrc@akbar.CAC.Washington.EDU re: Bush and China
C00502 00174 ∂26-Jan-90 1503 ME NS
C00503 00175 ∂26-Jan-90 1542 MPS Party
C00504 00176 ∂26-Jan-90 1743 VAL
C00505 00177 ∂26-Jan-90 2200 JMC
C00506 00178 ∂27-Jan-90 0012 GLB
C00508 00179 ∂27-Jan-90 0900 JMC
C00509 00180 ∂27-Jan-90 1212 doug@portia.stanford.edu Re: Residential Phone Service
C00512 00181 ∂27-Jan-90 1612 Mailer re: phone caller identification
C00515 00182 ∂28-Jan-90 1001 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
C00518 00183 ∂29-Jan-90 0958 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00521 00184 ∂29-Jan-90 1138 VAL re: suggestion
C00522 00185 ∂29-Jan-90 1553 VAL
C00524 00186 ∂29-Jan-90 2228 Mailer phone caller identification
C00543 00187 ∂30-Jan-90 1140 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00546 00188 ∂30-Jan-90 1504 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose review
C00551 00189 ∂30-Jan-90 1534 MPS
C00552 00190 ∂30-Jan-90 2107 Mailer re: Anonymity (was Re: Phone caller identification)
C00554 00191 ∂31-Jan-90 0846 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Faculty Meeting
C00556 00192 ∂31-Jan-90 1022 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU this week's seminar
C00558 00193 ∂31-Jan-90 1357 VAL Unofficial Communication
C00563 00194 ∂31-Jan-90 1628 CLT dec connections
C00568 00195 ∂31-Jan-90 1742 PKR responsiveness of databases
C00569 00196 ∂31-Jan-90 1754 harnad@Princeton.EDU PSYCOLOQUY editorial
C00580 00197 ∂31-Jan-90 1838 CLT Collaboration
C00583 00198 ∂01-Feb-90 0001 JMC
C00584 00199 ∂01-Feb-90 1045 CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU paper available
C00586 00200 ∂01-Feb-90 1758 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu re: responsiveness of databases
C00590 00201 ∂01-Feb-90 1831 Mailer re: TIME essay on education and Stanford
C00592 00202 ∂01-Feb-90 2019 pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
C00596 00203 ∂02-Feb-90 1219 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of Research Paper: Recursion Analysis
C00600 00204 ∂02-Feb-90 1224 VAL
C00601 00205 ∂02-Feb-90 1233 VAL re: reply to message
C00602 00206 ∂02-Feb-90 1246 Mailer re: TIME essay on education and Stanford
C00605 00207 ∂02-Feb-90 1303 VAL re: reply to message
C00606 00208 ∂02-Feb-90 1455 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract: Science of Reasoning
C00609 00209 ∂02-Feb-90 1500 hill@arachne.STANFORD.EDU DataMedia terminals
C00610 00210 ∂02-Feb-90 1513 MPS Ph.D. applications
C00611 00211 ∂02-Feb-90 1616 perlis@cs.UMD.EDU contexts
C00615 00212 ∂02-Feb-90 1625 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract: Eureka Steps
C00619 00213 ∂02-Feb-90 1627 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of Research Paper
C00623 00214 ∂02-Feb-90 1759 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu scheduling conflict on Oral exam
C00625 00215 ∂02-Feb-90 2104 reid@wrl.dec.com 9600-baud home terminal
C00627 00216 ∂02-Feb-90 2357 oski@d31mf0.Stanford.EDU Paul Flaherty
C00635 00217 ∂03-Feb-90 0636 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU triangles and polygons
C00636 00218 ∂03-Feb-90 0638 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU another problem in common-sense reasoning
C00638 00219 ∂03-Feb-90 0642 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU history of your triangle theorem
C00640 00220 ∂03-Feb-90 0646 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Minsky's coffee-table book
C00642 00221 ∂03-Feb-90 0732 reid@wrl.dec.com Re: 9600-baud home terminal
C00644 00222 ∂03-Feb-90 1120 perlis@cs.UMD.EDU Elephant
C00646 00223 ∂03-Feb-90 1308 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Final Call for Papers: 4th QP Workshop, Lugano
C00653 00224 ∂03-Feb-90 1558 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU pattern recognition and logic in AI
C00655 00225 ∂03-Feb-90 2217 harnad@Princeton.EDU Comments of Collaborative Proposal
C00672 00226 ∂04-Feb-90 0840 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:Joseph.Goguen%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of "OBJ as a Theorem Prover"
C00678 00227 ∂04-Feb-90 2056 golub@na-net.stanford.edu
C00679 00228 ∂05-Feb-90 0016 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00681 00229 ∂05-Feb-90 0800 JMC
C00682 00230 ∂05-Feb-90 0941 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu appointment
C00683 00231 ∂05-Feb-90 0953 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Tomorrow's faculty meeting
C00685 00232 ∂05-Feb-90 1003 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu re: Visit to University of Minnesota
C00687 00233 ∂05-Feb-90 1140 PAF stuff
C00688 00234 ∂05-Feb-90 1303 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
C00692 00235 ∂05-Feb-90 1401 "jc_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_7FACCD2501CD414A-7FACCD2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
C00701 00236 Tel: 212/532-4255 Fax: 212/532-9785
C00704 00237 ∂05-Feb-90 2021 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
C00709 00238 ∂05-Feb-90 2147 harnad@Princeton.EDU Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
C00714 00239 ∂05-Feb-90 2242 @RELAY.CS.NET:GOTO@ntt-20.ntt.jp r
C00715 00240 ∂05-Feb-90 2257 @RELAY.CS.NET:GOTO@ntt-20.ntt.jp Empty E-mail
C00717 00241 ∂06-Feb-90 0524 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_1985CE2501CD414A-B87DCE2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com re: Universal Email
C00720 00242 ∂06-Feb-90 0559 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
C00722 00243 ∂06-Feb-90 0709 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
C00724 00244 ∂06-Feb-90 0835 CLT
C00725 00245 ∂06-Feb-90 1336 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Oral exam schedule
C00727 00246 ∂06-Feb-90 1336 MPS Various items
C00729 00247 ∂06-Feb-90 1351 @coraki.stanford.edu:pratt@cs.stanford.edu Re: Oral exam schedule
C00731 00248 ∂06-Feb-90 1426 MPS
C00732 00249 ∂06-Feb-90 1431 MPS NAS meeting on Feb 8th
C00733 00250 ∂06-Feb-90 1553 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00735 00251 ∂06-Feb-90 1924 iverson@Neon.Stanford.EDU CS323 2/6 Assignment
C00737 00252 ∂07-Feb-90 0637 B-BRUE@vm1.spcs.umn.edu AI Lab tapes
C00740 00253 ∂07-Feb-90 0742 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Votes
C00741 00254 ∂07-Feb-90 0800 JMC
C00742 00255 ∂07-Feb-90 0928 CLT 9600-baud home terminal
C00743 00256 ∂07-Feb-90 1202 CLT Financial Summary
C00745 00257 ∂07-Feb-90 1246 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu your visit to cyc-west
C00747 00258 ∂07-Feb-90 1318 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: your visit to cyc-west
C00748 00259 ∂07-Feb-90 1348 CLT Timothy
C00749 00260 ∂07-Feb-90 1522 zeng@cs.ubc.ca Elephant 2000
C00751 00261 ∂07-Feb-90 1647 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract Rippling
C00754 00262 ∂07-Feb-90 2041 CLT financial summary (domestic)
C00755 00263 ∂08-Feb-90 0023 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu problem posed in cs323 last lecture
C00758 00264 ∂08-Feb-90 0835 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU MAC Intelligent Systems
C00760 00265 ∂08-Feb-90 0842 CLT Bing payment
C00761 00266 ∂08-Feb-90 1053 CLT SAIL tapes
C00762 00267 ∂08-Feb-90 1057 shoham@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
C00763 00268 ∂08-Feb-90 1101 reid@wrl.dec.com Re: 9600-baud modems
C00767 00269 ∂08-Feb-90 1110 MPS NAS meeting
C00768 00270 ∂08-Feb-90 1117 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
C00769 00271 ∂08-Feb-90 1128 irvine@sumex-aim.stanford.edu CS123
C00771 00272 ∂08-Feb-90 1132 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu my class
C00773 00273 ∂08-Feb-90 1156 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@life.ai.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu test of mailing list
C00775 00274 ∂08-Feb-90 1332 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU PAt Simmons
C00777 00275 ∂08-Feb-90 1411 MPS Berlekamp
C00778 00276 ∂08-Feb-90 1432 minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu prizes
C00779 00277 ∂08-Feb-90 1631 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Bud Frawley
C00780 00278 ∂08-Feb-90 1639 MPS
C00781 00279 ∂08-Feb-90 1702 harnad@Princeton.EDU BBS Call for Commentators: Searle, Pinker & Bloom, Cicchetti
C00792 00280 ∂08-Feb-90 1739 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Bud Frawley
C00794 00281 ∂08-Feb-90 2142 harnad@Princeton.EDU Important Date Correction for Searle Symposium...
C00796 00282 ∂08-Feb-90 2200 HK.RLS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU On-line CS/AI Reports
C00798 00283 ∂09-Feb-90 0825 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Bud Frawley
C00799 00284 ∂09-Feb-90 0934 VAL
C00800 00285 ∂09-Feb-90 1159 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
C00804 00286 ∂09-Feb-90 1449 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Next week's seminar topic
C00807 00287 ∂09-Feb-90 1546 poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU re: parking ticket
C00808 00288 ∂09-Feb-90 1642 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C00813 00289 ∂10-Feb-90 1604 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu concepts as objects (cs323)
C00818 00290 ∂11-Feb-90 0223 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU a philosophical question
C00819 00291 ∂11-Feb-90 1420 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
C00821 00292 ∂11-Feb-90 1511 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: reply to message
C00822 00293 ∂11-Feb-90 2128 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU reprint on emotions
C00824 00294 ∂11-Feb-90 2140 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU are we machines?
C00827 00295 ∂12-Feb-90 0753 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C00866 00296 ∂12-Feb-90 0936 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: Smith
C00954 00297 ∂12-Feb-90 0941 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU email address of Minsky?
C00955 00298 ∂12-Feb-90 1001 VAL re: cs323
C00957 00299 ∂12-Feb-90 1024 VAL Tyugu
C00960 00300 ∂12-Feb-90 1429 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu CS123 on Tuesday
C00962 00301 ∂12-Feb-90 1511 MPS
C00963 00302 ∂12-Feb-90 1731 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU FYI: [Comments by Hans Moravec on Roger Penrose's recent book]
C00998 00303 ∂12-Feb-90 2000 JMC
C00999 00304 ∂13-Feb-90 0122 poser@csli.Stanford.EDU Communism
C01002 00305 ∂13-Feb-90 1102 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C01004 00306 ∂13-Feb-90 1154 VAL Nonmonotonic seminar--correction
C01005 00307 ∂13-Feb-90 1600 CLT
C01006 00308 ∂13-Feb-90 1909 CLT Fellowship supplement for Zabih
C01007 00309 ∂13-Feb-90 2050 zeng@cs.ubc.ca Elephant 2000
C01010 00310 ∂13-Feb-90 2323 zeng@cs.ubc.ca re: Elephant 2000
C01013 00311 ∂14-Feb-90 0925 VAL Tyugu
C01014 00312 ∂14-Feb-90 0946 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU Re: Making sense of Mandela
C01016 00313 ∂14-Feb-90 1006 VAL re: Tyugu
C01017 00314 ∂14-Feb-90 1025 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU remarks on your review of Penrose
C01024 00315 ∂14-Feb-90 1354 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Program Verification Paper
C01026 00316 ∂14-Feb-90 1406 @Hudson.Stanford.EDU:jcm@iswim.Stanford.EDU Re: Program Verification Paper
C01029 00317 ∂14-Feb-90 1724 rosenblo@venera.isi.edu Vladimir Lifschitz
C01033 00318 ∂15-Feb-90 0657 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Does AI need a defense or not?
C01035 00319 ∂15-Feb-90 0917 MPS Permission
C01036 00320 ∂15-Feb-90 1148 rabin@harvard.harvard.edu Re: Did you get
C01039 00321 ∂15-Feb-90 1152 rabin@harvard.harvard.edu Re: Did you get
C01041 00322 ∂15-Feb-90 1308 barb@cs.uiuc.edu
C01043 00323 ∂15-Feb-90 1648 zeng@cs.ubc.ca I got the paper you faxed to me
C01045 00324 ∂15-Feb-90 1651 VAL
C01049 00325 ∂15-Feb-90 2115 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: my class
C01051 00326 ∂15-Feb-90 2207 CHEN@HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU IMPORTANT
C01070 00327 ∂16-Feb-90 1135 A.ABIE@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU re: Opinions of Potential Faculty
C01072 00328 ∂16-Feb-90 1148 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu contexts and lifting
C01074 00329 ∂16-Feb-90 1159 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Dennett
C01075 00330 ∂16-Feb-90 1306 mrg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: parking
C01077 00331 ∂16-Feb-90 1402 ME new keyboard
C01078 00332 ∂16-Feb-90 1440 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
C01128 00333 ∂16-Feb-90 1549 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu some very preliminary ideas on emotions and lifting
C01156 00334 ∂16-Feb-90 1635 VAL draft
C01157 00335 ∂17-Feb-90 1242 VAL re: draft
C01158 00336 ∂18-Feb-90 0043 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU FYI
C01160 00337 ∂18-Feb-90 0201 ito@ito.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp Elephant
C01164 00338 ∂18-Feb-90 0823 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: remarks on your review of Penrose
C01166 00339 ∂18-Feb-90 0829 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: Does AI need a defense or not?
C01169 00340 ∂18-Feb-90 1027 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Re: some very preliminary comments on your ideas on lifting
C01171 00341 ∂18-Feb-90 2138 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM responses to your comments
C01175 00342 ∂18-Feb-90 2143 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM the focus function and a case for contextTypes.
C01193 00343 ∂19-Feb-90 1341 ma@src.dec.com Elephant 2000
C01196 00344 ∂19-Feb-90 1526 VAL what can be said concisely
C01197 00345 ∂19-Feb-90 1639 VAL re: what can be said concisely
C01198 00346 ∂20-Feb-90 1024 VAL Special nonmonotonic seminar
C01200 00347 ∂20-Feb-90 1034 MPS MCC
C01201 00348 ∂20-Feb-90 1058 VAL Special seminar
C01203 00349 ∂20-Feb-90 1105 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C01205 00350 ∂20-Feb-90 1132 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
C01206 00351 ∂20-Feb-90 1530 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU
C01208 00352 ∂20-Feb-90 1548 @MCC.COM,@SHANDRA.ACA.MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM file
C01210 00353 ∂20-Feb-90 1626 VAL Special Nonmonotonic Seminar
C01212 00354 ∂20-Feb-90 1938 ME DD terminal
C01213 00355 ∂20-Feb-90 2155 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
C01227 00356 ∂21-Feb-90 0022 cliff%computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Manchester AI Professorship
C01229 00357 ∂21-Feb-90 0541 kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu re: comment
C01231 00358 ∂21-Feb-90 0544 kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu essay
C01317 00359 ∂21-Feb-90 1104 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
C01321 00360 ∂21-Feb-90 1531 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU ADS
C01323 00361 ∂21-Feb-90 1606 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
C01325 00362 ∂21-Feb-90 1612 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Publication
C01326 00363 ∂21-Feb-90 1721 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Tomorrow's seminar topic
C01328 00364 ∂21-Feb-90 1724 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
C01332 00365 ∂21-Feb-90 1745 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
C01335 00366 ∂22-Feb-90 0217 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU free will
C01337 00367 ∂22-Feb-90 0220 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU your old science fiction story
C01338 00368 ∂22-Feb-90 0913 CLT collaboration
C01340 00369 ∂22-Feb-90 1124 lrosenbe@note2.nsf.gov Re: apology
C01342 00370 ∂22-Feb-90 1139 ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU Sushi?
C01345 00371 ∂23-Feb-90 0833 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Ph.D Folders
C01346 00372 ∂23-Feb-90 0910 atm@ucs.indiana.edu re: Sushi?
C01347 00373 ∂23-Feb-90 0925 VAL special seminar
C01350 00374 ∂23-Feb-90 0957 MPS Visitors
C01351 00375 ∂23-Feb-90 1138 paulf@bodega.Stanford.EDU Re: phone caller identification
C01354 00376 ∂23-Feb-90 1528 MPS Mintz
C01355 00377 ∂23-Feb-90 1624 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C01357 00378 ∂23-Feb-90 1747 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
C01358 00379 ∂23-Feb-90 1757 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Dinner Invitation
C01370 00380 ∂24-Feb-90 1843 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu thesis proposal
C01371 00381 ∂25-Feb-90 1459 VAL Problem for the test
C01372 00382 ∂25-Feb-90 1500 VAL
C01373 00383 ∂25-Feb-90 2300 LES CSD history
C01375 00384 ∂26-Feb-90 0044 LES re: CSD history
C01377 00385 ∂26-Feb-90 0051 LES re: CSD history
C01378 00386 ∂26-Feb-90 0648 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: thesis proposal
C01380 00387 ∂26-Feb-90 0701 JMC
C01381 00388 ∂26-Feb-90 0847 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
C01383 00389 ∂26-Feb-90 0900 JMC
C01384 00390 ∂26-Feb-90 0954 PAF Nicaragua
C01385 00391 ∂26-Feb-90 1007 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
C01389 00392 ∂26-Feb-90 1022 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: aaai video outline
C01393 00393 ∂26-Feb-90 1032 der@thorin Dinner Invitation
C01395 00394 ∂26-Feb-90 1113 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
C01396 00395 ∂26-Feb-90 1154 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu one more address!
C01399 00396 ∂26-Feb-90 1252 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Referee Request
C01402 00397 ∂26-Feb-90 1354 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
C01404 00398 ∂26-Feb-90 1405 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
C01407 00399 ∂26-Feb-90 1717 VAL Elkan
C01409 00400 ∂26-Feb-90 1752 Mailer re: Nicaragua
C01411 00401 ∂27-Feb-90 1323 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU meeting
C01412 00402 ∂27-Feb-90 1359 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Thursday's seminar topic
C01415 00403 ∂27-Feb-90 1439 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
C01416 00404 ∂27-Feb-90 1743 couchli@wr1for.enet.dec.com Digital "Disclosure" Invitation
C01419 00405 ∂27-Feb-90 2200 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu revised draft of thesis
C01421 00406 ∂28-Feb-90 1257 RWF character reference
C01422 00407 ∂28-Feb-90 1342 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Current Developments
C01428 00408 ∂28-Feb-90 1605 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C01430 00409 ∂28-Feb-90 1831 VAL Gelfond
C01431 00410 ∂01-Mar-90 1000 JMC
C01432 00411 ∂01-Mar-90 1338 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI Division lunch
C01434 00412 ∂01-Mar-90 1803 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
C01437 00413 ∂01-Mar-90 2114 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu your trip to austin
C01439 00414 ∂02-Mar-90 0114 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU The Hunt for Red October
C01443 00415 ∂03-Mar-90 0923 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose
C01445 00416 ∂04-Mar-90 1428 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@life.ai.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu abstract
C01449 00417 ∂05-Mar-90 0929 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Have not heard from you re AI Day on Campus
C01451 00418 ∂05-Mar-90 1144 @RELAY.CS.NET:mazzetti@ed.aaai.org video
C01454 00419 ∂05-Mar-90 1219 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Request for Reprints
C01456 00420 ∂05-Mar-90 1245 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI division lunch
C01458 00421 ∂05-Mar-90 1348 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU [andre@csli.Stanford.EDU (Andre Scedrov): Lectures on Linear Logic]
C01461 00422 ∂06-Mar-90 0946 MPS
C01462 00423 ∂06-Mar-90 1321 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Thesis committee
C01464 00424 ∂06-Mar-90 1500 rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu AI Day on Campus
C01469 00425 ∂06-Mar-90 1512 MPS Abstract
C01470 00426 ∂06-Mar-90 1532 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU faculty meeting
C01473 00427 ∂06-Mar-90 1616 MPS
C01474 00428 ∂06-Mar-90 1636 binford@flamingo.stanford.edu AI Day on Campus
C01477 00429 ∂06-Mar-90 1659 CLT okner
C01478 00430 ∂06-Mar-90 2133 sohie@Neon.Stanford.EDU Searle's chinese room
C01480 00431 ∂06-Mar-90 2157 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Re: Searle's chinese room
C01482 00432 ∂07-Mar-90 0027 RWF character reference
C01483 00433 ∂07-Mar-90 0743 CLT request from Nils Nilsson
C01484 00434 ∂07-Mar-90 0744 CLT fuller
C01490 00435 ∂07-Mar-90 0800 JMC
C01491 00436 ∂07-Mar-90 1300 JMC
C01492 00437 ∂07-Mar-90 1413 MPS Proposal
C01493 00438 ∂07-Mar-90 1548 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Thursday's seminar topic
C01495 00439 ∂07-Mar-90 1632 scherlis@vax.darpa.mil Re: Soviet, Japanese and DARPA interest in Elephant
C01497 00440 ∂07-Mar-90 1632 MPS
C01498 00441 ∂07-Mar-90 2209 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Symposium
C01500 00442 ∂07-Mar-90 2233 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: SPP Symposium
C01502 00443 ∂08-Mar-90 0609 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: SPP Symposium
C01504 00444 ∂08-Mar-90 0934 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Orals tomorrow
C01506 00445 ∂08-Mar-90 0951 MPS Prof. Dale
C01507 00446 ∂08-Mar-90 1042 MARTYGO%YKTVMH.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU The proceedings from the Bar-Ilan Symposium
C01527 00447 ∂09-Mar-90 0059 VAL reply to message
C01528 00448 ∂09-Mar-90 1010 slagle@cs.umn.edu Distinguished Visitor
C01532 00449 ∂09-Mar-90 1937 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
C01534 00450 ∂10-Mar-90 1127 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
C01537 00451 ∂10-Mar-90 1204 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
C01540 00452 ∂11-Mar-90 1313 VAL CS221
C01541 00453 ∂11-Mar-90 1328 golub@na-net.stanford.edu re: whiteboards
C01542 00454 ∂11-Mar-90 1425 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz:lindsay@comp.vuw.ac.nz
C01544 00455 ∂11-Mar-90 1453 AI.GUHA@MCC.COM contexts reference
C01546 00456 ∂11-Mar-90 1523 VAL re: WOLF
C01549 00457 ∂11-Mar-90 1528 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
C01551 00458 ∂12-Mar-90 0901 ric@ace.SRI.COM Re: Preserving the gains of the revolution
C01558 00459 ∂12-Mar-90 0949 MPS receipt
C01559 00460 ∂12-Mar-90 0955 MPS Trip
C01561 00461 ∂12-Mar-90 1114 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Re: single room and dinner
C01563 00462 ∂12-Mar-90 1306 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Program Information and Request for Titles and Abstracts
C01570 00463 ∂12-Mar-90 1330 CLT bing
C01571 00464 ∂12-Mar-90 1352 ME su-etc
C01572 00465 ∂12-Mar-90 1642 MPS Austin Trip
C01574 00466 ∂13-Mar-90 0623 CLT $
C01575 00467 ∂13-Mar-90 0806 Mailer Preserving the gains of the revolution
C01580 00468 ∂13-Mar-90 0815 MPS
C01581 00469 ∂13-Mar-90 0845 CLT 900
C01582 00470 ∂13-Mar-90 1054 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:mccune@antares.mcs.anl.gov Otter 2.0
C01585 00471 ∂13-Mar-90 1259 harnad@Princeton.EDU Color Constancy (SPP Abstract)
C01590 00472 ∂13-Mar-90 1519 MPS Colby
C01591 00473 ∂13-Mar-90 1732 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu cs323 term paper
C01593 00474 ∂13-Mar-90 1853 carlf@Think.COM Elephant 2000
C01595 00475 ∂14-Mar-90 0430 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Re: can you answer this?
C01597 00476 ∂14-Mar-90 0935 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Rudy Rucker on "are we machines"
C01599 00477 ∂14-Mar-90 1158 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Spring Quarter Machine Learning Seminar
C01604 00478 ∂14-Mar-90 1408 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com missing your seminar
C01606 00479 ∂14-Mar-90 1418 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com missing your seminar
C01608 00480 ∂14-Mar-90 1818 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Title for AI Day on Campus
C01609 00481 ∂14-Mar-90 1900 JMC
C01610 00482 ∂14-Mar-90 1925 @research.att.com:rjb@allegra.tempo.nj.att.com "Future of Knowledge Representation"
C01613 00483 ∂14-Mar-90 2232 REM@SUWATSON.stanford.edu
C01614 00484 ∂15-Mar-90 0818 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Title for AI Day on Campus
C01616 00485 ∂15-Mar-90 0937 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Today's seminar topic
C01618 00486 ∂15-Mar-90 1054 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU AI DOC -- important message
C01622 00487 ∂15-Mar-90 1221 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU grades for homeworks
C01624 00488 ∂15-Mar-90 1411 MPS Vacation day
C01625 00489 ∂15-Mar-90 1702 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Qlisp and CLOS
C01627 00490 ∂15-Mar-90 2052 gjohn@portia.stanford.edu VTSS160
C01630 00491 ∂16-Mar-90 0947 AI.JUDY@MCC.COM HOTEL ARRANGEMENTS
C01631 00492 ∂16-Mar-90 1029 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU new sections for the triangle paper
C01643 00493 ∂16-Mar-90 1154 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP: Local information
C01648 00494 ∂16-Mar-90 1208 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Names for X terminals
C01650 00495 ∂16-Mar-90 1224 rpg@lucid.com Qlisp and CLOS
C01653 00496 ∂16-Mar-90 1604 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu Axiomatization of Mr. S and Mr. P
C01657 00497 ∂16-Mar-90 1608 gjohn@portia.stanford.edu re: VTSS160
C01658 00498 ∂17-Mar-90 0800 JMC
C01659 00499 ∂17-Mar-90 0903 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #3 - 17 MARCH 1990
C01666 00500 ∂18-Mar-90 1035 CLT DEC collaboration
C01668 00501 ∂18-Mar-90 1224 VAL Job hunting: Progress report
C01670 00502 ∂18-Mar-90 2237 hewitt@ai.mit.edu the uses of Circumscription
C01682 00503 ∂19-Mar-90 0600 JMC
C01683 00504 ∂19-Mar-90 1112 MPS Abstracts
C01684 00505 ∂19-Mar-90 1447 MPS Interview
C01685 00506 ∂19-Mar-90 1838 hoffman@csli.Stanford.EDU interview
C01687 00507 ∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp invitation
C01689 00508 ∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp arrangements information
C01694 00509 ∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp program
C01702 00510 ∂19-Mar-90 2149 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Local information
C01708 00511 ∂20-Mar-90 1057 hoffman@csli.Stanford.EDU re: interview
C01710 00512 ∂20-Mar-90 1402 MPS Library books
C01711 00513 ∂20-Mar-90 1528 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Library books
C01712 00514 ∂20-Mar-90 1601 ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU your presentation at this year's IAP meeting
C01715 00515 ∂20-Mar-90 1659 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU term paper
C01716 00516 ∂20-Mar-90 1803 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU IR
C01718 00517 ∂20-Mar-90 2131 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu today's faculty meeting and vote
C01722 00518 ∂21-Mar-90 1006 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
C01724 00519 ∂21-Mar-90 1020 tkeenan@note.nsf.gov Old proposals
C01727 00520 ∂21-Mar-90 1110 RPG re: Never again socialism
C01729 00521 ∂21-Mar-90 1314 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Book Information
C01731 00522 ∂21-Mar-90 1412 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU New Emacs feature on Go4
C01734 00523 ∂21-Mar-90 1459 jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Undergraduate Colloquium
C01736 00524 ∂21-Mar-90 1537 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
C01737 00525 ∂21-Mar-90 1557 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
C01738 00526 ∂21-Mar-90 1941 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu wrong reference
C01740 00527 ∂22-Mar-90 0008 gjohn@Neon.Stanford.EDU vtss paper
C01764 00528 ∂22-Mar-90 0017 kao@cdrsun.Stanford.EDU your recent message on su-etc
C01768 00529 ∂22-Mar-90 0018 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
C01770 00530 ∂22-Mar-90 0035 harnad@clarity.Princeton.EDU Call for Squibs: PSYCOLOQUY & sci.psychology.digest
C01778 00531 ∂22-Mar-90 0506 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com CompuServe Link to MHS
C01780 00532 ∂22-Mar-90 0800 JMC
C01781 00533 ∂22-Mar-90 0835 MPS Sato
C01782 00534 ∂22-Mar-90 1100 JMC
C01784 00535 ∂22-Mar-90 1356 jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Undergraduate Colloquium
C01786 00536 ∂22-Mar-90 1434 Mailer re: Taiwan imitation of China protest
C01790 00537 ∂22-Mar-90 1436 trip@russell.Stanford.EDU CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
C01793 00538 ∂22-Mar-90 1503 ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU Thanks
C01795 00539 ∂22-Mar-90 1620 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU Taiwan and the PRC
C01798 00540 ∂22-Mar-90 2204 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU Re: defending Taiwan
C01801 00541 ∂23-Mar-90 0951 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu term paper
C01803 00542 ∂23-Mar-90 1025 MPS
C01804 00543 ∂23-Mar-90 1032 sag@russell.Stanford.EDU NSF Proposal
C01819 00544 ∂23-Mar-90 1100 JMC
C01820 00545 ∂23-Mar-90 1204 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU visit
C01822 00546 ∂23-Mar-90 1256 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU Re: visit
C01824 00547 ∂23-Mar-90 1341 trip@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
C01827 00548 ∂24-Mar-90 2155 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU Data
C01835 00549 ∂24-Mar-90 2158 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU How to run the program
C01837 00550 ∂25-Mar-90 0745 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #4 - 24 MARCH 1990
C01842 00551 ∂25-Mar-90 1656 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Message from Ramin
C01843 00552 ∂25-Mar-90 2140 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C01844 00553 ∂25-Mar-90 2309 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU Here it is
C01876 00554 ∂25-Mar-90 2331 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Question
C01878 00555 ∂26-Mar-90 0200 JMC
C01879 00556 ∂26-Mar-90 0830 JMC
C01880 00557 ∂26-Mar-90 0918 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C01882 00558 ∂26-Mar-90 1016 MPS
C01883 00559 ∂26-Mar-90 1058 pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Better or Worse
C01885 00560 ∂26-Mar-90 1115 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
C01886 00561 ∂26-Mar-90 1121 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
C01888 00562 ∂26-Mar-90 1146 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
C01889 00563 ∂26-Mar-90 1606 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C01895 00564 ∂26-Mar-90 1606 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: The rest of my comments
C01896 00565 ∂26-Mar-90 1611 elkan@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU hello
C01898 00566 ∂26-Mar-90 1658 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM contexts vs microtheories
C01901 00567 ∂26-Mar-90 2051 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM re: contexts vs microtheories
C01903 00568 ∂26-Mar-90 2110 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM re: contexts vs microtheories
C01905 00569
C01907 00570 ∂27-Mar-90 0924 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C01909 00571 ∂27-Mar-90 0945 VAL reply to message
C01910 00572 ∂27-Mar-90 1023 VAL retreat
C01916 00573 ∂27-Mar-90 1453 CLT Calendar item
C01917 00574 ∂27-Mar-90 1500 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 16:48:23
C01919 00575 ∂27-Mar-90 1548 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU call for papers
C01923 00576 ∂27-Mar-90 1659 VAL Universal Counterexample
C01924 00577 ∂27-Mar-90 1742 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 19:11:15
C01926 00578 ∂27-Mar-90 1842 VAL Call for papers: Draft
C01930 00579 ∂27-Mar-90 1916 portal!cup.portal.com!Henderson@Sun.COM publishing
C01933 00580 ∂27-Mar-90 2112 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 22:55:10
C01935 00581 ∂28-Mar-90 1032 MPS
C01936 00582 ∂28-Mar-90 1431 ME 1991
C01937 00583 ∂28-Mar-90 1445 barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: Admissible sets and structures
C01939 00584 ∂28-Mar-90 1714 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU brochures
C01942 00585 ∂28-Mar-90 1724 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu most recent version of the cyc paper
C01943 00586 ∂29-Mar-90 0730 VAL UBC
C01944 00587 ∂29-Mar-90 1242 jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu Current Developments
C01948 00588 ∂30-Mar-90 0900 JMC
C01949 00589 ∂30-Mar-90 0912 GERRY%epvax.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK AAAI
C01952 00590 ∂30-Mar-90 0924 CLT calendar item
C01953 00591 ∂30-Mar-90 0957 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Pat....
C01954 00592 ∂30-Mar-90 1001 ME re: Will this address work
C01955 00593 ∂30-Mar-90 1720 bergman@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU new task
C01957 00594 ∂30-Mar-90 2047 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU "Never again socialism" may be a winning slogan in China....
C01960 00595 ∂31-Mar-90 1207 haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu Re: Current Developments
C01962 00596 ∂31-Mar-90 1333 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
C01963 00597 ∂31-Mar-90 1530 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
C01964 00598 ∂31-Mar-90 1710 underdog@portia.stanford.edu gopher
C01977 ENDMK
C⊗;
∂01-Jan-90 2041 Mailer re: Castro vs. Ceausescu
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(5.61/UW-NDC Revision: 2.9 ) id AA24623; Mon, 1 Jan 90 20:42:01 -0800
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1990 20:24:28 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Castro vs. Ceausescu
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <7TAwp@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.631254268.1103527590.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
My response to JMC on Cuba on what the US should do:
Discard the boycott as a failed policy. Discard the "no diplomatic relations"
as a failed policy (in fact, we already do have diplomatic relations with Cuba
in everything but name -- the US Embassy in Havana and the Cuban Embassy in
Washington are both in active operation with full staffs, albeit under the
fiction of being "interest sections" of a third country and the Ambassador not
officially called that).
Basically, eliminate any premise of the "Yanqui Imperialist threat" to
Castro's government. Instead, flood Cuba with a much more dangerous threat --
American tourists. Cuba's beaches are the best in the Caribbean; if the
boycott is lifted the current trickle will become a flood.
This will undermine Castro's government in ways that Radio Marti never can.
One last thing; it must be considered that Castro is genuinely popular among a
great many Cubans. Little good, I suspect, can be done by trying to undermine
Castro directly. Castro may be a megalomaniac, but there's no evidence that
he's succumbed to the temptation of a luxurious lifestyle. He therefore lacks
the weakness that brought down Baby Doc, Marcos, and Ceaucescu. It'd work
better to subvert the system under him, so that when he finally dies it'll
collapse on its own. This includes finding a leader who'll be able to invoke
Castro's name while discarding all his policies.
-------
∂02-Jan-90 0020 VAL
To: JMC, MPS
I'm taking 4 days off, Tuesday-Friday. See you next week.
--Vladimir
∂02-Jan-90 1027 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Alliant visit (reminder)
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id AA01985; Tue, 2 Jan 90 10:27:49 -0800
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 90 10:27:49 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9001021827.AA01985@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: qlisp@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Alliant visit (reminder)
Alliant will visit us on Thursday, January 4 at 10:00 a.m. to describe
a new multiprocessor system that they will soon be announcing. You'll
have to sign a non-disclosure agreement if you want to attend. Please
let me know if you plan to come. It will be in MJH 352.
Joe
∂02-Jan-90 1406 Mailer re: Affirmative Action: A Worldwide Disaster
To: su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Les Earnest <LES@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
John McCarthy posted a citation of an article in _Commentary_ by Thomas
Sowell of the Hoover Institution titled "Affirmative Action: a worldwide
disaster" and left a copy in the Jacks Hall lounge. The article reviews
the effects of policies that grant preferential treatment to certain
racial or ethnic groups in various countries, such as the Affirmative
Action in the U.S and "positive discrimination" in India, and observes
that the statistical arguments regarding the reasons for apparent
imbalances in composition of various employment groups are mostly
nonsensical.
Sowell also argues that while these Affirmative Action programs seem to
have great political appeal, only one of them has improved the economic
well being of the preferred group so far. That is in South Africa, where
government preferences have helped economically disadvantaged whites,
largely at the expense of the blacks.
Mr. Sowell seems to have overlooked a more fundamental argument: none of
these governments has defined their racial or ethnic classification scheme
in a way that makes scientific sense. For example, Stanford dutifully
reports Affirmative Action statistics each year for each of the five
official ethnic groups recognized by the U.S. government. This requires
that every student and employee be placed in one and only one of these
groups. Never mind that neither the government nor the University has
bothered to define what the classes mean or how to place people of mixed
background. Thus we are treated to statistics with 3 digit precision
in an undefined classification system!
I found Sowell's article convincing on the issues that he argued, if a bit
rambling, but believe that he has conceded too much by his implicit
assumption that every person is a member of some particular ethnic group.
For example, I'm not.
Les Earnest
∂02-Jan-90 1525 MPS Nafeh
Call Patty at Nafeh's office 943-1711.
∂02-Jan-90 1633 ether@allegra.att.com Nonmonotonicity and scope
Received: from arpa.att.com by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 2 Jan 90 16:32:51 PST
From: ether@allegra.att.com
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 90 16:53:30 EST
>From: allegra!ether (David Etherington)
To: Arpa!JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 29 Dec 89 1517 PST <1KRyLG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Nonmonotonicity and scope
> Date: 29 Dec 89 1517 PST
> From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
>
> 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.
I think you are right. In fact, scope will probably turn out to
be an immensely complicated thing to explicate in the long run.
Factors such as context, attention, and the goal structure of the
agent obviously all play a role. It turns out that these also
provide mechanisms for efficient nonmonotonic reasoning. Don
Perlis had a paper touching on this side of things at the New Paltz
workshop, and I've been thinking along the same lines lately.
If anyone can come up with a good way to determine "context" in
some general sense of the word, I can show how to use it to solve
a lot of the thorny problems that are lying around in nonmonotonic
reasoning.
I sent you a page 36 from a Nov 1 draft of the paper, but just
realized that it was almost certainly the wrong page. There were
2 versions produced that day. They have identical content, but
in one the double spacing was compressed to save trees. The copies
of the compressed one I sent out, however, didn't have the date
on them, so you must have one of the doublespaced versions. I'll
send another page immediately.
Thanks for your comments...
...David.
∂03-Jan-90 0738 Mailer re: Soviet public opinion
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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1990 7:32:38 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Soviet public opinion
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <7U1kT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.631380758.377401575.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
JMC, since you left such a good clue, it wouldn't be one of the "obvious"
nations (e.g. the UK, or West Germany, or Sweden). It'd have to be some
country the USSR officially doesn't like.
So that'd suggest one of: Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, or South Africa. For
my fifth guess, I dunno, how about the Vatican? :-)
-------
∂03-Jan-90 0817 @IBM.COM:CHAITIN@YKTVMZ Searle's Scientific American article
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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 90 11:17:15 EST
From: CHAITIN@IBM.COM
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Searle's Scientific American article
Hi John! It's been a long time! Oh, congratulations on your Kyoto
Prize. I'm afraid I haven't read the Searle article, but what you
said on your phone message sounds very reasonable. I.e., the theory
that it is speaking in Chinese is better than the theory that it is
talking about the Stock Market because it is a simpler theory (Occam's
razor). This can be formalized by using program-size complexity
(which I call algorithmic information content). The run time /
calculation time doesn't enter into it. One just measures bits of
information, i.e., the size of the alternative programs (theories)
that account for the facts = permit one to calculate them. The best
theory is the simplest = smallest program. Regards, Greg
P.S. I've send you a package of recent reprints.
∂03-Jan-90 0857 finin@PRC.Unisys.COM email
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id AA15793; Wed, 3 Jan 90 11:57:20 -0500
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 90 11:57:20 -0500
From: finin@PRC.Unisys.COM
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: finin@sol.PRC.Unisys.COM
Subject: email
I enjoyed your note in CACM on email and thought that it was right on
the mark. Since joining Unisys two years ago, I have been very
frustrated by the fact that there are two disjoint email systems which
DO NOT talk to each other and probably never will. Most of the R&D
people (well, the few of us who are left) are connected to the
internet and use it's style of email while the people who make policy
and control the money tend to be on an internal Unisys network. Your
proposal would solve this problem quite easily.
Personally, I think that email will have arrived when I can use it to
communicate with my Mother!
What has prompted me to send you this note, however, is that I just
ran across an article which you may find of interest. It's:
@article{Pliskin89,
author={Nava Pliskin},
title={Interacting with electronic mail can be a dream or a
nightmare: a user's point of view},
journal={Interacting with Computers},
volume=1,
number=3,
month={December},
year=1989}
The author discusses some of the many problems which make email
systems difficult to use, most of which would be solved by your
proposal. I've just dropped a copy of the paper in the mail to you,
in case you are interested in reading it.
Regards,
Tim
Tim Finin finin@prc.unisys.com (internet)
Center for Advanced Info. Technology 215-648-7446, 215-648-7412 (fax)
Unisys, PO Box 517, Paoli, PA 19301 215-386-1749 (home)
∂03-Jan-90 0859 MPS
Patti from Dr. Nafeh's office called again. She wants
you to call her 943-1711
∂03-Jan-90 0942 wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU bookcase
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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 90 09:42:24 -0800
From: George Wheaton <wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001031742.AA12507@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail
Subject: bookcase
John,
Yvette said that you were interested in one of the tall bookcases that was
in the hall during the move yesterday. I MAY have an extra one, if you
need one for your office (I don't think we should sell it). I asked
Carolyn about it this morning and she suggested that I check with you.
Any interest?
gw
∂03-Jan-90 0954 @IBM.COM:HALPERN@ALMVMA sabbatical
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Date: Wed, 03 Jan 90 09:56:33 PST
From: "Joe Halpern" <HALPERN@IBM.COM>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, mcvax!cwi.nl!paulv@seismo.css.gov, ma@src.dec.com,
odonnell@gargoyle.uchicago.edu, Misra@cs.utexas.edu, Konolige@kl.sri.com,
edmund.clarke@a.cs.cmu.edu, prakash@gvax.cs.cornell.edu,
mcvax!uva!johan@seismo.css.gov, shoham@cs.stanford.edu,
manfred@spica.ucsc.edu, Hector@princeton.edu, christos%cs@ucsd.edu,
vassos@csri.toronto.edu
Message-Id: <010390.095145.halpern@ibm.com>
Subject: sabbatical
Dear friends and colleagues:
I will be on sabbatical at the University of Toronto from January 6
to April 15, 1990. I can be reached there by email at
jyh@csri.toronto.edu (internet) or halpern@utorvm (bitnet).
The department's mailing address is:
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
M5S1A4
CANADA
My office telephone number will be 416-978-4106. You can leave messages
at the department office number of 416-978-6025. My home telephone
number will be 416-787-2349.
∂03-Jan-90 1101 JMC
Sarah work
∂03-Jan-90 2254 Mailer re: Soviet public opinion
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(5.61/UW-NDC Revision: 2.9 ) id AA01441; Wed, 3 Jan 90 22:54:32 -0800
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1990 22:48:04 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Soviet public opinion
To: Mark Crispin <mrc@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Cc: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>, su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <MS-C.631380758.377401575.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.631435684.1103527590.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Well, after I posted my message I looked it up. If what I found is the same
survey JMC refers to, the answer is Israel, the third of my five guesses. I
will admit I wouldn't have gotten it without the clue JMC gave; it made me
think beyond the superficial. Had I thought of it a bit more I probably would
have listed Israel first, or perhaps second behind South Korea.
-------
∂03-Jan-90 2355 crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us The INTERNET CRUCIBLE v2.1
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To: Distribution:;
Subject: The INTERNET CRUCIBLE v2.1
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 90 23:50:06 PST
From: crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us
INTERNET CRUCIBLE SMTP EDITION
January, 1990 Volume 2 : Issue 1
In this issue:
- Letters in response to Volume 1, Issue 2
- Overselling The Network
- Reprint availability
THE CRUCIBLE is a moderated forum for the discussion of Internet issues.
Contributions received by the moderator are stripped of all identifying
headers and signatures and forwarded to a panel of reviewers. Materials
approved for publication will appear in THE CRUCIBLE without attribution.
This policy encourages consideration of ideas solely on their intrinsic
merit, free from the influences of authorship, funding sources and
organizational affiliations.
The INTERNET CRUCIBLE is an eleemosynary publication of Geoff Goodfellow.
Mail contributions to: crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTERS IN RESPONSE TO THE CRUCIBLE VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2
The Changing Nature of Managing the Internet:
A Paradox in Governance
--------------
Sir:
I applaud the recommendations of this proposal. How do they get implemented?
Yours etc.,
--------------
Sir:
Although our site is not an Internet site, my contact with the
Internet while in college sparked a continuing interest its activities. In
The Crucible, (Vol. 1, Iss. 2), your contributors raises an issue concerning
the role of the IAB:
For the sake of argument, suppose one or more members of the IAB
were employees of a commercial concern. Further, suppose that these
commercial concerns were directly tied to Internet technology. For
example, one of of these concerns might be a vendor of Internet technology,
or another might be a supplier to such vendors.
Was this not a concern with the original mandate of the IAB when
DARPA founded the project? Obviously, network technology has become a
considerably more competitive market than when the Internet was originally
created, but since it is gov't funded, isn't there a bidding process for
introducing new technology into the Internet? It seems to me that this is a
fairly self-evident concern.
I think The Crucible is very interesting, although I do find the
lack of attribution disquieting. I think that if people are afraid of
openly criticizing the Internet management 1) they should revise their
opinion of the organizations that they are involved with or 2) as you
suggest, make the Internet management more accountable.
Yours etc.,
--------------
Sir:
I would like to agree with your policy of keeping contributions to
The Crucible anonymous. Many people are very willing to make honest
observations about problems with the Internet in private, but are afraid
that either their funding or their credibility in the Internet community
will be harmed if they speak publically. I may not agree with all of these
observations, but I agree with the value of having a place where they can
be made.
Yours etc.,
--------------
Sir:
While I feel that an open discussion of Internet is just fine, I
disagree strongly with several of the basic assumptions and statements in
The Crucible.
1) "Each contribution is refereed by a range of networking experts from
academia, research, and industry. As with refereed professional
journals, the referees are responsible for ensuring that a contribution
is credible..."
This is patently false and potentially quite damaging statement.
For many years, we in the academic community have worked to convince our
colleagues (e.g., physists, chemists, and biologists) that Computer
Scientists establish and use high standards for academic tenure and
promotion. In the academic world, the terms "peer review" and "refereed
publication" are sharply distinguished from "open" or "moderated"
discussions. As a member of a departmental promotion/tenure committee,
editor of one academic journal, and the editor-in-chief of another, I am
painfully aware of the academic refereeing process and how it differs from
what a pedestrian might think of as "refereeing". Scientists participate
in peer review voluntarily because they believe it will help keep their
publications accurate and objective. Part of the refereeing process
involves eliminating any unsubstantiated, subjective opinions. Thus, in a
refereed publication, one can say, "professor X proved Y" by giving a
citation to the published work, but one cannot say "I think professor X was
on vacation daydreaming and wasn't thinking clearly when he wrote paper Z"
because that conclusion is not warranted by the documented facts. This
distinction may seem like a minor quibble to readers who are interested in
expressing unsubstantiated opinions (or readers who are trying to speculate
at the discussion that went on behind the closed doors of IAB meetings),
but among my academic colleagues, it is an important point. Feel free to
publish unsubstantiated opinions or speculation, but please retract the
statements comparing The Crucible to a refereed journal and help us keep a
clear distinction between opinionated discussions and refereed journals.
(2) "Publication without attribution is a time-honored means for advancing
positions solely on the basis of their content. Unlike professional
journals that exist both to serve the community and contribute to the
authors' reputations, THE CRUCIBLE exists solely to serve the
community. THE CRUCIBLE moderator, a member of the network community
since 1973, feels that the Internet is best served by fostering a
forum in which ideas stand solely on their intrinsic merit, not on
the standings of the authors advancing the ideas...
THE CRUCIBLE, by publishing without attribution, prevents prejudice
towards contributions on the basis of authors' standings or their
affiliations, and encourages contributors to speak freely, without
organizational entanglements or jeopardizing funding sources. THE
CRUCIBLE relies on a wide cross-section of referees to filter
contributions that are not of a meritorious nature.
I agree that anonymous submissions of technical ideas are wonderful
and helps prevent predjuice. However, it only works for technical ideas
that are the subject of objective discussion, not for slanderous
allegations about individuals or groups. For example, if three groups
propose a replacement for the IP addressing scheme, anonymous consideration
of the ideas may eliminate predjuice. However if a random person says "the
IAB thought thus and so about topic X" that's absolutely different than
Vint Cerf, chair of the IAB, saying what the IAB thought. More to the
point, imagine someone writing, "I will work hard to see that Q does not
gain support." If the author is chairman of the FRICC, the statement is a
policy statement; but if the author is a first-year grad student, it's
meaningless. In an anonymous submission situation, you as moderator must
decide whether the publication will contain technical statements, policy
statements, or random opinions. You take responsibility for assuring your
readership that articles giving undocumented statements come from people
who are somehow giving correct and authoritative facts (or you should ask
authors to write "I have the impression..." in front of such statements
instead of publishing them as plain fact. In this regard, you have let us
down. At INTEROP 89(tm) you said that no one has given you one specific
instance of inaccuracy, so let me illustrate what I mean: you published an
article that blindly referred to CSNET as an example of a technology in
which the subscriber pays for the service. While it is true that there is
some usage-sensitive charging, CSNET survives ONLY because it was started
with an NSF seed fund and received other NSF grants along the way; it is
NOT a good example of the pay-for-use paradigm succeeding. Maybe if the
author had been a member of the CSNET executive committee he/she would have
known that, but as editor, you must either filter such statements or be
sure the authors are knowledgable. Similarly, articles were painfully
unaware of existing plans to upgrade NSFnet (not a secret as far as I know,
but you probably have to ask to find out), and of the existing work to
coordinate management of NSF regional nets.
If you want The Crucible to gain respect, more editorial discretion
will be needed (or rethink your policy and use anonymous submissions only
for objective technical material).
Yours etc.,
--------------
Sir:
In THE CRUCIBLE V1.2 a contribution stated:
Or do I have it wrong, and the worthy scholar of your piece doesn't care
whether we use world class networking in our allegedly world class national
research enterprise but just wants cheap reliable email? If so, we already
have it in the form of BITNET which reaches millions of individuals
worldwide for pennies a message and is 100% supported by member/user fees.
Would that it were so. Unfortunately BITNET is not 100%
self-supported. Today BITNET runs much of its traffic over the regional
and national IP networks. As such, it too is now relying upon governmental
funding. I have seen quotes of as much as 20% of the NSFNet traffic being
actually NJE buffers encapsulated in TCP/IP datagrams (in support of
BITNET). We feel subject to our own success, and traffic outgrew carrying
capacity, with our membership being unwilling to explicitly fund the
additional capacity needed to carry our own traffic. Sigh.
Yours etc.,
--------------
Sir:
I find the political issues involved with technology to be as
fascinating as the technical problems, and this is one reason I enjoy The
Crucible.
While reading the 2nd issue, it seems pretty clear that the
author(s) had an axe to grind (perhaps rightly so). This of course
highlights the anonymous policy of The Crucible, and makes one wonder about
the author's own motivation. Also, I am curious as to how many different
people contribute material, and who writes which pieces.
I would like to suggest that authors be identified with pseudonyms
(ala the Federalist Papers), and maybe a two-line bio telling us what role
they play in the Internet community. This would help readers keep straight
the various views.
I realize this is a slight departure from the policy of "advancing
positions solely on the basis of their content", but without any clue as to
the author's background or basis for his ideas, I would tend to slightly
suspect some of the more extreme critisms they make.
Yours etc.,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is THE CRUCIBLE's policy to correct errors. Readers are urged
to call mistakes to our attention by mailing to crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overselling The Network
Few users of the Internet would argue that there are no benefits to
networking. Electronic mail, file transfer, and access to remote resources
are all services that we enjoy using every day. A bit of culture shock is
bound to ensue when the marketeers get involved to sell "The Network" to
The Public. This is the result of the well-intentioned, but often
unintentionally humorous and shocking, video production of "The National
Network" by MCI and IBM.
To introduce the concept of a network, the video begins and ends
with a conversation between a scholar from the Renaissance and a women from
the near-future garbed in a StarTrek-esque uniform. The opening scene is
used to set-up a linkage between Einstein's theory of relativity and
"communications moving at the speed of light". Fortunately, the scene and
its shmaltzy dialogue lasts only a couple of minutes before the video gets
on to make its sales pitch.
The sales pitch is that A National Research Network would be A Good
Thing to have, and that we need "...a network that is 1000 times more
powerful" than our current networking capability. No arguments there.
In fact, this is an important message to impress upon The Public and The
Government: intensive, well-supported research is critical to the
development of the next generation of networks. There are however, two
serious flaws in the video's presentation: inadequate examples of
networking, and arguably irresponsible claims about the reliability and
dependability of research networks.
Throughout the video, various examples of computer-based
applications are presented, such as the use of super-computer access for
bio-modeling, telescience, and so on. Although the examples are powerful,
they suffer from two defects. First, there is no time frame associated
with the examples--the viewer gets the impression that just about
everything described is already implemented. Second, there is no
distinction made between distributed and non-distributed applications--
virtually all of the examples, except for telescience, involve technologies
that rely on computer programs, not on computer networks.
These are serious defects, because money could be well spent on
developing computer applications without funding the network, per se. That
is, many of the examples given in the video show the value of computer
applications, not the value of distributed applications (telescience, of
course, being the exception). In view of such an approach, one might
easily interpret the video as suggesting that little work is needed on the
networking aspect--an unexpected, but logical response.
A misleading and arguably irresponsible impression about the value,
reliability and dependability of The Research Network is given by the video's
example of the use of The Network in providing emergency medical care.
The video cuts to a helicopter landing at a hospital, and we hear the
voice-over:
"One of the most immediate benefits of a National Research Network
will be to speed better health care to all regions of the
country. Most people do not live near a major medical
center--for them, The Network could be a life saver."
then the scene changes to an examining room. We see a young doctor
examining a sickly youth. The camera pans to the concerned mother who
is on the verge of tears as the doctor discusses her child's case.
What is wrong with this scene? Probably it is using the term
"Research Network" and "life saver" in the same thought! Given, among
other things, the hit-and-miss nature of routing in the Internet (and
the inability of the engineering and research community yet to fix it),
it is a tremendous leap of faith to imagine that Our National "Research"
Network will have the stability necessary for life-critical situations.
The following scenario is more likely:
Doctor: "Nurse, I need the patient's blood analysis to determine
the medication dosage which may save the patient's life."
Nurse: "I'm sorry Doctor, RIP has just begun counting to infinity,
we've lost connectivity to the backbone, and
network operations doesn't answer the phone."
Doctor: "Get my lawyer on the line, I want to make sure my
malpractice insurance covers this..."
If the medical hard-sell wasn't enough, you need to continue
viewing only about 10 more minutes before the spectre of national security
is invoked:
"We have a major dependence in this nation on the creation and
the transmission of ideas. The future of this nation is at stake."
From here, it is easy to imagine how the speaker transitions to
having The Federal Government paying for all of this. While it is clearly
in The National Interest to fund research for next-generation networking,
there is a very big danger with the tack taken by this video: overselling
The Network.
Recent history is the best teacher here; consider how the original
NSFNET was oversold to the U.S. Science community. The original goals of
NSFNET were straight-forward and honest: super-computer access for
physicists. Unfortunately, the technology then available was not quite up
to speed for the size and topology specified for the project.
What began as "NSFNET Phase I" was under-capitalized, under-manned,
and technically questionable. After the sale to The Science Community was
consummated, it was up to The Networking Community to make it happen.
NSFNET Phase I would have failed, except for the heroic efforts of one
good-natured, but extremely overworked networking guru. The routers were
flakey, connectivity was sketchy, and connections were creaky, but it was
enough to make another sale--"NSFNET Phase II," which brought a massive
infusion of capital and an industry coalition to make the technology appear
to be cost-effective. Fortunately for all of us, the NSFNET Phase II
delivers much better service than the Phase I project. Unfortunately for
our networking guru, all The Science Community ever saw was that "tinkerer"
who was constantly breaking "their network." The guru got bawled out at
the National Academy of Sciences for his efforts.
The Real Danger: as academicians, physicists have little real power
(no insult intended). But, The Public, The Medical Profession, The Legal
Profession, and The Politicians, do in fact Have Power. If The Networking
Community screws up this new "National Research Network"--if it is poorly
designed or executed, like the NSFNET Phase I cacophony--then the
networking research and engineering community will be held responsible.
The punishment won't be getting bawled out by a group of scholars, it will
be an international media-event of the first order.
By making a video for consumption by The Public, The Medical
Profession, The Legal Profession, and The Politicians, and by making
connections between The `Research' Network and life-critical care, we have
begun the game of repeating history. We are once again allowing ourselves
to oversell The Network. MCI and IBM are to be congratulated for producing
a video to promote the concept of a National Network, but tear-jerking,
drum-beating scenes inappropriately linking time critical health care for
the masses with a research network due the cause a disservice. "The
Network," if presented with realistic distributed applications can pretty
much sell itself!
REFERENCE: "National Network" --
A production of MCI and IBM (MCI Video Production Center, McLean, VA)
Color, VHS, 20 minutes. This video is available at any of the
organizations running the regional networks of the NSFNET.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email reprints of THE CRUCIBLE are available from crucible@fernwood.mpk.ca.us:
v1.1: "A Critical Analysis of the Internet Management Situation:
The Internet Lacks Governance", examines Internet technical and
accountability failures. (August 1989)
v1.2: "The Changing Nature of Managing the Internet:
A Paradox in Governance", examines the paradoxes and failures
inherent in the Internet management structure. (September 1989)
-------
∂04-Jan-90 1017 MPS
Jackie at Bing has the kindergarten handout you want at
her office.
∂04-Jan-90 1100 JMC
pay for Sarah's work
∂04-Jan-90 1322 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: Soviet public opinion
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Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1990 13:15:26 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: re: Soviet public opinion
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <1SUwIX@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.631487726.7590.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
In <1SUwIX@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, John McCarthy writes:
>The interesting question is, Why Israel?.
>
>I suppose the Soviet people admire and independent policy, military
>success and dislike the Arabs on whom they have been wasting money.
I agree with your supposition.
The possibility you raise about the kibbutzim has some merit; Israel at its
founding was closer to the Communism that Marx envisioned than any Communist
state ever has been. I also believe (I may be mistaken) that the USSR had a
significant hand in getting Israel created.
Wheels within wheels...
Since some people brought it up, I wonder where India stood in the Soviet
poll. I doubt it was very high. India has played the part of the useful fool
for the Soviets, but I don't think useful = admirable.
-------
∂05-Jan-90 1117 rpg@lucid.com Romania
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Date: Fri, 5 Jan 90 11:15:03 PST
From: Richard P. Gabriel <rpg@lucid.com>
Message-Id: <9001051915.AA06770@rose>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Romania
John, I sent this to Nils and Terry. Do you have discretionary funds
(say $5k) that we could use for this?:
There is a student in Bucharest with whom I exchange letters, mainly
to advise him on his computer science career. This morning I received
the following telex from him:
Dear Richard:
Dreadful things happened in Romania. The dictatorship was overthrown
and many students were gunned during Christmas. We need help (especially
our universities). I'd like to visit U.S. and ask help from the computer
science community. Thus I need an official invitation (for a visa) and
some money for expenses in U.S. If you could help me, please answer the
following address:
Aurel Paun
Telex 11939 CBTX R
I would like to issue the invitation as a member of the department. Is
there some source of money for expenses that we could tap to help him
out? I've had little luck with getting money for worthy causes from
Lucid (as Terry knows), but I will try. Any thoughts?
-rpg-
∂05-Jan-90 1428 Mailer re: Scandal
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Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1990 14:11:40 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: re: Scandal
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: RIC@rml2.sri.com, comments@kl.sri.com, su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <1qV8PE@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.631577500.899.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Note too that unlike Watergate, Teapot Dome, or Grant's follies, the looting
of the S&L's was not a Republican scandal. The Democrats are just as guilty
as the Republicans in this one. Perhaps the notion of the US as a one-party
state (the Republicrat Party) isn't all that far off...
-------
∂05-Jan-90 1610 Mailer re: Scandal
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Date: Fri 5 Jan 90 16:09:41-PST
From: Ric Steinberger <RIC@RML2.SRI.COM>
Subject: re: Scandal
To: JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM, comments@KL.SRI.COM, su-etc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Message-ID: <631584581.570000.RIC@RML2.SRI.COM>
In-Reply-To: <1qV8PE@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(246)+TOPSLIB(136)@RML2.SRI.COM>
Much of the money is esentially "lost", unrecoverable. A lot was probably
spent on bad investments, ones with high risk that never paid off. Some
was just siphoned off, back into the pockets of the board of directors
who engaged in outrageous consumption. Some was probably hidden away
in foreign bank accounts, or laundered beyond tracability. It is
unlikely that more than 10 - 20 % will ever be recovered.
-ric s.
BTW - I don't know if Alan Cranston and friends have returned their "gifts."
-------
∂05-Jan-90 1617 pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
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From: The Bill Program <pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Prancing Pony Bill
Reply-To: <pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Prancing Pony Bill of John McCarthy (JMC) for December 1989 (1/5/90)
NOTE: In anticipation of the move off of SAIL, we are testing out
some new software. If this bill has anything that
you think is bizarre or incorrect, please let us know.
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You haven't paid your Pony bill since 10/1989.
Accounts with balances remaining unpaid for more than 55 days are
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Please pay your bill and keep your account current.
∂06-Jan-90 0141 @Score.Stanford.EDU:SYS@SAIL.Stanford.EDU Failed mail returned: user not accepting mail
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Subject: Failed mail returned: user not accepting mail
To: @SCORE.Stanford.EDU:JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
The message below was not deliverable to:
DEK@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
DEK (Don Knuth) has decided to discontinue reading email.
Please write to him at the following address:
Donald E. Knuth
Professor of The Art of Computer Programming
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140 USA
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Date: 06 Jan 90 0137 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: New building.
To: faculty@SCORE.Stanford.EDU
Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be
preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
- Francis Bacon.
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∂06-Jan-90 0141 @Score.Stanford.EDU:MAILER-DAEMON@goblin.Stanford.EDU Returned mail: Host unknown
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----- Transcript of session follows -----
421 troll.stanford.edu.tcp... Deferred: Address family not supported by protocol family
550 plotkin@troll.stanford.edu... Host unknown: Address family not supported by protocol family
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Date: 06 Jan 90 0137 PST
>From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: New building.
To: faculty@SCORE.Stanford.EDU
Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be
preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
- Francis Bacon.
∂06-Jan-90 1127 danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU thank you
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Date: Sat, 6 Jan 90 11:27:50 -0800
From: danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Olivier Danvy)
Message-Id: <9001061927.AA01185@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: clt@sail.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: thank you
for the delicious dinner and the pleasant evening yesterday.
Olivier & Karoline
PS: I found nothing relevant in the ``pruning'' entry of my French-English
dictionary.
∂06-Jan-90 1514 CN.MCS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Sat, 6 Jan 90 15:13:50 PST
To: jmc@sail
From: "REBECCA LASHER" <CN.MCS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
John,
I am just getting around to answering your 12/27/89 question about
the "Techno-bandits" book.
According to Socrates Melvern is the main author with secondary
authors. If there is more than one author it goes under the main
author.
In other words this book has more than one author. It is not an
edited work. An edited work with more than one editor is cataloged
under the title. An authored work with more than one author goes
under the main (or first) author. Of course, there are added
entries for secondary authors.
I just re-read you memo and see that you indeed got it right.
Socrates is right and the book is wrong. Books are cataloged at the
Library of Congress with the galley proofs before the book is
actually published. Evidently after the printing LC discovered
their error and made a correction.
Rebecca
∂06-Jan-90 1830 jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU Bibl. reference
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To: (John McCarthy) jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Reply-To: (J. Lederberg)lederberg@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
Subject: Bibl. reference
Date: Sat, 06 Jan 90 21:27:51 -0500
From: jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
Hi, John.
Who was the author, what was the name of a book that comprised
biographical sketches of Mark Ptashne, yourself, one other?
josh
∂06-Jan-90 2349 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU Re: Soviet public opinion
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From: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
To: JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Re: Soviet public opinion
Newsgroups: su.etc
In-Reply-To: <7U1kT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization:
Putting my guess on record before reading further msgs:
Israel
∂07-Jan-90 1812 jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU re: The eighties by the numbers
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From: jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis)
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: The eighties by the numbers
It's clear, as you imply, that the statistics were obviously gathered
to make a point -- though I myself happen to basically agree with
with the point being made. But I posted them not to try to convince
anyone of the point, but to provide some specific reference points for
what I hope will be some interestng discussion of the current
economic direction our country is taking (I personally think it's
a direction that leads to ruin.)
Thanks for your comments -- I hope other netters also pick up on it.
∂08-Jan-90 0653 jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU re: The eighties by the numbers
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From: jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis)
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: The eighties by the numbers
> From JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU Sun Jan 7 22:19:58 1990
> Subject: re: The eighties by the numbers
> To: jon@LINDY.STANFORD.EDU
>
> [In reply to message sent Sun, 7 Jan 90 18:14:17 PST.]
>
> Would you mind if I copied your message to me in a further comment
> to su-etc on the statistics?
>
>
Sure, go ahead.
∂08-Jan-90 0900 JMC
bmw
∂08-Jan-90 0900 JMC
register T for science class
∂08-Jan-90 0922 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU re: Soviet public opinion
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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 90 09:19:21 PST
From: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Soviet public opinion
In-Reply-To: Your message of 07 Jan 90 2238 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.631819156.siegman@>
I may have been aided by your hints that the 3rd country was a
surprise. (I also considered Finland, as a neighbor of Russian, and
France.) My ideas on the Soviet Union are based on one visit 20 years
ago, reading of the books by Kaiser, Hendrick Smith, and several other
visitors to the USSR, and general reading (esp. The Economist).
I figured
--Many Russians would know of Israel because of the fuss over
dissidents or people desiring to emigrate there.
--I've been lead to believe Russians are chauvinistic, defensive of
"mother Russian, probably critical of emigres who "bail out"; which
might count against Israel.
--But, they also have a strong moralistic view, admire those who stick
up for what they believe in, or perhaps more precisely who battle to
defend their land and their people (as they themselves did in WW II).
So, perhasps they would be sympathetic to Israel as an underdog, a
tough independent defender of its land and people.
This is of course all pretty simplistic, and our ignorance of Soviet
thinking -- or even of the factual situation, what they read, what
they know -- is large; so I'd be embarrassed to assert these views as
more than speculation.
∂08-Jan-90 0930 JMC
George Joseph
∂08-Jan-90 1000 JMC
imagen
∂08-Jan-90 1020 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Diagnosis Workshop
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From: Walter Hamscher <pwtc!hamscher@labrea.stanford.edu>
Subject: Diagnosis Workshop
To: qphysics@ai.toronto.edu
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International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis
Menlo Park, California, July 23-24-25, 1990
Call for Papers
This workshop encourages intensive and high quality interaction
and cooperation among researchers with a diversity of artificial
intelligence approaches to diagnosis. Attendance will be
limited to thirty participants, with fifteen presentations
spread over three days. Substantial time will be reserved for
discussion.
To attend, participants should submit extended abstracts or
short papers to be reviewed by the committee. Submissions are
welcomed in the areas of:
- Approaches to modeling and diagnosing both engineered and
natural systems, especially analog and large scale systems
- Theoretical aspects of deductive and abductive diagnosis
- Strategies for controlling diagnostic reasoning to prevent
combinatorial explosion
Please limit your submissions to 3000 words. Accepted papers
can be revised and expanded for compilation and distribution to
the workshop participants. Although work published elsewhere is
acceptable, new original work is preferred.
Please send four copies of each submission to the chairman at
the postal address below. Please include several ways of
contacting the principal author in addition to a postal address:
electronic mail addresses, FAX, and telephone numbers are
preferred, in that order. Please indicate with your submission
whether you wish to make a presentation or only to attend; in
the case of multiple authors please indicate which authors wish
to participate.
Submissions received after 30 March 1990 will not be considered.
The decisions of the committee will be mailed 25 May 1990.
Chairman: Walter Hamscher
Price Waterhouse Technology Centre
68 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025
E-mail: hamscher@pw.com or wch@ai.ai.mit.edu
Telephone: (415) 688-6669
Committee: Randall Davis (MIT), Johan de Kleer (Xerox), Judea
Pearl (UCLA), Olivier Raiman (IBM), James Reggia
(U of Maryland), Ray Reiter (U of Toronto), Peter
Struss (Siemens), Peter Szolovits (MIT), and Brian
Williams (Xerox).
This workshop is sponsored by AAAI and Price Waterhouse.
∂08-Jan-90 1118 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
The usual time of our meetings, 3:15 on Mondays, conflicts with the CSL
seminars at SRI. Can we move our seminar to 2:15? Please let me know by
Thursday whether you would support or oppose this change. There is no
need to respond if you don't care one way or the other.
--Vladimir Lifschitz
∂08-Jan-90 1344 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: ethical question?
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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1990 13:42:46 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: re: ethical question?
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <CVbqt@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.631834966.2781.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
In <CVbqt@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, John McCarthy writes:
>Whom do you have in mind MRC? All the important Reagan staff
>positions were changed more than once. No sooner did commentators
>decide someone was the power behind the throne when that
>someone returned to private life. Only Nancy stayed the course.
You forgot the *real* power behind the throne -- Nancy's Astrologer!!!!!!!
-------
∂08-Jan-90 1548 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU [JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU: Imagen at 885 Allardice ]
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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 90 15:47:46 -0800
From: Tom Dienstbier <tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001082347.AA23422@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: me@sail, JMC@sail
Subject: [JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU: Imagen at 885 Allardice ]
MArty, this I think fell in the cracks..Could you get with John and/or
Carolyn and see what can be done. You might just call Imagen and see
what a code 898 means.
tom
Return-Path: <@Polya.Stanford.EDU,@Score.Stanford.EDU:JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 08 Jan 90 1413 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Imagen at 885 Allardice
To: tom@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
What's the schedule on getting it fixed?
∂08-Jan-90 1608 emma@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: The electric heater
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: The electric heater
In-Reply-To: Your message of 06 Jan 90 15:31:00 PST.
<OVyYT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 90 16:11:00 PST
From: emma@russell.Stanford.EDU
We have turned the heat on in that office.
-Emma
ps. The story (as I have heard it): originally the university wanted
to have the heat centrally controlled with the users having no control
over the individual rooms. It was insisted that the users have some
control. The end result was that the control for the heat is inside
the wall radiators and, in your office, can be accessed by creeping
under the desk by the window, opening and lifting up the panel on the
radiator and moving the switch to the flame or the snowflake.
pps. The story about the lights is even more interesting.
∂08-Jan-90 1711 jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU Bibl item
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Bibl item
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 90 17:30:09 -0500
From: jsl%casp1.ROCKEFELLER.EDU@ROCKY2.ROCKEFELLER.EDU
P.S.
Your detailed entry reminded me I could have thought to
search our own online catalog - it would have worked:
CN Q141/H656
Aa Hilts, Philip J
TI Scientific temperaments;
ST three lives in contemporary science.
CL 302 p.
PP New York: Simon and Schuster.
DA 1982.
Sa Wilson, Robert Rathbun
Sb Ptashne, Mark
Sc McCarthy, John *****
Sd Scientists - United States
-------------
but asking is more fun.
josh
∂09-Jan-90 0749 CLT Imagen at 885 Allardice
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, tom@SUNBURN.Stanford.EDU
Yesterday I turned it on and it worked.
I haven't tried it this morning.
∂09-Jan-90 0759 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Imagen at 885 Allardice
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 90 07:59:10 -0800
From: Tom Dienstbier <tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001091559.AA00271@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Cc: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: Carolyn Talcott's message of 09 Jan 90 0749 PST <gX6hL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Imagen at 885 Allardice
Ok,, If you have anymore problems with this please work them through
Martin. He is your person to use since you are directly supporting him
as systems administrator. If he has problems then he will let me know.
thanks
tom
∂09-Jan-90 1207 ebr@doc.ic.ac.uk Re: Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence
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From: Barry Richards <ebr@doc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 90 15:13:22 GMT
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (6.5.6 8/11/89)
To: Philosophy Dept <phil@ub.d.umn.edu>, AI_and_Phil@ub.d.umn.edu
Subject: Re: Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence
Message-Id: <9001091513.aa04849@tgould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Dear Jim,
I was sorry to hear about the conflict of titles - your choice seemed
just right, others seem to think so too.
I think it would be wise to distinguish your venture from the other
one; potential contributors and readers may not easily remember whether
they are thinking of "Philosophy and AI" or "AI and Philosophy". It
occurred to me that you might consider the title "AI, Cognitive
Science and Philosophy". Although this may seem a bit clumsy,
it may acknowledge the full spectrum of your readership; there will
undoubtedly be a large number of people, who think of themselves as
cognitive scientists and who would like to be counted. If you think
this point has some merit, you might wish to consult other members of
the Board. As I write, I wonder whether putting "Philosophy" in the
middle of the title would be better: "Artificial Intelligence,
Philosophy and Cognitive Science".
Good luck on the venture.
Barry
--
BARRY RICHARDS
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
Department of Computing
180 Queen's Gate
London SW7 2BZ
Tel: 01 589-5111 ext. 5036 or 7506
Email: ebr@doc.ic.ac.uk
∂09-Jan-90 1209 VAL Request
Please send a letter of reference for me to:
Prof. Juris Hartmanis
Department of Computer Science
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7501
Thanks.
∂09-Jan-90 1249 hewitt@ai.mit.edu My contribution to the special issue on foundations of AI
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 90 15:50 EST
From: Carl Hewitt <hewitt@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: My contribution to the special issue on foundations of AI
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: David Kirsh <kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu>, bobrow@xerox.com, hewitt@ai.mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <19900105183958.7.HEWITT@DUE-PROCESS.AI.MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <19900109205005.3.HEWITT@DUE-PROCESS.AI.MIT.EDU>
John,
Thank you very much for your remarks about my contribution to the
special issue on foundations for AI.
I have changed the title of my contribution to ``Open Systems Semantics for
Distributed Artificial Intelligence''. Professor Les Gasser, who coedited the
standard book of readings [``Distributed Artificial Intelligence'' Morgan
Kaufman 1988], has agreed to write a commentary.
I have augmented my paper with reference to the standard literature on market
mechanisms for computer systems, most of which is contained or cited in the
standard book of readings [``The Ecology of Computation'' North Holland 1988
edited by Huberman]. This literature goes more deeply into market issues than
my contribution which treats markets only in very general ways as simple
negotiation systems.
Thank you for pointing out a bug in my understanding of Circumscription.
However, it turns out that by fixing the bug, the conclusions in my paper
about the use of deduction in large-scale Open System DAI work are
strengthened!
Sincerely,
Carl
∂09-Jan-90 1349 RWF re: Affirmative Action: A Worldwide Disaster
[In reply to message rcvd 27-Dec-89 22:43-PT.]
The Commentary arti cle has disappeared. Do you have another copy?
∂09-Jan-90 1618 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU Title and abstract
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 90 16:29:07 pst
From: Richard E Korf <korf@CS.UCLA.EDU>
To: ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU's message of Fri, 17 Nov 89 17:11:17 PST <8911180111.AA20815@pepper.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Title and abstract
Anoop, John,
Sorry about the delay on this, but I just got back from vacation yesterday. I'm
planning on arriving the evening of the 22nd and leaving the afternoon of the
24th. I'll stay with my girlfriend in Livermore and will be available all day on
the 23rd. Looking forward to visiting.
-rich
Real-Time Heuristic Search
Richard E. Korf
Computer Science Department
University of California, Los Angeles
We apply the usual two-player game assumptions of limited search horizon and
commitment to moves in constant time, to both single-agent and multi-agent
heuristic search problems. For the single-agent case, we present a
specialization of minimax lookahead search, and an analog to alpha-beta pruning
that significantly improves the efficiency of the algorithm. Paradoxically, the
search horizon reachable with this algorithm increases with increasing branching
factor. In addition, we present a new algorithm for interleaving planning and
execution, and prove that the algorithm makes locally optimal decisions on a
tree and is guaranteed to find a solution. Next, we generalize alpha-beta
minimax search to multiple agents. We find that shallow pruning is possible, but
not deep pruning. In the best case, the asymptotic branching factor is reduced
to $(1+\sqrt{4b-3})/2$. In the average case, however, alpha-beta pruning does
not reduce the asymptotic branching factor with multiple players. Finally, we
consider the scaling of heuristic search techniques to arbitrarily large
problems by incorporating subgoals as part of the evaluation function. These
algorithms effectively solve significantly larger problems than have previously
been solvable using heuristic evaluation functions.
∂09-Jan-90 1618 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1990 16:18:34 PST
From: Eunok Paek <paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.631930714.paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Hello.
This is your TA for CS323. I am trying to make a little fact sheet
for the class, regarding various administrative stuff. I wonder if
you would like to put your office hours down on it. In addition, let
me know if you would like to add something about homework and exams.
Thanks for your help.
-Eunok (it may be easy to pronounce my name as something like "uno".)
∂09-Jan-90 1710 ME NS
∂09-Jan-90 1502 JMC
I got Ill mem ref at user 143005 from NS.
ME - Try it now. I regenerated the data file for today.
∂09-Jan-90 1901 ME NS
OK, try again. I think NS is really fixed this time.
∂09-Jan-90 1904 ME NS
Hmm, something keeps breaking....
∂09-Jan-90 1936 ME NS really fixed
OK, NS is fixed. I forgot that I had changed the NS format slightly,
and today I ran an old fixer program which was using a different
format from the program that runs all the time. We lost a couple
of stories, but everything should be fine now.
∂10-Jan-90 0813 MPS
∂10-Jan-90 0810 hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1990 8:10:39 PST
From: "Sharon R. Hemenway" <hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: Pat Simmons <MPS@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Jan 90 0802 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.631987839.hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Pat:
We do not keep any application materials in the department. You
can get a packet from the main Office of Graduate Admissions in the
Old Union buildings but I really don't see how you can fax the stuff
to someone. You get a booklet which must be 25-30 pages long and
multitudes of carbonless multi-copy forms.
Sharon
I asked Sharon for the appropriate material and this was her reply.
What exactly do you want me to Fax? Thanks.
∂10-Jan-90 0900 JMC
junior museum
∂10-Jan-90 0900 JMC
Earth Day
∂10-Jan-90 1000 JMC
voucher
∂10-Jan-90 1013 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: Byers resolution
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Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 10:08:34 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9001101808.AA11205@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Byers resolution
Cc: nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU
It got forgotten. (You weren't there to introduce it.)
∂10-Jan-90 1020 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Voting on Promotions/Reappointments
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Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1990 10:19:46 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: cheriton@cs.Stanford.EDU, mccarthy@cs.Stanford.EDU,
mccluskey@cs.Stanford.EDU, oliger@cs.Stanford.EDU,
winograd@cs.Stanford.EDU
Cc: chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Voting on Promotions/Reappointments
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.631995586.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Please give me your vote on the following matters:
PROMOTING John Mitchell to Associate Professor without tenure
REAPPOINTING Andrew Goldberg Assistant Professor for a term of three years
REAPPOINTING Anoop Gupta Assistant Professor for a term of three years
∂10-Jan-90 1354 MPS Fruitfly Paper of JMC
∂10-Jan-90 1353 tony@cs.ualberta.ca Fruitfly Paper of JMC
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Date: 10 Jan 90 14:52 -0700
From: "T.Anthony Marsland" <tony@cs.ualberta.ca>
To: Pat Simmons <MPS@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <#XZZB@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <1386*tony@cs.UAlberta.CA>
Subject: Fruitfly Paper of JMC
Please thank Professor McCarthy for his permission to include his
paper in our book. Naturally I am delighted that he willing and
interested in improving his paper. I will request a copy of the file
and send draft proofs as soon as I can.
Tony Marsland
∂10-Jan-90 1558 VAL Elephant draft
Looks fine to me. I don't know what a "white paper" is supposed to look like,
but I guess this should be ok.
∂10-Jan-90 1712 pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Grad School
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Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 17:12:54 -0800
From: pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Dan Pehoushek)
Message-Id: <9001110112.AA12196@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Grad School
John,
I asked Sharon Hemenway about admission to graduate school. Her reply
follows. Maybe you and I can discuss this tomorrow, at your
convenience? It looks as though you will have to speak with Mike
Genesereth on my behalf, if you would like to go through with it;
I certainly would like to attend grad school here.
Thanks, Dan.
P.S. You did not "lead me to believe" whiteballing is simple, as
Sharon states. And I am working on the Admission Application package.
I asked Sharon about enrollment details.
She replied as follows.
----
Unfortunately, this is not something that is quite as simple or
automatic as Prof. McCarthy might have led you to believe. The policy
of the current chairman of the admissions committee (Mike Genesereth)
has been that "whiteballs" cannot be considered until after the full
work of the PhD admissions committee has been completed. John McCarthy
and Mike need to discuss this before we can.
Have you submitted an application package to the Office of Graduate
Admissions? You must submit all of the same materials as any other
applicant and it must be processed in the same way. The whole concept
of "whiteballing" is purely a Computer Science idea; as far as the
University is concerned, these students are just regular students who
apply and are accepted in the same exact manner all others.
You can feel free to stop by my office tomorrow but, as I said, I
don't think there's really much more I can tell you until John and
Mike have talked.
Sharon
----
∂10-Jan-90 1728 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU re: "Mac Typewriter" Software?
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From: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: "Mac Typewriter" Software?
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Jan 90 1412 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632021335.siegman@>
-----
Consider the following new civil right. No organization should
be allowed to require anyone to supply information it already
possesses or information that person has already declared public
and put in the public database.
------
Heartily agree.
Some years ago (a) I made a firm decision that I would NEVER again
fill out the whole suite of government employment forms they ask you
to fill out anytime you serve on a board or panel or consult for a
government agency. Then (b) I took all the security-relevant data
agencies always ask for (residences for the past 20 years, names and
addresses of relatives, dates and places of foreign travel) and put it
in an on-line text file on one of Stanford's mainframes with read-only
access to anyone. Whenever anyone asks for (a), I send them a listing
of (b).
Unfortunately Stanford keeps shutting down mainframes, and I may have
lost the file in one of the changeovers.
∂10-Jan-90 1755 RPG re: white papers
[In reply to message rcvd 10-Jan-90 15:05-PT.]
I believe that any mention of a proposal would place the white paper in
a category you would prefer to avoid. They want to be able to talk to
you about the topic, but if the paper is labelled as a proposal according
to some legal definition, they are required to not discuss it with you
until a decision is reached on accepting the proposal.
-rpg-
∂11-Jan-90 1130 HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Thu, 11 Jan 90 11:29:22 PST
To: jmc@sail
From: "Joyce Kiefer" <HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Professor McCarthy - I called the bookstore and they checked to see
if your text for 160, The Computer Age, is in. The woman found
copies on the shelf. There were 20 in stock as of Jan. 8.
Joyce Kiefer
VTSS
11:30 a.m. Jan. 11
To: J McCarthy(JMC@SAIL)
∂11-Jan-90 1417 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:jcm@iswim.Stanford.EDU from Roy Jones
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To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: from Roy Jones
From: John C. Mitchell <jcm@cs.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: John C. Mitchell <jcm@cs.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 90 14:01:43 PST
Sender: jcm@iswim.Stanford.EDU
Sent to me by mistake.
------- Forwarded Message
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Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1990 13:41:53 PST
From: "H. Roy Jones" <jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jcm@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Thoughts on Economizing at Stanford
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632094113.jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
John,
I loved your memo. AIR has a huge budget and my experiences suggest 80% of
their personnel do not significantly effect student computing. For the most
part student computing is the Macintosh cluster at Tressider, Portia, and
some unix boxes. I believe the rest of people are playing with cutting edge
toys such as NeXT machines and videodiscs, providing services such as file
recovery that aren't worth the cost, and creating bureacracy (meetings,
memos...). In reality they have little academic governance. They are an
expensive research organization that are, as you said, attempting to pump
priming. It is appalling to me they are forcing $10,000 NeXT machines on
humanities faculty while EAF is struggling to pay his own computing.
Networking also has a large budget, but I don't know enough about it to
comment.
Administrative computing is expensive because it is so archaic. The system
appears to be poorly designed, tough to use, and expensive to maintain.
However, I, perhaps naively, think they should not significantly cut back on
administrative computing but that they should bring it into the 90's, or at
least the 80's, and make even more significant savings elsewhere in the
bureacracy by using information considerably more efficiently.
I've seen so much waste in my limited administrative experience that I had to
comment.
Roy
------- End of Forwarded Message
∂11-Jan-90 1529 @Polya.Stanford.EDU:chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Vote
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Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1990 15:28:17 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: cheriton@cs.Stanford.EDU, McCarthy@cs.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Vote
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632100497.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Please give me your vote on Mitchell, Goldberg and Gupta. Thanks.
∂11-Jan-90 1826 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK
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Date: 11 Jan 90 17:59 PST
From: VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
To: JMC @ SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: TARK
Date: 11 January 1990, 17:54:32 PST
From: Moshe Vardi (408) 927-1784 VARDI at ALMVMA
To: MA at SRC.DEC.COM, BARWISE at RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU
BOOLOS at COGITO.MIT.EDU
DOYLE at ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU, MLFLC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
WAJ04367 at NUACC.BITNET, GINSBERG at POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
GROVE at STANFORD.EDU, ISRAEL at AI.SRI.COM, JAIN at CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
KAMINSKI at TECHSEL.BITNET, KOONS at SYGMUND.CGS.UTEXAS.EDU
KRASUCKI at CANCER.RUTGERS.EDU, GERHARD at AI.TORONTO.EDU
HECTOR at AI.TORONTO.EDU, VAL at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
AGUPTA at IUBACS.BITNET
BLOR at ANDREW.CMU.EDU, MAIDA at CS.PSU.EDU, MAREK at CS.CORNELL.EDU
MAZER at CRL.DEC.COM, JMC at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU, JULES at CS.VU.NL
BMOORE at AI.SRI.COM, YORAM at WISDOM.BITNET, RIPBC at CUNYUM.BITNET
PFPS at RESEARCH.ATTN.COM, JUDEA at CS.UCLA.EDU
PETERS at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
JANPLAZA at LCVAX, RUSPINI at AI.SRI.COM, MS at HPL.HP.CO.UK
ARUN at UDEL.EDU, SHOHAM at HUDSON.STANFORD.EDU, BSKYRMS at UCI.BITNET
EDITH at FWI.UVA.NL, THYSSE at HTIKUB5.BITNET, THOMASON at CAD.CS.CMU.EDU
TUTTLE at CRL.DEC.COM, PETER at FWI.UVA.NL
Subject: TARK
Thank you for registering to the 3rd Conference on Theoretical Aspects
of Reasoning About Knowledge. I enclose some practical information as
well as a copy of the advance program. If you are a speaker, please
note the time and the length of your presentation. Also, remember
that the audience will be quite diverse, so your presentation should
be prepared accordingly.
We currently have enough funds to partially subsidize attendees'
travel expenses. Total demand for such a subsidy will determine its
extent. I encourage you to find other sources of funding, so we can
help those who need it most. Since some US government grants exclude
air travel on non-US air carriers, the use of US carriers is
recommended. Also recommended is arriving at California on Saturday,
March 3, since that can reduce the airfare significantly.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I am looking forward to seeing you at Asilomar!
Yours truly,
Moshe Vardi
∂11-Jan-90 1829 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK Info
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Date: 11 Jan 90 18:05 PST
From: VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
To: JMC @ SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: TARK Info
Date: 11 January 1990, 17:54:32 PST
From: Moshe Vardi (408) 927-1784 VARDI at ALMVMA
To: MA at SRC.DEC.COM, BARWISE at RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU
BOOLOS at COGITO.MIT.EDU
DOYLE at ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU, MLFLC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
WAJ04367 at NUACC.BITNET, GINSBERG at POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
GROVE at STANFORD.EDU, ISRAEL at AI.SRI.COM, JAIN at CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
KAMINSKI at TECHSEL.BITNET, KOONS at SYGMUND.CGS.UTEXAS.EDU
KRASUCKI at CANCER.RUTGERS.EDU, GERHARD at AI.TORONTO.EDU
HECTOR at AI.TORONTO.EDU, VAL at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
AGUPTA at IUBACS.BITNET
BLOR at ANDREW.CMU.EDU, MAIDA at CS.PSU.EDU, MAREK at CS.CORNELL.EDU
MAZER at CRL.DEC.COM, JMC at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU, JULES at CS.VU.NL
BMOORE at AI.SRI.COM, YORAM at WISDOM.BITNET, RIPBC at CUNYUM.BITNET
PFPS at RESEARCH.ATTN.COM, JUDEA at CS.UCLA.EDU
PETERS at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
JANPLAZA at LCVAX, RUSPINI at AI.SRI.COM, MS at HPL.HP.CO.UK
ARUN at UDEL.EDU, SHOHAM at HUDSON.STANFORD.EDU, BSKYRMS at UCI.BITNET
EDITH at FWI.UVA.NL, THYSSE at HTIKUB5.BITNET, THOMASON at CAD.CS.CMU.EDU
TUTTLE at CRL.DEC.COM, PETER at FWI.UVA.NL
Subject: TARK Info
TARK III Information
LOCATION
Asilomar is situated on the tip of the Monterey Peninsula, overlooking
the Pacific Ocean, 120 miles south of San Francisco. Asilomar occupies
105 secluded acres of forest and dune, with pleasant pathways, a
swimming pool, and an exercise trail. Just over the dunes, Asilomar
State Beach stretches for over a mile. Monterey is an interesting
historical city--by California standards. Nearby, Carmel and Big Sur
offer quaint towns, pleasant beaches, and a rugged coastline. The
weather is mild, with temperatures in the 60's and 70's and a slight
chance of rain; the evenings can be cool, and we recommend bringing a
jacket.
TRANSPORTATION TO ASILOMAR
Flying into Monterey:
This is the simplest way to reach Asilomar. United, SkyWest, USAir,
American Eagle, and others fly to Monterey from West Coast locations,
such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. A shuttle goes from the
Monterey airport to Asilomar, for $8.
Flying into San Jose or San Francisco:
If you fly into San Jose or San Francisco, we recommend you rent a
car. If you wish to share a car rental, you may consult the
list of other invitees whom you may contact about such sharing
arrangements. The San Jose airport is about one and a half hours away
from Monterey by car. The San Francisco airport is about two and half
hours away by car. In both cases, leave the airport on Highway 101
South and follow the driving directions below.
Public transportation is a cheaper but inconvenient alternative.
Greyhound buses go from the San Francisco airport to Monterey five
times per day, at 8:40am, 10:55am, 3:25pm, 7:10pm, and 10pm. The trip
lasts between three and four hours and costs $15. Asilomar can be
reached from the Greyhound station with a short cab ride or on local
buses.
Driving to Asilomar:
When arriving on Highway 101, turn west at Salinas onto Highway 68 and
proceed to the Asilomar gatepost at the end of the highway. When using
Route 1, turn west onto Highway 68 in Carmel, and proceed as above.
ACCOMMODATIONS
Accommodations are at Asilomar; the standard arrangement is room and
board from Sunday at 3pm to Wednesday at noon. All meals are
included, from dinner on Sunday through lunch on Wednesday. If you
prefer vegetarian meals, please indicate this preference on the
registration form. If you wish to spend other nights in the area,
Asilomar will attempt to provide accommodations or suggest suitable
hotels. Should you have any questions, you can contact Asilomar
directly at Asilomar Conference Center, 8000 Asilomar Blvd., P.O. Box
537, Pacific Grove, CA 93950; telephone (408) 372-8016.
∂11-Jan-90 1833 VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU TARK Program
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Date: 11 Jan 90 18:08 PST
From: VARDI%ALMVMA.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
To: JMC @ SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: TARK Program
Date: 11 January 1990, 17:54:32 PST
From: Moshe Vardi (408) 927-1784 VARDI at ALMVMA
To: MA at SRC.DEC.COM, BARWISE at RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU
BOOLOS at COGITO.MIT.EDU
DOYLE at ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU, MLFLC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
WAJ04367 at NUACC.BITNET, GINSBERG at POLYA.STANFORD.EDU
GROVE at STANFORD.EDU, ISRAEL at AI.SRI.COM, JAIN at CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
KAMINSKI at TECHSEL.BITNET, KOONS at SYGMUND.CGS.UTEXAS.EDU
KRASUCKI at CANCER.RUTGERS.EDU, GERHARD at AI.TORONTO.EDU
HECTOR at AI.TORONTO.EDU, VAL at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
AGUPTA at IUBACS.BITNET
BLOR at ANDREW.CMU.EDU, MAIDA at CS.PSU.EDU, MAREK at CS.CORNELL.EDU
MAZER at CRL.DEC.COM, JMC at SAIL.STANFORD.EDU, JULES at CS.VU.NL
BMOORE at AI.SRI.COM, YORAM at WISDOM.BITNET
PFPS at RESEARCH.ATT.COM, JUDEA at CS.UCLA.EDU
PETERS at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
JANPLAZA at LCVAX, RUSPINI at AI.SRI.COM, MS at HPL.HP.CO.UK
ARUN at UDEL.EDU, SHOHAM at HUDSON.STANFORD.EDU, BSKYRMS at UCI.BITNET
EDITH at FWI.UVA.NL, THYSSE at HTIKUB5.BITNET, THOMASON at CAD.CS.CMU.EDU
TUTTLE at CRL.DEC.COM, PETER at FWI.UVA.NL
Subject: TARK Program
TARK III - Tentative Program
Sunday
4:30-5:15, Konolige, tutorial on non-monotonic reasoning
8:00-10:00 Reception
Monday
9:00-10, Parikh, Recent issues in reasoning about knowledge
10:00-10:30 Coffee break
10:30-12:00
Nicholas Asher, Intentional Paradoxes and Inductive..
Richmond Thomason, Propagating Epistemic Coordination..
Fagin, Halpern and Vardi, A Nonstandard Approach to the Logical
Omniscience Problem
2:30-4:00
Daniel Lehmann and Menachem Magidor, Preferential Logics:
the Predicate Calculus Case.
Tiomkin and Kaminski, Nonmonotonic Default Modal Logics
Kurt Konolige, Explanatory Belief Ascription
4:00-4:30 Coffee
4:30-6:00
Grigori Shvarts, Autoepistemic Modal Logics
Lin and Shoham, Epistemic Semantics for Fixed-Point Non-Monotonic
Logics
Judea Pearl, System Z: A Natural Ordering of Defaults with Tractable
Applications to Non-monotonic Reasoning.
8:00- 9:00 PM, Stalnaker, tutorial, Semantics of Conditionals
Tuesday
9:00-10:00, Geanakoplos, Tutorial on Common Knowledge and Games
10:00-10:30 Coffee Break
10:30-12:00
Paul Krasucki, Reaching Consensus on Decisions
Moses and Nachum, Agreeing to Disagree after All
Beth Allen, Costly Acquisition of (Differentiated) Information
3:00-4:00, Brian Skyrms, Dynamic Models of Deliberation applied to
the Theory of Games
4:00-4:30 Coffee Break
4:30-6:00
Itzhak Gilboa, A Note on the Consistency of Game Theory
Barton Lipman, On the Strategic Advantages of a Lack of ...
Jain and Sharma, Hypothesis Formation and Language
Acquisition with an Infinitely-Often
Correct Teacher.
7:30-8:30 PM, Business meeting
9:00-10:00 PM, Rump session, three 20 minute talks,
Wednesday
9:00-11:00
Edith Spaan, Nexttime is Not Necessary
S. Artemov, Kolmogorov's Logic of Problems and a Provability Inter-
Interpretation of Intuitionistic Logic.
Matt Ginsberg, Bilattices and Modal Operators
Murray Mazer, A Link between Knowledge and Communication in
faulty Distributed Systems
11:00-12:00, Rump session
∂12-Jan-90 0536 Mailer re: At war with peace
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Les Earnest <LES@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
John McCarthy says:
> No, Les, I believe it's you who should offer the first evidence.
Alas, I've lost the thread. Apparently John thinks that I should further
support something that I said that he thought was cynical. If I knew
what that was I would try. I'm now off to Colorado for 3 days but will
check for pointers upon returning.
∂12-Jan-90 0904 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU ride offered to Asilomar
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From: Matthew L. Ginsberg <ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001121655.AA12688@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: agupta%iubacs.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu, arun@udel.edu,
barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU, blor@andrew.cmu.edu, bmoore@ai.sri.com,
boolos@cogito.mit.edu, bskyrms%uci.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu,
doyle@zermatt.lcs.mit.edu, edith@fwi.uva.nl, gerhard@ai.toronto.edu,
grove@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU, hector@ai.toronto.edu, israel@ai.sri.com,
jain@cs.rochester.edu, jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, judea@cs.ucla.edu,
jules@cs.vu.nl, kaminski%techsel.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu,
koons@sygmund.cgs.utexas.edu, krasucki@cancer.rutgers.edu,
ma@src.dec.com, maida@cs.psu.edu, marek@cs.cornell.edu,
mazer@crl.dec.com, mlflc@cunyvm.cuny.edu, ms@otter.hpl.hp.com,
peter@fwi.uva.nl, peters@csli.Stanford.EDU, pfps@research.att.com,
ruspini@ai.sri.com, shoham@hudson.Stanford.EDU,
thomason@cad.cs.cmu.edu, thysse%htikub5.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu,
tuttle@crl.dec.com, val@sail.Stanford.EDU,
waj04367%nuacc.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu,
yoram%wisdom.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu
Subject: ride offered to Asilomar
Cc: ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Hi All:
I can offer one person a ride to and from the Bay Area for the TARK
conference.
Be warned that if the weather is good, the ride will be in an airplane
I built myself. I am prepared to fly right-side up, if that's what
my passenger wants.
Matt Ginsberg
∂12-Jan-90 0912 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Vote
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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1990 9:12:01 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Vote
In-Reply-To: Your message of 11 Jan 90 1625 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632164321.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Thanks, John, for your votes.
∂12-Jan-90 1000 JMC
peters 723-2212
∂12-Jan-90 1000 JMC
dentist bills
∂12-Jan-90 1004 VAL lunch
If we are meeting for lunch today, can we take your car? Mine is parked far
away. If not, I'll bring my car to the building when we are ready to go,
because there is no need for both of us to get wet.
∂12-Jan-90 1100 JMC
VAL writeup
∂12-Jan-90 1235 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Combining Nonmonontonic Theories
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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 90 12:36:40 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9001122036.AA02287@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: Combining Nonmonontonic Theories
I think I have it -- a principle for exactly how far circumscription
show go within a view.
In hindsight, it is very simple; it is hard to believe it took me so
long to find it.
Can I stop by some time and show it to you?
-Peter
∂12-Jan-90 1327 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU mental models
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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 90 13:28:07 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001122128.AA16474@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: mental models
Cc: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
A general thought stimulated by the autism article: people make mental
models of the world. "The world" includes "I" (the modelling agent)
as well as other agents. It includes the models made by those agents;
those models include the models made by OTHER agents including "I".
However, this infinite regress breaks off, and rather soon. Let's
call a model first-order if it doesn't include any other mental models,
i.e. is a model of (part of) the non-mental world only. Let's call it
of order n+1 if it includes some n-th order models. Thus my model of
what you think of me is second-order, my model of what you think I think
of you is third-order, and so on. Now for the substantive points:
(1) in autism, what is missing is probably not so much an inference
mechanism (as the authors seem to imply) as the inability to form second-order
models.
(2) In human relationships in general, second-order models are
unreliable and third-order models are still more unreliable (and often
the cause of difficulties in relationships). The mechanism is that
people form a model of what their parents think of them, and then
transfer it to significant others in adult life. This is the cognitive
basis of phenomena much discussed in psychology.
(3) You need second-order models to lie.
(4) You need third-order models to detect lying (other than by
direct confrontation with evidence, e.g. if I tell you it's raining when
it's not).
(5) Modern American politics relies on the politicians' models
of the electorate's models of the politicians (and taking of actions
designed to make the electorate change those models). The electorate
(or at least the majority thereof) doesn't have an accurate model
of the policitians' model of their model of the politicians (or they would
be insulted and the methods used wouldn't work). Thus: the
policitians use third-order models and some of the electorate can't
manage the necessary fourth-order model; but some can.
(6) I can't find an example of a fifth-order model. Therefore I
conjecture that in practice people can't use them.
I would be interested in your reactions to these ideas.
∂12-Jan-90 1331 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU triangle paper
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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 90 13:32:20 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001122132.AA16576@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: triangle paper
The referees "warmly recommend" its publication. For your interest I
quote from the report
Embedding problems of this type have a considerable history. A
very recent book "Lattice Points" by P. Erd\"os, P. M. Gruber, and
J. Hammer (Wiley, NY 1989) contains references to E. Lucas (1878)--
an equilateral triangle cannot be embedded into Z↑2; I. J.
Schoenberg (J. London Math. Soc. 12 (1937)--a regular n-gon is
embeddable into Z↑d only if n = 3,4,or5, and conditions on a regular
m-simplex to be embeddable; G. N. Patruno (Elem. Math 38 (1983) 69-71); and
a 1986 Ph. D. thesis of S. Rabinowitz on Convex Lattice Polytopes.
I am sure [the referee continues] that Proposition 1 must appear in
one of these papers. It is certainly part of the folklore of the subject,
so it should not be attributed to McCarthy.
∂12-Jan-90 1340 MPS Trip to Moscow
Andre Khlous called about your visit to Russia this coming spring.
Do you have Vadim Sadovsky telex number. It seems they need your
place and DOB. Andre will call you again around 2:00 from Suppes
office.
∂12-Jan-90 1442 MPS
where do i mail that package of papers (yours and vladimirs).
I forgot, or did you tell me. Thanks.
∂12-Jan-90 1650 ME NS
∂12-Jan-90 1518 JMC
hot is working, but ns isn't.
ME - OK, it's fixed.
∂12-Jan-90 2335 ME NS
∂12-Jan-90 2105 JMC
"Sorry, failed to read in story."
ME - Looks OK to me. Maybe you hit it in transition.
If it happens again, let me know with what keyword(s).
∂13-Jan-90 0834 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: mental models
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Date: Sat, 13 Jan 90 08:35:53 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001131635.AA05043@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: re: mental models
The difference between a "model" and a disjunctive proposition
comes up in automated deduction too. It has nothing to do with
the fact that the models in question are models of somebody's belief.
In terms of Gentzen sequents, a "model" or "partial model" is
just the atomic part of the antecedent (a Gentzen sequent is
a thing of the form Antecedent => Succedent, where the Antecedent
is a list of formulae representing assumptions and/or things already
proved). Various theorem-provers (e.g. SATCHMO by Manthey and Bry)
have been built whose creators don't realize that model-building
can be thought of syntactically as proof-building. The duality has
been known to logicians since G\"odel's completeness proof (1930),
in which one constructs a tree which either is well-founded (in which
case it's a proof tree) or has a path (in which case it's a model).
So (and I slurred over this point knowingly before tkeep the
message short) when I said autistic people may lack "ability to
build second-order models" and not lack an inference mechanism,
this isn't a real distinction. Model building IS a kind of inference
mechanism.
The same point, where argument by cases diverges from "model building",
comes up in applications of circumscription too, as of course you know.
So of course there are examples such as you mention where inferences
about other people's mental processes don't reduce to n-th order models.
This is just a special case of inferences about other peoples (or your own)
inferences about inferences about inferences. Now the empirical question
is: What types of reasoning about other peoples' thought processes
do people actually do? And my conjecture is that disjunctive propositions
are not "common" as you say but in fact almost vanishingly rare.
Consider for example your relationship with Carolyn. Ask yourself if
there are any disjunctive propositions in your theory of her beliefs
about you and your beliefs. The example you mention about the politician
doesn't even seem like a serious example, because it just describes a
model of the politician's model of me in which the politician believes
I am incapable of comparing his past voting behavior with his current
statements and reaching a contradiction, and expresses amazement over
the inaccuracy of that model; the disjunction brings forth two hypotheses
about his assumptions in creating his model, both of which are false, and
since we can't bring ourselves to believe that his model of us is so
unflatteringly inaccurate, our own model-building process comes to a halt,
and we are unable to model the process in his mind by which he created
his model of us.
Further evidence that people don't normally reason by cases can be
marshalled: you must have seen the red-and-green block example,
in which on(a,b),on(b,c), red(a), green(c), every block is either green or
red, and you have to prove there is a red block on a green block. People,
even Ph. D.'s, often don't get it because it requires an argument by
cases on the color of b.
∂15-Jan-90 0820 @NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK,@syma.sussex.ac.uk:judithd@cogs.sussex.ac.uk AISB Quarterly Newsletter
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via Janet with NIFTP id aa12523; 15 Jan 90 14:14 GMT
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Message-Id: <20030.9001151425@csunb.cogs.susx.ac.uk>
From: Judith Dennison <judithd%cogs.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 90 14:25:31 GMT
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: AISB Quarterly Newsletter
I have been asked to forward to you the following request for articles
for the AISB Quarterly. The AISBQ is the Newsletter of the Society for
the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB)
which has circa. 1000 members. If you wish to receive further information
regarding the society and its aims please email me:
judithd@uk.ac.sussex.cogs
judith dennison
======================
From:
Steve Torrance, AISBQ editor (address at the end of this letter).
AISB QUARTERLY.
A. REVIEWS OF THE DECADE
The coming issue of AISB Quarterly is the first of the 90's. It seems
appropriate to invite longstanding members of the AI community to contribute
brief perspectives on how the field has evolved over the last ten years. I
would be extremely grateful if you could forward some reflections along these
lines. A suggested length would be around 1000 words - but less or more is
fine.
Here are a few questions that could be used as a framework for your remarks.
* What was your departmental environment like then as compared to now?
* What was the general AI/Cog Science environment like then as compared to now?
* What were the burning issues within the field?
* What were the most important EXTERNAL factors relevant to AI/Cog Science?
* What were the biggest successes/failures within the decade?
* What were the most accurate/inaccurate predictions, within the decade?
* Were the eighties more or less significant for AI than the seventies?
* What do you predict for the nineties?
I wonder if you would send this message on to other colleagues (both
within your institution and elsewhere) who might be in a position to provide
useful contributions. In particular it would be appreciated if you could
pass it on to relevant people abroad: especially in the U.S.
B. SITE REPORTS
I think many readers of AISBQ would welcome a series of descriptions of the
main developments at different AI sites around the country (or world). I would
like to include a series of these, over a number of issues. Would you be able
to contribute one, or persuade a colleague to do so? Again, 1000 words can be
taken as a guideline for length.
C. OTHER MATERIAL
The Quarterly is suffering from a general dearth of good feature articles and
other material. Can you persuade any of your colleagues, research students,
etc., to offer pieces?
The copy date for the next issue is February 1st, but we can probably delay by
a week or 10 days.
I look forward to hearing from you, and from people you have contacted.
Steve Torrance
Editor, AISB Quarterly
steve5@uk.ac.middlesex.cluster
∂15-Jan-90 0936 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Workshop on Expert Systems in Engineering.
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Date: Mon, 15 Jan 90 12:25:00 EST
From: dekleer.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Workshop on Expert Systems in Engineering.
To: qphysics@ai.utoronto.ca
Message-ID: <19900115172539.0.JOHAN@CALVIN>
Line-fold: no
Resent-From: qphysics-owner@cs.toronto.edu
Resent-To: qphysics@cs.toronto.edu
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% Final call for papers
% LaTeX document
\documentstyle{article}
\setlength{\topmargin}{-0.5in} \setlength{\textheight}{9.2in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0in}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{\oddsidemargin}
\setlength{\parskip}{\smallskipamount}
\pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \sloppy
\begin{center} \large \bf
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
International Workshop on Expert Systems in Engineering \\
--- Principles and Applications ---
Call for Papers
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\end{center}
The Christian Doppler Expert Systems Laboratory is organizing an
International Workshop on Expert Systems in Engineering at the Technical
University of Vienna (Austria) to be held during September 24-26, 1990.
Its goal is to stimulate the flow of information between researchers
working on theoretical and applied research topics in this area. The
workshop will include presentations of refereed papers and invited talks
as well as system presentations. The number of participants will be
limited to about 50.
Submitted papers should either discuss technologies relevant to expert
systems in engineering (such as model-based reasoning, qualitative
reasoning, planning, design and knowledge-based real-time methods) or
describe applications of these technologies in areas like computer
integrated manufacturing, process automation etc.
Papers limited to 5000 words and proposals for system presentations
should be received by April 2, 1990. The papers will be refereed by at
least two members of the program committee. The official workshop
language is English.
Authors will be notified by June 1, 1990 and camera-ready copies are
due by July 15, 1990.
The workshop proceedings will be published by Springer (Lecture Notes
in AI). Please indicate, if a submitted paper will be published
elsewhere. In this case only an extended abstract will be included in
the proceedings.
Program Committee:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{tabular}{l}
J. Alty, Turing Institute, Glasgow \\
A. Bonarini, Politecnico di Milano \\
B. Buchberger, Johannes Kepler University, Linz \\
J. de Kleer, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto \\
J. Dorn, Technical University of Vienna \\
B. Faltings, Technical University, Lausanne \\
G. Gottlob, Technical University of Vienna (program chairman) \\
G. Guida, University of Udine \\
L. Kerschberg, George Mason University, Fairfax \\
H. Krallmann, Technical University of Berlin \\
R. Leitch, Heriott-Watt University, Edinburgh \\
N. Muscettola, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh \\
W. Nejdl, Technical University of Vienna (organization chairman) \\
O. Raiman, IBM Scientific Center, Paris \\
P. Raulefs, Intel AI Lab, Santa Clara \\
M. Somalvico, Politecnico di Milano \\
P. Struss, Siemens AG, Munich \\
N. Theuretzbacher, Alcatel-Elin Research Center, Vienna \\
A. Tjoa, University of Vienna \\
H. Voss, GMD, St. Augustin \\
T. Weigert, Johannes Kepler University, Linz \\
B. Williams, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto
\end{tabular}
Please send your paper (4 copies) to:
\begin{tabular}{l}
Wolfgang Nejdl \\
Department of Applied Computer Science \\
Christian Doppler Expert Systems Laboratory \\
Technical University of Vienna \\
Paniglgasse 16 \\
A-1040 Vienna, Austria \\
e-mail: ``nejdl@vexpert.at'' (or ``vexpert!nejdl@relay.eu.net'') \\
fax: +43 1 5055304
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
----
-------
∂15-Jan-90 1100 JMC
Check Quine in published article.
∂16-Jan-90 0439 rz@cs.cornell.edu Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
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Date: Mon, 15 Jan 90 17:44:19 EST
From: rz@cs.cornell.edu (Richard Zippel)
Message-Id: <9001152244.AA04848@bestla.cs.cornell.edu>
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id AA04848; Mon, 15 Jan 90 17:44:19 EST
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 20 Nov 89 1214 PST <otZ$q@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Parallel Computer Algebra Workshop
Date: 20 Nov 89 1214 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.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.
Hi.
I haven't heard from you in a while so I thought I'd reprime the pump.
Do you have any more thoughts about the workshop in May?
∂16-Jan-90 0831 Mailer re: Revising theories about Eastern Europe
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1990 8:27:46 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: re: Revising theories about Eastern Europe
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: karish@forel.stanford.edu, su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <cwCHd@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.632507266.4084.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
In <cwCHd@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, John McCarthy writes:
>The mainstream liberal slogans were always ambiguous. By
>1975, the U.S. troops had been withdrawn, and Congress refuse
>to vote more arms for the South Vietnamese.
As I understand it, there was a huge amount of US arms in South Vietnam.
Never used, and only dropped once...
-------
∂16-Jan-90 0844 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Pat Simmons
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1990 8:43:39 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: davis@cs.Stanford.EDU, sloan@cs.Stanford.EDU
Cc: mccarthy@cs.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Pat Simmons
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632508219.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
just called in. She's feeling much better but is still not 100%. She will
not be in today.
∂16-Jan-90 0925 CLT popl coordinates
Cathedral Hill Hotel
Vaness at Geary
776-8200
∂16-Jan-90 1056 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
LOGIC PROGRAMS WITH CLASSICAL NEGATION
Vladimir Lifschitz
Stanford Unversity
Monday, January 22, 2:30pm
MJH 252
**** Please note new time! ****
General logic programs are further generalized by including
classical negation, in addition to negation-as-failure. The
semantics of such "extended" programs is based on the method
of stable models. We show that some facts of commonsense
knowledge can be represented by logic programs more easily
when classical negation is available. Computationally,
classical negation can be eliminated from extended programs
by a simple preprocessor. Extended programs are identical
to a special case of default theories in the sense of Reiter.
This is joint work with Michael Gelfond. If time permits,
related work of Robert Kowalski and Fariba Sadri on "logic
programs with exceptions" will be also reviewed.
∂16-Jan-90 1500 JMC
papers for Leora
∂16-Jan-90 1524 rz@cs.cornell.edu Recruiting visit
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 90 18:24:40 EST
From: rz@cs.cornell.edu (Richard Zippel)
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To: flynn@sierra.stanford.edu, jlh@sierra.stanford.edu,
cheriton@pescadero.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Recruiting visit
Cc: marzullo@cs.cornell.edu
We (Richard Zippel and Keith Marzullo) are planning on visiting
Stanford on February 8 and 9 to recruit for faculty and research
positions in Cornell's Computer Science Department. We have one or
two tenure--track slots this year, and should have the same number of
slots next year as well. Additionally, several faculty members are
looking for post-doctorial candidates.
We're interested in strengthening and broadening the research
directions of our department and are particularly interested in
candidates who create and build systems, both software and hardware.
We would like to speak to candidates in the areas of parallel systems
and scientific computation as well as strong candidates other areas of
Computer Science.
Could you please distibute this notice to the faculty of your department?
We'll call you later this week or early next to set up a schedule.
thank you,
Keith Marzullo marzullo@cs.cornell.edu, (607) 255-9188
Richard Zippel rz@cs.cornell.edu, (607) 255-9217
∂16-Jan-90 1541 VAL re: Recruiting visit
Since they want people who build systems, that doesn't look promising. But
please tell them that I have applied if they call you.
∂16-Jan-90 1810 danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU your car
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 90 18:10:42 -0800
From: danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Olivier Danvy)
Message-Id: <9001170210.AA01468@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: your car
Cc: danvy@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Dear John:
I am willing to buy your car, but am slowed down by which insurance
to take, etc. -- and now I am leaving for POPL at San Francisco.
I'll be back the coming Friday.
Sorry to make you wait until then!
Probably you are enjoying your BMW, in the meanwhile.
Regards, Olivier
∂16-Jan-90 2323 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu do you have some free time?
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1990 23:26:00 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: do you have some free time?
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632561160.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
My name is Guha and I had spoken to you earlier about my thesis proposal.
I was wondering if you had some free time next week when I could come and
discuss some of my ideas with you and get some feedback.
Thanks
Guha
∂17-Jan-90 0856 MPS mcc
Good morning,
The invoice (minus the hotel bill) was sent just before X-mas.
I confirmed the hotel bill with Lenat's secretary on the 2-3 of January.
She said they would take care of the invoice at that time. Do you
want me to call her to see if it has been mailed?
Pat
∂17-Jan-90 1212 MPS Dr. Brown
Call Betty Williams at Dr. Browns office today.
328-1860
∂17-Jan-90 1238 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu meeting time
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id AA05138; Wed, 17 Jan 90 12:41:24 PST
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1990 12:41:24 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: meeting time
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632608884.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I have to meet someone for lunch at 12. So I'll be at your office at around
1:15. Is that ok?
Thanks
Guha
∂17-Jan-90 1511 MPS
I need to know if Furukawa 1st name is koichi.
Also, you do not have address for either Scherlis or Squires
in your phon file. Thanks
∂17-Jan-90 1632 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI Division lunches
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Date: 17 Jan 1990 1631-PST (Wednesday)
From: Jutta McCormick <jutta@coyote.stanford.edu>
To: latombe@coyote.stanford.edu, binford@coyote.stanford.edu,
feigenbaum@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, genesereth@cs.stanford.edu,
ok@coyote.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@cs.stanford.edu,
shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, winograd@csli.stanford.edu
Cc: jutta@coyote.stanford.edu
Subject: AI Division lunches
There seems to have been a problem with the mailer when I sent this
message earlier, and some of you didn't receive it; if you receive it twice,
I apologize.
Here are the dates and topics for the first three of this year's AI Division
lunches. They will all be at the faculty club at 12:00 noon; a room has been
reserved for Latombe. Please let me (jutta@coyote) know right away whether
or not you will be able to attend.
Monday, February 5
Topic: AI Division budget
Wednesday, March 7
Topic: AI in the manufacturing program at Stanford
Wednesday, April 11
Topic: Intelligent offices
∂18-Jan-90 0005 poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU AK-47s in the garden
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 90 00:01:49 pst
From: Bill Poser <poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001180801.AA21687@crystals>
To: jmc@sail, su-etc@csli
Subject: AK-47s in the garden
I see. Well, I'd be a bit skeptical about what her manner shows,
but maybe it does show something.
∂18-Jan-90 0211 Mailer re: AK-47s in the garden
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1990 1:56:38 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: AK-47s in the garden
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <7xuVT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.632656598.1103527590.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
The way the Seattle media covered it, there was no doubt in my mind that she
was guilty. Extreme efforts were taken to claim her innocence, including all
sorts of anecdotal comments about what a nice person she purportedly is, etc.
Had they not gone to such hysterical efforts, I might have had a reasonable
doubt.
I'm sure the Salvadoran government wasn't after her particularly; she was much
too small a fry. Rather, they wanted to scare the sh*t out of her and her
ilk, who play with matches in other people's houses.
Casolo now has a long-term job speaking at all the "Revolutionary Socialist
Youth" gatherings advertised at all the kiosks. "Why the Reactionary El
Salvador Government Must Fall: a Marxist-Leninist Prospective" and the like.
Fortunately, these nut-cases aren't too bright, as evidenced by a recent
protest announcement against banks which didn't comprehend the difference
between a commercial bank and an S&L.
-------
∂18-Jan-90 0800 JMC
Remind Hazel
∂18-Jan-90 0900 JMC
Acme security systems
∂18-Jan-90 1431 MPS McCarthy's Grades
∂17-Jan-90 1607 hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU McCarthy's Grades
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Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1990 16:09:07 PST
From: "Sharon R. Hemenway" <hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: mps@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: McCarthy's Grades
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632621347.hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Pat:
Did McCarthy ever submit his Autumn quarter CS499 grades? Ramin Zabih
and Dan Scales do not yet have grades for it. I'm trying to avoid
Ramin getting into the same kind of administrative trouble he landed
in last year because McCarthy never turned in one quarter's grades.
Thanks.
Sharon
I do not remember you signing this. Do you have it in your office?
∂18-Jan-90 1317 A.ERIC@GSB-How.Stanford.EDU Re: liberal? quotes?
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Date: Thu 18 Jan 90 13:18:16-PST
From: Eric M. Berg <A.Eric@GSB-How.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: liberal? quotes?
To: JMC@Sail.Stanford.EDU
cc: su-etc@shelby.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <7xDwQ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12559289598.31.A.ERIC@GSB-How.Stanford.EDU>
Bernard Goldberg, CBS correspondent, in a 1986 broadcast
from Moscow: "As incredible as it may sound, Soviets not
only think they're free, they think they're freer than
we are."
I don't understand why this is a "liberal" quota. Goldberg seems to be
making a statement about what the *Russians* believe, not what *he*
believes. In fact, the opening clause ("As incredible as it may sound")
seems to express some skepticism on his part as to whether their belief
is correct.
If he had gone on to say "And I fully agree with them," then that might
have been something that AIM could castigate as a "liberal" opinion.
Or is the problem that the Russians "obviously" believe that they aren't
free, but that CBS is hiding the truth from the American public by
broadcasting this report? :-}
-------
∂18-Jan-90 1326 Mailer failed mail returned
The following message has expired without successful delivery to recipient(s):
ullman@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
------- Begin undelivered message: -------
15-Jan-90 1427 JMC lunch with John Nafeh of MAD Intelligent Systems
To: ullman@SCORE.Stanford.EDU
Is Monday, Wednesday or Friday of next week feasible for
you? If so, choose one. He is interested in the possibility
of your doing some consulting for his company in the area
of databases.
I would come too.
------- End undelivered message -------
∂18-Jan-90 1516 hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: McCarthy's Grades
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1990 15:17:42 PST
From: "Sharon R. Hemenway" <hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: McCarthy's Grades
In-Reply-To: Your message of 18 Jan 90 1451 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.632704662.hemenway@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
I just checked with Claire Stager and she never did receive your
CS499 grades from Autumn quarter. If you cannot find the original
sheet, please let either Claire or me know and we will get you a
duplicate.
Sharon
∂18-Jan-90 1634 bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 90 16:34:21 -0800
From: Becky Thomas <bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001190034.AA25325@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail
I am leading the CS523 seminar, Readings in Artificial Intelligence.
I would very much like to have you come speak to the group some Friday
this quarter. You would be welcome to make any opening comments
you would like; we will then have a question period for the rest of
the session.
We meet 11:30 - 1:00 Fridays in MJH room 352. (Other times could be
arranged if necessary.) Would it be possible for you to come
on Friday, March 16? On that week we will be covering the
"Perspectives" section of the AI qual reading list.
(If another Friday might be better, please let me know - I can
rearrange sessions.)
Thanks.
Becky Thomas
∂18-Jan-90 1734 bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: reply to message
In-Reply-To: Your message of 18 Jan 90 17:16:00 -0800.
<7x#rp@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 90 17:34:43 -0800
From: bthomas@Neon.Stanford.EDU
No problem - thanks!
Cs
∂19-Jan-90 0919 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU lunch meeting
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 09:19:23 -0800
From: Jeffrey D. Ullman <ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001191719.AA03539@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: lunch meeting
I'm free for lunch any of MWF, but not VERY free, because I have
a 1:15 class. Thursday would be better, since I'm open-ended after lunch.
---jdu
∂19-Jan-90 0945 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU re: lunch meeting
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 09:45:04 -0800
From: Jeffrey D. Ullman <ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001191745.AA03568@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: lunch meeting
OK, but perhaps it would be better to meet on campus, say 11:45
at the faculty club.
---jdu
∂19-Jan-90 0954 VAL Apt
I'm meeting with Krzysztof Apt for dinner tonight. Would you like to join us?
∂19-Jan-90 1009 VAL re: Apt
[In reply to message rcvd 19-Jan-90 10:04-PT.]
How about 6pm at Fresco?
∂19-Jan-90 1013 VAL re: Apt
[In reply to message rcvd 19-Jan-90 10:12-PT.]
ok
∂19-Jan-90 1100 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu Visit to University of Minnesota
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 13:00:54 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9001191900.AA19301@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: jmc@Sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Visit to University of Minnesota
Our department is in the process of inviting
Distinguished Visitors for 2-5 days during the
Spring Quarter (early April to late May). It is
expected that the Visitor would give up to
one lecture per day during his stay and interact
with faculty and graduate students. The dept. will
pay all expenses plus an honorarium of $600 per day.
I would like to extend to you
an invitation to serve as a Distinguished Visitor.
We hope that you will be able to accept. If so, please
let me know what dates would be convenient for you.
I will call you early next week to discuss this further.
With Best Wishes,
Jim Slagle
∂19-Jan-90 1120 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU a problem in formalizing common-sense knowledge
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 11:22:24 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001191922.AA00413@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: a problem in formalizing common-sense knowledge
How can you represent the following piece of common-sense knowledge
in logic?
If A is hungry, and A eats something, then afterwards A is less hungry
than before.
The difficulty is that we don't know how hungry A was before the eating
or how hungry A is after the eating, or for that matter how much less
hungry A has gotten.
∂19-Jan-90 1331 phil@ub.d.umn.edu CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9001192130.AA30288@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
To: M_AND_M_EB@ub.d.umn.edu
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 15:30:20 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
Three items concerning the editorial board, the title, and the review
procedures of our new journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
(1) The editorial board currently includes Jon Barwise, Andy Clark,
Robert Cummins, Jerry Fodor, Clark Glymour, John Haugeland, Jaakko
Hintikka, David Israel, Frank Keil, Henry Kyburg, John McCarthy, Don-
ald Nute, Zenon Pylyshyn, Barry Richards, Roger Schank, John Searle,
Stephen Stich, and Terry Winograd. I am delighted you have joined.
(2) The rapid proloferation of different journals with similar names
has led to a reconsideration of the right title for this one. After
thinking it through, I have recommended that we adopt the following:
MINDS AND MACHINES
Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science
(ISSN 0924-6495)
Computer science, after all, is concerned with machines and cognitive
science is concerned with minds, while artificial intelligence is (at
least, in part) concerned with their relations and connections. This
title also suggests some of the classic problems that define the field.
I hope that this will prove to be a comfortable title for this journal,
and I appreciated the suggestions several of you previously forwarded.
(3) The review policy that I plan to adopt is the following. When a
submission is received, I will distribute the abstract by e-mail and
ask for your suggestions as to appropriate referees, who may include
yourselves. I shall then send the manuscript to two referees and ask
them to respond by e-mail. Comments and criticism will be forwarded
to authors by e-mail whenever possible. With your assistance, such a
mode of operation should greatly faciliate the publication of articles.
Two e-mail addresses are available. M_and_M_EB@ub.d.umn.edu is an
alias that reaches the entire editorial board plus Martin Scrivener at
Kluwer (less Jaakko and Zenon, pro tem). AI_and_PHIL@ub.d.umn.edu is an
alias that reaches only me here at UMD. I can also be reached by way of
phil@ub.d.umn.edu. The journal is open for business and I would welcome
submissions. I look forward to working with you in what should turn out
to be an extremely interesting and professionally rewarding enterprise.
Jim (Fetzer)
∂19-Jan-90 1346 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Corrigenda
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9001192146.AA24174@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Corrigenda
To: M_and_M_EB@ub.d.umn.edu
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 15:46:49 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
No doubt it is fitting that I should have to edit my first message
to the board. One minor correction: "proliferation" was intended
where "proloferation" occurred. One important addition: M_and_M
_EB@ub.d.umn.edu includes book review editor, William J. Rapaport.
Jim (Fetzer)
∂19-Jan-90 1426 MPS elephant draft
would you please send me a copy of the draft you want me
to give to Carolyn. thanks
∂19-Jan-90 1449 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Corrigenda
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9001192250.AA11944@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: re: Corrigenda
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 16:50:17 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
In-Reply-To: <13yrBW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>; from "John McCarthy" at Jan 19, 90 1359
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Thanks. If you are still interested in program verification,
I would still be interested in having something from you.
Jim
∂19-Jan-90 1516 VAL re: a problem in formalizing common-sense knowledge
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU
CC: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message sent Fri, 19 Jan 90 11:22:24 -0800.]
"If A is hungry, and A eats something, then afterwards A is less hungry
than before":
hungry(A) and food(B) -> less(hunger(A,result(eat(B),s)),hunger(A,s)).
∂19-Jan-90 1520 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU re: lunch meeting
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 90 15:20:13 -0800
From: Jeffrey D. Ullman <ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001192320.AA04241@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: lunch meeting
OK.. Shall we walk over from here or meet there?
---jdu
∂19-Jan-90 1548 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu re: AI Division lunches
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Date: 19 Jan 1990 1548-PST (Friday)
From: Jutta McCormick <jutta@coyote.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: jutta@coyote.stanford.edu
Subject: re: AI Division lunches
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> /
17 Jan 90 1639 PST.
<1kxtY0@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
will you be able to attend on February 5 and April 11?
--Jutta McCormick
∂19-Jan-90 1614 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
LOGIC PROGRAMS WITH CLASSICAL NEGATION
Vladimir Lifschitz
Stanford Unversity
Monday, January 22, 2:30pm
MJH 252
**** Please note new time! ****
General logic programs are further generalized by including
classical negation, in addition to negation-as-failure. The
semantics of such "extended" programs is based on the method
of stable models. We show that some facts of commonsense
knowledge can be represented by logic programs more easily
when classical negation is available. Computationally,
classical negation can be eliminated from extended programs
by a simple preprocessor. Extended programs are identical
to a special case of default theories in the sense of Reiter.
This is joint work with Michael Gelfond. If time permits,
related work of Robert Kowalski and Fariba Sadri on "logic
programs with exceptions" will be also reviewed.
∂19-Jan-90 1725 jullig@kestrel.edu ignore
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From: jullig@kestrel.edu (Richard Jullig)
Message-Id: <9001200102.AA26274@flycatcher.kestrel.edu>
To: SW-PI@vax.darpa.mil
Subject: ignore
∂20-Jan-90 0901 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU The trouble with that solution
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001201702.AA11591@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: The trouble with that solution
Cc: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
is that nobody would ever answer
"How hungry are you?"
with "12.3"
Well, of course you could assume that hunger(A,s) takes values
in the set {not-at-all, just-a-little, pretty-hungry, really-hungry,
starving,famished}. But then your axiom isn't valid anymore, because
you might start off really-hungry, eat a small something, and still be
really-hungry.
∂20-Jan-90 2003 ME tape drives
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
CC: tom@POLYA.Stanford.EDU
∂20-Jan-90 1716 JMC
To: tom@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU, ME@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Will a machine that can read 9-track tape still exist?
ME - Yes, 9-track tape drives will be around for quite a while.
∂21-Jan-90 0116 ME NS
∂20-Jan-90 2102 JMC ns
Is there anything a civilian can do when it says, "Sorry,
failed to read in story."?
ME - No, but that shouldn't happen. Your message is dated at 9:02pm,
which is two minutes after NS switches to a new day. So maybe the day
transition caused something funny. Retrying later should work in this
case. I don't see anything wrong now.
∂21-Jan-90 0844 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU comparisons and the hunger example
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Date: Sun, 21 Jan 90 08:45:38 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9001211645.AA21269@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: comparisons and the hunger example
(1) Granted there may be ways to assign a real number or a vector
of real numbers to a precise version of "hunger".
(2) Complications about different kinds of hunger (e.g. "I'm not
hungry for vegetables, but I'm hungry for dessert") are not the point
I was trying to get at with the example.
The point I was trying to get at is the ubiquity of COMPARISON
in common-sense reasoning. After all, natural language provides a
mechanism for making a "comparative form" of every adjective. There
is nothing in logic to correspond to this, it seems to me. The only
thing we know how to do is what Lifschitz gave in his nice one-line
"solution": assign a number to the quantities being compared. But
I think what people do when they "compare" is much more subtle, having
to do with analogies somehow. Judging from your two repies, you guys
don't think it is really a problem. Perhaps you're right, I'll
think about it some more.
∂21-Jan-90 2241 tiemann@Sun.COM League for programming freedom
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Date: Sun, 21 Jan 90 22:44:19 PST
From: tiemann@Sun.COM (Michael Tiemann)
Message-Id: <9001220644.AA18431@teacake.sun.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: League for programming freedom
Reply-To: tiemann@Sun.COM
Fight "Look and Feel" Lawsuits
Join the League for Programming Freedom
The League for Programming Freedom is an organization of people who
oppose the attempt to monopolize common user interfaces through "look
and feel" copyright lawsuits. Some of us are programmers, who worry
that such monopolies will obstruct our work. Some of us are users,
who want new computer systems to be compatible with the interfaces we
know.
"Look and feel" lawsuits aim to create a new class of
government-enforced monopolies broader in scope than ever before.
Such a system of user-interface copyright would impose gratuitous
incompatibility, reduce competition, and stifle innovation.
We in the League hope to prevent these problems by preventing
user-interface copyright. The League is not opposed to copyright
law as it was understood until 1986--copyright on particular
programs. Our aim is to stop changes in the copyright system which
would take away programmers' traditional freedom to write new
programs compatible with existing programs and practices.
The League for Programming Freedom will act against the doctrine
behind look-and-feel suits by any means consistent with the law and
intellectual liberty. We will write editorials, talk with public
officials, file amicus curiae briefs with the courts, and boycott
egregious offenders. On May 24th, 1989, we picketed Lotus
headquarters on account of their lawsuits against competitors,
stimulating widespread media coverage for the issue. If you have
other ideas, please suggest them.
In the future, the League may also fight other restrictive practices,
such as software patents, which threaten to make every design decision
in software development a chance for a lawsuit. The League's founders
consider software patents potentially even more dangerous than
look-and-feel copyright, but it will be up to the members to decide
whether the League should campaign against them.
Membership dues in the League are $42 per year for programmers,
managers and professionals; $10.50 for students; $21 for others.
Please give more if you can. The League's funds will be used for
filing briefs; for printing handouts, buttons and signs; whatever will
influence the courts, the legislators, and the people. You won't get
anything personally for your dues--except for the freedom to write
programs. The League is a non-profit corporation, but because it is a
lobbying organization, your contributions may not be tax-deductible.
We also accept corporate (nonvoting) members; please phone or write
for more information.
The League needs both activist members and members who only pay their
dues.
If you have any questions, please write to the League or phone
(617) 492-0023.
Richard Stallman, President
Chris Hofstader, Secretary
Denis Filipetti, Treasurer
!To join, please send a check and the following information to:
League for Programming Freedom
1 Kendall Square #143
P.O.Box 9171
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
(If you are at MIT, you can send or bring them to Richard Stallman
in NE43-430, if that is easier for you.)
Your name:
Your address, where we should write to you for elections and such:
The company you work for, and your position:
Your phone number and email address, so we can contact you for
demonstrations or for writing letters to Congress. (If you don't want
us to contact you for these things, please say so; your support as a
member is helpful nonetheless.)
Is there anything about you which would enable your endorsement of the
LPF to impress the public? For example, if you are or have been a
professor or an executive, or have written software that has a good
reputation, please tell us.
Would you like to help with LPF activities?
The corporate charter of the League for Programming Freedom states:
The purposes of the League shall be the furtherance of charitable,
educational and scientific purposes which qualify as exempt ...,
and to engage in activities to:
1. To determine the existence of, and warn the public about,
restrictions and monopolies on classes of computer programs where such
monopolies prevent or restrict the right to develop certain kinds of
computer programs.
2. To develop countermeasures and initiatives, in the public interest,
effective to block or otherwise prevent or restrain such monopolistic
activities including education, research, publications, public
assembly, legislative testimony, and intervention in court proceedings
involving public interest issues (as a friend of the court).
3. To engage in any business or other activity in service of and
related to the foregoing paragraphs that lawfully may be carried on...
The officers and directors of the League will be elected annually by
the members.
∂21-Jan-90 2242 tiemann@Sun.COM League for programming freedom
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Date: Sun, 21 Jan 90 22:44:42 PST
From: tiemann@Sun.COM (Michael Tiemann)
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: League for programming freedom
Reply-To: tiemann@Sun.COM
\input texinfo
@setfilename look-and-feel
@center @titlefont{Against User Interface Copyright}
@sp 2
@center Richard Stallman
In the past three years, a few companies have begun to sue others
for following what used to be standard practice in the computer
field: implementing programs that are compatible with the competition.
These plaintiffs claim to have a copyright on the user interface
of a program---something unheard of three years ago.
A handful of suits between small companies have been decided. Three
large suits are still in the courts. Lotus has sued Paperback Software
and Mosiac for implementing spreadsheets that talk to the user in the
same terms used by 1-2-3. And Ashton Tate has sued Fox Software for
implementing the same programming language previously implemented in
dBase. Apple Computer has sued Microsoft and Hewlett Packard for
implementing a window system whose displays partially resemble those of
the Macintosh system. More recently, Xerox has sued Apple for
implementing the Macintosh system, whose displays partially resemble
the earlier Xerox Star system.
@heading What Is a User Interface?
The user interface of a program is the way in which you communicate
with it. Other machines also have user interfaces. For example, the user
interface of a typewriter is a collection of keys corresponding to
letters, digits, and punctuation, and arranged in a well-known order.
The user interface of a car includes a steering wheel for turning and
pedals to speed up and slow down, plus a lever to signal turns, etc.
In the case of a machine which is a computer program, the interface
includes that of the computer---its keyboard, screen and mouse---plus
those aspects specific to the program. Those typically include the
choice of commands, menus and programming language, and the way your
data is presented on the screen.
User interface copyright would mean a monopoly on a user interface.
In the example of the typewriter, this would mean that each
manufacturer would have to arrange the keys in a different order.
@heading The Purpose of Copyright
In any discussion of what copyright law ought to mean, we must start
by noting its purpose. According to the Constitution, its purpose is
to ``promote the progress of science and the useful arts.''
Conspicuously absent is any hint of intention to enrich copyright
holders to the detriment of the users of copyrighted works.
The Supreme Court made the reason for this absence explicit, stating in
@cite{Fox Film vs. Doyal} that ``The sole interest of the United States
and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the
general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.''
@refill
In other words, since copyright is a government-imposed monopoly,
which interferes with the freedom of the public in a significant way,
it is justified only if it helps the public more than it costs the
public.
The spirit of individual freedom must, if anything, incline us even
less to accept such a monopoly. So if either the Supreme Court or the
principle of freedom is our guide, we have to ask: what value does
user interface copyright offer the public---and what price would we
have to pay for it?
According to Infoworld magazine (mid January 1989), computer users in
general have considered this question and reached a consensus: they
expect user interface copyright to be harmful for them. If we believe
that the users have a good idea of their own interests, the issue is
already settled. But so as not to take their word for it, let's now
investigate how much good and harm user interface copyright would do
in various ways.
@heading Is More Incentive Needed?
The developers of the Star system, the Macintosh system, 1-2-3 and dBase
claim that without interface copyright there would be insufficient
incentive to develop such products. This is disproved by their own
actions.
Until three years ago, user-interface copyright was unheard of. The
entire development of the computer industry took place under a system
where imitating a user interface was standard practice, and lawful. And
it was under this system that today's plaintiffs made their decisions to
develop their products. When faced with the choice in actuality, these
developers decided that they did, indeed, have ``enough incentive''.
Although everyone was free to imitate these interfaces, no one tried for
several years. Implementing an imitation takes a long time. During
this time, the first developers had no similar competition.
Some people think that interface copyright would protect small companies
from being wiped out by imitation from IBM and other giants. This is an
unlikely scenario. Today's interface copyright plaintiffs are large,
established companies trying to wipe out small competitors. Small
companies remain safe from IBM by virtue of their flexibility. Giants
have inertia and tend to move cautiously.
Granted that interface copyright would add to the existing incentive,
it does not follow that it will lead to much additional improvement in
user interfaces. The existing incentive is so great that it may well
suffice to motivate everyone who has an idea worth developing. Then
the change would only increase the price of these improvements. Once
you suck a bottle dry, more suction won't get more out of it.
@heading What Will Interface Copyright Cost the Public?
So much for the value of interface copyright; what about the cost?
Computer user interfaces will be less convenient and more incompatible.
One cost we can be sure of is that future user interfaces will be less
widely used by developers, because most developers will not be allowed
to use them. We will also lose much of the usefulness of the
important interface concepts of the past decade. The few systems
permitted to use them will be more expensive due to the lack of
competition---a windfall for a few manufacturers, but bad for the
public at large.
But this is not the only cost. Better interfaces may be hard to think
of, but it is easy to invent interfaces which are merely different.
Interface copyright will surely succeed in encouraging more of this
sort of ``interface development''. The result will be greater
incompatibility between computer systems---exactly what the user does
not want.
These ``improved'' interfaces may be slightly better or slightly worse
if considered abstractly; but for the users who have already learned
to use one well-known interface, they are inevitably worse, because
they require retraining.
Even an intrinsically superior interface may be unacceptable for the
users due to incompatibility. For example, the Dvorak keyboard,
invented several decades ago, enables a typist to type much faster than
is possible with the standard ``qwerty'' keyboard. Nonetheless, few
people use it. Already-trained typists don't know how. New typists
don't learn how, because they want to learn the standard layout.
@heading Diversity in Interfaces is Not Desirable
Here we can see one of the implicit assumptions behind the system of
copyright, and why it does not apply to user interfaces. Copyright
was designed to encourage diversity; its details work toward this end.
Diversity is exactly what benefits the public when it comes to novels
and songs, and the other traditional domains of copyright. Readers
want new, different novels to be written so that there are more
different things to read. This is indeed a way to promote the art of
creative writing.
But this is not the way to promote the art of computer programming.
Computer users regard diversity in interfaces as a price which may
sometimes be worth paying, not as a measure of progress.
Thus, when proponents of interface copyright say that this will force
developers to find ways to vary the accepted interfaces, they are saying
that the users will suffer.
@heading Incompatibility Does Not Go Away
If there had been a 50-year interface copyright for the steering
wheel, it would have expired not long ago. During the span of the
copyright, we would have got cars steered with joysticks, cars steered
with levers, and cars steered with pedals. Each car user would have
had to choose a brand of car to learn to drive, and it would not be
easy to switch.
The expiration of the copyright would have freed manufacturers
ostensibly to switch to the best of the known interfaces. In practice
they would still be unable to do so without forcing all their old
customers to learn to drive all over again. It would take decades for
the country to converge on a single interface, perhaps into the 21st
century.
@heading Who Invests in the User Interface?
The plaintiffs like to claim that user interfaces represent large
investments on their part.
In fact, designing the user interface of a computer program is usually a
small part of the investment in developing the program itself. The ones
who do make a large investment in the user interface are the users who
train to use it. Users have spent far more learning to use 1-2-3 than
Lotus spent to develop the program, let alone to develop the program's
interface per se.
Therefore, if investment justifies owning the interface, it is the
users who should be the owners. And they should be able to permit
everyone to clone it, as they would prefer to do.
@heading Discrimination Against Sharing of Software
User interface copyright discriminates against freely redistributable
software, such as freeware, shareware and public domain software.
For a proprietary program it @emph{may} be possible to license the
interface, if the owner is willing. But there is no way to do this for
programs that are freely redistributable. Any means for collecting
royalties from the users for use of the interface is incompatible with
redistribution by them. The result will be a growing body of interface
techniques that are allowed in proprietary software but forbidden in
non-proprietary software.
This discrimination is harmful because non-proprietary software provides
several advantages to the public: users can customize it, improve it,
and study it to learn programming; they can also develop habits of good
citizenship by lawfully passing on copies to their friends.
Software developers who choose to encourage redistribution feel a duty
to serve the public fully, even if this means less personal income.
Society needs this sentiment, but it is scarcer today than innovation.
Putting obstacles in its path to ``encourage innovation'' is
counterproductive.
@heading The Fear Factor
The scope of interface copyright is so wide and vague that it will be
difficult for any programmer to be sure of being safe from lawsuits.
Most programs need an interface, and there is usually no way to design
an interface except based on the ideas you have seen used elsewhere.
Only a great genius would be likely to envision a usable interface
without a deep resemblance to current practice. It follows that most
programming projects will risk an interface infringement suit.
The danger will be increased because the actual, de facto scope of
interface copyright will be wider than supposedly intended. This is
due to the practice of intimidation.
When offered a choice between paying royalties and being sued, most
businessmen choose to pay, even if they would probably win the case.
They know that customers and investors may avoid them because of the
suit, so that an eventual victory will come years too late to save
them from great loss or even bankruptcy. They speak of suits ``putting
their money in jail.'' They prefer the certainty of a payment they can
bear, even if it is unjust.
This phenomenon is well known, and some companies take advantage of it
by threatening to sue when they know they don't have a real case.
If patents are any guide, intimidation will be widespread in the area of
interface copyright. @w{G. Gervaise} Davis (an attorney specializing in the
field) estimates that 90% of all recent software patents would be
overturned in court, if anyone dared to challenge them. These patents
are part of a strategy of intimidation; they were filed in order to gain
a position for intimidation.
@heading Barrier to Evolution
Despite the high and many-fold social cost of user interface
copyright, the reader may still feel that it must have some beneficial
effect on progress in user interfaces, however minuscule. However,
interface copyright may actually retard progress, because of the
evolutionary nature of interface development.
Fully fleshed-out user interfaces schemes don't often arise as tours de
force from the minds of isolated masters. They result from repeated
implementations, by different groups, each learning from the successes
and failures of previous attempts. For example, the Macintosh interface
was based on ideas tried previously by Xerox and SRI, and before that by
the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The Xerox Star also
drew on the interface ideas that came from SRI and SAIL. 1-2-3 adapted
the interface ideas of Visicalc and other spreadsheets. dBase drew on a
program developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This evolutionary process resembles the creation of folk art rather
than the way symphonies, novels or films are made. The ideas that we
ought to encourage are most often ideas for small, localized changes
to what someone else has done. If each interface has an owner, it
will be difficult to implement such ideas. Even assuming the owner
will license the interface that is to be improved, the inconvenience
and expense would discourage all but the most determined.
@heading Evolution vs. Compatibility
The careful reader will now notice an apparent contradiction between
the usefulness of evolutionary growth and the undesirability of
incompatible changes. Why aren't the evolutionary changes rejected
by users who do not want any change?
To some extent, they are rejected. For this reason, developers often
try to satisfy both goals. They make changes that are
upward-compatible, or change only a small portion of the well-known
interface.
Thus, on computer keyboards, we now have function keys, arrow keys, a
delete key and a control key, which typewriters did not have. But the
layout of the letters is unchanged. This is an upward-compatible change.
When complete upward-compatibility is impossible, developers still strive
for as much compatibility as is possible given the improvement to be
made. This reduces the retraining cost for the given amount of benefit.
However, such partial changes as this would not be permitted by copyright
law. If any significant portion of the new interface were the same as a
copyrighted interface, the new interface would be illegal.
@heading Conclusion
We have seen that monopolies on user interfaces do not serve the users
and do not ``promote the progress of science and the useful arts.'' It
follows that user interfaces ought to be the common property of all, as
they were until a few years ago.
@heading What Can Be Done
@itemize @bullet
@item
Don't buy from Xerox, Lotus, Apple or Ashton-Tate. Buy from their
competitors or especially from the defendants they are suing.
@item
Don't own stock in these companies.
@item
Don't develop software to work with the systems made by these companies.
@item
Port your existing software to competing systems, so that you encourage
users to switch.
@item
Above all, don't work for the look-and-feel plaintiffs, and don't
accept contracts from them.
@item
Join the League for Programming Freedom and help organize further
activities. You can phone the League at (617) 492-0023, or write to:
@display
League for Programming Freedom
1 Kendall Square #143
P.O. Box 9171
Cambridge, MA 02139
@end display
@item
Tell your friends and colleagues about this issue and how it threatens
to ruin the computer industry. Ask them to join the League.
@item
Write to or phone your elected representatives to show them how
important this issue is.
@example
Senator So and So
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Representative Such and Such
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
@end example
You can phone senators and representatives at (202) 225-3121.
@end itemize
@bye
∂22-Jan-90 0715 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Mon, 22 Jan 90 07:16:35 -0800
From: Tom Dienstbier <tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001221516.AA04110@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Cc: ME@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 20 Jan 90 1716 PST <uy#qZ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Yes, we expect to keep one on Jeeves, our sun file server. I also
believe that gang-of-4 has one.
tom
∂22-Jan-90 0937 ARK End of the world party?
To: DRF
CC: ME, JMC
∂22-Jan-90 0857 DRF hey-ho
Hi there! How's things? Is Score now down forever? What's
the story with Sail? Is there going to be any kind of
going-away ceremony? -drf
ARK - Score has been unavailable for users for a few months. It is
not clear exactly when it did or will go down forever. SAIL will be
around until the end of February, at which time it too dies. (It may
be up in an unsupported mode then, however.) I suppose there should
be a going away ceremony. I'll send a copy of this message and reply
to ME and JMC and see what they think.
Regards,
Arthur
∂22-Jan-90 1006 ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU Rich Korf
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To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Cc: ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Rich Korf
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 90 10:07:32 PST
From: ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU
Hi John! I am trying to arrange Rich Korf's schedule for tomorrow. He will
be attending the faculty lunch and then he will be available for meetings
until 3:45. Are you interested in meeting him during that period? He may
be able to come in the morning too. --- Anoop.
∂22-Jan-90 1128 VAL re: comparisons and the hunger example
To: beeson@UCSCD.UCSC.EDU, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
[In reply to message from beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU sent Sun, 21 Jan 90 08:45:38 -0800.]
I didn't mean hunger(s) to be a real number, or an element of any other
completely specified ordered set. We simply postulate an ordered set
whose elements are called "degrees of hunger". We are free to write
additional axioms for these "degrees" if we wish, but it isn't necessary
to make these axioms complete in any sense.
--Vladimir
∂22-Jan-90 1145 ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU Re: Rich Korf
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Rich Korf
In-Reply-To: Your message of 22 Jan 90 11:02:00 -0800.
<czYyE@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 90 11:45:44 PST
From: ag@pepper.Stanford.EDU
2:45-3:45 would fit in quite well. I was planning to take him out to
dinner. You are welcome to join us. --- Anoop.
∂22-Jan-90 1205 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU San Jose job for computational linguist
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: San Jose job for computational linguist
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 90 12:08:02 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
I did think of someone they could talk to. How do I put Andras Kornai
in touch with the folks at MAD Intelligent Systems?
Stanley
∂22-Jan-90 1449 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: San Jose job for computational linguist
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: San Jose job for computational linguist
In-Reply-To: Your message of 22 Jan 90 14:46:00 PST.
<1qzxnY@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 90 14:51:48 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Thanks. Will do.
∂23-Jan-90 0933 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU achievement
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 09:24:58 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001231724.AA01366@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: faculty@cs.stanford.edu
Subject: achievement
Cc: nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU
For possible inclusion in my Computer Forum talk
I would like to know:
Which scientific/technical achievement (in computer
science) performed by you while at Stanford is your
most important one (or tied for most important)?
A "one-liner" (well, maybe a "two-liner") is all I need;
I can take it from there.
Thanks, -Nils
∂23-Jan-90 1026 @MCC.COM:msingh@mcc.com request for Elephant 2000 information
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 12:26:28 CST
From: msingh@mcc.com (Munindar Singh)
Posted-Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 12:26:28 CST
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: request for Elephant 2000 information
Dear Professor McCarthy,
I am interested in looking closely at your proposal for Elephant 2000,
and possibly, in working on a semantics for it. Would it be possible
for you to have a copy of the written text (e)mailed to me? My postal
address is:
AI Laboratory
MCC
3500 W. Balcones Center Drive
Austin, TX 78759
Thanks,
Munindar Singh
∂23-Jan-90 1112 HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 11:11:25 PST
To: jmc@sail
From: "Joyce Kiefer" <HF.JFK@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
To: VTSS FACULTY
From: VTSS OFFICE
Subject: Luncheon Talk with HP Product Manager
on Hot Issues regarding New Technologies
Professor James Adams has invited Bert Vermuelen, Product Marketing
Manager for Hewlett Packard in Bristol, England, to join us for
lunch on Tuesday, Jan. 30, in the VTSS Conference Room in the
Ginzton Modular. Mr. Vermuelen is involved with selling digital
audio tape technology for computers and is therefore, says Jim,
"pushing Japanese technology (HP has licensed it) through a Japanese
company for international customers". The technology itself and the
issues of protection of intellectual property, getting the world to
standardize your product and VTSS issues themselves will be some of
the topics of discussion.
RSVP to Joyce Kiefer at 5-0119 or hf.jfk@forsythe
To: JMC@SAIL
∂23-Jan-90 1319 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose book
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 13:20:14 -0800
From: Matthew L. Ginsberg <ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001232120.AA14900@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Penrose book
I read it; should we talk about it some time? I can't see that he's really
got a lot to say, as you remarked. (I like the idea that you can't duplicate
people because of quantum mechanics, though. That's pretty neat.)
Also, Pam and I are trying to figure out what we should be doing with our
lives when she is done being a Master's student here. Any input you care
to give me would be much appreciated -- thanks!
Matt
∂23-Jan-90 1551 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Possible Orals date
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 15:52:54 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9001232352.AA19546@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: Possible Orals date
First of all, thanks for the correction
not valid --> inconsistent.
I have been trying to set a date for my oral exam. Gio Wiederhold and
Yoav Shoham can both make it Friday, March 9. Would that be an OK
date for you? I don't have a time yet, but I assume sometime in the
morning.
Please let me know if this works.
Thanks,
Peter
∂23-Jan-90 1621 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, nail@NIMBIN.Stanford.EDU,
su-events@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
FORMALIZING VARIOUS INTUITIONS ABOUT INHERITANCE
IN LOGIC PROGRAMS
Fangzhen Lin
Stanford University
Monday, January 29, 2:30pm
MJH 301
**** Please note new place--for this meeting only! ****
Reasoning about inheritance is one of the earliest applications of
nonmonotonic logics. It is also one of the motivations for developing
such logics. Unfortunately, so far attempts at formalizing inheritance
hierarchies using general purpose nonmonotonic logics, like default
logic and circumscruiption, seem not as successful as the ones using
ad hoc methods, like the ones used by Touretzky and the Horty trio.
This raises an important question: Are these nonmonotonic logics
appropriate for the job? In this paper, we'll show that for default
and autoepistemic logics, the answer is positive. Specifically,
we'll propose a methodology for formalizing various intuitions about
inheritance in logic programs with negation as failure (a subclass of
default and autoepistemic theories). We'll prove that one of our
formalizations includes Horty's skeptical theory as a special case.
Among other things, the methodology is remarkably simple and very
similar to the ones used by McCarthy and others.
∂23-Jan-90 1627 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU this week and next
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1990 16:27:38 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.stanford.edu>
To: corey@russell.Stanford.EDU, ohsawa@russell.Stanford.EDU,
masaru@russell.Stanford.EDU, schwartz@neon.stanford.edu,
cyrluk@neon.stanford.edu, kanazawa@russell.Stanford.EDU,
shin@russell.Stanford.EDU, ravaglia@suwatson.stanford.edu,
orourke@russell.Stanford.EDU, fehling@bayes.stanford.edu,
dthompson@pluto.arc.nasa.gov, graham@russell.Stanford.EDU,
ohair@russell.Stanford.EDU, ginzburg@russell.Stanford.EDU,
martini@russell.Stanford.EDU, sirai@russell.Stanford.EDU,
linsky@russell.Stanford.EDU, gurr@russell.Stanford.EDU,
kato@russell.Stanford.EDU, l.levine@macbeth.stanford.edu,
glad@russell.Stanford.EDU, d.dayvyd@macbeth.stanford.edu,
tah@linz.stanford.edu, grove@neon.stanford.edu,
eswolf@neon.stanford.edu, miyoshi@russell.Stanford.EDU,
betsy@russell.Stanford.EDU, isoda@russell.Stanford.EDU,
kar@neon.stanford.edu, numao@russell.Stanford.EDU,
schuetze@russell.Stanford.EDU, shankar@csl.sri.com,
fernando@russell.Stanford.EDU, rucker@russell.Stanford.EDU,
barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU, sf@russell.Stanford.EDU,
etch@russell.Stanford.EDU, andre@russell.Stanford.EDU,
kepa@russell.Stanford.EDU, migura@russell.Stanford.EDU,
ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU, iam@gang-of-four.stanford.edu,
jcm@cs.stanford.edu, luca@src.dec.com, ma@src.dec.com,
guven@russell.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
peters@russell.Stanford.EDU, laubsch@hplabs.hp.com,
trip@russell.Stanford.EDU, nerbonne%hplnlhub@hplabs.hp.com,
meldal@bach.stanford.edu, bolton@suwatson.stanford.edu,
katiyar@Neon.stanford.edu, clt@sail.stanford.edu,
pjking@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: this week and next
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.633140858.etch@russell.stanford.edu>
In the logic seminar this week, I will talk about the treatment of the
liar paradox in Barwise and my book The Liar.
Next week, Bernie Linsky will present material from "General Intensional
Logic" by C. Anthony Anderson (Chapter II.7 of the Handbook of Philosophical
Logic). Copies will be made available at this week's meeting.
Sorry about the last message--the mailer is acting up.
∂24-Jan-90 0932 CLT Timothy
He was still quite tired and cranky last night.
Please bring him home right after the science class
so he will have time to rest and get ready for school.
∂24-Jan-90 1001 MPS State Department
Bill Bremmer 202 647-6758 or 8956 called regarding
your sponsorship of Marianna Rosenfeld. There is
3 hours difference and he goes home at 5:30 EST.
∂24-Jan-90 1147 VAL reply to message
[In reply to message rcvd 24-Jan-90 11:44-PT.]
I didn't know she's coming.
∂24-Jan-90 1300 JMC
papers for Leora
∂24-Jan-90 1325 MPS
Laura from Suppes office called. Marianne is
Mintz wife. She wants you to call the State
Department today as their arrival time is the 3rd of
Feb.
∂24-Jan-90 1622 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU 1990 Forsythe Lectures
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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1990 14:01:57 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: csdlist@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Cc: chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: 1990 Forsythe Lectures
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.633218517.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Professor Richard P. Brent will deliver the George and Sandra Forsythe
Memorial Lectures in Computer Science on February 12 and 13, 1990, to which
the public is invited. Professor Brent is well known for his work on
parallel numerical algorithms, computational number theory, and analysis of
algorithms. He was a student of Professors Gene Golub and George Forsythe at
Stanford, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1971.
The annual Forsythe Lectures honor the memory of computer science pioneers
George and Sandra Forsythe. George played a leading role in the founding of
Stanford's Computer Science Department and was its first chairman. His wife,
Sandra, was a noted computer science educator and text-book author.
During 1971-1972 Professor Brent worked in the Mathematical Science
Department at the IBM Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Since
1972 he has held various positions at the Australian National University.
In 1978 he was appointed Foundation Professor of Computer Science in the
Faculty of Science at ANU. In 1985 he moved to the Research School of
Physical Sciences at ANU, where he is Professor of Computer Sciences and
Head of the Computer Sciences Laboratory. At various times he has been a
visiting Professor at Stanford University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and
the University of California at Berkeley.
The first lecture, entitled "Parallel Computation", will be given in
Fairchild Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. on Monday evening, February 12, 1990.
(Fairchild Auditorium is just southwest of Stanford Medical Center off
Campus Drive.) The lecture will be of general interest to people in the
computer community. There will be a reception in the Fairchild Auditorium
foyer immediately following the lecture.
The second lecture, entitled "Fast Training Algorithms for Multilayer Neural
Nets", will be given at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, February 13, 1990,
in Jordan 040 (Psychology Building) at Stanford.
Professor Brent is the editor of the Prentice-Hall "Advances in Computer
Sciences" series, member of the editorial board of SIAM "Journal on Matrix
Analysis and Applications", and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of
Science. He has been an invited speaker at various international meetings,
including two IFIP World Computer Congresses.
∂24-Jan-90 1642 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Orals date and time
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id AA20433; Tue, 23 Jan 90 18:05:46 PST
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 90 18:05:46 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9001240205.AA20433@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
gio@eclipse.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu, siroker@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: Orals date and time
Dear Committee Members,
I have checked with each of you individually, and March 9 seems to be
a good day on which to hold the orals. I don't have a time yet (since
I still have to check scheduling with the University), but expect it
will be sometime late in the morning, say 10 or 10:30.
So please hold 10am-noon on March 9 open.
If any of you has an objection to the timing or the wisdom of
scheduling at this point, please let me know.
I will circulate a complete, although perhaps not polished, draft well
in advance of the 9th.
Thank you,
Peter
∂24-Jan-90 1849 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu,@ZERMATT.lcs.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu paper abstract
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Date: Sat, 20 Jan 90 17:19 EST
From: "David A. McAllester" <dam@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: paper abstract
To: theorem-provers@MC.lcs.mit.edu
Message-ID: <19900120221902.3.DAM@WITHERING.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Taxonomic Syntax for First Order Inference
David McAllester
Robert Givan
Tanveer Fatima
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Most knowledge representation languages are based on classes and
taxonomic relationships between classes. Taxonomic hierarchies without
defaults or exceptions are semantically equivalent to a collection of
formulas in first order predicate calculus. Although designers of
knowledge representation languages often express an intuitive feeling
that there must be some advantage to representing facts as taxonomic
relationships rather than first order formulas, there are few, if any,
technical results supporting this intuition. We attempt to remedy this
situation by presenting a taxonomic syntax for first order predicate
calculus and a series of theorems that support the claim that taxonomic
syntax is superior to classical syntax.
A short version of this paper appears in the proceedings of KR89 and
a longer version is available as MIT AI Memo 1134.
∂24-Jan-90 1854 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu,@ZERMATT.lcs.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu paper abstract
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Date: Sun, 21 Jan 90 14:52 EST
From: "David A. McAllester" <dam@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: paper abstract
To: theorem-provers@MC.lcs.mit.edu
Message-ID: <19900121195202.1.DAM@WITHERING.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Natural Language Syntax and First Order Inference
David McAllester
Robert Givan
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
We have argued elsewhere that first order inference can be made more
efficient by using non-standard syntax for first order logic. In this
paper we show how a fragment of English syntax under Montague semantics
provides the foundation of a new inference procedure. This procedure
seems more effective than corresponding procedures based on either
classical syntax or our previously proposed taxonomic syntax. This
observation may provide a functional explanation for some of the
syntactic structure of English.
This paper is currently availible as MIT Artificial Intelligence Memo 1176.
∂24-Jan-90 1854 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Pre-Orals
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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 90 17:48:59 PST
From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9001250148.AA29291@sherman.teleos.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu, stan@teleos.com
Subject: Pre-Orals
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
Nils suggested that it would be a good idea for me to give a seminar about
a month before my orals, with the whole committee present. This would give
us a change to achieve common knowledge about concerns that people have, and
allow me to fix things up before the orals.
He has an empty slot in his principia group seminar on Wed., 21 March at 2:30.
Stan and John, are you available then? If not, suggest another date and
time, and I'll find a room.
If this all sounds like a good plan, I'll go ahead and officially schedule
the orals for late April.
- Leslie
∂24-Jan-90 1856 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com Abstract for Path-Indexing Method Paper
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Date: Mon 22 Jan 90 13:19:18-PST
From: Mark Stickel <STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com>
Subject: Abstract for Path-Indexing Method Paper
To: theorem-provers@MC.lcs.mit.edu
cc: STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com
Message-ID: <633043160.0.STICKEL@AI.SRI.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(229)+TOPSLIB(126)@AI.SRI.COM>
Reply-To: STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com
Technical Note 473
Artificial Intelligence Center
SRI International
The Path-Indexing Method for Indexing Terms
Mark E. Stickel
The path-indexing method for indexing first-order predicate calculus
terms is a refinement of the standard coordinate-indexing method. Path
indexing offers much faster retrieval at a modest cost in space. Path
indexing is compared with discrimination-net and codeword indexing.
While discrimination-net indexing may often be the preferred method for
maximum speed, path indexing is an effective alternative if
discrimination-net indexing requires too much space or in certain cases
in which discrimination-net indexing performs particularly poorly.
-------
∂24-Jan-90 1855 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com Abstract for Prolog Technology Theorem Prover Paper
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Date: Mon 22 Jan 90 13:17:45-PST
From: Mark Stickel <STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com>
Subject: Abstract for Prolog Technology Theorem Prover Paper
To: theorem-provers@MC.lcs.mit.edu
cc: STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com
Message-ID: <633043065.0.STICKEL@AI.SRI.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(229)+TOPSLIB(126)@AI.SRI.COM>
Reply-To: STICKEL@warbucks.ai.sri.com
Technical Note 464
Artificial Intelligence Center
SRI International
A Prolog Technology Theorem Prover:
A New Exposition and Implementation in Prolog
Mark E. Stickel
A Prolog technology theorem prover (PTTP) is an extension of Prolog that
is complete for the full first-order predicate calculus. It differs
from Prolog in its use of unification with the occurs check for
soundness, depth-first iterative-deepening search instead of unbounded
depth-first search to make the search strategy complete, and the model
elimination reduction rule that is added to Prolog inferences to make
the inference system complete. This paper describes a new Prolog-based
implementation of PTTP. It uses three compile-time transformations to
translate formulas into Prolog clauses that directly execute, with the
support of a few run-time predicates, the model elimination procedure
with depth-first iterative-deepening search and unification with the
occurs check. Its high performance exceeds that of Prolog-based PTTP
interpreters, and it is more concise and readable than the earlier
Lisp-based compiler, which makes it superior for expository purposes.
Examples of inputs and outputs of the compile-time transformations
provide an easy and quite precise way to explain how PTTP works. This
Prolog-based version makes it easier to incorporate PTTP theorem-proving
ideas into Prolog programs. Some suggestions are made on extensions to
Prolog that could be used to improve PTTP's performance.
-------
∂24-Jan-90 1930 ME network problem
∂24-Jan-90 1643 JMC
q/m has said "spooling host not responding" for some time.
ME - We were having network problems earlier today.
∂25-Jan-90 0848 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@peabody.teleos.com:stan@teleos.com Pre-Orals
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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 90 08:39:50 PST
From: Stan Rosenschein <stan@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9001251639.AA09134@peabody.teleos.com>
To: leslie@teleos.com
Cc: stan@teleos.com, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: Leslie Kaelbling's message of Wed,
24 Jan 90 17:48:59 PST <9001250148.AA29291@sherman.teleos.com>
Subject: Pre-Orals
I'm available at the time you suggested. --Stan
∂25-Jan-90 0953 CLT DARPA request for Qlisp info
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
CC: JJW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
CC: RPG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
I sent this to Pullen some time ago and he claims to have taken care
of it. I will send a copy to Nicole.
∂25-Jan-90 0957 albert@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Re: csdlists email address
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Sender: Albert Peters <albert@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1990 9:58:02 PST
From: "Albert Peters" <albert@cs.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: albert@cs.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: csdlists email address
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 25 Jan 1990 7:56:25 PST
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Cc: chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU, damon@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.633290282.albert@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
> Date: 24 Jan 90 1641 PST
> From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
> Subject: re: 1990 Forsythe Lectures
> To: chandler@SUNBURN.STANFORD.EDU
>
> [In reply to message sent Wed, 24 Jan 1990 14:01:57 PST.]
>
> I received this message directed to JMC@SAIL via csdlist@sunburn.
> Please change my address on csdlist@sunburn to JMC-LISTS@SAIL, because
> I prefer to receive announcements and other junk mail at that address.
Ok, I've changed your email address in the PEDIT database to jmc-lists@sail.
All mailing lists generated by PEDIT (including csdlist) will now use the
jmc-lists address (starting tonight when the lists are re-generated).
Also, if people lookup your address using LOOKUP or if they send to
mccarthy@cs the mail will go to this address.
--Albert
∂25-Jan-90 1024 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Pre-Orals, Orals
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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 90 09:50:25 PST
From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9001251750.AA29829@sherman.teleos.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu, stan@teleos.com
Subject: Pre-Orals, Orals
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
Okay. Everyone is available for March 21 at 2:30. Nils, could you put me
on your schedule for sure?
Now, for the orals date. John would prefer April 26 or 27. Stan and Nils,
what is your availability on these dates?
- Leslie
∂25-Jan-90 1120 wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Assistant Chair search
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From: George Wheaton <wheaton@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001251921.AA26971@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: faculty@sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Assistant Chair search
Peter Henderson from SUNY StonyBrook will be here next Monday, Jan 29, to
interview for the position of Associate Professor (teaching) and Assistant
Chair for Education in CSD. Peter is one of three candidates for the job;
the others are Stuart Reges and Eric Roberts, who was here this past week.
There are two time slots available if any of you want to meet with him:
2:00 - 2:45 and 4:00 - 4:30. Anyone interested in joining us for lunch is
also welcome, just let me know.
Peter will give a "public" talk on his views of CS education from 4:30 -
5:00. Please come if you can.
gw
∂25-Jan-90 1546 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU China bill veto override
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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1990 15:44:26 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: China bill veto override
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <MailManager.633311066.2781.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Any comments about the failure to override the veto in the Senate today?
-------
∂25-Jan-90 1609 MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU re: China bill veto override
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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1990 15:51:56 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
Subject: re: China bill veto override
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <1u$sjv@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.633311516.5474.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
I can't think of anything either. A lot of people gave up on the PRC after
June 4.
-------
∂26-Jan-90 0907 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Orals time and date
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Date: Fri, 26 Jan 90 09:02:37 PST
From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9001261702.AA00849@sherman.teleos.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu,
shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, stan@teleos.com
Subject: Orals time and date
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
Is April 26 at 2pm okay with everyone?
- Leslie
∂26-Jan-90 1000 @MCC.COM:ai.shepherd@MCC.COM consulting
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Posted-Date: Fri, 26 Jan 90 11:58 CST
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Date: Fri, 26 Jan 90 11:58 CST
From: Mary Shepherd <ai.shepherd@MCC.COM>
Subject: consulting
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Cc: mary@MCC.COM, Lenat@mcc.com
Message-Id: <19900126175856.8.MARY@ARIADNE.ACA.MCC.COM>
John,
It looks like Friday (Feb. 2) will be the best time for both you and Doug.
I look forward to seeing you then.
Mary
∂26-Jan-90 1135 mrc@akbar.CAC.Washington.EDU re: Bush and China
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Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1990 11:30:13 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@akbar.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: re: Bush and China
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <1C$Z0B@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.633382213.377401575.mrc@akbar.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Suppose the Sandinistas don't cancel or steal the election? The polls suggest
that they would win a fair election. A lot of conservatives should be eating
crow at that point.
-------
∂26-Jan-90 1503 ME NS
∂26-Jan-90 1357 JMC
hot is up, but ns hasn't got stories since 10am.
ME - OK, it should be back to normal now. For some reason, the [DOER]
job has gotten into a loop a few times recently, including this morning.
∂26-Jan-90 1542 MPS Party
There is a secretary party downstairs today at 4:00.
If you need me, I will be there. Have a nice weekend.
Pat
∂26-Jan-90 1743 VAL
Please tell me when you want me to give a lecture in your class.
∂26-Jan-90 2200 JMC
N.
∂27-Jan-90 0012 GLB
To: sf@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
I received the following letter from TCS, about the paper
Jussi and I submitted last year:
--------
Dear Prof. Bellin, January 7th 1990
two referees, one of them certainly extremely
competent in linear logic, told me orally that your
paper ``A decision procedure revisited...) should
be published as it stands, without modifications.
I am thus happy to accept it and send it today
to the publisher.
Unfortunately our publication delay has increased up
to 18 to 20 months.
I thank you for your contribution to our journal.
Best wishes.
M.Nivat
--------
This is good news, also because the person extremely competent
must be (very close to) Girard. Perhaps this means that
my fears of French protectionism were sligtly paranoid.
∂27-Jan-90 0900 JMC
penrose to Shankar
∂27-Jan-90 1212 doug@portia.stanford.edu Re: Residential Phone Service
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Date: Sat, 27 Jan 90 12:12:50 PDT
From: douglas bone <doug@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9001272012.AA02336@portia.stanford.edu>
To: JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Re: Residential Phone Service
Newsgroups: su.etc
In-Reply-To: <c$clS@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Stanford University
Cc:
In article <c$clS@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> you write:
>[In reply to message from vera@fanaraaken.UUCP sent 26 Jan 90 22:53:13 GMT.]
>
>Having Stanford operate a telephone system for students suggests
>one more addition to the swollen administrative payroll.
I agree entirely. I would rather stop the implementation of the Stanford
residential system but I think it is far too late to effect that policy. My
immediate concern is to minimize the degradation of students' phone service
under the new system. I haven't yet spoken with the communications people --
maybe it isn't as bad as I think. One can always hope.
Douglas Bone
--
Douglas Bone Internet: bone@sierra.stanford.edu
Standard disclaimers BITNET: bone%sierra.stanford.edu@stanford
apply. UUCP: ..inhp4!ucbvax!sierra.stanford.edu!bone
∂27-Jan-90 1612 Mailer re: phone caller identification
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Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1990 16:00:14 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: phone caller identification
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <casNR@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.633484814.377401575.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
I agree with JMC's comments halfway; that is, I do not disagree with the new
law but I think that JMC's proposals should go along with it.
I think it is reasonable for a caller from a residence (not a business) to be
able to call anonymously. If I am calling a series of vendors as part of a
selection process I may not want to disclose my identity to those vendors I
have decided to eliminate from consideration. There are entirely too many
ways of getting oneself on mailing and telephone solicitation lists as it is.
On the other hand, I think it is reasonable for a residence to decide that it
refuses to receive anonymous calls. The proper response in this case is a
busy signal.
The question is what to do about calls from pay phones. It may be reasonable
to have an option to refuse calls from pay phones unless the call was charged
to a telephone credit card (in which case the associated telephone number is
passed as the "from" number).
-------
∂28-Jan-90 1001 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
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Date: Sat, 27 Jan 90 12:52:09 MST
From: teodor@utep-vaxa.UUCP (Teodor C. Przymusinski <cadovax!utep-vaxa!teodor@gryphon.com>)
Message-Id: <9001271952.AA01775@utep-vaxa.UUCP>
To: apt@mcvax.bitnet, beeri@hujics.bitnet, cv00@utep.bitnet, jll@ibm.com,
jmc@sail.stanford.edu, marek@cs.cornell.edu, minker@jacksun.cs.umd.edu,
rak@doc.imperial.ac.uk, reiter@ai.toronto.edu, val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: teodor mail
Dear Catriel, Jack, Jean-Louis, John, Krzysztof, Misha,
Ray, Robert, Vladimir, Witek
I am planning to apply for a position to several universities this year.
I hope that I can continue using your name on my list of
references. Please, let me know otherwise.
I greatly appreciate your support and I appologize for any
inconvenience that this may cause you.
Regards,
Teodor.
∂29-Jan-90 0958 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
FORMALIZING VARIOUS INTUITIONS ABOUT INHERITANCE
IN LOGIC PROGRAMS
Fangzhen Lin
Stanford University
Monday, January 29, 2:30pm
MJH 301
**** Please note room change--for this meeting only! ****
Reasoning about inheritance is one of the earliest applications of
nonmonotonic logics. It is also one of the motivations for developing
such logics. Unfortunately, so far attempts at formalizing inheritance
hierarchies using general purpose nonmonotonic logics, like default
logic and circumscruiption, seem not as successful as the ones using
ad hoc methods, like the ones used by Touretzky and the Horty trio.
This raises an important question: Are these nonmonotonic logics
appropriate for the job? In this paper, we'll show that for default
and autoepistemic logics, the answer is positive. Specifically,
we'll propose a methodology for formalizing various intuitions about
inheritance in logic programs with negation as failure (a subclass of
default and autoepistemic theories). We'll prove that one of our
formalizations includes Horty's skeptical theory as a special case.
Among other things, the methodology is remarkably simple and very
similar to the ones used by McCarthy and others.
∂29-Jan-90 1138 VAL re: suggestion
[In reply to message rcvd 29-Jan-90 11:31-PT.]
Yes, of course. The final version will even include a brief discussion of
domain circ'n.
∂29-Jan-90 1553 VAL
Minc arrives SFO Feb 3 by United #29 at 9:16 pm
∂29-Jan-90 2228 Mailer phone caller identification
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Date: Mon, 29 Jan 90 22:28:28 -0800
From: Andy Freeman <andy@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001300628.AA12442@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 29 Jan 90 2159 PST <13bCE4@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: phone caller identification
I'm unconvinced that records exist for calls that aren't itemized,
that is, local or even ZUM calls.
I do agree that the problem is not techological, but legal. The
police won't trace on request, no matter how little it costs in
phone-company time because it isn't a good use of their resources.
The phone company won't let you go through their records. Therefore,
caller-id only way that on-demand tracing will ever happen.
-andy
∂30-Jan-90 1140 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-events@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
A CHARACTERIZATION OF MAXIMUM ENTROPY EPSILON SEMANTICS
Paul Morris
IntelliCorp
Monday, February 5, 2:30pm
MJH 252
This is joint work with Moises Goldszmidt and Judea Pearl of UCLA. A
solution to the Yale shooting problem due to Geffner and Pearl
represents frame axioms by means of extreme conditional probabilities,
or epsilon semantics. However, the solution goes beyond epsilon
semantics in using a principle of irrelevance, which has been thought
to be related to maximum entropy.
We characterize maximum entropy epsilon semantics for an important
class of rule sets as a preference for worlds that minimize a specific
weighted count of rule violations. The result shows that an application
of maximum entropy to a variant of the shooting problem gives a
counter-intuitive result, whereas the principle of irrelevance is in
accord with intuition. Thus, the two approaches are not identical. We
also present some relationships between probabilistic and default
reasoning that extend results of Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor.
∂30-Jan-90 1504 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose review
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Date: Tue, 30 Jan 90 15:05:47 -0800
From: Matthew L. Ginsberg <ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9001302305.AA22585@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Penrose review
The easy things are the typos on the first page -- the first line is
missing a "to" before "presently" and the numbers of the first few
points go 1,2,3, 6.
Overall, I think that you and Penrose have both fallen into the same
trap -- making strong claims about areas where your backgrounds are
(relatively) suspect. Penrose really has no grounds to draw conclusions
about machines' abilities to prove Godel's theorem (as you point out),
and you probably should not attack his intuitions about physics. Maybe
you are right, maybe not; in any case, it reduces the credibility of the
review if you stray from areas in which you have recognized expertise.
(I was specifically unhappy about your "counterexample" on p.8, which
I mostly couldn't understand but seemed to me to be at *best* an experiment
that might invalidate Penrose's claims, not a gedanken experiment that
shows these claims to be false.)
But let me try to be more constructive. It seems to me that Penrose is
making two claims about AI. One is simply a repetition of Searle's
Chinese room thing, and you point out, rightly, that this has already
been dealt with in the literature. I would spend a little more time on
the argument, for what it's worth.
Penrose's other claim is this Godel theorem nonsense and you point out,
rightly again, that it is nonsense. You had two basic arguments, the
putative debate between Penrose and a program, and the discussion of the
work by Shankar and Quaife. I liked them both, but might have reversed them
in the presentation.
The other thing you talk about is the place of AI in science generally, which
you cast in terms of "the common sense informatic situation", a phrase
that was new to me. Why invent new jargon? You can surely describe the
problems to which nonmon is a proposed answer without doing so. I would
also try to avoid the axioms describing circumscription if possible, unless
your audience is such that you know you won't lose them. (Even the split
into fixed-point and minimization approaches may not be relevant to the
review itself.) The bottom line seems to me to be that resource and knowledge
limitations force us to draw retractable conclusions, and that nonmon is an
attempt to formalize that. Whatever you *do* decide to say, I found your
single sentence of motivation on p.1 unconvincing; it was as if you were
using the review for a soapbox (which you are free to do, as soon as you
convince the reader that you need to do it).
Hope this helps ...
Matt
∂30-Jan-90 1534 MPS
Call J. Nafeh. His secretary called around 2:45
∂30-Jan-90 2107 Mailer re: Anonymity (was Re: Phone caller identification)
Received: from jessica.Stanford.EDU by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 30 Jan 90 21:06:54 PST
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Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1990 21:08:37 PST
From: Perry Friedman <jester@jessica.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Cc: jester@JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: Anonymity (was Re: Phone caller identification)
In-Reply-To: Your message of 30 Jan 90 2058 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.633762517.jester@jessica.Stanford.EDU>
Yes, perhaps "esp., the crime..." but there is also the part
about "fabricating or producing falsely"... notice, however, that
they say "false and FRAUDULENTLY"
So, what was the point of posting this and mailing it to me anyway?
Perry
∂31-Jan-90 0846 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Faculty Meeting
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Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1990 8:47:23 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: tenured@cs.Stanford.EDU
Cc: chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Faculty Meeting
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.633804443.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
There will be a meeting of the tenured faculty on Tuesday, February 6, 1990
at 2:30 in MJH-252 for final consideration on reappointment of Shoham and
Dill. Evaluation letters on these candidates, plus vitas, are available in
my office.
∂31-Jan-90 1022 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU this week's seminar
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: this week's seminar
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 90 10:22:47 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Topics in Philosophical Logic
Etchemendy and Feferman
This week I will finish up my presentation of The Liar. For those of
you who weren't at last week's meeting, I ran out of time just after
describing what we call the Russellian treatment. I will talk about
the preferred (by us) Austinian treatment Thursday.
Bernie Linsky's presentation of Anderson's chapter on Intensional
Logic has been postponed until next week.
∂31-Jan-90 1357 VAL Unofficial Communication
∂31-Jan-90 1332 boyer@CLI.COM Unofficial Communication
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Date: Wed, 31 Jan 90 15:31:46 CST
From: Robert S. Boyer <boyer@CLI.COM>
Message-Id: <9001312131.AA24427@CLI.COM>
To: val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Unofficial Communication
Reply-To: boyer@cli.com
Hi.
This is an unofficial letter, friend to friend. Trust more in what
Woody says because he will be speaking a little more officially, on
behalf of the chairman of cs.
I hope that your are still willing to consider moving to Austin! You
enjoy very strong support now from all of the people at UT who show
familiarity with you and your work.
It looks like UT is finally starting to move on this. You should be
hearing officially from Woody soon that you are being invited back to
Austin again soon and will also be asked to recommend 10 or so names
for us to get letters of reference from.
Unofficially, I believe there is a very good chance that you'll be
offered a full professorship, a joint appointment with cs and
philosophy. I think you'll be asked to give two talks when you come
back. One should be directed mainly at philosophers, e.g. what is
common sense reasoning, the big picture, what is the point of
cirumscription, what hope is there for formal reasoning about the
world. A conversation with Bob Causey or Paul Woodruff on just how to
do this would be appropriate. I think the second talk (to cs) should,
unlike your excellent but introductory previous talk, be a somewhat
dazzling display of recent technical progress in Common Sense
reasoning. (A couple of folks in cs thought that the content of your
last talk was ``old''. It is impossible to please everyone in one
talk.)
Free Advice: When you ask people if they would be willing to write
letters on your behalf, please send them not only (a) your excellent
vita and (b) the brief summary of all the amazing number of different
kinds of papers you have written (which you previously sent to Woody)
but also (c) a statement in as close to layman's language as possible
what the nature of your major contributions in CS have been,
especially common sense reasoning.
A half dozen graduate students here have written to the chairman
singing your praises as a great teacher.
Fact: A letter from a Turing award winner is worth, in Austin, about
100 times as much as a letter from practically anyone else.
Cheers,
Bob
∂31-Jan-90 1628 CLT dec connections
To: "@JMC.DIS[1,CLT]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
We have received a collection of reports from DEC SRC (see listing below).
and we have sent a collection of papers to the DEC SRC reading room.
The reports will be kept in Pats office. Feel free to sign them out
and look at them. The point is to find possible points of contact and
collaboration (and thus get DEC interested in giving us equipment)!
If something along these lines comes to mind let me know.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUTHOR: Cardelli, Luca
TITLE: A Polymorphic Lambda-calculus with Type:Type
DATE: May 1986
NUMBER 10
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: Control Predicates are Better than Dummy Variables for
Reasoning About Program Control
DATE: May 1986
NUMBER: 11
AUTHOR: Leiserson, Charles, J. Saxe
TITLE: Retiming Synchronous Circuitry
DATE: August 1986
NUMBER: 13
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: A Simple Approach to Specifying Concurrent Systems
DATE: December 1986 (revised January 1988)
NUMBER: 15
AUTHOR: Nelson, Greg
TITLE: A Generalization of Dijkstra's Calculus
DATE: April 1987
NUMBER: 16
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: win and sin: Predicate Transormers for Concurrency
DATE: May 1987 (revised September 1988)
NUMBER: 17
AUTHOR: Birrell, A.D., J.V. Guttag, J.J. Horning, R. Levin
TITLE: Synchronization Primitives for a Multiprocessor: A Formal
Specification
DATE: August 1987
NUMBER: 20
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: Concurrent Reading and Writing of Clocks
DATE: April 1988
NUMBER: 27
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: A Theorem on Atomicity in Distributed Algorithms
DATE: May 1988
NUMBER: 28
AUTHOR: Abadi, Martin, L. Lamport
TITLE: The Existence of Refinement Mappings
DATE: August 1988
NUMBER: 29
AUTHOR: Abadi, Martin
TITLE: The Power of Temporal Proofs
DATE: August 1988
NUMBER: 30
AUTHOR: Broy, Manfred, G. Nelson
TITLE: Can Fair Choice be Added to Dijkstra's Calculus
DATE: February 1989
NUMBER: 38
AUTHOR: Burrows, Michael, M. Abadi, R. Needham
TITLE: A Logic of Authentication
DATE: February 1989
NUMBER: 39
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie, F. Schneider
TITLE: Pretending Atomicity
DATE: May 1989
NUMBER: 44
AUTHOR: Cardelli, Luca
TITLE: Typeful Programming
DATE: May 1989
NUMBER: 45
AUTHOR: Abadi, Martin, L. Cardelli, B. Pierce, G. Plotkin
TITLE: Dynamic Typing in a Statically Typed Language
DATE: June 1989
NUMBER: 47
AUTHOR: Cardelli, Luca, J. Mitchell
TITLE: Operations on Records
DATE: August 1989
NUMBER: 48
AUTHOR: Lamport, Leslie
TITLE: The Part-Time Parliament
DATE: September 1989
NUMBER: 49
AUTHOR: Cardelli, Luca, J. Donahue, L. Glassman, M. Jordan, B. Kalsow, G. Nelson
TITLE: Modula-3 Record (revised)
DATE: November 1989
NUMBER: 52
∂31-Jan-90 1742 PKR responsiveness of databases
To: JMC
CC: PKR
[In reply to message rcvd 31-Jan-90 16:09-PT.]
Ok, you have piqued my interest.
Should I get the details in person? I'll be around Friday,
perhaps I can stop by?
-Peter
∂31-Jan-90 1754 harnad@Princeton.EDU PSYCOLOQUY editorial
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Date: Wed, 31 Jan 90 16:59:12 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9001312159.AA09449@cognito.Princeton.EDU>
To: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu
Subject: PSYCOLOQUY editorial
To: BBS Associateship
The following editorial is reposted from PSYCOLOQUY, an international
email forum of which I have just become the co-editor. Please read what
it is about, and if you are interested, please subscribe (it's free)
according to the instructions below. The editorial has been slightly
revised for this BBS reposting.
Stevan Harnad
---
To the readership of PSYCOLOQUY: An International Electronic Forum for
Scholarly Communication (formerly BITNET PSYCHOLOGY NEWSLETTER)
[Currently 1300 readers and redistribution sites]
This is just to let you know that this list has just come come under
new editorship. We all owe many thanks to Bob Morecock for having
founded the Bitnet Psychology Newsletter, originally "Psychnet," now
PSYCOLOQUY. He has performed a valuable service to the field of
psychology in getting the list started and sustaining it through its
first few years in an era in which this medium will become inceasingly
important in scholarly communication.
I will edit the scientific contributions to PSYCOLOQUY. The co-editor
for clinical and professional matters will be Perry London, Dean of the
Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers
University; he will be assisted by Professor Cary Cherniss, likewise of
GSAPP. We will also be looking for subeditors in the many specialized
areas of psychology, including: perception, cognition, development,
personality/social, physiological, comparative, operant/Pavlovian,
etc.
There are some rather ambitious plans under consideration for this
forum. Academic email networks can be much more than bulletin boards for
meetings, abstracts and notices, as most of them are. They are a
potentially revolutionary medium for disseminating and discussing new
findings and ideas -- "Scholarly Skywriting." The global scope and
lightning pace of intellectual exchanges in this medium are uncannily
well suited to the thought processes of the creative mind -- or so I
believe, at any rate, and this hypothesis will soon be put to the test.
Along with the conference and preprint notices in psychology and
related fields that will continue to appear, and that you are
encouraged to continue to submit, there will be demonstrations of
"skywriting" in many areas of psychology and related disciplines. At
first they will be circulated to the list as a whole. Then they will
only be archived; to continue receiving them you will either have to
request the volumes from listserv@uhupvm1.bitnet or to sign up for
special sublists on tcsvm.bitnet devoted to the topic under
discussion. Occasional summaries or samples will be sent to the list as
a whole from topics whose discussions endure.
Anyone can contribute to the scholarly discussion, but the submissions
will be moderated by Perry and me, and we will have to exercise
selectivity where necessary, for reasons of length, relevance or tone
(skywriting discussions must be polite and dispassionate).
In addition, the American Psychological Association Science Directorate
will be sponsoring PSYCOLOQUY on a trial basis for 8 months; this will
pay the student assistants at Princeton and Rutgers who will update the
lists, which are maintained at Tulane University (tcsvm.bitnet)and
University of Houston (uhupvm1.bitnet) in the US as well as in Finland
(finhutc.bitnet).
Meanwhile, the list should grow to include the 25,000 members of the
American academic and research psychological community and the at least
as many academic and research psychologists and representatives of
related disciplines worldwide. Please make known the existence of
PSYCOLOQUY to all email-using psychologists and scholars in related
disciplines (and urge those who are not yet using email to try it!).
There will be notices in the APA publications and in BBS about
PSYCOLOQUY, inviting psychologists to sign on and contribute.
There will also be an article about the project.
The list's subscibership is currently about 1300, which is not small
for an email list but microscopic in relation to the size of the world
psychological community. I encourage all interested BBS Associates to
subscribe, and all subscribers to recruit new subscribers to the list
(feel free to capture and circulate this text to others by email). The
procedure for adding one's name automatically to the list is to send
email from the login at which you wish to receive PSYCOLOQUY to
listserv@tcsvm.bitnet (or listserv@finhutc.bitnet) with
SUB PSYCH Firstname Lastname
as the only line of text.
To unsubscribe:
UNSUB PSYCH (name not required)
I have also initiated the procedure for making PSYCOLOQUY available as
a moderated scientific discussion forum (sci.psycoloquy.moderated) on
Usenet, which is an efficient way to complement bitnet's email
distribution. Usenet goes directly to most major institutions in the
US and all users at each site have access. There is also wide Usenet
redistribution abroad.
You are encouraged to send three kinds of postings to PSYCOLOQUY
starting right now: (i) announcements of meetings, preprints,
employment, journal contents, etc., i.e., the usual scientific
bulletin board information; (ii) discussions pertaining to clinical
and professional matters in the field of psychology, and (iii) brief
reports of recent ideas or findings on which you would like to initiate
multiple scholarly discussion ("skywriting"). Send your messages for
posting to:
psych@tcsvm.bitnet
(NOT to listserv@tcsvm.bitnet, which is just for subscribing).
Let's use these 8 months to swell the ranks of the PSYCOLOQUY
subscribership and to demonstrate the net's revolutionary potential as
a medium for scholarly interaction!
Your reactions and suggestions are welcome. Looking forward to
a rewarding collaboration,
Stevan Harnad
--------------
∂31-Jan-90 1838 CLT Collaboration
To: "@JAPAN.DIS[1,CLT]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Prof. Ito came by today and we talked about possible plans
for a workshop in Japan. Here are the ideas we came up with.
The workshop would be one week. The first day would probably be joint
sessions, then we would break up into smaller working groups to allow
indepth discussions. The groups would preferably not stay fixed for
the remainder of the week, but that will probably be a realtime decision.
We considered whether or not to try to publish a proceedings. Both Ito
and I felt that it would be more productive to come prepared to discuss
new ideas and ongoing research rather that presenting polished papers.
The goal would be to make sufficient progress on some problems that some
number of papers would come directly out of ideas developed at the workshop.
We thought of two main topics for discussion:
(1) Logic and computation -- including
type-theory and constructive logic
type-free theories
semantic frameworks
(2) New directions in programming
concurrency and real-time programming
object oriented programming
very high level programming
communication mechanisms (ala elephant)
modifying programs without reading them
None of these thoughts are intended to be final, just a start.
Feed back is welcome.
It looks like the best times to go to Japan are in the periods
October 90, April-May 91, or October 91.
If we want to go ahead with the workshop format (which as far as
I can tell everyone seems to be for in principle) we should
probably try to set a time soon so plans can be made. Other
decisions can be made at a later time.
If any of the proposed times (or subintervals thereof) are
definitely out for you please let me know soon.
∂01-Feb-90 0001 JMC
Get Pais back from Gene Golub.
∂01-Feb-90 1045 CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU paper available
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Date: 01 Feb 90 1044 PST
From: Carolyn Talcott <CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: paper available
To: qlisp@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
When Prof. Ito was here yesterday he left a copy of a recent paper
``Deductive Operational Semantics of PaiLisp-Kernel''.
I'll leave a copy with Pat for anyone who wants to
borrow it or make their own copy.
∂01-Feb-90 1758 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu re: responsiveness of databases
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Date: Thu, 1 Feb 90 17:59:19 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9002020159.AA15391@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: Peter Rathmann's message of 01 Feb 90 1729 PST <1qc#HG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: responsiveness of databases
Nice problem. I think database people have worried about this,
although I am not familiar with the work. For relational databases,
you only store ground data, and expect a ground answer, so the problem
does not arise in practice. (Actually, I guess ground is not the right
word, since telephone(husband(wife(Vladimir))) is a ground term.)
I suppose there could be a syntactic characterization of this.
More interesting would be if the database does not know the actual
digits of Vladimir's telephone number. Which of the less responsive
answers should it give? There might be some characterization in terms
of minimization which would help here.
A related problem has been investigated is that of cooperative
responeses to queries. (Kaplan, I think.) Queries which give null
responses are frequently the result of errors on the part of the
questioner. Rather than answer "none" to the question of how many
people got A's in a course taught by John McCarthy last summer, it
would be more helpful to say that John McCarthy didn't teach at all
last summer. Most of the work used lots of domain specific
heuristics, and an explicit model of the questioner's thought process.
Some general principles are possible though, like trying to find a
generalization of the failing query which also fails, and returning
the result of that.
The kripke approach seems powerful, but don't you need a lot of
context to get some idea of the state of knowledge of the questioner?
Just some off the top of my head thoughts. I'll think about it some
more.
-Peter
∂01-Feb-90 1831 Mailer re: TIME essay on education and Stanford
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, seligman@CS.STANFORD.EDU,
su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Robert W Floyd <RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from JMC rcvd 01-Feb-90 16:06-PT.]
Hoo boy! Proportional representation of ethnic groups in
students, faculty, and administration? Then any ethnic
group could bring down the state university system by
agreeing not to study, teach, or papershuffle there.
Those turkeys in Sacramentimonio didn't happen to
require proportional representation in their line of
work, did they?
At least this means nobody at the university level will
have the unpleasant duty of telling certain ethnic groups
that on the average they aren't prepared to meet the competition.
After they graduate, with their degrees in ethnic self-study,
I fear that someone else will eventually let them know.
This may put me in a bind in coming presidential elections.
Vote for a Rep and get a Supreme Court that wants to outlaw
abortion, vote for a Dem and get one that wants to legislate
equality of result. What are the residency requirements for
citizenship in, say, New Zealand?
∂01-Feb-90 2019 pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
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From: The Bill Program <pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Prancing Pony Bill
Reply-To: <pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Prancing Pony Bill of John McCarthy (JMC) for January 1990 (2/1/1990)
NOTE: In anticipation of the move off of SAIL, we are testing out
some new software. If this bill has anything that
you think is bizarre or incorrect, please let us know.
Previous Balance 1.31
Monthly Interest at 1.00% 0.01
Current Charges NONE
---------
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Bills are payable upon presentation. Interest of 1.00% per month will be
charged on balances remaining unpaid 25 days after bill date above.
An account with a credit balance earns interest of 0.33% per month,
based on the average daily balance.
You haven't paid your Pony bill since 10/1989.
Accounts with balances remaining unpaid for more than 55 days are
considered delinquent and are subject to reduction of credit limit.
Please pay your bill and keep your account current.
∂02-Feb-90 1219 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of Research Paper: Recursion Analysis
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 13:33:53 GMT
Message-Id: <20448.9002021333@sin.aipna.ed.ac.uk>
From: Alan Bundy <bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Subject: Abstract of Research Paper: Recursion Analysis
To: theorem-provers%mc.lcs.mit.edu@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
A Rational Reconstruction and Extension of Recursion
Analysis
Alan Bundy, Frank van Harmelen, Jane Hesketh, Alan
Smaill and Andrew Stevens
The focus of this paper is the technique of recursion
analysis. Recursion analysis is used by the Boyer-Moore
Theorem Prover to choose an appropriate induction schema
and variable to prove theorems by mathematical
induction. A rational reconstruction of recursion
analysis is outlined, using the technique of proof
plans. This rational reconstruction suggests an
extension of recursion analysis which frees the
induction suggestion from the forms of recursion found
in the conjecture. Preliminary results are reported of
the automation of this rational reconstruction and
extension using the Clam-Oyster system.
This paper was published in the proceedings of IJCAI-89.
It is also available from Mrs Margaret Pithie, Dept of
Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh,
Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, Scotland as DAI
Research Paper 419.
∂02-Feb-90 1224 VAL
Are we meeting for lunch today?
∂02-Feb-90 1233 VAL re: reply to message
[In reply to message rcvd 02-Feb-90 12:28-PT.]
That's ok. Please let me know if you decide to go to the airport with me
to meet Mints tomorrow night.
∂02-Feb-90 1246 Mailer re: TIME essay on education and Stanford
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1990 12:27:52 PST
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: TIME essay on education and Stanford
To: Robert W Floyd <RWF@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: JMC@sail.stanford.edu, seligman@cs.stanford.edu, su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <qc$BL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MS-C.633990472.368800899.mrc@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU>
"Equality of result" is what is already mandated by our nation's divorce laws.
The goofy feminists are trying to extend this further by having a "share of
future earning power" be part of any settlement.
I propose that we just take the straightforward approach and introduce direct
taxation. The major taxes would be the Penis Tax (waived for transexuals, but
don't ask for an extension!) and the Race Tax. The primary burden of the Race
Tax would be on whites and orientals; some races would receive negative
taxation. Mixed-race people would be taxed according to the percentages of
their mixture.
-------
∂02-Feb-90 1303 VAL re: reply to message
[In reply to message rcvd 02-Feb-90 12:52-PT.]
I'm not sure yet about my plans for tomorrow afternoon. I'll call you
tonight.
∂02-Feb-90 1455 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract: Science of Reasoning
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 17:04:10 GMT
Message-Id: <21415.9002021704@sin.aipna.ed.ac.uk>
From: Alan Bundy <bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Subject: Research Paper Abstract: Science of Reasoning
To: theorem-provers%mc.lcs.mit.edu@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
A Science of Reasoning
Alan Bundy
This paper addresses the question of how we can
understand reasoning in general and mathematical proofs
in particular. It argues the need for a high-level
understanding of proofs to complement the low-level
understanding provided by Logic. It proposes a role for
computation in providing this high-level understanding,
namely by the association of proof plans with proofs.
Proof plans are defined and examples are given for two
families of proofs. Criteria are given for assessing the
association of a proof plan with a proof.
It is available from Mrs Margaret Pithie, Dept of
Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh,
Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, Scotland as DAI
Research Paper 445.
∂02-Feb-90 1500 hill@arachne.STANFORD.EDU DataMedia terminals
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To: jmc@sail
Cc: hill@arachne.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: DataMedia terminals
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 90 15:00:04 -0800
From: hill@arachne.STANFORD.EDU
In David Luckham's office we have 3 DataMedia terminals that we want
to get rid of. One works and the other 2 do not. Are you, by chance,
interested in having some or all of this stuff?
Thanks,
Susan Hill
∂02-Feb-90 1513 MPS Ph.D. applications
Hi,
It's that time again. I have 14 apps that need to
be rated and given back to Sharon Hemenway, Monday, 2-5
by 10 am. I will leave them on top of my desk.
Pat
∂02-Feb-90 1616 perlis@cs.UMD.EDU contexts
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id AA01345; Fri, 2 Feb 90 19:17:11 -0500
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 19:17:11 -0500
From: perlis@cs.UMD.EDU (Don Perlis)
Message-Id: <9002030017.AA01345@yoohoo.cs.UMD.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: contexts
Cc: perlis@cs.UMD.EDU
John,
Sarit Kraus, Madhura Nirke (a student you have
not met), and I are working on solving the time-dependent
version of the Nell and Dudley problem: Dudley must
save Nell who is tied to the railraod tracks as a
train is approaching in the distance. Dudley must
form and enact a plan before the train gets to
Nell. The key is that Dudley must keep track of
the fact that the more time he spends planning,
the less he has to carry out the plan.
We think step-logics are a natural format
for this sort of thing. These are the logics my
student Jennifer Elgot-Drapkin and I formulated
a couple of years ago. However, the problem is
still incredibly difficult. We are making progress,
but it is very slow.
I wanted to let you know our most recent
observation, as itbears on your own work. In order
to have Dudley be able to represent a partially-
devised plan and reason about what would be true
in the (imagined) enacting of it (so he can assess
whether it is a good plan, or how to extend it to
a more complete plan) we need him to be able to
reason within the context of assuming the partial
plan to be true (i.e., to be being enacted). At the
same time he must splice into this things he also
believes more generally even apart from the plan.
Thus we are exploring reasoning within
contexts. We thought you might be interested
in knowing of this domain, and also we would
be most interested in learning any details of
your own efforts, especially if you have anything
written that you are prepared to distribute at
this point.
Best,
Don
∂02-Feb-90 1625 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract: Eureka Steps
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 17:09:29 GMT
Message-Id: <21428.9002021709@sin.aipna.ed.ac.uk>
From: Alan Bundy <bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Subject: Research Paper Abstract: Eureka Steps
To: theorem-provers%mc.lcs.mit.edu@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Turning Eureka Steps into Calculations in Automatic
Program Synthesis
Alan Bundy, Alan Smaill and Jane Hesketh
We describe a technique called middle-out reasoning for
the control of search in automatic theorem proving. We
illustrate its use in the domain of automatic program
synthesis. Programs can be synthesised from proofs that
their logical specifications are satisfiable. Each
proof step is also a program construction step.
Unfortunately, a naive use of this technique requires a
human or computer to produce proof steps which provide
the essential structure of the desired program. It is
hard to see the justification for these steps at the
time that they are made; the reason for them emerges
only later in the proof. Such proof steps are often call
`eureka' steps. Middle-out reasoning enables these
eureka steps to be produced, automatically, as a side
effect of non-eureka steps.
This paper is available from Mrs Margaret Pithie, Dept
of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh,
Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, Scotland as DAI
Research Paper 448. It will soon appear in the
proceedings of the UK IT 90 Conference.
∂02-Feb-90 1627 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@MC.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of Research Paper
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 13:24:50 GMT
Message-Id: <20348.9002021324@sin.aipna.ed.ac.uk>
From: Alan Bundy <bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Subject: Abstract of Research Paper
To: theorem-provers%mc.lcs.mit.edu@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Experiments with Proof Plans for Induction
Alan Bundy, Frank van Harmelen, Jane Hesketh and Alan
Smaill
Abstract
The technique of proof plans, is explained. This
technique is used to guide automatic inference in order
to avoid a combinatorial explosion. Empirical research
is described to test this technique in the domain of
theorem proving by mathematical induction. Heuristics,
adapted from the work of Boyer and Moore, have been
implemented as Prolog programs, called tactics, and used
to guide an inductive proof checker, Oyster. These
tactics have been partially specified in a meta-logic,
and the plan formation program, Clam, has been used to
reason with these specifications and form plans. These
plans are then executed by running their associated
tactics and, hence, performing an Oyster proof. Results
are presented of the use of this technique on a number
of standard theorems from the literature. Searching in
the planning space is shown to be considerably cheaper
than searching directly in Oyster's search space. The
success rate on the standard theorems is high.
This paper is available from Mrs Margaret Pithie, Dept
of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh,
Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, Scotland. It has been
accepted for publication in the Journal of Automated
Reasoning.
∂02-Feb-90 1759 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu scheduling conflict on Oral exam
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 18:00:19 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9002030200.AA19016@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: scheduling conflict on Oral exam
I just realized that Gio teaches a course at 11 am, so there is a
conflict with orals at 10:30. Would noon work?
That's 12 noon, or thereabouts, March 9, 1990.
-Peter
∂02-Feb-90 2104 reid@wrl.dec.com 9600-baud home terminal
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: reid@wrl.dec.com
Subject: 9600-baud home terminal
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 90 14:04:11 PST
From: Brian K. Reid <reid@wrl.dec.com>
I have sitting on my desk now a pair of 9600-baud modems that are
Stanford property, which I bought out of my unrestricted account while
I was in the EE department. I no longer need them (I have just
upgraded my home circuit to 56Kbit service).
Once, quite some time ago, you mentioned to me that you were
interested in upgrading the speed of your home circuit. If you have
not already done so, and if you would like to upgrade your circuit to
9600 baud, then all you need to do is to arrange with the telephone
company to have your circuit upgraded to work at the higher speed,
plug in these modems, and you'll be on the air.
I am happy to give them to you if you still want them.
Brian
∂02-Feb-90 2357 oski@d31mf0.Stanford.EDU Paul Flaherty
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 23:58:24 PST
From: oski@d31mf0.Stanford.EDU (L. Ravi Narasimhan)
Message-Id: <9002030758.AA28839@d31mf0.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Paul Flaherty
2 February, 1990
Dear Professor McCarthy,
I am writing to solicit your help regarding my friend Paul Flaherty. I
believe you are acquainted with Paul both from his contributions to
su.etc as well as from personal contact. Paul is enduring very trying
times professionally and personally and is in great need of counsel. He
has often told me about his discussions with you and he has considerable
respect for your ideas. It is for this reason that I am taking the
liberty of writing to you. I think, perhaps, that you may be able to
offer him the guidance he needs.
I cannot provide complete details of his situation because I know only
his side of the story. As I understand it, he has had trouble with the
qualifying examinations administered by the Electrical Engineering
department. His second attempt at them was marred by a serious personal
crisis which adeversely affected his performance. He was to have taken
the exam again this year but has spent the last weeks fighting a case of
mononucleosis severe enough to warrant hospitalization. I gather that
he is making progress in his research efforts and that he is an asset to
his research group. Despite this, it seems that his advisors are not
giving him the backing that a person of his abilities and
accomplishments should merit. As I mentioned earlier, this is what I am
given to believe from my discussions with him, I do not know what other
factors are in play.
I realize that you are not in the Electrical Engineering department and
may not be able to intercede on his behalf. I am asking for your help
for a different reason. I have never seen Paul as discouraged and
despondent as he is now. He has gone through setbacks before but this
experience has shaken him to a degree that I did not think possible. He
feels as if he has been used and that he may not be allowed to complete
his degree despite all the work and time he has invested in it. I have
known other students who, for various reasons, have given up on graduate
school. I have never felt for them the concern that I feel for Paul.
We are on opposite ends of the political spectrum yet we have had
countless discussions on points of science, technology, literature,
philosophy, and religion. We also share a tremendous respect for the
ideals behind higher education in all of its aspects. I have been
exposed to many people during my undergraduate years at Berkeley and my
graduate career here. I rank Paul as one of the very best of them. He
is able to synthesize ideas from diverse sources and argue his points
calmly and rationally while giving just consideration to the ideas of
others. In addition to his considerable knowledge and desire to learn,
he also enjoys and succeeds at teaching. People with all of those
abilities are rare. If he leaves, our community will be losing a very
valuable resource. In addition to his scholarly activities, he has
helped to develop the Stanford Amateur Radio Club into a resource that
the University and the South Bay Area can benefit from. The emergency
communications that the Club provided after the October earthquake were
in large part made possible by the time Paul spent in acquiring, fixing,
installing, and troubleshooting the equipment. His abilities as an
engineer are widely esteemed by members of the club and hams around the
country who know of his reputation.
He is surely not the first student to feel the way he does.
I have recently undergone similar frustration and disillusionment with
my own graduate career. Fortunately, I have my family close by and
Professors in my department with whom I can discuss such matters. Paul
is far away from his family and feels alienated from his colleagues and
Professors. He is facing these problems virtually alone and while he is
still recovering from his illness. He needs some words to boost his
confidence and to reassure him that the enterprise is, after all, worth
the trouble. I have given him what advice I can but he needs to hear it
from someone in a position of authority. I have told him that he should
contact you regarding his situation and it is my hope that you can
counsel him in ways that I can not.
I am writing you with some trepidation and without Paul's knowledge. If
I have overstepped my bounds, please accept my apologies. I hope that,
at the very least, Paul is not further hurt by this action which is taken
under my own initiative. Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
L. Ravi Narasimhan
Graduate Student
Department of Chemistry
∂03-Feb-90 0636 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU triangles and polygons
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002031437.AA08503@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: triangles and polygons
It's an amusing exercise to use my embedding theorem to derive the
known result as to which regular polygons are embeddable in which
lattices. Enjoy yourself!
∂03-Feb-90 0638 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU another problem in common-sense reasoning
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002031440.AA08511@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: another problem in common-sense reasoning
Parent: Point to the cat's left thumb.
Child: easily points to a place on the cat which is the obvious correct
answer, although cats do not have thumbs per se or even hands or even
arms.
How do you represent that in logic?
∂03-Feb-90 0642 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU history of your triangle theorem
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: history of your triangle theorem
I've checked all the references in the Erdos book except the original
1878 Lucas paper, which I still haven't managed to obtain. None of them
mentions your result. I conjecture therefore that you SHOULD get the
credit in spite of the referee's claim that it is "folklore".
∂03-Feb-90 0646 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Minsky's coffee-table book
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Minsky's coffee-table book
Folklore has it that you and Minsky have different opinions about AI.
Have you read his book? Did you perhaps review it somewhere?
I'm using it for a textbook this semester to teach AI, and filling in
the missing technical details in class.
∂03-Feb-90 0732 reid@wrl.dec.com Re: 9600-baud home terminal
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: 9600-baud home terminal
In-Reply-To: Your message of 02 Feb 90 21:10:00 -0800.
<SdBWv@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 90 07:32:35 PST
From: Brian K. Reid <reid@wrl.dec.com>
56KB is synchronous, and cannot connect directly to terminals. If you
had a computer at home rather than a terminal, then the 56KB line
could connect to that and the terminals connect to it too.
How do you currently run two terminals and a printer? Do you have
three connections?
∂03-Feb-90 1120 perlis@cs.UMD.EDU Elephant
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From: perlis@cs.UMD.EDU (Don Perlis)
Message-Id: <9002031920.AA04025@yoohoo.cs.UMD.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Elephant
Sure, I'd be happy to look at your Elephant
paper, and make what comments I can.
I know about McDermott's original focus on the Nell
and Dudley problem; we are not working on that, altho
it does have a straightforward solution. Andrew Haas
gave one long ago, and the use of contexts is yet
another (or, rather, simply the representation of plans
*as* plans instead of as facts).
We'll let you know of our progress.
Don
∂03-Feb-90 1308 qphysics-owner@neat.cs.toronto.edu Final Call for Papers: 4th QP Workshop, Lugano
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Subject: Final Call for Papers: 4th QP Workshop, Lugano
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============ Final Call for Papers; Deadline: Feb. 27th, 1990 ==============
4th International Workshop on Qualitative Physics
Lugano, Switzerland
July 9th - 12th, 1990
Following the success of the previous workshops in Urbana, Paris and
Palo Alto, the fourth international workshop on Qualitative Physics will
be held at the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale
(IDSIA), Lugano, Switzerland. It will be sponsored jointly by IDSIA
and the Swiss Group for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
(SGAICO).
Papers are invited on all topics of Qualitative Physics, including
(but not limited to):
- Qualitative Representations of Space and Time
- Naive Physics
- Techniques for Automatic Model Management
- Applications of Qualitative Physics
- Implementation Strategies and Performance Studies
- Causal Reasoning
- Qualitative Theories of Physical Domains
Attendance of the workshop is limited in order to permit free discussion
among participants. Invitations will be made by the program committee
on the basis of submitted papers. The program committee consists of:
Johan de Kleer (Xerox PARC), Boi Faltings (EPF Lausanne, co-chairman)
Ken Forbus (University of Illinois), Peter Struss (Siemens Munchen, co-chairman)
,
Olivier Raiman (IBM Paris and Yorktown Heights)
Papers must not exceed 11 pages of single-spaced text using 12pt. type.
Submit 6 copies by February 27th, 1990, to:
Boi Faltings
Att: QP-Workshop
EPFL, LIA-DI
MA-Ecublens
1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Each paper will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. Papers will be
selected according to their originality and potential to generate
interesting discussions.
Invitations to the workshop will be mailed by mid-April. If this is too late
for you, please send a letter explaining you situation along with your paper
submission. If you would like to be notified by FAX, please state your FAX
number with the paper submission.
The local organization will be handled by IDSIA and the Department of Computer S
cience of
the Universit\`{a} degli Studi di Milano. For questions, please contact Francesc
o Gardin,
Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione, Universit\`{a} degli Studi di Milano,
Via
Moretto da Brescia 9, 20133 Milano, Italy.
For further information, please contact Boi Faltings at the above adress or
Tel. +41-21-693-2735, FAX +41-21-693-5225, E-mail: faltings@elma.epfl.ch or
faltings@CLSEPF51.bitnet, or Peter Struss, SIEMENS AG, Otto-Hahn Ring 6,
D-8000 Munchen 83, West Germany, Tel.+49-89-636-2414, FAX +49-89-636-44150,
E-mail: struss@ztivax.siemens.com.
∂03-Feb-90 1558 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU pattern recognition and logic in AI
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002032359.AA12339@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: pattern recognition and logic in AI
If logic is to be the representation method, then pattern recognition
boils down to matching on terms in first-order logic. Unification
is the basic tool for matching terms. There is a vast literature on
various kinds of unification (it's technically complex) but most of
it has been concerned with symbolic computation or lambda-calculus
and not with pattern recognition per se. The point of the 'cat's thumb'
example is to push the limits of term-matching in logic. Not that
nerve nets can do the cat's thumb either.
∂03-Feb-90 2217 harnad@Princeton.EDU Comments of Collaborative Proposal
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From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9002040507.AA04543@psycho.Princeton.EDU>
To: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu
Subject: Comments of Collaborative Proposal
Here are the comments on the conference proposal. Almost all were
favorable, but the caveats raised initially were echoed often: "S"
means that special BBS issues would be preferable to pre-empting
regular BBS issues. "C" emphasizes that conference papers are often not
of journal quality, and that we must guard against these. "R" stresses
that the refereeing process must be as broad as BBS's usual refereeing
process. "D" indicates it should be done in other disciplines besides
neuroscience. "X" is for not restricting the published version only to
those who participated in the conference.
=S chipman@nprdc.navy.mil (Susan Chipman)
+CR "Bruce P. Halpern" <D57J%CORNELLA@pucc>
+ ghh@clarity (Gilbert Harman) Associate Editor, BBS
+D eskridge%kestrel@AUSTIN.LOCKHEED.COM (Tom Eskridge)
+S Andy Clark <andycl%syma.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
=CS WMSPS%vaxa.stirling.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
+R avis cohen <AHC%CORNELLA@pucc>
=C phil (Philip Johnson-Laird)
+C Paul Ekman <EKMANSF@UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU>
+RD Heiner Brinnel <BRINNEL%FRSUN12@pucc>
-C bob crowder <RGCROW%YALEVM@pucc>
+ MEG3C@prime.acc.virginia.edu
+RD Brian MacWhinney <brian+@andrew.cmu.edu>
+ Paul Ekman <EKMANSF@UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU>
+S Andy Clark <andycl%syma.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
+ Irving Kupfermann <KUPFERMA%NYSPI@pucc> [Associate Editor, BBS]
+ "Jack P. Hailman" <JHAILMAN@vms.macc.wisc.edu> [Associate
+SX Ralph Fasold
+ UJANEL%UNC.BITNET@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
+ cfields@NMSU.Edu
+ David Rosenthal <UZIFF013%DBIUNI11@pucc>
------------------------------------------------------
=S From: chipman@nprdc.navy.mil (Susan Chipman)
It seems to me that this might upset the balance of coverage of BBS --
with such a concentration of topics in a relatively narrow area of
neuroscience.
From: harnad (Stevan Harnad)
To: chipman@nprdc.navy.mil
The proposal you saw was just for one BBS issue; but perhaps I should
take yours as a vote for special issues, rather than pre-empting
regular ones. Stevan Harnad
From: chipman@nprdc.navy.mil (Susan Chipman)
As you may already know, Whitman Richards of MIT is trying to raise
money for a whole series of workshops on topics in cognitive science.
[If] the large-scale funding he is seeking will happen I think that
these discussions might profit from the greater degree of openness that
your commentary system might provide. Along the lines of some of the
remarks you made about the present proposal.
---
+CR From: "Bruce P. Halpern" <D57J%CORNELLA@pucc>
The general idea is quite interesting, and has many potential attractions.
However, it seems rather important to maintain the practice of having
potential comments from a wide range of Associates. Your encouragement of
email is clearly pertinent to this. This world-wide network of Associates
responds on a very selective basis to target articles. If target articles
developed at meetings come to have a sheltered or privileged status that
differs from all other articles, their value might be lessened. Published
volumes of meeting papers are all too often of highly variable quality and
utility because of the absence of sufficient peer review and comment. BBS,
which has provided the model for extensive peer comments, would not want to
abandon that concept.
---
+ From: ghh@clarity (Gilbert Harman) Associate Editor, BBS
The specific proposal lies outside my competence. The general idea
seems OK to me. Gil
---
+D From: eskridge%kestrel@AUSTIN.LOCKHEED.COM (Tom Eskridge)
This is a much needed and welcome mechanism for presenting the
most up-to-date work with discussion, to a large body of
researchers. Although neuroscience is not in my speciality
area, I would like to read the latest in the field, and look
forward to this mechanism being extended to cover the other
BBS disciplines. Tom Eskridge
---
+S From: Andy Clark <andycl%syma.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
I think this is a fine idea. But I also like the standard BBS approach
and would not like to see more than 1 conference issue per year. if I
think of any more detailed suggestions I'll let you know.
Cheers...ANDY CLARK
---
=CS From: WMSPS%vaxa.stirling.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
Sorry to appear perhaps overly-cautious, but I've got doubts about BBS
getting involved in the conference business. Your letter deals with
many of these, but I suppose that my main concern is that anyone can
run and publish a conference, but BBS is unique. I'd hate to see BBS
compromised in any way. Yes, I agree that consigning them to special
extra issues would be better. Feel free to make use of my opinion/vote
as you choose. Cheers, Bill McGrew
---
+R From: avis cohen <AHC%CORNELLA@pucc>
I agree with your analysis and concerns. The idea seems a good
one so long as the process is not circumvented and the articles are
well refereed. Avis Cohen
---
=C From: phil (Philip Johnson-Laird)
Not competent to comment on the specific conference. The basic message is
this: people present papers at conferences that often would not be good
enough for publication. Cave! Phil
---
+C From: Paul Ekman <EKMANSF@UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU>
IF DONE SELECTIVELY I THINK IT WOULD BE VERY USEFUL. IT WOULD BE A LOT
OF WORK TO HAVE THE MEETING CONDENSED DOWN FOR WHAT WOULD BE IN THE
journal, but it would allow for some more give and take, and be useful
to the participants. would depend on a very good chairman who would
keep tight reins on the whole matter.
---
+RD From: Heiner Brinnel <BRINNEL%FRSUN12@pucc>
The idea, the underlying philosophy, and the practical organisation of
your project look very nice to me ... given your influence remains
strong enough to guarantee a true open minded philosophy for it, i. e.
respect original ideas and minorities. Besides neuroscience (which is
'politically' quite strong in Europe), I hope that other disciplines,
such as behavioral sciences, can be implemented in the future, too.
---
-C From: bob crowder <RGCROW%YALEVM@pucc>
For me, I don't lack stimulation and people to talk to around here.
Can't get excited about a way to generate still more conferences.
---
+ From: MEG3C@prime.acc.virginia.edu
Sounds like a great idea! Mike Gorman University of Virginia
---
+RD From: Brian MacWhinney <brian+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Basically, this is the right way to do things. However BBS must
remember that setting up one of these conferences is an immense amount
of work and that the organizer should be given all the freedom possible
within the context of the fact that the results will consume pages in
BBS. I assume that the whole thing gets tied up in a package and then
sent to several BBS associates for review and that, once approved, the
rest is between your and the conference organizer. The traditional CMU
Symposia could some year possibly appear in this format, I would
guess. Good luck. --Brian MacWhinney
---
+ From: Paul Ekman <EKMANSF@UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU>
its fine with me.
---
+S From: Andy Clark <andycl%syma.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Yes,I think having conference issues as special issues is a fine idea.
By all means sharemy few comments with the others.
---
+ From: Irving Kupfermann <KUPFERMA%NYSPI@pucc> [Associate Editor, BBS]
The Cordo conference sounds like a good idea. Does it make any sense to
consider including the issue of the role of the cerebellum in
classical conditioning, or does that take it too far away from the main
issues? Irving K.
---
+ From: "Jack P. Hailman" <JHAILMAN@vms.macc.wisc.edu> [Associate
Editor, BBS]
Have just returned after being away since 18 Dec to find your exchanges in
the message of 18 Jan. As usual, you seem to have handled things extremely
well, raising the sorts of points I'd have raised. So let's see if it can
be made workable.
---
+SX From: Ralph Fasold
---
+ From: UJANEL%UNC.BITNET@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
Stevan: Good letter. --Bill Lycan
---
From: <FASOLD%GUVAX.BITNET@pucc>
I can see the advantage of making the results of a good conference more widely a
vailable than they otherwise would be by this proposed arrangement between
BBS and RSDNSI. I would give BBS the chance to publish the best work by
leading scholars, as well as give the conference a wider audience. It seems
that you and Mr. Cordo have anticipated most to the problems connected with
ensuring quality of publication and I am impressed with the spirit of cooper-
ation that seems to be there for finding solutions.
I have only two questions. There appears to be seven or eight speakers at
the RSDNSI conference. Would it be expected that all or most of them would
become authors of target articles? If so, it would seem that a conference
of this structure might take up two or three regular issues of BBS. At such
a rate, a couple of such conferences could account for an annual volume.
The other is the possibility that publication in BBS might become largely
contingent on having been invited to be a main speaker at a conference. This
might work to the disadvantage of scholars with heterodox theories or those
whose work happens not to fit the theme of any conference.
I am sure there are answers to these questions, but I thought they might be
worth raising anyway. Ralph Fasold
----
+ From: cfields@NMSU.Edu
Thanks for the discussion of BBS collaborations with conferences. I
think it's a splendid idea.
And, good show on the plug for greater use of email by neuroscientists!
I've been going at this with the community of molecular biologists I
work with, with some success. Cheers, Chris
---
+ From: David Rosenthal <UZIFF013%DBIUNI11@pucc>
Sorry not to get back sooner. I think it's a fine idea, and I'm very
impressed with your letter to Cordo, which I think crosses all the t's
and dot all the i's. I think his proposal of joint selection sounds
quite sensible, given joint status. Do you want to try it out for a
bit? A trial basis? Also, I think it's not nearly so clear that it'd
work *as* well in other disciplines. (eg. philosophy!)
---
∂04-Feb-90 0840 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:Joseph.Goguen%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Abstract of "OBJ as a Theorem Prover"
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Date: Sun, 4 Feb 90 16:11:10 GMT
From: Joseph.Goguen%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Message-Id: <9002041611.AA15093@uk.ac.oxford.prg.client80>
To: theorem-provers <@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk:theorem-provers@mc.lcs.mit.edu>
Cc: Joseph.Goguen%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Subject: Abstract of "OBJ as a Theorem Prover"
OBJ as a Theorem Prover, with Application to Hardware Verification
by Joseph A. Goguen
This paper states, justifies, and illustrates some new techniques for proving
theorems with a functional programming language, like OBJ, that has a rigorous
algebraic semantics. These techniques avoid the complexities of both higher
order logic and Knuth-Bendix completion, and instead support a style of user
interaction in which: (1) OBJ's powerful reduction engine does the routine
work automatically, in such a way that partially successful proofs return
information that often suggests what to try next; and (2) OBJ's flexible
facilities for hierarchical and generic modules describe complex proof
strategies in a style that is familiar from experience with programming
languages. New results in this paper include: a simple extension of first
orrder equational logic that allows universal quantification over functions
instead of just over ground elements; a technique for eliminating both first
and second order universal quantifiers; a completeness theorem; a technique
for transforming conditional equations to unconditional equations; some very
useful structural induction principles; and some techniques for reasoning
about parameterized modules. These tools for reasoning about (first order)
functions are powerful enough to justify algorithms that automatically
generate OBJ code for verifying some rather broad classes of (second order)
assertions. The paper features some hardware verification examples, but also
includes some inductive proofs for the natural numbers and an OBJ-style
parameterized module verification. Parameterized module verification supports
a flexible style of proof reuse, and this example also illustrates the
rigorous treatment of exceptions in OBJ. The hardware verification examples
illustrate what seems a very promising approach to both combinational and
sequential circuits, using standard gates and/or bidirectional components
(such as MOS transistors), possibly with ``don't care'' conditions. Order
sorted algebra plays an important role in many of the examples.
****************************************************************************
This paper is available from Ms. Judith Burgess, Computer Science Lab,
SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park CA, 94025, USA.
∂04-Feb-90 2056 golub@na-net.stanford.edu
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Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1990 20:54:34 PST
From: Gene H. Golub 415/723-3124 <golub@na-net.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 01 Feb 90 0115 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634193674.golub@>
Sorry, I'll bring it in on Monday.
Gene
∂05-Feb-90 0016 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
A CHARACTERIZATION OF MAXIMUM ENTROPY EPSILON SEMANTICS
Paul Morris
IntelliCorp
Monday, February 5, 2:30pm
MJH 252
This is joint work with Moises Goldszmidt and Judea Pearl of UCLA. A
solution to the Yale shooting problem due to Geffner and Pearl
represents frame axioms by means of extreme conditional probabilities,
or epsilon semantics. However, the solution goes beyond epsilon
semantics in using a principle of irrelevance, which has been thought
to be related to maximum entropy.
We characterize maximum entropy epsilon semantics for an important
class of rule sets as a preference for worlds that minimize a specific
weighted count of rule violations. The result shows that an application
of maximum entropy to a variant of the shooting problem gives a
counter-intuitive result, whereas the principle of irrelevance is in
accord with intuition. Thus, the two approaches are not identical. We
also present some relationships between probabilistic and default
reasoning that extend results of Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor.
∂05-Feb-90 0800 JMC
Cross and Scherlis
∂05-Feb-90 0941 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu appointment
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Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1990 9:44:18 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: appointment
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634239858.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I was wondering if I could come by your office and get some feedback/ talk
about my thesis sometime between the 8th and 16th.
Thanks
Guha
∂05-Feb-90 0953 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Tomorrow's faculty meeting
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Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1990 9:53:28 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: tenured@cs.Stanford.EDU
Cc: chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Tomorrow's faculty meeting
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634240408.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Please don't forget tomorrow's tenured faculty meeting scheduled for 2:30 in
MJH-252. On the agenda is the final consideration for the reappointment of
Dill and Shoham. Please read the evaluation letters (which are in my office)
at some point before the meeting.
∂05-Feb-90 1003 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu re: Visit to University of Minnesota
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Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 12:03:39 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9002051803.AA07474@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
Subject: re: Visit to University of Minnesota
I assume you are refering to you uncertainty about April 18th would be part of.
your visit. If so, you may accept our invitation for either April 18th to 20th
or April 19-20th. Hope to see you then.
∂05-Feb-90 1140 PAF stuff
Do you have office hours in the near future? There are a few things I'd
like to discuss with you (as per Ravi's note).
-=paulf
∂05-Feb-90 1303 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
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Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 15:03:28 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9002052103.AA11585@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: fox@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, kessler@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu,
robin@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu, visitor@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
.mn
.LT
.SZ 12
Prof. John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140
.sp 2
Dear Professor McCarthy:
.pp
This is to confirm our invitation to you to be a Distinguished Visitor and
to give lectures at 2:30-3:30pm on April 18, 19, and 20, 1990. Your talks
will be videotaped and carried on our closed-circuit instructional TV
network, which is transmitted to local industry sites. After each
lecture, there is a small reception and discussion, which lasts a half
hour. Please send us titles and abstracts of your talks at least 30 days
in advance. We shall pay a Distinguished Visitor honorarium of $600/day
for the three days of your visit.
.pp
We shall reimburse all your travel expenses and provide hotel
accommodations and meals. It will be easier for us if you make your own
arrangements, and we shall reimburse you after your visit. We shall
reserve a room for you at the Radisson University Hotel on Washington Ave.
in Minneapolis. If we can be of further assistance in making any other
arrangements, please let us know. When you arrive at the airport, you
should take a taxi to the Radisson University Hotel. Please let us know
in advance of your travel plans including flight numbers and times of
arrival/departure, so that we can make the hotel reservation.
.pp
It is a great pleasure for us that you so kindly accepted our invitation,
and we are looking forward to your visit.
.in 25
Sincerely,
.sp 4
James Slagle
.br
Professor
∂05-Feb-90 1401 "jc_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_7FACCD2501CD414A-7FACCD2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
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5 Feb 90 16:52 EST
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 16:44 EST
From: John Coonrod <"jc_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_7FACCD2501CD414A-7FACCD2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com>
To: jmc- <jmc@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Universal Email
Message-Id: <00900205214400/0003921119NB4EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 5-Feb-90 16:40 EST
When Please complete by: No-date
Dear Professor McCarthy:
I greatly enjoyed reading your piece in the December
Communications of the ACM (which was brought to my attention on
the Netwire/MHS forum). It was given to me because I've been
running a little campaign on this subject, although I hadn't come
up with quite as nice a solution.
My professional interest is to find ways to speed up rural
development in the Third World by actively engaging the
appropriate researchers with the appropriate project people.
This got me involved in the overall "non-globalness of email"
issue. I've since begun to convene an impromptu "league" of
people to directly work on this problem. My intention is to
involve the appropriate fanatic on the subject from each major
email provider, and work together to foment the necessary action.
In my field, the UN is on Dialcom, the private agencies are on
Peacenet/Econet or EIES, lots of individuals are on MCIMail or
Compuserve in the States, Eurokom in Europe, etc. Most
people with PC-based lans are running on MHS. And the academic
world seems to all be on Internet.
I've studied the X400 standards, and they seem to be a great
leap in the wrong direction -- rather than coming up with a
consensus, simple standard, they come up with tools for
translating the most horrendously complex addresses possible.
With deep respect for your seniority in the computer science
world (I was an undergrad at Stanford 69-73) and your undoubtedly
busy schedule, I would like your permission to involve you in
this effort at whatever level is appropriate. (While this
introductory letter is a bit long, I limit virtually all my
messages to 10 lines or less.)
Sincerely, John Coonrod
Tel: 212/532-4255 Fax: 212/532-9785
Internet: <"jc@0003921119">@mcimail.com
Tel: 212/532-4255 Fax: 212/532-9785
∂05-Feb-90 1549 mmdf@NRI.Reston.VA.US MCI Mail rejected a message.
Received: from NRI.Reston.VA.US by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 5 Feb 90 15:48:54 PST
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 18:35:30 EST
From: Postmaster@NRI.Reston.VA.US
Sender: mmdf@NRI.Reston.VA.US
Subject: MCI Mail rejected a message.
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Message-ID: <9002051835.aa01596@NRI.NRI.Reston.VA.US>
The following mail message could not be forwarded
to MCI Mail for the following Recipients:
To: jc <jc@0003921119@mcimail.com>
MCI Mail stated the message could not be sent because:
At least one problem with envelope
607 Either no address or no MCI Mail user matches recipient information
TO: jc
EMS: MCI Mail
MBX: jc@0003921119
615 Message must include at least one TO: recipient
Your message follows:
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5 Feb 90 18:26 EST
Message-ID: <OeyV0@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 05 Feb 90 1528 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: email difficulties
To: "jc@0003921119"@mcimail.com
I would be astonished if your idea would work.
My intention is to involve the appropriate fanatic on
the subject from each major email provider, and work
together to foment the necessary action.
This is because the right thing to do is to eliminate Dialcom,
Peacenet/Econet, EIES, MCIMail, Compuserve's mail service,
Eurokom, MHS and the mail use of Internet. You are proposing
a suicide pact.
Wouldn't it be better to get some user agencies to agree on
a telephone protocol that eliminates using the special networks?
However, I would be glad to be helpful if I can.
∂05-Feb-90 2021 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
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5 Feb 90 23:14 EST
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 23:12 EST
From: John Coonrod <"JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com>
To: jmc- <jmc@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Universal Email
Message-Id: <33900206041233/0003921119NB4EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 5-Feb-90 23:06 EST
Thank you for your reply.
I hope it doesn't require corporate suicide (which is unlikely).
Email on lans, for example, works so well and so much of what
people do is with their local co-workers, I cannot imagine it
disappearing. It also marries so well with forums/boards that I
wouldn't want to divorce them.
So I don't think networks are the culprit. I personally would
think a kind of a simplified internet approach would work.
<name>@<workgroup.bignet>
(where "bignet" names would adopt logical mnemonics)
If a few big networks would agree to recognize this format, I would
think we'd have it.
I would think I could get MCIMail to accept, for example, that:
jc@thp.mci is equivalent to
EMS: thp ('tho this is not my current ems registered name)
MBX: jc
I would think it would be easy for internet to know that sail.edu
is the same as sail.stanford.edu, although trailing more periods
isn't, in and of itself, a problem.
There are just not that many big packet switched networks in
the world. All a "little" network would need to do is access any
one of the big ones, and the big ones would need to agree on a
modest directory of big net mnemonics. They could start right
away with the ones they all already have bridges to.
This "parsing" standard wouldn't interfere at all with all the
X400 nonsense -- X400 just becomes invisibly mapped under this
higher level parsing standard. I bet if just compuserve,
dialcom, telemail and mcimail bought into something like this, it
would fly. That's the more modest initial aim of my proposal.
The one thing I haven't addressed here are message numbers for
tracking conversation threads. I think a good standard on this
is crucial, as the best advantage of email over fax is the
ability to have your messages organize themselves neatly.
(To reply, just try replying this time. Thanks, and sorry about
giving you an address that didn't work -- typical of the problem
I'm trying to solve.)
∂05-Feb-90 2147 harnad@Princeton.EDU Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 00:41:09 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9002060541.AA01227@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu
Subject: Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
Call for contributors:
(1) Workshop on the Symbol Grounding Problem
(2) Symposium on Searle's Chinese Room Argument
I am organizing a workshop on the Symbol Grounding Problem -- the
problem of how words and other kinds of symbols inside an organism or a
robot can be connected to the objects and states of affairs they refer
to in the world -- at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology [SPP] at the University of Maryland, College Park, June 11 -
14 1990. Please nominate people who might serve as speakers or
discussants. The relevant fields that should be represented are:
(1) AI
(2) Robotics
(3) Neural Networks
(4) Neurobiology
(5) Psychophysics
(6) Perception and Cognition
(7) Developmental Psycholinguistics
(8) Philosophy, Logic and Foundations of Computation
At the same meeting there will also be a Symposium on Searle and the
Chinese Room Argument. Although the two topics are related, the focus
is very different. The Grounding workshop is meant to be empirical, and
concerned with the actual problems of grounding symbols, words, robots,
in the real world of objects. The Searle symposium is on the logic and
implications of Searle's critique.
Please suggest individuals I should invite, for both the workshop and
the symposium. They should have some stature in the field, or should
have made some salient contribution, experimental or theoretical, to
the topics under discussion.
In prior years, the incentive that has drawn important speakers to
these SPP workshops and symposia has been that they always furnish a
very sophisticated and active audience of philosophers (and
representatives of other disciplines who wish to display their wares
before the philosophers) who provide an extremely high level of
critical analysis and discussion. Active members and past presidents of
SPP include Dan Dennett, Zenon Pylyshyn, Jerry Fodor, Pat Churchland,
and the current president is Paul Churchland. Prior SPP speakers have
included N Chomsky, W Quine, H Putnam, JJ Gibson, SJ Gould, RL Gregory,
R Schank, Oliver Sacks, RJ Herrnstein, D Hofstadter, and S Ullman.
Please send me your nominations (including self nominations), together
with addresses (email and Usmail) of your nominees.
Stevan Harnad
-----------------------------------------------------------
∂05-Feb-90 2242 @RELAY.CS.NET:GOTO@ntt-20.ntt.jp r
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 15:16:21 I
From: Shigeki Goto <Goto@ntt-20.ntt.jp>
Subject: r
To: jmc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: goto@ntt-20.ntt.jp
Message-Id: <12564106144.26.GOTO@NTT-20.NTT.JP>
-------
∂05-Feb-90 2257 @RELAY.CS.NET:GOTO@ntt-20.ntt.jp Empty E-mail
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 15:43:59 I
From: Shigeki Goto <Goto@ntt-20.ntt.jp>
Subject: Empty E-mail
To: jmc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: goto@ntt-20.ntt.jp
Message-Id: <12564111174.26.GOTO@NTT-20.NTT.JP>
John,
I have mistakenly sent an empty message to you.
Sorry!
-- Shigeki --
-------
∂06-Feb-90 0524 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_1985CE2501CD414A-B87DCE2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com re: Universal Email
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Received: from mcimail.com by NRI.NRI.Reston.VA.US id aa06530; 6 Feb 90 8:12 EST
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 08:07 EST
From: John Coonrod <"JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%MHS:_1985CE2501CD414A-B87DCE2502CD414A%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: re: Universal Email
Message-Id: <12900206130721/0003921119NB4EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 6-Feb-90 8:04 EST
[In reply to message received Tue, 6 Feb,
but somehow dated 7 Feb 90 5:00am]
Thank you.
There is one system that presently works almost exactly as you suggest:
the MHS system bundled with Novell Netware and available for
other PC lans. A network has a hub, and a hub has a phone
number. The one difference is that it doesn't presently allow
users to just give it a phone number: the phone number has to be
in a directory and given a name, and the names must match.
MHS owners could reach me if I published my address as:
jc@thpinyc (MHS: (212) 213-2085)
although in principle the hub name is redundant. I realize my
suggestion, in a sense, is the opposite of yours in that it
forces everyone to have one account on at least one big network.
It would then have a few advantages, though, that fax does not:
no busy signals, no long distance charges, and the ability for
one system to outpace another technically (eg: Stanford can send
at 1.5mbaud while Dakha receives at 2400 baud.)
I'll let you know if I make any headway.
∂06-Feb-90 0559 "JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com Universal Email
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 08:45 EST
From: John Coonrod <"JC_._ATC_@_thpinyc_(John_Coonrod)%THP_-_Global"@mcimail.com>
To: jmc- <jmc@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Universal Email
Message-Id: <15900206134551/0003921119NB3EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 6-Feb-90 8:39 EST
Is it OK for me to freely distribute your 12/89 article from ACM
(I downloaded it from a database), or does that violate an ACM
copyright? If not, could I have a "free to distribute" version
that you mentioned you'd distributed on various boards?
Thank you.
∂06-Feb-90 0709 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 10:10:56 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9002061510.AA01256@cognito.Princeton.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: Symbol-Grounding Workshop & Searle Symposium
John, thanks for the reply. I'll respond soon. Stevan
∂06-Feb-90 0835 CLT
call cross, babbage
∂06-Feb-90 1336 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Oral exam schedule
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 13:35:02 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9002062135.AA01387@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, gio@eclipse.stanford.edu,
jmc@sail.stanford.edu, pratt@cs.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu, hemenway@sunburn.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: Yoav Shoham's message of Tue, 6 Feb 1990 8:18:34 PST <CMM.0.88.634321114.shoham@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Oral exam schedule
We had a conflict on the March 9 10:30am time slot with Gio's class.
Luckily, everyone seems to be able to make it around noon, also on
March 9. Thanks to all for being so accommodating with your schedules.
So, please mark your calendars for noon, March 9, 1990, and let me
know if any problems come up.
Thanks,
Peter
∂06-Feb-90 1336 MPS Various items
P. Suppes wants you to call at his home. This is in
reference to the Russians, who are here now.
Mr. Berlekamp wants you to call - 849-4214.
Alician Wells or Analia Bond, I-Center, 3-1985.
There will be 10 foreign people - Tues, Feb 27th - here
to discuss various subject matters. They would like you
to talk about sharing and transferring advanced technology to the
USSR "now that the cold war is lessening". These people are
from various countries, not all east block. The I-ctr is
going to send you a packet with a little bit about each person.
I believe they said these would be informal talks.
∂06-Feb-90 1351 @coraki.stanford.edu:pratt@cs.stanford.edu Re: Oral exam schedule
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Message-Id: <9002062152.AA12204@coraki.stanford.edu>
To: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Cc: shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, gio@eclipse.stanford.edu,
jmc@sail.stanford.edu, pratt@cs.stanford.edu,
hemenway@sunburn.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: Oral exam schedule
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 6 Feb 90 13:35:02 PST.
<9002062135.AA01387@eclipse.stanford.edu>
Date: 06 Feb 90 13:52:06 PST (Tue)
From: pratt@cs.stanford.edu
Note that I teach CS 154 that day (March 9) starting at 3:15.
Hopefully it will be shorter than 3 hours.
-v
∂06-Feb-90 1426 MPS
Sanjaya Addanki, IBM, 914-789-7837
Would like to put the paperwork thru for summer and
go over the details with you
∂06-Feb-90 1431 MPS NAS meeting on Feb 8th
Glynn Custred - 937-2125
∂06-Feb-90 1553 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
SIX LESSONS FROM RECENT WORK ON THE FRAME PROBLEM
Vladimir Lifschitz
Stanford University
Monday, February 12, 2:30pm
MJH 252
By "recent work on the frame problem" I understand primarily
Andrew Baker's contribution to KR'89. The six lessons are:
1. Situations have a nontrivial theory even before actions are
introduced.
2. It is important to distinguish between arbitrary fluents and
frame fluents.
3. It is important to distinguish between situations and states.
4. Circumscription should be extended to higher order predicates.
5. Formalizing commonsense knowledge may require the use of a
conjunction of circumscriptions.
6. It may be useful to reify physically impossible situations.
∂06-Feb-90 1924 iverson@Neon.Stanford.EDU CS323 2/6 Assignment
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 19:24:42 -0800
From: David L. Iverson <iverson@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9002070324.AA02925@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, paek@cs.Stanford.EDU
Subject: CS323 2/6 Assignment
Cc: iverson@Neon.Stanford.EDU
I would like to clarify the assignment given during Vladimir Lifschitz's
lecture today. I couldn't hear everything that was said out here in TV land.
Is it correct that we are supposed to figure out what is wrong with the
circumscription result we arrived at using geometric reasoning about the
problem where A(P) = ForAll x.(P(a,x) OR P(b,x)) ?
Also, when should this assignment be turned in?
Thank You,
David Iverson
NASA-Ames Research Ctr
∂07-Feb-90 0637 B-BRUE@vm1.spcs.umn.edu AI Lab tapes
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Date: Wed, 07 Feb 90 08:37:47 CST
From: B-BRUE@vm1.spcs.umn.edu
To: JMC@SAIL.stanford.edu
Subject: AI Lab tapes
Subject: AI Lab tapes
Dear Prof. McCarthy,
Arthur Norberg showed me your letter regarding the AI Lab documents on
7-track tape. It is difficult for me to comment on funding sources
without knowing more about the contents of the tapes and the costs
involved. My guess is that the conversion would be on the order of
$5000 to $10000.
If I have guessed correctly, I can think of two possible funding sources.
Assuming that SAIL's demise is imminent, one might apply to the NEH for
emergency funds. The NEH director usually has about 30,000$ in discretionary
funds, so an application for a third of that would need to be compelling.I
don't believe that NSF has a similar setup. The other possibility might be
Comtex, the publishing firm that produced a microfiche of the Stanford AI
memoranda. I have no idea if they have cash to fund such things, but it might
be worth a try. CBI, unfortunately, can't afford such an expense.
I have spoken with Henry Lowood, an archivist at Stanford whom I believe you
have met. I know he is interested in preserving your records. Let me know
if I can be of further help.
Bruce Bruemmer
Archivist
Charles Babbage Institute
∂07-Feb-90 0742 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Votes
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Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1990 7:43:44 GMT
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Votes
In-Reply-To: Your message of 06 Feb 90 1652 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634405424.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Thanks for your votes...I will make a note of them.
∂07-Feb-90 0800 JMC
bmw scherlis
∂07-Feb-90 0928 CLT 9600-baud home terminal
It seems to me we should accept Brians offer.
∂07-Feb-90 1202 CLT Financial Summary
AI
--
Funds
dar(804) thru 8/30/91
nsf(531) thru 12/31/92
Balance Feb 28 90: 675k
Est expenses thru Dec90 350k
(includes SAIL, 1 student, misc, not including travel)
Ext Balance 1Jan91: 325k (about 9 or 10 months)
Qlisp
-----
Funds
dar(816) thru 2/28/90
Balance 28Feb90 147k cached
Monthly expenses 24k (Joe and Dan and alliant) (will last about 6 mo)
Proposal for continued work submitted to Dec89 BAA, chances unkown
MTC
---
Funds
dar(808) thru 2/28/90
nsf(489) thru 6/30/90
loans and cache
Balance 28Feb90 272k
Monthly expenses 28k (clt+iam+student)
Expected funds:
dar 100k Mar-Sep90
dar 150k Oct90-Oct91
dar 150k Oct91-Oct92
2 Nsf proposals pending
CPL
---
Funds
dar(805) 25k nce applied for
Expected funds:
dar 50k Mar-Sep90
Will pay suitable fraction of rpg
Proposal submitted to Dec89 BAA, funding likely
∂07-Feb-90 1246 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu your visit to cyc-west
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Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1990 12:48:37 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: your visit to cyc-west
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634423717.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Doug told me that you were planning to visit cyc-west someday this week
or next week. He tells me that you are considering Friday. I was wondering
what day you had decided on (any day except Tuesday and Thursday is ok with
me)
Guha
∂07-Feb-90 1318 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: your visit to cyc-west
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Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1990 13:21:16 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: re: your visit to cyc-west
In-Reply-To: Your message of 07 Feb 90 1306 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634425676.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Ok. I'll be there (at the cyc offices) at 9am on Friday.
Thanks
Guha
∂07-Feb-90 1348 CLT Timothy
I will pick him up the afternoon.
∂07-Feb-90 1522 zeng@cs.ubc.ca Elephant 2000
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Date: 7 Feb 90 15:22 -0800
From: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
To: <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: "Dr.Carson Woo" <carson_woo@mtsg.ubc.ca>
Message-Id: <1610*zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: Elephant 2000
Dear Professor:
From a poster on the bulletin board here at the Computer Science Department
at the University of British Columbia, I read that, last November at UCSD,
you delievered a speech
on the Speech Acts based programming language -- Elephant 2000.
I am very interested in that topic and my thesis work is also in that
direction (I am now a Master's candidate at UBC CompSci). I wonder if
you could send me some material regarding Elephant 2000 and your
research on Speech Acts based programming. My email address is:
zeng@cs.ubc.cdn
You may send your paper in Latex file or PostScript file format to me
by email, or you may use fax -- the department fax machine no. is:
(604)228-5485
Thank you very much for your help.
Sincerely yours,
Tao Zeng
Feb.7
∂07-Feb-90 1647 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Research Paper Abstract; Rippling
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 15:32:55 GMT
Message-Id: <29056.9002061532@sin.aipna.ed.ac.uk>
From: Alan Bundy <bundy%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>
Subject: Research Paper Abstract; Rippling
To: theorem-provers%mc.lcs.mit.edu@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Extensions to the Rippling-Out Tactic for Guiding
Inductive Proofs
Alan Bundy, Frank van Harmelen and Alan Smaill
In earlier papers we described a technique for
automatically constructing inductive proofs, using a
technique called rippling to reduce the search. Although
essentially correct, further testing on harder examples
showed that this technique had to be extended in various
ways. Each of the various extensions are described with
examples to illustrate why they are needed, but it is
shown that the spirit of rippling has been maintained.
This paper is available from Mrs Margaret Pithie, Dept
of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh,
Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, Scotland as DAI
Research Paper 459.
∂07-Feb-90 2041 CLT financial summary (domestic)
We had 1.2k in the bank as of 31-Jan
(Approx 4k of your personal expenses came through in Jan)
I have paid 2k of bills since 1 Feb.
If you plan to continue spending at that rate you will
have to find more income.
∂08-Feb-90 0023 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu problem posed in cs323 last lecture
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 00:25:49 PDT
From: Sreeranga Rajan <sreerang@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9002080825.AA21306@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: problem posed in cs323 last lecture
Cc: paek@neon.stanford.edu, val@sail.stanford.edu
I am presenting here my answer to the following problem posed in cs323:
The circumscription of
A(P): (forall x) (P(a,x) or P(b,x))
was derived from geometry as
A*(P): (forall x y) (P(x,y) implies (x = a or x = b))
and (forall x) (P(a,x) iff (not P(b,x)))
This minimal model is not correct when a = b,
since (forall x) (P(a,x) iff (not P(b,x))) is not valid
when a = b.
Thus we could modify A*(P) as
A*(P): {
(forall x y) ( P(x,y) implies (x = a or x = b))
and (forall x) (P(a,x) iff (not P(b,x)))
}
or (forall x) (P(a,x) iff a = b)
Since I would not be able to respond during the class (as a TV
student I get to see the class broadcast only after the class), I
decided to send my response through electronic mail.
Thank you for considering the answer
Regards,
-- Sree
∂08-Feb-90 0835 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU MAC Intelligent Systems
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: MAC Intelligent Systems
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 90 08:38:17 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
Could you tell me more about this company and your relationship to it?
John Nafeh asked me yesterday if I would do a little consulting for
them, and I'd like to have a clearer picture of the outfit. Thanks.
Stanley
∂08-Feb-90 0842 CLT Bing payment
Could you please write a check to Bing School for 212.80
and leave it in the office when you take Timothy today?
The have a basket for collecting checks on the counter.
Make sure it has Timothys name in the ``For'' part.
Thanks
∂08-Feb-90 1053 CLT SAIL tapes
Something I didn't include in the financial summary:
As of 1Feb we are paying 50% of ME for SAIL tapes at 6k/mo for
however long it takes. Have you rattled any cages for funds?
∂08-Feb-90 1057 shoham@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 10:58:40 PST
From: Yoav Shoham <shoham@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 08 Feb 90 1043 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634503520.shoham@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
What is the Japan Prize? Same as Kyoto Prize?
∂08-Feb-90 1101 reid@wrl.dec.com Re: 9600-baud modems
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To: Carolyn Talcott <CLT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Cc: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: 9600-baud modems
In-Reply-To: Your message of 08 Feb 90 10:31:00 -0800.
<1Cg9vv@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 90 11:00:22 PST
From: Brian K. Reid <reid@wrl.dec.com>
Carolyn,
These are UDS/Motorola 9600 A/B modems, with attached UDS EC100
error controllers. They are quite configurable, and can work over 2-
wire leased, 4-wire leased, or dialup, though they work best over a 4-
wire leased circuit because there is no need to "turn around" the
line. As they currently stand, they are configured to work with a 4-
wire leased line, but it only takes about an hour with the manual and
a pair of tweezers to reconfigure them to work with a dialup line.
The modems themselves are synchronous, but the EC100 controller
converts it to an asynchronous RS232 interface. I have used them for 5
years without incident, first with just a Concept-100 terminal, then
with a Unix computer and a "tip" line, and finally with a full IP
"SLIP" link that allowed me full network connectivity. They have
significantly better performance for dialup than Telebit Trailblazer
modems because of the rapidity with which they can turn the line around
to simulate full- duplex.
By the way, I strongly recommend that you try out "X terminals" across
a 9600-baud link before you set yourself up to depend on them. The X
protocol sends about 8 times as many bits per keystroke as an ordinary
terminal does; X at 9600 baud is about the same speed as a 1200-baud
Datamedia.
Brian
∂08-Feb-90 1110 MPS NAS meeting
Prof. Cohn said you could leave a message with his wife.
He will be home around 4:00.
Also, he said you could go over to his house to pick him
up. Address is 6 Maywood Lane, Menlo Park.
∂08-Feb-90 1117 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 11:19:46 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 08 Feb 90 1043 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634504786.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
John, that's great! What is the Japan Prize? Is it the same as the Kyoto
Prize that you won?
Ed
∂08-Feb-90 1128 irvine@sumex-aim.stanford.edu CS123
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 11:31:17 PST
From: Sue Irvine <irvine@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, irvine@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Subject: CS123
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634505477.irvine@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Professor McCarthy,
Professor Feigenbaum asked me to remind you that you agreed to speak to his
class, CS123, Tuesday February 13. The class is held at Skilling 191 from
1:15 to 2:30.
Thank you.
Sue Irvine
∂08-Feb-90 1132 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu my class
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 11:35:07 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: my class
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634505707.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
John, There should have been no implication in Sue's message that
you were signed up for the FULL time. I told the students that you would
talk to them about "Can a thermostate be said to have beliefs?". Of course
you can take as much time as you like. This an Introduction to AI c ourse
at the undergrad level and is populated by students from all over the
university, including many graduate students as well.
Ed
∂08-Feb-90 1156 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@life.ai.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu test of mailing list
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 14:39 EST
From: "David A. McAllester" <dam@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: test of mailing list
To: theorem-provers@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Message-Id: <19900208193947.6.DAM@CROCE.AI.MIT.EDU>
I am trying to get rid of bad addresses on this
list (so people don't keep getting error messages).
This message is simply a test.
David McAllester
∂08-Feb-90 1332 tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU PAt Simmons
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 13:33:59 -0800
From: Tom Dienstbier <tom@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9002082133.AA03029@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: clt@sail.Stanford.EDU, weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Cc: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: PAt Simmons
Again I have seemed to, to put is bluntly, totally pissed off Pat. She
seems to think that facilities is a organization that does everything,
including moving desks, bookcases, working on filing cabinets(etc). We do
not do these things. Anyway, she doesn't seem to understand this.
Apparently George told her this also today. Sorry about all of this if
you were bombarded by all of this.
tom
∂08-Feb-90 1411 MPS Berlekamp
Prof. Berlekamp would like to get together with you to
discuss the status of game playing programs (such as go and chess)
as they fit into AI issues. I tentatively made an appointment
with him to see you next Thursday at 2:30 after your class.
That seemed to be the best time. He said he will call back to
confirm or you can call at 849-4214.
Pat
∂08-Feb-90 1432 minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu prizes
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 17:32:27 EST
From: Marvin Minsky <minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <9002082232.AA16785@media-lab>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu, minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: prizes
Thanks.
Think how lucky we didn't have to split it! (The other one went to three
geologists.)
∂08-Feb-90 1631 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Bud Frawley
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 16:31:42 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail
Subject: Bud Frawley
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634523502.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
John, Bud Frawley plans to attend the annual meeting and he will also
be at the buffet supper Tuesday night.
Carolyn
∂08-Feb-90 1639 MPS
∂08-Feb-90 1638 JMC
To: MPS
If they aren't done yet, please make the copies of phon 2-sided.
I already did them one-sided. They are on my desk.
∂08-Feb-90 1702 harnad@Princeton.EDU BBS Call for Commentators: Searle, Pinker & Bloom, Cicchetti
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 19:09:23 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9002090009.AA03230@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu
Subject: BBS Call for Commentators: Searle, Pinker & Bloom, Cicchetti
To: BBS Associates
Here are the abstracts of three target articles that are about to be
circulated for Commentary. Please recommend commentators (including
yourself). -- Stevan Harnad
harnad@princeton.edu harnad@pucc.bitnet
-----
Searle: Consciousness & Explanation
Pinker & Bloom: Language Evolution
Cicchetti: Peer Review Reliability
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPLANATORY INVERSION AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
by John R. Searle
Department of Philosophy
University of Californai
Berkeley CA
Cognitive science typically postulates unconscious mental phenomena,
computational or otherwise, to explain cognitive capacities. The mental
phenomena in question are supposed to be inaccessible in principle to
consciousness. I try to show that this is a mistake, because all
unconscious intentionality must be accessible in principle to
consciousness; we have no notion of intrinsic intentionality except in
terms of its accessibility to consciousness. I call this claim the
Connection Principle. The argument for it proceeds in six steps. The
essential point is that intrinsic intentionality has aspectual shape:
our mental representations represent the world under specific aspects,
and these aspectual features are essential to a mental state's being
the state that it is.
Once we recognize the Connection Principle, we see that it is necessary
to perform an inversion on the explanatory models of cognitive science,
an inversion analogous to the one evolutionary biology imposes on
pre-Darwinian animistic modes of explanation. In place of the original
intentionalistic explanations we have a combination of hardware and
functional explanations. This radically alters the structure of
explanation, because instead of a mental representation (such as a
rule) causing the pattern of behavior it represents (such as rule
governed behavior), there is a neurophysiological cause of a pattern
(such as a pattern of behavior), and the pattern plays a functional
role in the life of the organism. What we mistakenly thought were
descriptions of underlying mental principles in, for example, theories
of vision and language, were in fact descriptions of functional aspects
of systems, which will have to be explained by underlying
neurophysiological mechanisms. In such cases what looks like
mentalistic psychology is sometimes better construed as speculative
neurophysiology. The moral is that the big mistake in cognitive science
is not the overestimation of the computer metaphor (though that is
indeed a mistake) but the neglect of consciousness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) NATURAL LANGUAGE AND NATURAL SELECTION
Steven Pinker
and
Paul Bloom
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Many have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty
cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould
have suggested that language may have evolved as the byproduct of
selection for other abilities or as a consequence of unknown laws of
growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization
for grammar is incompatible with Darwinian theory: Grammar shows no
genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers
no selective advantage, and would require more time and genomic space
to evolve than is available. We show that these arguments depend on
inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary
theory offers a clear criterion for attributing a trait to natural
selection: complex design for a function with no alternative processes
to explain the complexity. Human language meets this criterion: Grammar
is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional
structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary
grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the claim
that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound:
Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are
adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, the child's
acquisition of language should differ systematically from language
evolution in the species; attempts to make analogies between them are
misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there
is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by
a conventional neo-Darwinian process.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) THE RELIABILITY OF PEER REVIEW
Domenic V. Cicchetti and Harold O. Conn
VA Medical Center
West Haven, CT 06516
and
Leonard D. Eron
University of Illinois, Chicago,IL 06516
ABSTRACT: The reliability of peer review of scientific documents and
the normative criteria scientists apply to judge the work of their
peers are critically re-examined with special attention to the
consistently low levels of reliability that have been reported.
Referees of grant proposals agree much more about what is unworthy of
support than about what does have scientific value. In the case of
manuscript submissions this seems to depend on whether a field is
general and diffuse or specific and well defined: In the former there
is likewise substantially more agreement on rejection than acceptance
but in the latter both the wide differential in manuscript rejection
rates and the high correlation between referee recommendations and
editorial decisions suggest that reviewers and editors agree more on
acceptance than on rejection. A number of suggestions are considered
for improving the reliability and quality of peer review. The need for
further research is also stressed, especially for peer review in the
physical sciences.
------------------------------------------------------------
∂08-Feb-90 1739 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Bud Frawley
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1990 17:40:20 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Bud Frawley
In-Reply-To: Your message of 08 Feb 90 1638 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634527620.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
I could have sworn that you asked me one year if he was coming.
He's from GTE. Perhaps it was someone else who inquired........
∂08-Feb-90 2142 harnad@Princeton.EDU Important Date Correction for Searle Symposium...
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 90 00:43:00 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9002090543.AA03645@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Important Date Correction for Searle Symposium...
Subject: Important: SPP Date correction
John:
To prospective participants in the Symbol Grounding Workshop and the
Searle Symposium at the SPP Meeting in Maryland:
The correct dates are Friday June 8 to Monday June 11, NOT as indicated
(erroneously) in my posting. Please let me know if this would prevent
you from participating.
Stevan
∂08-Feb-90 2200 HK.RLS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU On-line CS/AI Reports
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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 21:59:23 PST
To: jmc@sail
From: "Bob Street" <HK.RLS@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: On-line CS/AI Reports
John,
I have received an inguiry from Bill Arms at CMU. He is proposing
that Stanford join CMU, MIT and the NRI (Vinton Cerf) in making
technical reports and working papers in Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence available on-line for the researchers in the
three institutions as a pilot demonstration. He feels that the
three schools represent a critical mass in those fields and so the
project is meaningful and would easily attract DARPA/NSF funding.
Arms thinks that someone at Stanford may already be working on this.
Is this so?
Arms sees z39.50 protocols and X-windows with Motif as the user
interface. Do you or others in CS/AI have an interest?
Cerf and Bruce at MIT have shown interest. Bruce and Arms are my
counterparts at MIT and CMU respectively.
Best,
Bob*
To: JMC@SAIL
∂09-Feb-90 0825 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Bud Frawley
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1990 8:26:01 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Bud Frawley
In-Reply-To: Your message of 09 Feb 90 0007 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634580761.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
Aha, now I remember. No, John, Oliver is not coming.
Carolyn
∂09-Feb-90 0934 VAL
Where and when are we meeting for lunch?
∂09-Feb-90 1159 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 90 13:59:34 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9002091959.AA03950@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
.mn
.LT
.SZ 12
Professor John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140
Dear Professor McCarthy:
.pp
This is to confirm our invitation to you to be a Distinguished Visitor and
to give lectures at 2:30-3:30pm on April 18, 19, and 20, 1990. Your talks
will be videotaped and carried on our closed-circuit instructional TV
network, which is transmitted to local industry sites. After each
lecture, there is a small reception and discussion, which lasts a half
hour. Within one week, please write to verify your acceptance of this
invitation. Please send us titles and abstracts of your talks at least 30
days in advance. We shall pay a Distinguished Visitor honorarium of $600/day
for the three days of your visit.
.pp
We shall reimburse all your travel expenses and provide hotel
accommodations and meals. It will be easier for us if you make your own
arrangements, and we shall reimburse you after your visit. We shall
reserve a room for you at the Radisson University Hotel on Washington Ave.
in Minneapolis. If we can be of further assistance in making any other
arrangements, please let us know. When you arrive at the airport, you
should take a taxi to the Radisson University Hotel. Please let us know
in advance of your travel plans including flight numbers and times of
arrival/departure, so that we can make the hotel reservation.
.pp
It is a great pleasure for us that you so kindly accepted our invitation,
and we are looking forward to your visit. Your host will be Dr. James
Slagle ((612) 625-0329).
.in 25
Sincerely,
.sp 4
James Slagle
.br
Professor
∂09-Feb-90 1449 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Next week's seminar topic
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∂08-Feb-90 2322 usenet@shelby.stanford.edu parking ticket
∂09-Feb-90 1527 usenet@shelby.stanford.edu Re: PIXAR
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Next week's seminar topic
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 90 14:49:43 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Seminar on Issues in Logical Theory
February 15, 3:45 pm
Speaker: Prof. Paul C. Gilmore
Prof. of Computer Science
U.British Columbia
Title: How many real numbers are there?
Abstract:
In this lecture a natural deduction based set theory NaDSet will be
used to provide a formal framework for logical foundations of category
theory admitting genuine instances of self-membership. However, usual
diagonal arguments leading to inconsistency are blocked, including
Cantor's argument for uncountability of the set of real numbers.
The following week, February 22, David Israel will present material on
proof theory and meaning, inspired by Chapter III.8 of the Handbook of
Philosophical Logic.
∂09-Feb-90 1546 poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU re: parking ticket
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 90 15:46:08 pst
From: Bill Poser <poser@crystals.STANFORD.EDU>
Message-Id: <9002092346.AA04070@crystals>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: parking ticket
Thanks for the advice. I'll try it.
Bill
∂09-Feb-90 1642 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
SIX LESSONS FROM RECENT WORK ON THE FRAME PROBLEM
Vladimir Lifschitz
Stanford University
Monday, February 12, 2:30pm
MJH 252
By "recent work on the frame problem" I understand primarily
Andrew Baker's contribution to KR'89. The six lessons are:
1. Situations have a nontrivial theory even before actions are
introduced.
2. It is important to distinguish between arbitrary fluents and
frame fluents.
3. It is important to distinguish between situations and states.
4. Circumscription should be extended to higher order predicates.
5. Formalizing commonsense knowledge may require the use of a
conjunction of circumscriptions.
6. It may be useful to reify physically impossible situations.
∂10-Feb-90 1604 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu concepts as objects (cs323)
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Date: Sat, 10 Feb 90 16:06:52 PDT
From: Sreeranga Rajan <sreerang@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9002110006.AA21155@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: concepts as objects (cs323)
Cc: sreerang@portia.stanford.edu
I am a student in the class cs323 and I had a few thoughts on
introduction of concepts as objects.
This is regarding the papers "Epistemological problems of
Artificial Intelligence" section 4 "Concepts as Objects", page 89
and "First Order Theories of Individual Concepts and Propositions",
page 123 of cs323 collection of papers.
From the following assertions:
combination(safe2) = combination(safe1),
knows(pat,combination(safe1),
we cannot conclude (using the substitutiviy of equality):
knows(pat,combination(safe2)).
But, if we assert:
knows(pat, combination(safe1) = combination(safe2)).
we can conclude:
knows(pat,combination(safe2)).
Similarly, from the sentences:
Pat knows Mike's telephone number
and
Mary's telephone number = Mike's telephone number
we cannot conclude
Pat knows Mary's telephone number.
But if we have the assertions:
Pat knows Mike's telephone number
and
Pat knows Mary's telephone number = Mike's telephone number
then we can conclude:
Pat knows Mary's telephone number.
It seems to me that using first order theory of equality
does not do much good due to the absence of the assertion
that the "knower" or "agent" such as Pat knows that two values are
equal.
Regards,
-- Sree
∂11-Feb-90 0223 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU a philosophical question
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002111007.AA16578@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: a philosophical question
Minsky states in his book unequivocally that
"We are [wonderful] machines". (my brackets)
Do you believe we are machines?
∂11-Feb-90 1420 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
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Date: Sun 11 Feb 90 16:21:04-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <gg9Ji@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12565592485.50.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
John,
I have to leave on a trip on Tuesday afternoon, so I'd like to wrap up the
AI Journal article responding to Brian Smith by, say, Tuesday morning.
Guha mentioned that he gave you a copy of it, so if you could get any
comments on it to me by Monday night (or, latest, Tuesday morning) I would
appreciate it. Of course you may be too busy to comment on it, but this
note's "message" is just that comments received soon are much more
likely to affect our response than comments received a day or two later.
We look forward to seeing you next time we're out in Ca.
Regards
Doug
-------
∂11-Feb-90 1511 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: reply to message
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Date: Sun 11 Feb 90 17:11:11-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
Subject: Re: reply to message
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <Khxn9@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12565601608.50.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
OK< thanks, John. I look forward to your comments.
Doug
-------
∂11-Feb-90 2128 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU reprint on emotions
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 90 21:30:20 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002120530.AA22305@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: reprint on emotions
Yes, it was I who sent the xerox of a New Scientist article on
the cognitive role of emotions. Your previous response, in which
you said "they have it backwards", was interesting but didn't seem
to me to get to the heart of the matter. Not that I am certain
what the heart of the matter is, but we have three things:
(a) emotions (b) multiple agents with multiple conflicting goals
(c) consciousness. So that gives SIX questions: which of a,b,c
are necessary, or at least useful, for which others?
∂11-Feb-90 2140 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU are we machines?
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002120542.AA22361@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: are we machines?
It so happened that after sending you that question, I read Roger
Penrose's opinion: he's firmly on the we're-not-machines side,
see p. 402 of his book, 'The Emperor's New Mind'.
Penrose's point seems to be the speculation that as-yet-unknown
laws of physics, specifically quantum gravity and the modifications
to quantum mechanics he thinks it will require, can explain the
non-mechanical aspects of our minds, e.g. consciousness and the
ability to "make judgements". Your message, "We operate entirely
according to the laws of chemistry and physics", would be consistent
with his position as well as with Minsky's, although those two
positions are direct opposites. The second part of your message
is weaker: it says our "mental processes" can be mechanically
simulated. It's weaker in two ways: (1) perhaps the processes
are non-mechanical even if they can be mechanically simulated,
and (2) perhaps there's more to us than our "mental processes".
∂12-Feb-90 0753 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 90 07:53:02 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9002121553.AA03280@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, val@sail.Stanford.EDU
>From: dfp10@leah.Albany.Edu (dfp10)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Dimitri Vulis's Summary of US/USSR E-mail Options
Keywords: ussr email
Date: 12 Feb 90 11:25:24 GMT
Organization: The University at Albany, Computer Services Center
>From DFP10@UACSC2.ALBANY.EDU Mon Feb 12 05:57:41 1990
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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 90 05:57:22 EST
>From: DFP10%ALBNYVM1@UACSC2.ALBANY.EDU
To: dfp10@leah.Albany.EDU
Status: R
======================================================================== 541
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 90 04:36:28 MSK
Sender: Russian TeX and Soviet E-mail list <RUSTEX-L@UBVM>
>From: Dimitri Vulis <DLV%CUNYVMS1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: A draft of a Soviet E-mail survey: YOUR comments wanted
X-To: Multiple Recipients et al <RUSTEX-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
To: "Donald F. Parsons" <DFP10@ALBNYVM1.BITNET>
I was about to post the next draft of the Sov E-mail paper to rustex-l, when it
occurred to me that there are people not on rustex-l who might be interested in
seeing this and might even offer some helpful comments. So, I'm sending this
draft to a number of mailing lists as well as to some persons who I thought
might find the topic interesting. If you are not interested or get more than
one copy, I apologize: I promise not to use this address list ever again and to
limit the discussion to the RUSTEX-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU mailing list. Please
address your comments to rustex-l or to my address below. Thanks.
---
New and recent E-mail possibilities for USSR communication
02/11/90 DRAFT 4
The following is a revision of the paper E-MAIL POSSIBILITIES FOR USSR
COMMUNICATION by Jim Conklin and Peter Halamek, dated 02/12/1988. I compiled
this paper by updating the data in C&H's paper and adding some information from
e-mail conversations and/or promotional literature.
This is a _draft_. There are likely to be errors in it. The purpose of
distributing this draft is to solicit comments, corrections, and additional
information. If you are interested in the topic, please read this draft and
check for errors and omissions; if you do not have any additional information,
but have questions after reading this document, please let me know and I will
try to have them answered in the next draft. Please do not widely distribute
this draft; it will soon be made obsolete by another such draft. My address is
Bitnet: DLV@CUNYVMS1
Internet: DLV%CUNYVMS1@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
UUCP: ((rutgers,gatech)!psuvax1,mcsun,unido)!cunyvms1.bitnet!dlv
(DO NOT USE *@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU, all mail sent to that address is lost.:)
Any and all remarks will be greatly appreciated!
Dimitri Vulis
Department of Mathematics
City University of New York Graduate Center
---
Introduction.
This document is intended to help answer the frequently posed questions of the
kind "How can I send e-mail to XXX in the USSR, preferably from Internet?".
There is an RSCS academic network and an X.25 network in the USSR. Many Soviet
academic and research institutions have asked to be connected to one of the
research networks in the West; this cannot be done because such connections
would violate the US Department of Commerce regulations (the Soviets might gain
access to supercomputers on the network).
Some Soviet institutions have "private" connections to Western research
institutions, which may involve 1) a leased line or a mux line to a location in
Europe, 2) a leased line to Europe, with Internet/BITNET/EARNET carrying the
traffic the rest of the way to the United States, 3) one of the commercial
services below. For example, there are alleged to be links between IKI and
ESOC, IKI and JPL, IHEP and LBL, etc. Such private arrangements are usually
kept secret because of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that surround the
Department of Commerce regulations. :)
Unless you and your intended correspondent is at one of these institutions, or
has enough interest and connections to arrange access to one of these links,
you have to use one of the commercial services below.
---
SovAm Teleport, a Soviet-American joint venture between San Francisco/Moscow
Teleport (SFMT) and VNIIPAS.
SFMT uses a satellite connection between Moscow and Staten Island for rapid
communications. E-mail is not their main service; in addition, they offer or
plan to offer online translation, database access, and videophones (video
teleconferencing).
*Access requires permission from the Soviet side, in writing, to SFMT.
[Is this still true?
Can Moscow users dial up 24 hours a day?
Is it true that KOI-7 is used to represent Cyrillic text (i.e., one cannot have
both uplow Latin and uplow Russian in a message), as is claimed?
Is this the same as the MCI/Compuserve connection thru VNIIPAS described
below?]
SFMT can provide the equipment needed on the Soviet side for access to its
system, thereby eliminating problems of getting error-correcting modems and
other equipment into the Soviet Union. For $475, SFMT will provide and install
a modem, especially adapted for the poor quality of telephone lines Soviet
Union. According to the SF office, a US Robotics 2400E or an equivalent will
also work, but not a 'regular' modem, such as Hayes 2400.
[What baud rates >2400 are supported? Is this error correction the same as MNP
level 5? What error-correcting software protocols (kermit, xmodem, ymodem) are
supported? -DV]
SFMT Director is Joel Schatz, initial contact likely to be Dianne Schatz.
Phone, in the US, is 415-931-8500.
Practically all known projects in which schoolchildren or peace activists or
scientists exchange e-mail were found to be using SFMT.
Contacts:
Internet: sfmtmoscow%cdp@arisia.xerox.com (Andrej Kolesnikov) or
nbotkin%cdp@arisia.xerox.com (Nancy Botkin). (=*@cdp.uucp)
Telephones:
(415) 931-8500 --- San Francisco/Moscow Teleport in San Francisco, USA
229-96-63 --- SovAm Teleport in Moscow
Telex: 9103804097 TELEPORT
Fax: (415) 931-2885
Surface mail:
San Francisco/Moscow Teleport
3278 Sacramento Sreet
San Francisco, CA 94115-9800
Rates:
Rates for Non-Profit organizations in US:
Initial set-up fee, $100
>1. For "Enhanced Service:" users can send and
>receive messages from colleagues in Moscow who are not yet on
>line, through the SovAm Teleport office.
"SFMT Moscow office assistance including follow-up of unasnwered messages,
stimulation of timely responses from your Soviet counterparts, technical
support and training, as well as communications access to the US from the SFMT
Moscow office when you are visiting the USSR."
>$75 / month
>.25 / minute connect time
>.20 per month per 1000 characters stored, except
>for the first 1000 characters
>20/mo for every additional username on the
>same SFMT account
>2. Basic Service for Non-profit organizations:
>$25 per month, all other charges are the same.
>No assistance delivering messages from Moscow office.
>3. Business rates:
>$200 per month, all other charges are the same.
>Also includes any technical assistance and training in Moscow.
[presumably, Business implies Enhanced?]
Rates for Moscow:
Initial set-up fee 30 r.
Monthly fee 10 r.
Connection charges:
25 k / minute online
45 k / 1000 characters sent
The small fee paid in roubles by the Soviet side is offset by the high fee paid
by the Western side.
Telenet is used for access to SFMT, with Telenet fees paid by SFMT and included
in the SFMT charges.
On some occasions I received response from AK within 10 minutes after sending
him mail; this indicates that messages sent via satellite can be read in
Moscow within minutes.
It is not possible to send mail from Internet to SFMT users in the USSR or vice
versa because of security considerations and difficulties in billing.
Neither this nor any other service provides local access numbers in cities
other than Moscow; one has to call long distance from other sites.
---
DASNET.
DA Systems, Inc. provides a very useful service by storing and forwarding
electronic mail among the various e-mail services, not otherwise connected (for
a fee). According to Peter Halamek, he has been able to receive mail sent from
USSR to his Internet account via DASNET. I have not been able to find out what
the arrangements are on the Soviet side (i.e., whether the user has to be a
SFMT subscriber, whether DASNET access costs extra, etc).
Rates: (subject to error):
Initial charge: $33.50 in US, $46.50 outside US (includes $20 credit
and a $7.50 directory).
+
$4.50/mo in US,: $5.50/mo outside
+
$2.75 / per message sent to the USSR
+
$0.22/first KB, then $0.11/each add'l KB.
According to AK, the Internet-SFMT exchange occurs only twice per day.
Contact:
DA Systems, Inc.
1503 E. Campbell Ave.
Campbell, CA 95008
408-559-7434
TELEX: 910 380-3530
Remark: I have repeatedly requested more information from DAS, and was promised
it in early February.
---
VNIIPAS.
According to the file SOVIET.COM posted on the Foreign Language Forum (FLEFO)
on Compuserve, it is possible to access Compuserve and MCI Mail from Moscow by
means of a phone call. Extensive quotations follow:
>This file, provided by a FLEFO member currently in the USSR, details how to
>sign on to CompuServe from the Soviet Union, and how to send e-mail between
>the USSR and the United States using combinations of CompuServe, Bitnet, MCI
>Mail, Internet, etc. For those who had thought that the only e-mail
>possibility to the USSR was through the San Francisco-Moscow Teleport (SFMT),
>this file should come as a welcome (and much cheaper) alternative.
>
>**********
>
>December, 1989
>
>Here's the info on Bitnet, CompuServe, and MCIMail to and from the USSR:
>
> VNIIPAS (Vsesojuznyj nauchno-issledovatel'skij institut prikladnyx
>avtomatizirovannyx sistem) has a direct link to MCI and CompuServe. I just got
>an e-mail message over MCI this morning from Moscow, and before I left, I
>actually signed on to CompuServe from my Leningrad suite by dialing VNIIPAS.
>You can set up an account in the Soviet Union with VNIIPAS by calling Svetlana
>Zav'jalova in Moscow at 229-1118. The office is at ul. Nezhdanova 2a. Here are
>the conditions:
>
>1. The account costs 10 convertible rubles a month ($16).
>2. Each on-line minute with VNIIPAS is 25 convertible kopeks (40c).
>3. Each 1K sent (or received) costs 45 convertible kopecks (72c).
>
> All payment must be made in convertible currency at the commercial (not
>tourist) rate, currently about 63k/$1.00, to VNIIPAS's account with
>Vnesh`ekonombank. Only cash and traveler's cheques are accepted.
>
> VNIIPAS only provides the connection mode. In addition to VNIIPAS charges,
>users pay whatever other charges are involved with the host system to which
>they log on. I will shortly get a complete list of hosts to which VNIIPAS can
>connect. [NOTE FROM SYSOP: When this or any other additional information
>becomes available, we will add it to this file.]
>
> Users in the USSR must use error correcting modems (U.S. Robotics Courier
>2400E recommended) because of dirty phone lines. Connections are even more
>difficult when made from outside Moscow. The only dial-in lines available are
>in Moscow. Users in other cities must pay long distance (in non-convertible
>roubles, e.g. from Leningrad 25k/minute (4c at the new tourist rate of
>exchange).
>
> Since VNIIPAS charges per kilobyte of sent and RECEIVED characters, remote
>systems with sparse menus save money. [A long discussion deleted...]
>
>So there you have it: for two short received paragraphs on CompuServe, I was
>charged 3.4K. With time charges and per K charges for both systems, that comes
>out to nearly $3.50. Hence, e-mail to the USSR is not cheap, by any means;
>but at least it is now available.
>
>It *would* be nice to get rid of the "What's New" stuff at the beginning, but
>as it is, CS's opening menu is only a 50K longer now than SFMT's opening
>routine. (SFMT forces you through a number of short single-line menus to get
>to your mailbox.
>
>The main points to emphasize (so it seems to me) are these:
>
>1. CompuServe is available through VNIIPAS in Moscow. To get CS, you must set
>up an account in Moscow in hard currency.
>
>2. U.S.-based CS users sending messages to CS users in the USSR pay only the
>normal CS access charges. CS users in the USSR pay the normal CS access
>charges PLUS VNIIPAS charges: $.72 per K sent and/or received plus $.40 per
>minute on-line, all in hard currency (cash or traveler's cheques).
>
>3. The only VNIIPAS dial-up numbers are in Moscow. 1200/2400 baud are both
>okay. Noisy lines make 1200 baud more reliable and absolutely require an error
>correcting modem for users in the USSR. Connections to VNIIPAS from outside
>Moscow are spottier. From Leningrad I access VNIIPAS in Moscow with a U.S.
>Robotics Courrier 2400e modem at 2400 baud. But it usually takes me about 5-10
>attempts to (1) get through to the right number in Moscow, (2) for the modem
>to connect, and (3) for the line to be clean enough so that my modem can ARQ
>(use error correction). With the new tourist exchange rate, long distance
>
>4. The San Francisco - Moscow teleport is VNIIPAS's American partner.
>However, users need NOT become SFMT customers to use CompuServe through
>VNIIPAS. (You can also get onto an MCI Mail account through VNIIPAS).
>
>There may even be a way to get around VNIIPAS charges, but I'll find out about
>this only in the second week of January.
It appears, however, that this connected is through SovAm and not VNIIPAS
proper.
Note that one can send mail from Internet to Compuserve by addressing it to
7nnnnn.nnn@compuserve.com and to MCI Mail by sending it to id@mcimail.com.
One can also log in to Compuserve and MCI Mail via IMMoscow (below).
---
Interlink Mailbox Moscow (IMMoscow)
A joint Soviet-West German venture, Interlink has a "Mailbox system" (an IBM AT
running Xenix) in Moscow (reachable from Internet as immoscow.gtc.de or
gtc8.uucp) connected to gtc.uucp (Gutacker Telecommunications Gmbh) via a
leased line. The venture plans to offer e-mail Internet access to Soviet users
who will access their system via modem; they will be expected to cover the
hard-currency expenses incurred in transporting their mail to and from
Internet. The venture plans to offer E-mail, online databases, hard copy mail,
translation, and other services.
Note: if your mailer cannot reach user@immoscow.gtc.de, try the following:
user%immoscow.gtc.de@unido (where unido is unido.bitnet or
unido.informatik.uni-dortmund.de or
unido.informatik.uni-dortmund.de@mcsun.eu.net) or unido!gtc8!user or
user@gtc8.uucp.
Modem: according to KS, a regular Hayes 1200 bps CCITT compatible works
satisfactorily in Moscow. 2400 bps access is also available; MNP is
recommended. To insure error-free transmission, one can either use XMODEM
protocol to up/download messages or use a MNP modem. Both are currently
supported on all lines.
Rates:
Initially DM 500.00 (about $300)
+
Monthly DM 90.00 (about $54)
+
DM 0.90 (about $.54) / minute online
+
DM 0.60 (about $.18) / Kilobyte
Fax/Telex/Database access additional
Major hard currencies are accepted at current exchange rate.
The above charges are for an account on the Xenix machine in Moscow, from which
the subscriber in Moscow can send and receive mail and usenet news, just like
from any other public access Unix node. There are no charges for sending mail
to it.
Contact:
Mr. Andrei Astakhov,
Director General,
INTERLINK USSR
USSR, 123423, Moscow, Narodnogo Opoltceniya St., 34
tel : ++ 7 095 946-87-11
fax : ++ 7 095 943-00-87
telex : 411683 CCBMC SU
E-mail : interlink@immoscow.gtc.de
Another contact: Kirill Chashchin, SysOp, kirill@immoscow.gtc.de
The following is a copy of their ad:
>-----------------------------------------------------------
> If you're interesting in USSR E-mail connection,
> INTERLINK USSR
> can help you
>
>Our Joint Soviet - West-German venture located in Moscow is
>introducing new service:
>
> Interlink Mailbox Moscow (IMMoscow)
>
>Any means of electronic communication are available for you
>from anywhere using your computer, modem and nothing more!
>
>From our system (active 24 hours a day 7 days a week (*))
>you can send and receive E-mail messages, telexes, send
>faxes everywhere. We can even create your PERSONAL telex
>number. All incoming telexes will go directly to your
>mailbox. We provide user-friendly interface with
>multilingual menus.
>
>We offer database search on your request (available now),
>hardcopy mail delivery (available March 15th), translation
>into Russian (available March 1st).
>
>We will make all arrangements with party you want to
>communicate in Moscow.
>
>If you already have E-mail account and want to avoid
>expensive online charges, we will arrange message forwarding
>to you - just ask.
>
>Phone Technical Support line as well as on-site service for
>our users is available in Moscow.
>
>Communication equipment and software available on request.
>
>Our charges:
>
>Membership DM 500.00
>Monthly DM 90.00
>Each Minute online DM 0.90
>Each 2 Kbyte sent DM 0.60
>
>Fax/Telex/Database access additional.
>Major credit cards accepted.
>No surcharge for credit card payments.
>
>Major currencies are accepted at current exchange rate.
>
>To open IMMoscow account you have to fill in included form
>and mail/fax it to the following adress. Please allow 14
>days for processing your papers in our office. Sorry, we
>will accept credit card payments only since March 1st, 1990.
>
>For more details call:
>
>Mr Andrei Astakhov, : tel : ++ 7 095 946-87-11
>Director General, : fax : ++ 7 095 943-00-87
>INTERLINK USSR : tlx : 411683 CCBMC SU
>USSR, 123423, Moscow, : E-mail : interlink@gtc8.uucp
>Narodnogo Opoltceniya St., 34
>
>( Prices subject to change without notice )
>
>(*) Except weekly 3-hours maintenance break during off-peak
>hours.
>-----------------------------------------------------------
---
*Telenet's Telemail is another alternative. It CAN be accessed from the Soviet
*side, at least by privileged individuals or those working for privileged
*organizations. (Arrangements must be made from the Soviet side for Soviet
*network access to the international packet-switched networks. It appears that
*all such arrangements must be handled though the Soviet All-Union Scientific
*Research Institute of Applied Computerized Systems -- VNIIPAS.) The Soviet
*correspondent will probably have to know the 12-digit
*international packet-switched-network address for the Telemail host in order
*to receive permission and equipment to access the network and the Telemail
*host computer. Costs for an individual Telemail mailbox account are
* $15 to initiate the account with Telenet's Telemarketing
* division in Reston, VA
* $20 per month ($18/month if paid from a credit card) minimum
* usage fee, including ...
* 14 per hour of business-hours sign-on time
* 0.05 per 1,000 characters transmitted into or out of the
* system
* 0.007 per day (~0.21 per month) per 1,000 characters stored,
* with certain storage free (e.g., first five days
* after a message is delivered)
*
*(Corporate Telemail accounts are also available.)
*The Xmodem file-transfer protocol is supported, with Ymodem and Kermit to be
*added in 1988. The MNP modem-error-correcting protocol is also supported and
*effectively eliminates the need for error-correcting file-transfer protocols
*if used (2400-baud), since the X.25 packet- switching protocol contains error
*detection/correction, leaving only the local telephone link as a source of
*line errors, which is handled by MNP.
The DNIC (data network identification code which precedes NUA) list contains
the entry:
USSR IASNET 2502
USSR was allocated a DNIC at the Madrid CCITT Plenary (circa 1980).
If your X.25 allows you to dial out (IAS does not accept collect connections)
you can try connecting to 02502040300 to see
> You are connected to the Communication Node of
> Institute for Automated Systems, Moscow, USSR
> Moscow Time: ***
>
> Enter your ID >
> Enter your psw>
However there appears to be no mail protocol running on top of the X.25, except
perhaps ADONIS, which may be X.400.
>From BBL: according to EMMS, Vol.12, No. 16, 15 August 1988, IAS operates on
top of IASNET Adonis conferencing system and the Electronic Mailing System for
the benefit of about 300 university academics and scientists.
Telenet uses an international satellite channel from Western Union Worldcom to
link an IAS-Net node in Moscow with a Telenet node in New York at 9600 bps.
>The New York-to-Moscow billing rate will be about $10
>an hour and $12 a kilosegment, about average for Telenet
>services abroad. The Moscow-to-New York rate will be .25
>roubles per minute and .45 roubles per kilocharacter in Soviet
>money, slightly less than the going rate from most foreign
>locations (10 roubles is about 6 US dollars). However, IAS-
>Net bills for outbound usage by foreigners must be paid in
>hard currency, such as U.S. dollars.
---
>According to The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide,
>by John S. Quarterman, there are a couple of other networks on the other side
>of the Wall/Curtain besides Akademnet (none of which are connected to the
>West, of course. yet).
>
>"IASnet is a 'network for Socialist countries'. It is a star network, with the
>central host at the Institute for Automated Systems (IAS) in Moscow. There are
>X.25 connections to leading institutes of informatics in Bulgaria, Hungary,
>East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam. .... IASnet
>was still being implemented in August 1988.
>
>"ADONIS is [a network] run by the Institute for Automated Systems (IAS) in
>Moscow and connects computer centers in the Soviet Union. It [also] was still
>being set up in August 1988. This is apparently an RSCS NJE network.
There were also rumors that ADONIS is in fact X.400 on top of X.25.
---
Related info on EE E-mail:
A BBS (running PC Board) operates in Tallinn, Estonia. The number is +7 014 2
422 583. Most of the callers appear to be from outside the USSR. (Note that it
is not possible to dial Tallinn without operator assistance from the US. It is
possible to dial the USSR directly from most of Western Europe.)
There exist two EE EE uucp nodes: iaccs (Institute of Cybernetics in
Bratislava, Czechoslovakia) and sztaki (Computer Research Institute of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA)); both are routed through tuvie (Austrian
EUNET backbone).
FidoNet has nodes in Poland. Polish coordinator is listed as:
Jan.Stozek@f0.n48.z2.fidonet.org
--
Donald F. Parsons MD, PhD, 150 Mosher Rd, DelmarNY 12054 (518)474-7047
Wadsworth Center L.&R.,Empire State Plaza,Albany, NY 12201-0509
Bitnet:dfp10@albnyvm1 Internet:dfp10@uacsc2.albany.edu Usenet:dfp10@leah.albany.edu Compuserve: 71777,212
∂12-Feb-90 0936 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: Smith
Received: from MCC.COM by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 12 Feb 90 09:35:40 PST
Date: Mon 12 Feb 90 11:35:57-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
Subject: Re: Smith
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <chbKQ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12565802726.50.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
John,
Here is the current draft of our response to Brian's piece:
-*- Mode: Text -*-
We have chosen to write a separate response to Brian Smith's review (BS)
of our position paper, rather than to respond by making changes and
additions to the text of our article. Corresponding to each of BS's
five sections, we highlight the issues upon which he and we appear to
disagree; make a judgment about whether this is (a) just a
misunderstanding, or (b) a genuine difference of opinion; and attempt a
clarification.
1. <untitled by BS>
1.a. Mistakenly attributed beliefs:
[As just explained, this section -- 1.a -- is a collection of remarks to
"set the record straight" in cases where we feel that section 1 of BS
has misrepresented or misunderstood our position. We regret the
necessity to include any of this "a" type material, and endeavor to be
as brief as possible in the "a" subsections.]
In his long, Footnote #3, BS accuses us of "a radical reversal" in the
last three years, from "coding up everything in the encyclopedia" to
"the complement of the encyclopedia". All this reflects is his finally
listening to what we've been saying for the past six years (since before
the Cyc project began). E.g., as we wrote an article published in
January, 1986), "`General knowledge' can be broken down into a few
types. First, there is real world factual knowledge, the sort found in
an encyclopedia. Second, there is common sense, the sort of knowledge
that an encyclopedia would assume the reader knew without being told
(e.g., an object can't be in two places at once.)" [Lenat et al, 86]
And, as we went on to state there -- and in all our talks and articles
since 1984 -- looking at articles, advertisements, snippets of
conversations, etc., is useful as a tool to drive human knowledge
enterers to introspect concretely on that unstated underlying common
sense knowledge. For example, Cyc knowledge enterers often make use of
absurd supermarket tabloid headlines and articles, not because we want
Cyc to believe those things (!), but rather because they provide a
natural introspective ice-breaker, namely asking oneself "Now why do I
find that headline hard to believe?" Indeed, in a much earlier article
written about Alan Kay's Knoesphere project (which in some ways was the
precursor to Cyc), our position was already clear: "Something which is
absent for a typical enclopedia but must be present in the Knoesphere KB
is commonsense knowledge. This includes everyday physics, models of
human interaction... as well as facts and heuristics about teaching,
question-answering, imagery, analogy, etc... We intend to spend much of
the coming decade in research trying to build such a core [of everyday
concepts]." [Lenat, Borning et al, 83]
In that same long footnote, BS accuses us of being "considerably more
optimistic" three years ago than today, about the chances for success in
getting something like Cyc to succeed. Although we don't discuss such
things in our article, quite the reverse trend has occurred. When Cyc
began, back in late 1984, we estimated it had a low (less than one in
ten) chance of succeeding. Year by year, our optimism has grown; we now
put its chances at better than 50-50. Yes, we spent most of the early
years in thrashing out a representation language and ontology, and now
we're spending most of the effort using that (rather than fighting it)
to do knowledge entry. BS interprets that as a negative indicator, but
we interpret it as an extremely positive and encouraging pattern. The
time for pessimism -- or perseverence -- was 2-4 years ago, not today.
We chose perseverence, and it has paid off.
In that same footnote, BS claims our estimate of the size of the
required KB has increased over the years. That's true (it correlates
with our decreasing naivete), but even back in 1983 [Lenat, Borning, et
al 83] our estimate was 300k frames for factual knowledge, and a similar
volume for commonsense knowledge. Assuming about 100 individual
assertions per concept, that number (600k frames, 60 million assertions)
is not so far away from our best guess today (1 million frames, 100
million assertions). Perhaps some of the confusion came from mixing the
two units of measure: concepts (frames) and individual assertions.
Again in that footnote, BS confuses the pragmatic necessity of having
several inference engines (to do efficient justification maintenance)
with the theoretical "plank" of ours which continues to state
sophisticated inference procedures alone won't solve all your problems
(literally and figuratively) if you lack knowledge.
We're almost ready to leave BS footnote #3. BS implies, near the end of
it, that we belive that all the theoretical foundations of AI will be
complete by 1994. We certainly do not believe that. In fact, a host
of fundamental research questions may be uncovered by this work, and
become seen as important. E.g., one can successfully build a bridge
over a stream without much theoretical understanding of engineering and
physics, and the enterprise of doing so is quite likely to reveal many
new issues to begin to investigate, issues that eventually lead to the
development of a theory. The same situation occurs when high energy
experimental physicists gather data about collisions at new energy
levels, etc., etc. It's foolish never to theorize, but it's commonplace
for empirical experiments and constructions to outstrip (and drive) the
development of theory, especially in a field's first few centuries of
life. In its early stages, a theory may be little more than a
plausible generalization of a class of recently observed phenomena.
Theory-building must -- and does -- go on in the absence of complete
sets of data to characterize; and experiments must -- and do -- go on
in the absence of complete theories.
Finally, we can leave footnote 3! A few lines later, BS mistakenly
attributes to us the absurd claim that "just a million frames... could
intelligently manifest the sum total of human knowledge". That is most
definitely not what we believe, or claim, or hope. Rather, our hope is
that that order of magnitude (i.e., about 1 million "frame-fulls" or
about 100 million assertions) will suffice for crossing the point where
knowledge acquisition could be more profitably done by natural language
understanding (reading online texts and "discussing" the difficult
parts) rather than continuing to build the KB manually, one assertion at
a time. We may span much of the breadth of human knowledge, but of
course not the depth -- one of the main uses of such a KB will be as a
substrate on which to build the next generation of knowledge based
systems which do go into depth in particular areas.
Moreover, we certainly don't restrict ourselves to frames, though the
majority of the assertions can be cast as simple P(x y) statements. Our
philosophy is to not flinch from from building special purpose machinery
(for representation, for control, for interfacing, etc.) to handle the
most commonly occurring cases, and to thus have a series of increasingly
general (and inefficient) mechanisms even though most of the very
general ones are rarely used.
In the case of representation, we use frames for most of the assertions
in the KB, but we of course have to have a way to represent
disjunctions, set-theoretic constraints, quantified statements, etc.,
and so we have a constraint language (similar to predicate calculus with
equality) as well.
For most human users browsing through the KB and editing it, it's proven
useful to present assertions P(u, v,...) which share a common first
argument u clumped together -- i.e., to have what appears to be a
frame-based interface. There are by now half a dozen different editing
and browsing tools, some of them quite un-framelike (built around
semantic nets, or a metaphor to a museum floorplan, or predicate
calculus.) While many humans prefer frame-like anchorings, the most
common interface to/from other (non-Cyc-based) application programs has
been straight constraint language expressions. Although this is not the
place to discuss "standards" for knowledge representation, we expect
that whatever interlingua develops and becomes adopted will likely be
based around something which is similar to that. See, e.g.,
Genesereth's proposal for KIF [Genesereth 1989]
In the case of control structure, we again see a series of increasingly
general (and inefficient) rules of inference -- inferences engines --
and once again the most specific ones are the most efficient and the
most frequently used. E.g., we could express the fact that
"children(x,y) iff parents(y,x)" using general if-then rules, horn
clause rules,..., all the way down to the special purpose mechanism
inverse (i.e., by asserting inverse(children, parents)). The latter is
not just shorter to state, it is much faster to "run" (e.g., to later
retract, to not show up later in irrelevant situations while searching
for a proof, etc.) because the maintenance of inverse(r,s) assertions
has been thoroughly worked out ahead of time in Cyc.
1.b. Genuine disagreements
[As explained earlier, this section -- 1.b -- discusses the genuine
disagreements that we have with section 1 of BS, answers some of his
objections to our position, and presents our disagreements with his
position as stated therein.]
We do believe that clever control structures alone are no substitute for
large amounts of cached knowledge. Of course some amount of effort --
perhaps as high as 20% of the two person centuries of effort in getting
CYC to its mid-1990's "crossover point" must deal with inference -- with
symbol manipulating methods to do deduction and induction (including
abduction, analogy, and so on.)
We do believe that a decade of flat-out work will get us through "stage
1" in our research program. Cantwell Smith is welcome to begin his
"decades of debate"; meanwhile, we are happy to announce that CYC is
halfway through its one decade lifetime and still on schedule. Yes, of
course there is "a middle realm", Brian, but it is immense. A brief
paper can do little more than tantalize, and we encourage the reader to
go through [Lenat and Guha 90] for a several hundred page foray into
that middle realm.
2.a. Conceptual Tunneling: Mistakenly attributed beliefs:
We are aware as anyone of the range of application of expert system
technology today -- and its limitations. We have written about that in
numerous books and articles over the past fifteen years. An ES can't
be a nurse because of the heavy reliance on sight, hearing, etc., the
need for frequent and subtle motor activity and hand-eye coordination,
the need to provide inter-personal warmth and support, etc. Could an ES
in principle one day write a good textbook on nursing, or design a new
device used in nursing? To that we would answer affirmatively, and
astonishingly enough so would BS. We are pleased in a way that BS
views our general principles as tautologous. Not so many years ago, and
still today in many academic circles, they would be quite controversial.
His attributing a trivial Analogical Method to us is a bit unfair.
Immediately after we state it, we explain why it's too general and weak
to be useful, and how it can and should be specialized. We have a
useful specification of the notion of causality, a family of causes
relations, and a calculus for using them to predict (deductively), to
explain (abductively), and to help us epistemologically to favor one
explanation over another.
Yes, we know "these issues have been investigated for years". We've
been doing some of the investigating! He accuses us of not being aware
that "analogy requires a notion of relevant similarity", which is odd
given the detail with which we discussed that in [Lenat 84]. And as the
previous paragraph indicated, we've proceeded a long ways farther than
that in the intervening years.
2.b. Conceptual Tunneling: Genuine disagreements
The need for formulation: Simple problems can of course be solved
without explicitly formulating them -- else the meta-meta-... level
recursion would never end. But difficult ones require formulation. You
may grasp your coffee mug unconsciously, but you probably don't design
an airplane that way. At least not a plane I'd care to be the first to
fly in. Raw perception and low-level muscle coordination are not part
of what we were calling Knowledge, though of course propositions about
what you have perceived, about the act of your perceiving it, etc., are
Knowledge.
This ties in to his remark about children not having explicit mental
models (formulations, representations). Two remarks are in order here.
First, although BS (and the colleagues he cites) tell us we don't need
such things, they don't propose any alternative. Second, we don't care
whether that's "really" how people solve problems and get around in the
real world -- we're AI scientists, not cognitive psychologists. And we
feel that, in limited domains, the best computational scheme to get
programs to duplicate human-level problem solving behavior is through
explicit formulation (and logical manipulation of same.)
How dare we try to build this KB: We are not so pessimistic (or perhaps
so perfectionistic) as Cantwell Smith. In our opinion, AI has
progressed to the point where it's worth trying to build the large,
broad KB: we do know ways to adequately represent a vast variety of
knowledge, we do know enough about ontology and ontological engineering
to choose and debug an adequate set of collections, predicates (slots),
and so on. If we fail, then the next set of important lessons for AI
are likely to emerge by tackling this large empirical task, rather than
by micro-experiments or sterile philosophical argument.
Are we sure about the one million frame number (100 million assertions)?
Of course not. But we have lots of supportive evidence, based not just
on the three estimates we gave in our article, but also based on the
thousands of man-years of effort spent on building knowledge-based
systems in the past fifteen years. Yes, by now we feel we do have the
right to estimate how many frames it will take.
Cantwell Smith chooses visual imagery as his examples (recognizing
faces; the expression on a person's face gradually changing) -- even
though we explicitly claimed we would not tackle perception head-on. On
the other hand, knowledge about facial expressions can and should be
part of the large KB, and it is easy to see that a small number of
assertions suffices to predict the change in expression when one goes
from glee to horror, and a moderate number of assertions to predict the
change in emotional state as one loses control of one's vehicle. Yes,
one can sit around for decades and bemoan the impenetrable mystique of
the human intellect, and make grand arguments for why it is unknowable,
or one can sit down and try to penetrate it.
The heart of this disagreement is made clear over the issue of whether
we in AI should use computers to test (i.e., verify or falsify) our
hypotheses and surprise us (our view), versus merely as fancy word
processors to articulate and clarify one's hypotheses (his view.)
As R. V. Guha reminds us, "One of the things we have learnt from so many
years of science is that given any hard problem it is wise to break it
down into separate peices, solve it and put it together. But for Brian
Smith, perception, inference, representation are all one complex
integrated ball that have to be dealt with at one shot. This seems
rather foolhardy. Divide an conquer really is a pretty good idea."
It's a bit much for him to presume that he knows what discouraged
Winograd and we don't; but granting for the sake of argument it was the
problem of "genuine semantics", we claim that this problem gets easier,
not harder, as the KB grows. In the case of an enormous KB, such as
CYC's, for example, we could rename all the frames and predicates as
G001, G002,..., and -- using our knowledge of the world -- reconstruct
what each of their names must be. While this does not guarantee that
the genuine meanings of the concepts have been captured, it's good
enough for us. After all, how does one guarantee that their neighbor
shares the same meanings they do for terms? The answer is that one
doesn't, at least not formally or exhaustively. Rather, in practice,
one defeasably assumes by default that everyone agrees, but one keeps in
reserve the ubiquitous conflict resolution method that says "one may
call into question whether they and their neighbor are simply
disagreeing over the meaning of some terms."
Near the end of section 2, BS raises the question of how a set of
symbols relates to the world. He better than most people knows how many
person centuries have been lost on this issue. Programmers were
writting working programs long before people developed fancy semantics
for programming languages. Surely he drives a car and uses other
devices without "really knowing" how they work. In a similar faship, we
hope to use symbol structures to represent things without "really
knowing" the answer to this question.
There are two issues, then, as regards our disagreement with BS about
how "solved" the problems are about deduction and control. The first
issue is how to -- and whether to -- come up with a formalism in which
to state relevant information. The second issue is how to actually use
these formalisms to state the axioms. We are claiming that AI has found
at least reasonable candidates for the former, and that it's finally
time to really start doing the latter. Another way to look at what we
are saying is that at the current state of the field, the maximum
gain/improvement can be obtained by building KBs. Not that we are going
to have a fully human-level intelligent agent in 1994, but that better
AI -- a whole new and qualitatively different set of experiments -- can
be done in 1994, using as a substrate the large KBs constructed between
now and then.
3.a. Thirteen Dimensions: Mistakenly attributed beliefs:
Dimension 1: Explicit representation
BS seems to massivley misunderstand what we meant by "explicit". E.g.,
he says "L&F are even more committed to explicit representation than
adherents of logic", which to us is a non sequitor. What we mean by
"explicit" is a representation with a declarative semantics. Thus, we
might say a program P represents X even if there is no data structure in
P that means exactly X, so long as X follows from other data structures
(where "follows from" is given shape by the declarative semantics.)
We are pragmatists and engineers; tradesmen, not philosophers. We are
happy to use any tool that helps us in some specialized ways, and that
includes implicitly represented knowledge. Despite myriad examples of
such (which BS mentions in his footnote #19) that we use in our
programs, the evidence still supports our expectation that the vast
majority of the contents of CYC will be declarative, and we view the
gradual translation of knowledge into increasingly declarative form as
both inevitable and desirable. (There is also often an extra level of
translation, from declarative into efficient "compiled" form, and this
final stage is also probably inevitable and utile.)
Dimension 5: Multiple representations of Knowledge. We are of course
not arguing that any one narrow representation (such as frames and
slots) is enough; see our earlier comments about our formal constraint
language, etc. Nevertheless, it's important to remark that binary
predicates (slots on frames) are -- surprisingly often -- quite
adequate, and such awkwardnesses as arise in trying to represent some
new situation can often be remedied just by slotizing (creating
specialized new slots.) E.g., there are now about 50 slotized forms of
constraints on slots -- what sort of frames can legally have them, what
sort of entries can legally fill them, how many entries they can have,
and so on -- and we almost never have to resort to writing a
full-fledged constraint language expression. Indeed, most of those
slotized constraints were introduced (as new slots) to eliminate the
need for the various constraint language expressions we had to write.
Cantwell Smith might say that all this is still just one "grammar" for
representation -- that the frames and slots are a special case of the
constraint language. In that case, we count this as a genuine
disagreement rather than a mistakenly attributed belief.
Dimension 7: We could not understand Cantwell Smith's words here (his
use of "traditional" early on in this discussion, his use of
"non-representational experience" late in the discussion, his "Lisp"
example about (LENGTH '(A B C)) which seems to be just a discourse
example, etc.) So we're not sure if he misunderstood us or genuniely
disagrees.
Resource limited computation is an important part of our
systems' design (e.g., the different GET levels in CYC), and we also
rely on explicit meta-level reasoning about strategies, progress being
made, time of day, models of the particular people using the system at
present, etc.
Dimension 8: BS cites Rosenschein's system as an example of "moving
beyond logic's familiar representational assumptions". Our
understanding of that system, though, is that it is build on rock-solid
modal logic. Perhaps it illustrates our assumption that one can reason
adequately, using propositions, even about phenomena which people
intuitively feel are somehow gestalt, mysterious, non-decomposable.
Dimension 9: A 200% incorrect misreading by Cantwell Smith. Of course
inference is important -- it lets you just represent log**n of the KB
you'd otherwise have to represent if you tried to cache everything (n is
the average depth of reasoning chain your system goes through.) As
mentioned in our article, CYC has dozens of specialized inference
procedures, not just one (as do most AI programs) or zero (as Cantwell
Smith seems to think it does.) Our point was not to advocate a 100
million assertion KB in lieu of a small one plus some inference method
-- rather, it's to advocate a 100 million assertion KB plus dozens of
inference methods as being just barely enough to get us from stage i to
ii in our three-stage research program. It does appear, by the way,
that most common sense inference is rather shallow -- 2-4 "rule firings"
deep -- shallow compared to, say, playing master level chess or proving
a difficult theorem. Still, n=3 means log**3(total assertions) = 100
million. So it would be absurd to even consider an equivalent n=0 KB
(it would have to have 10**(10**(10**(10**8))) assertions in it!)
Why did we say 200% instead of 100%? Because he is also wrong in saying
that reasoning is central to the logicist position. Some mathematical
logicians might say it is, but most computer science logicians would say
that knowledge is (see, e.g., McCarthy's Missouri Program; Pat Hayes'
Second Naive Physics Manifesto; and so on.)
Dimension 11: Does meaning bottom out? There are at least two senses in
which we shout a negative answer; and one way in which we murmur an
affirmative one. First, we have a very strong belief in the "gray box"
view of knowledge and -- hopefully -- our large KB. "Gray box" means
that one typically treats the thing as black box, as primitive, but when
confronted by some novel problem, or the need to analogize, etc., one
can open the black box and examine, modify, etc., the substructure that
comprises it. A simple example of "gray boxing" is what we do with cars
-- we treat them as black boxes so long as they work. Other examples
include the route we take to work every day; our use of an english
dictionary which is itself written in english; etc. Of course, in
practice, CYC and any such KB is of necessity finite. This does not
concern us overmuch. Why? Sometimes, there are boxes which are
(currently) still black to all of humanity -- such as when we delve down
to physical phenomena whose mechanisms are not yet understood; and most
of us get by in the world quite well with a much larger fraction of
black boxes than that.
The second way in which we claim meaning doesn't bottom out in an atomic
base is illustrated by CYC's use of metaphorical sensibility. There are
caches of popular metaphors, and in addition each slot P has a measure
of how sensible (or common) it would be to say X when one actually meant
P(X). E.g., agent and physicalExtent have high metaphorical
sensibility; one often says "The US did such and so" when they mean
"Some agent of the US did such and so"; and one often says "Joe is huge"
when one means "Joe's body -- his physical extent -- is huge." So one
can state assertions like "Russia is angry", "Granadas guzzle gasoline"
or "the relentless sun", and have them disambiguated and interpreted as
(albeit much longer) legal (non-metonomous) expressions.
The third way of looking at this issue, the one in which we murmur an
affirmative answer to the question "Does meaning bottom out?", is to say
that at any fixed level of abstraction, yes it does bottom out. We
effectively drew on compositional semantics, above, to change this
superficial Yes answer into a No, but we suspect that Cantwell Smith
does not believe in compositional semantics.
Dimension 12. Autonomous semantics: To the extent permitted by current
sensors and effectors, the knowledge in CYC has autonomous semantics.
CYC explicitly represents itself as a Program, its current "run" as an
Event, the users logged onto it as Human, their activity as
KnowledgeEntering, etc. The frames about computer mice, mousing, and so
on, tie in to actual events (as when a user moves their mouse or clicks
a button; in such cases, CYC frames get created and/or modified.) The
user's actions cause revisions in the user's model (CYC frames), and
that user model determines in a great many situations how CYC treats the
user. The knowledge in the KB about people -- such as eating and
sleeping -- is used to help guess why a user isn't responding at 12:30
pm or 12:30 am. And so on.
In areas where there is no meaningful overlap -- such as
ChurningCreamIntoButter -- the semantics are of necessity not
autonomous. We do not believe that they need to be in order to
understand and reason intelligently about those concepts (how many of us
have ever made butter, after all?), and perhaps that is the crux of a
genuine disagreement between Smith and us on this issue.
Dimension 13: Representing as. Far from ignoring the "`as' questions",
the basic motivation for our paper and our current research
(Feigenbaum's LSKB for Engineering, and Lenat's CYC) is very much the
brittleness of current systems. And much of that brittleness is due to
what we have called the Representation Trap: using variable names
pregnant with meaning -- pregnant to the user, but barren to the system.
We choose to solve the "as" question empirically, by having our systems
incrementally approach understanding. For instance, when a new piece of
text is digested into CYC, a set of questions is raised, questions which
"anyone ought to be able to answer." If CYC gets wrong answers, its KB
is augmented. And the cycle repeats. Eventually, #%Detente will not
mean any less for the computer than "detente" means to us.
The final part of dimension 13 is the necessity of representing several
different points of view for, say, the concept of detente. In CYC, we
have a scheme for handling recursively nested propositional attitudes
(e.g., Israel is afraid that Iran believes that Iraq expects that the
USA will soon want to provoke a conflict with Russia in the Mid-East.)
To do this efficiently, we represent various sub-abstractions of the
actors (e.g., Iran as Israel believes it to be) and have rules for
projecting knowledge and beliefs, goals and dreads and expectations,
from the "outer" world to the next "inner" world. One need only
explicitly store the exceptions to what these projection rules would
conclude. These rules are typically only run in a backwards direction,
for efficiency reasons (this makes it increasingly costly to accurately
simulate an actor with vastly different knowledge and reasoning methods
than you have. Luckily, or perhaps by choice, we rarely have to deal
with intelligent entities that don't share a large amount of knowledge
with us.) And the various sub-abstractions are only created if we have
something special to say about them, only if they have lasting
importance. (Below, we discuss temporal sub-abstractions of actors and
other objects.)
As stated in our General Remark, above, this is the generous
interpretation of his Dimension 13. The less generous one would say
that this is a genuine disagreement, and an irreconcilable one based on
differences of faith. Even should we succeed in producing a generally
acknowledged intelligent artifact, he might still refuse to acknowledge
it on the grounds of this Dimensional disagreement.
3.b. Thirteen Dimensions: Genuine Disagreements
We begin with a few basic problems with the material he presents before
he begins discussing the various dimensions. The EC perspective BS
presents is too fuzzy to launch an attack against, so we shall restrict
ourselves to particular "local" disagreements.
First of all, before he can criticize us or any AI paradigm for not
having an adequate theory of representation, BS has to define adequate.
We claim that it's enough to have model theory, the theory of
descriptions, etc.
The remark about "researchers rallying" around EC signifies nothing; we
recall similar rallies in AI (e.g., around Resolution), not to mention
the numerous fads in philosophy. Actually, it signifies something a bit
worse, given that the EC fad has been around longer than the Cyc
project, and has consumed a vastly larger annual budget. To wit,
shouldn't they have something to show for all those years of work by now
(i.e., some solid theoretical foundations, ideally embodied in
programs)?
BS seems to assume that the right way to go about developing a field
(especially something like a logic) is to sit down, get all the
foundations straight, and then start using it. (In this case, he's
groping to try to erect a foundation that would compete with logic.)
But that's not how the game is played. Consider what happened with
logic. The big advance came with the Principia, which was nothing but
the Cyc for mathematics. Building it exercised and honed logic.
Tarski, Godel, et al. could then -- a couple of decades later -- set the
foundations. So the best bet for BS, and for what he calls EC, is to
try something real with it. Forget the "decades of debate".
Dimension 1: Explicit representation: A trend that BS begins here, and
that we see throughout most of the twelve dimensions, is his equating us
with the logic position, as if that somehow shows something bad about
us. But there is nothing at odds between, say Cyc and the proposed
Advice Taker (as articulated in McCarthy's classic paper over thirty
years ago; for a more recent update on this point of view, see [McCarthy
83].) The difference between the logic position and ours is
principally one of focus: we think that our research time can best be
spent actually trying to build big common sense KB's, and they think
it's not time yet, and so they continue building tools which eventually
will be used to that end.
Another trend that keeps recurring in his treatment of these twelve
dimensions, and which is first illustrated here, is the following. BS
mentions some very general and also very well known problem (e.g., that
explicit representation may result in unwarranted definiteness and
premature categorization), and then slips in (as it were) the EC view
toward eventually attacking that problem. The unstated parts of such an
"argument" are (a) L&F have an approach to attacking it as well, and (b)
the EC view is just that -- one untried, fuzzy proposal which may or may
not solve the problem. To the extent that the EC view is defined as
"something which solves this problem", it's no wonder it's still
unarticulated.
A third trend, which we will stoop to illustrate here, is ironically the
sort of "tunneling" that he accuses us of. E.g., he goes from a true
assertion (`Interpreted code runs slower than compiled code') to an
unfair generalization (`Explicit representation leads to programs that
are poor in general') and then back down to a few downright false
specializations (`Such programs are less effective'). But
"effectiveness" means what can (ultimately) be derived from a program;
if explicit representation has any effect on this attribute, it is to
improve it, not decrease it! Similarly with his next target, "control
flow". This means something like "how easy is it to decide, and include
information affecting, what to do next, at each moment". Again, if
explicit representation has any effect on this attribute, it is to
improve it, not decrease it! His third target here is the negative
effect this has on "overall system architecture". But that involves
things like what knowledge the program can use, for what purposes.
Given a fixed representation, an explicit one is likely to be usable by
more types of architectures than an implicit one.
We shall give here just one more example of BS's tunneling, and then try
to restrict our attention to more substantive issues: Late in the
Dimension 8 discussion, BS discusses the fact that traditional logic
does not deal with certain issues (how to think creatively about the
world, etc.) He then concludes that the problem is uncorrectable (we
disagree), and logic is therefore worefully all wrong (we disagree), and
therefore EC must be the answer (even if logic were wrong, this does not
follow.)
Dimension 2: Contextual content: Cantwell Smith confuses the common
practice of natural languages to economize (the meaning of "1989" or
"tomorrow" is of course context-dependent) with the necessity of a KB to
have this confusion. In CYC, e.g., there is a separate frame for 1987
in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars, and a third frame for the word
(so to speak) "1987", whose referents include both of those Event
frames. There is little need, or benefit, in having the system itself
confused about the meanings of "1987", any more than it's useful for a
person not to understand the meanings -- even if that person uses the
word "1987" to mean one thing at one time and another thing at another
time. So CYC in a way appears to have "situated" knowledge, but that is
-- thankfully! -- just a superficial phenomenon.
This is in a way BS's main point, so let's restate the part of his
position that we agree with. Consider linguistic utterances (such as
"the time is 4 pm"). The "meaning" of such utterances is highly
dependent on context. I.e, one cannot expect the truth of the sentence
(by itself) to be preserved if you transplant it from one conversation
to another. So if our representation were going to consist of such
(natural) linguistic utterances, we would need some notion of context in
ascribing meaning to our uttarnces.
That much we agree with. But then comes a huge jump in the argument:
from such natural language utterances, BS concludes that the same
will apply to utterances (propositions) in logic. I.e., he jumps to
the conclusion that one cannot ascribe meaning to a logical assertion
independent of context.
The main argument for this is that utterances in logic are, after all,
in some sense linguistic statements. The flaw in this argument is that
there is a crucial difference between sentences in logic and sentences
in natural language. Natural language sentences presume common sense,
user modelling, etc., on the part of the listener, and utilize this to
become relatively (compared to our corresponding logical encoding) terse
-- at the price of introducing ambiguities in word sense, ambiguities in
pronominal referents, ambiguities in metaphorical and analogical
references, and ambiguities in the interpretation of ellipses. By
contrast, our sentences in logic have been "universalized" to the extent
humanly possible (but see the next paragraph): including explicit
clauses that refer to the sorts of contextual information that would be
omitted in natural language utterances. So the BS argument for why
non-situated represetations are meaningless is just sophism, i.e. relies
on a confusion between a natural language uttarance and a logic
utterance. If exactly the same notion of meaning etc. held in both, we
wouldn't need to invent the formal languages of logic, would we?
There was an important clause in the previous paragraph: "... to the
extent humanly possible..." Can we truly "universalize" a sentence?
Is is really possible for us to unearth all the contextual information
and make it explicit (without possibly introducing new implicit
contextual assumptions?). The answer (both from the work of Carnap et.
al. and from results such as Godel's theorem) is that this is indeed
very very hard.[FOOTNOTE: Basically we can eliminate contextual
information when only a single model (up to isomorphism) satisfies our
axioms.]
Not one place in BS is it made clear what exactly this beast "context"
is. The moment Cantewell Smith lapses into what the EC position is, we
get lots of fancy words used in a very fuzzy sense. E.g., "the
egocentricity obtains in virtue of the machine's existence, not in
virtue of any self-reference." Being that "fuzzy" is not bad science --
it's simply not science at all. It might be foolhardy for Lenat and
Feigenbaum to be ambitious, but we are at least precise in what we say.
Mystifying contexts is of no use. Much better is to try to come to
grips with it, and we know of no better tool for this purpose than
logic. Just because we can't 100% universalize a statement in logic
does not mean it is inadequate and should be abandoned.
So, alright, we need to deal with this contextual effect.
What this means is that we should go and make this concept explicit in
our representations and this is exactly the stance being pursued today
by John McCarthy (what he calls Contexts), R. V. Guha (what he calls
Microtheories), and others.
In a way, BS's "computational examples" of context-assuming programs
argue against his position, not for it. When someone at MCC sends a
mail message to DOUG, it reaches me. Why? Because the operating system
accesses a file which quite clearly defines how to disambiguate such
partial addresses. I.e., it contains a simple yet adequate explicit
model of context.
A similar response applies to his remark that Cyc "wouldn't know what
time it was." Natural language interfaces, or other programs written on
top of Cyc, would have the job of answering such questions. They in
turn would call on the Cyc KB to do various sorts of disambiguation.
The KB in turn has explicit models of its being used (in this case, the
particular conversation going on at a certain date and time, on a
certain terminal, what has been said so far, etc.) and from that it is
straightforward to disambiguate references to "today" and "next year".
This is not much different from the way the email program disambiguates
what DOUG means.
If you broaden Cantwell Smith's first two objections (about "explicit
representation" and "not being situated") to the levels that he and his
references typically intend -- namely that a program can not possibly be
intelligent unless it "lives" in the real world and has direct sensory
experiences -- then we patently disagree with such mysticism. To dip
our toe into BS's metaphysical swamp, we might say `Yes, our KB's are
indeed "somewhere": they are where they are being used.' That in turn
would suggest that they should contain explicit models of situations
where we expect them to be used, not used, etc., i.e. a rich explicit
meta theory about the scope and limitations of use of our systems. Just
such a scheme was discussed in detail in [Lenat, Davis, et al 83].
Dimension 3: Content depending on use: We definitely hold that we can
and are constructing knowledge bases whose content means something;
i.e., KBs which have meaningful content independent of any particular
use of that knowldge. We are unhappy with the somewhat vicious tone
that Cantwell Smith uses in his review about this issue; and we find it
surprising that he believes in the negation of such a possibility.
E.g., if you consider some of the facts ("George Washington was the
first President of the USA") and heuristics ("If it's raining, then the
ground is probably getting wet") in our large KB, it seems to us that we
have precise, commonly agreed upon meanings for each of them, and for
each of the terms they mention. We may use the second piece of
knowledge to answer a variety of questions, such as deciding if we
should watch where we're walking, or to guess whether or not the
concrete mason will bother showing up to try to work on our driveway
today, or to guess at why there is a large puddle of ammonia today in
front of our spaceship (landed last week on some moon of Jupiter).
Of course the kind of uses of a proposition may be limited and biased by
the way we choose to represent it, and we as reasoners are limited by
what knowledge we choose to represent in the first place. The net
effect of this is to make there be a pragmatic limit on the multiple
uses of the knowledge in a KB. There aren't an infinite variety, there
is a bias making some more natural or efficient, and the choice of
contents of the KB limits the in-principle macro-level uses (problems
tacklable.) The net effect is at least multiple-use, if not truly
use-neutral, knowledge.
Use-dependent meaning ("Is there water in the refrigerator?") does not
imply we have to abandon the computational framework of logic. It might
mean not insisting on an absolute account of the world. In fact we (and
symbolic AI in general) don't even take a stance on the existence of
such an absolute account. On the other hand, BS seems to be insisting
that there indeed exists such an "all independent" notion of meaning.
Yes, of course the meaning of the english word "water" depends on the
discourse in which it is used. This does not imply that we abandon
explicit represention. It simply argues -- and we would agree -- that
we should represent knowledge about discourses (common types,
communication conventions, etc.) A large task? Yes. A theoretical
impossibility? Hardly. The concept of use-dependent meaning only
undermines the concept of soundness if one is reckless in introducing
it.
BS presumes much too direct a translation between the english word
"water" and the term Water in the KB. He is assuming that we opt for a
close connection, so that the NL--Logic translation is easy. However,
we opt for as "deep" a representation as possible, one that often is
quite far removed from the accidents and surface phenomena of english or
any natural language.
BS then goes on to point out some of the assumptions made in our
research program -- such as compositional semantics. We point them out,
too.[Lenat and Guha 90] Every research program must have, and does have,
numerous assumptions behind it. Not being prepared to make any
assumptions leads only to apathy or to sterile argument. His approach
implies that every problem in AI is "AI-complete"; perhaps this explains
his hesitation to decompose problems.
BS appears to be confusing the role of logic in math (where it was used
not as a real computational tool but as a precise language in which to
state a minimal set of axioms from which everything else would follow)
and the role of logic in AI. Precision (or rather a lack of it) is not
even an issue that computer scientists can choose sides on: programs are
precise, period. Logic is used in AI for its other properties such as
having a denotational semantics, modularity, etc.
He frets that `nothing in the KB means anything.' Well, there are a lot
of expert systems out there built on logic that are very useful -- their
users would not care that BS feels that they dont "mean" anything.
Then, at the very end of the Dimension 3 tirade, BS asks us to rely on
his "experience". If he has scientific evidence as to why we won't
suceed, he needs to be more precise that just saying "it is simply my
experience."
Dimension 4: Consistency mandated? We disagree with Cantwell Smith's
comment that logic hates and avoids inconsistency. That is a rather
dated point of view. Inconsistency at some point is the hallmark of any
non-monotonic system, and a vast amount of attention has been focussed
recently on how to deal with this. Perhaps this is again a case of his
equating logic in math with logic in AI.
Dimensions 6 and 8: Only discrete propositions? We do believe that
discrete propositions can arbitarily closely model continuous phenomena.
More importantly, they can do it adequately and efficiently for
real-world problem solving. And they can capture whatever is worth
capturing about a situation. That is, one need never in principle throw
up one's hands and say "you just had to be there, I can't describe it!"
There is nothing to prevent one from adequately describing the terror
and confusion at a theater fire, or the trials of committee work (here
"adequate" means that conclusions could be drawn about something
involving, say, a theater fire, conclusions which enable the problem
solver to correctly predict victims' reactions and memories, media
coverage, pre-catastrophe fire codes, etc.)
Cantwell Smith's very example disarms him: the implicit assumptions that
writers build their text upon. We have looked at thousands of such
snippets, and continue to look at them, chosen from such diverse sources
as encyclopedias, novels, and newspaper advertisements. Of course there
is a tremendous amount of unstated assumptions, presumed shared
experiences and knowledge -- indeed, that is precisely what we hope to
capture and represent in CYC. But as for implicit non-conceptual
inferences, we have yet to run across one. All such apparent references
have so far been successfully reduced to discrete concepts and
propositions involving them.
BS seems to be confusing the underlying computational formalism (a
digital one) and a representation built on top of that. That the former
is digital does not much impact on the latter. Does he want us all to
go and build analog computers?
He then complains about the limitations of bivariance (having just True
and False and perhaps a few other symbolic truth values). Our defense
is twofold: First, the observation that the world is not vague (though
language is); and second, we symbolic-AI'ers can get far enough with
just what we have (far enough to, say, one day pass the Turing Test.
Dimension 7: Do representations capture all that matters? Earlier, in
3.a, we discussed our confusion over BS's use of several terms and
examples in section. There are some disagreements here as well, but we
shall only call attention to the final line of this section: "there is
no way in which L&F's system would ever be able to understand the
difference between right and left."
We're rather puzzled by this. Cyc can know about right and left
propositionally, the same way it knows about hunger and democracy and
computers and ownership. The assertional right/left knowledge can be
related to digitized images, room floor plans, asymmetric particle
physics phenomena, etc., but this is more of an affectation, a luxury,
than a necessity. If a program uses "right" and "left" properly in
sentences, answers queries involving it (e.g., "Which particular muscles
does Conners use in his backhand?"), and acts appropriately (e.g.,
"Please open the rightmost pod door, HAL"), what more could be required
in order to warrant our admitting that it understands the right versus
left distinction?
Dimension 9: Participation crucial? Of course participation often helps
one understand a situation -- especially in a field which is pre- or
non- theoretical. But even in moderately well understood fields it is
"optional" (e.g., men can be gynecologists; non-criminals can be
lawyers; and so on.) And what does it mean for a college student to
"participate" in Einstein's equations or other areas of math and
theoretical physics?
Dimension 10: Participation and Action crucial. Cantwell Smith seems to
believe there must be some fundamental reason we could never handle "See
you tomorrow", or knowing that "tomorrow, today will be yesterday." Our
response is essentially to repeat the above cry that such reasoning can
easily be formalized and automated. We shall treat this example in a
bit more detail, to convey the flavor of how we actually handle this
sort of reasoning in CYC.
We handle the uttering of "See you tomorrow" by creating a frame E1 in
CYC to represent that uttering event (E1 is an instance of the set of
all events.) Each event is grounded in time (whether or not the
absolute time is known), and the meaning of "tomorrow" is clearly the
day after this event E1 takes place. A CYC frame E2 would be created,
representing a second event. E2's temporal grounding would be "the day
following the day E1 takes place", and E2 would be a seeing or meeting
type of event.
This technique has been known to logicians since 1924. They (as does
CYC) use an abstract (non-situated) notion of time. Smith claims you
can't really compare 5 minutes of cpu time and 5 minutes of waiting at a
train station. They (because of different situations) are simply
different, incommensurable things. It is difficult for us to take his
point of view seriously.
His more complicated example -- and many much more complicated ones --
are also straightforwardly handled in CYC. To see how, we must first
discuss in a bit more detail how CYC handles time.
There is a pragmatically adequate language for describing pieces of time
(unifying both set- and point- based abstractions of time), and fifty
temporal relations -- predicates (slots) which relate one piece of time
to another. Although we originally kept separated (a) events and (b)
the time intervals over which they occur, several years of experience at
knowledge entering convinced us to combine those, so that each frame
representing an event may have those fifty temporal relation slots. One
important class of events are objects (i.e., each object has a starting
and ending time, can end-at-the-same-time-as another object, and so on.)
Another important class -- a superset of the previous one -- is temporal
sub-abstractions of objects. Only those objects which are useful or
required are created and represented explicitly; even more importantly
for finiteness, only required sub-abstractions of objects are
represented explicitly (typically, new sub-abstractions are created
dynamically as required during the solving of a problem.)
Now we can explain how CYC handles the effects of actions occurring and
time passing: the basic idea is that each (frame representing an) event
has actors (before, during, and after the event) which are temporal
sub-abstractions of objects. Rules can thus be stated as to, e.g., the
effect of taking a time-delay poison; they effect a particular
sub-abstraction of the victim which is related to the present event's
actor (the present event is the taking of the poison) in a clearly
expressed fashion (expressed using the vocabulary of temporal
relations.)
4: The Logical Point of View.
Here again we see BS confusing the Nilsson kind of logic approach to AI
(where all that's done with a KB is to prove sentences) and the McCarthy
kind of logic approach to AI (where a declarative KB is used by all
kinds of programs.)
Yes, we are in many ways just a variation on that second "logicist"
theme. The main difference is that we think it's high time to start
trying for "a competent axiomatisation", that additional work on
reasoning is either unnecessary or, more likely, should be guided by the
difficulties encountered in such an attempt. The "dig" about the
expressiveness of our language is of course unwarranted, as this was a
position paper and not an account of our current research projects. The
dig is also, as so much of his review, simply false. See, for example,
[Lenat & Guha 89] for a several hundred page account of our
representation language, inference engines, ontology, and yes, even some
remarks on our paradigm.
5: Conclusion.
BS seems to be saying that AI can't move forward until we solve all the
problems that have been haunting philosophers for centuries. We have
tried to clarify why we disagree.
Just because "wheel-barrows are inadequate to try crossing Europe" does
not mean that our existing representation technology is inadequate to
try representing world knowledge: Analogies can of course be false. As
we discussed, coincidentally, in our paper, this is especially likely if
(as in the wheel-barrow case) there is no causal basis whatsoever for
it, if it was chosen merely for dramatic impact on the reader.
We are hopefully more at the "Age of Discovery" stage in AI, where
attempted ocean crossings will at least point out the inadequacies in
our current vehicles and lead to improvements, and may lead to some
surprising discoveries as well, even if we fail to reach our ultimate
goal. Of course "work lies ahead of us", but let's let necessity and
utility guide that work, not aesthetism and faith. Let's grope towards
being Newton, not Aristotle.
BS has us pegged correctly at the end, as disagreeing with Yeats'
romantic but pessimistic mumbo-jumbo. We would say that inanimate
objects and lower animals can embody truth, but Man (and one day AI) are
distinguished because they can know it.
-------
Acknowledgements:
Discussions of BS with R. V. Guha and John McCarthy provided many useful
insights and examples, which we have included in this reply.
References:
Genesereth, M. "KIF: Knowledge Interchange Format", Stanford, 1989.
Lenat, D. B., "Software for Intelligent Systems", Scientific American,
v. 251, September, 1984, 204-213.
Lenat, D. B., Alan Borning, David McDonald, Craig Taylor, and Stephen Weyer,
"Knoespehre", Proc. IJCAI-83, 1983, 167-169.
Lenat, D. B., Randall Davis, Jon Doyle, Michael Genesereth, Ira Goldstein, and
Howard Schrobe, "Reasoning about Reasoning", in [Hayes-Roth, Waterman, and
Lenat, eds.] Building Expert Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1983, 219-240.
Lenat, D. B., M. Prakash, and Mary Shepherd, "CYC: Using Common Sense
Knowledge to Overcome Brittleness and Knowledge Acquisition
Bottlenecks", AI Magazine, January (Winter), 1986, 65-85.
McCarthy, J., "Some Expert Systems Need Common Sense", Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences, 426, 1983, 129-137.
-------
∂12-Feb-90 0941 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU email address of Minsky?
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002121743.AA27544@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: email address of Minsky?
Do you have an email address of Minsky?
I want to ask him what he thinks of Penrose's arguments.
∂12-Feb-90 1001 VAL re: cs323
[In reply to message rcvd 12-Feb-90 01:33-PT.]
Yes, I remember about Tuesday.
∂12-Feb-90 1024 VAL Tyugu
This is the list of topics of his possible lectures and seminars; do we
want him to give all 4, or only some of them, and what is the best way
to advertize them?
1. Knowledge - based programming environments
-----------------------------------------
Architecture and knowledge systems (knowledge representation
and usage) of the new generation programming environments is discussed.
Several recent Soviet projects are considered.
2. Automatic program synthesis in large
-----------------------------------
Deductive program synthesis technique based on heavily restricted
constructive theories is presented. Its application to knowledge-based
programming and relational programming is demonstrated.
3.Semantics of specification languages
-----------------------------------
Semantics of a specification is considered as a list of axioms
obtained from the specification and applicable for constructively
deriving solvability proofs needed for deductive program synthesis.
Semantics of a kernel of specification languages of programming systems
of PRIZ family is presented.
4. NUT - an object-oriented environment with program synthesizer
-------------------------------------------------------------
Nut is a programming environment where automatic program
synthesis is combined with object-oriented programming paradigm.
Language, architecture and particularities of implementation of
the NUT system are discussed.
∂12-Feb-90 1429 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu CS123 on Tuesday
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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1990 14:32:07 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Subject: CS123 on Tuesday
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.634861927.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
John, this is just a reminder. You asked me to remind you about saying
some things to my Intro to AI class on Tuesday (1:15PM) about beliefs
("Can a thermostat be said to have a belief?" ETc.ETc.). The class has gone
through "basic AI" so far including knowledge representation and search,
but it's all been very simple.
Talk as long as you like (or as little)...your choice.
I think that your visit to them will be very important to them.
The calss is on the upper-level of Skilling, above the auditorium
(Skilling 191).
Thanks,Ed
∂12-Feb-90 1511 MPS
Hi,
Got a call from Sue, Ed Feigenbaum's secretary confirming your
talk tomorrow from 1:15-3:30. She said you had confirmed with
her before.
Anyway, are you going to have Eunok Paek teach your class
tomorrow, if so, would you like me to notify her?
Pat
∂12-Feb-90 1731 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU FYI: [Comments by Hans Moravec on Roger Penrose's recent book]
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From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
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To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: FYI: [Comments by Hans Moravec on Roger Penrose's recent book]
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Redistributed: NanoTechnology↑.x
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This is an open letter, distribute at will.
Comments are solicited. Thanks. -- Hans Moravec
To: Professor Roger Penrose, Department of Mathematics, Oxford, England
Dear Professor Penrose,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on thinking machinery in your new
book "The Emperor's New Mind", and in the February 1 New York Review of Books
essay on my book "Mind Children". I've been a fan of your mathematical
inventions since my high school days in the 1960s, and was intrigued to hear
that you had written an aggressively titled book about my favorite subject. I
enjoyed every part of that book-the computability chapters were an excellent
review, the phase space view of entropy was enlightening, the Hilbert space
discussion spurred me on to another increment in my incredibly protracted
amateur working through of Dirac, and I'm sure we both learned from the
chapter on brain anatomy. You won't be surprised to learn, however, that I
found your overall argument wildly wrong headed!
If your book was written to counter a browbeating you felt from
proponents of hard AI, mine was inspired by the browbeaten timidity I found in
the majority of my colleagues in that community. As the words "frightening"
and "nightmare" in your review suggest, intelligent machines are an
emotion-stirring prospect, and it is hard to remain unbrowbeaten in the face
of frequent hostility. But why hostility? Our emotions were forged over eons
of evolution, and are triggered by situations, like threats to life or
territory, that resemble those that influenced our ancestors' reproductive
success. Since there were no intelligent machines in our past, they must
resemble something else to incite such a panic-perhaps another tribe down the
stream poaching in our territory, or a stronger, smarter rival for our social
position, or a predator that will carry away our offspring in the night. But
is it reasonable to allow our actions and opportunities to be limited by
spurious resemblances and unexamined fears? Here's how I look at the
question. We are in the process of creating a new kind of life. Though
utterly novel, this new life form resembles us more than it resembles anything
else in the world. To earn their keep in society, robots are being taught our
skills. In the future, as they work among us on an increasingly equal
footing, they will acquire our values and goals as well-robot software that
causes antisocial behavior, for instance, would soon cease being manufactured.
How should we feel about beings that we bring into the world, that are similar
to ourselves, that we teach our way of life, that will probably inherit the
world when we are gone? I consider them our children. As such they are not
fundamentally threatening, though they will require careful upbringing to
instill in them a good character. Of course, in time, they will outgrow us,
create their own goals, make their own mistakes, and go their own way, with us
perhaps a fond memory. But that is the way of children. In America, at
least, we consider it desirable for offspring to live up to their maximum
potential and to exceed their parents.
You fault my book for failing to present alternatives to the "hard AI"
position. It is my honest opinion that there are no convincing scientific
alternatives. There are religious alternatives, based on subjective premises
about a special relation of man to the universe, and there are flawed secular
rationalizations of anthropocentrism. The two alternatives you offer, namely
John Searle's philosophical argument and your own physical speculation, are of
the latter kind. Searle's position is that a system that, however accurately,
simulates the processes in a human brain, whether with marks on paper or
signals in a computer, is a "mere imitation" of thought, not thought itself.
Pejorative labels may be an important tool for philosophy professors, but they
don't create reality. I imagine a future debate in which Professor Searle,
staunch to the end, succumbs to the "mere imitation" of strangulation at the
hands of an insulted and enraged robot controlled by the "mere imitation" of
thought and emotion. Your own position is that some physical principle in
human brains produces "non-computable" results, and that somehow this leads to
consciousness. Well, I agree, but the same principle works equally well for
robots, and its not nearly as mysterious as you suggest.
Alan Turing's computability arguments, now more than fifty years old,
were a perfect fit to David Hilbert's criteria for the mechanization of
deductive mathematics, but they don't define the capabilities of a robot or a
human. They assume a closed process working from a fixed, finite, amount of
initial information. Each step of a Turing machine computation can at best
preserve this information, and may destroy a bit of it, allowing the
computation to eventually "run down", like a closed physical system whose
entropy increases. The simple expedient of opening the computation to
external information voids this suffocating premise, and with it the
uncomputability theorems. For instance, Turing proved the uncomputability of
most numbers, since there are only countably many machine programs, and
uncountably many real numbers for them to generate. But it is trivial to
produce "uncomputable" numbers with a Turing machine, if the machine is
augmented with a true randomizing device. Whenever another digit of the
number is needed, the randomizer is consulted, and the result written on the
appropriate square of the tape. The emerging number is drawn uniformly from a
real interval, and thus (with probability 1) is an "uncomputable" number. The
randomizing device allows the machine to make an unlimited number of
unpredetermined choices, and is an unbounded information source. In a
Newtonian universe, where every particle has an infinitely precise position
and momentum, fresh digits could be extracted from finer and finer
discriminations of the initial conditions by the amplifying effects of chaos,
as in a ping pong ball lottery machine. A quantum mechanical randomizer might
operate by repeatedly confining a particle to a tiny space, so fixing its
position and undefining its momentum, then releasing it and registering
whether it travels left or right. Just where the information flows from in
this case is one of the mysteries of quantum mechanics.
The above constitutes a basic existence proof for "uncomputable"
results in real machines. A more interesting example is the augmentation of a
"Hilbert" machine that systematically generates inferences from an initial set
of axioms. As your book recounts, a deterministic device of this kind will
never arrive at some true consequences of the axioms. But suppose the
machine, using a randomizer, from time to time concocts an entirely new
statement, and adds it to the list of inferences. If the new "axiom" (or
hypothesis) is inconsistent with the original set, then sooner or later the
machine will generate an inference of "FALSE" from it. If that happens the
machine backtracks and deletes the inconsistent hypothesis and all of its
inferences, then invents a new hypothesis in its place. Eventually some of
the surviving hypotheses will be unprovable theorems of the original axiom
system, and the overall system will be an idiosyncratic, "creative" extension
of the original one. Consistency is never assured, since a contradiction
could turn up at any time, but the older hypotheses are less and less likely
to be rescinded. Mathematics made by humans has the same property. Even when
an axiomatic system is proved consistent, the augmented system in which the
proof takes place could itself be inconsistent, invalidating the proof!
When humans (and future robots) do mathematics they are less likely to
draw inspiration from rolls of dice than by observing the world around them.
The real world too is a source of fresh information, but pre-filtered by the
laws of physics and evolution, saving us some work. When our senses detect a
regularity (let's say, spherical soap bubbles) we can form a hypothesis (eg.
that spheres enclose volume with the least area) likely to be consistent with
hypotheses we already hold, since they too were abstracted from the real
world, and the real world is probably consistent. This brings me to your
belief in a Platonic mathematical reality, which I also think you make
unnecessarily mysterious. The study of formal systems shows there is nothing
fundamentally unique about the particular axioms and rules of inference we use
in our thinking. Other systems of strings and rewriting rules look just as
interesting on paper. They may not correspond to any familiar kind of language
or thought, but it is easy to construct machines (and presumably animals) to
act on their strange dictates. In the course of evolution (which,
significantly, is driven by random mutations) minds with unusual axioms or
inference structures must have arisen from time to time. But they did poorly
in the contest for survival and left no descendants. In this way we were
shaped by an evolutionary game of twenty questions-the intuitions we harbor
are those that work in this place. The Platonic reality you sense is the
groundrules of the physical universe in which you evolved-not just its physics
and geometry but its logic. If there are other universes with different
rules, other Roger Penroses may be sensing quite different Platonic realities.
And now to that other piece of mysticism, human consciousness. Three
centuries ago Rene Descartes was a radical. Having observed the likes of
clockwork ducks and the imaging properties of bovine eyes, he rejected the
vitalism of his day and suggested that the body was just a complex machine.
But lacking a mechanical model for thought, he exorcised the spirit of life
only as far as a Platonic realm of mind somewhere beyond the pineal gland-a
half-measure that gave us centuries of fruitless haggling on the "mind-body"
problem. Today we do have mechanical models for thought, but the Cartesian
tradition still lends respectability to a fantastic alternative that comforts
anthropocentrists, but explains nothing. Your own proposal merely substitutes
"mysterious unexplained physics" for spirit. The center of Descartes'
ethereal domain was consciousness, the awareness of thought-"I think therefore
I am".
You say you have no definition for consciousness, but think you know
it when you see it, and you think you see it in your housepets. So, a dog
looks into your eyes with its big brown ones, tilts its head, lifts an ear and
whines softly, and you feel that there is someone there there. I suppose,
from your published views, that those same actions from a future robot would
meet with a less charitable interpretation. But suppose the robot also
addresses you in a pained voice, saying "Please, Roger, it bothers me that you
don't think of me as a real person. What can I do to convince you? I am
aware of you, and I am aware of myself. And I tell you, your rejection is
almost unbearable". This performance is not a recording, nor is it due to
mysterious physics. It is a consequence of a particular organization of the
robot's controlling computers and software. The great bulk of the robot's
mentality is straightforward and "unconscious". There are processes that
reduce sensor data to abstract descriptions for problem solving modules, and
other processes that translate the recommendations of the problem solvers into
robot actions. But sitting on top of, and sometimes interfering with, all
this activity is a relatively small reflective process that receives a digest
of sensor data organized as a continuously updated map, or cartoon-like image,
of the robot's surroundings. The map includes a representation of the robot
itself, with a summary of the robot's internal state, including reports of
activity and success or trouble, and even a simplified representation of the
reflective process. The process maintains a recent history of this map, like
frames of a movie film, and a problem solver programmed to monitor activity in
it. One of the reflective process' most important functions is to protect
against endless repetitions. The unconscious process for unscrewing a jar
lid, for instance, will rotate a lid until it comes free. But if the screw
thread is damaged, the attempt could go on indefinitely. The reflective
process monitors recent activity for such dangerous deadlocks and interrupts
them. As a special case of this, it detects protracted inaction. After a
period of quiescence the process begins to examine its map and internal state,
particularly the trouble reports, and invokes problem solvers to suggest
actions that might improve the situation.
The Penrose house robot has a module that observes and reasons about
the mental state of its master (advertising slogan: "Our Robots Care!"). For
reasons best known to its manufacturer, this particular model registers
trouble whenever the psychology module infers that the master does not believe
the robot is conscious. One slow day the reflective process stirs, and notes
a major trouble report of this kind. It runs the human interaction problem
solver to find an ameliorating strategy. This produces a plan to initiate a
pleading conversation with Roger, with nonverbal cues. So the robot trundles
up, stares with its big brown eyes, cocks its head, and begins to speak. To
protect its reputation, the manufacturer has arranged it so the robot cannot
knowingly tell a lie. Every statement destined for the speech generator is
first interpreted and tested by the reflective module. If the robot wishes to
say "The window is open", the reflective process checks its map to see if the
window is indeed labeled "open". If the information is missing, the process
invokes a problem solver, which may produce a sensor strategy that will
appropriately update the map. Only if the statement is so verified does the
reflective process allow it to be spoken. Otherwise the generating module is
itself flagged as troublesome, in a complication that doesn't concern this
argument. The solver has generated "Please, Roger, it bothers me that you
don't think of me as a real person". The reflective process parses this, and
notes, in the map's schematic model of the robot's internals, that the trouble
report from the psychology module was generated because of the master's
(inferred) disbelief. So the statement is true, and thus spoken. "What can I
do to convince you?"-like invoking problem solvers, asking questions sometimes
produces solutions, so no lie here. "I am aware of you, and I am aware of
myself."-the reflective process refers to its map, and indeed finds a
representation of Roger there, and of the robot itself, derived from sensor
data, so this statement is true. "And I tell you, your rejection is almost
unbearable"-trouble reports carry intensity numbers, and because of the
manufacturer's peculiar priorities, the "unconscious robot" condition
generates ever bigger intensities. Trouble of too high an intensity triggers
a safety circuit that shuts down the robot. The reflective process tests the
trouble against the safety limit, and indeed finds that it is close, so this
statement also is true. [In case you feel this scenario is far fetched, I am
enclosing a recent paper by Steven Vere and Timothy Bickmore of the Lockheed
AI center in Palo Alto that describes a working program with its basic
elements. They avoid the difficult parts of the robot by working in a
simulated world, but their program has a reflective module, and acts and
speaks with consciousness of its actions.]
Human (and even canine) consciousness undeniably has subtleties not
found in the above story. So will future robots. But some animals (including
most of our ancestors) get by with less. A famous example is the Sphex wasp,
which paralyzes caterpillars and deposits them in an underground hatching
burrow. Normally she digs a burrow, seals the entrance, and leaves to find a
caterpillar. Returning, she drops the victim, reopens the entrance, then
turns to drag in the prey. But if an experimenter interrupts by moving the
caterpillar a short distance away while the wasp is busy at the opening, she
repeats the motions of opening the (already open) burrow, after shifting the
prey back. If the experimenter again intervenes, she repeats again, and again
and again, until either the wasp or the experimenter drops from exhaustion.
Apparently Sphex has no reflective module to detect the cycle. It's not a
problem in her simple, stereotyped life, malicious experimenters being rare.
But in more complex niches, opportunities for potentially fatal loops must be
more frequent and unpredictable. The evolution of consciousness may have
started with a "watchdog" circuit guarding against this hazard.
I like thinking about the universe's exotic possibilities, for
instance about computers that use quantum superposition to do parallel
computations. But even with the additional element of time travel (!), I've
never encountered a scheme that gives more than an exponential speedup, which
would have tremendous practical consequences, but little effect on
computability theorems. Or perhaps the universe is like the random axiomatic
system extender described above. When a measurement is made and a wave
function collapses, an alternative has been chosen. Perhaps this constitutes
an axiomatic extension of the universe- today's rules were made by past
measurements, while today's measurements, consistent with the old rules, add
to them, producing a richer set for the future.
But robot construction does not demand deep thought about such
interesting questions, because the requisite answers already exist in us.
Rather than being something entirely new, intelligent robots will be ourselves
in new clothing. It took a billion years to invent the concept of a body, of
seeing, moving and thinking. Perhaps fundamentals like and space and time
took even longer to form. But while it may be hard to construct the arrow of
perceived time from first principles, it is easy to build a thermostat that
responds to past temperatures, and affects those of the future. Somehow,
without great thought on our part, the secret of time is passed on to the
device. Robots began to see, move and think almost from the moment of their
creation. They inherited that from us.
In the nineteenth century the most powerful arithmetic engines were in
the brains of human calculating prodigies, typically able to multiply two 10
digit numbers in under a minute. Calculating machinery surpassed them by
1930. Chess is a richer arena, involving patterns and strategy more in tune
with our animal skills. In 1970 the best chess computer played at an amateur
level, corresponding to a US chess federation rating of about 1500. By 1980
there was a machine playing at a 1900 rating, Expert level. In 1985, a
machine (HiTech) at my own university had achieved a Master level of 2300.
Last year a different machine from here (Deep Thought) achieved Grandmaster
status with a rating of 2500. There are only about 100 human players in the
world better-Gary Kasparov, the world champion, is rated between 2800 and
2900. In past each doubling of chess computer speed raised the quality of its
play by about 100 rating points. The Deep Thought team has been adopted by
IBM and is constructing a machine on the same principles, but 1000 times as
fast. Though Kasparov doubted it on the occasion of defeating Deep Thought in
two games last year, his days of absolute superiority are numbered. I
estimated in my book that the most developed parts of human mentality-
perception, motor control and the common sense reasoning processes-will be
matched by machines in no less than 40 years. But many of the skills employed
by mathematics professors are more like chess than like common sense. Already
I find half of my mathematics not in my head but in the steadily improving
Macsyma and Mathematica symbolic mathematics programs that I've used almost
daily for 15 years. Sophomoric arguments about the indefinite superiority of
man over machine are unlikely to change this trend.
Well, thank you for a stimulating book. As I said in the
introduction, I enjoyed every part of it, and its totality compelled me to
put into these words ideas that might otherwise have been lost.
Very Best Wishes,
Hans Moravec
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
Arpanet: hpm@rover.ri.cmu.edu
Fax: (412) 682-1793
Telephone: (412) 268-3829
----- End Included Message -----
∂12-Feb-90 2000 JMC
letter re penrose review
∂13-Feb-90 0122 poser@csli.Stanford.EDU Communism
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 90 01:24:26 PST
From: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Message-Id: <9002130924.AA29521@csli.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Communism
Yes, the Japanese Communist party is fairly moderate in the sense of
not being associated with the really radical groups. They have
always been pro-soviet, which didn't endear them to the ultra-radicals,
who were Maoist. They have also suffered from their association with
the Soviet Union because of the fact that the Soviet Union continues to
occupy Japanese territory illegally and to use its territorial
claims as a basis for harassing Japanese fishermen, which the Japanese
are pretty sensitive about.
(This makes me think of my surprise last year in Osaka on reading a sign
near my apartment that read "East Ward Communist Party Lifestyle Consultation
Center". Doesn't it conjure up visions of people deciding whether to
take up squash or racquetball? It is actually more of a social-service
place.)
But hasn't the CPUSA been moderate in this sense too? They
didn't attract the Weathermen and other radical New Left groups
like the New American Movement, which were either independent or
Maoist, and most of more old-fasihoned radical groups I can think
of are Troskyite, like the Spartacist League.
∂13-Feb-90 1102 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
GENERAL PATTERNS OF NONMONOTONIC REASONING
Daniel Lehmann
Hebrew University
Monday, February 19, 2:30pm
MJH 252
Recent developments in the area of nonmonotonic reasoning have
converged onto a number of specific properties of nonmonotonic
inference operations. Nonmonotonic inference operations appear
as a natural generalization of Tarski's consequence operations.
The need and justification for considering such a generalization
will be discussed and some of the recent results reviewed.
∂13-Feb-90 1154 VAL Nonmonotonic seminar--correction
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I forgot, of course, that next Monday is a holiday. We'll postpone this
talk until Feb 26, or arrange a special time. Stay tuned.
--Vladimir
∂13-Feb-90 1600 CLT
C Tajnai says don't forget the forum buffet
∂13-Feb-90 1909 CLT Fellowship supplement for Zabih
To: littell@SUNBURN.STANFORD.EDU
CC: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Charge it to 2-dma-804
∂13-Feb-90 2050 zeng@cs.ubc.ca Elephant 2000
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Date: 13 Feb 90 20:50 -0800
From: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
To: <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <1629*zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: Elephant 2000
Return-Receipt-To: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Dear Prof. McCarthy:
This is a msg which I sent about 2 weeks ago. Since I
didn't hear from you for a while, I hereby resend it
to you just in case the previous got lost...Tao
==================================
Dear Professor McCarthy:
From a poster on the bulletin board here at the Computer Science Department
at the University of British Columbia, I read that, last November at UCSD,
you delievered a speech
on the Speech Acts based programming language -- Elephant 2000.
I am very interested in that topic and my thesis work is also in that
direction (I am now a Master's candidate at UBC CompSci). I wonder if
you could send me some material regarding Elephant 2000 and your
research on Speech Acts based programming. My email address is:
zeng@cs.ubc.cdn
You may send your paper in Latex file or PostScript file format to me
by email, or you may use fax -- the department fax machine no. is:
(604)228-5485
Thank you very much for your help.
Sincerely yours,
Tao Zeng
Feb.7
∂13-Feb-90 2323 zeng@cs.ubc.ca re: Elephant 2000
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id AA14840; Tue, 13 Feb 90 23:24:05 PST
From: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Date: 13 Feb 90 23:23 -0800
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <gibRX@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <1631*zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: re: Elephant 2000
Return-Receipt-To: zeng@cs.ubc.ca
Dear Professor McCarthy:
I am very glad to hear from you.
I still haven't received the paper yet. Was it sent by mail?
I am in the process of finishing a paper on the application
of speech acts based conversation to support office communication
tasks. The paper is supposed to be finished by Feb.20th
when the deadline for submitions to a IFIP WG84 conference is due.
I really would like to read through your paper before I
finalize my own paper and submit it to the conference.
So you see I need the paper as soon as possible, and the worth thing
is that the university will be closed on Thursday and Friday, that
means I can't get my mails until next Monday the 18th, unless the mail
comes tomorrow.
I wonder if it's possible for your secretary or yourself
to send the latex file of your paper to me via email or fax it to
me at (604)228-5485 (attn. Tao Zeng), just in case there will be too
long a delay for the mail to arrive.
Your help will be highly appreciated.
Sincerely yours,
Tao Zeng
Feb.13, 1990
∂14-Feb-90 0925 VAL Tyugu
I'm going to schedule Tyugu's talks for next two Wednesdays, 3:15.
Is this a good time for you?
∂14-Feb-90 0946 siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU Re: Making sense of Mandela
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Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 09:44:55 PST
From: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
To: JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Re: Making sense of Mandela
Newsgroups: su.etc
In-Reply-To: <Kj2i$@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Stanford University
Cc:
Haven't heard from Wm Mandel on KPFA for, oh, maybe 3 or 4 months now
(haven't been listening to KPFA lately); but he was around not too
long ago, I think.
By the way, KPFA's coverage in the days immediately following the
October quake was extremely good, and not recognized by the media in
the Bay Area -- many good interviews, etc. (Including the panel
discussion where someone said, "Well, we've just go to take the bull
by the horns and run with it".)
∂14-Feb-90 1006 VAL re: Tyugu
[In reply to message rcvd 14-Feb-90 09:32-PT.]
How about Friday next week?
∂14-Feb-90 1025 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU remarks on your review of Penrose
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002141827.AA00834@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: remarks on your review of Penrose
Remarks on your review of Penrose:
1. You begin by saying "Penrose doesn't believe computers...can be
intelligent". I couldn't find anything in the book to support this
claim. Indeed the bottom of p. 10 and top of p. 11 make it clear,
as does the title of his chapter, that he is concerned with
computers "having a mind" or "being conscious" rather than merely
exhibiting apparently intelligent behavior.
I think we have to distinguish more carefully the
properties of
"intelligence" (behavioristically defined, as in the Turing test)
"understanding"
"having a mind"
"being conscious"
"awareness"
"free will"
It seems that Penrose argues against computers have a mind, being conscious,
having awareness or free will, but not really against them exhibiting
intelligence. A middle case is "understanding", as in the Chinese room.
It's not clear if "understanding" requires consciousness, or if it (like
intelligence) can be recognized by behavioral criteria. That seems to be
what the Chinese room controversy is about.
2. The first part of your review is a good essay on the aims and
methodology of AI for the layperson. But it seems to me that Penrose's
book is not really anti-AI, if we limit the aim of AI to making
machines exhibit intelligent behavior. You yourself say that the "strong AI"
position (which has to do with consciousness) is a straw man, and I think
you have long been a proponent of the behavioristic criterion for
intelligence (as well as for beliefs, etc.)
Therefore there is no need to defend AI against Penrose's non-attack.
Of course, perhaps you do ALSO think that machines can be made to
be conscious; but that is SEPARATE question of whether they can be
made to be intelligent, at least in my opinion.
3. Line 266 of your review, where you try to refute what Penrose
says on p. 412, seems to me to miss the mark. Penrose isn't talking
about judgements in the sense of deductions from facts, even in the
sense of non-monotonic deductions. Penrose is talking about
judgements in the sense of Martin-L\"of (I don't know if you have read his
"Constructive Type Theory", so this may not make sense to you, in which
case ignore it); or to put it another way, judgements in the sense
that G\"odel talked about, whether a certain proposed new axiom is true.
Your dialogue with the machine about formal systems is good in that
it corrects a common misconception, but I think it brings out the point
relevant here as well: the HUMAN is asked to supply the confidence. It's
an example of the kind of judgement Penrose is talking about on p. 412
to judge whether a proposed ordinal notation is really well-founded,
so that transfinite induction on it should be accepted. Penrose would
say that a human is "in touch with Plato's mathematical world" and so
equipped to make that judgement. To argue against this (and I don't
think it's by any means self-evidently true or false) requires a much
deeper line of argument what you give.
4. Your discussion of the "one-graviton" criterion and your proposed
refuting experiment are fascinating. But:
Line 457: "I don't know whether Penrose or other mathematical
physicists or philosophers of quantum mechanics would regard this as
an argument against his idea". Why not ask him via email? or
if not that, ask some other physicist? Or, if you are certain that this
experiment would (given the conjectured outcome) refute the one-graviton
criterion, then delete this sentence about "I don't know." It seems
important whether this is or isn't a crucial experiment for the proposed
theory.
∂14-Feb-90 1354 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Program Verification Paper
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9002142155.AA08636@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Program Verification Paper
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 15:55:24 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
You may recall I mentioned that I am editing a collection on the
subject of program verification for the ACM Book Series, of which
Peter Wegner is the editor. One of my contributors has unexpect-
edly backed out and I would like to know if you would be interest-
ed in giving me a paper to replace his. The speech-act conception
outlined in your earlier message would be perfect, if you were to
pursue it. I would also like to consider it for an early issue of
Minds and Machines, if the idea appeals to you. Please let me know.
Jim (Fetzer)
∂14-Feb-90 1406 @Hudson.Stanford.EDU:jcm@iswim.Stanford.EDU Re: Program Verification Paper
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To: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Subject: Re: Program Verification Paper
Cc: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 14 Feb 90 15:51:05 -0500.
<9002142151.AA06766@ub.d.umn.edu>
From: John C. Mitchell <jcm@cs.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: John C. Mitchell <jcm@cs.stanford.edu>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 13:36:05 PST
Sender: jcm@iswim
This is for JMC, not JCM (me):
From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9002142151.AA06766@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Program Verification Paper
To: jcm@sail.stanford.edu
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 15:51:05 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
You may recall I mentioned that I am editing a collection on the
subject of program verification for the ACM Book Series, of which
Peter Wegner is the editor. One of my contributors has unexpect-
edly backed out and I would like to know if you would be interest-
ed in giving me a paper to replace it. The speech-act conception
outlined in your earlier message would be perfect, if you were to
pursue it. I would also like to consider it for an early issue of
Minds and Machines, if the idea appeals to you. Please let me know.
Jim (Fetzer)
∂14-Feb-90 1724 rosenblo@venera.isi.edu Vladimir Lifschitz
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Posted-Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 15:37:37 PST
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Vladimir Lifschitz
Reply-To: rosenblo@venera.isi.edu
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 15:37:37 PST
From: Paul Rosenbloom <rosenblo@venera.isi.edu>
John: Hi. We are considering Vladimir Lifschitz for a CS faculty position at
USC, and I've been delegated to try to get some quick feedback on him (we're
running late in this process). You will be receiving a form letter in the
mail (FYI, the template is below), and it would be useful if we could get an
official letter from you at that time. However, I was wondering if, in the
very near future, you could send me some informal comments about him through
email (or a copy of the full letter, if you have already written it)? Thanks.
-- Paul
This is the form letter you will be receiving.
Dear Professor::
____ is being considered for a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor
in the Computer Science Department at USC and he has given us your name as
a reference. I would appreciate your frank opinion of him, both personally
and professionally, with special emphasis on the following points:
1. A statement of your relationship with him;
2. The quality of his thesis, potential of his research and its impact
on the field;
3. His intellectual capacity;
4. His ability as a teacher and his interaction with students
Please feel free to add any other information that you believe would help us
in evaluating ----- for appointment in a research-oriented university. Your
comments will be held in the strictest confidence.
Sincerely yours,
∂15-Feb-90 0657 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Does AI need a defense or not?
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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 90 06:59:31 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002151459.AA13129@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Does AI need a defense or not?
I said it didn't, but maybe it does, if Penrose's book is
PERCEIVED as an attack on AI. The title doesn't help.
Anyway, do you think "mindless intelligence" is possible?
It was implicit in my comments that it certainly is, and that it
is what you might get by carrying out your research program.
Strong AI seems to me to be the claim that "mindless intelligence"
isn't possible. (At least that's one of the claims of "strong ai").
∂15-Feb-90 0917 MPS Permission
Good morning,
Adam Cohen (Harvard) 617-493-2986 called regarding his
thesis and your oral history done by C. Babbage. He would
like to quote a few sentences of it and is asking for your
permission.
Another item.
The I Center called and they want to change the meeting place
on the 27th to the I Center. 31984 - 31985. They did say it
would be okay if you still want to keep it here. I will need
to know so I can release or confirm Nils conference room. Thanks
∂15-Feb-90 1148 rabin@harvard.harvard.edu Re: Did you get
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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 90 14:50:26 EST
From: rabin@harvard.harvard.edu (Michael Rabin)
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: Did you get
Cc: rabin@harvard.harvard.edu
Hi John,
The e-mail is playing tricks on me. I got your
Dec. 11th message and responded from Jerusalem.
Now i am back in Cambridge for a few days and
found your question, which should have also
been forwarded to Jerusalem. All this supports
your contention that e-mail through a net
is inferior to doing it through the telephone.
I spoke with Paul Martin. He was reluctant to
promise funds for a course. His style is to
count FTE s and parts thereof and use those
to cover the essentials and he is already
paying for three outside professors ( of
the "practice" so called).
What Martin suggested is to ask you to give
a series of lectures to be advertised and
open to the Boston CS community and other
interested parties (philosophers etc.).
There are several established named
lecture series to accomodate this.
The lectures are for an honorarium and
I can try to negotiate for a maximum but
I do not know what the range is.
Coming back to the question of timetable
and housing, what is your current thinking
about this. From my point of view having
you here for at least the Fall term, or
a substential portion thereof.
Everybody here is naturally very enthusiastic
about the prospect of your visit and the
more of you that we can have the better.
Best personal regards, Michael.
∂15-Feb-90 1152 rabin@harvard.harvard.edu Re: Did you get
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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 90 14:54:27 EST
From: rabin@harvard.harvard.edu (Michael Rabin)
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: Did you get
Cc: rabin@harvard.harvard.edu
On reading my just sent letter I see that I
have not finished the last sentence in
the last paragraph but one. The sentence
" From my point of view..." should end
with "is best." M.R.
∂15-Feb-90 1308 barb@cs.uiuc.edu
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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 90 15:11:49 -0600
From: Barb Armstrong <barb@cs.uiuc.edu>
Message-Id: <9002152111.AA12265@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Teodor C. Przymusinski is being considered for a faculty position in the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. Would
you please send a letter of recommendation for him (e-mail is fine).
Thank you,
Barbara Armstrong
Secretary to C. W. Gear
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1304 W. Springfield Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
∂15-Feb-90 1648 zeng@cs.ubc.ca I got the paper you faxed to me
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Date: 16 Feb 90 0:47
From: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
To: <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: "Dr.Carson Woo" <carson_woo@mtsg.ubc.ca>
Message-Id: <1636*zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: I got the paper you faxed to me
Return-Receipt-To: <zeng@cs.ubc.ca>
Dear Prof.McCarthy:
Thank you and your secretary very much for offering the help.
I browsed over it and yes, it is closely related to our work here at
UBC.
I will certainly keep you be informed if we have any comments when
studying it carefully.
Again, thanks for help.
Sincerely yours,
Tao Zeng
Feb.15
Cc: Dr.Carson C.Woo
∂15-Feb-90 1651 VAL
%2/21/89
%To: Austin, Cornell, Purdue, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Yale
\input letter.tex[1,val]
\valletterhead
\address
Professor Martin H. Schultz, Chairman
Department of Computer Science
Yale University
P. O. Box 2158 Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-2158
\body
Dear Professor Schultz:
This letter is being written on behalf of Dr.~Teodor Przymusinski, who has applied
for a position at your department. I have known Dr.~Przymusinski since 1983, when
we worked together at the University of Texas, and I am familiar with most of
what he has published since then.
Przymusinski's research interests are mainly in the area of the foundations of
logic programming and deductive databases---declarative and procedural
semantics, negation-by-failure, constructive negation. In my view, his
papers on negation in logic programming are among the best written on
this important subject. His ideas and results have deeply influenced this field,
and they are often referenced and used by other researchers. His
other important contribution is the modification of Robinson's resolution
that can be used for automating nonmonotonic reasoning. Przymusinski is
known as one of the authors and proponents of the methodology of research
based on relating nomonotonic reasoning to logic programming.
Before Przymusinski turned to computer science and artificial intelligence, he
worked in set-theoretic topology. I am not familiar with that work and cannot
comment on it. But the crisp mathematical style of Przymusinski's papers and
lectures, that makes them so delightful and so easy to follow,
clearly shows a person with strong background in abstract mathematics. This
background is nicely complemented by his practical experience in computer
programming.
I believe Przymusinski's achievements and abilities should make him extremely
attractive to many departments, and I have no hesitation to give my highest
recommendation for him.
\closing
Sincerely,
Vladimir Lifschitz
\endletter
\end
∂15-Feb-90 2115 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: my class
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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1990 22:24:49 PST
From: Ed Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: re: my class
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 08 Feb 90 1447 PST
Message-Id: <MacMS.56497.23010.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
John, thanks very much for coming over to my class and talking to them (about
some very interesting things). You're a big influence on young people, and I
felt it was important in an introduction to AI that they get the chance to
meet you and hear from you.
Ed
-------
∂15-Feb-90 2207 CHEN@HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU IMPORTANT
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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 90 01:09 EST
From: CHEN@HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU
Subject: IMPORTANT
To: jmc@sail.stanford.EDU
X-VMS-To: MAILER%"jmc@sail.stanford.edu"
Dear Professor McCarthy:
I am currently making application to doctoral programs in computer science
for the coming fall semester. I have heard a great deal about your work and
am very interested in working with you. I would like to apply to your program.
Following is a brief file concerning my background and my career interests.
I would appreciate your careful review of this material and your careful
consideration of my entry into your program. I understand that the official
deadline has passed for applying to your university. However, I am hoping that
perhaps you might still consider my application because I am very keen to work
with you. I believe that doors are always open for exceptional students.
Please tell me how I might possibly handle a late application.
I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much.
Respectfully yours,
CHEN, Xianghui
Department of Statistics
Harvard University
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------- PERSONAL FILE -------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIOGRAPHICAL Name: CHEN, Xianghui
INFORMATION: Sex: Male
Date of Birth: 02/12/68
Home Address: 222 Richards Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
Telephone: Home: (617)-493-5013
Office: (617)-495-5325
E-Mail Address: chen@husc3.harvard.edu
or chen@hustat.harvard.edu
================================================================================
EDUCATION: B.E., Tsinghua University, P.R.China, 1984-89.
This degree is for my undergraduate major in
computer science.
B.S., Tsinghua University, P.R.China, 1985-89.
This degree is for my undergraduate major in
mathematics.
Ph.D., Harvard University, U.S.A., 1989-Present.
This degree is for my graduate major in statistics.
The expected date of award is June 1994. An A.M. degree
will be given by the end of this academic year.
================================================================================
AWARDS & * Beijing Computer Competition -- first prize.
ACADEMIC
WORK: Only a few months after starting learning computers in my
fifth year of high school, I took part in the first Beijing
Computer Competition and won first prize. From that time
forward computers have occupied a central place in my life.
Supporting my interests in computers was a strong background in
mathematics, which began in my childhood and brought me many
prizes, e.g., in 1983 I was selected as one of the top twenty
finalists in China in the 34th AHSMC (American High School
Mathematics Competition).
----------------------------------------------------------------
* College Entrance -- special standing.
In 1984, I was admitted to Tsinghua University, the
finest university in China in the science and technical fields.
In addition to entering one year early, because of my back-
ground I was also able to enter without taking the NCEE
(National College Entrance Examinations), normally required for
every prospective student. There were only four students
awarded such an honor in China that year. I chose to enter the
Computer Science Department and began work in Software Systems.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* Computer Science Concentrations -- only student studying in
two main subareas.
In 1987, after three years' study in Software Systems,
I entered Artificial Intelligence and thus became the only
student studying in these two subareas in the Computer Science
Department. In AI, in addition to required subjects I also
undertook studies in relevant topics such as Decision Support
System, Non-Deterministic Reasoning and Parallel Processing for
AI. I have a good command of software, have proficiency in
more than ten computer languages and three operating systems,
and possess a very good style of programming.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* Dual Majors in CS & Math -- one of the four students.
To strengthen my background in computer science, I also
began in my second year to major in mathematics in the double
-degree program, which is availible only to a few top students.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* Teaching & Research.
In addition to my coursework and research, I also had one
year of teaching experience (instructing classes, correcting
papers, holding tutorials and giving guidance in computer
operation). In conjunction with my department, I also worked
for two years as a research assistant in several government
projects such as The Highway Charge Management System (using
DBMS techniques) for the Beijing Highway Administrative Office,
which oversaw the entire transportation system of Beijing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* Highest Class Standing.
I graduated in 1989 with two baccalaureate degrees, one
in computer science and the other in mathematics, and was
ranked highest in both of my dual fields.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* The only student from Tsinghua University last year who gained
admission to a Ph.D. program at Harvard Unversity and was
offered Harvard's fellowship.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* Good Work at Harvard.
I have been doing very well in statistics at Harvard.
Particularly, I got the highest grade (A) in the course
"Mathematical Statistics", though I had less background in
statistics than the other students at the enrollment.
================================================================================
RESEARCH & I believe my dual foundation in computer science and
CAREER GOALS: mathematics allows me greater insight and broader creativity
in my work with computers. I would like to use this background
in further study of more advanced and theoretical approaches in
the area of AI and Software Systems. For this reason, I am
seeking entrance into your graduate program. My study plans at
your university are to acquire more knowledge and methods in
order to put my ability to full use in future research. Besides
classroom experience and theoretical studies, I hope to assist
in research or teaching for some professors, engage in
practical work in laboratories, and solve theoretical and
practical problems with the aid of advanced facilities. Under
the department's guidance, I would like to conduct my doctoral
research in the area of AI or Software Systems.
I have selected your university because of the position it
leads in the world in its quality of education, its standard of
research, and its wealth of resources. I believe it would be
a good place for me to conduct research in new computer
theories. At the same time, I believe that I would be an
asset to the intellectual community of your university.
Hopefully, this will all aid in the fullfillment of my
ultimate goals, to make significant contributions in the area
of computer science in the world.
================================================================================
ADDITIONAL Last year, to get the best academic training and research
INFORMATION: experience, I declined my acceptance as a graduate student to
the Academia Sinica in China and applied to some top
universities in the USA. Due to my economic situation last
year, I was only able to apply to those universities which
could waive my application fee. Since most universities with
top computer science program were insisting on submission of
application fees, I was unable to apply computer science
programs and applied primarily to statistics and mathematics
programs instead. Of the offers I received for graduate study,
Harvard University was my best choice. So I accepted Harvard's
fellowship and entered the Ph.D. program in the Department of
Statistics last September. Each year Harvard University
accepts only about ten Chinese students directly from China.
I thought that perhaps I could be happy in the field of
statistics, but I am finding that my heart really is in
computers. Though I have been doing very well in statistics at
Harvard and I am confident that I could be a good expert in
statistics, I am more interested in computer science and must
go back to where my heart truly dwells. Since my financial
situation has improved from last year, I am now able to make
application to your department.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------- END OF THE FILE ------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
∂16-Feb-90 1135 A.ABIE@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU re: Opinions of Potential Faculty
Received: from Macbeth.Stanford.EDU by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 16 Feb 90 11:32:01 PST
Date: Fri 16 Feb 90 11:31:27-PST
From: ABE DEANDA <A.ABIE@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Opinions of Potential Faculty
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <Cja3B@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12566872327.20.A.ABIE@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Correct, Shockley never expressed an opinion about racial
purity. Most of his comments on the issue of race concerned
eugenics - such as, he was concerned that the minority
population seemed to be procreating at a greater rate than the
majority population.
My comment about Shockley was meant just to illustrate that
a person can be outstanding in his or her field while nonetheless
holding views (political or otherwise) which could be considered
outside of the mainstream.
Abe
-------
∂16-Feb-90 1148 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu contexts and lifting
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Received: by sumex-aim.stanford.edu (4.0/inc-1.0)
id AA15445; Thu, 15 Feb 90 23:48:11 PST
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1990 23:48:10 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: contexts and lifting
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635154490.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I spent some time thinking about emotions, contexts and the issue of
lifting after what you said on Wednesday. I think I have what might
a partial solution for the case of contexts with arguments to certain
predicates suppressed.
You suggested that I send you shorter write-ups of what I had (rather than
wait for long periods of time and give you long documents). So I was
wondering if I should send the material I have written up on it.
Please tell me if you want me to send it to you.
Thanks
Guha
∂16-Feb-90 1159 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Dennett
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id AA27723; Fri, 16 Feb 90 07:21:24 -0800
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 90 07:21:24 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002161521.AA27723@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: Dennett
Yes, I have read 'Brainstorms'.
∂16-Feb-90 1306 mrg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: parking
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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1990 13:07:17 GMT
From: Michael Genesereth <mrg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: parking
In-Reply-To: Your message of 15 Feb 90 1906 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635202437.mrg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
John,
Right. Me either. But there are problems. (1) the lot will not
always be there. (2) there is a bug in my approach to parking, viz.
I first look on the oval, then onthe cross strrets, then over near
bio. The search is sometimes worth it; so I do not always go staight
to the lot. The problem is that, when I fail to find a spot, it takes
me longer. I also avoid the bio lot because it is more distant and
I frequently have lots of thinbgs to carry.
mrg
∂16-Feb-90 1402 ME new keyboard
You now have a new, working, DD keyboard. (Looks like it might have
been Ralph's.)
∂16-Feb-90 1440 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 90 14:04:00 MST
From: teodor@utep-vaxa.UUCP (Teodor C. Przymusinski <utep-vaxa!teodor@apple.com>)
Message-Id: <9002162104.AA10709@utep-vaxa.UUCP>
To: apt@cs.utexas.edu, mcvax.bitnet!apt@cs.utexas.edu,
hujics.bitnet!beeri@cs.utexas.edu, utep.bitnet!cv00@cs.utexas.edu,
ibm.com!jll@cs.utexas.edu, sail.stanford.edu!jmc@cs.utexas.edu,
cs.cornell.edu!marek@cs.utexas.edu,
jacksun.cs.umd.edu!minker@cs.utexas.edu,
doc.imperial.ac.uk!rak@cs.utexas.edu,
ai.toronto.edu!reiter@cs.utexas.edu,
sail.stanford.edu!val@cs.utexas.edu
Subject: teodor mail
The following universities requested letters of
recommendation on my behalf. I would greatly appreciate if you would
mail your letter of recommendation to them
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Whenever available, I have included
electronic mail and/or fax addresses to speed up the process.
For your convenience, I have also enclosed my current curriculum
vitae (in LaTeX format).
Thank you again for your support.
Teodor
P.S. I am leaving for Warsaw tomorrow to attend my mother's funeral and
I will return on Feb. 25.
====================== ADDRESSES =========================================
Lawrence L. Larmore
Chairman, Computer Science Recruitment Committee
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521
larmore@ucrmath.ucr.edu
(714)787-4710
FAX: 787-3800
------------
Maggie Kettwig
Administrative Assistant
Computer Science Department
Washington State University
Pullman, Wash. 99164-1210
(509)-335-6636
------------
Juris Hartmanis
Chair, Recruiting Committee
Department of Computer Science
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7501
becky@cs.cornell.edu
(607)-255-7316
FAX: (607)-255-4428
------------------
Charles M. Shub
Chair, Recruiting Committee
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado
Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150
(719)-593-3325
----------------------
Greg W. Scragg
Chairperson
Department of Computer Science
State University of New York
Geneseo, NY 14454-1401
(716)-245-5322
---------------
Alfred W. Hales
Department of Mathematics
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1555
=================== CURRICULUM VITAE =====================================
\documentstyle[12pt]{article}
\oddsidemargin 0.0in
\evensidemargin 0.0in
\textwidth 6.5in
\topmargin 0.0in
\headheight 0.0in
\headsep 0.0in
\footheight 12pt
\footskip 30pt
\textheight 9.0in
\title{Curriculum Vitae}
\author{Teodor C. Przymusinski}
\begin{document}
\sloppy
\maketitle
\hyphenation{dimen-sion}
\hyphenation{zero-dimen-sio-nal}
\hyphenation{data-base}
\section*{Biographical Data}
\begin{description}
\item[Born:] January 18, 1947
\item[Family Status:] Married, two children
\item[Ph.D. Degrees:] Ph.D.(1974) and Habilitated Ph.D.(1979)
\\Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
\item[SS\#:] 193-54-3596
\item[Residence Status:] U.S. Permanent Resident.
\end{description}
\section*{Awards, Honors, Other Recognition}
\begin{itemize}
\item Outstanding Contribution Award at the
First International Conference on Principles of
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'89), Toronto, May 1989.
\item
Invited speaker at the International Conference on Logic
Programming (ICLP'89), Lisbon, Portugal, June 1989.
\item
Invited speaker at the International Conference on Topology and
Computer Science, Oxford University, Oxford, England, June 1989.
\item
Member of the
Program Committee of the International Conference on Logic
Programming, Lisbon, Portugal (ICLP'89).
\item
Member of the
Program Committee of the ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of
Database
Systems, Philadelphia, Pa., March 1989 (PODS'89).
\item
Scientific Award of the Science Section of the
Polish Academy of Sciences, 1980.
\item
Scientific Award of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences of the Polish
Academy of Sciences, 1979.
\item
Habilitated Ph.D. Degree, Institute of
Mathematical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, 1979.
\item
Ph. D. Degree in Mathematics with Honors, Institute of
Mathematical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 1974.
\item M. Sc. Degree in Mathematics with Honors, Warsaw
University, 1972.
\item First Prize in the Polish Mathematical Society
Competition for the best M.Sc.
Thesis (The Marcinkiewicz Competition), 1972.
\end{itemize}
\section*{Recent Invited Publications}
\begin{enumerate}
\item Non-monotonic Reasoning vs. Logic Programming: A New Perspective,
invited paper,
Handbook on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (eds. Y.Wilks and
D.Partridge), Cambridge University Press, in press.
\item On the Relationship Between Minimal Model Semantics and CWA, invited
paper, special issue
of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems (M.Leash,
editor) devoted to
non-monotonic reasoning (coauthors: M. Gelfond and H.
Przymusinska), in press.
\item Weakly Stratified Logic Programs, invited
paper, special issue
of Fundamenta Informaticae (K. Apt, editor) devoted to
Logical Foundations of AI (coauthor: H. Przymusinska), in press.
\item
``Non-Monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming'', invited
paper, Proceedings of
the International Conference on Logic
Programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989.
\item ``The Well-Founded Semantics Coincides
With The Three-Valued Stable Semantics'' invited
paper, special issue
of Fundamenta Informaticae (W. Marek, editor) devoted to
Non-Monotonic Reasoning, in press.
\item ``Semantic Issues in Deductive Databases and Logic Programs'',
invited paper,
`The Sourcebook on the Formal Approaches in Artificial Intelligence'
(Editor A. Banerji), North Holland
(coauthor: H. Przymusinska), in press.
\item
Invited to write a book on non-monotonic reasoning for the Symbolic
Computation Series of Springer Verlag.
\end{enumerate}
\section*{Recent Invited Lectures}
\begin{enumerate}
%---- 39---
\item
``Semantic Issues in Logic Programming'', University of Alberta,
Canada, 1990.
\item ``Non-monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming'',
Syracuse University, February 12, 1990.
\item
A series of five invited lectures on the semantics of logic
programs and deductive databases at the University of Linkoping in Sweden,
January 6-12, 1990.
\item
Invited lecture at the International Conference on Logic
Programming, Lisbon, Portugal, June 1989.
\item
Invited lecture at the International Conference on Topology and
Computer Science, Oxford University, Oxford, England, June 1989.
\item
``Well-Founded Semantics of Logic Programs'', Imperial College, London,
June 1989.
\item
``Semantic Issues in Logic Programming'', Warsaw University, July 1989.
% -- 38 --
\item ``Non-monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming'',
Department of Computer Science and
Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University
of Maryland, College Park, April 1989.
% -- 37 --
\item ``Non-monotonic Reasoning vs. Logic Programming:
A New Perspective'', Colloquium Series ``Programming the Future'',
Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University
of Maryland, College Park, November 1988.
% -- 36 --
\item ``Non-monotonic Reasoning vs. Logic Programming'', University
of Texas at Austin, December 1987.
% -- 35 --
\item ``On the Declarative and Procedural Semantics of Logic Programs'',
MCC Corporation, Austin, TX, May 1987.
% -- 34 --
\item ``Formalisms of Commonsense Reasoning'', Computer Research Lab, New
Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, February 1987.
% -- 33 --
\item ``A Query Answering Algorithm for Circumscriptive and Closed-World
Theories'', Stanford University, January 30, 1987.
% -- 32 --
\item ``On the Semantics of Stratified Deductive Databases
and Logic Programs'', Stanford University, January 29, 1987.
% -- 31 --
\item ``Parallel Parser on the Intel Concurrent Super-Computer'', Computer
Research Lab, New Mexico State University, October 1986.
% -- 30 --
\item ``On the Semantics of Stratified Deductive Databases'', Workshop
on Foundations of Deductive Databases and Logic Programming,
Washington, D.C., August 1986.
% -- 29 --
\item ``Extended Closed World Assumption and its relation
to Parallel Circumscription'', Stanford University,
Stanford, August, 1985 (presented by H.Przymusinska).
% -- 28 --
\item ``A Minimal Model Query Evaluation Procedure'', Stanford University,
August 1985.
\end{enumerate}
\section*{Research Grants and Consulting Activities}
\begin{itemize}
\item
National Science Foundation Grant \#IRI-8910729, June'89 - May'92,
\$96,000.
\item
Army Research Office Grant \#27079-EL-SAH, Sept'89 - August'92,
\$185,000.
\item
National Science Foundation Institutional Infrastructures
Grant \#CDA-8806127, July'88 - May'89.
\item Department of Education
Grant for the Development of a Computerized Learning Center,
June'86 - May'89, Software/Hardware Coordinator.
\item Consultant for the research project ``Parallel Prolog on the
Intel Supercomputer'', Computer Research Lab at the New Mexico State
University (Parallel processing on the concurrent Intel Super-Computer),
1987/88.
\item Consultant for the research project ''Parallel Algorithms for Natural
Language Processing'', Computer Research Lab at the New Mexico State
University (Parallel processing on the concurrent Intel Super-Computer),
1986/87.
\item Faculty Development Grant, University of Texas at El Paso, 1985-1986.
\item University of Texas Mini-Grant for research in the field of
Artificial Intelligence, 1984-1985.
\item Faculty Development Grant, University of Texas at El Paso, 1984-1985.
\item University of Texas Research Grant (URI) for research in
the field of Artificial Intelligence, 1984-1985 (jointly with
M.Gelfond and H.Przymusinska).
\end{itemize}
\section*{Activities As a Referee etc.}
\begin{itemize}
\item
Member of the
Program Committee of the ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of
Database
Systems, Philadelphia, Pa., March 1989 (PODS'89).
\item
Member of the
Program Committee of the International Conference on Logic
Programming, Lisbon, Portugal (ICLP'89).
\item
Chairman of the session on ``Semantic Issues'',
International Logic
Programming Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, July, 1989 (ICLP-89).
\item
Presenting a tutorial ``Non-Monotonic Reasoning'' at
the ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of
Database
Systems, Philadelphia, Pa., March 1989 (PODS'89).
\item
Chairman of the session on ``Semantic Issues'',
International Logic
Programming Conference in Seattle, August 1988 (ICLP-88).
\item
Chairman of the session on ``Logic in AI'',
International Symposium on Methodologies of Intelligent Systems,
Torino, Italy, October 1988 (ISMIS-88).
\item
Session chairman at the ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of
Database
Systems, Philadelphia, Pa., March 1989 (PODS'89).
\item
Reviewer for numerous research journals and institutions,
including:
\begin{itemize}
\item The National Science Foundation
\item The National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
\item Journal of Computational Logic
\item Journal of Computer and System Sciences
\item Journal of Symbolic Computation
\item Journal of Information and Computation
\item Journal of Logic Programming
\item Journal of the ACM
\item Studia Logica
\item Fundamenta Informaticae
\end{itemize}
\item Membership in professional organizations:
\begin{itemize}
\item American Association for Artificial Intelligence
\item Association for Logic Programming.
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\section*{Research and Teaching Appointments}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
PERMANENT: & & \\
{\bf Assistant Professor} & Institute of Mathematical Sciences, & 1972-1979\\
& Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw & \\
{\bf Associate Professor} & Institute of Mathematical Sciences & 1979-1984\\
& Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw &\\
{\bf Associate Professor} & University of Texas at El Paso & 1984-1986\\
{\bf Professor} & University of Texas at El Paso & 1986-\\
& & \\
VISITING: & & \\
Postdoctoral Fellow & Steklov's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, & 1974-1975\\
& Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow &\\
Andrew Mellon & University of Pittsburgh & 1975-1976\\
Postdoctoral Fellow & & \\
Visiting Assistant Prof. &University of Pittsburgh & 1976-1977\\
Visiting Associate Prof.& University of Toronto & Summer 1980\\
Visiting Associate Prof.& Auburn University & 1981-1982\\
Visiting Associate Prof.& University of Pittsburgh & 1982-1983
\end{tabular}
\section*{Selected Committee Appointments}
\begin{itemize}
\item College of Science
Committee on Tenure and Promotions,
Summer 1988 -- to date.
\item Departamental Advisory Committee, 1985 - to date.
\item College of Science
Committee on the Future of Computers, 1987/88.
\item Chairperson Search Committee, 1987/88.
\item Faculty Search Committee 1985/87.
\item Faculty Council, 1985 - 1987.
\item Faculty Senate, 1985 - 1987
\end{itemize}
\section*{Other Publications}
\begin{enumerate}
\item
On Constructive Negation in Logic Programming, Proceedings of the
North American Logic Programming Conference, Cleveland, Ohio,
October 1989.
% -- 57 --
\item Three-Valued Non-Monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming,
Proceedings of the First International
Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning (KR'89), Toronto, May 1989, 341-348.
% -- 56 --
\item Every Logic Program Has a Natural
Stratification and an Iterated Fixed Point Model,
Proceedings ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles
of Database Systems, Philadelphia, Penn., March 1989, 11-21.
% -- 55 --
\item
On the Relationship Between Circumscription and Negation as Failure,
(coauthors: M.Gelfond and H.Przymusinska), Artificial Intelligence
Journal 38(1989), 75-94.
% -- 54 --
\item
An Algorithm to Compute Circumscription, Artificial Intelligence
Journal 38(1989), 49-73.
% -- 51 --
\item
On the Declarative and Procedural Semantics of
Logic Programs, J. Automated Reasoning 5(1989), 167-205.
% -- 49 --
\item Minimal Model Semantics vs. Negation as Failure, Proceedings
of the
International Symposium on Methodologies of Intelligent Systems (ISMIS-88),
Torino, Italy, October 1988, 435-443 (coauthors: M. Gelfond and H.
Przymusinska).
% -- 48 --
\item
Perfect Model Semantics,
Proceedings of the Logic Programming Conference,
Seattle, Wash. 1988, 1081-1096.
% -- 47 --
\item
On the Relationship Between Non-monotonic Reasoning
and Logic Programming, Proceedings of the Seventh
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI'88, St. Paul, Minn.,
1988, pp. 444-448.
% -- 46 --
\item
Weakly Perfect Model
Semantics for Logic Programs, Proceedings of the
Logic Programming Conference,
Seattle, Wash. 1988, 1106-1122 (coauthor: H. Przymusinska).
% -- 45 --
\item On the Declarative Semantics of Stratified
Deductive Databases and Logic Programs, in: Foundations of
Deductive Databases and Logic Programming (ed. J.Minker),
Morgan Kaufmann 1987, 193-216.
% -- 44 --
\item A Query Answering Algorithm for Circumscriptive Theories,
Proceedings of the ACM SIGART
International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent
Systems, Knoxville, Tenn., October 1986, 85-93.
% -- 43 --
\item On the Semantics of Stratified Deductive
Databases, Proceedings of the Workshop on the Foundations of
Deductive Databases and Logic Programming, Washington, D.C.,
August 1986, 433-443.
% -- 42 --
\item The Extended Closed World Assumption and its Relationship to Parallel
Circumscription, Proceedings ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles
of Database Systems, Cambridge, Mass. 1986, 133-139 (coauthors:
M.Gelfond and H. Przymusinska).
% -- 41 --
\item Query Answering in Circumscriptive and Closed-World Theories,
Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
AAAI-86, Philadelphia, August 1986, 186-190.
% -- 40 --
\item Normality of product spaces and Morita's Conjectures, Topology
and its Applications 22(1986), 19-32
(coauthors: Keiko Chiba and Mary Ellen Rudin).
% -- 39 --
\item General Topology, chapter in: Lexicon of Mathematics,
Wiedza Powszechna, Warsaw (in Polish).
% -- 38 --
\item Reflexive algebras and $\sigma$-algebras, International Journal
of Mathematics 9(4)(1986), 811-816 (coauthor: V.K.Srinivasan).
% -- 37 --
\item A solution to a problem of E. Michael, Pacific Journal Math.
114 (1984), 235-242.
% -- 36 --
\item Normality of product spaces, chapter in: Handbook of Set-theoretic
Topology, (eds. Ken Kunen and Jerry E. Vaughan), North Holland 1983,
779-822.
% -- 35 --
\item There is no compactification theorem for the small inductive
dimension, Topology and its Applications 13 (1982), 133-136
(coauthor: Jan van Mill).
% -- 34 --
\item Perfectly normal compact spaces are continuous images of $\beta$N-N,
Proceedings American Math. Soc. 86 (1982), 541-544.
% -- 33 --
\item Extending functions from products with a metric factor and
absolutes, Pacific Journal of Math. 101 (1982), 463-475.
% -- 32 --
\item Normality and paracompactness of Pixley-Roy hyperspaces,
Fundamenta Math. 113 (1981), 201-219.
% -- 31 --
\item A note on Martin's Axiom and perfect spaces, Colloquium Math.
49 (1981), 209-215.
% -- 30 --
\item Product spaces, chapter in: Surveys in General Topology
(ed. G.M. Reed), Academic Press, New York 1980, 399-430.
% -- 29 --
\item The existence of Q-sets is equivalent to the existence of
strong Q-sets, Proceedings American Math. Soc. 79 (1980), 626-628.
% -- 28 --
\item Products of perfectly normal spaces, Fundamenta Math. 108
(1980), 129-136.
% -- 27 --
\item Collectionwise normality and extensions of locally finite
coverings, Fundamenta Math. 109 (1980), 175-187 (coauthor:
Michael Wage).
% -- 26 --
\item Normality and paracompactness in finite and countable Cartesian
products, Fundamenta Math. 105 (1979), 9-26.
% -- 25 --
\item On the dimension of product spaces and the example of M. Wage,
Proceedings American Math. Soc. 76 (1979), 315-321.
% -- 24 --
\item Separable extensions of first countable spaces, Fundamenta
Math. 105 (1979), 68-80 (coauthor: Eric van Douwen).
% -- 23 --
\item First countable and countable spaces all compactifications of
which contain $\beta$N, Fundamenta Math. 102 (1979), 229-234 (coauthor:
Eric van Douwen).
% -- 22 --
\item Continuous extenders in normal and collectionwise normal spaces,
Fundamenta Math. 102 (1979), 165-171 (coauthor: David Lutzer).
% -- 21 --
\item On the equivalence of certain set-theoretic and topological
conditions,
in: Colloquia Mathematica Soc. Janos Bolyai 23, Topics in Topology,
North Holland 1978, 998-1003.
% -- 20 --
\item On the notion of n-cardinality, Proceedings
American Math. Soc. 69 (1978), 333-337
% -- 19 --
\item On locally finite coverings, Colloquium Math. 38 (1978), 187-192.
% -- 18 --
\item Collectionwise normality and extensions of continuous functions,
Fundamenta Math. 98 (1978), 75-81.
% -- 17 --
\item Collectionwise normality and absolute retracts, Fundamenta
Math. 98 (1978), 61-73.
% -- 16 --
\item Topological properties of product spaces and the notion of
n-cardinality, Topology Proceedings 2 (1977), 233-242.
% -- 15 --
\item Normality and separability of Moore spaces, in: Set-theoretic
Topology, Academic Press, New York 1977, 325-337.
% -- 14 --
\item Some extensions of the Tietze-Urysohn Theorem,
American Math. Monthly 84
(1977), 435-441 (coauthors: Eric van Douwen and David Lutzer).
% -- 13 --
\item Collectionwise Hausdorff property in product spaces,
Colloquium Math. 36 (1976), 49-56.
% -- 12 --
\item Extensions of first countable and countable spaces, Topology
Proceedings 1 (1976), 246-248.
% -- 11 --
\item Normality and paracompactness in subsets of product spaces,
Fundamenta Math. 91 (1976), 161-165.
% -- 10 --
\item Normality and Martin's Axiom, Fundamenta Math. 71 (1976), 123-131
(coauthor: Kazimierz Alster).
% -- 9 --
\item A note on collectionwise normality and product spaces,
Colloquium Math. 33 (1975), 66-70.
% -- 8 --
\item The undecidability of the existence of a non-separable
normal Moore space satisfying the countable chain condition,
Fundamenta Math. 85 (1974), 291-294 (coauthor: Franklin D. Tall).
% -- 7 --
\item A Lindelof space X such that $X↑2$ is normal but not paracompact,
in: Colloquia Mathematica Soc. Janos. Bolyai 8, Topics in Topology,
North Holland, Amsterdam 1974.
% -- 6 --
\item A note on dimension theory, Fundamenta Math. 85(1974), 277-284.
% -- 5 --
\item A Lindelof space X such $X↑2$ is normal, but not paracompact,
Fundamenta Math. 78 (1973), 291-296.
% -- 4 --
\item On $\sigma$-discrete coverings consisting of connected sets,
Colloquium Math. 27 (1973), 237-239.
% -- 3 --
\item Inverse invariance of metrizability for ordered spaces,
Colloquium Math. 28(1973), 211-220.
% -- 2 --
\item Metrizability of inverse images of metric spaces under open,
perfect and zero-dimensional mappings, Colloquium Math.
24(1972), 175-180.
% -- 1 --
\item Non-metrizable inverse images of metric spaces under open, perfect
and zero-dimensional mappings, Bull. Polon. Acad. Sci. 20 (1972),
49-47.
\end{enumerate}
\section*{Other Presentations}
\begin{enumerate}
\item
``On Constructive Negation in Logic Programming'',
North American Logic Programming Conference, Cleveland, Ohio,
October 1989.
\item
``Three-Valued Non-Monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming'',
special session of the International Joint Conference
on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'89) presenting papers
awarded at the First International
Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning (KR'89).
\item
``Three-Valued Non-Monotonic Formalisms and Logic Programming'',
First International
Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning (KR'89), Toronto, May 1989.
% -- 14 --
\item
``Minimal Model Semantics vs. Negation as Failure'',
International Symposium on Methodologies of Intelligent Systems ISMIS-88,
Torino, Italy, October 1988.
% -- 13 --
\item
``Perfect Model Semantics'', Logic Programming Conference,
Seattle, Wash., August 1988.
% -- 12 --
\item
``On the Relationship Between Non-monotonic Reasoning
and Logic Programming'', Seventh National Conference on Artificial
Intelligence AAAI'88, St. Paul,
Minn., August 1988.
% -- 11 --
\item
``Weakly Perfect Model
Semantics for Logic Programs'', Logic Programming Conference,
Seattle, Wash., August 1988, (presented by H. Przymusinska).
% -- 10 --
\item ``A Query Answering Algorithm for Circumscriptive Theories'',
International Symposium on Methodologies of Intelligent
Systems, Knoxville, Tenn. , October 1986 (presented by H.Przymusinska).
% -- 9 --
\item ``Query Answering in Circumscriptive and Closed-World Theories'',
Fifth
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-86, Philadelphia,
August 1986.
% -- 8 --
\item ``The Extended Closed-World Assumption and its Relationship to
Parallel
Circumscription'', ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of
Database
Systems, Cambridge, Mass., March 1986 (presented by M.Gelfond).
% -- 7 --
\item ``Normality of Product Spaces and Morita's Conjectures'', Regional
Meeting of the Southwestern Section of the Mathematical Association
of America, El Paso, Texas, March 1986.
% -- 6 --
\item ``Extensions of functions from products with metric factors'',
Annual Topology Conference, Auburn University, March 1984.
% -- 24 --
\item ``A solution to a problem of E.Michael'', invited talk,
University of Wisconsin, November 1982.
% -- 23 --
\item ``On characterizations of normality in product spaces'', invited talk,
Miami
University, Oxford, Ohio, September 1982.
% -- 22 --
\item ``On the normality of Pixley-Roy hyperspaces'', invited talk,
University of
Pittsburgh, March 1982.
% -- 21 --
\item ``Extending functions from products with a metric factor'',
invited talk, Annual
Topology Conference, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md., March 1982.
% -- 20 --
\item ``There is no compactification theorem for the small inductive
dimension'', invited talk, Texas Tech University, November 1981.
% -- 19 --
\item International Topology Conference, Praque, Czechoslovakia,
July 1981 (invited speaker; declined due to time conflict).
% -- 18 --
\item ``On the extensions of locally finite coverings'', invited talk,
Winter Topology
Conference, Institute of Mathematics, Oberwolfach,
West Germany, February 1981.
% -- 17 --
\item ``Perfectly normal compact spaces are continuous images of bN-N'',
Set-theoretic Topology Workshop, invited talk,
University of Toronto, Toronto,
July-August 1980.
% -- 16 --
\item ``Extensions of continuous functions and collectionwise normality'',
invited talk, University of Silesia, Poland, April 1980.
% -- 15 --
\item ``Absolute retracts
and collectionwise normality'', invited talk,
Winter School on Abstract Analysis,
Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechoslovakia, January 1979.
% -- 14 --
\item ``On the equivalence of certain set theoretic and topological
conditions'', invited talk,
International Topology Conference, Budapest, Hungary,
August 1978.
% -- 13 --
\item Set-theoretic Topology Workshop, University of Toronto, June 1977
(invited speaker; declined because of time conflict).
% -- 12 --
\item ``Collectionwise Hausdorff property in product spaces'',
invited talk,
Southern Illinois
University, April 1977.
% -- 11 --
\item ``On the notion of n-cardinality'', invited talk,
Annual Topology Conference,
Louisiana State University, March 1977.
% -- 10 --
\item ``Paracompactness of subsets of product spaces'',
invited talk,
Cleveland State University, August 1976.
% -- 9 --
\item ``On $\sigma$-discrete coverings'', invited talk,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute,
July 1976.
% -- 8 --
\item ``Normality and Martin's Axiom'', invited talk,
University of Toronto, July 1976.
% -- 7 --
\item ``A Lindelof space whose square is normal but not paracompact'',
invited talk,
University of N.Carolina at Greensboro, July 1976.
% -- 6 --
\item ``On the existence of normal non-separable Moore spaces'',
invited talk,
Summer Topology Workshop, Ohio University, June 1976.
% -- 5 --
\item ``Extensions of first countable and countable spaces'',
invited talk, Annual
Topology Conference, Auburn University, March 1976.
% -- 4 --
\item ``Collectionwise normality of product spaces'', invited talk,
Auburn University,
Auburn, January 1976.
% -- 3 --
\item ``On the normality of Moore spaces'', invited talk,
Set-theoretic Topology
Conference, Ohio University, November 1975.
% -- 5 --
\item ``Extensions of continuous functions and collectionwise
normality'', invited talk, Winter
School on Abstract Analysis, Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechoslovakia,
January 1978.
% -- 4 --
\item ``Collectionwise Hausdorff product spaces'', invited talk,
Conference on Topology,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, November 1975.
% -- 2 --
\item ``Images of metric spaces under continuous mappings'', invited talk,
Polish Mathematical Society Meeting, March 1974.
% -- 1 --
\item ``Covering properties of product spaces'', invited talk,
Moscow State University,
November 1974.
% -- 3 --
\item ``Countable chain condition in Moore spaces'', Polish-Soviet
Conference on Topology, University of Warsaw, October 1973.
% -- 2 --
\item ``A Lindelof space whose square is normal but not paracompact'',
International Topology Conference, Budapest, August 1972.
% -- 1 --
\item ``Non-metrizable images of metric spaces'', Polish-Soviet Conference
on Topology, Moscow State University, Moscow, November 1972.
\end{enumerate}
\section*{Computer Experience}
\begin{itemize}
\item Extensive experience both with mainframe (IBM, DEC-10, VAX-11) as well as
with various types of microcomputer systems. Significant programming
experience in Prolog, Pascal, Fortran and assembly languages.
\item Hardware/Software Coordinator for the
Computerized Learning Center
at the University of Texas at El Paso, 1986-1989.
\item Supervisor of the Novell computer network at the
Computerized Learning Center
at the University of Texas at El Paso, 1896-1989.
\item Member Hardware/Software Committee at the Mathematical Sciences
Department, 1986-1989.
\item Member of the Committee on the Future of Computers in the
College of Science, 1987-1988.
\item Consultant for the research project ''Parallel Algorithms for Natural
Language Processing'', Computer Research Lab at the New Mexico State
University (Parallel processing on the concurrent Intel Super-Computer),
1986.
\item Consultant for the research project ``Parallel Prolog on the
Intel Supercomputer'', Computer Research Lab at the New Mexico State
University (Parallel processing on the concurrent Intel Super-Computer),
1987.
\item Teaching various computer-oriented courses, including:
\begin{itemize}
\item Artificial Intelligence;
\item Numerical Analysis;
\item Graph Theory with Computer Applications;
\item Linear Programming;
\item Automatic Theorem Proving.
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\section*{Research Interests}
Research in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Logic
Programming and Deductive Databases, primarily in the following areas:
\begin{itemize}
\item Non-monotonic reasoning:
Circumscription, Autoepistemic Logic, Default
Theory, Closed World Assumption and various forms of the Negation as
Failure Rule;
\item Declarative and procedural semantics of deductive databases
and logic programs and constructive negation;
\item Automatic theorem proving:
query answering algorithms for non-monotonic logics,
including algorithms for deductive databases and logic programs.
\end{itemize}
\end{document}
∂16-Feb-90 1549 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu some very preliminary ideas on emotions and lifting
Received: from sumex-aim.stanford.edu by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 16 Feb 90 15:49:49 PST
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id AA06952; Fri, 16 Feb 90 15:52:33 PST
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1990 15:52:32 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: some very preliminary ideas on emotions and lifting
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635212352.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
A treatment of emotions from the perspective of contexts/microtheories.
The emotions that seem amenable to this approach are happy, sad, afraid, jealous.
There seem to be three levels for each. Each of these levels corresponds to incerasing
levels of precision.
Consider Fred being happy at his graduation about becoming a graduate. We have the
following contexts.
C2 - the context where the topic of Freds happiness is completely implicit.
C1 - the context where what aspect of his Graduation Fred is happy about is implicit.
C0 - we are most precise here.
So we say,
ist(happy(Fred),c2),
ist(happy(Fred, FredsGraduation),c1) and
ist(happy(Fred, graduate(Fred)),c0).
We need some axioms which will lift (1) to (2) and so on. The following is a
way of writting this lifting axiom (seems too general).
(1) ist(happy(x),c1) ≡ ist(happy(x, mainEvent(x,c1)), c2)
We might want to make this a default.
The function mainEvent is a critical part of the above axiom. c1 talks about the
event about which a person happy explicitly but this is implicit in c2. To do the
lifting, we need to get our hands on this and this is what mainEvent is for.
The problem of extracting the value of arguments (to predicates) left implicit
in a context is discussed later.
The relation between happy, desires and beliefs. One has to be desirous of something
if he he going to be happy about it. He also has to believe that it is going to
be true. So we have the following.
(2) ist(happy(x,e) ⊃ ist(believes(x occurs(e))∧desires(x occurs(x))) c1)
(3) ist(happy(x,f) ⊃ ist(believes(x f)∧desires(x f) c0)
I am uncomfortable about the above axioms since it assumes that the second
beliefs argument for beliefs and desires is a fact. I'd like to be less commital
about that.
Time
Nothing has been mentioned about the temporal aspects of happy etc. Ideally we
should be able to state our axioms about happiness etc. indepenent of the abstraction
of time used and then be able to `mix and match' any abstraction of time with
any abstraction (c0,c1 or c2) used for emotions.
Consider two abstractions of time.
(a) We have a sequence of situations (which could be intervals or points) and facts
hold in situations.
(b) Each object (such as Fred) has temporal properties. So we have objects such as
FredAt4:15Today etc. These are arguments to predicates (there is no concept of fluents here).
The following are examples of axioms that specify how add (a) or (b) to c1.
(4) ist(happy(x),c2)∧situationOfContext(c2,s) ≡ ist(holds(happy(x),s), [c2,a])
(5) ist(happy(x),c2)∧ ∧situationOfContext(c2,s)∧ist(subAbsCotemporalWith(x,y,s),[c2,b]) ≡
ist(happy(y),[c2,b])
Where [c2,b] denotes the composite context formed by combining c2 and b.
Actually axioms 1-5 are flawed in the following respect. c2 actually refers to a family
of contexts. All the elements of this class have a similar set of facts implicit in them.
To distinguish between them we can `parametarize' these elements. This can be done
either by making these contexts functions and having these implicit factors arguments
to these. This might turn out to be highly inadequate since we might later realize that
something else was also implicit in the context. So its better to consider these as rich
objects and have a set of predicates that apply to the context (examples of these
predicates include mainEvent and situationOfContext). We have to notationally
distinguish between these different elements. It might be usefull to consider these as
completely different contexts and refer to them as c11,c12...c1n. Then we can consider
c1 as a `context type' (also called g-microtheory in my proposal) and if a context
cnm does have all the axioms in c1 (also all that was implicit in c1) then we say
contextType(cnm,c1). Of course cnm could also fall into other cateogries. So in our
notation instead of [c1,a] we have a new object constant c1ai and have
contextType(c1ai, c1) and contextType(c1ai, a).
This means we need to change axioms 1-5 but that seems quite simple.
So for example, (3) becomes
(6) contextType(ci,c0) ≡ ist(happy(x,f) ≡ ist(believes(x f)∧desires(x f) ci)
Since a large number of axioms are going to be of this form, we might want
some special syntax for these class of statements. One option is to have
(7) istT(happy(x,f) ≡ istT(believes(x f)∧desires(x f) c0)
and
(8) contextType(ci,cj)∧istT(p,cj) ⊃ ist(p,ci)
In the rest of this document I'll use the term context when I actually mean
contextType but the intended meaning should be clear from usage.
Simplifying/ coarsening theories by dropping arguments from predicates.
It might be possible to devise ways of writting the axioms in simpler
context (types) that have a bunch of things implicit in them and automating
ways of going to the more complicated contexts than vice versa.
There seem to be the following cases under which we might be interested in dropping
arguments.
(a) Flexibility - the argument being dropped might be meant to incorporate some
aspect (such as time) and we want to be flexible about which abstraction of time
we use. So hopefully we should be able to `combine' the emotion (or other) axioms
with the axioms for different abstractions of time (or something else) to get the
`usable' theory.
(b) There exist situations where that argument becomes `degenerate' in one or
more of of the following ways.
(i) None of the axioms is interested in the binding for that argument.
(ii) That argument is the same for all occurrances of the predicate.
The issue of apriori determining the existance of such situations is complicated
but is required since
(a) we need to determine when we can actually enter one of these specialized contexts
(b) having some abstraction of what exactly happens when we drop an argument might
tell us what additional axioms need to be supplied to lift the axioms when the
additional argument is added.
Its possible that not all the axioms in one of these simpler theories
need to be liftable. The lifting needs to be done mainly to conclusions
of the simpler theory and these can be restricted to some subset of the
sentences in the theory. An argument for why we should be able to
restrict our attention (for lifting purposes) to some subset of the
formulae in a theory is as follows.
Why do we put a set of formulae togather and call it a theory (and use
it in some context)? Presumably one expects to use these sentences
togather frequently. Why do we need to lift anything out of this theory?
Because our theories are not air-tight divisions and we might want
some interaction between theories. Now if all of the formulae in a theory
were candidates for lifting into another theory, maybe we should have merged
these two theories in the first place. So we have only restricted interaction
between theories and it might be a good idea to impose this restriction in
terms of the class of sentences that can be lifted out of a theory.
One class of formulae that might be be the most frequently lifted ones
is the class of ground formulae. I cant seem to come up with good
examples of lifting we cant do with lifting just ground formulae.
This class is also interesting because the lifting seems fairly straightforward.
First consider atomic formulae. (If we can lift an atomic formula p from
context ca to context cb, lifting sentences constructed only out
of these formulae seems quite easy).
Given a formula p in context c, we cant expect to have a single axiom
that specifies how to lift it out of that context (assuming there is
no universal or outermost context. actually this might be a good reason
to assume (non-monotonically) that there is an outermost context).
So we need one lifting axiom for every pair of contexts (or context types).
Writting these axioms could be bothersome and so we need some easy way
of stating these. Here is one approach.
Consider two context types c3 and c2. c3 has the predicate p with two
arguments. c2 has p with 3 arguments. When lifting a ground atomic
formula from c3 to c2, we need to extract this implicit argument. This
object has to be a function of only p, c3 and the two arguments to p in
c3. So for every predicate p with an argument suppressed in c3 (wrt c2),
we can introduce a function f such as f(x,y,c3i) where x and y are the
arguments to p in c3 and c3i is the actual context (i.e. contextType(c3i c3)).
We might write this as liftingFunction(c3,c2,p,f).
The function mainEvent used for happy is an example of this. It might
so happen that a number of predicates share the same `lifting function'.
It seems reasonable to have the following axioms.
(liftedFormula(p1,c3,p2,c2) means that when we lift p1 from c3 to c2 we get p2)
ist((predicate x y),c3)∧liftingFunction(c3,c2,p,f) ⊃ ist((predicate x y (f x y c3)) c2)
(we will need such axioms for predicates of arity 3,4 etc.)
liftedFormula(p1,c3,p2,c2)∧ liftedFormula(pa,c3,pb,c2) ⊃
liftedFormula(p1∨pa,c3,p2∨pb,c2)
and
liftedFormula(p1,c3,p2,c2) ⊃ liftedFormula(¬p1,c3,¬p2,c2)
These two should take care of lifting of ground formulae (when the main
problem is recovering implicit arguments) Using these axioms to do the
lifting of formulae with variables seem not good since we want to
eliminate the reference to the lifting functions once we have done the
lifting. If the term (f x y c3) has a variable in it, we might not be
able to replace it with an object constant (that is present in c2 - this
object constant might not be there in c3). If there is some other
function in c2 that is equal to (f x y c3) (that does not refer to c3)
we can use that, but I dont see the existance of such functions.
The next issue is determining when we can drop arguments, i.e. enter
the more special theory.
Of course determining this could be very difficult. One way
to look at this is to check for cases where we can separate out
a set of axioms from a general theory and suppress some arguments to
some of the predicates in these axioms.
Some extreme cases are -
(a) we have a set of axioms which dont care about the binding for z.
In this case, we can isolate these axioms. This happens if there is
only one occurrance of that variable in each of the axioms to be moved
to c2. We cant expect to lift (p x y) out of c3 into c2 (if we derive
it in c3). An example of this - consider c2 being about parties. It
contains the predicate happy and this takes 2 arguments (the person
who is happy and the event he is happy about). If there exists a set
of axioms that enable us to conclude that a person will have a good
time at a party if he is happy (these axioms dont really care what he
is happy about), then we can suppress the second argument to happy
and enter the context c3 in which happy has one argument to derive
whether some particular person will have a good time at some party.
(b) if z is a constant in all occurrances of p in a set of axioms.
Here (f x y c3i) is then equal to this constant. An example of this.
Consider a theory for determining what food to eat. If we have a
predicate preferredFood(<foodType> <person> <mealtype>), we can expect
to have a set of axioms that talk about breakfast. In all these, the
<mealtype> argument is going to be Breakfast. So we can suppress this
and form a context with just these axioms.
However in general, it looks like for every pair of context types we
need axioms that specify when to enter one from another. This might
not be all that bad if some of our context types are very general
(like `contexts that use discrete time', `contexts using continuous time'
etc.)
What is likely to happen in most cases is as follows. We have a set
of axioms involving some predicate p, (in which no argument is throughout
a constant or is ignored) but with some additional assumptions can
be reduced to a set of axioms in which one of these conditions is satisfied.
So if these assumptions are true, we can use the simpler context.
example - in our party example, we might be interested in what the person
is happy about to determine whether he will have a good time at the party
since if the people hosting the party are opposed to the event that makes
him happy, then he wont enjoy the party. But we can have additional axioms
which say that if they are his friends, they are unlikely to oppose what
he is happy about. In this case, we dont need to bother about what he is
happy about (as long as he is happy about something). So if his friends
are trying to determine whether he will have a good time, they can work
in c3 where they dont worry about what is happy about. One possibility
is that the the only use of this variable is in the ab part of an axiom.
We might just assume that we are not dealing with an abnormal case, go
to the simpler context, get an answer and then check that this is not ab.
So the effect of what the person is happy about (on his having a good
time at the party) is thro an ab.
Actually deducing this might be out of the question not just computationally
but also because in many cases we might not know precisely what these
assumptions are.
Endless adding of arguments -
One can go on elaborating/ refining on a theory. This might require
adding additional arguments to predicates/functions. We obviously cant
add to many arguments to a predicate/function (no predicate/function
should take more than 5 or 6 arguments). We have to provide for some
abstraction for further refining a predicate that already has too
many arguments. The simplest scheme to do this is to reify occurrances
of the predicate and say things about this reified object.
example. consider an action in situation calculus kill(<killer> <victim>).
We can go on adding arguments such as the instrument, whether it was painfull
etc. At some point we can reify this action to create a rich object
and rather than saying kill(Fred,Joe,Gun,PointBlank...) introduce a
new object Killing001 and say performer(Killing001,Fred) and so on.
The justification is that if a predicate has 7 arguments, there are probably
a lot more things to really say about it.
`Mix and match'.
The aim is that we should be able to write axioms that say things
like - if a person is happy about something and that thing ceases
to be true, then the person is likely to be unhappy about that
thing ceasing to be true - without commiting to any particular
formalism for time. The idea is that we can then use different
formalisms for time under different cases (along with this axiom).
It seems to me that such axioms cant be stated with no reference to
time. This does not mean that we have to commit to some abstraction
of time while stating these. For example, the english statement above
does not commit to any particular model of time. We can do something
similar. We have a vocabulary of temporal terms which we use to
specify such axioms. However, there are no axioms that specify anything
about the temporal aspects of these terms. We can use different
sets of axioms that define these terms to incorporate different
models of time. So in some sense, these axiomatizations are
"pre-technical". (They are vague in just the way english terms such
as `after' or `causes' are and this is not something to avoid but to
exploit). Its possible that this strategy can be used for things
other than time.
Some such vague temporal terms include the following - after, start,
cease, occur, cause. I am not sure if these should be functions or
predicates. We might want to use some concepts such as sequence
of events etc. that seem to be present in all models of time,
Using a particular model of time might not be as painless as just adding
a set of axioms describing the temporal terms. The axioms might need
some reformulation. But since we need of these sets for each model of
time, and there are not that many models of time, this should not be tough.
Let me try to work out the above example -
if a person is happy about something and that thing ceases
to be true, then the person is likely to be unhappy about that
thing ceasing to be true.
Assume that we are using an abstraction of emotions in which people
are happy (or sad) about facts.
The above fact can be written as
after(happy(x p),ceases(p),unhappy(x ceases(p)))
To translate this to situation calculus we use the following axiom
istT(after(p event effect) cn) ⊃
istT(holds(p, s)⊃ holds(effect, result(event, s)) [cn, sit-cal])
A similar axiom can be used to translate it to the subabstractions/histories
framework. Determining which abstraction of time to use is another important
thing (we can't (and should'nt be able to) derive any conclusions using
the cn context).
Certain domains do use a more specialized model of time etc. and we might
want specialized versions of this general vocabulary (still not very commital
about the exact model of time) for these.
∂16-Feb-90 1635 VAL draft
I'd like to ask you a favor. I just finished a draft of the paper that I
want to submit to AAAI; the deadline is next Tuesday. I asked Carolyn to
pass a copy to you. Please read as much as you can over the weekend and
give me your comments. Actually, I'm most interested in your opinion about
the nontechnical parts. (There is a long proof at the end, but it will have
to be left out anyway because of the space limitation.)
Thanks very much.
--Vladimir
∂17-Feb-90 1242 VAL re: draft
[In reply to message rcvd 17-Feb-90 12:17-PT.]
Thanks very much for the comments. Let me call you tonight to talk about them
(not now, so that I won't feel guilty about doing work on the Jewish Sabbath).
∂18-Feb-90 0043 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU FYI
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From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9002180843.AA04807@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: FYI
Tom Knight was just denied tenure at MIT. (I think this is
semi-public, but it's probably best if you don't mention hearing this
from me. Assuming, of course that you haven't heard it already from
someone else...)
Ramin
∂18-Feb-90 0201 ito@ito.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp Elephant
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From: Takayasu Ito <ito@ito.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp>
Return-Path: <ito@ito.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp>
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To: JMC%sail.stanford.edu%relay.cs.net@u-tokyo.ac.jp
Subject: Elephant
After returning to Japan I read your draft on Elephant2000. I like your idea andapproach. I will study it and try to develop it as an actual programming system
in our cooperative reseach program supported by JSPS & NSF,after working on
a formal semantics of PaiLisp language.
Also, I will try to find my student to study Elephant in our new academic year
starting in April.
{Marvin Minsky will receive this year's Japan prize,as you may know already.}
{Did you send your recommendation letter of Masahiko to Univ of Tokyo? Do not
forget it. We are in good relation,but he would like to move to Tokyo if
"things" work,by his personel reason.}
Looking forward to seeing you soon,again.
Best regards,
Takayasu Ito
∂18-Feb-90 0823 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: remarks on your review of Penrose
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
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To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: re: remarks on your review of Penrose
I don't believe in contact with the Platonic world either. Your
suggested change to the dialogue between person and computer is a good one.
I don't believe either that people have a non-recursively-enumerable
"fountain of truth" to judge axioms by. Witness the sad state of
affairs in modern set theory, which has been reduced to an imitation
of empirical physics without the experiments.
I think Penrose's basic idea (the only really new one in the book,
I think) that there should be an objective physical criterion for the
collapse of the wave function is a really good one. Whether it
has anything to do with consciousness, and whether his criterion is
the physically correct one, I don't know.
∂18-Feb-90 0829 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU re: Does AI need a defense or not?
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
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To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU
Subject: re: Does AI need a defense or not?
You implicitly assume: If X exhibits behavior that is economically
explained by assuming X has a mind, then X has a mind.
This is the proposition one always meets in philosophy books on the
page where they define and dismiss solipsism. I have never been
convinced. I have never seen a convincing refutation of the solipsist
position. When the same proposition is used to convince me that
a machine exhibiting certain behavior has a mind, it's even less
convincing. Remember that under some conditions an X with a mind
will exhibit no behavior indicating that X has a mind (e.g. the
curare-anesthetized patients). The possibility that a machine
might exhibit behavior which in a human would be indicative of a mind,
but without actually having a mind, proceeding just by pure calculation,
isn't excluded by any argument I have seen.
I used to shock my AI students on the first day of class by bringing
in a computer programmed to plead "Don't unplug me. I want to live!"
and so on. Then I would unplug it. This always produced a
gasp in the room!
∂18-Feb-90 1027 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Re: some very preliminary comments on your ideas on lifting
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Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1990 10:29:50 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: some very preliminary comments on your ideas on lifting
In-Reply-To: Your message of 17 Feb 90 1834 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635365790.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Sure, please show it to Vladimir. I am sure his comments would be very
usefull.
Thanks
Guha
∂18-Feb-90 2138 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM responses to your comments
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Date: Sun, 18 Feb 90 23:32 CST
From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: responses to your comments
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-Id: <19900219053218.4.GUHA@WOODY.ACA.MCC.COM>
Thanks for your comments.
I have some responses to your suggestion
of using the function focus. Also, I think
I was'nt clear earlier about the notion
of context-types.
I have written up something that discusses
both the issue of the focus function and
makes a case for context-types and shows
how they solve certain problems. I am sending
it to you in my next message.
Thanks
Guha
∂18-Feb-90 2143 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM the focus function and a case for contextTypes.
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From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: the focus function and a case for contextTypes.
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-Id: <19900219053350.5.GUHA@WOODY.ACA.MCC.COM>
I want to discuss two issues here. The first is that of a general
approach towards explicating the values of arguments left
implicit in contexts. The second is an argument for the need for
theories/contexts corresponding to the notion of a theory as it
is used in the philosophy of science literature.
(I) Explicating implicit arguments in contexts : If we
have a context c1 with a predicate p that takes 2 arguments (call
them x and y) and another context c2, that takes a third one too,
we need some way of computing the value of this third argument
when we lift a sentence of the form p(x y) from c1 to c2.
The general approach is to associate with every predicate
in c1 that takes an extra argument in c2 a function of c1,c2 and
all the arguments to p in c1. This function term should be equal
to the value of the implicit argument.
There are two issues. (a) Should we have a function or
predicate to do this? - I dont see any major advantage of one
approach over an other, so I guess we should allow both. (b)
What should be the arguments to this function? In my note, I had
a function called mainEvent to lift the predicate happy from a
context in which it took one argument to one in which it took 2
argument. So we had,
(1) ist(happy(x),c2) ≡ ist(happy(x, mainEvent(x,c2)), c1)
You suggested I use
(2) ist(happy(x),c2)∧ focusses(c2,z,c1) ≡ ist(happy(x,
z), c1)
Here focusses is the analog of mainEvent with the main
difference (other than in the form) being that focusses is
independent of who is happy. I dont know if you intend having one
predicate (such as focusses) for each predicate (such as happy)
that has an implicit argument. I take it that you dont. If so,
this is capable of handling only those cases (of leaving an
argument implicit), where all occurraces of all implicit
arguments can be subsituted with the same constant. I think we
need something stronger than this.
example : A set of people (say an alumni gathering) could
be having a discussion about how each of them felt at their
graduation. We might very well leave the second argument out of
happy here since given a person, we know the event in question.
If we want to lift this, since they could have graduated at
different times, we need a function that takes the person in
question (i.e. the explicit arguments to happy) as one of its
arguments.
The point I am trying to make is that (a) We want to
allow for more than the case where all occurrances of an implicit
argument correspond to a single constant. (b) If we want to do
(a), the implicit argument explicating function could potentially
need to take the contexts involved and all the explicit arguments
of the predicate involved as its arguments.
(II) Context-types (this is probably a bad term): In the
philosophy of science literature (pos), the term `theory' is used
to refer to a collectionof general axioms (such as f=m*a) that
dont refer to any specific bodies or objects. One view of a
context is as a set of axioms or as a theory. It might be usefull
to include these general theories (in the pos sense) as a class
of contexts.
Let me try to give an example of the utility of this
class of contexts.
(a) Using our happiness example, consider the following
two uses of the context c2 (where happy takes a single argument).
(i) The first use involves a discussion of Fred and the context
has an associated time I0 which corresponds to the time around
Fred's graduation. (i.e. one of the aspects of the context is
that all objects involved, explicit or implicit are within I0).
Further, the focus of the discussion is around his graduation. If
we want to lift this into a context c2, we have
focusses(c2,FredsGarduation,c1), or if we allow Fred to be an
argument to this, focusses(c2,Fred,FredsGraduation,c1). (ii) The
second corresponds to a similar use of c1 and also deals with
Fred, except, that now the time associated is around the time
Fred got married. Now if we lift this discussion to c2, we get
focusses(c2,Fred,FredsMarriage,c1).
It easy to see that having (i) and (ii) in the same KB
(something that seems quite reasonable) could lead to problems.
One approach to this problem is as follows.
One complaint could be that I was sloppy about saying
that the context in which happy took one argument was c1 since I
not only left one argument implicit but also made assumptions
about the time period in concern. So I should have used some
other context ci which both has the second argument to happy
implicit and assumes some limited temporal focus. If we do this,
our two discussions (in which the argument to happy was left
implicit) turn out to be different contexts. (Call these two
contexts ci and cj).
In general, we need to distinguish between a particular
type of simplification (or sets of these) (such as leaving an
argument to happy implicit) and a use of this. While it may be
possible to be rather precise about what exactly is assumed about
the former, and to consider them (i.e. sets of simplifications)
independently, this might not be possible for the later. So it
may be possible to talk about the axioms of happiness (when happy
has just one argument) in the abstract (without commiting about
other issues such as temporal bounds of the context in which
these axioms are to be used), when we actually use these axioms
/predicates to say things in a discussion (i.e. about a
particular object), this will almost invariably involve making
other simplifications. The sum of these simplifications (which we
might not be able to explicate completely) itself forms another
context.
However, all these different contexts that use happy as a
one place predicate share the general axioms about happiness and
we should need to state them only once. My first shot at doing
this is as follows.
Consider the class of all contexts that treat happy as a
one place predicate. Call this class CC1. To say that ci is a
context that treats happy as a one place predicate we say either
CC1(ci) or contextType(ci CC1).
Now, consider a statement such as (3) ist((happy(x) ∧
likes(x y) ⊃ niceTo(x y)), ci)
We want to derive this from somewhere else. Since we can
expect this to hold in all the contexts that belong to CC1
(including cj), that seems to be an appropriate place to put it.
So we can say,
(4) istT((happy(x) ∧ likes(x y) ⊃ niceTo(x y)), CC1)
(I use istT to say that something is true in all the
elements of some class of contexts).
We would like to have the following hold strictly.
(5) istT(p ct) ∧ contextType(ck, ct) ⊃ ist(p cl).
Unfortunately we cant say this monotonically for the
following reason - contexts belonging to CC1 could also belong to
other context-types and the form of this axiom might need to
change based on those other context-types.
example - CC1 says nothing about the temporal abstraction
used. If ci (which belongs to CC1) wants to use situation
calculus. So we have to restate (3) as
(6) ist(holds((happy(x) ∧ likes(x y) ⊃ niceTo(x y)) s),
ci)
Now we dont want to have to write a special axiom (or
anticipate the use of CC1 & situation calculus togather) to get
(6). Ideally we want to derive (6) from (4), the fact that ci
uses situation calculus and that ci belongs to CC1.
[digression : In fact this is exactly the problem that
keeps us from saying
(7) contextType(ci CC1) ⊃ ist((happy(x) ∧ likes(x y) ⊃
niceTo(x y)) ci)
instead of having (4) and something like (5).]
A partial solution to this problem is as follows.
I want to distinguish between two classes of category
types. Those that make their entry quite painlessly and those
that dont. For example, one can see how ci can also belong to a
context-type that talks about furniture (possibly to state how
Fred felt about sitting on a chair with a nail sticking out
during his graduation) and it is unlikely that making ci belong
to this class of contexts is going to cause us to change the form
of the axioms from CC1. On the other hand, irrespective of which
formalism we use for time, it is unlikely that the axioms from
CC1 will remain completely untouched.
So to get the axioms from the easy context types (such as
the one with axioms about furniture), we have, (8) easyToAdd(ct1)
∧ istT(p, ct1) ∧ contextType(ci, ct1) ⊃ ist(p ci).
For those that are not easy to add here is one possible
approach.
Since it is unlikely that there are going to be many of
these, we can hope to consider them when writting the axioms of
CC1 etc. Though we might be prepared to consider time (and
possibly space) we dont want to commit to any particular
abstraction of time.
So we want to talk about time, but without commiting to
any particular abstraction of time. One way to do this is to have
a `generic' temporal vocabulary to state th temporal aspects of
axioms in CC1. Based on the actual temporal formalism used, we
add additional axioms to make these general terms more
meaningfull. Alternately, we can associate a set of `templates'
with each of these temporal formalisms (since any instance of CC1
can be expected to use some temporal formalism) to translate the
axioms from CC1 to ci. An example of this is as follows.
Instead of (4) we say,
(9) istT((instantaneous (happy(x) ∧ likes(x y) ⊃ niceTo(x
y))) CC1)
and to obtain (6) from (9) we use the following axiom,
istT((instantaneous p), ct1) ∧ contextType(ci ct1) ∧
temporalFormalism(ci SitCal) ⊃
ist(holds(p s), ci)
One can see both how (a) Axioms for actions can be
translated using this template approach. (b) The above axiom
itself could have been translated differently if ci had used
other abstractions of time.
Concluding, the points I tried to make here (in (II))
were, (a) It might be usefull to distinguish between contexts and
classes of contexts that use a similar set of simplifications. (I
call the later general microtheories in my thesis proposal.) (b)
We can profit by using `vague' terms in these context types and
translate the axioms / remove these vague terms when actually
using these axioms in a specific context based on the other
context types the specific context is an instance of.
∂19-Feb-90 1341 ma@src.dec.com Elephant 2000
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From: ma@src.dec.com (Martin Abadi)
Message-Id: <9002192141.AA14096@jumbo>
Date: 19 Feb 1990 1341-PST (Monday)
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
X-Folder-Carbon: authentic
Subject: Elephant 2000
Hello.
Although I certainly missed many of your points, I found interesting
your draft on Elephant 2000, at which I just had a look. It occurs
to me that perhaps you could find some nice examples in connection
with delegation and access control as they happen, or should happen,
in distributed systems.
Situations like this arise:
There are three principals A, B, and C (they may be users, nodes,
or services). After mutual authentication, A would like to have
B do something on his behalf. For this to work, B needs to get C
to do some things, but A could not be bothered to hear about the
details. So A gives a certificate to B, which shows that B acts
for A and gives some permissions to B; later B can present this
certificate to C, as appropriate.
(In reality, the details are a bit complex, because A with B may have
more or less power than A by himself.)
I don't have a precise idea what programs such as B's look like in
Elephant, or whether they are instructive, so I am mentioning this
just in case you find it useful.
Regards,
Martin
∂19-Feb-90 1526 VAL what can be said concisely
A "tower" in the blocks world can be defined as a total order relation on a
subset of blocks, so that binary predicate variables can be used as
variables for towers.
Is this understandable?
∂19-Feb-90 1639 VAL re: what can be said concisely
[In reply to message rcvd 19-Feb-90 16:28-PT.]
OK. Thanks very much for giving me your comments promptly.
∂20-Feb-90 1024 VAL Special nonmonotonic seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-events@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Speaker: Kave Eshghi, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, England
Title: Using Autoepistemic Expansions for Diagnosis
Time: Thursday, February 22, 3:15pm
Place: 352 Margaret Jacks Hall
∂20-Feb-90 1034 MPS MCC
Does the invoice go to Lenat or Eaton and where was
the meeting held. Also, any other expenses? Thanks
∂20-Feb-90 1058 VAL Special seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-events@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
PROGRAM SYNTHESIS IN LARGE
Enn Tyugu
Estonian Academy of Sciences
Tallinn, USSR
Friday, February 23, 3:15pm
MJH 252
Some years ago a program synthesizer was implemented
in which data flow schemas with higher order objects were used
as program specifications. It turned out that a class of
higher order data flow schemas was equivalent to a fragment of
intuitionistic propositional logic. Further on, several other
classes of constructive propositional theories appeared to be
useful for automatic program synthesis due the existence of
fast proof searching algorithms for them. Recently a fine
classification of such theories together with derivation
complexity estimation was given by M.Kanovich.
In this talk, logic and architecture of several
programming environments with automatic program synthesis
based on propositional logic is considered. Application
examples, including CAD, data logic and compiler construction
are discussed.
∂20-Feb-90 1105 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-events@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
GENERAL PATTERNS OF NONMONOTONIC REASONING
Daniel Lehmann
Hebrew University
Monday, February 26, 2:30pm
MJH 252
Recent developments in the area of nonmonotonic reasoning have
converged onto a number of specific properties of nonmonotonic
inference operations. Nonmonotonic inference operations appear
as a natural generalization of Tarski's consequence operations.
The need and justification for considering such a generalization
will be discussed and some of the recent results reviewed.
∂20-Feb-90 1132 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
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Date: Tue 20 Feb 90 13:33:12-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <gl#WG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12567921223.15.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
OK, still good from this side too...
Guha says no problem getting the file you want printed out here
automatically... just send him the precise file name and he'll do it.
Doug
-------
∂20-Feb-90 1530 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 15:31:46 PST
From: Eunok Paek <paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635556706.paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Hi. I am the TA for cs323.
Many students in class are worrying about homework and final.
Since we are already into the 7th week of the quarter and they have
not been given any homework (except a single exercise), it is time to
let students know what's expected from them. If you are thinking of
some final project/paper, they ought to know what it's about, how long
it should be, etc. They would probably like some sample topics/themes
for final project/paper. I just thought that you might be interested
in hearing what students have felt about the class.
-Eunok Paek
∂20-Feb-90 1548 @MCC.COM,@SHANDRA.ACA.MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM file
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 17:47 CST
From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: file
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <gmrst@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <19900220234721.1.GUHA@SHANDRA.ACA.MCC.COM>
Thanks for the filename. I'll make sure doug gets a copy etc.
Would have some time next week to discuss my proposal and
the stuff I sent you on lifting etc. I am comming in on Monday,
so any time Tuesday thro Friday would be fine.
Guha
∂20-Feb-90 1626 VAL Special Nonmonotonic Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Speaker: Kave Eshghi, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, England
Title: Using Auto-epistemic Expansions for Diagnosis
Time: Thursday, February 22, 3:15pm
Place: 352 Margaret Jacks Hall
Abstract:
An extension of the DeKleer and Reiter's theory of diagnosis
is discussed which allows non-monotonic constructs in the
system description. This extension uses the negation as failure
rule of logic programming. The diagnoses generated correspond to
stable expansion of the corresponding auto-epistemic theories.
∂20-Feb-90 1938 ME DD terminal
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
CC: JJW@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Since your DD keyboard line, 140, seemed not to be working, I've changed
your keyboard to line 127. So now your DD is working again. This may
solve your problems once and for all.
Since you're on line 127, if you have further problems, the command to try
is TTY EX 127 now. Let me know if there are any such problems.
∂20-Feb-90 2155 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 21:57:47 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: nilsson@cs.stanford.edu, latombe@cs.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: jones@cs.stanford.edu
Subject: Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635579867.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Dear Nils, Jean-Claude, and John (as Chairman of Industrial Lecturer
committee; are you still doing this, John?),
I think Levitt has a very good idea here. Kunz (one of our Ph.D.s) is a very
conscientious and excellent teacher. The topic is timely. Can our department
be a co-investor with Civil Eng. on this? Do we have any Industrial Lecturer
money available to help with this? Can we move forward with this without a
student "marketing survey", or should we solicit such from the grad students
before committing?
Ed
13-Feb-90 20:13:04-GMT,2823;000000000001
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To: EAF@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, SHAH@sierra.stanford.edu,
leifer@sierra.stanford.edu, kruger@sierra.stanford.edu,
marty@cis.stanford.edu, cutkosky@cnc-sun.stanford.edu
Cc: kunz@intellicorp.com levitt, saraswat@glacier.stanford.edu
Subject: Seminar on Model-Based Reasoning in Engineering Knowledge Systems
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 90 12:11:54 PST
From: rel@cive.stanford.edu
I am canvassing interest and support to repeat a seminar which John Kunz
offered last year for the Civil Engineering Department.
John was on a sabbatical leavce from IntelliCorp and developed and taught
the seminar described below for us as part of a collaboration with CIFE.
The seminar was intended to provide an introduction to ideas about model-based
reasoning in knowledge-based systems for aspiring doctoral students.
The format of the seminar provided elements of a journal club (reading and
discussing papers relevant to the topic) and engaged students in defining
the goals of their research (via writing RFPs and then critiquing each
others') and in defining their research approaches (via writing and critique
of each others' proposals to do the work defined in each students' RFP).
The approach and its execution were superb! This course was at the
99th percentile of the School's Tau Beta Pi student evaluations, and I
attended a number of the seminars myself.
John has offered to teach the class again this spring and I am willing
to do the paperwork associated with setting it up as class. There are
only about 4 CE students who might take the class this year, so we
would like to recruit students from CS as well as other engineering
departments, and ask departments who have students that could benefit
(or the School of Engineering as part of its Manufacturing thrust) to
help pay the stipend to John. I had proposed $5,000 for the 3 unit course.
This is what we pay outside instructors for a three unit course.
To kick things off, CE will pay $2,000 and send four or five students
to the class.
Please let me know if you are willing to support this effort. Ed
Feigenbaum has indicated some interest in having KSL co-sponsor the
course. I hope that other will want to kick in also. John is a truly
gifted teacher and this is a timely subject for many of our reearch effforts.
If there is inadequate support outside of CE, we will offer this course
again ourselves in 1991.
Ray Levitt
COURSE OUTLINE FROM LAST YEAR FOLLOWS IN NEXT MESSAGE
*******************************************************
13-Feb-90 23:33:02-GMT,4569;000000000001
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To: saraswat@glacier.stanford.edu, kruger@sierra.stanford.edu,
shah@sierra.stanford.edu, leifer@sierra.stanford.edu,
marty@cis.stanford.edu
Cc: levitt@cive.stanford.edu, kunz@intellicorp.com, eaf@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU,
cutkosky@cnc-sun.stanford.edu
Subject: Description of Kunz Course
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 90 15:31:07 PST
From: rel@cive.stanford.edu
SPECIAL SEMINAR -- WINTER QUARTER 1988/89
CE217: Design of Engineering Knowledge Systems Using Model-Based
Reasoning (3 units)
Dr. John C. Kunz, Consulting Associate Professor of Civil
Engineering
Organizational Meeting: Wednesday, 11 January 1989 at 3:15 pm in
Terman 398
Class will meet at a time to be arranged
Purpose: This seminar will investigate issues concerning model-
based reasoning systems in engineering. In engineering and
science, models are descriptive (of the concepts of a system,
their attributes and their relations), and they are predictive (of
the values of dependent system attributes following change in
independent attribute values). Model-based reasoning systems use
artificial intelligence techniques in creation, simulation and
testing of engineering models of complex systems in the computer.
We will discuss such systems as extensions of artificial
intelligence expert systems, consider methodology for creation of
such systems, and evaluate their uses and limits in engineering.
The class will have four parts:
% Review of the state of the art of model-based reasoning
systems. Case examples for review will be chosen from various
domains of engineering, including some suggested by participants.
Seminar participants will be expected to review literature, write
critiques of papers, and participate actively in discussion of
this literature.
% Preparation of a request for proposal (RFP) for development
of such systems. Each participant will prepare a RFP and critique
one of another participant.
% Preparation of proposals for development of such systems.
Each participant will write and present a proposal for a model-
based system in engineering. The proposal must address a RFP
presented in class -- either the RFP presented by the participant
or one presented by another participant. Hopefully, many of the
seminar proposals will later be extended into graduate research.
% Review and critically evaluate proposals. Each participant
will provide a written review and discussion of the proposal of
another participant.
Prerequisites: Normally, participants will be graduate students
in civil engineering or computer science who have taken CE214 or
otherwise demonstrated familiarity with principles of artificial
intelligence programming. The class is offered Pass/No Credit
only. Seminar size will be limited to 15 students.
Evaluation: Evaluation is based on attendance, homework, and
active participation in the seminar. Written homework will be
required weekly, and each participant will have responsibility for
leading several seminar discussions during the quarter. Since the
seminar involves large amounts of sharing of ideas, timely
submission of all assignments is required to continue to
participate in and to receive credit for the class.
Distribution: CE Faculty; School of Engineering Depts.
CE217 SYLLABUS (Winter Quarter 1988/89)
Part I: State of the Art
January 2, 5: Course introduction
Introduction to Model-Based Reasoning Systems
January 9, 12: Review of AAAI-88
January 16, 19: Project Management
Civil Engineering
January 23, 26: Qualitative Physics
Calculi for Manipulation of Concepts
Jan. 30, Feb. 2: Robotics, Manufacturing
Applications in Science
February 6, 9: Organizations, Economics
Grand Unified Theories of Cognition
February 13, 16: Requests for Proposal, Proposals, and Proposal
Evaluations
Part II: Preparation of Requests for Proposals
February 20, 23: Presentation of RFPs
Part III: Proposals
Feb. 27, March 2: Presentation of Proposals
Part IV: Critique of Proposals
March 6, 9: Critique of Proposals
____________
************************
The domain papers and applications would, of course, be broadened
to accommodate the interests of a schoolwide class in the current
version of the course.
- Ray Levitt
∂21-Feb-90 0022 cliff%computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Manchester AI Professorship
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 07:02:23 GMT
From: cliff%computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
Message-Id: <9002210702.AA04657@ipse2pt5.cs.man.ac.uk>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 07 Feb 90 1745 PST <Gf#WD@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Manchester AI Professorship
David Bree (actually Bre'{e})
cliff
∂21-Feb-90 0541 kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu re: comment
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 05:48 PST
From: David Kirsh <kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu>
Subject: re: comment
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <oFc13@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <19900221134813.8.KIRSH@BULLWINKLE.cogsci.ucsd.edu>
Doug Lenat tells me you are writing a bit of a reply to Brian Smith to append
to their rejoinder. How is that proceeding? I'll need it very soon.
Also I'm enclosing under separate copy a fragment of my introductory article
for your examination and comments. The bulk of the article is about the
logicist position and replies to it, because as I see it, all other positions,
with the exception of Soar, are really argued for by arguing against logic.
-- David
∂21-Feb-90 0544 kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu essay
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 05:51 PST
From: David Kirsh <kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu>
Subject: essay
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <oFc13@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <19900221135100.9.KIRSH@BULLWINKLE.cogsci.ucsd.edu>
%%-*- Mode: Text -*-
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\begin{titlepage}
\begin{center}
COGNITIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GROUP\\
COGNITIVE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT\\
UCSD
\end{center}
\vspace{2in}
\begin{center}
{\large AI: THE BIG ISSUES}
\end{center}
\vspace{.5in}
\begin{center}
David Kirsh \\
\today
\end{center}
\vspace{.5in}
\begin{quote}
{\bf Abstract:} to come.
\end{quote}
\vspace{1in}
{\bf Acknowledgements:}Support for this work has been provided in part by
DARPA under Office of Naval Research contracts N00014-85-K0124, and by the
Army Institute for Research in Management, Information and Communication
Systems contract number DAKF11-88-C-0045.
\newpage
\bcn
\section*{AI: THE BIG ISSUES}
\ecn
\section{Introduction}
Since its inception AI research has been driven by two overarching goals:
\bi \item to understand the design of systems capable of general
intelligence; and,
\item to create the computational technologies necessary to build robots that
can actually see, speak and act reliably. \ei
The theoretical understanding needed to achieve these goals is broad enough to
demarcate a science. Yet, so far, there has been little discussion, and even
less agreement, on methodology: What is a theory in AI? How are theories to
be tested: by conformity to experimental studies of human performance; or by
more normative measures? What constitutes evidence of a successful theory:
machine performance on abstract symbolic input and output; or machine
performance with actual visual input and actual motor output? How many
problem instances must a program be tested on?
The objective of research in the foundations of AI is to address some of these
basic questions of method and theory. It is to self-consciously reappraise
what AI is all about.
Because every research program defines for itself a set of major objectives
and major canons for doing good work, the intent of this special issue is to
lay bare the assumptions underpinning the dominant approaches to AI.
Theorists historically associated with each position were asked to write a
paper speculating on the scope and limits of their approach; then theorists
generally skeptical of the position were asked to comment.
Each major author was asked to state what the basic tenets of his position
are, discuss the principles underpinning the method or approach, describe the
natural type of problems and tasks in which the approach succeeds, explain
where the power resides in the method or approach, and then to discuss its
scope and limits.
Commentators were asked to evaluate the source of power of the method or
approach and to state why they thought the method/approach works and
why it fails.
In this introduction, I shall critically review the major arguments for and
against the principle schools of AI. To round the picture out, I include a
brief account of the PDP approach to AI and the Society of Mind theory which
unfortunately are not represented in article form here.
The paper is organized into three parts. In part I, I explore the arguments
for and against the most general account of logicism. With the exception of
SOAR, most of the arguments which the major competitors to logicism offer in
{\ital support} of their position actually have their origin as arguments
{\ital against} logicism. Thus, the reasons connectionists give for believing
in connectionism are roughly the same reasons they have for rejecting
logicism. The attraction of connectionism, is, among other things, that it
promises to remedy precisely what logicism is deficient in. The same holds
true for Minsky's Society of Mind thesis, Brooks' mobot approach, and Hewitt's
negotiation model. To a first approximation, then, it would be fair to say
that most major theoretical battles in AI are still feuds with logic
theorists.
In part II, I consider some of the positive claims made for the competing
approaches and briefly discuss the issues.
In part III, I draw some conclusions about the differing ideals of a
scientific AI. Marr Chomsky vs Minsky, Brooks vs SOAR. top, bottom middle
\bcn
\section*{PART I}
\ecn
\subsection{Generalized Logicism: The axiomatization of knowledge}
The position I shall identify with logicism is a generalized version of that
presented by Nils Nilsson in this volume. It can be characterized as a
commitment to 7 tenets:
\be
\item {\ital Knowledge is the limiting factor}: Knowledge about the world --
not choice of representation or control knowledge -- is the strongest limiting
factor in AI. Whether we are trying to understand an agent's ability to talk,
to parse scenes veridically, to navigate through a crowded room, or to solve
algebraic puzzles, the hardest part of the problem is to discover what an
agent knows about the world which permits him to succeed. This requires
understanding how the world is conceived. Issues of representation and
control can be finessed until after questions of conceptualization have been
settled.
\item {\ital Microtheories}: Knowledge about the world can be organized into a
giant theory, or into a set of microtheories whose relations can be precisely
specified. This is possible because either the world itself is partitioned
into natural provinces, natural domains, or because we can impose such order
on the world. To cope with the obvious incompleteness of microtheories of
everyday life, theories may partially overlap and complement each. But it is
a tenet of logicism that they are consistent (or can be made consistent when
coupled with metatheoretic statements about when to use each theory).
Consistency, of course, does not imply either soundness or truth.
\item {{\ital Axiomatizable}: Each microtheory can be given axiomatically in a
smallish set of declaratives that together with deductive rules of inference
can generate all the relevant truths associated with perception, thought, and
action related to a domain.\\
\hspace{.25in} Logicists typically believe that domain knowledge ought to
be axiomatized. The axiomatic method is an orderly way of summarizing knowledge.
By singling out assumptions both individually and in groups we can test whether a
particular set of assumptions -- represented by an axiom set -- is sufficient
to cover what we believe an agent knows about a domain. This process is
incremental. We cannot state in advance everything that an agent knows: we
have only typical examples of knowledge. But if our axiomatization is right
we then have a systematic account of knowledge which will let us generate
predictions about how that agent will act and think with respect to that
domain, if unencumbered by computational limitations. If we are wrong we have
a skewed picture of what the agent knows, but one which can be refuted by
future counterexamples. \\
\hspace{.25in} The process of formalizing and axiomatizing knowledge,
then, promises to make the study of intelligence continuous with the most
rigorous branches of science. Theories are formally well-defined and empirically
falsifiable.}
\item {{\ital Formalized Inference and Reasoning}: Although formal theories of
knowledge {\ital per se} are not theories of reasoning, that is, although they
say nothing of the {\ital process} by which knowledge accumulates or leads to
new thoughts, it is nonetheless true that by formalizing knowledge deductively
we are in a better position to discover the structure of this process -- the
typical patterns of reasoning, whether deductive or non-deductive. We can
make these reasoning patterns an object of study in their own right, and look
for formal rules governing their structure.\\ \hspace{.25in} Thus if a domain
theory on its own is unable to deliver all the requisite inferences we can
bolster it with a theory about the type of reasoning appropriate to that
domain.[Nilsson in McDermott]. For instance, we may supplement a theory about
gambling with an axiomatization of probability theory so that the appropriate
inferences can be drawn. The same applies to supplementing a domain theory
with axioms -- possibly at the metalevel in terms of inference schemata
defined over first order expressions -- eg. non-monotonic inference,
intuitionism, and so on. Accordingly, in a given domain, although we may
actually reason using non-logical rules -- as in arithmetic, where our
algorithmic rules are not themselves rules of logic -- we nonetheless can
produce axioms of arithmetic, Peano's for instance, which define addition,
multiplication and the rest.\\ \hspace{.25in} More generally, logicists
believe that {\ital any} process of reasoning that is not purely deductive can
be formalized. We can formalize `metaknowledge about reasoning' [Nilsson
ibid]. Or we can formalize the reasoning task which a given process model
must satisfy (eg preserve truth in all A-models), [see Reiter McDermott]. In
this respect, the common sense term {\ital rational inference} functions in AI
like the common sense term {\ital grammatically well-formed} functions
linguistics -- a source of intuitions which in ideal theories are explained by
a set of rules or principles. This means that the principles behind every
type of non-demonstrative reasoning such as abduction, induction, analogical
inference, non-monotonic inference and so on, can be given formally -- though
possibly using metatheoretic concepts. For each of these forms of reasoning
are examples of rational inference.}
\item {\ital Discovery}: Microtheories can be discovered by a process of
successive approximations starting with a first pass axiomatization of a
domain. This applies to the microtheories which axiomatizers produce as well
as the microtheories which agents acquire as they learn more about a domain.
There is, then, nothing essentially unformalizable about theory revision and
discovery. Logical accounts should let us track learning.
\item {\ital Model Theory}: The grounds for accepting deductive logic as the
ideal language of specification is that the meaning of every statement can be
precisely given in a compositional semantics such as logical model theory.
Thus we can identify what is meant by a particular domain theory $T$ by
relying on the axioms of model theory to specify its set of models $M$. A
model is any consistent set-theoretic structure produced by uniformly
assigning to each term in $T$ an appropriate type of element or relation in
the model domain.
\item{\ital Theoretical Adequacy}: A theory $T$ is an acceptable rendering of
an agent $A$'s domain knowledge if $T$ is sufficient for $A$ to succeed in its
purposes; eg. prediction, explanation, successful action.
\ee
Taken together, these assumptions suggest that in the scientific study of AI,
logic plays a dominant role. It is the language of theorizing.
Logic moreover, promises benefits for engineering, as well as for science.
Axiomatic theories provide the principles by which we can develop a structured
top down approach to the problem of engineering design; and by which we can
distinguish bad engineering from bad knowledge. If we were not able to
determine what knowledge is necessary or sufficient for a task, we would be
unable to decide whether a given program fails because of a bug in the code --
{\ital imperfect programming} -- or because it has faulty knowledge -- {\ital
imperfect knowledge}.[Levesque KR].
In the next several sections I will consider arguments drawn from philosophy,
linguistics, cognitive science, and AI, for and against this belief that logic
is the proper language to theorize about cognitive/intelligent capacities.
\subsection{The Basic Criticism}
To my mind, the deepest opposition to the logicist view -- opposition which
fuels support for connectionism, Society of Mind, Mobots, Open Systems Theory,
and certain forms of Situated Action Theory -- stems from a metaphysical
conviction that the way intelligent systems are {\ital embedded} in the world
is more complex than is presupposed by the traditional model theoretic account
of semantics and representation intrinsic to logicism. What an agent knows
about the world is not reducible to an axiomatic account of concepts and
relations.
It is worth appreciating that the view being rejected here is not some
provincial doctrine of AI, but the philosophical heritage of the
Anglo-American world. Ever since Plato the mind has been regarded as a
resevoir of representations. Structures inside the mind were assumed to be
similar to, or somehow representative of external structures -- objects,
events and processes in the external world. The magic of intentionality -- of
mental representations being {\ital about} extra-mental entities -- was never
adequately explained; but there has always been a presumption that
representation has something to do with a mirroring in the structure of mental
and non-mental entities. Consequently, conceptual structure has always been
thought to mirror actual structures in the world. See Figure 1. The thought,
proposition, of Socrates eating cooked lamb was somehow similar in structure
to the external fact, the state-of-affairs, of Socrates eating cooked lamb.
There was a one to one correspondence between the words or concepts {\ital
Socrates, eating, lamb, cooked}, the elements of the proposition, and the
properties, actions and objects {\bf Socrates, eating, lamb, cooked}, the
elements of the state-of-affairs. This idea culminated in Wittgenstein's
picture theory of meaning.[Tractatus]
\begin{figure}
\vspace{3.5in}
\caption{The Mind- World Dualism of Logicism: An agent believes a set of
propositions which delimits a set of possible structures one of which is the
actual world or a fragment of the actual world the agent is concerned with.
The relation of mind to world, then, is captured by the semantic or model
theoretic relation of allowable interpretation -- satisfaction. This relation
is taken as primitive and unproblematic.}
\end{figure}
There are many alleged reasons for rejecting this philosophical orthodoxy, but
again, in my opinion, the deepest reason offered is that it falsely assumes it
is possible to treat thoughts in timeless abstraction from the causal context
in which they arise.
On the classical view, thoughts are assumed to have a structure independently
of the processes which generate and use them. Thus it doesn't matter
whether a thought (or more precisely the content of a thought) is being
believed, desired, entertained, and it doesn't matter what other thoughts,
beliefs etc. precede or succeed it, or, for that matter, what is happening in
the environment of the thinker. Time is irrelevant, space is irrelevant,
ongoing activities are irrelevant. The content of a thought can be
specified in abstraction from these particularities. As Quine has said,
occurrent thoughts can be recast as eternal sentences. Indexicality and the
like buy brevity of statement, but nothing more. Accordingly, it should be
possible to inquire into the way an agent conceives of the objects and
relations in a domain -- the agent's conceptual structure of the domain --
independently of the dynamic way that the agent {\ital uses} or possibly
{\ital modifies} those concepts in thinking about the domain.
But what if the result is a portrait of reasoning that is wholly
unrealistic? Thoughts after all are supposed to figure in reasoning.
Knowledge is, at least some of the time, the outcome of a line of reasoning.
So knowledge must be linked to reasoning. The question is how.
Logicists are not indifferent to the complexity of the relation between
knowledge and reasoning.[See Moore in McDermott, Hayes same, and Reiter for
individual accounts of how the two are linked]. The party line seems to be
that knowledge is to reasoning what a competence theory is to a process or
performance account. Competence concerns domain knowledge per se,
performance or process accounts concern the computational or reasoning
abilities required to use the knowledge. A complete theory will have both
elements. But they can be developed separately. This explains why it is
standard in AI to distinguish domain knowledge -- pure epistemological
competence -- both from the inference engine which runs on domain knowledge,
and from control knowledge, which concerns how and when to use axioms in the
domain knowledge.
To the anti-logicist this separation of competence and performance is
unacceptable. It requires that we be able to decide in a {\ital non-question
begging} fashion, whether an agent is unable to, for example, understand a
sentence, explain a phenomenon, achieve a certain goal, because of some {\ital
in principle} epistemological inadequacy or because of some {\ital practical}
reasoning limitation.
How can this be done? How can we decide between the case where a person fails
to recognize a sentence as part of his language because the sentence is not
part of his language, and the case where he fails because he `knows' the
sentence is part of his language but he has processing limitations preventing
him from appreciating that fact? Both interpretations are consistent with the
evidence. If we had {\ital a priori} justification for prejudging what is in
language and what is outside we could decide. But all we have is people's
behaviour. Thus the distinction between competence and performance is
entirely internal to a theory. It is question begging.
The same applies when we try to decide whether an expert's knowledge of a
domain resides in his conceptualization of the domain or in how he reasons. A
complete theory must explain the totality of the expert's behaviour. If an
expert fails to correctly diagnose an illness, however, shall we say his
failure was a performance failure or a failure of knowledge? Logicists
suppose there is a fact of the matter. But why? The reasoning/knowledge
distinction may be spurious. How can we know how the doctor would behave if
he could reason better? We would like to hold the doctor's knowledge
constant and change his reasoning style. The problem is that we don't have
any non question begging way of specifying what is domain knowledge and what
is reasoning style. We don't know what he knows. It is tempting to say that
we can find out by assuming a default style of reasoning. So, for instance,
if he reasons according to the rules of deduction, we have our basis for
distinguishing knowledge from use. But again why are we justified in
supposing that he would reason deductively? In fact we know in general he
does not. Morevoer, suppose we find that he reasons one way about medical
issues and another way about shopping or about taxes. Why not suppose that
the theory of reasoning is an integral part of what he knows about a domain?
Only a prior acceptance of the knowledge/reasoning distinction would keep us
from collapsing the two.
Few logicists will be moved by this argument. They too wish to allow
reasoning to be an integral part of knowledge -- only it is metaknowledge,
[Nilsson, Hayes] or requires the use of metalevel constructs to specify
it[Reiter]. In short, it is not conceptual knowledge.
But there is another way of posing this problem. Logicists acknowledge that
efficiency is a problem for any deductive system operating with large numbers
of axioms. One suggestion, which Nilsson offers, is that instead of just
using unification, which by itself is sound and complete, it will be helpful
to admit some partial inference rules which work many places though not
everywhere -- although where they can be applied they do yield consistent
inferences. In restricted cases this will work well. But as the number of
partial inference rules rises, the search space of rule choice will also rise.
[cf SOAR problem]. Some method will be required to {\ital bias} when to
apply these specialized rules. Preference rules at a metalevel might serve,
but equally we could type some of the predicates, and build that metaknowledge
into a typechecking system at the object level so that specialized inference
rules would be preferred for use with particular predicates.
It is here the problem emerges. From an abstract point of view, typing serves
an indexing function. Certain types index certain specialized inference rules.
How far can this to be taken? It is commonly regarded that domain specific
inference rules are part of the knowledge base, not part of the inference
engine. The reason is that as inference rules become more specific they
behave less like inference rules and more like axioms. But then why suppose
that inference rules cannot function as domain knowledge? If it is only a
pragmatic matter whether to use a conditional as an inference rule or an axiom
how can we claim there is principled distinction between conceptual and
heuristic knowledge? Why not just jettison the distinction entirely, and
admit that we cannot really separate out factual knowledge from control
knowledge or knowledge of how to draw inferences in a domain? In that case,
there is just effective knowledge, and it is the job of the theorist to
discover it?
Again, a devout logicist will be unmoved. Arguments aside, it may simply be a
fact evident to a logicist that if we examine particular examples of reasoning
in a domain we can tell factual from conceptual mistakes from inferential
mistakes. Yet how can he know his intuitions are correct? What grounds are
there for supposing that {\ital indexing} knowledge is not conceptual
knowledge about a domain? Clearly, indexing is important. Indeed, there are
theorists, such as Roger Schank,[reference] who maintain that almost as much
knowledge is contained in the indexing scheme -- the typing and classification
of information -- as in the actual contents of the declaratives stored. Do we
have such a clear idea of what is conceptual? As Simon [reference] pointed
out long ago, we can reduce search if we can classify states more precisely,
so that instead of there being two rules to apply to state $S_i$ we reclassify
$S_i$ into $S_1$ and $S_2$ which each take only one rule. But then have we
not increased our conceptual knowledge of the domain? Now we can draw a finer
set of distinctions than before.
If the logicist still remains indifferent there is one last variation on this
tack: Not all domain knowledge is actually conceptual knowledge, hence
orthodox knowledge elicitation is bound to be inadequate because it
necessarily leaves something out.
Suppose the capacity to apply appropriate rules in inference is not based on
conceptual distinctions about types of situations, but on some less well
understood process such as analogical recognition. The rule to apply to
situation $S_j$, therefore, is not determined by the type predicate of $S_j$,
or some extra property that $S_j$ has. It is determined by the agent's
recognizing that $S_j$ is relevantly similar to $S_2$. But when asked, or
when the two cases are compared it is not clear what they have in common.
Allegedly, in face recognition, our ability to determine whether two pictures
are images of the same face, is not reducible to a set of concepts describing
facial features. Agents may be able to recognize two situations as
relevantly similar despite having {\ital no} concepts of the nature of the
similarity. But then might there not be important first order domain
knowledge an agent has that resists expression in an axiomatic theory? If so,
why not just forgo the belief in an epistemological/process distinction? Much
of our domain knowledge cannot be properly identified with concepts and
axioms, whatever their nature.
The thrust of these arguments is that when close attention is paid to the
actual capacities which acting perceiving creatures display, we find it
impossible to retain the vision of cognition as a uniform space of logic-like
{\ital concept} manipulation. What we are to replace this traditional view
with is less clear. But there are suggestions. For instance, in place of
concepts understood as context independent intensions defined truth
conditionally, we are to think about open textured context sensitive
intensions [Lakoff] -- entities which are not reducible to sets of necessary
and sufficient conditions, nor to invariant patterns of use, nor to simple
word-world correlation functions. In place of reasoning understood as a
simple process of applying rules over well-defined concepts, we are to think
of cognition as a hotbed of {\ital sub-rational} [Hofstaeder] interactions
defined over sub-conceptual [Smolenski] entities -- as in connectionist, or
society of mind type interactions -- where aspects of thousands of cases may
be simultaneously compared and weighed. In place of propositions construed as
context free compositions of concepts, we are to think of indexicalized states
that are situationally dependent and sometimes irreducibly tied to the here
and now [Evans, Smith]. And in the most extreme case, we are to give up the
notion of intelligence having much to do with logic-like cognition at all, and
consider the majority of intelligent activity to be controlled by tuned
control systems, sensitized to highly specific and task bound properties
[Brooks, Agre Chapman].
Accordingly, what opponents of logic appear to be objecting to is the narrow
portrait of intelligence flowing out of a simplistic image of concepts, the
world, and mind-world interaction. There are more mechanisms of intelligence
than can be captured in axiomatic accounts of knowledge, and rational
inference. Much of intelligence is non-propositionally based.
I now turn to the arguments for and against logicist tenets. In each case, I
try to provide the deep intuition behind the logicist's position before
offering what I take to be its basic criticism.
\subsection{Microtheories, Conceptual Structure, Propositions}
{\ital Why we need them}. For the logicist, axiomatic microtheories are put
forward as the basic form of domain knowledge. As the name suggests, a
micro{\ital theory} is not just a descriptive device, it is explanatory. It
tells us what an agent knows in a manner that explains that agent's competence
in judgement, action, prediction or whatever rational faculty is thought to
need explanation.
According to the received view in philosophy and cognitive science, a
competence theory is explanatory and not just descriptive if it is able to
generate from a small set of (learnable or innate) concepts and axioms the
full range of true statements known about a domain. Using these axioms we
should be able to explain how new situations can be understood by showing
those situations to be assimilatable to old ones in a {\ital principled}
fashion. Thus, although domain knowledge {\ital might} consist of storage of
fifty thousand cases, any theory which specified domain knowledge as {\ital
just} case knowledge would fail to provide a {\ital systematic} account of
what an agent knows. Why can the agent recognize and understand novel cases?
Are there no regularities to be found in the case knowledge? By axiomatizing
knowledge, we explain these regularities; we produce a codification which
makes clear the structural understanding an agent has of a particular domain.
This is the methodological directive underpinning Chomsky's approach to
syntax, Davidson's and Montague's approach to semantics, Marr's approach to
shape classification, and the logicist's approach to commonsense knowledge.
Good microtheories, then, reveal the conceptual structure of a domain. They
presuppose, first that there are a set of concepts structuring understanding,
and second that these concepts are interrelated in logical fashion.
To accomodate this view, let us define a {\ital concept} as a modular
component of knowledge. If John knows the pen is on the desk we assume he has
distinct concepts for {\ital pen, desk} and {\ital on}. We assume this
because we believe that he might also know that the teacup is on the desk, or
that the desk is not on the pen, or that the pen is empty. We credit John
with enough understanding of {\ital pen}, {\ital desk}, and {\ital on} that he
can swap them around reasonably. Thus if he genuinely knows what it is for
something to be a pen, or a desk, and for something to be on something else,
then he can just as easily understand what it is for a pen to be on something
other than a desk, as on a desk. Indeed, to warrant us in thinking he knows
that the pen is on the desk we need to assume that he can substitute
appropriately for {\ital x} and {\ital y} in {\ital (On x y)}.
If concepts did not have this modularity how could we explain inference? For
instance, given the premises that the pen is on the desk, that the pen is
matte black, then a knowledgeable agent ought to be able to infer that the
matte black pen is on the desk. It is possible that actual agents will not
bother to draw this inference. But it is hard for us to imagine that they
might have a grasp of what pens are etc, and not be {\ital able} to draw it.
Inferences are permissive not obligatory. Thus, as long as it makes sense to
view agents to be {\ital sometimes} drawing inferences about a domain, it
makes sense to suppose they have a network of concepts which structures their
knowledge\footnote{The much discussed attribute of systematicity which
Fodor and Pylyshyn cite as essential to symbolic reasoning and antithetical to
the spirit of much connectionist work to date, is a version of this {\ital
generality constraint} on concepts. A few years earlier, Evans put the
matter like this
\bqt
If the subject can be credited with the thought that {\ital a } is {\ital F},
then he must have conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that
{\ital a} is {\ital G}, for every property of being {\ital G} of which he has
a conception. We thus see the thought that {\ital a} is $F$ as lying at the
intersection of two series of thoughts: on the one hand, the series of
thoughts that {\ital a} is $F$, {\ital b} is $F$, {\ital c} is $F$, \dots,
and, on the other hand, the series of thoughts that {\ital a} is $F$,
{\ital a} is $G$, {\ital a} is $H$, \dots. [The varieties of Reference, p
104, fn 22.].
.. 144
\eqt}. Consequently, it is impossible to understand a domain piecemeal, case
by case, without first grasping a whole system of concepts which structures
(and partially indexes) the cases in a sensible fashion.
This, I believe, is the core insight driving the logicist program: to
understand an agent's knowledge we must discover the structured system of
concepts underpinning the conceptualizations it uses. The thesis is
seductive because of its unanticipated explanatory power. For if we can
identify the conceptual system of an agent, we are in a position to explain
several otherwise puzzling properties of its reasoning.
For instance, we can explain how the agent's understanding {\ital develops}.
Learning becomes movement along a trajectory of theories, or conceptual
systems. The principles of learning become the principles of conceptual
advance.
Similarly, we can explain how knowledge is lost. Knowledge decay in existing
reasoning systems, such as humans or animals, often follows a pattern. Why?
When a system decays, bugs may not seem to arise in a systematic manner, but
if we know the structure of the larger system from which they emerge, there
may be greater order than we would have suspected. This is obviously
desirable if we are cognitive scientists and wish to explain deficits; but
equally desirable if we are designers trying to determine why a design is
faulty.
The same holds for understanding the perceptual strategies an agent may have
for confirming or disconfirming conjectures. Only with a knowledge of what
counts as evidence can we see the point of certain perceptual questions.
Perception, from this vantage, is a method of gathering evidence about the
environment. We can think of it as an oracle offering answers to questions
about the external world. Not direct answers, but partial answers, perceptual
answers, that serve as evidence for or against certain conjectures. Because
evidence is well-defined only as a relation between statements, the output of
perception must be sufficiently like a statement to be assigned a conceptual
structure. That is, the conceptual structure of perception must be comparable
to the conceptual structure of statements. This is not surprising if, as is
commonly assumed, we derive perceptual knowledge and beliefs from different
sensory modalities. For how could hearing provide us with evidence that
corroborates the testimony of our sight if the two do not encode their
information in propositional form. Accordingly, to understand the relation
of perception to knowledge, and to understand, moreover the way an agent
controls its perception we need to know the conceptual structure of knowledge.
There is yet a fourth advantage to uncovering the conceptual structure of
knowledge. If knowledge consists in compositions of concepts -- that is,
propositions -- we have an explanation of why, in principle, any piece of
knowledge in one microtheory can be combined with knowledge drawn from another
microtheory. They can combine because they are structured in a similar
fashion out of similar types of elements. At the object level, this explains
how it is possible for a cognizer to receive generally useful information in
one context, say astronomy, and end up using it in another, say calendar
making. At the metalevel, it explains how, as designers, we can build on
knowledge in different domains, thereby simplifying our overall account of the
knowledge a system requires. Many of the decisions we make rely on
information drawn from disparate domains. Knowledge which accrues in one
domain can be useful in making decisions in another. This is a fact which
Nilsson rightly emphasises in his condition on portability as a hallmark of
commonsense knowledge. Compositionality would explain portability.\footnote{
To be sure, this common language of concepts does not apply to {\ital every}
domain of knowledge. Microtheories about syntax and early vision, arguably are
about domain elements not found in other microtheories. These
microtheoretical specifications identify correctness conditions on
computations, or identify the knowledge built into highly domain specific
procedures. So sometimes microtheoretical knowledge is not transportable to
other contexts.
But in cases, where knowledge is not built into informationally encapsulated
modules, our microtheories explain portability -- a hard problem for any
non declarative theory.}
Logic, therefore, commands our attention because it offers us a clean
formalism in which to explain the systematic nature of our conceptual
understanding of the world. I take this to be very compelling.
If opposition to logic is to be equally compelling we must be convinced that:
\be \item Logic is not the only way of {\ital explaining} our systematic
understanding of the world -- that connectionism, or Society of Mind theory,
or distributed AI approaches can equally accomodate the facts of
systematicity; or
\item That our understanding of the world is not really as systematic as
logic presents it -- a closer examination of reasoning and action management
shows that there is less formal systematicity in thought and action than
axiomatizations make us believe; or
\item It is impossible to describe our knowledge in abstraction from the way
we actually {\ital use} knowledge to solve particular problems, so, in fact,
logical accounts misrepresent what we know because they make it appear as if
all, or at least a majority, of knowledge is context independent.
\ee
Now to the arguments against logicism. I consider arguments against the
context independence of concepts first. Can knowledge be studied in
abstraction from how it is used in reasoning?
\subsubsection{Portability vs Incommensurability}
Knowledge is portable if it was acquired or introduced in one situation for
one purpose but can be used in other situations and for other purposes.
Axiomatic accounts expain this important feature of commonsense because they
use concepts that are context free: they retain their meaning and reference
across change of context. Thus a concept that appears in the conclusion of
one chain of inference can be used in another chain of inference without
concern that the new context of use will impose restrictions on the
applicability of the concept, or on its meaning.
To achieve this complete context insensitivity, one important condition must
be satisfied: all knowledge must be axiomatized in the same system. To see
why this may be a problem consider what an axiomatic theory is.
Axiomatic theories consist of primitive, undefined terms, Boolean operators
plus identity and quantifiers, and Boolean combinations of theses primitives.
Because an axiomatic system introduces primitives, none of the axioms in a
microtheory can actually be regarded as a proposition; none of them is in
itself either true or false. The primitives and axioms must be interpreted.
Thus prior to interpretation we know just this: that if $A$ is true, then $B$
is true, regardless of what $A$ and $B$ might possibly be. This sets some
constraints on the class of possible interpretations -- possible models -- of
the axiom set. Nonetheless, for each variable there will still be a class of
possible entities that it could denote. The only restriction placed upon
denotation (ie. interpretation) is that each assignment of entity to term must
satisfy or conform to the formal relations stated in the axioms. A model
is any structure that preserves the {\ital relations} defined in the axiom
set.
It follows, then, that axiomatic theories define primitives contextually -- by
the systems of axioms they appear in. We can think of undefined terms in
axiomatizations like variables in algebra. In the expression $x↑2 - y↑2
= (x - y)(x + y)$, $x$ and $y$ are undefined in the sense that they may
represent any individual consistent with the equation.
Now one way to view the meaning of primitives is by their net effect on
permissable inference. Primitives mean whatever they must mean to ensure
that we do not derive false statements from true ones. If we believe that an
equation is true then $x$ and $y$ can mean anything (designate any number) as
long as we cannot derive a false claim. The meaning of $x$ and $y$ as given
by their appearance in equations constrains the class of permissable algebraic
inferences. By adding more equations with $x$ and $y$ we further constrain
the possible inferences. We restrict their possible models. In effect, we
are defining $x$ and $y$ by their {\ital functional role} in algebraic
inference. If we change either the rules of algebra or the axioms they
appear in the particular functional role of $x$ and $y$ and hence their
meaning will also change. This is what is meant by saying that they are
contextually defined.
Returning to axiomatizations of knowledge, it should be obvious that if we
reason with primitives drawn from different microtheories or we reason with
them using different rules of inference, we shall change the basic meaning of
those primitives. Put differently, if we wish to follow a line of thought
that uses premises drawn from several microtheories we must be certain that
any common terms mean the same. Otherwise we may make inferences of the
following type: I have a pain in my foot, my foot is in my shoe, therefore I
have a pain in my shoe. This is an invalid inference because the microtheory
of commonsense bodily experience defines {\ital pains}, {\ital feet} and
{\ital in}, in such a way that pains are not in feet the way our microtheory
of space tells us feet are {\ital in} shoes. The two operate with different
primitive notions of {\ital in}.
As emphasised, portability demands that statements in one domain can in
principle be used in inferences involving statements in other domains. The
meaning of concepts must be context independent. If terms shift in meaning as
we shift contexts then interdomain inference can be valid only if we add
additional axioms explaining how concepts in one domain relate to concepts
with similar names in other domains. This requires building a larger theory
integrating smaller microtheories with bridging axioms. In that case, an
intertheoretical term will be contextually defined by the whole set of axioms
in which it figures, rather than in an isolated subset.
This has the consequence that microtheories cannot be either totally
self-contained or isolated. Portability is achieveable only if there
is an overarching conceptual system -- the conceptual scheme underlying all
possible commonsense knowledge -- which can serve to integrate the various
microtheories. The conceptual scheme underlying natural language has often
been put forward as this general scheme.
Unfortunately, producing such a scheme may prove a problem for two reasons.
First, many microtheories are about isolated, tractible domains that are
largely unconnected. The theory of liquid behaviour has little in common with
the theory of naive psychology, or the theory of commonsense geometry. So in
fact it may be hard, if not impossible, to establish that the three are
consistent. They each use theoretical terms that are specific to their
domains. Of course, we want them to be consistent because we may use theorems
from each of the fields in longer inferences, say about how we expect a
particular agent to {\ital react} (naive psychology) at having a {\ital pail}
(naive geometry) of {\ital water} (naive liquids) {\ital thrown}
(naive physics) at him. So ultimately we would like to fit all our microtheories
into a single commonsense knowledge base that allows adding premises to chains
of thought without concern for the microtheory they orginated from. But, as
we know from the history of mathematics, it can be extremely difficult to
establish consistency across branches that appear to have nothing in common.
To be sure, we might proceed in making interdomain inferences confident that
one day we will be justified. But if our domain knowledge is axiomatized, we
have no reason to use similar names in different domains. Hence no reason to
notice that an inference is possible.
I think that this is a genuine problem for logicists. But there may be an
out. Any microtheory must eventually make predictions about observable states
if it is to be usable by an acting perceiving system. In complete
microtheories we hope to be able to tie domain primitives to observations. If
the observational predicates derive from a common language of observation then
the primitives of a domain ought to be reducible to a common language of
perception.
And, in fact, according to Nilsson, we may understand an agent to have a {\bf
see} function which maps states of the world into observational descriptions.
Presumably, then, the way microtheories connect to experience is through a
network of deductive relations to the output of {\bf see}. That is, {\bf see}
determines which predicates are primitively observable and which are not.
These unobservable predicates must be viewed as constructions out of
observables or in some other way inferentially connected to a determinate set
of them; otherwise an agent can have no means of ever deciding whether its
microtheoretical assertion are true.
But here we face the second problem beleaguering portability --
incommensurability of observations. It has been argued, at length by Kuhn
and others, that there is no such thing as a theory-neutral observation
language. In formulating a theory, the theoretical concepts themselves have
an effect on the meaning of the observational predicates and statements that
constitute evidence for the theory. That is, {\bf see} is actually
conditioned by each microtheory -- it is not a function that exists prior and
independently from microtheorizing. It changes with eh agent's knowledge of
the world. Hence each microtheory lives, to some degree, in an isolated
sub-world unconnected to other theories, even at its observational periphery.
Consequently, inferences that cross theoretical boundaries are not properly
speaking deductively valid, for they presuppose commensurability of common
terms which, if Kuhn is right, is unsubstantiated.
It is probably safe to say that the radical Kuhnian position is endorsed by a
small minority in the philosophy of science today. But conversely there are
few who believe that theoretical terms are reducible to observational terms.
This reductive possibility is required to justify identifying two
theoretical terms, because unless there is a common matrix of axioms to
contextually define a theoretical term, we must assume that theoretical terms
in different theories have different inferential roles.
The logicist can pull out one last trick, however. Instead of claiming to
reduce theoretical terms to observational terms he can argue that theoretical
terms are contextually defined by their relation to other theoretical terms
and the theory as a whole is tied to observations. Intertheoretical
inferences, then, are justified as long as they hold between terms that play
similar roles in the theoretical parts of microtheories.
It should be obvious that such a desperate manoeuvre cannot succeed. In
deductive theories, to justify an inference from $a \rightarrow b, a,
\Longrightarrow b$ we must assume that $a$ in $a \rightarrow b$ has exactly
the same meaning as $a$ in the second premiss. {\ital Similarity} of
inferential role is not good enough because if we insist on the conclusion
necessarily folowing from the premisses it must be the case that the
models in which $a \rightarrow b$ is true can be compared with the models
in which $a$ is true. But they need not be comparable if they are defined in
different home theories.
And yet something like similarity of inference role is exactly what we want.
Unless {\ital mass} in Newtonian mechanics means something like {\ital mass}
in Einsteinian physics we cannot say that the concept of mass has been
revised. The two would be totally incommensurable. Yet, we clearly do want
to be able to draw such inferences. So we clearly want to have a notion of meaning
that allows that terms may be {\ital similar} -- though not identical -- in
meaning.
But how can we on the logicist account? Our problem is this. In a rational
creature it ought to be possible to alter the expectation that, for example
{\ital water will soon overflow in a container unless interruped} by informing
it that {\ital a watchman will soon appear to interrupt it}. Here two
domains, naive liquids, naive agency, introduce the same term {\ital
interrupt} as a primitive. In the liquid world {\ital interrupt} has a more
specific meaning than in the world of general agency, where there are many
ways of interrupting things. It has a different inferential role. One way
of dealing with this would be to merge the theories and add bridging axioms
explaining the relation of interrupt in liquid contexts to interrupt in other
contexts. But it is hard to know how many such bridging axioms would be
necessary to cover all contexts where interruptions are possible. Is there a
tidy lattice structure of interruptions? If we doubt that there is such a
lattice, yet we also believe that interdomain inferences can be made, we may
consider a different theory of meaning, one based on analogical extension of
terms rather than prior specification of meaning. Thus, we might infer that a
watchman can interrupt an overflow, even though we have no bridging axiom to
link the concept of interruption in the theory of liquids with interruption in
the theory of agency, because our conclusion is based on {\ital analogies} of
interruptions in other agency contexts to interruption in this context.
In human reasoners these analogies take place so often we don't notice that
the terms have slightly different meanings. Careful attention to language,
however, suggests that these variations are absolutely commonplace.
Now, if all inference were necessarily deductive we would have no choice but
to outlaw such analogical inferences. But logicists have no reason to outlaw
non deductive reasoning as long as they can formalize the rules which govern
it. As we broaden the range of inferences in which our concepts can operate,
however, we broaden the contexts in which they have meaning.
This creates a tension. Either restrict inference to deduction, and save our
clean model theoretic account of meaning -- but at the cost of losing
portability, for now we are confined to intratheoretic inference. Or sanction
different kinds of inference, but interpret the meaning of terms more broadly
by their role in the space of possible inferences they can figure in. If we
pursue this last policy, terms are not implicitly defined by their role in
their home microtheories but by their role in the entire space of reasoning.
The standard name for theories of meaning that identify meaning with
functional role in all of reasoning is {\ital conceptual role semantics}. A
clear statement of this position is found in Harman: \bqt
\dots meaning depends on role in conceptual scheme rather than on truth
conditions. That is, meaning has to do with evidence, inference, and
reasoning, including the impact sensory experience has on what one believes,
the way in inference and reasoning modify one's beliefs andplans, and the way
beliefs and plans are reflected in action. (Harman `Meaning and Semantics',
in Milton Munitz and Peter Unger, ed., Semantics and Philosophy (New York:
NYU Press 1975). p 11.
\eqt
At first such an extension might seem consistent with the spirit, if not the
letter, of logicism. After all, if terms are defined contextually in
microtheories why not admit that our conceptual scheme is in fact more unitary
than we had originally expected and again define terms contextually, this time
in the context of a commomnsense supertheory which includes second order
axioms of reasoning.
But such an extension is totally against the spirit of logicism. Once we
admit that our first order axioms may figure in non-deductive patterns of
reasoning, we can no longer claim that the meaning of a first order term is
the constraints it imposes on possible models. At one blow we have allowed
that the way a term can be used in oher forms of reasoning is relevant to
determining its meaning. Yet one of the great virtues of logicism was that we
were to be able to study the conceptual structure of an agent without concern
for its actual reasoning patterns. We wanted to determine what an agent
knows; not how it uses that knowledge. Use is a heuristic issue, a question
of performance, not pure competence. We were able to pursue our inquiry
into pure conceptual competence because the wya a concept can be used in a
deductive system is fully specified by its model theory. In a deep sense
constraints on use are identical to constraints on truth, because only what is
valid is derivable in a consistent system. Thus although particular encodings
or particular axioms or particular control structures might speed up the
drawing of inferences, they would not alter what could or couldn't be
infereed.
Unfortunately, the beauty of identifying use with truth dissolves once we
allow non-demonstrative inferences. For now we can use concepts in ways that
do not guarantee truth. Hence our theory of use must be substantive. We
cannot suppose it is implicit in our model theory, for now order, preference
timing, and an undischarged notion of analogical similarity can affect what is
inferrable. Consequently, if we suppose that to interpret a concept we need
to study non-demonstrative reasoning we can no longer study knowledge in
abstraction from use. One of the fundamental tenets of logicism must be
abandoned.
If the logicist is to resist this attack he must explain how he can accomodate
the various forms of non-demonstrative inference -- including analogical
inference -- which we find in everyday reasoning; and explain these reasoning
styles in a manner that is consistent with a model based semantics.
\end{document}
∂21-Feb-90 1104 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 13:04:56 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9002211904.AA18898@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
.mn
.LT
.SZ 12
Professor John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140
Dear Professor McCarthy:
.pp
This is to confirm our invitation to you to be a Distinguished Visitor and
to give lectures at 2:30-3:30pm on April 18, 19, and 20, 1990. Your talks
will be videotaped and carried on our closed-circuit instructional TV
network, which is transmitted to local industry sites. After each
lecture, there is a small reception and discussion, which lasts a half
hour. Within one week, please write to verify your acceptance of this
invitation. Please send us titles and abstracts of your talks at least 30
days in advance. We shall pay a Distinguished Visitor honorarium of $600/day
for the three days of your visit.
.pp
We shall reimburse all your travel expenses and provide hotel
accommodations and meals. It will be easier for us if you make your own
arrangements, and we shall reimburse you after your visit. We shall
reserve a room for you at the Radisson University Hotel on Washington Ave.
in Minneapolis. If we can be of further assistance in making any other
arrangements, please let us know. When you arrive at the airport, you
should take a taxi to the Radisson University Hotel. Please let us know
in advance of your travel plans including flight numbers and times of
arrival/departure, so that we can make the hotel reservation.
.pp
It is a great pleasure for us that you so kindly accepted our invitation,
and we are looking forward to your visit. Your host will be Dr. James
Slagle ((612) 625-0329).
.in 25
Sincerely,
.sp 4
James Slagle
.br
Professor
∂21-Feb-90 1531 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU ADS
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 15:31:06 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9002212331.AA20636@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: ADS
I've been talking to ADS (Advanced Decision Systems) in Mountain View
and they would like me to consult there one day a week (or two half-
days). I'd like to do this; do you have any objection?
∂21-Feb-90 1606 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 16:01:01 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9002220001.AA09748@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Prof. Levitt's initiative (see below)
Cc: nilsson@cs.stanford.edu, latombe@cs.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
jones@cs.stanford.edu
Ed,
Gene Golub is in charge of the industrial lecture
program for next year. (John McC resigned from that
chore a while back.) Our practice is to invite
industrial lecturers from the surrounding area who
are able to give a course or seminar but who do not
need to get paid. We have a great wealth of
excellent people in that category. The Dept. has no
funds at present to pay industrial lecturers except those
who are teaching required courses for faculty
members who are on sabbatical.
-Nils
∂21-Feb-90 1612 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Publication
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1990 16:13:03 GMT
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Publication
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Feb 90 1559 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635645583.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
I'll put it in I.D. mail right away.
∂21-Feb-90 1721 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Tomorrow's seminar topic
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Tomorrow's seminar topic
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 17:20:52 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Seminar on Issues in Logical Theory
February 22, 3:45 pm
Tomorrow, David Israel will present material on proof theory and
meaning, inspired by Sundholm's chapter, "Proof Theory and Meaning,"
in the Handbook of Philosophical Logic.
Next week: Grigori Mintz, "Resolution Calculi for Modal Logic."
∂21-Feb-90 1724 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1990 17:23:58 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: eaf@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, Genesereth@cs.Stanford.EDU,
latombe@Coyote.Stanford.EDU, lenat@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU,
ZM@Sail.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU,
nilsson@TENAYA.STANFORD.EDU, shoham@Cs.Stanford.EDU,
Marty@CIS.STANFORD.EDU, waldinger@ai.sri.com,
Winograd@csli.stanford.edu, Shortliffe@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU,
musen@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, barraqua@Coyote.Stanford.EDU,
rse@sumex-aim.Stanford.EDU, Fagan@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU,
ginsberg@cs.stanford.edu, gruber@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
Bhayes-roth@sumex-aim.Stanford.EDU, Iwasaki@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
KELLER@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, OK@coyote.stanford.edu,
VAL@Sail.Stanford.EDU, IAM@Sail.Stanford.EDU,
Nii@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, Ponce@Coyote.Stanford.EDU,
Rindfleisch@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, rit@coyote.stanford.edu,
singh@hudson.stanford.edu, CLT@Sail.Stanford.EDU,
weening@gang-of-four.stanford.edu, em.der@psych.Stanford.EDU,
cooper@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, tajnai@Cs.Stanford.EDU
Cc: hiller@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635649838.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
Please send me the title for your proposed talk by Monday, March 5,
if you wish to participate in the AI Day on Campus.
Also, let me know if you wish to give a demo and the title of said demo.
I want to get a brochure printed and mailed by March 29 (when I'm leaving
on a two-week trip to Georgia/Mississippi). If we delay in getting the
publicity out, we will lose potential attendees.
I will need a technical person (co-chairman) to help me block the
program. Would appreciate a volunteer.
Finances: We will take the expenses off the top and the remainder of
the money will be divided into shares. One share for a talk; one
share for a demo; one share for my co-chairman.
Carolyn
∂21-Feb-90 1745 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1990 17:45:01 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: AI-DOC:;@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Call for titles for AI Day on Campus 6/7/90
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635651101.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
NOTE: My apologies if you receive this message twice.
Please send me the title for your proposed talk by Monday, March 5,
if you wish to participate in the AI Day on Campus.
Also, let me know if you wish to give a demo and the title of said demo.
I want to get a brochure printed and mailed by March 29 (when I'm leaving
on a two-week trip to Georgia/Mississippi). If we delay in getting the
publicity out, we will lose potential attendees.
I will need a technical person (co-chairman) to help me block the
program. Would appreciate a volunteer.
Finances: We will take the expenses off the top and the remainder of
the money will be divided into shares. One share for a talk; one
share for a demo; one share for my co-chairman.
Carolyn
∂22-Feb-90 0217 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU free will
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002221019.AA07837@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: free will
You think a machine could have a mind, but do you think it could have
free will? It seems that almost by definition "free will" means
non-algorithmic choices. If I ask you to make some choice (where it
is consequence-less which choice you make) such as choosing a number
between one and ten, or choosing to raise or not to raise your arm,
do you think that there are algorithms executing in your brain that
determine the choice?
Incidentally, I received early religious education in the Presbyterian
church, which has a doctrine called "predestination" according to which
free will is an illusion. It contradicts their other doctrine that
evil is man's fault, the result of his own actions, which caused my
early start on free-thinking. It's funny that these questions of my
childhood crop up again in the context of artificial intelligence.
∂22-Feb-90 0220 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU your old science fiction story
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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 02:21:49 -0800
From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9002221021.AA07862@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: your old science fiction story
I remember your story about the invaders who were blocked by posts
and couldn't decide which way to go. Evidently you have thought
about the problem of making choices before!
∂22-Feb-90 0913 CLT collaboration
To: "@JAPAN.DIS[1,CLT]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
It looks like most people prefer Spring of 91 to Fall of 90
for the workshop in Japan. According to Masahiko, the Japanese
academic year begins at the beginning of April, so mid or late
April would be better for them. If you have any objections
to this time frame let me know soon. Also if you know of
any meetings or other events during that time that we should avoid
conflict with please let me know.
∂22-Feb-90 1124 lrosenbe@note2.nsf.gov Re: apology
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: apology
In-reply-to: Your message of 17 Feb 90 12:27:00 -0800.
<WkZlQ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 14:04:45 -0500
From: Laurence Rosenberg <lrosenbe@note2.nsf.gov>
Message-ID: <9002221404.aa28044@Note2.NSF.GOV>
Hi, thanks for the material on elephant. I think the Software Engineering or
Software Systems program are the best target for this. I don't know which one
since they have recently shifted responsibilities. Contact K.C. Tai or Tomλ
Keenan.
Larry Rosenberg
∂22-Feb-90 1139 ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU Sushi?
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From: <ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Sushi?
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
X-Original-To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Hi John,
The details of my visit to Stanford are crystallizing now.
My plane gets in Thurday March 1st, around 8.30 pm in SF.
I am renting a car, so I can be at your house
(where I am lodged in case you had not heard yet)
around 9.30pm. Would you then still be in for a Sushi dinner,
like we were saying we would do when we last spoke on the phone?
Or is that too late?
Saturday night is another possibility, but also rather later in the
evening then.
Let me know ...
Alice
∂23-Feb-90 0833 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Ph.D Folders
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From: mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Pat Simmons)
Message-Id: <9002231632.AA29440@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Ph.D Folders
Did you put the envelopes from Batch 3 on my desk
after I left last night? If so, do they go to
Sharon Hemenway? Thanks.
Pat
∂23-Feb-90 0910 atm@ucs.indiana.edu re: Sushi?
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Date: 23 Feb 90 12:15:00 EST
From: atm@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: re: Sushi?
To: "jmc" <jmc@sail.stanford.edu>
OK, Saturday then. I'm looking forward to that.
May I remind you that you were going to send me
a paper about speech-act based programming?
Alice
∂23-Feb-90 0925 VAL special seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
∂22-Feb-90 2214 ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU special seminar
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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 22:13:20 -0800
From: Jeffrey D. Ullman <ullman@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9002230613.AA15284@nimbin.Stanford.EDU>
To: cs545@eclipse.stanford.edu, nail-local@nimbin.Stanford.EDU
Subject: special seminar
Monday, 4PM in 352 (I think) we'll have the following talk.
***************************************************************
On Choice and Negation in Deductive Databases
(rediscovering Buridan's dilemma)
Carlo Zaniolo
MCC, Austin, Tx
This talk will examine the theoretical and practical
relations between negation and non-deterministic choice
in deductive databases. In particular we show how stable
model semantic can be used to capture the notion of declarative
non-derminism. Then we present a taxonomy of partial models
which shows that the well-founded model coincides with the minimal
deterministic model and is a subset of the maximal deterministic
model of a program. Finally, we provide a backtracking
fixpoint procedure for the construction of stable models.
∂23-Feb-90 0957 MPS Visitors
Maria from the I-Center (31984) called to confirm
your meeting on the 27th at 4pm at the I-Ctr with
the foreign visitors. I mentioned this to you and
you felt you might not be the right person to talk
to these people. I told her I would get back to her.
∂23-Feb-90 1138 paulf@bodega.Stanford.EDU Re: phone caller identification
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Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 11:38:42 PST
From: paulf@bodega.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty)
Message-Id: <9002231938.AA26776@bodega.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: phone caller identification
Newsgroups: su.etc
In-Reply-To: <casNR@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: The Three Packeteers
Cc:
In article <casNR@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> you write:
>The usual opponents of progress have succeeded in getting a
>California law that phone companies offer an option that
>prevents receivers of calls from knowing the calling number.
>Let's have another law requiring the option of not receiving
>calls from telephones that don't allow themselves to be
>identified. By the way, I hope the original option isn't
>available for business phones.
>
As far as I was aware, this was as far as PUC hearings, and not law. Pac*Bell
really wanted to offer this service, to cut down on crank calls...
--
-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX/VK2WYX | "Unix could use a more user-friendly front
->paulf@shasta.Stanford.EDU | end. Does anyone have a card punch handy?"
∂23-Feb-90 1528 MPS Mintz
Megan Beardsley, Campus Report (51943) called
regarding Mintz and party. She would like to
interview you regarding their visit here. How,
why, what, etc. She will be in her office until
5:00 today.
She has already talked to them. I mentioned Suppes,
and she is also trying to reach him.
Pat
∂23-Feb-90 1624 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
GENERAL PATTERNS OF NONMONOTONIC REASONING
Daniel Lehmann
Hebrew University
Monday, February 26, 2:30pm
MJH 252
Recent developments in the area of nonmonotonic reasoning have
converged onto a number of specific properties of nonmonotonic
inference operations. Nonmonotonic inference operations appear
as a natural generalization of Tarski's consequence operations.
The need and justification for considering such a generalization
will be discussed and some of the recent results reviewed.
∂23-Feb-90 1747 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
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Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 17:46:57 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9002240146.AA01773@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Puzzle
The code seems to work.
Ramin
∂23-Feb-90 1757 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Dinner Invitation
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To: barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU, bratman@russell.Stanford.EDU,
bresnan@russell.Stanford.EDU, herb@psych.stanford.edu,
etch@russell.Stanford.EDU, greeno@xerox.com, kay@russell.Stanford.EDU,
kiparsky@russell.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
jcm@cs.stanford.edu, julius@russell.Stanford.EDU,
nilsson@cs.stanford.edu, john@russell.Stanford.EDU,
poser@russell.Stanford.EDU, der@psych.stanford.edu,
sag@russell.Stanford.EDU, sells@russell.Stanford.EDU,
shoham@cs.stanford.edu, wasow@russell.Stanford.EDU,
winograd@russell.Stanford.EDU
Cc: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Dinner Invitation
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 17:58:15 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Esteemed CSLI-affiliated faculty,
In connection with our second annual Industrial Affiliates Corporate
Advisory Board Meeting, I'd like to invite you to the banquet we're
planning at the Buck Estate.
It will take place the evening of Tuesday, 10 April, starting at 6:30
with cocktails, followed by dinner.
This will be an enjoyable opportunity for informal discussion between
you and representatives from the twelve companies that currently
belong to our IAP (ATR, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Matsushita
Electric, NEC, NTT, Sharp, SRI, Tokyo Electric Power, WACOM, and
Xerox).
The IAP is becoming an important source of support for CSLI; member
companies are contributing well over half a million dollars this year.
I hope you will show them your support of CSLI by participating in the
IAP meeting on April 10th and 11th, including this banquet.
Please RSVP to Debra (debra@csli) by Thursday, 2 March.
Festively yours,
Stanley
∂24-Feb-90 1843 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu thesis proposal
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Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1990 18:45:48 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: thesis proposal
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.635913948.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I was wondering if had a chance to read my thesis proposal yet. Could you
tell me after you have read it so that I can come and get your comments on
it?
Thanks
Guha
∂25-Feb-90 1459 VAL Problem for the test
Using the notation RTC[p] for the reflexive transitive closure of p,
express in the situation calculus: "There is no way to change the location
of block B without moving large blocks".
Answer:
∀sl[holds(at(x,l),S0)∧RTC[P](S0,s)⊃holds(at(x,l),s)],
where
P(s1,s2) ≡ ∃a[¬∃xl(heavy(x)∧a=move(x,l))∧s2=result(a,s1)].
∂25-Feb-90 1500 VAL
Correction: in the answer, "heavy" should be "large".
∂25-Feb-90 2300 LES CSD history
I am reviewing a draft dissertation on the history of science by a Harvard
grad. student named Adam Cohen. He attributes a number of quotations to
you (citing various sources) that sound like things you might have said.
He also includes a number of Feigenbaum quotations with distortions that
sound like him that I plan to untwist. There are also a number of factual
errors that he attributes to various sources.
He says that the Math Department attempted to inhibit a number of C.S.
appointments, including yours, and succeeded in some cases. He also says
that the Math Department prevented Wirth's appointment. I know that could
not have been true if Wirth was seeking a purely C.S. position, inasamuch
as CSD was independent by then, but it occurs to me that he might have been
seeking a joint CS-Math appointment that was blocked. Can you shed any
light on this?
Other questions:
1. My recollection was that Bill Miller had a joint appointment with Applied
Physics. True?
2. When was the BBN timesharing system based on the PDP-1 built?
3. Did ARPA support the Zeus project or was that just NSF money?
∂26-Feb-90 0044 LES re: CSD history
[In reply to message rcvd 25-Feb-90 23:11-PT.]
Thanks for the quick response. You say:
> There were two BBN time-sharing systems for the PDP-1. The first
> was completed in 1962 just before I went to Stanford. The second
> several years later.
I recall your earlier remarks that the first BBN system was the first
operational timesharing system. However, Cohen's thesis claims that
"In 1961, Fernando J. Corbato constructed a prototypical Compatible
Timesharing System to run on the Computation Center's IBM 7094." If so,
this would have predated the BBN system. The cited source for this claim
is an article on "Project MAC" by Robert Fano in Encyclopedia of Computer
Science and Technology, Vol. 12, pp. 339-360; New York, Marcel Dekker,
Inc., 1979.
You say:
> I don't remember whether any of the ARPA money was spent on Zeus.
> I suspect some was spent on beefing up the PDP-1, but I'm not sure
> of that.
Would it be correct to say that the main source of funds for your part of
the Zeus project was NSF? As I recall, Suppes covered about half of the
costs from his sources.
∂26-Feb-90 0051 LES re: CSD history
One other question; you say:
> As far as I know Wirth's appointment was strictly CS. Someone
> could have opposed it in the H&S Advisory Committee, but it
> wouldn't have been a department per se.
Do you happen to know if Wirth was ever offered a permanent faculty
position in CS or did he decide to leave without seeking such an
appointment?
∂26-Feb-90 0648 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu re: thesis proposal
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1990 6:51:08 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: re: thesis proposal
In-Reply-To: Your message of 26 Feb 90 0112 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.636043868.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Well, unfortunately something got fouled with my tickets and so I am going
to be comming in only at 8:30 tonight. Are you free any other time in thw
week?
Thanks
Guha
∂26-Feb-90 0701 JMC
aim 202-371-6710
∂26-Feb-90 0847 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 23 Feb 90 20:25:00 PST.
<GnalU@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 08:48:42 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
We'd like you to talk Tuesday April 10th 1:30 - 2:30 in the affiliates
meeting. Will that time work for you? Thanks.
Stanley
∂26-Feb-90 0900 JMC
Cate about Mesa
∂26-Feb-90 0954 PAF Nicaragua
Looks like socialism is having a bad year...
-=paulf
∂26-Feb-90 1007 slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 12:07:29 CST
From: "James Slagle" <slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9002261807.AA28939@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
.mn
.LT
.SZ 12
Professor John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140
Dear Professor McCarthy:
.pp
This is to confirm our invitation to you to be a Distinguished Visitor and
to give lectures at 2:30-3:30pm on April 18, 19, and 20, 1990. Your talks
will be videotaped and carried on our closed-circuit instructional TV
network, which is transmitted to local industry sites. After each
lecture, there is a small reception and discussion, which lasts a half
hour. Within one week, please write to verify your acceptance of this
invitation. At the same time, please send us titles and abstracts of your
talks. We shall pay a Distinguished Visitor honorarium of $600/day
for the three days of your visit.
.pp
We shall reimburse all your travel expenses and provide hotel
accommodations and meals. It will be easier for us if you make your own
arrangements, and we shall reimburse you after your visit. We shall
reserve a room for you at the Radisson University Hotel on Washington Ave.
in Minneapolis. If we can be of further assistance in making any other
arrangements, please let us know. When you arrive at the airport, you
should take a taxi to the Radisson University Hotel. Please let us know
in advance of your travel plans including flight numbers and times of
arrival/departure, so that we can make the hotel reservation.
.pp
It is a great pleasure for us that you so kindly accepted our invitation,
and we are looking forward to your visit. Your host will be Dr. James
Slagle ((612) 625-0329).
.in 25
Sincerely,
.sp 4
James Slagle
.br
Professor
∂26-Feb-90 1022 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: aaai video outline
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 10:10:27 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9002261810.AA12480@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: mazzetti@ed.aaai.org
Subject: Re: aaai video outline
Cc: Feigenbaum@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Hayes-Roth@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
Hinton@ri.cmu.edu, Lehnert@cs.umass.edu, Nilsson@score.stanford.edu,
RGSmith@slcs.slb.com, Rich@mcc.com, bobrow@xerox.com,
buchanan@vax.cs.pitt.edu, clancey.pa@xerox.com,
duda%polya@score.stanford.edu, engelmore@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
forbus@a.cs.uiuc.edu, hart@kl.sri.com,
hector%ai.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net, hes@scrc-vallecito.symbolics.com,
marty@cis.stanford.edu, mckeown@cs.columbia.edu, minsky@mc.lcs.mit.edu,
reddy@fas.ri.cmu.edu, swartout@vaxa.isi.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Claudia,
I agree with John (except that maybe we don't need a
historian of science). We do need to get someone to
look this material over carefully and do a major piece
of scholarship to do it right. You probably should not
have sent out such an early draft for general comments,
because there are several errors, omissions, changes,
etc. that are obvious to all of us and why should you
make all of us repeat a lot of work? My suggestion is
that you get someone who has been in the field
a long time to prepare the first draft of the timeline and
have them circulate a much more polished version
to us for comment and correction. (I am not available
to do the first draft, but I will send you a red-penciled
copy of your draft that catches some of the errors---
already
noticed by John.)
-Nils
∂26-Feb-90 1032 der@thorin Dinner Invitation
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 10:31:35 PST
From: der@thorin.stanford.edu (Dave Rumelhart)
Message-Id: <9002261831.AA15852@thorin>
To: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Cc: barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU, bratman@russell.Stanford.EDU,
bresnan@russell.Stanford.EDU, herb@psych.stanford.edu,
etch@russell.Stanford.EDU, greeno@xerox.com, kay@russell.Stanford.EDU,
kiparsky@russell.Stanford.EDU, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
jcm@cs.stanford.edu, julius@russell.Stanford.EDU,
nilsson@cs.stanford.edu, john@russell.Stanford.EDU,
poser@russell.Stanford.EDU, sag@russell.Stanford.EDU,
sells@russell.Stanford.EDU, shoham@cs.stanford.edu,
wasow@russell.Stanford.EDU, winograd@russell.Stanford.EDU,
ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU's message of Fri, 23 Feb 90 17:58:15 PST <9002240158.AA27642@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Dinner Invitation
I can come to the dinner.
der
∂26-Feb-90 1113 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: reply to message
In-Reply-To: Your message of 26 Feb 90 09:50:00 PST.
<l08YU@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 11:14:34 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Great. Thanks.
Stanley
∂26-Feb-90 1154 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu one more address!
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 11:18:47 MST
From: teodor@utep-vaxa.UUCP (Teodor C. Przymusinski <utep-vaxa!teodor@apple.com>)
Message-Id: <9002261818.AA03268@utep-vaxa.UUCP>
To: apt@cs.utexas.edu, mcvax.bitnet!apt@cs.utexas.edu,
hujics.bitnet!beeri@cs.utexas.edu, utep.bitnet!cv00@cs.utexas.edu,
ibm.com!jll@cs.utexas.edu, sail.stanford.edu!jmc@cs.utexas.edu,
cs.cornell.edu!marek@cs.utexas.edu,
jacksun.cs.umd.edu!minker@cs.utexas.edu,
doc.imperial.ac.uk!rak@cs.utexas.edu,
ai.toronto.edu!reiter@cs.utexas.edu,
sail.stanford.edu!val@cs.utexas.edu
Subject: one more address!
I appologize but I forgot to add one more university that urgently requested
a letter of recommendation for me. It is:
Professor G.A. Articolo
Search Committee
Department of Mathematics
Rutgers University
Camden, NJ 08102
I would greatly appreciate if you could send your letter as soon as
possible. Thank you!
Teodor.
∂26-Feb-90 1252 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Referee Request
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9002262053.AA11954@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Referee Request
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 14:53:46 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
A paper entitled, "Program Verification: A Practicioner's Perspec-
tive", by David Nelson has been submitted to MINDS AND MACHINES. I
think that you might find this interesting and would like to know if
you would be willing to referee it. You can have several weeks to
look it over and send me a critique by email. The abstract is long
but includes the following paragraphs:
"It is verification of computer processes that is needed, not of the
program texts that are merely the scripts for those processes. In
this view, verification is the empirical investigation of: a) the
behavior that programs invoke in a computer system and b) the larger
context in which that behavior occurs. In this, deduction can play
no more, and no less, a role than it does in the empirical sciences.
"Trustworthy programs can be obtained, but only by: exercising great
care, employing empirically-verified methods and composing programs
from trustworthy components. Both computers and objects are, by def-
inition, representational. Thus, object-oriented program development
paradigms are superior (theoretically and practically) to value-orient-
ed paradigms."
Even if some of this sounds familiar, I think you will find some inter-
esting new arguments here. Please let me know if you can referee it.
Jim
∂26-Feb-90 1354 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9002262155.AA08746@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: re: Referee Request
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 15:55:31 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
In-Reply-To: <1v0r6n@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>; from "John McCarthy" at Feb 26, 90 1346
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Thanks for your message. Since we are exploring the intersection
between these different disciplines, especially with respect to
theoretical, conceptual, and methodological questions, I do not
expect that all of our papers will introduce new technical mater-
ial. Some of them will do so, no doubt. But your approach to the
case at hand strikes me as perfectly appropriate. I'll send it on.
Jim
∂26-Feb-90 1405 utep-vaxa!teodor@cs.utexas.edu teodor mail
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 11:03:09 MST
From: teodor@utep-vaxa.UUCP (Teodor C. Przymusinski <utep-vaxa!teodor@apple.com>)
Message-Id: <9002261803.AA02762@utep-vaxa.UUCP>
To: apt@cs.utexas.edu, mcvax.bitnet!apt@cs.utexas.edu,
hujics.bitnet!beeri@cs.utexas.edu, utep.bitnet!cv00@cs.utexas.edu,
ibm.com!jll@cs.utexas.edu, sail.stanford.edu!jmc@cs.utexas.edu,
cs.cornell.edu!marek@cs.utexas.edu,
jacksun.cs.umd.edu!minker@cs.utexas.edu,
doc.imperial.ac.uk!rak@cs.utexas.edu,
ai.toronto.edu!reiter@cs.utexas.edu,
sail.stanford.edu!val@cs.utexas.edu
Subject: teodor mail
Thank you very much for sending letters of recommendation for me.
I also wish to thank those of you who sent condolences in connection with my
mother's death.
Regards,
Teodor
∂26-Feb-90 1717 VAL Elkan
This is a message from Charles Elkan. He is good, but probably I should
tell him that the answer is no at this time, right?
∂26-Feb-90 1636 cpe@neat.cs.toronto.edu hello
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From: Charles Elkan <cpe@cs.toronto.edu>
To: val@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: hello
Message-Id: <90Feb26.193625est.6160@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 19:36:24 EST
I'm writing to you because I would like to find a job in the
bay area. IBM Almaden is having a funding squeeze, but they
could likely find a half-time position for me. Is there
something at Stanford I could combine with that? I could teach
a course, and I could get involved with research projects in
automated reasoning or databases.
Have you decided yet whether you will be at Stanford next year?
Charles
∂26-Feb-90 1752 Mailer re: Nicaragua
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, su-etc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, PAF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Robert W Floyd <RWF@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message from JMC rcvd 26-Feb-90 10:03-PT.]
You're paranoid, John; nobody wants to take revenge on you
even if you are right too often.
∂27-Feb-90 1323 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU meeting
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 13:23:01 -0800
From: mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Pat Simmons)
Message-Id: <9002272123.AA15164@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: meeting
Yes, the meeting is at 4 and will
be in the assembly room.
∂27-Feb-90 1359 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Thursday's seminar topic
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Thursday's seminar topic
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 13:59:23 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Seminar on Issues in Logical Theory
March 1, 3:45 pm
Speaker: Grigori Mints, Institute of Cybernetics, Tallinn, Estonia
Topic: Interplay of Proof Theory and Constructivist Ideology in USSR
1950-70
The whole picture of the post-war development of mathematical logic in
the USSR was influenced by the birth and active development of the Russian
school of constructive mathematics. This talk will review some results
obtained then, but insufficiently known in the West, as well as the
influence of the ideology on topics of research, methods of research,
and the researchers themselves.
Note that this topic is different from the one announced before. If
you are interested in the previous topic (Resolution Calculi for Modal
Logic), you should attend Mints' talk Wednesday, noon, Feb. 28, in 352
Margaret Jacks Hall.
Next week: Jeff Pelletier on Mass Expressions.
∂27-Feb-90 1439 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 14:38:46 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9002272238.AA15499@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Puzzle
I've read a good chunk of the code. Let's chat about what you want
done to it. (By the way, Throop is clearly a good Lisp hacker...)
Ramin
∂27-Feb-90 1743 couchli@wr1for.enet.dec.com Digital "Disclosure" Invitation
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 17:42:18 PST
From: 27-Feb-1990 1731 <couchli@wr1for.enet.dec.com>
To: mail11:;@UNKNOWN@decwrl.dec.com (@pid.dist3)
Cc: couchli@decwrl.dec.com
Subject: Digital "Disclosure" Invitation
DIGITAL RISC WORKSTATION & SERVER
PROPRIETARY INFORMATION DISCLOSURE
MARCH 5,1990
2:30 TO 5:00
CERAS ROOM #112
You are invited to attend the Proprietary Information Disclosure on two of
Digital's soon to be announced, R3000 based, RISC systems. The new systems
will continue to grow the family of RISC products introduced last January and
July of 1989.
On March 5th, we will be presenting and demoing the new workstation which is
the successor to the DECstation 3100, as well as discussing the successor to
the DECserver 5400.
Additionally, we will have prototype "UNIX Keyboards" for your evaluation and
comments.
As with all Digital Disclosures, attendance is by approved invitation only.
However, if you are unable to attend, but wish to be represented by someone in
your organization, please contact Linda Couch (COUCH@JESSICA) with the
individual's name. To confirm your attendance, RSVP to the above.
Thank you for your interest in Digital! Your Account Team looks forward to
seeing you on March 5th.
Linda Couch
COUCH@JESSICA
(408)748-6468
Mary Tate
GTATE@WHEN
(408)748-4421
Mary Belinsky
MARYB@CS
(408)748-4314
∂27-Feb-90 2200 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu revised draft of thesis
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 22:01:41 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9002280601.AA19880@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: gio@eclipse.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, pratt@cs.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: revised draft of thesis
Dear Orals Committee,
I have placed a revised thesis draft in each of your mailboxes. This
will be the last draft I send out before the oral exam on March 9th.
As always, comments and feedback are eagerly welcomed.
Thanks,
Peter
∂28-Feb-90 1257 RWF character reference
Candy Gayles of Equifax Services says you authorized
asking me for a character reference. Please confirm.
∂28-Feb-90 1342 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Current Developments
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9002282140.AA02338@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Current Developments
To: M_and_M_EB@ub.d.umn.edu
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 90 15:40:57 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
MINDS AND MACHINES
Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science
(ISSN 0924-6495)
Some recent developments concerning the editorial board, some policies,
and a revised refereeing procedure:
(1) We have three new members of the editorial board: Fred Dretske,
Stevan Harnad, and Philip Johnson-Laird. The board now includes Jon
Barwise, Andy Clark, Robert Cummins, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, Clark
Glymour, Stevan Harnad, John Haugeland, Jaakko Hintikka, David Israel,
Philip Johnson-Laird, Frank Keil, Henry Kyburg, John McCarthy, Donald
Nute, Zenon Pylyshyn, Barry Richards, Roger Schank, John Searle, Ste-
phen Stich, and Terry Winograd. Several invitations are outstanding.
(2) Although I previously indicated that, when papers are submitted, I
would publish their abstracts and ask for volunteers, upon reflection
that did not seem to be the best plan. What I am doing is making di-
rect requests to specific referees in those cases where it is evident
to me which of you might be best positioned to review specific papers.
I have asked two of you to referee a paper on parallel processing, two
others to review a paper on program verification, etc. When I have a
paper where the fit is not obvious, then I will ask for volunteers. I
believe that this will work out better than would have my earlier plan.
(3) A request has come for clarification concerning the amount of new
technical contributions that are expected of publishable papers. My
view is that we are dealing primarily with theoretical, conceptual and
methodological aspects of these issues and concerns. If this journal
can establish a critical tradition that contibutes to the emergence of
better frameworks and paradigms for better understanding these disci-
plines and activities, I will account it a great success, even if we
publish no technical innovations at all. I naturally expect we will
have papers that make technical contributions, but that should not be
regarded as among the most important desiderata for publication here.
(4) In those cases where a paper merits publication but the referee is
in substantial disagreement with its theses, etc., I extend a standing
invitation to submit a critical response for publication together with
the paper. This is one of the ways in which the journal can foster a
critical tradition and one of the ways in which you as members of the
board can contribute to its success. I will be responsible for assess-
ing whether or not such a response should appear, but I will be strong-
ly influenced by your recommendations in matters of this kind. Do not
hesitate to take me up on this standing invitation. It is your option.
We are in business and papers are arriving. Please encourage students
and colleagues with appropriate interests to keep us in mind. I have
received inquiries about the journal from as far distant as Australia.
If you would like to review papers in some specific area, let me know.
One modest request: anyone with Zenon's email address, please send it.
Jim
phil@ub.d.umn.edu
∂28-Feb-90 1605 VAL Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
There will be no meeting next Monday, March 5.
The last meeting this quarter:
A CIRCUMSCRIPTIVE THEORY FOR CAUSAL AND EVIDENTIAL SUPPORT
Eunok Paek
Stanford University
Monday, March 12, 2:30pm
MJH 252
Reasoning about causality is an interesting application
area of formal nonmonotonic theories. Here we focus our attention
on a certain aspect of causal reasoning, namely causal asymmetry.
In order to provide a qualitative account of causal asymmetry, we
present a justification-based approach that uses circumscription to
obtain the minimality of causes. We define the notion of causal and
evidential support in terms of a justification change with respect
to a circumscriptive theory and show how the definition provides
desirable interactions between causal and evidential support.
∂28-Feb-90 1831 VAL Gelfond
Gelfond is coming tomorrow. Would you like to invite him to our Friday lunch?
∂01-Mar-90 1000 JMC
Protter
∂01-Mar-90 1338 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI Division lunch
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Date: 1 Mar 1990 1335-PST (Thursday)
From: Jutta McCormick <jutta@coyote.stanford.edu>
To: latombe@coyote.stanford.edu, binford@coyote.stanford.edu,
eaf@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, mrg@sunburn.stanford.edu,
ok@coyote.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@cs.stanford.edu,
shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, winograd@csli.stanford.edu
Cc: jutta@coyote.stanford.edu
Subject: AI Division lunch
Please let me know whether you will definitely attend the AI Division lunch on
Wednesday, March 7, at noon, at the Faculty Club. Nils and Terry have
already responded negatively, so there is no need to reply to this msg.
--Jutta
∂01-Mar-90 1803 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:pony-errors@neon.stanford.edu Prancing Pony Bill
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From: The Bill Program <pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Prancing Pony Bill
Reply-To: pony-bills@Neon.Stanford.EDU
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Prancing Pony Bill of John McCarthy (JMC) for February 1990 (3/1/1990)
Previous Balance 1.32
Monthly Interest at 1.00% 0.01
Current Charges 0.80 (vending machine items)
---------
TOTAL AMOUNT DUE 2.13
PAYMENT DELIVERY LOCATION: CSD Receptionist.
Make checks payable to: STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
Please deliver payments to the Computer Science Dept receptionist, Bldg. 460.
To ensure proper crediting, please include your ACCOUNT NAME on your
check. If you pay by cash, use the small yellow envelopes provided
and write both your ACCOUNT NAME and the AMOUNT on outside.
Note: The recording of a payment may take up to three weeks after the payment
is made, but never beyond the next billing date. Please allow for this delay.
Bills are payable upon presentation. Interest of 1.00% per month will be
charged on balances remaining unpaid 25 days after bill date above.
An account with a credit balance earns interest of 0.33% per month,
based on the average daily balance.
You haven't paid your Pony bill since 10/1989.
Accounts with balances remaining unpaid for more than 55 days are
considered delinquent and are subject to reduction of credit limit.
Please pay your bill and keep your account current.
∂01-Mar-90 2114 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu your trip to austin
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Date: Thu, 1 Mar 1990 21:17:27 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: your trip to austin
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.636355047.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
You were telling me that you were planning on comming to austin sometime
in the middle of March. Could you let me know as soon as you decide when that
is going to be? I would like to plan my schedule so that I am there when you
are there.
Thank you,
Guha
∂02-Mar-90 0114 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU The Hunt for Red October
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Date: Fri, 2 Mar 90 01:13:48 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003020913.AA26873@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, jjw@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Subject: The Hunt for Red October
It opens Friday night. Want to go see it?
Ramin
∂03-Mar-90 0923 ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Penrose
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From: Matthew L. Ginsberg <ginsberg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9003031724.AA26462@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Penrose
Yes; I just sent it to your secretary (I've been travelling)
Roger Penrose
Mathematical Institute
24-29 St. Giles'
Oxford OX1 3LB
England
∂04-Mar-90 1428 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@life.ai.mit.edu:dam@ai.mit.edu abstract
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Date: Sun, 4 Mar 90 16:53 EST
From: "David A. McAllester" <dam@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: abstract
To: theorem-provers@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Message-Id: <19900304215355.0.DAM@CROCE.AI.MIT.EDU>
Here is another paper title and abstract,
Automatic Recognition of Tractability in Inference Relations
by David McAllester, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
ABSTRACT: A procedure is given for recognizing
sets of inference rules that generate polynomial time decidable inference
relations. The procedure can automatically recognize
the tractability of the inference rules underlying congruence closure.
The recognition of tractability for that particular rule set
constitutes mechanical verification of a theorem originally proved
independently by Kozen and Shostak. The procedure is algorithmic,
rather than heuristic, and the class of automatically recognizable
tractable rule sets can be precisely characterized. A series of
examples of rule sets whose tractability is non-trivial, yet machine
recognizable, is also given. The technical framework developed here is
viewed as a first step toward a general theory of tractable inference
relations.
This paper is available as MIT AI Lab Memo 1215 (or upon request
from the author).
∂05-Mar-90 0929 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Have not heard from you re AI Day on Campus
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Date: Mon, 5 Mar 1990 9:28:46 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: eaf@sumex, latombe@coyote, jmc@sail, shortliffe@sumex, barraquand@coyote,
gruber@sumex, iwasaki@sumex, ok@coyote, val@sail, iam@sail, nii@sumex,
ponce@coyote, rindfleisch@sumex, rit@coyote, singh@hudson, clt@sail,
der@psych
Cc: tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Have not heard from you re AI Day on Campus
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.636658126.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
You are invited to participate in AI Day on Campus, Thursday, June 7.
Please send me the title of your talk and if you plan to do a demo,
send title of that also.
Carolyn
∂05-Mar-90 1144 @RELAY.CS.NET:mazzetti@ed.aaai.org video
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Date: Mon, 5 Mar 90 10:05:55 PST
From: Claudia Mazzetti <mazzetti@ed.aaai.org>
Message-Id: <9003051805.AA08532@nilsson.aaai.org>
To: Feigenbaum@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU, Hayes-Roth@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU,
Hinton@RI.CMU.EDU, JMC-LIsts@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU, Lehnert@cs.umass.edu,
Nilsson@score.stanford.edu, RGSmith@SLCS.SLB.COM, Rich@MCC.COM,
bobrow@XEROX.COM, buchanan@VAX.CS.PITT.EDU, clancey.pa@XEROX.COM,
duda%polya@score.stanford.edu, engelmore@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU,
forbus@A.CS.UIUC.EDU, hart@KL.SRI.COM, hector%ai.toronto.edu@RELAY.CS.NET,
hes@scrc-vallecito.symbolics.com, marty@cis.stanford.edu,
mckeown@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU, minsky@mc.lcs.mit.edu, reddy@FAS.RI.CMU.EDU,
swartout@VAXA.ISI.EDU
Subject: video
Cc: jmc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU, mazzetti@nilsson, minksy@ai.mit.edu,
newell@CS.CMU.EDU, simon@CS.CMU.EDU, woody@CS.UTEXAS.EDU
Because there has been considerable disagreement about producing a
history of AI video, DEC and I have decided to cancel the video
project because there is not enough time to produce the scholarly
treatment of AI history.
DEC still wants to do a video project. I've asked them to submit a
proposal to us describing our potential role. The content of this
video is still yet to be determined.
Claudia
∂05-Mar-90 1219 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Request for Reprints
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9003052020.AA13812@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Request for Reprints
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 90 14:20:43 CDT
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Could you please send me a copy of your paper, "Towards a Mathe-
matical Theory of Computation"? I would also appreciate having
copies of any of your other papers on this or related topics, if
that would be possible. Whatever you have available I would like.
Many thanks.
Jim
∂05-Mar-90 1245 jutta@coyote.stanford.edu AI division lunch
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Date: 5 Mar 1990 1242-PST (Monday)
From: Jutta McCormick <jutta@coyote.stanford.edu>
To: latombe@coyote.stanford.edu, binford@coyote.stanford.edu,
eaf@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU, mrg@sunburn.stanford.edu,
ok@coyote.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@cs.stanford.edu,
shoham@hudson.stanford.edu, winograd@csli.stanford.edu
Cc: jutta@coyote.stanford.edu
Subject: AI division lunch
Due to the fact that most of you will not be able to attend the planned
AI Division lunch this Wednesday, March 5, it will be cancelled.
The next AI Division lunch is planned for Wednesday, April 11.
∂05-Mar-90 1348 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU [andre@csli.Stanford.EDU (Andre Scedrov): Lectures on Linear Logic]
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: [andre@csli.Stanford.EDU (Andre Scedrov): Lectures on Linear Logic]
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 90 13:48:47 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
For those of you not on the logmtc mailing list. Apologies to those
who already received copies.
------- Forwarded Message
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Return-Path: <andre@csli.Stanford.EDU>
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>From: andre@csli.Stanford.EDU (Andre Scedrov)
Message-Id: <9003051724.AA15463@csli.Stanford.EDU>
To: barwise@russell.stanford.edu, etch@russell.stanford.edu,
logmtc@sail.stanford.edu, poly@ghoti.stanford.edu
Subject: Lectures on Linear Logic
In the remaining four lectures in CS 359 I will give an introduction
to linear logic. The class meets T Th 9:30 - 10:45 in Building 60,
room 62.
Andre Scedrov
------- End of Forwarded Message
∂06-Mar-90 0946 MPS
In order for Dan to get his file complete, he will
need a reference from you. Also, he needs the original
of the reference I gave you the other day.
Pat
∂06-Mar-90 1321 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com Thesis committee
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Date: Tue, 6 Mar 90 13:19:32 PST
From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9003062119.AA26555@sherman.teleos.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Thesis committee
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
John,
Nils has been reading my draft chapters and giving me ideas and guidance.
Would you mind if (as long as it is bureaucratically possible) I made him
my principal advisor? I would like to have you remain on my committee, if
possible.
- Leslie
∂06-Mar-90 1500 rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu AI Day on Campus
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Date: Tue, 6 Mar 1990 15:00:29 PST
From: Bob Engelmore <rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: AI Day on Campus
To: eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Binford@cs.stanford.edu,
Genesereth@cs.stanford.edu, latombe@coyote.stanford.edu,
ZM@sail.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu, shoham@cs.stanford.edu,
Marty@cis.stanford.edu, waldinger@ai.sri.com,
Winograd@csli.stanford.edu, Shortliffe@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
musen@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, barraqua@coyote.stanford.edu,
rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Fagan@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
ginsberg@cs.stanford.edu, gruber@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
Bhayes-roth@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Iwasaki@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
OK@coyote.stanford.edu, VAL@sail.stanford.edu, IAM@sail.stanford.edu,
Nii@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Rindfleisch@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
rit@coyote.stanford.edu, singh@hudson.stanford.edu,
CLT@sail.stanford.edu, der@psych.stanford.edu, tajnai@cs.stanford.edu,
hiller@hudson.stanford.edu
Cc: rogers@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Message-Id: <MacMS.33037.23010.rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Dear Colleagues,
I have agreed to co-chair the "AI Day on Campus" event with Carolyn. An
immediate problem in planning this event is the selection of the date on which
to hold it. Right now it is scheduled for Thursday, June 7th. Unfortunately,
Ed Feigenbaum has a commitment, which was made a year ago, that will make it
impossible for him to participate on that date. I've talked to Nils and
others and we agree that it would be really bad form if we held the AI Day on
Campus without one of our famous "heavies". So, I am looking for an alternate
date. Carolyn and I discussed the possibility of moving the event one week
later, to Thursday, June 14th. She is checking on the availability of space,
and I am checking on the availability of people. Therefore,
assuming you were planning to participate on June 7th, can you participate on
June 14th instead? If not, can you participate if the event were held on
another day during the week of June 11 - 15?
I realize that grades have to be turned in that week, but I think it should be
possible to interleave a 30 minute talk with that commitment.
Please respond as soon as possible. I appreciate your cooperation.
Bob
-------
∂06-Mar-90 1512 MPS Abstract
Got a call from Kathy Jaeger, Hunter College.
They are going to send their program to the publishers
on Thursday and would like to have your abstract on that
day. If that is impossible, for Thursday, they will hold
open a space for you at the publishers, but will have to
have it be the end of the week.
She may be happy with the title??? Do you want me to check
with her about a title only?
They have a fax so it will be no trouble getting anything to
them quickly.
Pat
∂06-Mar-90 1532 @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU faculty meeting
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From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <9003062325.AA17102@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: tenured@cs.stanford.edu
Subject: faculty meeting
As you know, the Department is engaged in a search
for a professor (teaching) to be in charge of our
educational program. This person will take over
the position Roy Jones has been filling. The committee
responsible for this search will be making a final
decision about a recommendation at its meeting this
Friday, March 9. I would like to present the committee's
recommendation to the senior faculty at a special
faculty meeting on Tuesday, March 20 at 2:30 p.m. in
MJH 146. I hope you all can attend. The c.v. and the
evaluation letters on the recommended candidate will
be available in Joyce's office circa Tuesday, March 13.
Please study these before the meeting.
Thanks, -Nils
∂06-Mar-90 1616 MPS
Jack Cate called at 4:15 Tuesday
∂06-Mar-90 1636 binford@flamingo.stanford.edu AI Day on Campus
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Date: Tue, 6 Mar 90 16:36:48 PST
From: binford@flamingo.stanford.edu (Tom Binford)
Message-Id: <9003070036.AA01446@flamingo.stanford.edu>
To: rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Cc: eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Genesereth@cs.stanford.edu,
latombe@coyote.stanford.edu, ZM@sail.stanford.edu,
jmc@sail.stanford.edu, nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu,
shoham@cs.stanford.edu, Marty@cis.stanford.edu, waldinger@ai.sri.com,
Winograd@csli.stanford.edu, Shortliffe@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
musen@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, barraqua@coyote.stanford.edu,
rse@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Fagan@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
ginsberg@cs.stanford.edu, gruber@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
Bhayes-roth@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Iwasaki@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
OK@coyote.stanford.edu, VAL@sail.stanford.edu, IAM@sail.stanford.edu,
Nii@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, Rindfleisch@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
rit@coyote.stanford.edu, singh@hudson.stanford.edu,
CLT@sail.stanford.edu, der@psych.stanford.edu, tajnai@cs.stanford.edu,
hiller@hudson.stanford.edu, rogers@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Subject: AI Day on Campus
Bob
The later the better. I have to be out of the country at
the end of May and first two weeks of June. I am squeezed
at the other end.
Tom
∂06-Mar-90 1659 CLT okner
We have an appointment for next monday (Mar 12) at 6pm
∂06-Mar-90 2133 sohie@Neon.Stanford.EDU Searle's chinese room
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Date: Tue, 6 Mar 1990 21:34:00 PST
From: "Sohie J. Lee" <sohie@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Searle's chinese room
Cc: eaf@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.636788040.sohie@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Hi Professor McCarthy-
I'm the TA for CS123 and on our homework assignment, we included the
question below:
What was Searle's Chinese room intended to show? Does John McCarthy agree
with this point of Searle's "demonstration"? Sketch what McCarthy would say
about Searle's Chinese room.
The question was based on a guest lecture you gave on Tuesday, February 13.
Professor Feigenbaum requests a few sentences or a short paragraph of your
response. We think the students would be interested in your point of view.
Thank you for your time!
Sohie Lee
∂06-Mar-90 2157 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Re: Searle's chinese room
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Date: Tue, 6 Mar 1990 21:56:22 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: "Sohie J. Lee" <sohie@neon.stanford.edu>
Cc: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: Searle's chinese room
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 6 Mar 1990 21:34:00 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.636789382.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
John, we are about to hand out "solutions" to this homework, and I would
rather have the handed-out answer in your own words than in my paraphrase
of your words.
Ed
∂07-Mar-90 0027 RWF character reference
Equifax mentioned Livermore. I will tell them ALL about you.
∂07-Mar-90 0743 CLT request from Nils Nilsson
To: fuller@RDVAX.ENET.DEC.COM
CC: nilsson@TENAYA.STANFORD.EDU, JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Just to follow up on Nils' message of 24-Feb to you regarding possibilities
for DEC equipment for John McCarthy's research group at Stanford. As Nils
mentioned, I am coordinating our efforts to retire SAIL (our ancient,
faithful, but no longer maintainable DEC10) and replace it with modern
computing equipment. If there is any information I could give you about
our past or current research activities or hardware needs I would be happy
to do so.
Sincerely,
Carolyn Talcott
∂07-Mar-90 0744 CLT fuller
Here is a copy of the aforementioned msg from Nils to Fuller
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
∂24-Feb-90 1822 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU request
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 90 18:16:50 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
To: fuller@rdvax.enet.dec.com
Cc: clt@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: request
Sam,
I need some advice. As you know, DEC has most generously made
available to Stanford a large amount of DEC equipment as part of DEC's
gift to Stanford's Centennial campaign in aid of the Near West Campus.
In fact, the CS Dept. has successfully proposed through Stanford for
some of this equipment (which will be used by our "theory group.")
DEC's Centennial Gift is helping a number of Stanford departments,
including electrical engineering, chemical engineering, physics,
biology, etc. This is as it should be (our colleagues are needy
also), but CS has some special equipment needs that sometimes lose out
in the understandable pressure to spread the DEC gift around through
much of Stanford. I am speaking specifically of John McCarthy's
group's need to upgrade their computational environment. SAIL is
wearing out! In view of JMC's long-standing association with DEC, I
thought it would not be inappropriate to let you know of John's needs
to see if you had some suggestions about how they might be met.
I attach a brief summary of the situation and the equipment that
John and his group are looking for. I would be happy to forward
any suggestions you might have to John or you could communicate
directly with Carolyn Talcott who is coordinating the process of
moving from SAIL to a new system.
Thanks for any advice you might give us.
-Nils
%% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- %%
The Stanford formal reasoning group is in need of hardware to replace
the SAIL system which is being retired after 20 years of use. In
addition to filling basic computing needs, modern equipment would help
to resestablish the formal reasoning community that existed at the AI
laboratory in the early days of SAIL. Our intent is that this
equipment should be able to expand and evolve to provide a productive
computing environment for an extended period of time (say 10 years) as
did SAIL. The expected users of the proposed system include John
McCarthy's group (Richard Gabriel, Vladimir Lifschitz, Ian Mason,
Carolyn Talcott, and Joe Weening); Zohar Manna (and Richard
Waldinger), Robert Floyd, and Terry Winograd in Computer Science and
Solomon Feferman (mathematics and philosophy). In addition the new
equipment would allow us to make special software tools, such as
theorem provers, reasoning systems, and experimental programming
environment systems for advanced courses and student projects.
The basic equipment requirement is a timesharing system such as a
DECsystem 5400 or 5800 with additional disks, memory, and
communications devices. Most users will access the facility through X
window system terminals, although a few DECstation workstations would
also be useful.
-------------------
∂07-Mar-90 0800 JMC
Change dentist appointment
∂07-Mar-90 1300 JMC
Hunter abstract msg.msg/425p
∂07-Mar-90 1413 MPS Proposal
Carolyn needs a bio from you that lists any post-doc students
you have had over the past 5 years and any scientists who you have
had long term collaborations and also co-authors over the past
4 years.
A copy of your bio has to be pruned to show only the 10 most
important publications of recent years.
Thanks, Pat
∂07-Mar-90 1548 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Thursday's seminar topic
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Thursday's seminar topic
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 90 15:49:08 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Seminar on Issues in Logical Theory
March 8, 3:45 pm
This week, Jeff Pelletier will talk about his chapter in the Handbook
of Philosophical Logic, on Mass Expressions (and perhaps also on his
more recent work).
Next week, David Cruz will present material from Westerstahl's chapter
on Quantifiers in Formal and Natural Languages (IV.1). Note: This
meeting will have to start at 4:15, rather than 3:45, since there is a
CSLI-wide meeting with the dean of research that will occupy both our
room and many of the seminar members (in different senses of "occupy",
I trust).
∂07-Mar-90 1632 scherlis@vax.darpa.mil Re: Soviet, Japanese and DARPA interest in Elephant
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From: William L. Scherlis <SCHERLIS@DARPA.MIL>
Subject: Re: Soviet, Japanese and DARPA interest in Elephant
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Message-Id: <636856305.0.SCHERLIS@VAX.DARPA.MIL>
In-Reply-To: <D6s3H@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
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John --
Sorry to be so elusive. I am in the midst of dealing with more than
100 proposal abstracts received in our latest solicitation, and each
of these is generating phone calls. I will respond to your query
in the next few days.
Bill
-------
∂07-Mar-90 1632 MPS
Do you have any other info on the Phys. Rev. I need the
year, which is not clear on the note you gave me and the
title of the article, if you have it. Richard is having
difficulty finding any reference to it. Thanks
∂07-Mar-90 2209 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Symposium
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Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 00:18:12 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003080518.AA03169@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: SPP Symposium
Dear John,
This is to make the invitation to the SPP Symposium on Searle's Chinese
Room Argument official. Please send me a confirmation right away that
you accept the invitation and will be able to attend. The Symposium
will be on the evening of Saturday, June 9. (The Symbol Grounding
Workshop will be that morning; I hope you will also participate in
that, though I will not put you down as a speaker as there are many
already.)
The SPP Meeting will be from Friday June 8 to Monday June 11 at
University of Maryland, College Park. I look forward to seeing
you there.
Best wishes,
Stevan
∂07-Mar-90 2233 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: SPP Symposium
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From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003080633.AA03263@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: SPP Symposium
Format: You and Pat Hayes will be speakers, 40 minutes each.
There will be 3 discussants: Georges Rey, Eric Dietrich,
Alexis Manaster-Ramer (philosopher, philosopher and linguist,
respectively). Discussants get 10 minutes each.
Rest is general discussion. Total time for symposium: 3 hours.
Symbol Grounding Workshop (3 hours): 20 minutes per speaker,
6-8 speakers, including Irv Biederman (perception), Rodney
Brooks (robotics), Kim Plunkett (language development),
Tony Movshon (neuroscience), Michael Treisman (psychophysics),
Larry Maloney (psychophysics), Rick Granger (neuroscience),
Howard Pattee (systems science).
Cheers, Stevan (please confirm that you accept)
∂08-Mar-90 0609 harnad@Princeton.EDU re: SPP Symposium
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Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 09:10:20 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003081410.AA25159@cognito.Princeton.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: SPP Symposium
Welcome aboard! You'll be getting more details from Janet
Andrews at Vassar, the Program Chairman.
∂08-Mar-90 0934 rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu Orals tomorrow
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Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 09:35:42 PST
From: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu (Peter K. Rathmann)
Message-Id: <9003081735.AA15600@eclipse.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, pratt@cs.stanford.edu, gio@eclipse.stanford.edu,
shoham@hudson.stanford.edu
Cc: rathmann@eclipse.stanford.edu
Subject: Orals tomorrow
Just want to confirm that everyone is still able to make it for Friday
noon, in Jacks 146.
Since we are scheduled to begin at noon, and may continue for some
time, I'll be providing some sandwiches for the closed session. Any
special requests/requirements?
-Peter
∂08-Mar-90 0951 MPS Prof. Dale
I don't seem to have a first name for Prof. Dale.
Also, which campus is he at in Texas. Thanks
∂08-Mar-90 1042 MARTYGO%YKTVMH.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU The proceedings from the Bar-Ilan Symposium
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To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Reply-to: MARTYGO%YKTVMH.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU
Subject: The proceedings from the Bar-Ilan Symposium
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Prof. McCarthy:
We are now ready to send papers from the Bar-Ilan Symposium for
publication. Over half will be published as a Springer volume titled
"Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language and Knowledge-based
Systems". I am listing the contents below. Some 6 other papers which
are theoretical are in various stages of refereeing for an issue of
the "Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence."
As the distinguished invited speaker for the Symposium, we would be
greatly honored if you would agree to write a short forward to the
volume. One or several paragraphs of your choice, perhaps from your
lecture or with other thought provoking questions, would be greatly
appreciated.
It was very inspiring having you participate in the Symposium,
and we hope to be able to sponsor another such meeting in June 1991.
As Springer would like all material for the volume camera ready
by the end of this month, I will be happy to handle
the formatting of any contribution of yours.
Sincerely,
Marty Golumbic
golumbic@israearn.bitnet
martygo@yktvmh.bitnet
----------------------------------------------------------------
Advances in Artificial Intelligence
Natural Language and Knowledge-based Systems
Edited by Martin Charles Golumbic
Learning from Experience in Board Games
Ze'ev Ben-Porat and Martin Charles Golumbic
PRODS: A Prototype Based Design Shell for Prototype
Selection and Prototype Refinement
Rifka Oxman
What's in a Joke?
Michal Ephratt
Machinery for Hebrew Word Formation
Uzzi Ornan
Theory Formation for Interpreting an Unknown Language:
a Domain Metamodel of Etruscologists' Trials
Ephraim Nissan
Ontology, Sublanguage, and Semantic Networks
in Natural Language Processing
Victor Raskin
Concept Learning via Conceptual Clustering (tentative)
Yo&ee.lle S. Maarek
Anticipating a Listener's Response in Text Planning
Ingrid Zukerman
Towards an Intelligent Finite Element Training System
Alex Bykat
Bayesian Inference in an Expert System without Assuming Independence
Alex Gammerman and A.R. Thatcher
A Partial Orders Semantics for Constraint Based Systems
Steven A. Battle
Partial Orders as a Basis for KBS Semantics
Simon P. H. Morgan and John G. Gammack
A Heuristic Search Approach to Planning and Scheduling
Software Manufacturing Projects
Ali Safavi and Stephen F. Smith
From Data to Knowledge Bases
Martin Charles Golumbic and Dennis Grinberg
.* ------------------------------------------------------------------------
.*
.* Ben-Porat / Golumbic
.*
A theoretical model for a system that learns from its experience in
the realm of board games is presented in
:hp1.Learning from Experience in Board Games:ehp1.
by Ze'ev Ben-Porat and Martin Golumbic.
The model enables a system to enhance and improve its playing
capabilities through the usage of a learning mechanism which extracts
knowledge from actual playing experience. The learning process
requires no external guidance or assistance. The model was
implemented and tested for a variant of :q.Chinese Checkers:eq..
The paper shows the feasibility and validity of the proposed model and
investigates the parameters that affect its performance traits.
The experimental results give evidence to the validity of the model as
powerful learning mechanism. Further research is necessary in order
to realize the full potential of this model and its applicability to
different domains. Original and general algorithms for knowledge
extraction and pattern matching were designed and tested as part of
the prototype computer system. Analysis of the performance
characteristics of these algorithms indicates that they can handle
large knowledge bases in an efficient manner. After an initial amount
of knowledge has been acquired, further learning can take place with
practically no effect on the response time of the system.
:p.
.* Oxman
.*
In :hp1.PRODS: A Prototype Based Design Shell for Prototype Selection
and Prototype Refinement:ehp1., Rifka Oxman presents a system for
encoding and employing multiple prototypes in design.
In knowledge-based systems, prototypes provide a basis for the
generation of design being localized and made specific through
modification within a refinement process, while preserving the salient
characteristics of the solution type. They also enable the
generalization of situations and constraints into typical contexts and
problem contexts. The PRODS system provides an appropriate
representation for the two complementary types of knowledge which
operate in a refinement process. Generative knowledge describes the
design solution space by predefined refinement stages; interpretive
knowledge enables the selection and control. It is suggested that such
systems can be made to interface with external CAD systems and to
incorporate other kinds of design knowledge within a prototype based
structure.
:p.
.* Ephratt
.*
In the paper :hp1.What's in a Joke?:ehp1. by Michal Ephratt,
a preference algorithm is formulated for identifying and grasping the
unexpected meaning, i.e., the punch line, of a linguistic joke.
The usual task in computational linguistics is identifying and resolving
ambiguity in favor of the most probable or likely meaning.
In contrast here, a modification called :q.partial reverse preference:eq. can
be applied to a variety of preference parsers, such as Schubert's
trade-off preference algorithm, turning them into electronic comedians.
Watch out Bob Hope!
This is demonstrated in the paper with several side-splitters.
:p.
.* Ornan
.*
:hp1.Machinery for Hebrew Word Formation:ehp1. by Uzzi Ornan provides a
new formal and arguably computer implementable approach to morphological
inflexion and derivation, applying it to Hebrew.
Hebrew text is generally written without vowels presenting more of a
challenge to computational linguistics than many other languages as
written words display a higher degree of ambiguity.
Moreover, Hebrew grammar reflects concepts which allow interpretation
of texts from ancient through medieval into modern times.
The author's erudition as one of Israel's foremost Hebrew linguists
leads us to view in a new light the process of formation of :q.new:eq.
words by children, obtaining new roots, generating compound words,
adopting foreign words and other aspects of the morphological machinery.
:p.
.* Nissan
.*
In contrast to Hebrew which was in continuous use for religious and
scholarly study by Jews throughout the milenia from Biblical time to
the present, the language of the Etruscan civilization of pre-Roman
Italy was totally dead, buried and unknown. In the paper
:hp1.Theory Formation for Interpreting an Unknown Language:
a Domain Metamodel of Etruscologists' Trials:ehp1.,
Ephraim Nissan relates the methodology of current avenues of research
in interpreting the surviving corpus of this ancient language. It is
suggested that the problem of deciphering Etruscan is but one of many
efforts that could benefit from applying AI methods to deciphering
unknown languages.
:p.
.* Raskin
.*
Victor Raskin argues for a formal foundation of meaning representation
in natural language artificial intelligence in the paper
:hp1.Ontology, Sublanguage, and Semantic Networks
in Natural Language Processing:ehp1.. Neither the state of the art
in linguistic semantics nor in model-theoretic semantics provide
solutions to the major goals of natural language processing semantics.
Following this critique, an alternative is proposed
exploiting the sublanguage orientation nature of NLPS and the ability to
predefine the grain size of the required meaning analysis
by combining the ontological and semantic network bases approaches.
:p.
.* Zukerman
.*
In the process of generating text, people generally take into
consideration the effect their utterances are likely to have on their
listeners. In particular, they try to detect and prevent possible
comprehension problems which are likely to be triggered by the
discourse. In her paper
:hp1.Anticipating a Listener's Response in Text Planning:ehp1.,
Ingrid Zukerman presents a mechanism which emulates this
behavior in the generation of discourse to convey an intended message.
This mechanism anticipates the effect of a given message on
a model of listener's beliefs, and proposes rhetorical devices to
preclude possible adverse effects.
:p.
.* Bykat
.*
To understand and effectively use a sophisticated
statistical, numerical or other large software package requires
many hours of training and guided practice with an expert.
In :hp1.Towards an Intelligent Finite Element Training System:ehp1.,
Alex Bykat describes the construction of a knowledge-based
consulting and training system for a finite element package.
After presenting the overall design, the paper
concentrates on the system's natural language communication.
:p.
.* Gammerman / Thatcher
.*
:hp1.Bayesian Inference in an Expert System without Assuming
Independence:ehp1.
by Alex Gammerman and A.R. Thatcher
describes an application of Bayesian inference to the problem of
estimating, from past data, the probabilities that patients have certain
diseases given their symptoms. The study relates to 2000 patients at a
hospital in Scotland who suffered acute abdominal pain. A distinctive
feature of methodology used in the paper is its application of Bayes'
Theorem without assuming independence of the symptoms and yet without an
unmanageable increase in complexity. Moreover, in a limited database it
is shown how to select combinations of symptoms which allow the
calculation of confidence bounds for the probabilities most relevant to
the diagnosis of each disease.
:p.
.* Battle
.*
Two papers address the problem of formulating a practical semantics
for constraint based systems,
:hp1.A Partial Orders Semantics for Constraint Based Systems:ehp1.
by Steven Battle, and
.*
.* Morgan / Gammack
.*
:hp1.Partial Orders as a Basis for KBS Semantics:ehp1.
by Simon Morgan and John Gammack.
Central to this problem is the issue of partial solutions which
naturally give rise to a partially ordered structure of representational
states. The partial order and the operations that may be performed upon
it provide a general way of talking about constraint based systems
without needing to talk about the specifics of any particular
representational scheme.
:p.
.* Safavi / Smith
.*
In their paper :hp1.A Heuristic Search Approach
to Planning and Scheduling Software Manufacturing Projects:ehp1.,
Ali Safavi and Stephen Smith discuss an incremental approach
to scheduling which allows trade-offs between productions with
different resource capacities and requirements.
Since software project planning is seen more as a schedule
revision problem than a schedule generation problem, such an
incremental strategy is advised. A formal treatment of
revision operators is presented for application during the
scheduling process, and the findings of an implementation
of their model are reported.
:p.
.* Golumbic / Grinberg
.*
Research into knowledge bases is an area still under evolution.
Slowly, however, basic principles are emerging which
seem to have the resilience to stand up to scientific rigor.
In :hp1.From Data to Knowledge Bases:ehp1., Martin Golumbic and
Dennis Grinberg reflect on and analyze the progress made so far and
identify problems which can reasonably be attacked in the near term.
Included as an appendix, is the edited transcript of a panel
discussion on the subject.
∂09-Mar-90 0059 VAL reply to message
[In reply to message rcvd 08-Mar-90 17:34-PT.]
Lunch Monday is fine.
∂09-Mar-90 1010 slagle@cs.umn.edu Distinguished Visitor
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From: "James Slagle" <slagle@cs.umn.edu>
Message-Id: <9003091811.AA09616@cs.umn.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Distinguished Visitor
Please respond (in any way) to the invitation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
.mn
.LT
.SZ 12
Professor John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2140
Dear Professor McCarthy:
.pp
This is to confirm our invitation to you to be a Distinguished Visitor and
to give lectures at 2:30-3:30pm on April 18, 19, and 20, 1990. Your talks
will be videotaped and carried on our closed-circuit instructional TV
network, which is transmitted to local industry sites. After each
lecture, there is a small reception and discussion, which lasts a half
hour. Within one week, please write to verify your acceptance of this
invitation. At the same time, please send us titles and abstracts of your
talks. We shall pay a Distinguished Visitor honorarium of $600/day
for the three days of your visit.
.pp
We shall reimburse all your travel expenses and provide hotel
accommodations and meals. It will be easier for us if you make your own
arrangements, and we shall reimburse you after your visit. We shall
reserve a room for you at the Radisson University Hotel on Washington Ave.
in Minneapolis. If we can be of further assistance in making any other
arrangements, please let us know. When you arrive at the airport, you
should take a taxi to the Radisson University Hotel. Please let us know
in advance of your travel plans including flight numbers and times of
arrival/departure, so that we can make the hotel reservation.
.pp
It is a great pleasure for us that you so kindly accepted our invitation,
and we are looking forward to your visit. Your host will be Dr. James
Slagle ((612) 625-0329).
.in 25
Sincerely,
.sp 4
James Slagle
.br
Professor
∂09-Mar-90 1937 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
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Date: Fri, 9 Mar 90 19:36:26 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003100336.AA00434@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Puzzle
I haven't made much progress on this in the last few days, because
there's a conference deadline this Thursday (3/15) that I'm writing a
paper for. The deadline was originally earlier, but they decided to
move it. I'll fix my mis-implementation of your suggestion and try to
get some data from it this weekend, but I doubt I'll have a chance to
make much additional progress until my paper is done.
Ramin
∂10-Mar-90 1127 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9003101929.AA09322@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: re: Referee Request
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 90 13:29:10 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
In-Reply-To: <1r7pPD@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>; from "John McCarthy" at Mar 09, 90 1157
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Thanks for the critique. The other referee was more sympathetic
concerning the author's views but had similar reservations about
the adequacy of his supporting arguments. My inclination is to
suggest that he completely rework his position, stregthening his
arguments and recasting the issues in terms of the right paradigm
for computer science: pure science vs. applied vs. approximative,
etc. I think there is something valuable in his ideas about the
machine as a logic machine rather than a computing machine, but I
agree that what we have in hand is not publishable. Let me know
if you have any argument about my handling it this way, which is
really an invitation to submit a different paper. As I have told
the other referee, I intend to provide feedback to referees as to
my intended disposition of submissions, so you can contest what I
have in mind if you are so inclined. I appreciate the assistance.
Jim
∂10-Mar-90 1204 phil@ub.d.umn.edu re: Referee Request
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9003102005.AA22200@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: re: Referee Request
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 90 14:05:58 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
In-Reply-To: <h7ZIs@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>; from "John McCarthy" at Mar 10, 90 1149
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Thanks for the suggestion, which I will run by Bill Rapaport.
His background, I believe, includes the study of mathematics,
philosophy, and computer science at Michigan (three degress,
I think), and more than 20 years of project development with
his own software company and the like.
The paper suffered from several defects, including, as you
observe, excessive reliance upon quotation. The style would
have to be drastically different. I see no incompatiblity in
pursuing both ideas (a review, a new paper, or both), especi-
ally since a new paper must be refereed again, etc.
I will let you know if we go forward with the review thing.
But I like the idea and intend to recommend it to Bill.
Jim
∂11-Mar-90 1313 VAL CS221
I'm planning to give 3 midterms, that should play the main role in determining
the final grade. Would you consider it a waste of time if I spend 3 class
periods on this? Is it customary to rely on take home tests in classes on this
level?
∂11-Mar-90 1328 golub@na-net.stanford.edu re: whiteboards
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id AA03162; Sun, 11 Mar 90 13:35:44 PST
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 1990 13:35:18 PST
From: Gene H. Golub 415/723-3124 <golub@na-net.stanford.edu>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: whiteboards
In-Reply-To: Your message of 11 Mar 90 1119 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637191318.golub@>
I agree with the comments on dead pens. We should be able to handle that
though.
Regards,
Gene
∂11-Mar-90 1425 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu,@kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz:lindsay@comp.vuw.ac.nz
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From: Lindsay Groves <lindsay@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
To: theorem-provers@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Message-ID: <9003111612.aa26334@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Could someone please put me on this mailing list and/or give me the address of
whoever administers it?
Thanks, Lindsay Groves
∂11-Mar-90 1453 AI.GUHA@MCC.COM contexts reference
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Date: Sun 11 Mar 90 16:53:43-CST
From: R. V. Guha <AI.GUHA@MCC.COM>
Subject: contexts reference
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-ID: <12572938460.30.AI.GUHA@MCC.COM>
Hi,
Doug and myself are writting an article for AI magazine on cyc and
we are mentioning contexts as one of the areas in which we are working.
I would like to refer to some publication of yours in which you mention
it. I was wondering if there is anything more recent (in which you mention it)
than Generality in AI. If there is none, could you tell me where that essay
was published?
Thanks for you help,
Guha
-------
∂11-Mar-90 1523 VAL re: WOLF
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, leora@IBM.COM
[In reply to message from JMC rcvd 10-Mar-90 11:21-PT.]
I'd like to stress "commonsense", rather than "logical". The CYC project
isn't exactly "logical formalization" in the sense of using logical formulas.
But their language is declarative, and that makes their work relevant.
So, if we want a pronounceable abbreviation, how about Workshop on Common Sense
- WOCS?
Participation: By invitation only. Say something like: "If you want to be
invited, submit an abstract or send a short (10-20 lines) description of
your past work or research interests related to the topic of the workshop."
I suggest that there be no (guaranteed) late or on-site registration. This
will make things easier for Leora, because an upper bound on the number of
participants will be known in advance.
Request 2 copies of a detailed abstract, up to 5 pages not including the
bibliography.
Dates:
Oct. 15: Submission of abstracts and requests for participation
Nov. 26: Notification of acceptance/rejection
Dec. 16: Papers due
Jan. 6-9: Meeting
Re: Names of people to be encouraged to submit papers. I suggest that we
include all people on John's list, and others, in the mailing list for the
call for papers, and ask them to post copies of the announcement in their
institutions, BUT not say anything "encouraging" in our message to them.
This will make it easier for me to reject their submissions without
hesitation if they are no good.
∂11-Mar-90 1528 VAL Reminder: Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar
To: "@CS.DIS[1,VAL]"@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
A CIRCUMSCRIPTIVE THEORY FOR CAUSAL AND EVIDENTIAL SUPPORT
Eunok Paek
Stanford University
Monday, March 12, 2:30pm
MJH 252
Reasoning about causality is an interesting application
area of formal nonmonotonic theories. Here we focus our attention
on a certain aspect of causal reasoning, namely causal asymmetry.
In order to provide a qualitative account of causal asymmetry, we
present a justification-based approach that uses circumscription to
obtain the minimality of causes. We define the notion of causal and
evidential support in terms of a justification change with respect
to a circumscriptive theory and show how the definition provides
desirable interactions between causal and evidential support.
∂12-Mar-90 0901 ric@ace.SRI.COM Re: Preserving the gains of the revolution
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From: ric@ace.SRI.COM (Richard Steinberger)
Message-Id: <9003121355.AA24882@ace.SRI.COM>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Re: Preserving the gains of the revolution
Newsgroups: su.etc
In-Reply-To: <T79UQ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: SRI International
Cc:
In article <T79UQ@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> you write:
>Today's New York Times tells us that the lame duck Sandinista
>legislature is about to pass a law turning over to their people
>as individuals large amounts of Government property. Does giving
>Daniel Ortega the Government owned house he occupies resemble
>what would have happened if the lame duck Democrats in 1980 had
>given Jimmy Carter the White House as personal property? Well,
>not quite.
This is really serious. Maybe we should send in the Marines to put things
right and restore true democracy.
>
>They also seem to be saying that they will retain control of
>the armed forces with the right to draft young men and will
>retain a control of the secret police. There is some equivocation
>about this so it may not actually happen.
I think it is unlikely that the Sandanistas will be able to maintain control
over the armed forces unless the Contras refuse to disarm. It should
be remembered that Contra disarmament was an important condition, agreed
to by the United States, for the recent election in that country.
>
>Acton said that power corrupts, and it certainly seems to apply
>in this case. I don't suppose that the original motivation of
>the Sandinista leaders was to get rich. Maybe it wasn't Somoza's
>original motivation either. The Sandinista corruption is likely
>to turn out to be rather mild, because they have been in power
>only 11 years. If Ortega had been able to keep power as long
>as Honecker, he'd really have become rich.
This is really rich. I suppose no Western/Capitalist country has been
tainted by corruption. No. Unthinkable. The scandals in the last 25 years
of the US Presidency are flukes, mere statistical anomilies. No US
President, or other leader of a Western-style democracy, ever profited from
having held high office. Corruption in European democracies, in Japan, in
Australia, Mexico, Argentina was an invention of the US leftist-leaning
media moguls. It's only Socialist [hissssss!] countries where political
corruption can really take root and prosper.
To paraphrase, "I don't suppose that the original motivation of the
leaders of the [Democrats, Republicans, Tories, Social Democrats, Catholic
Church, American Medical Association, American Bar Association] was to get
rich." If JMC's reasoning is correct, Ronald Reagan must be a closet
Socialist; he certainly has been enriched for having been president,
even if he can't remember what actions he authorized while in office.
>
>Corruption is especially likely to develop in socialist regimes.
>They tend to equalize nominal salaries and make up for it by
>their leaders taking privileges for themselves by having the
>Government employ servants for them and provide them with houses
>and dachas. When that isn't enough, Swiss bank accounts seem to
>proliferate.
More of the same here. One might be led to conclude that the more
inequitable in distribution the wealth of a nation, the less likely that
political corruption will be.
And I suppose that Camp David isn't a dachas. Merely a few small rooms in
a state park! No servants in the White House either. And the junior
officers that attend to the needs of the nations top military officials
aren't servants. They're just 'a few good men.'
The only reason more corrupt US leaders don't have Swiss bank accounts is that
they are unnecessary. It's the foreign dictators like the Duvaliers in
Haiti, the Shah in Iran, Pinochet in Chile, Somoza in Nicuragua, all of
whom were supported for many years by US dollars and weapons, that have
the BIG Swiss accounts. And while we're on the subject of Swiss accounts,
let's remember where Ollie North and company did most of their banking.
Nothing corrupt there.
-ric steinberger
∂12-Mar-90 0949 MPS receipt
do you have a receipt for room and board for the
Asilomar trip?
∂12-Mar-90 0955 MPS Trip
Before I firm up you April trips, I want to confirm a couple
of things with you. Your talk is over on the 20th at 3:30
and you leave for DC at 6:00 that same day.
Now, registration is not until 3:30 on the 22nd for the NAS
meeting. Two questions.
Do you want to go someplace from the 20th to the 22nd and
the meeting is over at 5:00 on the 25th. Do you want to
come home that same day
Thanks
∂12-Mar-90 1114 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Re: single room and dinner
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 1990 11:16:16 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: single room and dinner
In-Reply-To: Your message of 12 Mar 90 1107 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637269376.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Thanks for your quick response. I'll reserve a single room for you. How do
you wish to pay for, or charge, the difference between single and double
accommodations of $65.00?
∂12-Mar-90 1306 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Program Information and Request for Titles and Abstracts
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 90 16:05:06 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003122105.AA02304@cognito.Princeton.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: SPP Program Information and Request for Titles and Abstracts
To: AMR@ibm.com (Alexis Manaster-Ramer), PSYKIMP@vms2.uni-c.dk (Kim Plunkett),
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu,
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (For: Howard Pattee),
granger@uci.bitnet, hayes.pa@xerox.com,
ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu
(Larry Maloney), mcarthy@sail.stanford.edu, movshon@nyu.nyu.edu,
psyirv@umnacvx.bitnet, rey@cs.umd.edu (Georges Rey),
stan@teleos.com (Stan Rosenschein), treisman@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Subject: SPP Program Information, Call for Titles, Abstracts
Cc: RNVANGUL@SUNRISE.BITNET (Robert Van Gulick), andrewsj@vassar.bitnet,
harnad
Status: R
To all participants in the SPP Symbol Grounding Workshop
and Searle Symposium:
Searle Symposium ("The Chinese Room Revisited"):
Pat Hayes hayes@parc.xerox.com Xerox Parc SPEAKER
John McCarthy JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU Stanford, AI SPEAKER
Georges Rey rey@cs.UMD.EDU U. Md. philosophy DISCUSSANT
Alexis Manaster-Ramer AMR@ibm.com IBM/ Watson Res Ctr DISCUSSANT
Eric Dietrichdietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu SUNY phil DISCUSSANT
Symbol Grounding Workshop:
**Stan Rosenschein stan@teleos.com Teleos NOT CONFIRMED YET
Howard Pattee, c/o dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu SUNY Bing. systems sci
Richard Granger granger@ICS.UCI.EDU UC Irvine neuroscience
Michael Treisman TREISMAN@vax.oxford.ac.uk Oxford psych
Irv Biederman PSYIRV@vx.acs.umn.edu Minn psych
Larry Maloney ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu NYU psych
Anthony Movshon tony@cortex.psych.nyu.edu NYU neurosci
Kim Plunkett PSYKIMP@vms2.uni-c.dk Aaarhus Univ. psychology
There has been some back and forth about whether the Workshop
should be first or the Symposium. As it now stands, the Symposium
is from 9am to noon and the Workshop is from 8pm to 11 pm, but they
may get switched again. In any case, they're both on Saturday June
9th, both at the same place, and I hope you'll all be active in
both of them. The Symposium's format is 40 minutes for a speaker,
10 minutes of audience discussion on that speaker only, then
the next speaker, followed again by 10 minutes of open discussion.
Then each discussant gets 10 minutes, the speakers reply, and
then all three talks are thrown open to discussion.
Each of the workshop's 8 contributors gets 15 - 20 minutes to present
work on his own aspect of the symbol grounding problem, but the idea
is to minimize the formal presentation and make the workshop as
interactive as possible. The tentative order of presentation is
as above, but if in exchanging abstracts or other advance materials
about your presentations (as I hope you will do, now that you
have one another's email addresses) you work out another order,
that's fine. What I'd like to ask you all for right now is the
topic or TITLE of your presentation (discussants need not provide
one until and unless they have an advance idea of what their
speakers will say) and an informal ABSTRACT or summary, if
possible. The title will appear in the program.
Best wishes, Stevan Harnad
PS:
For Program information please contact the Program Chairman:
andrewsj@vassar.bitnet (Janet Andrews)
For details about the meeting and the society, please contact the
SPP Secretary:
RNVANGUL@SUNRISE.BITNET (Robert Van Gulick)
And for details of local arrangements in Maryland, the local
arrangements chairman:
rey@cs.umd.edu (Georges Rey)
∂12-Mar-90 1330 CLT bing
Sue asks if you would like to come Wed 21-mar 1-3?
∂12-Mar-90 1352 ME su-etc
I received a reply with the following header, but the message did no
show up in su-etc. Should he have copied su-etc or does the newsgroups
field handle this?
Let me guess. Did his message contain a large amount of quoted text
(probably of yours) and less new text? [Like this message!]
∂12-Mar-90 1642 MPS Austin Trip
I have made 2 arrangements for you to Austin. One, you
leave at 1:50 on Sunday and get there at 9:13 pm - cost is
1121, because part of the trip is 1st class.
The other is 12:25 am on the 19th to get into Austin at
7:15 am. The cost is 396.00.
As the agent said, there is no rhyme nor reason for the
big difference in prices. I said I would call her
back tomorrow in the am. She is holding both until you
decide what you want.
Pat
∂13-Mar-90 0623 CLT $
We are 1k+ in the hole as of the last statement?
There are several k bills to pay.
I stronly suggest you stop incurring expenses
until some of this virtual money arrives.
You just can't spend it because someone says
they will someday pay you.
∂13-Mar-90 0806 Mailer Preserving the gains of the revolution
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Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 11:06:15 PST
From: ric@ace.SRI.COM (Richard Steinberger)
Message-Id: <9003141906.AA28142@ace.SRI.COM>
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 12 Mar 90 1900 PST <T8$yN@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Preserving the gains of the revolution
> Yes, corruption exists under both socialism and capitalism, but
> I'll bet that it will turn out that it does much greater
> relative damage to the economy under socialism. Whether this
> is so will very likely become apparent in the next few years.
> Corruption within a company is limited by the bankruptcy of
> the company, and reading the business press shows that some
> form of corruption causes a substantial fraction of
> bankruptcies even when nothing actually illegal has been
> done - only the appointment and maintenance in position
> of incompetent cronies and relatives.
I know of no way to guage the relative damage of corruption to various forms
of economies. However, corruption in a privately-held company is limited
by bankruptcy only in the sense that bankrupty sets a "hard limit" on the
its continuation. Many, many people can be damaged by such corruption:
workers that lose their jobs, investors that lose money, retired persons
that rely on pension funds invested in such a company, the citizenry at
large who may be loosing a potentially valuable economic organization.
When economic corruption occurs across many sectors of industry, it is
an indication of a deeper moral or philosophical corruption that has
taken root in a country. JMC is correct to remind us that corruption
has become endemic in many of the larger communist societies of the
world. (And there is certainly a good deal of it in China, a nation
the US continues to support with little criticism).
Corruption has also become prevalent in our own country. Witness the
scandals in DoD procurement, the convictions of top Wall Street arbitrageurs
for insider trading, the convictions of Chicago Board of Trade members for
essentially stealing investors' money, the widespread bankrupties at many S
& Ls, estimated alone to cost well over $100 billion, corruption and
kickbacks in HUD projects, ethics violations and illegal campaign practices
by several US Congressmen. These are not isolated events; rather they
represent a pattern indicative of a set decaying moral and political
beliefs. And this pattern is all too prevalent throughout the world today.
One would think that in a country that is at least a nominal
democracy, widespread corruption would have some trouble attaining the levels
we have seen in the past decade. Sadly, that has not been the case.
-ric steinberger
∂13-Mar-90 0815 MPS
Could you stop by my office before you go to class today
please. I have a proposal that needs your signature. Thanks
∂13-Mar-90 0845 CLT 900
Right, that allowed me to pay one bill
∂13-Mar-90 1054 @Score.Stanford.EDU,@ai.ai.mit.edu,@mc.lcs.mit.edu:mccune@antares.mcs.anl.gov Otter 2.0
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Date: Tue, 13 Mar 90 11:53:54 CST
From: mccune@antares.mcs.anl.gov
Message-Id: <9003131753.AA07471@lutra.mcs.anl.gov>
To: theorem-provers@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Otter 2.0
The theorem prover Otter 2.0 has been released. To get a copy by FTP,
connect to hermes.mcs.anl.gov, username anonymous, any password will
do. Go to pub/Otter, and follow the directions in README.FTP.
Two versions of the manual are included: one is LaTeX input and the
other is already formatted by nroff. Let me know if you want a paper
copy---they will be ready in about a month.
If you are not able to use FTP or if you want just the PC or the
Macintosh version, let me know---I will send information in a week or
two. (If you can FTP and then get the files to you PC or your
Macintosh, that is fine, because the UNIX version contains the PC and
the Mac versions.)
Bill McCune
MCS-221
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL 60439-4844
mccune@mcs.anl.gov
---------------------------
∂13-Mar-90 1259 harnad@Princeton.EDU Color Constancy (SPP Abstract)
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Date: Tue, 13 Mar 90 15:48:59 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003132048.AA04545@cognito.Princeton.EDU>
To: AMR@ibm.com (Alexis Manaster-Ramer), PSYKIMP@vms2.uni-c.dk (Kim Plunkett),
RNVANGUL@SUNRISE.BITNET (Robert Van Gulick), andrewsj@vassar.BITNET,
clhardin@suvm.BITNET (C. L. Hardin),
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu,
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (For: Howard Pattee),
granger@uci.BITNET, hayes.pa@xerox.com,
hilbert@csli.stanford.edu (David Hilbert), jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu (Larry Maloney), movshon@CMCL2.NYU.EDU,
psyirv@umnacvx.BITNET, rey@cs.umd.edu (Georges Rey),
stan@teleos.com
(Stan Rosenschein), treisman@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Subject: Color Constancy (SPP Abstract)
From: ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu (Larry Maloney)
Abstract for presentation in Symbol Grounding Workshop
Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting
June 8 - 11 1990
I will need a slide projector and an overhead. [Georges Rey, please
note]
Color and Color Constancy
Laurence T. Maloney
Department of Psychology
Center for Neural Science
New York University
The initial visual information that determines color appearance in
human vision depends as much on the lighting in a scene as on the
spectral properties of surfaces in the scene. A visual system that
bases color appearance on the properties of the surface, discounting
the contribution of the illuminant, is termed \fIcolor constant\fP.
I describe a class of algorithms designed to allow vision systems to
estimate information (analogous to color) about surface properties
despite changes in the illuminant. These linear model algorithms
include work by Brill, Buchsbaum, Maloney and Wandell, and others.
These algorithms share strong assumptions about the range of possible
illuminants and possible surface reflectances present in a scene. I
describe evidence suggesting that many common surfaces and illuminants
satisfy the constraints required by linear model algorithms.
Hilbert (1987, Chap. 7) discusses the consequences of this work
for philosophy.
Maloney, L. T., and Wandell, B. A., Color constancy: A computational
method for recovering surface spectral reflectance. Journal of the
Optical Society of America A, 1986, \fB3\fP, 29-33.
Maloney, L. T., Evaluation of linear models of surface spectral
reflectance with small numbers of parameters. Journal of the Optical
Society of America A, 1986, \fB3\fP, 1673-1683.
Hilbert, D. R., \fIColor and Color Perception; A Study in
Anthropocentric Realism.\fP (Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1987).
---------------------------------------------------
∂13-Mar-90 1519 MPS Colby
The first event will be early evening on Saturday. Do
you want to arrive, if possible, on Saturday? Also,
you have a choice of 2 airports. Bangor or Portland.
There is only about 10-20 minutes difference in the drive
to the campus. Keith Devlin is your host and will pick you
up at the airport. Makes no difference to him. Will
you be coming back after commencement on Sunday, or stopping
off someplace on your way back home. Thanks.
∂13-Mar-90 1732 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu cs323 term paper
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Date: Tue, 13 Mar 90 17:29:44 PDT
From: Sreeranga Rajan <sreerang@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9003140129.AA21636@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: cs323 term paper
Cc: sreerang@portia.stanford.edu
Prof. McCarthy, I am attempting to write the term paper on the suggested
topic of Language for Design (cs323). The approach I am taking is as follows:
The problem of design could be recast as a problem of construction with some
constraint specification. So, a language for design should essential provide
a way to express the specified constraints with the language of construction.
I am not sure if this would be what you are asking. Could you throw some more
light on the problem?
Regards,
-- Sree
∂13-Mar-90 1853 carlf@Think.COM Elephant 2000
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From: carlf@Think.COM
Message-Id: <9003140252.AA24522@tartarus.think.com>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: carlf@Think.COM
Subject: Elephant 2000
Some time ago I saw a an announcement that you were giving a talk called
"Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts". I found the
abstract very interesting but was unable to attend. Have you written
anything about this, and if so, how could I get ahold of it?
Thank you,
Carl Feynman
∂14-Mar-90 0430 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Re: can you answer this?
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To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, me@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Re: can you answer this?
In-Reply-To: Your message of 12 Mar 90 11:32:00 -0800.
<1r8Z90@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 04:29:16 PST
From: Joe Weening <weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
That kind of header is generated by "rn" when the person replying
wants to reply just to the sender. The "Newsgroups" line just
indicates where the replied-to message is located. I think he did
not intend to send the reply to su.etc.
∂14-Mar-90 0935 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU Rudy Rucker on "are we machines"
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9003141737.AA24126@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Rudy Rucker on "are we machines"
Rudy is the author of "Infinity and the Mind", "The Fourth Dimension",
as well as numerous science fiction books. I quote an excerpt from
his reply to the question:
'Penrose does not, in my opinion, get the G\"odel/Lucas issue quite
correct. In Infinity and the Mind I have a note at the end called
"A Note on Man-Machine Equivalence" which states precisely what I think
the situation is. In a nutshell, I think that G\"odel's theorem
allows there to be a machine or an algorithm or a deductive system
M which is equivalent to human reasoning, but what the theorem rules out
is that we can find a short description of M. The Godel number of M is,
in other words, larger than the human Berry number, which is the
first number which no human can name.'
∂14-Mar-90 1158 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Spring Quarter Machine Learning Seminar
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From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9003141950.AA22293@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: csd@cs.stanford.edu, jones@cs.stanford.edu, xcomx@sierra.stanford.edu,
phd@cs.stanford.edu, latombe@cs.stanford.edu,
feigenbaum@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, genesereth@cs.stanford.edu,
shoham@cs.stanford.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Spring Quarter Machine Learning Seminar
Cc: minton@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov, langley@pluto.arc.nasa.gov,
cheeseman@pluto.arc.nasa.gov, mark@sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
haussler@saturn.ucsc.edu, russell@ernie.berkeley.edu, grosof@ibm.com,
der@beren.stanford.edu, koza@cs.stanford.edu, tgd@cs.orst.edu,
nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT---SPRING QUARTER, 1990
(Please Post and/or Distribute Further to Interested Parties)
CS 520 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR
MACHINE LEARNING
1 unit
Tuesdays 11:00--11:50 a.m.
(First meeting, Tuesday, April 3; last meeting, Tuesday, June 5)
Televised (delayed) over Stanford Instructional Television Network
(People who would like to see video tapes of the lectures can do
so a day or two after the lecture, and throughout the quarter, in
the Mathematics/Computer Science Library.)
Terman Auditorium, Terman Engineering Center, Stanford University
Convener: Nils Nilsson (nilsson@cs.stanford.edu)
This year, CS520 will concentrate on the subject of "Machine Learning."
SEMINAR SCHEDULE
April 3: "Overview of Machine Learning," Tom Dietterich, Oregon State
University
April 10: "Explanation-based Learning," Steve Minton, NASA Ames
April 17: "Probably Approximately Correct Learnability Theory," David
Haussler, UC Santa Cruz
April 24: "An Integrated Approach to Empirical Discovery," Pat
Langley, NASA Ames
May 1: "Bias and Concept Learning," Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley
May 8: "Connectionist Learning," David Rumelhart, Stanford University
May 15: "Learning Under Uncertainty---A Bayesian Approach, " Peter
Cheeseman, NASA-Ames
May 22: "Genetic Algorithms," John Koza, Third Millennium Venture Capital
May 29: "Learning and Non-monotonic Reasoning," Benjamin Grosof, IBM
June 5: "Case-Based Learning," Bill Mark, Lockheed
E-Mail Addresses of Lecturers:
minton@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
langley@pluto.arc.nasa.gov
cheeseman@pluto.arc.nasa.gov
mark@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
haussler@saturn.ucsc.edu
russell@ernie.berkeley.edu
grosof@ibm.com
der@beren.stanford.edu (David Rumelhart)
koza@cs.stanford.edu
tgd@cs.orst.edu (Tom Dietterich)
∂14-Mar-90 1408 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com missing your seminar
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Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 14:01:15 PST
From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
Message-Id: <9003142201.AA00958@sherman.teleos.com>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 14 Mar 90 1357 PST
<T9xAN@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: missing your seminar
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
Okay. Please save 26 April, though.
- L
∂14-Mar-90 1418 @IU.AI.SRI.COM,@sherman.teleos.com:leslie@teleos.com missing your seminar
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From: Leslie Kaelbling <leslie@teleos.com>
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To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 14 Mar 90 1411 PST
<1v9xN6@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: missing your seminar
Reply-To: leslie%teleos.com@ai.sri.com
Yes. My orals are scheduled for 2pm, 16 April. Place TBD.
- L
∂14-Mar-90 1818 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU Title for AI Day on Campus
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Date: Wed, 14 Mar 1990 18:18:52 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Title for AI Day on Campus
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637467532.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
John, I need a title for your talk!!
Carolyn
∂14-Mar-90 1900 JMC
Herring, Vance Sanders, etc.
∂14-Mar-90 1925 @research.att.com:rjb@allegra.tempo.nj.att.com "Future of Knowledge Representation"
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Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 22:25:28 EST
From: rjb@allegra.tempo.nj.att.com (Ron Brachman)
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: "Future of Knowledge Representation"
Dear John,
I know you are very busy, but if you have a moment, I would like to
ask you a small favor. I have been asked by AAAI to give an invited
lecture at the upcoming conference in Boston, the topic of which is
"The Future of Knowledge Representation." What I would like is any
impressions you have of what that future might be like. At this point
I have no idea what I will talk about, and can really use some good
ideas. Hopefully it would take you only a few minutes to jot down
your favorite speculations, predictions, and opinions on the matter.
In addition to speculating about the future of our field, I think I
might also reflect back on the last ten years. In that regard, I
would like to hear what you think are the most significant
developments in the area of knowledge representation over the last
decade. I would be happy to get your ideas on significant events, both
good and bad, technical, sociological, and otherwise.
I certainly appreciate any ideas you might provide me. I have to get
moving on this pretty quickly, so the sooner I can get your thoughts,
the better.
Thanks very much,
Ron Brachman
∂14-Mar-90 2232 REM@SUWATSON.stanford.edu
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Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 22:33:14 PDT
From: REM@SUWATSON.stanford.edu
To: jmc@sail
Monday night (March 12) at 7:30 pm PST,
my wife and I became parents of a 9 lb 4.5 oz baby boy.
∂15-Mar-90 0818 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU re: Title for AI Day on Campus
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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 1990 8:18:36 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Cc: clt@sail.Stanford.EDU, engelmore@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU
Subject: re: Title for AI Day on Campus
In-Reply-To: Your message of 14 Mar 90 2040 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637517916.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
Manna
Nilsson
Genesereth
Latombe
Khatib
Binford
Shoham
Tenenbaum
Rumelhart
Ginsberg
Winograd
Feigenbaum
Hayes-Roth
Fagan
Musen
Nii
for a total of 20 (if you participate, and I hope you do).
The audience will be Forum members and prospects. Industry types.
talks will be 30 minutes and the date is Thursday, June 14.
I need your title and commitment (commitment today and title tomorrow a.m.).
Bob Engelmore is my co-chairman and we are blocking the program. I hope
to send the program to the printer for a mock-up late tomorrow.
Carolyn
∂15-Mar-90 0937 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU Today's seminar topic
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To: phil396@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Today's seminar topic
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 90 09:36:21 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Philosophy 396
Seminar on Issues in Logical Theory
March 15, 4:15 pm
This week, David Cruz will present material from Westerstahl's chapter
on Quantifiers in Formal and Natural Languages (IV.1).
NOTE: This meeting will start at 4:15, rather than the normal time,
due to Dean Byer's meeting with all CSLI staff and researchers.
∂15-Mar-90 1054 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU AI DOC -- important message
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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 1990 10:51:06 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: AI-DOC:;@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
Subject: AI DOC -- important message
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637527066.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
This is the roster of speakers and titles. Bob Engelmore is co-chairman
and he and I are in the process of blocking the program. Verify your
title, and if you have a suggestion on placement, let us know.
Carolyn
.........................................
Overview of Artificial Intelligence at Stanford
Robert Engelmore
Spatial Reasoning: From Robotics to Engineering
Jean-Claude Latombe
Sensor-based Robot Control Systems
Oussama Khatib
Geometric and Physical Reasoning in Inspection and Manufacturing
Thomas Binford
Agent-Oriented Programming
Yoav Shoham
Informable Agents
Michael Genesereth
Designworld
Michael Genesereth
AI in Design and Manufacturing
Jay M. Tenenbaum
Artificial Intelligence and Electronic Data Interchange
John McCarthy
Formal Approaches to the Construction of Correct Reactive Programs
Zohar Manna
Intelligent Communicating Agents
Nils Nilsson
Multivalued logics: Making formal reasoning a practical AI tool
Matthew Ginsberg
Generation of Knowledge-acquisition tools from explicit task models
Mark Musen
Experiments with Speech Input to Expert Systems
Larry Fagan
Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Modeling Techniques
in a Monitoring and Control Task
Larry Fagan
Intelligent Real-Time Monitoring and Control
Barbara Hayes-Roth
Generation of Knowledge-acquisition tools from explicit task model
Knowledge-based CASE
Penny Nii
How Things Work: Knowledge-based Modeling of Physical Devices
Tom Gruber and/or Yumi Iwasaki
Brain Style Computation
David Rumelhart
(Title needed ?)
Edward A. Feigenbaum
Artificial intelligence, Human intelligence, and Social intelligence:
What's the connection?
Terry Winograd
∂15-Mar-90 1221 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU grades for homeworks
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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 1990 12:22:17 PST
From: Eunok Paek <paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: grades for homeworks
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637532537.paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Hello.
I am not sure if you will use the following for grading. But in any
case, I am sending it for your record.
-Eunok
------------------------------------------
Name hw. 1 hw.2
------------------------------------------
Alexander Clemm 10/10 10/10
David Cruz 10/10 10/10
Michael Frank 7/10 10/10
Rafael Furst 10/10 10/10
Christopher Hayes 10/10 5/10
Nadeem Hussain 7/10
David Iverson 7/10 7/10
Makoto Kanazawa 10/10 10/10
Jonas Karlsson 4/10 10/10
Michael Lenz 7/10 10/10
Eric Ly 7/10 10/10
Allan Padgett 7/10 5/10
Sreeranga Rajan 7/10 4/10
Dave Sawyer 10/10 4/10
Tracy Schwartz 9/10 10/10
Mark Torrance 7/10 10/10
Charles Tung 6/10
Alan Wada 7/10 10/10
∂15-Mar-90 1411 MPS Vacation day
If it is alright with you I would like to take a vacation
day tomorrow. A family gathering over the weekend. Thanks
Pat
∂15-Mar-90 1702 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Qlisp and CLOS
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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 90 17:01:52 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9003160101.AA22762@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: qlisp@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Qlisp and CLOS
Has anyone yet thought about how to extend Qlisp to Common Lisp + CLOS
instead of just Common Lisp? I think there are some interesting
ideas, i.e., making calls to generic functions behave like calls to
qlambda process closures when appropriate.
∂15-Mar-90 2052 gjohn@portia.stanford.edu VTSS160
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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 1990 20:53:29 PST
From: George John <gjohn@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: VTSS160
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637563209.gjohn@portia.stanford.edu>
Professor McCarthy,
(pardon me if you got a half-message from me. neon crashed
while I was writing your letter)
I think my average in your class is an A-. I wanted to say that
I've worked as hard as I could in your class -- I've researched each
topic in the library, my papers are consistently 30 to 40% longer than
anyone else's. I wanted to know if 1) you could reconsider my grade, or
2) I could write another paper for more credit. Don't misunderstand --
noone would call you a harsh grader. I suspect the median for your class
is much higher than most. It's just that I feel the distribution of
grades is a little too small. An A- will bring my GPA down, and I
think I've done everything in my power to get an A in your class.
Let me know if there's anything else I can do.
--George John
please respond to my neon account: gjohn@neon
∂16-Mar-90 0947 AI.JUDY@MCC.COM HOTEL ARRANGEMENTS
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Date: Fri 16 Mar 90 11:43:08-CST
From: Judy Bowman <Ai.Judy@MCC.COM>
Subject: HOTEL ARRANGEMENTS
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-ID: <12574192642.41.AI.JUDY@MCC.COM>
I made a reservation for you at
The Quarters (same hotel that you stayed in
9102 Burnet Rd the last time you were here)
835-7070
Confirmation: Steve 3/16/90
for Mar 18,19.
Looking forward to seeing you next wk.
Judy Bowman
-------
∂16-Mar-90 1029 beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU new sections for the triangle paper
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From: beeson@ucscd.UCSC.EDU (20012000)
Message-Id: <9003161831.AA03749@ucscd.UCSC.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: new sections for the triangle paper
The following are to be added. This should pass plain TeX if you strip
out "\sectionheading" and add \bye. I still hope to add a reference
for the minimal polynomial of λ cos(2 pi/n).
\sectionheading{ Embeddability of regular polygons in plane lattices}
We show that an old result is a corollary of our main theorem. The
original proofs (there are two independent ones in the literature)
are much easier than the proof of our main theorem, so
the fact that it is a corollary of our theorem is only of interest for
the connection, and not for the result itself. The original proofs
are discussed in the next section.
\proclaim {Theorem} (Schoenberg [1937], Scherrer [1946])
Suppose a regular $n$-gon is
embeddable in $\bold {Z↑k}$ for some $k$. Then $n$ = 3,4, or 6.
\endproclaim
\demo{Proof}
If we have an embedded
$n$-gon, then there is an embedded isosceles triangle with one angle
of $2 \pi /n$. The other two angles are each $\pi/2 - \pi/n$.
Their tangents are thus $\cot \pi/n$.
The non-embeddability of an $n$-gon in any $\bold {Z↑k}$
will then follow from our theorem when
$\cot↑2 (\pi/n)$ is irrational. Since
$$ \cot↑2 \theta = \frac {1+ \cos 2 \theta}{1-\cos 2 \theta}$$,
we have $$ \cos 2\theta = \frac{\cot↑2 \theta-1}{\cot↑2\theta + 1}$$,
so $\cos 2 \theta$ \is rational if and only if $cot↑2 \theta$ is rational.
Hence an embedded $n$-gon is possible if and only if $\cos (2\pi/n)$
is rational.
The minimal polynomial of $\cos (2\pi/n)$ has degree $\phi(n)/2$, where
$\phi$ is the Euler $\phi$-function. This can be one
if and only $\phi(n) = 2$, that is, $n = 3$, $4$, or $6$. \qed
\sectionheading {History and Related Work}
The first proof that the equilateral triangle is not embeddable in
$\bold {Z↑2}$ was given (so far as I know) by E. Lucas [1878].
Lucas' proof is perhaps more accessible in P\'olya and Szeg\"o [1954],
page 376 (problem 238). Since it is only a few lines, and not published
elsewhere in English, it seems worth reprinting:
Put one corner of the hypothetical equilateral triangle at origin, the
other corners at $(a,b)$ and $(x,y)$, and supposing that $x,y,a,b$ have no
common factor. Then we have
$$ x↑2 + y↑2 = a↑2 + b↑2 = (x-a)↑2 + (y-b)↑2$$
and hence
$$ 2(xa + by) = x↑2 + y↑2 = a↑2 + b↑2$$
$$ x↑2 + y↑2 + x↑2 + b↑2 = 4(xa + yb) \cong 0 \mod 4$$
Since we have excluded the case of $x,y,a,b$ all divisible by 2,
they must all be odd. In that case, however, the equation
$$ x↑2 + y↑2 = (x-a)↑2 + (y-b)↑2 \mod 4$$
is impossible, completing the proof.
So far as I can determine, John McCarthy was the first to state and prove
(although he did not publish) the generalization of Lucas' theorem to
planar polygons (Proposition 1 of this paper).
One of the referees suggested that this theorem was part of the
``folklore'' of the subject, and should not be credited to McCarthy;
but Lucas' proof is very special, and when P\'olya and Szeg\"o give it,
as recently as 1954, there is no hint
of a generalization, nor is this generalization mentioned in any of the
other related papers discussed below, and these are all the papers I could
find on the subject.
Rather than ask about arbitrary planar triangles, people seemed to
have generalized Lucas' theorem in another direction, asking about arbitrary
regular polygons.
Schoenberg [1937]
proved that a regular $n$-gon with $n$ different
from 3,4, and 6, is not embeddable in $\bold {Z↑k}$, or indeed any (possibly
oblique) rational lattice in $k$-space for any $k$.
Although it refers to $k$ dimensions
instead of a plane, it actually suffices to consider only planar lattices,
since if a polygon were embeddable in $\bold {Z↑k}$, then the intersection
of the plane of the polygon with $Z↑k$ would be a planar lattice.
Schoenberg's proof is short: Let $A$,$B$,and $C$ be
three consecutive vertices of a regular lattice $n$-gon with center at
origin. Let $P= A+C$. Then $\vert P \vert = 2 \vert B \vert \cos(2\pi/n)$,
so $\cos↑2 (2\pi/n)$ is rational. Then we can finish the proof as in
the previous section, except that the cases $n= 8$ and $n= 12$ still need
attention. (Schoenberg [1937], p. 50, jumps too
quickly for me to follow to the conclusion that $\cos (2\pi/n)$ is rational.)
Scherrer [1946], apparently unaware of Schoenberg [1937], gave another
proof of this theorem. His proof is a gem:
Suppose we had an embedded $n$-gon (for $n> 6$). Consider the
lattice vectors formed by the sides. Translate them, putting their
tails all at origin. Then their heads form a {\smaller} lattice $n$-gon,
in fact smaller by at least a certain factor, namely $2 \sin (\pi/n)$.
Iterating this construction leads to arbitrarily small lattice $n$-gons,
a contradiction. This proof works even for non-square lattices, which
we have not considered in this paper. Scherrer also showed the case
$n=5$ is impossible, by a similar construction: Number the sides of
a pentagon, considered as vectors, by 1,2,3,4,5. Then taking them
in the order 1,3,5,2,4, place the tail of each at the head of the previous
one. You will get a five-pointed star. Connecting the points, you get
a smaller lattice pentagon than you started with. For square lattices,
Scherrer could have ruled out $n=3$ and $n=6$ by Lucas' theorem.
The main point of Schoenberg [1937] is not polygons, but
rather necessary and sufficient conditions for the
embeddability of a regular $n$-simplex in $\bold {Z↑n}$ (it is always
embeddable in $\bold {Z↑{n+1}}$, for example taking all the points with
one coordinate 1 and the rest 0). Although
the equilateral triangle is not embeddable in $\bold {Z↑2}$, the
tetrahedron is embeddable in the unit cube,
for example at $(1,0,0)$, $(0,1,0)$, $(0,0,1)$, and $(1,1,1)$.
Schoenberg showed that, for $n$ even, the embedding is possible
if and only if $n+1$ is a perfect square; for $n \cong 3 \mod 4$, it
is always possible and for $n \cong 1 \mod 4$, if and only if $n+1$ is
a sum of two squares.
The fact that the $4$-simplex is not
embeddable in $\bold {Z↑4}$ refutes the idea that perhaps a polyhedron
is embeddable if all of its triangles are embeddable.
Nobody seems to have considered the question of the embeddability
of arbitrary triangles until the 1980's.
Landau and Cremona [1987] consider the following question: given that a
triangle is embeddable in $\bold Z↑n$, what is the smallest embedding?
That is, find the smallest triangle similar to the given one which
has its vertices on lattice points in $n$-space. They answer the
question in dimensions 3 and 4 using the greatest-common-divisor
algorithm in the quaternions. Since now we know that triangles
embeddable in $\bold Z↑4$ are also embeddable in $\bold Z↑3$, we might wonder if
a smallest embedding can always be found in $\bold Z↑3$. The answer (according
to a letter from Landau) is
no: although a lattice triangle in $\bold Z↑4$ can always be rotated and
dilated into $\bold Z↑3$, sometimes a dilation is really required.
≠
∂16-Mar-90 1154 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP: Local information
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Date: Fri, 16 Mar 90 14:52:11 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003161952.AA04815@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: AMR@ibm.com (Alexis Manaster-Ramer), PSYKIMP@vms2.uni-c.dk (Kim Plunkett),
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu,
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
(For: Howard Pattee),
granger@uci.BITNET, hayes.pa@xerox.com, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu (Larry Maloney), movshon@CMCL2.NYU.EDU,
psyirv@umnacvx.BITNET, rey@cs.umd.edu (Georges Rey),
stan@teleos.com (Stan Rosenschein), treisman@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Subject: SPP: Local information
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 90 14:29:52 -0500
From: rey@cs.UMD.EDU (Georges Rey)
To: RNVANGUL%SUNRISE.BITNET@cs.UMD.EDU, andrewsj%vassar.BITNET@cs.UMD.EDU,
harnad@clarity, rey@cs.umd.edu
Subject: Re: Information for Michael Treisman
I've been researching how to standardize transportation to the SPP
conference in June. It turns out to be a lot trickier than I thought
(we ordinarily arrange to pick people up at the airports; but that
obviously will be impractical in all but special cases). The airport to
fly into is definitely BALTIMORE. What I hope to arrange are some
shuttle buses from there to the campus. Should that not work, there is
the option of taking a train from Baltimore airport to New Carrolton
(the last stop before Washington D.C.), and then catching the shuttle
between there and the campus. But the connections might be hard to
coordinate, especially given the fact that the shuttles will be running
on a summer schedule. If financially feasible, of course, it would be
best to rent a car (having a car in the DC area is independently
desirable; the subway between college park and downtown DC is not yet
completed). And, of course, if there is some special problem --e.g.
peculiar arrival time; too much luggage-- there are several of us who
could drive our own cars to pick people up. I'll continue to work on
the possibility of arranging a special shuttle and be back with all of
you ASAP (I hope no later than next tuesday).
Lodging is as follows:
comfortable twin (2 single beds) or queen (1 double) rooms, air-conditioned,
in same bldg as conference: $37.50/person/night ($57.50 as a single);
dormitory rooms, all twins, no air-conditioning, about 20 min walk to
conference bldg: $17./person/night ($22. as a single).
Checks should be made out to the University of Maryland, preferably for
the full three nights of the conference.
Hope this will do for now. Best Regards, georges Rey
∂16-Mar-90 1208 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Names for X terminals
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Date: Fri, 16 Mar 90 12:07:19 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9003162007.AA28243@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Names for X terminals
When we install the X terminals in your office and Vladimir's, we'll
need hostnames for them. What would you like? (The names won't
appear in mail headers, just in Finger listings to indicate where you
are logged in from.)
∂16-Mar-90 1224 rpg@lucid.com Qlisp and CLOS
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Date: Fri, 16 Mar 90 12:24:14 PST
From: Richard P. Gabriel <rpg@lucid.com>
Message-Id: <9003162024.AA12754@rose>
To: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
Cc: qlisp@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: Joe Weening's message of Thu, 15 Mar 90 17:01:52 -0800 <9003160101.AA22762@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Qlisp and CLOS
I have given this some thought. There are more interesting approaches
than what you mention. Two ideas are:
1. different sorts of method combination that run methods in parallel
2. classes of generic functions with parallel calling conventions.
For example, you could have a class that always spawns a process on
function call, so that Dan's (qlet& t ((x1 (f1 ...))
(x2 (f2 ...))
...
(xn (fn ...))) ...)
is just
(let ((x1 (f1 ...))
(x2 (f2 ...))
...
(xn (fn ...))) ...)
where f1,...,fn are of the right class. Similarly, one can define classes
where any instance of that class can be running at the same time and
other calls block until then.
-rpg-
∂16-Mar-90 1604 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu Axiomatization of Mr. S and Mr. P
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From: Sreeranga Rajan <sreerang@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9003170004.AA03918@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Axiomatization of Mr. S and Mr. P
Cc: sreerang@portia.stanford.edu
I axiomatized the S-P problem in classical logic and translated the
axioms into a prolog program. It seems to work and come up with the
right answers: S=17 and P=52.
Here are the six axioms:
[1] To express the range constraint of the numbers
Axiom 1:
(forall n) [between(n,1,100) iff 1 < n and n < 100]
[2] To express the relationship between sum and product
Axiom 2:
(forall s,p) [ agree(s,p)
iff
(forall m,n) [between(m,1,100) and
between(n,1,100) and
s = m+n and
p = m*n
]
]
[3] P says "I don't know the numbers"
This means that there are more than one sum which satisfy
agree(s,p). This can be expressed as:
Axiom3:
(forall p) [ S1(p)
iff
(thereexist s1,s2)
[not (s1=s2) and
agree(s1,p) and
agree(s2,p)]
]
[4] S says " I knew you didn't know them and I don't know them either"
This means that for every product that satisfies agree(s,p),
S1(p) is true, and that there is more than one product that
satisfies agree(s,p).
Axiom 4:
(forall s) [ S2(s)
iff
(forall p)
[agree(s,p) implies S1(p)] and
(thereexist p1,p2)
[not (p1=p2) and
agree(s,p1) and
agree(s,p2)]
]
[5] P says "Now I know the numbers!"
This means that there is only one sum which satisfies agree(s,p) and
S2(s).
Axiom 5:
(forall s,p) [ S3(s,p)
iff
(forall s1)
[(S2(s) and agree(s,p) and
S2(s1) and agree (s1,p))
implies
s = s1]
]
[6] S says "Now I know them too!"
There is only one product that satisfies agree(s,p) and S3(s,p)
Axiom 6:
(forall s,p) [ S4(s,p)
iff
(forall p1)
[(S3(p) and agree(s,p) and
S3(p1) and agree(s,p1))
implies
p = p1]
Theorem:
S4(s0,p0)
(where s0 and p0 are sum and product constants.)
∂16-Mar-90 1608 gjohn@portia.stanford.edu re: VTSS160
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Date: Fri, 16 Mar 1990 16:08:09 PST
From: George John <gjohn@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: VTSS160
In-Reply-To: Your message of 16 Mar 90 1518 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637632489.gjohn@portia.stanford.edu>
Thanks. I'll give it to you by Thursday. I appreciate this.
--George
∂17-Mar-90 0800 JMC
papers for Cate
∂17-Mar-90 0903 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #3 - 17 MARCH 1990
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Date: Sat, 17 Mar 90 11:54 EST
From: JC <"JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com>
To: MCCARTHY <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #3 - 17 MARCH 1990
Message-Id: <41900317165414/0003921119NB2EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 17-Mar-90 11:38 EST
From: John Coonrod, Email: jc%thpinyc@mcimail.com
1. PROGRESS ON A "BUSINESS CARD STANDARD"
Many members responded as to what "prefix" (like TEL, FAX, TLX)
one should put on business cards. Several people suggested EML,
although a stronger showing was made for spelling out Email, at
least until people are more familiar with seeing it.
As for the addressing standard, a thorough reading of
Quarterman's book indicates that, frankly, there already IS a
dominant addressing standard, and it is the one used by Internet,
Bitnet and many others. The shorthand name for it is DNS, for
"domain naming system." Several of the networks I've logged onto
recently will accept DNS addresses on their "To" lines with no
further ado.
2. "MAIL FRIENDLINESS"
I've received some really strong complaints about some mail
systems that seem completely intransigent, which seem bent on
ensuring people DON'T communicate. I recommend we create a
League-approved standard of excellence for Email, and then create
a climate whereby systems feel compelled to shape up. Here is my
draft "Bill of Rights for email users in 1990", for your
comments.
a) You should only have to use one mail system, and it should be
the system most useful to their daily work. For people in
offices, this usually means a Lan-based system.
b) Mail should come to you - you shouldn't have to think about
going after it. Your screen should be able to notify you when
you have mail waiting.
c) You should be able to quickly attend to mail without
interrupting your other work.
d) You should be able to reach anyone on any other mail system
within some reasonable interval, like an hour.
e) You should have a way of organizing your messages, and
tracking receipts and replies.
f) Every address should be expressible in DNS form, and every
mail system should accept DNS addresses on their "To" lines and
handle them intelligently.
g) Every mail system should be able to handle and exchange 8-bit
binary attachments.
h) When in doubt, you should be able to send to "postmaster" (or
"info"?) on any system, and get a reply.
3. BITNET/UN LINKUPS
Bob Chen, of the World Hunger Program at Brown University just
returned from Geneva and informed me he now had email connections
from the Bitnet of the global academic world to WFP, FAO, UNHCR
and UNDRO, who handle their mail through ICC, the International
Computer Centre in Geneva. Nick Narishkin at UNICEF informed me
that UNICEF, too, will bridge their WANG mail to ICC, which they
say is well-gatewayed. Way to go, UN.
4. CONFERENCES
Thanks to the recommendations and support of Bill Leland, Wendy
White and John Black, I've gotten "jcoonrod" accounts on Econet
and Cosy. The other conference I regularly is watch is the
Compuserve/Novell/MHS forum. Some people have proposed moving
this league to a conference, which frankly makes a lot of sense.
Does anyone have suggestions? What conferences do YOU look at
daily? Please be assured, our commitment remains to get your
League mail to where YOU want it.
5. "MARCH GOALS AND WISHES" STATUS
I've had good luck solving the puzzle of receiving messages to my
MCIMail-bridged lan from Peacenet and Applelink. The big
remaining problem is Dialcom. ATI was quite cordial about last
week's wish for a small, background personal MHS -- we shall see.
Looking forward to your next communications,
John Coonrod
∂18-Mar-90 1035 CLT DEC collaboration
To: ZM, JMC
I sent a msg to martin abadi and leslie lamport suggesting we have
a short chat before Zohar leaves. I got the following reply from
leslie. Should we try to meet with leslie on Wednesday, or just
wait til both Martin and Zohar return?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: lamport@src.dec.com (Leslie Lamport)
Date: 18 Mar 1990 1029-PST (Sunday)
To: Carolyn Talcott <CLT@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: meeting
Carolyn,
Martin is away for a few weeks. It would be best if Martin were here,
since it's unlikely that I'll have time to do any sort of collaborating
in the next year or so. However, Wednesday afternoon is possible for
me.
Leslie
∂18-Mar-90 1224 VAL Job hunting: Progress report
While I was at UBC, a letter came from Professor Sir Mark Richmond,
offerring me a visiting professorship at Manchester. Hurrah!
About UBC, it seems likely that they'll make me an offer. They said
(even more explicitly than Manchester) that they have no other
candidates for the theoretical AI position. Also, Gilmore is about
to retire, and they need a logician, so that I would fulfill two of
their needs.
I'll be going to Austin Tuesday, then to El Paso Saturday, and back
Monday. So I'll see you on March 27 (unless we'll bump into each other
in the Austin airport Tuesday night).
∂18-Mar-90 2237 hewitt@ai.mit.edu the uses of Circumscription
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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 90 01:38 EST
From: Carl Hewitt <hewitt@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: the uses of Circumscription
To: JMC@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: hewitt@ai.mit.edu, kirsh%cogsci@ucsd.edu
Message-Id: <19900319063820.8.HEWITT@DUE-PROCESS.AI.MIT.EDU>
John,
I have enclosed the section of my AIJ paper that deals with
Circumscription in case you would like to comment or make
suggestions.
Thank you very much for correcting some of my misunderstandings
about Circumscription.
Sincerely,
Carl
\subsubsection{The Deductive Indecision Problem in Circumscription}
In this section I present an example to show how the Deductive
Indecision Problem arises in the use of Circumscription in OIS.
Circumscription [McCarthy: 1980, McCarthy: 1986] has been introduced
as a way to close logical axiom systems to provide qualifications that
are useful in compactly expressing axioms and their qualifications.
Circumscription and related nonmonotonic logics are very useful
for this purpose.
This section of the paper uses Circumscription to illustrates some points
about Deductive Indecision in Microtheories. We illustrate how
Circumscription can be used as a powerful tool to analyze the
qualifications of Microtheories.
Consider the question of the safety of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power
plant which came up as a crucial issue as part of the process of
deciding whether or not it should be given an operating license.
Let's suppose that all participants accept the following propositions:
\procedure %
trained-operators
earthquake-zone
\endproc
\noindent
which state that the operators are trained and that the nuclear plant is in an
earthquake-zone
\procedure %
{\rm Axiom 1:}
\keyword{If} trained-operators, \keyword{then} safe-plant
\endproc
\noindent
which states that if the operators are trained then the plant is safe
\procedure %
{\rm Axiom 2:}
\keyword{If} earthquake-zone, \keyword{then} \keyword{not}(safe-plant)
\endproc
\noindent
which states that if the plant is in an earthquake zone then
it is not safe.
The above propositions taken together are inconsistent in they
imply both \code{safe-plant} and \code{\keyword{not}(safe-plant)}.
Using Circumscription, we can remove the contradiction by
replacing each axiom \code{$A_{i}$} with an new axiom of the form
\procedure %
\keyword{If} \keyword{not}($C_{i}$), \keyword{then} $A_{i}$
\endproc
where \code{$C_{i}$} is a new unique propositional variable which I
call a {\em Caveat} and which McCarthy calls a {\em Normality
Condition}.
So Axiom 1 is transformed to Axiom 1':
\procedure %
{\rm Axiom 1':}
\keyword{If} trained-operators \keyword{and} \keyword{not}(caveat-1), \keyword{then} safe-plant
\endproc
and Axiom 2 is transformed to Axiom 2':
\procedure %
{\rm Axiom 2':}
\keyword{If} earthquake-zone \keyword{and} \keyword{not}(caveat-2), \keyword{then} \keyword{not}(safe-plant)
\endproc
\noindent
Circumscription provides that conclusions can be drawn from the
maximal consistent models of the axioms by varying which Caveats are
taken to be true and false. In this way Circumscription eliminates the
contradiction in the Microtheory obtained by joining the Microtheories of
the proponents and opponents of licensing the reactor. However, note
that the Deductive Indecision Problem has been enlarged by
Circumscription because in addition to be being Undecided about
\code{safe-plant}, the new Circumscription Microtheory is undecided
about \code{caveat-1} and \code{caveat-2} as well. There are two
inconsistent extensions: one in which \code{caveat-2} is true along with
\code{safe-plant} and vice-versa.
In response to the above discussion, the utility proposes the
following axiom:
\procedure %
{\rm Interaction Axiom 3:}
\keyword{If} trained-operators, \keyword{then} caveat-2
\endproc
\noindent
because it maintains that its operators have been trained to deal with
earthquakes and so the fact that power plant is in an earthquake zone
does not imply that it is not safe. If the above proposition is
accepted and the discussion ends here, then by Circumscription, we can
conclude that the power plant is safe.
However, the opponents to the plant also have a new axiom to propose:
\procedure %
{\rm Interaction Axiom 4:}
\keyword{If} earthquake-zone, \keyword{then} caveat-1
\endproc
\noindent
because they maintain that being in an earthquake zone implies that
having trained operators does not imply that the plant is safe.
The machinery that Circumscription establishes to join together two
formally inconsistent microtheories has become part of the content of
the dispute between the participants! Actually this is not to surprising
given the entrenched nature of the conflict.
Neither side is willing to accept each others new proposals for axioms
and so Circumscription is applied to produced Axioms 3' and 4':
\procedure %
{\rm Interaction Axiom $3'$:}
\keyword{If} trained-operators \keyword{and} \keyword{not}(caveat-Interaction-Axiom-3),
\keyword{then} caveat-2
\bline
{\rm{Interaction Axiom $4'$:}}
\keyword{If} earthquake-zone \keyword{and} \keyword{not}(caveat-Interaction-Axiom-4),
\keyword{then} caveat-1
\endproc
There is no resolution and the Deductively Undecided atomic
propositions have been enlarged to include
\code{caveat-Interaction-Axiom-3} and \code{caveat-Interaction-Axiom-4}.
But the discussion is not done yet! The utility proposes the following
axiom:
\procedure %
{\rm{Second-Order Interaction Axiom 5:}}
\keyword{If} trained-operators, \keyword{then} caveat-Interaction-Axiom-4
\endproc
\noindent
because it believes that if the operators are trained to handle
earthquakes, then the power plant being in an earthquake zone does not imply
that trained operators will not have a safe plant.
\noindent
while the opponents counter with:
\procedure %
{\rm{Second-Order Interaction Axiom 6:}}
\keyword{If} earthquake-zone, \keyword{then} caveat-Interaction-Axiom-3
\endproc
\noindent
because they believe that if the power plant is in an earthquake zone,
then having trained operators does not imply that the
earthquake zone does not make the plant unsafe because
even though the operators are trained, they will not be able
to keep the plant safe.
The participants are arguing about the {\em process} of the forum in
which they make their representations in a way which is couched in
logical language. The same kind of behavior should be expected in any
other forum that is provided to the participants: they will use
whatever machinery is available to them in order to further
incompatible entrenched commitments specifically including all the
various nonmonotonic logics.
Determination of the safety of the power plant is a very difficult issue.
So it is not surprising that it cannot be solved using Deduction.
However the Deductive Indecision Problem can be made
worse! Deduction is concerned exclusively with the {\em internal}
structure of Microtheories. Its great power stems from the ability to
analyze Microtheories from any context in which they
might have arisen. However, it seems that it has left out something
crucial by concentrating only on the {\em logical} relationships among
Microtheories.
∂19-Mar-90 0600 JMC
482-8260 3005171008
∂19-Mar-90 1112 MPS Abstracts
Hi,
U of Minn called requesting the title of your abstracts for your
three talks, so they could publish them. You can e-mail them
to
boley@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
or
slagle@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
∂19-Mar-90 1447 MPS Interview
Henry Ayling, Expert Magazine (IEEE) would like your
permission to use an interview done by you and Reed Hoffman
for Computing Futures, Nov-Dec 89, and have it printed in
Expert. He also said you may want to change, update, make
additions, etc. to it. His number is 714 821-8380.
PS - He did say he does not need your permission as he already
has it, but that this call is a courtesy call in case you want
to change, etc. it.
I just reread this, and it sure is Monday.
Pat
∂19-Mar-90 1838 hoffman@csli.Stanford.EDU interview
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Date: Mon 19 Mar 90 18:39:47-PST
From: Reid Hoffman <HOFFMAN@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: interview
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: hoffman@CSLI.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <637900787.0.HOFFMAN@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(242)+TOPSLIB(128)@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Professor McCarthy,
Apparently the interview which we did in the Summer has generated much
popularity and IEEE Expert wishes to reprint it. (1) Is this ok with you?
(2) Do you want to check it over for any clarifications? (3) There are
a couple of questions which we might add, would you be interested?
thanks
reid
-------
∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp invitation
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From: ANDREWSJ%VASSAR.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: spp invitation
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X-VMS-To: IN%"jmc@sail.stanford.edu"
This is to officially invite you to speak at the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology meeting on June 9 at the University of Maryland, College Park, in
the symposium on the Chinese Room Revisited from 8-11 p.m. Please confirm
by sending me an email message to that effect; include your regular mailing
address and phone number. I will send you the program and local arrangements
information by email. Soon you will receive the printed program notice with
room reservation forms, etc. Thank you!
--Jan Andrews, 1990 Program Chair
∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp arrangements information
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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 90 23:38 EDT
From: ANDREWSJ%VASSAR.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: spp arrangements information
Sender: ANDREWSJ%vaxsar.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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Draft of Travel and Lodging arrangements for 1990 SPP
at Univ of Maryland College Park
Travel:
College Park is a northeast Suburb of Washington DC. The
conference will be held in the Center of Adult Education at the
far west end of the campus, at the intersection of Adelphi Rd.
and University Blvd. (MD hghwy #193).
By automobile: take Interstate 95 to the College Park Exit (where
95 meets 495 (the "Beltway"); go south on Baltimore Ave. (MD #1);
turn right (west) on University Blvd.; proceed about 1 mile to
Adelphi Rd.
Shuttle service is available from each of the area's three major
airports, Dulles, National, and BWI (Baltimore-Washington
International, located to the north about 2/3 of the way to
Baltimore). Dulles is remote, to the far west of DC; National is
near the center of DC and is best if you're planning to stay in
DC. BWI is closest and easiest for the conference itself.
Reservations for the shuttle should be made by calling (301)-441-
VANS (i.e. 441-8267) and mentioning that you're part of the SPP
conference. There are substantial savings for groups like ours,
and the shuttle service will organize them with an eye to
synchronizing with different flights. Traveling in a group of 3
or more can bring the fare down from $25, to $12./person.
The campus can also be reached by Amtrak to BWI, where you could
pick up one of the above shuttles, or to New Carrolton, the last
stop before Wash DC, where you get the metrobus #F6 to the campus
(at which point you should telephone the conference for further
instructions).
Lodging:
(a) Adult Ed bldg (same bldg as lectures, and with air-
conditioning:
45 Twin rooms (2 beds), @$37.50/prsn/night ($57.50 single) (90)
50 Queen rooms (1 dbl bed), @38.50/prsn/night (100)
(B) North Campus High Rise Residence (about 30 min walk; NO air-
conditioning):
40-60 Twin rooms (2 beds), @$17/prsn/night ($22. single) (80-120)
In the case of option (a), subtract 10% if paid in advance to the
Univ. of Maryland. Send the remittance and requests for any
further information to: Georges Rey, Philosophy, CSS 4360, UMCP
College Pk, MD 20742; ph: (301)-454-2851; email: rey@tove.umd.edu
∂19-Mar-90 2038 @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:ANDREWSJ@vaxsar.bitnet spp program
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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 90 23:38 EDT
From: ANDREWSJ%VASSAR.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: spp program
Sender: ANDREWSJ%vaxsar.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Reply-to: ANDREWSJ%VASSAR.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Message-id: <C105821C1A5F202933@vaxsar.bitnet>
X-Envelope-to: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
X-VMS-To: IN%"jmc@sail.stanford.edu"
Program for the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology, June 8-11, 1990 at the University of Maryland, College Park
Friday, June 8
Conference registration: 1-7
3-6 pm Symposium on Rule-Following
Chair: Eva Kittay (Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook)
Speakers: Neil Tennant (Philosophy, ANU)
Crispin Wright (Philosophy, U. Michigan) (tentative)
Norbert Hornstein (Linguistics, U. Maryland)
Paul Boghossian (Philosophy, U. Michigan)
8-10 pm Invited Lectures on Neuroscience:
Chris Cherniak (Philosophy and Computer Science, U. Maryland)
A. Georgeopoulos (Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins)
Saturday, June 9
Conference registration: 8-12
9-12 Workshop on Symbol-Grounding
Chair: Stevan Harnad (Psychology, Princeton)
Speakers: Howard Pattee (Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton)
Richard Granger (Neuroscience, University of California at Irvine)
Michael Triesman (Psychology, Oxford)
Irving Biederman (Psychology, U. Minnesota)
Larry Maloney (Psychology, New York University)
Anthony Movshon (Neuroscience, New York University)
Kim Plunkett (Psychology, Aarhus University)
1:30-3:30 Concurrent contributed paper sessions I, II, III
I Language and Concepts
Speakers: Paul Bloom (Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT)
Christopher Gauker (Philosophy, McMicken)
II Determination of Mental Content
Speakers: Ruth Millikan (Philosophy, U. Connecticut)
Barbara Von Eckardt (Philosophy, U. Nebraska)
III Intentional Realism and Reductionism
Speakers: Robert Gordon (Philosophy, U. Missouri at St. Louis)
Bernard Kobes (Philosophy, Arizona State U.)
4-5:30 Invited Lecture on Cognitive Development
Speaker: Elizabeth Spelke (Psychology, Cornell)
Discussant: Jerry Samet (Philosophy, Brandeis)
6-7:30 Banquet dinner
8-11 Symposium on the Chinese Room Revisited
Chair: TBA
Speakers: Patrick Hayes (Xerox Parc)
John McCarthy (Artificial Intelligence, Stanford)
Discussants: Georges Rey (Philosophy, U. Maryland)
Alexis Manaster-Ramer (Linguistics, IBM Watson)
Eric Dietrich (Philosophy, SUNY Binghamton)
Sunday, June 10
9-11:30 Symposium on Language and Other Knowledge Systems
Chair: TBA
Speakers: Barbara Landau (Psychology, Columbia)
Jane Grimshaw (Linguistics, Brandeis)
Paul Bloom (Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT)
1-3:15 Concurrent contributed paper sessions IV, V, VI
IV Imagery and Consciousness
Speakers: Nigel J. T. Thomas (Philosophy, U. of Leeds)
Norton Nelkin (Philosophy, U. of New Orleans)
V Challenges to Connectionism
Speakers: Ken Livingston (Cognitive Science, Vassar)
Keith Butler (Philosophy, U. of Wisconsin at Madison)
VI Functional Explanation in Psychology
Speakers: H. Looren de Jong (Psychology, Vrije)
Valerie Gray Hardcastle (Philosophy,UCSD)
3:30-6 Symposium on Concepts and Categories
Chair: Don Perlis (Computer Science, U. Maryland)
Speakers: Michael Devitt (Philosophy, U. Maryland)
Susan Carey (Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT)
Ray Jackendoff (Linguistics, Brandeis)
6:15-7 Business meeting
8:30-9:30 Presidential Address
Chair: Ray Jackendoff (Linguistics, Brandeis)
Speaker: Paul Churchland (Cognitive Science, UCSD)
9:30-11 Reception
Monday, June 11
9-12 Symposium on Perception and Action in Humans and Machines
Chair: Zygmunt Pizlo (Psychology, U. Maryland)
Speakers: Azriel Rosenfeld (Computer Science, U. Maryland)
Dana Ballard (Computer Science, Rochester)
Bob Steinman (Psychology, U. Maryland)
Bela Julesz (Psychology, Rutgers)
Available throughout the conference in a nearby location: Software
Demonstration Room (and the usual book displays)
∂19-Mar-90 2149 harnad@Princeton.EDU SPP Local information
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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 90 00:41:46 EST
From: harnad@Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Message-Id: <9003200541.AA00186@reason.Princeton.EDU>
To: AMR@ibm.com (Alexis Manaster-Ramer), PSYKIMP@vms2.uni-c.dk (Kim Plunkett),
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu,
dietrich@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
(For: Howard Pattee),
granger@uci.BITNET, hayes.pa@xerox.com, jmc@sail.stanford.edu,
ltm@xp.psych.nyu.edu (Larry Maloney), movshon@CMCL2.NYU.EDU,
psyirv@umnacvx.BITNET, rey@cs.umd.edu (Georges Rey),
stan@teleos.com (Stan Rosenschein), treisman@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Subject: SPP Local information
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 90 20:41:10 -0500
From: rey@cs.UMD.EDU (Georges Rey)
Cc: RNVANGUL%SUNRISE.BITNET@cs.UMD.EDU, andrewsj%vassar.BITNET@cs.UMD.EDU,
rey@cs.umd.edu
Draft of Travel and Lodging arrangements for 1990 SPP
at Univ of Maryland College Park
Travel:
College Park is a northeast Suburb of Washington DC. The
conference will be held in the Center of Adult Education at the
far west end of the campus, at the intersection of Adelphi Rd.
and University Blvd. (MD hghwy #193).
By automobile: take Interstate 95 to the College Park Exit (where
95 meets 495 (the "Beltway"); go south on Baltimore Ave. (MD #1);
turn right (west) on University Blvd.; proceed about 1 mile to
Adelphi Rd.
Shuttle service is available from each of the area's three major
airports, Dulles, National, and BWI (Baltimore-Washington
International, located to the north about 2/3 of the way to
Baltimore). Dulles is remote, to the far west of DC; National is
near the center of DC and is best iff you're planning to stay in
DC. BWI is closest and easiest for the conference itself.
Reservations for the shuttle should be made by calling (301)-441-
VANS (i.e. 441-8267) and mentioning that you're part of the SPP
conference. There are substantial savings for groups like ours,
and the shuttle service will organize them with an eye to
synchronizing with different flights. Traveling in a group of 3
or more can bring the fare down from $25, to $12./person.
The campus can also be reached by Amtrak to BWI, where you could
pick up one of the above shuttles, or to New Carrolton, the last
stop before Wash DC, where you get the metrobus #F6 to the campus
(at which point you should telephone the conference for further
instructions).
Lodging:
(a) Adult Ed bldg (same bldg as lectures, and with air-
conditioning:
45 Twin rooms (2 beds), @$37.50/prsn/night ($57.50 single) (90)
50 Queen rooms (1 dbl bed), @38.50/prsn/night (100)
(B) North Campus High Rise Residence (about 30 min walk; NO air-
conditioning):
40-60 Twin rooms (2 beds), @$17/prsn/night ($22. single) (80-120)
In the case of option (a), subtact 10% if paid in advance to the
Univ. of Maryland. Send the remittance and requests for any
further information to: Georges Rey, Philosophy, CSS 4360, UMCP
College Pk, MD 20742; ph: (301)-454-2851; email: rey@tove.umd.edu≠
∂20-Mar-90 1057 hoffman@csli.Stanford.EDU re: interview
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Date: Tue 20 Mar 90 10:58:54-PST
From: Reid Hoffman <HOFFMAN@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: interview
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <637959534.0.HOFFMAN@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <1DrW6o@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(242)+TOPSLIB(128)@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Great! Given that this week is finals week, is there sometime next week
which would be good for you?
reid
-------
∂20-Mar-90 1402 MPS Library books
Hi,
Our new runner xeroxed the items you wanted from the
Physics library, but, by accident, he lost them. Now
I need to have the titles from you again. He through
away the instructions after he did the job. We are
both sorry about that. Do you remember the titles?
Thanks. Pat
∂20-Mar-90 1528 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Library books
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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 90 15:27:29 -0800
From: mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Pat Simmons)
Message-Id: <9003202327.AA14362@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 20 Mar 90 1428 PST <lrxym@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Library books
would you like me to get the list from him. i would be glad to.
∂20-Mar-90 1601 ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU your presentation at this year's IAP meeting
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu, kay.pa@xerox.com, sells@russell.Stanford.EDU,
etch@russell.Stanford.EDU, winograd@russell.Stanford.EDU,
poser@russell.Stanford.EDU, peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Cc: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU, debra@russell.Stanford.EDU
Subject: your presentation at this year's IAP meeting
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 90 16:04:05 PST
From: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU
Below is the tentative agenda for the IAP Meeting scheduled for 10 and
11 April.
Would you please let me have a title for your presentation and a set
of your transparancies and/or handouts by Monday, 2 April.
Ingrid
-------
Industrial Affiliates Program
Corporate Advisory Board Meeting
10-11 April 1990
Tentative Agenda
Tuesday, 10 April
8:30 Coffee
9:00 Student interviews
12:00 Lunch
1:15 Welcoming remarks
1:30 John McCarthy
2:30 Break
3:00 Martin Kay
4:00 Peter Sells
4:30 John Etchemendy
6:30 Cocktails and dinner at the Buck Estate
Wednesday, 11 April
8:30 Coffee
9:00 Terry Winograd
10:00 William Poser
10:30 Stanley Peters
11:00 Break
11:15 Executive session
12:30 Lunch
2:00 Demos/other
∂20-Mar-90 1659 paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU term paper
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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 1990 17:00:01 PST
From: Eunok Paek <paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: term paper
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637981201.paek@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Some student gave me the term paper for the class. Do you want to
read it yourself? -Eunok
∂20-Mar-90 1803 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU IR
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: IR
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 90 18:05:48 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
I'm a member of C-ACIS and would like to see the committee
scrutinizing Information Resources closely. I believe you have views
on the subject, and would be interested to learn whatever you feel
like sharing.
Stanley
∂20-Mar-90 2131 eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu today's faculty meeting and vote
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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 1990 21:33:55 PST
From: Edward A. Feigenbaum <eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: today's faculty meeting and vote
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.637997635.eaf@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Dear John,
This is a short note regarding the faculty meeting that was
held today on the subject of selecting a Professor for
Teaching/ Associate Chairman for Education of the department.
The meeting was remarkable for the amazing closeness of the
votes among three people, reflecting the difficulty that led
the committee to be unable to recommend one candidate to the
faculty. In my view, it is therefore quite important for you
to get the CVs and the letters and make an informed decision
before you vote by e-mail. I'm not urging any particular
candidate on you (though I will summarize my own feelings
below), but rather urging that you spend 15-20 minutes with
the papers before voting. [I have never seen such a lack of
consensus among the faculty in 25 years here].
I went into the meeting with no position on who to choose. I
just wanted to see the papers and hear the discussion. I came
to the view that Peter from Stony Brook (currently a tenured
professor there) had outstanding credentials and track record;
and also seemed to be "low variance" in terms of the risk.
Stuart Reges seemed "high variance", i.e. sometimes brilliant
but erratic in work habits and dealing with the faculty.
Jim from DEC is currently a systems builder at a DEC lab, has
been away from teaching and universities for some time, and
poses a "risk of embarrassment" (or worse) because of his
inclination towards "activism" (he is Terry's chosen successor
as head of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility).
By a one-vote margin after several votes and one late
abstention that decided things, Jim gained the plurality
(not the majority).
Best wishes,
Ed
≠
∂21-Mar-90 1006 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: IR
In-Reply-To: Your message of 20 Mar 90 23:57:00 PST.
<8re3Y@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 10:08:36 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Sorry to fall prey to initialitis. It's the Committee on Academic
Computing and Information Systems, which reports to the Academic
Senate. This is the faculty committee which, in principle, keeps
watch to insure that academic needs are being properly served by the
university's official organs, such as Information Resources.
Stanley
∂21-Mar-90 1020 tkeenan@note.nsf.gov Old proposals
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To: jmc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
cc: tkeenan@NSF.GOV
bcc:
Subject: Old proposals
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 12:27:58 EST
From: "Thomas A. Keenan" <tkeenan@note.nsf.gov>
Message-ID: <9003211228.aa00127@Note.NSF.GOV>
Dear John:
I am writing you to acknowledge that there are two proposals in
your name that are rather dated and to try to explain what has or
has not happened and what I hope to do. First, the processing of
both proposals was delayed at the beginning because they had been
submitted for a one year duration and with one year budgets.
There have been other delays and foulups. Proposal 8917606,
titled "Systems of Variable Type ..." was originally assigned to
another program [Software Engineering] and reviewers were
selected by that program director. Later it was reassigned to my
program [Software Systems] where it languished until I discovered
that there was not sufficient review and the people who had been
selected as reviewers were not responding. Accordingly, I have
selected additional reviewers and have received permission to
extend the processing period to approximately May 1.
The second proposal, 8915663, titled "Axiomatizing Program
Equivalence ..." was assigned to my program from the beginning.
We have received three reviews which is usually sufficient for a
decision. In this case, one of the reviews was misplaced and was
discovered only recently. I have also received permission to
extend the processing period on this proposal to May 1, but I
hope to be examining the whole package, including budget, in
detail before that date.
Tom
∂21-Mar-90 1110 RPG re: Never again socialism
[In reply to message rcvd 19-Mar-90 16:38-PT.]
John, it's a little funny you think this, unless you mean ``pure socialism''.
One could argue that the freeing of Eastern Europe as we see it now is a
failed clever plan. Virtually all of Western Europe is socialist to
some degree - France is the most extreme, but the others are not far behind.
Gorbachev could have figured that now was a good time to try to move Western
Europe towards socialism by mixing up Europe (and moving Eastern Europe
towards capitalism). Of course, I think if this is what he was trying, it
probably isn't going quite the way he wanted.
In any event, a degree of socialism is alive and well in Europe still.
-rpg-
∂21-Mar-90 1314 phil@ub.d.umn.edu Book Information
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From: phil@ub.d.umn.edu (Philosophy Dept)
Message-Id: <9003212116.AA22527@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Book Information
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 15:16:22 CDT
Cc: phil@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
John,
Bill Rapaport likes the idea of asking Nelson to review
the books you suggested. Could you provide me with the
relevant bibliographical data to order them from their
publisher: full names, titles, dates, etc.? Then we'll
take it from there.
Incidentally, I was mistaken in thinking that Nelson has
a Ph.D. from Michigan. He does not hold a doctorate.
Jim
P.S. I hope you can send me copies of your old papers,
especially the mathematical theory of computation
stuff, but also related papers. In fact, I would
like to have copies of as many as are available.
∂21-Mar-90 1412 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU New Emacs feature on Go4
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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 14:11:25 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9003212211.AA20078@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU, me@sail.Stanford.EDU, clt@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: New Emacs feature on Go4
Several weeks ago, someone from Sweden posted modifications to make
8-bit extended ASCII characters appear as themselves instead of \234
etc. It turned out to be quite easy to modify this so that characters
0 to 31 appear as themselves instead of ↑@, ↑A, etc. If you use an X
font that has SAIL's special characters, they will then be displayed
appropriately.
This feature is controlled by the Emacs variable "ctl-arrow", which in
standard Emacs is t to use the "↑A" notation, nil to use "\001", for
characters not between 32 and 127. Now, any value other than t or nil
will make Emacs treat all characters as displayable. This variable is
local to each buffer, but you can make the change apply everywhere by
putting
(setq-default ctl-arrow 1)
in your .emacs file. Then, to test it, run:
emacs -fn 8x13sail &
to start Emacs, and type something like:
C-q C-a C-q C-b C-q C-c
(where "C-" means the CTRL key; C-q quotes the following character).
At the moment, 8x13sail is the only font with SAIL characters (aside
from 8x13sailbold, which is very ugly). But it shouldn't be hard to
add them to other fonts.
Although I don't know how to do it yet, it should be straightforward
to make easier ways to enter the special characters, e.g. using the
function keys on the keyboard.
∂21-Mar-90 1459 jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU Undergraduate Colloquium
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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 1990 15:01:03 PST
From: "H. Roy Jones" <jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Undergraduate Colloquium
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638060463.jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
John,
Can I talk you into coming to the undergrad colloquium again this spring? It
meets Thursdays from 3:30 - 5:05 and right now all Thursdays from 4/12-5/24
are open. I know you're busy, but this doesn't involve any preparation. You
just talk about how you've got where you are and what you think of the field
as a whole.
Thanks,
Roy
∂21-Mar-90 1537 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: IR
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Mar 90 11:18:00 PST.
<1xs9lu@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 15:40:02 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
No, you didn't give me your screed. Should I read it first, before we
meet?
Stanley
∂21-Mar-90 1557 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Mar 90 15:56:00 PST.
<hst0w@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 16:00:08 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
Thanks. I'll read it.
∂21-Mar-90 1941 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu wrong reference
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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 1990 19:44:10 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: wrong reference
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638077450.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I am afraid I gave you the wrong reference to Quine's Natural Kinds.
It appears in the book Ontological Relativity in the essay Natural Kinds
(I think I told you that it appears in the essay Epistemology Naturalized).
Guha
∂22-Mar-90 0008 gjohn@Neon.Stanford.EDU vtss paper
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 1990 0:08:38 PST
From: "George H. John" <gjohn@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: vtss paper
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638093318.gjohn@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Professor McCarthy,
Here's the paper I wrote in the hope of getting an A in your
VTSS 160 class. I'll bring the hard copy by your office around noon
or 1pm Thurs. I didn't know exactly when on Thursday you wanted it,
so I thought I'd mail it to you.
VTSS 160
George John
Final Paper
Viewpoints, Propaganda, and Information
In this essay I will compare the strategies used by three
different organizations to instruct (or, in the case of two of them,
to indoctrinate) the readers on the topic of the environment. The
first organization is the American Medical Association. The article
of interest in the JAMA is "Medical Perspectives on Nuclear Power."
Another organization is Earth Day 1990, represented by three "Fact
Sheet"'s on energy, automobiles, and plastics. Finally, there is the
anti-environmentalist organization Consumer Alert, represented by the
Consumer Comments newsletter.
The article "Medical Perspective on Nuclear Power" is unique
among the three in that it presents detailed facts and statistics in
an effort to give the reader an understanding of how nuclear reactors
work. All facts are presented before arguments against or in favor of
reactors are made. The conclusion is methodically derived from the
givens (statistics, conclusions of other research, and information
from other scientific journals). This is a distinguishing
characteristic of this article: rather then stating an assertion and
then attempting to prove it (often merely by other assertions in the
other articles), it uses the facts to come to a conclusion.
The structure of the article is what is expected from a
scientific journal. At the beginning, the article poses a series of
(non-leading) questions, designed to interest the reader and to
encourage him to read further. Then there is a description of the
current state of nuclear power in the US. Note that each significant
statement is footnoted. The most distinguishing feature of this
article is that it actually has a list of references. We can thus be
certain that the article is more than simply one person or council's
view -- the facts presented have been researched from a wide variety
of respectable journals and research papers.
Next, the article actually tries to explain how nuclear
reactors work. Rather than simply saying "The US reactors are much
safer than those in the Soviet Union. There is no cause for concern
regarding their safety," it describes (in what I think is as much
detail as you can expect for an audience of non-physicists) the way US
reactors work and the way the Chernobyl reactor worked. The article's
first goal is to educate the reader. Only after this is done does it
conclude "Thus, a Chernobyl-type event cannot occur at a US nuclear
power plant."
The article next addresses the concerns about nuclear fuel and
"normal" nuclear power plant operations. Basically, the article
admits that there have been problems with shipment of radioactive
materials, but these should be eradicated by new legislation.
Further, designing storage vessels within NRC regulations is not a
problem. The greatest risks during normal operation are to plant
workers, but the amounts of radiation they are exposed to are also
within NRC limits. NRC limits exposure to the surrounding population
to .05mSv/y, a small fraction of the 3mSv/y average background
radiation. In 1983, the average dose to persons living within 80km of
a reactor was 4x10-5mSv.
Of course, the thing that has everyone worried is the
possibility of a disaster at a nuclear plant. The article simply
gives some worst-case scenarios, and attempts again to educate and to
dispel myths surrounding nuclear disasters. The serious concern about
nuclear reactors is the possibility of melting of fuel in the reactor.
This could possibly lead to chemically active fission products
escaping from the containment vessel. The article gives some
statistics about the chances for a meltdown (1 in 20,000 per year per
reactor) and chances for release of life-threatening levels of
radiation in the event of a meltdown (1%). (Statistics are from an
NRC report.) From these statistics, the article states that the
chances of a life-threatening meltdown in the US in a ten-year period
is 1 in 2000.
The article actually discusses measures that can be taken in
the event of a disaster, which indicates the open-mindedness of the
article. If this were pro-nuclear propaganda, the author would haveλ
probably chosen to not include descriptions of possible disasters.
But here we find the possible disasters and the best responses to
them. Basically, the public needs to be educated about what to do in
the event of a radiation leak. A serious accident at a nuclear power
plant is survivable. Even at Chernobyl, no citizen had radiation
sickness. In a worst case scenario, around 40,000 deaths from cancer
during the next several decades would be expected. In a large urban
area, this might only increase the overall cancer rate by 2%, which
would be almost unmeasurable.
"Generating electricity by any means entails some risk." This
is the most sensible statement in any of the articles. In order to
evaluate one option for generation of electricity, we must also look
at the other options. According to several studies, nuclear power is
substantially safer than coal plants. The coal fuel cycle is
estimated to cause 279 illnesses and 18.1 deaths per gigawatt-year,
while the nuclear fuel cycle is estimated to cause 17.3 illnesses and
1 death per gigawatt-year.
"To function optimally, members of a democratic society should
have a reasonable understanding of scientific principles and concepts,
which will help them make decisions about major issues such as nuclear
power, chemicals in drinking water, hazardous wastes, pesticides, and
food additives." This is the second most sensible statement is any of
the articles. When the other articles refer to the need for education
they basically mean teaching their viewpoint, while this article
rightly says that American people need to understand the scientific
principles on which these major issues are based in order to make
informed decisions about them.
Finally, the Council on Scientific Affairs makes its
recommendations, which are supported by the text. Basically, it says
that the US needs electricity from some source, and nuclear power is
safe. Conservation is also important. Physicians should "help
improve public understanding of the benefits as well as the risks of
nuclear power." Again, this article is for education, not
indoctrination, and this last statement is proof. The people need to
know the risks as well as the benefits in order to make an informed
decision.
Earth Day 1990 is an organization with an agenda: to build as
much political support as possible for environmentalism (and possibly
thereby putting more pressure on corporations, who will donate more
money to environmental groups?...). This is evident from its "Fact
Sheets." Three are discussed here: "Energy & Environment,"
"Plastics," and "The Automobile."
"Energy & Environment" tries to convince the reader that the
US should really forget about coal and nuclear energy and instead use
solar, wind, and geothermal power. "Acid rain, global warming, oil
spills and nuclear waste are all directly related to the way each one
of us uses energy." Two things are obvious from this sentence: 1)the
article is linking these environmental maladies to "energy use"
without discussion or proof, and 2)the article is out to make converts
out of "each one of us." The article goes on to assert that burning
fossil fuels create "greenhouse" gases, which cause acid rain and
global warming, which will lead to droughts, flooding, mass
extinctions, etc... None of this is proven! There are no references!
There is no explanation of what the greenhouse effect is, how it might
be linked to coal burning, or why it might cause mass extinctions!
"In the process of producing energy, nuclear power creates plutonium
and other radioactive wastes that remain dangerous for tens of
thousands of years!" So what !? If they're properly contained, it
doesn't make any difference!
The article goes on to extoll the virtues of solar energy
(kind of ironic that solar panels are made of plastic and toxic
materials...), wind energy, and geothermal energy. It claims that the
wind turbines in California produce 2 billion kwatt-hrs of energy per
year. This converts to 228 megawatts. Assuming that there are 50,000
wind turbines (how much does a wind turbine cost, anyway?), this
averages to 4.5 kilowatts per turbine. Given that at any moment,
about 5% of them seem to be moving, this figure seems high.
"Plastics" basically addresses the problems of increasing
amounts of trash due to plastic, disposable materials. A paragraph is
included for bird and fish lovers: "100,000 marine mammals are
strangled to death each year after becoming entangled in plastic
waste. Over one million sea birds die annually after mistaking
poisonous plastic resin pellets for fish eggs." I just don't see how
a million birds could die from eating plastic. That comes to two
birds dying from eating plastic EVERY MINUTE. The front of this
leaflet is graced with a picture of a poor dead fish, caught in the
plastic from a six-pack of soda. I fail to see how fish can
effortlessly swim through dense seaweed and die in a little plastic
ring. This is merely propaganda to include the animal lovers in the
cause. Further, it claims that plastic production emits harmful gases
and creates hazardous waste, and styrofoam production depletes the
ozone layer. The true solution is to use materials that can be reused
or recycled. This makes sense, and I would have been happy to read an
article about why plastics won't decompose, some studies of waste
disposal options, and recycling as one of those options. However,
this article presents only one option, and only one opinion.
"The Automobile" doesn't deserve much discussion. It merely
states that cars produce pollution and we shouldn't use them. I
consider this to be something of a moot point since by most
predictions the petroleum supply should dwindle sharply in about half
a century. The article states that about 5 tons of CO2 per year are
produced by cars. I converted this to 11,000 cubic meters. That
seems like a lot to me. Anyway, this is the third in a row of "scare
them into doing anything we tell them to do" propaganda. The
recommendations are, of course, to walk or use a bicycle whenever
possible, etc.
The remaining newsletter, "Consumer Comments," is
anti-environmentalist propaganda. Again there is the pattern found in
the "Fact Sheet"'s: scare the reader into believing what the
newsletter is saying. Appeal to emotions, not to reason. The article
(entitled, "??????????") begins, "What do you do when you know that
society is being defrauded? How do you save society from paying
billions of dollars for non-existent environmental threats?" The goal
is immediately obvious, to organize the people against "the enemy:"
the environmentalists, whλλλλλλλλo harm the US economy by
imposing strict regulations on companies, and by taking large sums of
money from these organizations. The article states that there really
are no environmental threats, and the people must organize to defeat
the environmentalists.
Of course, if the article is to compel anyone to join the
ranks of the anti-environmentalists, it must provide some reasons to
doubt the claims of the environmentalists. One might expect to find
some scientific data, refuting the claims of the environmentalists and
proving once and for all that it just doesn't matter how much
pollution gets sent into the air -- the global ecosystem can remain in
a stable equilibrium. Instead there are just more assertions without
any supporting data. It is presented as fact that "acid rain is a
phenomenon of nature," "asbestos isn't a danger," "pesticides...save
lives," "DDT didn't need to be banned," and no one dies from
pollution.
The final paragraph of the article is strangely reminiscent of
Karl Marx: "We must be bold. We must build activist coalitions. . .
We must capture the press. We must raise sufficient finances to
accomplish our objectives. We must begin today."
Anti-environmentalists of the world, unite! Hey, hey, ho, ho,
environmentalism has got to go! If the Consumer Alert organization
seriously expects intelligent people to back its agenda, it might
start by offering arguments and evidence for its claims, rather then
emotionally rousing speeches.
Other articles found in the newsletter cover environmentalist
activities, government misuse of funds, poverty, and personal finance.
One article, "CEI and CA File Comments on CAFE Standards," asserts
that big, gas-guzzler cars are safer than smaller, more fuel-efficient
cars, and therefore the environmentalist groups are pushing reforms at
the expense of human safety. Another article, "Nuclear Free Zones,"
points out that anti-nuclear agreements hurt local economy and
employment. "Globescope Meets in Los Angeles" lists the funders of
several environmental groups. The point is basically that the
environmentalists are out to take the people's money. Finally, "Alar
Aftermath" discusses the ill effects of the ban on alar (i.e., loss of
firmness, worms, etc.). Basically, all of the articles are written
for the devout anti-environmentalist. I don't think any neutral
person would be convinced (or even impressed) with the newsletter.
In conclusion, these three different perspectives on
environmentalist issues exhibit markedly different tactics of
convincing the reader. On the scientific paper side, we have the JAMA
article. The article merely presents conclusions derived from given
data and statistics, and tries to dispel the myths and present both
sides of the issue. Oh the heavy propaganda side, we have Consumer
Alert, which is only interested in criticizing the environmentalists
and showing the anti-environmentalist side of the argument. And
finally, there is Earth Day 1990, which lacks the substance of the
JAMA article and the ideology of the Consumer Alert article. In many
cases it says virtually nothing and offers some common-sense advice.
In other cases it is also propaganda, and makes statements about the
harm plastics and energy production cause the environment, without
backing them up with any real data. While each of the organizations
proposes to educate the reader, only the JAMA article is truly
interested in this -- the others are only interested in
indoctrination.
∂22-Mar-90 0017 kao@cdrsun.Stanford.EDU your recent message on su-etc
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 00:19:26 PST
From: kao@cdrsun.Stanford.EDU (Imin Kao)
Message-Id: <9003220819.AA14722@cdrsun.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: kao@cdrsun.Stanford.EDU
Subject: your recent message on su-etc
I am actually amazed by your level of understanding about the
China/Taiwan matter. I am also disappointed by the lukewarm
news/press coverage in the US. Well, I guess it is always like that
after all. Taiwan is a small country and perhaps draws less
attention. On the other hands, when this happened in China it was a
totally different story...
However, I'd like to comment on the following two items you posted:
> 3. About 1947 there was a Taiwan revolt against the Nationalists which was
> suppressed. I think its goal was independence; anyway it wasn't a communist
> revolt.
This is so-called "228 events" which happened on Feb 28. The older
generations know it better than the new generations simply because
there's NO information about it, at least not in the public. We heard
the stories from our parents and grandparents. (Yes, quite a few
unbelivable stories which makes me think that the massacre in China is
not surprising. Something that I pondered -- why did it happen?)
> 6. The Nationalists also held Quemoy and Matsu, small islands
> near the coast of the mainland. The Communists attacked but were
> unable to capture them, and the Nationalists still have them.
I think when you said "Quemoy" you meant "Jin-Meng", at least this is
the term we use in Taiwan. I was in that far-off island during my
days in the army to fulfill the mandatory army service. The
Communists tried to attack Jin-Meng but failed. I don't think they
had tried to attack Matsu.
Imin
∂22-Mar-90 0018 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Puzzle
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 00:17:25 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003220817.AA22153@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Puzzle
You claimed that there was a straightforward way to get the
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-13-10-14 ordering by modifying the manhattan
distance "better" heuristic. I thought I understood your suggestion,
but my understanding was clearly wrong. Can you repeat what you said?
Ramin
∂22-Mar-90 0035 harnad@clarity.Princeton.EDU Call for Squibs: PSYCOLOQUY & sci.psychology.digest
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From: harnad@clarity.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
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To: Vision-List-Request@ADS.COM, brain-database@athena.mit.edu,
jcha@csugreen.BITNET
(James Ha), live-eye@yorkvm1.BITNET,
neuron-request@hplabs.hp.com
Subject: Call for Squibs: PSYCOLOQUY & sci.psychology.digest
CALL FOR SQUIBS for PSYCOLOQUY/sci.psychology.digest
[Apologies if you see this more than once; it's being sent to
several lists on a one-time basis, and your name may be on more than
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PSYCOLOQUY (Bitnet) now has a moderated Usenet twin, sci.psychology.digest.
To sign on to PSYCOLOQUY,
send the following 1-line message to listserv@tcsvm.bitnet:
sub psych Firstname Lastname
(substituting your name, of course). Postings are then to:
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To get the Usenet version you must me at a site that receives
Usenet. Type rn and follow the menu directions, adding
sci.psychology.digest (and any other groups you want) at the prompt.
We now enter the second, experimental phase in exploring the vast
potential of this new medium for scholarly communication, under the
sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (see forthcoming
articles in the APA Monitor and Science Agenda).
PSYCOLOQUY/sci.psychology.digest is now calling for "squibs" -- brief
postings of new ideas or findings in any area related to psychology,
cognitive science or neuroscience on which you wish to invite peer
discussion. Note the "peer." All contributions must be serious and
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specializing in its subject matter. (Nominations for the board are also
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Each squib should have a clear, self-explanatory title plus a few
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Use this medium to "pilot" new ideas and findings with your peers the
world over. You will find that the potential speed and interactiveness of
"scholarly skywriting" matches much more closely the natural speed and
interactiveness of human thought than the slow turnaround times of
conventional publication. Its scope is also global and interdisciplinary
to a degree that has never before been possible. And yet, unlike "live" oral
symposia, it has the constraints of the written medium (and peer
review); so there is still a premium on reflection and answerability.
The objective is eventually to draw the best minds in the field into
active participation in this medium, even those who still find
computers too unfriendly, by demonstrating its revolutionary potential
in the evolution of ideas.
Postings will be classified by subject matter, with informative
subject headers that make it easy to browse or skip. (Your format
suggestions are welcome.) Conventional bboard material -- abstracts,
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-- will continue to appear but will not be archived. The only form of
contribution that will be archived electronically (and available by
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professional commentary, in the style of BBS's Open Peer Commentary.
Ongoing discussions will have their own separate postings, with
a recognizable identifying header, for those who wish to follow
only them. (If an especially useful discussion archive on a particular
topic evolves, I may publish it, with the contributors' permission, in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences.) At first each archived files will be
identified only by its subject header and posting date, but
eventually a more formal citation format will be adopted
(suggestions are again welcome).
The ideal length for a squib is not much more than a screenful, but
longer gems will not be rejected because of length alone. If length
gets out of hand, however, only the author's summaries of long
contributions will actually be posted, while the full file will
be available by anonymous ftp to those who are following the
discussion.
Co-Editors:
(scientific discussion) (professional/clinical discussion)
Stevan Harnad Perry London
Psychology Department Dean, Graduate School of
Princeton University Applied and Professional Psychology
Rutgers University
∂22-Mar-90 0506 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com CompuServe Link to MHS
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 08:01 EST
From: JC <"JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com>
To: MCCARTHY <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: CompuServe Link to MHS
Message-Id: <54900322130145/0003921119NB1EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 22-Mar-90 7:51 EST
As you already may know, last night CompuServe announced an agreement with
ATI to offer connections to MHS, the internetwork protocol for most lans.
Given the enormity of CompuServe, this has significant impact for the future
of Email, as it will make it extremely attractive for lans to connect "to
the world" rather than just to privately owned hubs. I would welcome your
thoughts on this and its impact, either here or in the Novell/MHS forum on
CompuServe
∂22-Mar-90 0800 JMC
material to Cate, phone Cate first
∂22-Mar-90 0835 MPS Sato
Hi,
Who is sato.re1 going to? Thanks
∂22-Mar-90 1100 JMC
369-2131 re tide
∂22-Mar-90 1356 jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Undergraduate Colloquium
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 1990 13:57:32 PST
From: "H. Roy Jones" <jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Undergraduate Colloquium
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Mar 90 1546 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638143052.jones@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
John,
I've got you down for 3:30-5:05 on 4/12. I'll send you a reminder with
location information a week or so in advance.
Thanks,
Roy
∂22-Mar-90 1434 Mailer re: Taiwan imitation of China protest
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 1990 14:08:46 PST
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: re: Taiwan imitation of China protest
To: John McCarthy <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Cc: su-etc@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <1rsu6m@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.638143726.1575.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
A couple of other relevant details:
1. Both China and Taiwan possess nuclear arms, although Taiwan has not as
yet exploded any nuclear devices. Taiwan acquired the inertial guidance
technology for nuclear missiles in the mid-70's and must have had an
operational facilty by the early 80's. My suspicion is that the US switch of
diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC was timed to coincide with
Taiwan's nuclear defences coming into operation.
In any case, it would be suicide for China to attack Taiwan. Remember
that Taiwan does not have to *win* a China/Taiwan war; it only has to ensure
that China loses. Under these circumstances Taiwan could only be defeated at
the cost of the annihilation of Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, etc...
2. The Taiwan Independence movement was and remains heavily influenced by
Taiwanese who remember the period of Japanese occupation fondly. I do not
believe there is a serious effort to re-annex into Japan; however the TI
movement clearly wants to clone Japan.
Although the KMT has long ago given up any hope of regaining control of
the mainland, it has never deviated from this position. There is a cognizant
reason for this; KMT control of Taiwan is premised on the dual points of
Taiwan being part of China and the KMT government being the legitimate
government of China.
What I hope will happen and what I think will happen are two different
things. What I think will happen is that the Communist government in Peking
will collapse and China will deteriorate into civil war. Mongolia, Tibet,
Taiwan, and possibly Hong Kong will use the opportunity to attempt secession.
At some point some warlord will gain control. He won't keep it.
-------
∂22-Mar-90 1436 trip@russell.Stanford.EDU CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
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Date: Thu 22 Mar 90 14:38:40-PST
From: Trip Mccrossin <TRIP@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
To: appelt@ai.sri.com, herb@psych.stanford.edu, greeno.pa@xerox.com,
konolige@ai.sri.com, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, meseguer@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU,
jcm@cs.stanford.edu, bmoore@ai.sri.com, julius@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU,
nilsson@score.stanford.edu, der@psych.stanford.edu,
shoham@score.stanford.edu
Cc: trip@CSLI.Stanford.EDU, ingrid@CSLI.Stanford.EDU
Message-Id: <638145520.0.TRIP@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(242)+TOPSLIB(128)@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
I am currently updating the `CSLI Researchers' Picture Board in
Ventura Hall. To this effect, I would like to take your picture
sometime in the next week or so. We would like to have the board fully
updated before the end of the month, in time for our upcoming NSF Site
Visit.
I can come by your office if that is most convenient for you.
Alternatively, if you expect to be at CSLI sometime in the near
future, I could do it then. Please let me know which alternative is
most convenient for you, and accordingly what times are most
convenient.
Thank you in advancee for your assistence.
Trip McCrossin.
(Cordura 113/Ventura 20)
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∂22-Mar-90 1503 ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU Thanks
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 14:27 EST
From: <ATM%IUBACS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Thanks
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
X-Original-To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Hi John,
Thanks so much for sending me the proceedings of the Logic and Knowledge
Representation conference in Asilomar. Did you find any of the talks
particulalry interesting?
You were right in warning me that a few more tense moments might arise
regarding Zeno's future here at IU. The department still has not decided,
for reasons they have kept from us. They will meet again tomorrow.
Next year, when we know where we'll be, we should make a plan to get
Timothy and Timen together again. Thanks for your hospitality and talks,
I feel almost like coming home when staying with you!!
So long,
Alice
PS still working on the BBS Commentary on Searle, and probably will use
the Bellow quote you gave me.
∂22-Mar-90 1620 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU Taiwan and the PRC
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Date: Thu 22 Mar 90 16:19:44-PST
From: D. J. <U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Taiwan and the PRC
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-ID: <12575837705.41.U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Don't post this. But......
I feel that Taiwan should be free from China--permanently.
IMHO, it is pure fiction to think that Taiwan is anything other
than an independent country.
What should the US (and Japan) do if Taiwan declares independence
and rids itself of the buffoons in the Taiwanese parliament?
Well, the US (and Japan) still maintain economic ties with
the PRC. Perhaps, the US and Japan and "buy" Taiwan's freedom.
I don't mean outright cash but do mean especially lucrative
deals for the Chinese, designed so that the cash will be
tied to the purchase of American (or Japanese) equipment.
The Chinese gain something. We, the Americans, don't lose much, but
Taiwan gets to be free without reprisal from the PRC, which
has been sufficiently bribed.
But if the PRC doesn't go for it, I don't think that we
will defend Taiwan (nor should we). The cost in _American_
lives is just too high. I generally agree with Weinberger's
set of conditions for military engagement. They include
but are not limited to (1) the engagement must be winnable
(2) there must be minimal loss of life.
Oh well...This is my ramblings on this matter.
---Dwight
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∂22-Mar-90 2204 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU Re: defending Taiwan
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Date: Thu 22 Mar 90 22:02:58-PST
From: D. J. <U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: defending Taiwan
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <HsbTp@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12575900189.39.U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
My memory doesn't go back that far, but I thought that back then
the Chinese didn't have a nuclear force. Granted that the PRC
is still considered a 3rd world nation, it does have nuclear weapons
now. That arsenal is apparently big enough to convince the
USSR to aim 1/3 of its ICBM's at the PRC.
So, it seems to me that we would be playing the same kind
of brinkmanship that we played with the Soviets during the
Cuban missile crisis if we were to intervene in a Chinese
invasion of Taiwan. Some of the American experts at that
time were fearful that the crisis could escalate into a
nuclear exchange between the USSR and the USA. How can
you be sure that any conflict between the USA and the PRC
won't escalate into a nuclear exchange?
If the PRC were non-nuclear, then your proposition would
probably work with minimal risk for us, but the PRC has
a nuclear force now.
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∂23-Mar-90 0951 sreerang@portia.stanford.edu term paper
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Date: Fri, 23 Mar 90 09:52:00 PDT
From: Sreeranga Rajan <sreerang@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9003231752.AA20306@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: term paper
Cc: sreerang@portia.stanford.edu
In my term paper I had started out with defining the elements of a language
for design.I was interested in talking to you whether that was a right start
to develop it further, or was I quite not there.
Regards,
-- Sree
∂23-Mar-90 1025 MPS
I have a meeting today and will have to leave around 4:15.
I hope this is okay with you. Thanks Pat
∂23-Mar-90 1032 sag@russell.Stanford.EDU NSF Proposal
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Date: Fri, 23 Mar 1990 10:35:13 PST
From: Ivan A. Sag <sag@russell.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: NSF Proposal
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638217313.sag@russell.stanford.edu>
John,
Sorry, I meant to get this to you sooner. I'd value very much any reactions
or suggestions you might have. This is a summary meant for deans, rather
than for you, but I think you'll get the idea. I'm also enclosing an
agenda for the site visit.
I would be very interested in exploring connections to research you
and your colleagues are doing.
Regards,
Ivan
Center for Research on Interpretive Symbolic Processes (CRISP)
-- to be housed within the CSLI Laboratory --
Proposal Submitted: to NSF's Science and
Technology Research Centers Program: August, 1989
Requested Amount: $6,924,393
Proposed Duration: 9/1/90 - 8/31/95 (60 months)
Current Status: Competing with 29 other proposals
(across all fields of science) for 12-14 awards
SITE VISIT FROM NSF: TO TAKE PLACE ON APRIL 2, 1990
Principal Investigators:
Ivan A. Sag (Linguistics) - Director
Herbert Clark (Psychology)
Jerry Hobbs (SRI International)
Martin Kay (Linguistics and Xerox PARC)
David Rumelhart (Psychology)
Affiliated Stanford-External Organizations:
Xerox PARC
SRI International
Hewlett Packard
Boeing
University of Rochester
The Research Problem: To understand how diverse types of information
are integrated in communicative processes; to develop solutions to
what we call the ``Resolution Problem''.
Communication is vastly underdetermined by language. Human languages,
for example, contain many ambiguous words (e.g. cut, fair, can) and
constructions (e.g. visiting relatives, I saw the man with the
telescope); a vast array of devices for accessing salient contextual
information directly (e.g. pronouns, ellipses); and numerous devices
that make reference to ``hidden'' contextual parameters (e.g. Canseco
is good and That cake is good appeal to quite different standards of
``goodness'' that must be contextually supplied before interpretation
is possible.)
The value of these design features is that they make communication
efficient. The mystery they pose is how language users are able to
communicate accurately, if at all. The problem of understanding
language appears quite like the problem of solving an equation in n
variables, except that a vast knowledge of the world, the context, and
the ongoing discourse is called into play and manipulated with
astonishing efficiency as interpretation is resolved in real-time
communication.
Some examples:
Encyclopedic knowledge affects syntactic disambiguation:
She found the book on the computer is potentially ambiguous.
She found the book on the atom is not.
Plausiblity of particular scenarios affects pronoun resolution:
The council refused the demonstrators a permit because
they feared violence. [they = the council]
The council refused the demonstrators a permit because
they advocated violence. [they = the demonstrators]
Contextual information biases lexical disambiguation:
The entire store was in disarray. The pencils were unsharpened.
The pens were empty. [`writing implement' sense of pen]
The entire ranch was in disarray. The barns were unpainted.
The pens were empty. [`fenced enclosure' sense of pen]
In short, communication relies crucially on the ability of language
users to resolve linguistic indeterminacy by appeal to
extra-linguistic knowledge of diverse kinds. At present, we have only
the beginnings of a scientific theory of how this resolution takes
place.
Rationale: The background against which we will address these issues
consists in part of:
A rich, well developed, computationally tractable conception of the
nature of language and the information it is used to convey -- the
fruits of 6 years of research in CSLI's Situated Language Project.
Two well-developed architectures for resolving informational
uncertainty: connectionist models (Rumelhart) and abductive models
(Hobbs).
A set of known experimental results about the kinds of
information humans do and don't make use of in real-time language
processing (Clark, Tanenhaus (U. of Rochester)).
We feel we are in a unique position to integrate research from
Linguistics, Cognitive Psychology and Computer Science in an effort to
develop a coherent, integrated, cross-disciplinary theory of the
Resolution Problem, given the resources we are requesting.
Goals: The goals we set for ourselves are three-fold:
To develop a deeper understanding of the nature of resolution --
basic scientific hypotheses about resolution-relevant information
and resolution processeses.
In service of (1), to develop new on-line measures for testing
experimentally detailed hypotheses about resolution in real-time
language processing.
In service of (1), to develop working computational models that
integrate connectionist, abductive and symbolic processing methods.
Applications: There are a variety of applications of our research that
we also intend to investigate, in part in collaboration with our
industrial and other affiliates:
Improved natural language computer technology that allows
domain-portable, flexible interfaces to devices of all sorts.
[Hobbs, Kay, and Sag have already begun research in this area]
Experimental machine translation systems with resolution
capabilities.
Improved interfaces of a novel character to a variety of
computer systems. We believe that the Resolution Problem is the chief
obstacle to convenient, flexible, and universally available
communication with computers. [Sag has already developed a prototype
of an interface to the UNIX operating system that embodies a
type-sensitive completion mechanism based on a conception of pronoun
resolution mechanisms in human language.]
The design of more effective, more efficient, error-free
sublanguage protocols for increased safety in airplane - control tower
conversations. [Clark and Morrow, with a grant from NASA, are already
analyzing these for their problems]
Improved methods for eliminating biases and misinterpretations
in survey interviews. [Clark and Schober have already begun work in
this area.]
NSF-CRISP SITE VISIT
Center for the Study of Language & Information
Cordura Hall, Stanford University
April 2 and 3, 1990
Monday, April 2
8:10 - 8:30 CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST - Cordura Lobby
8:30 - 10:30 RESEARCH PLANS AND RATIONALE FOR THE CENTER
Ivan Sag (Linguistics, Stanford)
Jerry Hobbs (SRI International)
David Rumelhart (Psychology, Stanford)
Michael Tanenhaus (Psychology, U. of Rochester)
Martha Pollack (SRI International)
Herbert Clark (Psychology, Stanford)
10:30-10:45 BREAK - Cordura Lobby
10:45-11:00 MANAGEMENT PLAN
Ivan Sag
Stanley Peters (Director: CSLI Laboratory, Stanford)
11:00-11:30 BUDGET EXPLANATION AND JUSTIFICATION
Ivan Sag
11:30 - 12:30 EXECUTIVE SESSION
NSF Site Team
12:30 - 1:30 LUNCH - Cordura Lobby
1:30 - 2:15 KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
Martin Kay (Stanford and Xerox PARC)
John Seely Brown (Vice-President, Advanced Research,
Xerox PARC)
Miro Benda (Manager: Advanced Information Systems,
Boeing Advanced Technology Center)
Robert W. Ritchie (Director: University Affairs,
Hewlett Packard Company)
2:15 - 3:00 EDUCATION AND OUTREACH
Donald Kennedy (President, Stanford)
Elizabeth Traugott (Vice Provost
and Dean of Graduate Studies, Stanford)
Thomas Wasow (Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Stanford)
James Greeno (Director: Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford)
3:00 - 3:15 BREAK - Cordura Lobby
3:15 - 4:15 DEMO/POSTER SESSION
4:15 - 5:15 INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
Stanley Peters
Robert Byer (Vice Provost and Dean of
Graduate Research, Stanford)
Ewart Thomas (Dean: School of Humanities
and Sciences, Stanford)
Nils Nilsson (Chair: Department of Computer Science, Stanford)
William Leben (Chair: Department of Linguistics, Stanford)
Herbert Clark (Chair: Department of Psychology, Stanford)
Ray Perrault (Director: AI Center, SRI International)
Geoffrey K. Pullum (Dean: Graduate Studies and Research,
UC Santa Cruz)
Paul Kay (Chair: Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley)
5:15 - 6:30 EXECUTIVE SESSION
NSF Site Team
7:00 - 9:00 INFORMAL DINNER - MacArthur Park Restaurant
Tuesday, April 3
8:30 - 12:30 Executive Session
NSF Site Team
10:15 - 10:45 James Rosse (Provost: Stanford)
∂23-Mar-90 1100 JMC
Marsland 403 492-3971
∂23-Mar-90 1204 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU visit
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Date: Fri, 23 Mar 90 12:17:57 pst
From: Richard E Korf <korf@CS.UCLA.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Subject: visit
John,
I know this is a long shot since its Spring Break, but I'm going to be free
in Palo Alto on Monday, and thought I'd check to see if you will be around and
would like to get together for a chat. I'll be in the office all day today, and
will be staying at Rickey's Hyatt House starting tonight (493-8000).
-rich
∂23-Mar-90 1256 korf@CS.UCLA.EDU Re: visit
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Date: Fri, 23 Mar 90 13:10:17 pst
From: Richard E Korf <korf@CS.UCLA.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 23 Mar 90 1208 PST <1vtpZ$@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: visit
John,
Great. I'll be at your office at 3 on Monday. I'm not flying up until late
tonight, and I'm at a workshop all day tomorrow and Sunday.
-rich
∂23-Mar-90 1341 trip@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
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Date: Fri 23 Mar 90 13:43:46-PST
From: Trip Mccrossin <TRIP@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: CSLI Researchers Picture Board / Ventura Hall
To: TRIP@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: appelt@ai.sri.com, herb@psych.stanford.edu, greeno.pa@xerox.com,
konolige@ai.sri.com, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, meseguer@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU,
jcm@cs.stanford.edu, bmoore@ai.sri.com, julius@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU,
nilsson@score.stanford.edu, der@psych.stanford.edu,
shoham@score.stanford.edu, ingrid@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Message-Id: <638228626.0.TRIP@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <638145520.0.TRIP@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(242)+TOPSLIB(128)@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
REMINDER:
I am currently updating the `CSLI Researchers' Picture Board in
Ventura Hall. I would like to take your picture to that effect
sometime in the next week. We would like to have the board updated
before the end of the month, in time for our upcoming NSF Site Visit.
I can come by your office if that is most convenient for you.
Alternatively, if you expect to be at CSLI sometime in the near
future, I could do it then. Please let me know which is most
convenient for you, and accordingly what times are most convenient.
Those of you who have already contacted me, thank you. THose of you
who have not, please note that it is of some importance that we
complete this before the Site Visit.
Thank you in advancee for your assistence.
Trip McCrossin.
(Cordura 113/Ventura 20)
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∂24-Mar-90 2155 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU Data
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Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 22:04 PST
From: Ramin Zabih <RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Data
To: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Message-ID: <19900325060437.1.RDZ@PRECARIOUS.Stanford.EDU>
Here's the data we've gotten so far. Each element is 5
datapoints and the board position. An element is
(search size, solution #/moves). The datapoints are:
row-or-column triplet equivalences, row-or-column
identity equivalence, row-only identity equivalence, no
equivalence row-or-column, and no equivalence row-only.
(((1565 150) (2373 146) (1633 172) (2768 146) (1853 172)
(4 2 6 7 11 :BLANK 3 8 10 15 12 1 9 13 14 5))
((1485 126) (2540 126) (2728 186) (2922 126) (3236 186)
(1 3 4 11 9 13 12 2 10 7 5 14 6 :BLANK 15 8))
((2000 136) (6842 204) (5354 286) (9356 204) (8651 286)
(6 11 8 5 9 1 4 12 13 2 14 15 7 3 10 :BLANK))
((1038 90) (2091 88) (759 90) (2636 88) (773 90)
(3 6 :BLANK 2 10 14 4 7 5 9 1 8 13 11 15 12))
((1887 160) (3372 160) (2715 192) (3959 160) (3142 192)
(3 10 11 4 1 12 9 :BLANK 15 2 7 14 5 6 8 13))
((1669 150) (3136 148) (2149 158) (3944 148) (3102 158)
(1 7 12 3 15 :BLANK 10 8 2 11 4 6 13 14 5 9))
((1322 114) (2172 108) (1538 116) (2638 108) (1849 116)
(9 2 3 4 6 10 15 11 5 14 1 8 7 :BLANK 12 13))
((1947 134) (3593 122) (3299 162) (4589 122) (5406 162)
(2 4 1 3 7 15 6 5 10 8 :BLANK 11 14 9 12 13))
((1753 122) (5125 164) (3449 222) (7095 164) (5690 222)
(5 1 11 6 8 4 12 3 10 14 13 2 7 :BLANK 15 9))
((1333 134) (1768 130) (1641 164) (1920 130) (1874 164)
(8 1 12 11 3 13 14 :BLANK 6 9 5 2 15 7 4 10))
((1924 118) (3853 126) (3011 160) (5090 126) (5059 160)
(2 5 7 10 9 12 4 3 :BLANK 1 11 15 6 8 14 13))
((2826 150) (5375 162) (3331 182) (7410 162) (6144 182)
(9 12 2 6 1 13 5 14 :BLANK 10 7 15 4 8 11 3))
((1427 152) (2203 152) (2549 222) (2508 152) (2949 222)
(13 14 15 11 5 7 3 :BLANK 6 2 10 12 1 8 4 9))
((541 54) (967 54) (796 58) (1084 54) (891 58) (5 1 7 4 3 :BLANK 11 10 13 2 9 8 14 15 6 12))
((1087 98) (2308 98) (1622 122) (2896 98) (1800 122)
(5 2 9 8 10 13 14 7 1 3 4 12 11 :BLANK 6 15))
((2566 146) (4283 160) (2789 196) (5541 160) (4036 196)
(2 6 :BLANK 15 5 3 12 8 9 4 7 11 1 14 13 10))
((1779 136) (4380 166) (3112 218) (5978 166) (4576 218)
(9 5 6 15 11 1 4 2 8 14 10 7 13 3 12 :BLANK))
((1948 122) (4330 138) (2435 120) (5669 138) (3703 120)
(12 3 :BLANK 13 9 10 5 4 11 2 8 7 1 6 14 15))
((1210 130) (1910 130) (1750 182) (2167 130) (2062 182)
(:BLANK 6 7 3 15 13 5 9 11 1 4 14 12 10 8 2))
((1127 114) (1856 114) (1497 132) (2083 114) (1614 132)
(6 15 2 7 13 :BLANK 11 8 3 10 4 12 1 5 9 14))
((1205 120) (2177 120) (1267 136) (2754 120) (1487 136)
(:BLANK 6 7 11 5 8 1 15 10 9 2 3 13 14 4 12))
((1390 128) (2374 128) (2831 188) (2823 128) (4101 188)
(1 8 5 10 7 9 3 14 12 11 :BLANK 2 6 13 4 15))
((2298 136) (3257 114) (3522 184) (4253 114) (5646 184)
(10 13 1 8 7 9 5 2 4 6 11 3 14 :BLANK 15 12))
((1372 140) (1969 140) (1365 162) (2246 140) (1393 162)
(5 6 10 2 1 11 7 9 13 15 12 4 14 8 3 :BLANK))
((1729 126) (5519 160) (2368 188) (7836 160) (3545 188)
(8 4 11 14 13 6 2 10 5 3 1 7 9 :BLANK 12 15))
((1656 126) (3708 144) (2823 198) (4884 144) (4093 198)
(1 11 2 8 15 :BLANK 14 12 10 6 13 3 5 4 9 7))
((1600 136) (2685 134) (1668 144) (3076 134) (1788 144)
(:BLANK 1 5 7 2 14 3 4 11 12 13 15 9 10 8 6))
((2097 150) (4584 162) (2854 216) (6208 162) (4239 216)
(:BLANK 15 8 12 2 7 14 9 1 11 3 6 5 13 4 10))
((691 78) (1207 78) (1007 80) (1325 78) (1104 80) (2 9 :BLANK 4 8 5 6 3 10 15 13 11 1 7 14 12)
)
((2060 158) (3712 168) (3611 216) (4702 168) (6423 216)
(13 7 :BLANK 8 9 1 2 14 6 15 12 11 3 4 5 10))
((2065 122) (3926 124) (2825 192) (5039 124) (4077 192)
(3 7 4 12 2 6 8 :BLANK 9 5 10 11 14 1 15 13))
((358 52) (407 52) (925 80) (483 52) (1011 80) (5 7 12 3 6 1 10 4 9 11 :BLANK 8 13 14 2 15))
((970 104) (1641 104) (1184 112) (1822 104) (1274 112)
(2 10 5 3 12 9 11 :BLANK 1 13 4 7 14 15 8 6))
((2461 142) (3631 132) (2239 180) (4956 132) (3396 180)
(1 11 2 8 15 14 3 :BLANK 4 9 12 6 13 10 5 7))
((1990 130) (3924 128) (2267 162) (5261 128) (3234 162)
(2 10 9 8 4 :BLANK 7 12 5 11 1 14 13 3 15 6))
((1842 138) (4587 154) (2464 138) (6283 154) (3709 138)
(12 1 11 6 9 10 5 :BLANK 14 13 4 3 8 2 15 7))
((2080 132) (1961 116) (2853 170) (2387 116) (4127 170)
(14 8 5 4 6 12 1 10 9 15 11 2 13 :BLANK 3 7))
((1303 112) (2191 108) (2297 150) (2660 108) (3469 150)
(:BLANK 2 12 4 13 6 5 10 14 15 1 3 9 7 11 8)))
∂24-Mar-90 2158 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU How to run the program
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Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 22:09 PST
From: Ramin Zabih <RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: How to run the program
To: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Message-ID: <19900325060936.2.RDZ@PRECARIOUS.Stanford.EDU>
The function (random-board) will get you a random puzzle
board. (showboard [board]) will print it out. To solve
a board, use
(test-board [board] [cache-strategy] [row-only?])
where
[board] is a puzzle board
[cache-strategy] is either nil, 'encode-board-identity
or 'encode-board-triplet
[row-only?] is t or nil.
So to get Throop's original strategy, you would say
(test-board [board] nil t)
while to get our latest strategy you would say
(test-board [board] 'encode-board-triplet nil).
See you tomorrow.
Ramin
∂25-Mar-90 0745 "JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #4 - 24 MARCH 1990
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25 Mar 90 10:41 EST
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 15:10 EST
From: JC <"JC_._POSTMAST_@_THPINYC_(JC)%THPINYC"@mcimail.com>
To: MCCARTHY <JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: EMAIL LEAGUE UPDATE #4 - 24 MARCH 1990
Message-Id: <33900324201033/0003921119NB4EM@mcimail.com>
MHS: Source date is: 24-Mar-90 14:58 EST
From John Coonrod, Email: jc%thpinyc@mcimail.com
tcn713@dialcom, 76660.16@compuserve.com
1. PROGRESS ON LINKAGES
Various members of the league reported advances in getting
systems to talk to one another this week.
The big news, of course, was the announcement of a CompuServe/MHS
link beginning in May. Also:
-- Dialcom/MCIMail X.400 link is scheduled to be up full time
in the 3rd quarter. Dialcom supports X.400 traffic, so
anyone else with an X.400 port can get a "system" account
with them.
-- Econet/Peacenet links via DasNet but not reliably through
Internet
-- AppleLink seems to be reachable 1 way from Internet, but not
back.
I've spoken to people at the latter two about the possibility of
a direct bridge to MCIMail or MHS.
2. MAIL FRIENDLINESS
There was general agreement on the value of a standard for "mail
friendliness" although a few people suggested that 1 hour was not
a reasonable delivery speed goal within the current
interconnects, and that 2 hours might be more like it. A new
thrust, though, is to rate nations on their e-mail friendliness.
This would be particularly valuable in expanding services in the
developing world.
The question NOW is, how can we best propagate these ideas?
Articles in journals? Messages to every BBS? Riots in the
streets? Please make some suggestions.
3. CONFERENCES
Lots of people liked the idea of using conferencing for the
league, but nobody could agree on where it should be. I will
continue to deliver updates directly, and I will post them (with
a little preface) on Cosy/StiDev and Compuserve/Novell/MHS.
4. MHS KLUDGE
I have written myself a little gateway to move messages to and
from my own MHS mailbox to various mail and conferencing systems
so that I can manage all my mail in one place. It's in Turbo
Pascal 3, if anyone wants to play with it, and I guess if I were
a truly cooperative human being I'd break down and buy C, as that
seems to be what people use these days. Let me know your wishes.
5. BACKMAIL
Alethic Software in Nova Scotia produces a program which almost
exactly fulfills McCarthy's "fax-like" email. BackMail is a
shareware program that sits in 35k of a PC and, in the
background, will dial other BackMail sites to deliver mail, and
answer the phone to receive mail. The author is investigating
various versions and bridges. Copies are available on many
bulletin boards and on CompuServe/IBMCOM and PCMagNet.
Looking forward to your next communications,
John Coonrod
∂25-Mar-90 1656 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Message from Ramin
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 90 16:55:33 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9003260055.AA11032@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Message from Ramin
Ramin says his errand is taking longer than expected, but he will be
in at around 7:00 this evening.
∂25-Mar-90 2140 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 90 21:39:10 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003260539.AA12239@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
I'm around (you seem to be idle). Give me a call
if you see this while I'm still logged into go4.
Ramin
∂25-Mar-90 2309 @IGNORANT.Stanford.EDU:RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU Here it is
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 90 23:19 PST
From: Ramin Zabih <RDZ@SCORE.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Here it is
To: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
Message-ID: <19900326071936.3.RDZ@PRECARIOUS.Stanford.EDU>
FYI, the particular example took 2065 nodes with the
triplet-equivalence algorithm and 4077 with Throop's
original code.
Random Board
3 7 4 12
2 6 8 :BLANK
9 5 10 11
14 1 15 13
Blank: 8 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 0
Acceptances: 0 Rejections: 0 Nodes Considered: 0 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 0 Achieve-Two-Rows: 0
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 0
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
3 7 4 12
2 5 6 8
9 1 10 11
14 :BLANK 15 13
Blank: 14 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 4
Acceptances: 1 Rejections: 11 Nodes Considered: 25 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 1 Achieve-Two-Rows: 0
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 11
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
3 7 4 12
2 5 6 8
:BLANK 1 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 9 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 6
Acceptances: 2 Rejections: 11 Nodes Considered: 32 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 1 Achieve-Two-Rows: 1
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 11
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
3 7 4 12
2 5 6 8
1 :BLANK 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 10 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 7
Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 11 Nodes Considered: 34 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 2 Achieve-Two-Rows: 1
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 11
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
3 7 4 12
1 2 6 8
:BLANK 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 9 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 10
Acceptances: 4 Rejections: 14 Nodes Considered: 52 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 3 Achieve-Two-Rows: 1
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 14
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
3 7 4 12
1 :BLANK 6 8
5 2 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 6 Completed Chain: 0 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 12
Acceptances: 5 Rejections: 14 Nodes Considered: 58 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 3 Achieve-Two-Rows: 2
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 14
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 0
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 3 4 12
:BLANK 7 6 8
5 2 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 5 Completed Chain: 1 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 15
Acceptances: 6 Rejections: 18 Nodes Considered: 70 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 4 Achieve-Two-Rows: 2
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 15
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 3
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 3 4 12
7 2 6 8
5 :BLANK 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 10 Completed Chain: 1 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 17
Acceptances: 7 Rejections: 18 Nodes Considered: 77 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 5 Achieve-Two-Rows: 2
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 15
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 3
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 3 4 12
:BLANK 2 6 8
7 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 5 Completed Chain: 1 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 19
Acceptances: 8 Rejections: 18 Nodes Considered: 85 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 5 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 15
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 3
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 2 :BLANK 12
6 3 4 8
7 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 3 Completed Chain: 2 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 30
Acceptances: 9 Rejections: 71 Nodes Considered: 228 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 6 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 32
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 39
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 2 4 12
6 :BLANK 3 8
7 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 6 Completed Chain: 2 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 32
Acceptances: 10 Rejections: 71 Nodes Considered: 235 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 7 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 32
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 39
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 2 3 12
:BLANK 4 6 8
7 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 5 Completed Chain: 3 Last-complete-row: 0 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 41
Acceptances: 11 Rejections: 133 Nodes Considered: 421 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 8 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 49
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 84
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 2 3 4
:BLANK 8 6 12
7 5 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 5 Completed Chain: 4 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 59
Acceptances: 12 Rejections: 457 Nodes Considered: 1076 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 9 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 247
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 0
Base Board
1 2 3 4
8 5 6 12
7 :BLANK 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 10 Completed Chain: 4 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 61
Acceptances: 13 Rejections: 459 Nodes Considered: 1082 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 10 Achieve-Two-Rows: 3
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 247
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 2
Base Board
1 2 3 4
:BLANK 5 6 12
8 7 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 5 Completed Chain: 4 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 63
Acceptances: 14 Rejections: 461 Nodes Considered: 1090 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 10 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 248
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 3
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 :BLANK 6 12
8 7 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 6 Completed Chain: 5 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 64
Acceptances: 15 Rejections: 462 Nodes Considered: 1092 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 11 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 248
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 4
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 :BLANK 12
8 7 10 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 7 Completed Chain: 6 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 65
Acceptances: 16 Rejections: 463 Nodes Considered: 1095 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 12 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 248
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 5
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 10 12
8 :BLANK 7 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 10 Completed Chain: 6 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 67
Acceptances: 17 Rejections: 466 Nodes Considered: 1105 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 13 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 210
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 248
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 8
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 12
:BLANK 10 8 11
9 14 15 13
Blank: 9 Completed Chain: 7 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 76
Acceptances: 18 Rejections: 574 Nodes Considered: 1337 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 14 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 227
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 293
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 54
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 11
:BLANK 10 12 8
9 14 15 13
Blank: 9 Completed Chain: 7 Last-complete-row: 1 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 86
Acceptances: 19 Rejections: 652 Nodes Considered: 1509 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 15 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 238
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 326
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 88
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
:BLANK 10 11 12
9 14 15 13
Blank: 9 Completed Chain: 8 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 96
Acceptances: 20 Rejections: 727 Nodes Considered: 1662 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 16 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 253
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 119
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
:BLANK 14 15 13
Blank: 13 Completed Chain: 12 Last-complete-row: 3 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 97
Acceptances: 21 Rejections: 728 Nodes Considered: 1665 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 17 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 253
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 0 Completed-Rows: 120
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
14 15 13 :BLANK
Blank: 16 Completed Chain: 12 Last-complete-row: 3 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 100
Acceptances: 22 Rejections: 732 Nodes Considered: 1679 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 18 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 254
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 3 Completed-Rows: 120
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 15 14 11
13 :BLANK 10 12
Blank: 14 Completed Chain: 9 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 114
Acceptances: 23 Rejections: 891 Nodes Considered: 2038 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 19 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 0 Previously-Seen: 324
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 120
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 15 14 11
13 10 :BLANK 12
Blank: 15 Completed Chain: 9 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 115
Acceptances: 24 Rejections: 892 Nodes Considered: 2041 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 20 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 1 Previously-Seen: 324
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 120
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 15 11
13 :BLANK 14 12
Blank: 14 Completed Chain: 10 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 118
Acceptances: 25 Rejections: 897 Nodes Considered: 2053 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 21 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 3 Previously-Seen: 325
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 122
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 15 11
13 14 :BLANK 12
Blank: 15 Completed Chain: 10 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 119
Acceptances: 26 Rejections: 898 Nodes Considered: 2056 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 22 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 4 Previously-Seen: 325
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 122
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 :BLANK
13 14 15 12
Blank: 12 Completed Chain: 11 Last-complete-row: 2 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 121
Acceptances: 27 Rejections: 901 Nodes Considered: 2062 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 23 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 6 Previously-Seen: 325
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 123
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 :BLANK
Blank: 16 Completed Chain: 15 Last-complete-row: 3 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 122
Acceptances: 28 Rejections: 902 Nodes Considered: 2065 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 24 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 6 Previously-Seen: 325
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 124
SOLVED!
Base Board
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 :BLANK
Blank: 16 Completed Chain: 15 Last-complete-row: 3 Blank-Origin: 8 Moves: 122
Acceptances: 28 Rejections: 902 Nodes Considered: 2065 Ply Depth: 0 Queue Length: 1
Better Heuristics: Manhattan-Distance: 24 Achieve-Two-Rows: 4
Worse Heuristics: Completed-Columns: 6 Previously-Seen: 325
Dont-Break-Chain: 0 Two-Row-Restriction: 355
Next-To-Last-Row: 92 Completed-Rows: 124
∂25-Mar-90 2331 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Question
Received: from Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU by SAIL.Stanford.EDU with TCP; 25 Mar 90 23:31:35 PST
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 90 23:30:35 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003260730.AA12470@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Question
Is the list of admitted PhD students confidential? If not, could you
send me a copy? It seems that I know several of them, and I want to
be sure that others whom I know don't come visit without my knowledge.
Ramin
∂26-Mar-90 0200 JMC
John Fox 01 242-0200
∂26-Mar-90 0830 JMC
Menlo Clinic about bill
∂26-Mar-90 0918 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 09:17:06 -0800
From: mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Pat Simmons)
Message-Id: <9003261717.AA13498@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 24 Mar 90 2233 PST <HtcdT@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
I was under the impression that the first letter in a series to an
individual would start with the name only and the rest would be
numberedd consecutively starting with .1. Was I wrong?
∂26-Mar-90 1016 MPS
Everett Stone for Raymond Miller (301-286-2757) called
regarding peer reviewers.
Cesdis
Center of Excellence for Space Data and Information Sciences
Nassau
∂26-Mar-90 1058 pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Better or Worse
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 10:57:34 -0800
From: pehoushe@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Dan Pehoushek)
Message-Id: <9003261857.AA13887@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Better or Worse
Huberman's work looks quite reproducible, although I did not read the long
Bishop+Knight chapter.
She mentions induction many times, which might be rephrased as "Better
must be acyclic." Although, if you are losing but trying to get a
draw, then you want to get to a forcibly cyclic set of positions.
There may be some benefits in viewing Better as acyclic, while Worse
detects positions that are cyclic or potentially cyclic.
∂26-Mar-90 1115 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
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Date: Mon 26 Mar 90 13:15:51-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <gl#WG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12576830959.65.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
John,
Hi... Guha and I would appreciate your comments on our article, which
we should hand in soon to AI Magazine. Good seeing you again,
Regards
Doug
-------
∂26-Mar-90 1121 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
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Message-Id: <9003261924.AA20863@russell.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: IR
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Mar 90 11:18:00 PST.
<1xs9lu@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 11:24:04 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
Could I get together with you tomorrow afternoon, say about 3:00, to
discuss the points you made in the memo you sent me about budget
restructuring and computing?
Stanley
∂26-Mar-90 1146 peters@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: IR
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Message-Id: <9003261949.AA21271@russell.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: IR
In-Reply-To: Your message of 26 Mar 90 11:30:00 PST.
<huZ7v@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 11:49:08 PST
From: peters@russell.Stanford.EDU
John,
Is "here" MJH? I can come there if you like.
Stanley
∂26-Mar-90 1606 weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 15:59:52 -0800
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Message-Id: <9003262359.AA14797@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: qlisp@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
>From: gupta@prl.philips.co.uk (Ashok Gupta)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Call for Papers - Parallel Computing in Lisp
Date: 26 Mar 90 14:41:37 GMT
CALL FOR PAPERS
HIGH PERFORMANCE
AND
PARALLEL COMPUTING
IN LISP
Two days in mid-Nov 1990, U.K.
Sponsored by the British Computer Society Parallel Processing Specialist Group.
Production quality Lisp systems are fast approaching the performance levels of
applications developed in the more mainstream languages. Implementations of
Lisp span the spectrum of available hardware platforms - from p.c.'s to worksta-
tions & dedicated Lisp machines through to multi-processor, parallel computers.
This conference aims to bring together
researchers working on developments in compiler technology,
hardware design, systems and algorithms
users of high performance Lisp systems in research & industry
engaged with problems in natural language understanding,
robotics, reasoning, planning etc. in fields such as - but
not limited to - defence, telecommunications, finance etc.
vendors of high performance lisp systems and applications.
The programme will have an international flavour and will consist of keynote and
invited speakers, contributed papers, tutorials and panel sessions.
If you wish to participate, please send in three copies of papers to Ashok Gupta
(address below). Papers must be limited to 6000 words or 11 single-spaced
pages. The first page should include the title, the name(s) and affiliation of
the author(s), complete addresses, (including phone numbers and electronic-mail
address if available) and a short (up to 200 words) abstract. Where there are
multiple authors the person to be contacted must be clearly identified; please
note the dates of the schedule before nominating this individual.
Closing date for papers is 15 June, 1990. Authors will be informed of accep-
tance or rejection by 13 July, 1990 and final camera ready copies must be re-
turned by 10 August, 1990.
Submissions will be judged by the Programme Committee based on presentation,
clarity, originality, and insight. Reports on work in progress or suggested
directions for future work as well as appropriate surveys and applications are
welcome.
Programme Committee :-
Professor John Fitch
Dept of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, U.K.
Phone:- (+44) (225) 826820 [Direct Line]
Email:- jpff@maths.bath.ac.uk
Jeff. Dalton
A.I. Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, U.K.
Email:- jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk
Ashok Gupta
Philips Research Laboratories, Crossoak Lane, Redhill, Surrey, U.K. RH2 ONR
Phone:- (+44) (293) 785544 ext 5647
Email:- gupta@prl.philips.co.uk
Technical queries may be addressed to any member of the Programme Committee.
For opportunities of sponsorship and other details please contact the Conference
Organiser :-
David Lloyd
Applied Workstations Ltd., Dorking, Surrey, U.K.
Tel: (+44) (306) 889485. Fax: (+44) (306) 741293
∂26-Mar-90 1606 AI.LENAT@MCC.COM Re: The rest of my comments
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Date: Mon 26 Mar 90 18:06:50-CST
From: Doug Lenat <AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
Subject: Re: The rest of my comments
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
cc: AI.LENAT@MCC.COM
In-Reply-To: <1ruxoj@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <12576883931.65.AI.LENAT@MCC.COM>
Thanks for the comments, John. We are incorporating them (and, as
appropriate, responses to them) in the article tonight.
Doug
-------
∂26-Mar-90 1611 elkan@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU hello
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 16:10:15 -0800
From: elkan@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Charles Elkan)
Message-Id: <9003270010.AA14850@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: hello
Mike Genesereth suggested that I should contact you about
the possibility of a research position here next year. He
would like to have me around, and IBM Almaden could probably
give me a half-time appointment, so I'd like to work something
out. Could you please name a time on Tuesday or Wednesday
when you will be free. I'd also like to find out your current
thinking on the frame problem. I'll bring a copy of my recent
paper "Reasoning about Action in Standard First-Order Logic",
written with Ray Reiter.
Charles Elkan
∂26-Mar-90 1658 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM contexts vs microtheories
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 18:58 CST
From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: contexts vs microtheories
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Message-Id: <19900327005859.4.GUHA@GAIA.ACA.MCC.COM>
Thanks for your comments. I am incorporating
them into the paper now. I was wondering about
the differences between contexts and microtheories.
I have an intuitive idea of what the difference is,
but am not able to express it very clearly. How does
the following paragraph sound?
The descriptions associated with microtheories provide the information
that might be required to `interpret' the contents of the theory and
capture the {\it context} \cite{jmc-context-paper} of the microtheory.
Unlike the microtheory itself (which is just a set of sentences), the context
associated with a microtheory is a {\it rich} \cite{McCarthy-and-Hayes}
object since an arbitrary amount of information can be used to
{\it universalize} \cite{Epistemology-naturalized} a sentence (or utterance)
in one of these microtheories. The addition of a fact to a microtheory always
changes the microtheory but need not always change the context of the microtheory.
Thanks
Guha
∂26-Mar-90 2051 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM re: contexts vs microtheories
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 22:52 CST
From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: re: contexts vs microtheories
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <du#5j@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <19900327045205.5.GUHA@GAIA.ACA.MCC.COM>
Thanks again for your comments. Almost all of
your comments about the paper made their way
into the paper in one form or another. There
are a number of answers to questions you raise/ responses
to your comments that we owe you.
How would you rather receive these - by email, by
reading the paper (that is now unambiguous on those points)
or when we meet next?
Thanks
Guha
∂26-Mar-90 2110 @MCC.COM:ai.guha@MCC.COM re: contexts vs microtheories
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Date: Mon, 26 Mar 90 23:11 CST
From: R. V. Guha <ai.guha@MCC.COM>
Subject: re: contexts vs microtheories
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: <dubGb@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-Id: <19900327051107.6.GUHA@GAIA.ACA.MCC.COM>
Date: 26 Mar 90 2054 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
[In reply to message sent Mon, 26 Mar 90 22:52 CST.]
Please send me a new copy of the paper.
Ok, I'm comming there and so I'll slip it under your
door by Wednesday morning.
Guha
∂27-Mar-90 0924 mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Tue, 27 Mar 90 09:22:45 -0800
From: mps@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Pat Simmons)
Message-Id: <9003271722.AA17279@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
In-Reply-To: John McCarthy's message of 26 Mar 90 1641 PST <14uzwG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Is the title of the article Toward a model of representation changes?
If so, I will get it at the library. The issue is August 1980
∂27-Mar-90 0945 VAL reply to message
[In reply to message rcvd 27-Mar-90 09:24-PT.]
Any time tomorrow would be ok.
∂27-Mar-90 1023 VAL retreat
[In reply to message rcvd 27-Mar-90 09:24-PT.]
I gave a copy of my last paper ("Metatheory of Action") to Nils and asked him
whether this would be an appropriate subject for a talk at the faculty repreat.
As you'll see from his reply, he suggested that I give two talks: one more
general, the other on the new results. So the topics I want to propose are
"Representing Action and Change in AI" and "Recent Results on the Frame Problem".
What do you think?
∂20-Mar-90 1116 nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU Re: retreat
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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 90 11:11:13 PST
From: Nils Nilsson <nilsson@tenaya.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9003201911.AA03528@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU>
To: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: retreat
Cc: nilsson@Tenaya.Stanford.EDU
Vladimir,
I had a brief look at your paper, and I think it's very
good! I particularly like the fact that we are beginning
to have metatheoretical results about representations---
although perhaps there is more discussion about
the importance of that in the introduction of the paper
than is needed. I am also grateful that you introduced
your results by first presenting an example of its
application.
Regarding the retreat: I suspect that the paper would
be slightly over specialized for a general CS audience.
If you were to talk about this at the retreat, I think
you would want to provide considerable motivation
about what the "frame problem" is, what
"circumscription"
is, etc. The motivation might end up taking a lot of
time, but I'll bet that most of the CS faculty have
no idea of why your new results are important nor
what problems they solve.
Maybe, if there is time, you could give two talks---one
dealing with the general problem of representing and
reasoning about actions in AI and the other presenting
your latest results.
-Nils
∂27-Mar-90 1453 CLT Calendar item
sf ballet thursday 5-apr 8pm
∂27-Mar-90 1500 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 16:48:23
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To: JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Message of 26-Mar-90 16:48:23
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Date: 26 Mar 90 1447 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: The rest of my comments
To: lenat@MCC.COM, guha@MCC.COM
-------
∂27-Mar-90 1548 etch@russell.Stanford.EDU call for papers
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: call for papers
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 90 15:50:20 PST
From: John Etchemendy <etch@russell.Stanford.EDU>
* * * *
The Fifth International Conference on Computers and Philosophy will be
held at Stanford University on August 9th, 10th and 11th, 1990. The
conference is sponsored by the AAPT, the APA Committee on Computer Use
in Philosophy, and the Department of Philosophy, the Symbolic Systems
Program, CSLI, and IMSSS at Stanford University.
The program committee consists of John Etchemendy (chair), Jon
Barwise, and Tryg Ager. It invites presentations on all aspects of
the relationship between philosophy and computers, including, but not
restricted to, ethical issues surrounding computer use, issues in AI
and the philosophy of mind, philosophical foundations of computation,
the use of computers in teaching philosophy and logic, and issues of
program verification. The conference will also serve as a showcase
for instructional software. Deadline for receipt of five-page
abstracts is March 15th, 1990. Please send three copies of abstracts
to John Etchemendy, Center for the Study of Language and Information,
Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305. (For E-mail use
ARPANET: etch@csli.stanford.edu).
We are also inviting proposals for the site of the 1991 meeting. For
further information, contact Dr. Robert J. Cavalier, CDEC, Carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (For E-mail use
rc2z@andrew.bitnet or through ARPANET at rc2z@andrew.cmu.edu). The
deadline for proposals for the 1991 site is June 1st 1990.
* * * *
∂27-Mar-90 1659 VAL Universal Counterexample
P ← not Q.
Q ← not R.
The corresponding default theory is:
:¬Q/P, :¬R/Q.
Its only extension is {Q}, which agrees with the usual interpetation
of the logic program. For your favorite misinterpretation of Reiter,
we'll an additional extension, {P,R}.
∂27-Mar-90 1742 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 19:11:15
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To: JMC@Sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Message of 26-Mar-90 19:11:15
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Date: 26 Mar 90 1710 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: contexts vs microtheories
To: ai.guha@MCC.COM
-------
∂27-Mar-90 1842 VAL Call for papers: Draft
WOCS-91
Workshop on Common Sense
We solicit papers describing original ideas and new results on
expressing commonsense knowledge in formal declarative languages
and on formalizing commonsense reasoning. Topics include but are
not limited to the following:
1. Formalizations aimed at better solutions of known difficulties
or raising new ones.
2. Extending formalization to new domains.
3. Mathematical analysis of the soundness and generality of
formalizations.
4. Mathematical results and counterexamples clarifying relations
between different approaches.
Relevance to artificial intelligence will be the primary consideration.
New logics advanced for their own sakes, as well as theorems only
marginally related to the problem of formalizing common sense, will be
regarded with suspicion. People considering submissions may wish to
contact one of the organizers by telephone, email or mail to discuss
appropriateness of the topic.
Papers will be distributed at meeting, but there are currently no plans
to publish formal proceedings.
Participation: by invitation only. People who would like to be invited
should submit a paper or a short (20-30 lines) description of their past
work or research interests related to the theory of commonsense knowledge
and reasoning.
Submission format: Three copies of a detailed abstract, up to four pages
(not including the bibliography). An abstract should describe the main
results, an explanation of their significance, and a comparison with
earlier work.
Place: ?????
Important dates:
October 15, 1990: Submission of abstracts and requests for participation
November 26, 1990: Notification of acceptance/rejection
December 16, 1990: Papers due
January 6-9, 1991: Meeting
Organizers:
Chairman of organizing committee:
John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
(415)723-4430
JMC@CS.STANFORD.EDU
Program:
Vladimir Lifschitz
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
(415)723-3334
VAL@CS.STANFORD.EDU
Arrangements:
Leora Morgenstern
IBM Watson Research Center
P.O.Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
(???) ???-????
LEORA@IBM.COM
∂27-Mar-90 1916 portal!cup.portal.com!Henderson@Sun.COM publishing
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To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
From: Henderson@cup.portal.com
Subject: publishing
Lines: 22
Date: Tue, 27-Mar-90 19:04:09 PST
Message-Id: <9003271904.1.27437@cup.portal.com>
X-Origin: The Portal System (TM)
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X-Possible-Reply-Path: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Henderson
Dr. McCarthy,
As a publisher of computer science texts, I have grown quite
familiar with your now "legendary" status within the cs community.
I am quite sure that many before me have inquired about your
interest in publishing a book, and I suppose I must now add
my name to that long list. I am of course, keenly interested
in any writing plans you may have.....I can only imagine the success
that any book you might write would enjoy.
Some of my peers before me may have asked about texts; I am also
interested in any graduate level book ideas, or reseach monographs
you may be interested in writing.
Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Ray Henderson
Associate Editor
Prentice Hall
415 826-6581
>> Email: henderson@cup.portal.com
∂27-Mar-90 2112 Mailer@MCC.COM Message of 26-Mar-90 22:55:10
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Subject: Message of 26-Mar-90 22:55:10
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Date: 26 Mar 90 2054 PST
From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: contexts vs microtheories
To: ai.guha@MCC.COM
-------
∂28-Mar-90 1032 MPS
Prof. Hurd called
∂28-Mar-90 1431 ME 1991
∂28-Mar-90 1054 JMC
We need a 1991 calendar even if SAIL won't be here.
ME - OK, there is now a 1991 calendar in the usual place [UP,DOC].
∂28-Mar-90 1445 barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU Re: Admissible sets and structures
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To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: Admissible sets and structures
In-Reply-To: Your message of 24 Jan 90 17:42:00 PST.
<1k##Sl@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Address: CSLI, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 90 14:48:03 PST
From: Jon Barwise <barwise@russell.Stanford.EDU>
To Future readers of ASAS:
Admissible sets and structures has arrived. Please pick up the copy
(or copies) you ordered from Margie, or send her a message to tell her
where to send it (kuder@csli). She will soon know how much each
costs. Make a check to csli for that amount. -Jon
∂28-Mar-90 1714 tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU brochures
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Date: Wed, 28 Mar 1990 17:13:40 PST
From: "Carolyn E. Tajnai" <tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
To: AI-DOC:;@Hudson.Stanford.EDU
Subject: brochures
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638673220.tajnai@Hudson.Stanford.EDU>
The brochure for AIDOC is at the printer. When it arrives, each of you
will receive 10 brochures for distribution to prospects. Put your
initials on the application (upper right hand corner). Non-Forum
members must pay $600 to attend, and the extra $100 will go into your
unrestricted account.
Bob Engelmore asked about Stanford faculty and students attending.
CSD affiliated faculty may attend without paying. (There is a $200
charge for people from other universities.) Of course, if they
plan to attend the barbeque lunch, we must have an rsvp.
Students: AI students may attend on a space available basis. I don't
think space will be a problem. If a student is participating in a
demo, then he is invited to the lunch, otherwise students won't be
invited.
And closer to the time, we'll need to have your rsvp's for the barbeque
lunch.
I'm off on a 2-week vacation; will return April 16. Bonnie Hiller
and Bob Engelmore can answer questions re AIDOC.
Carolyn
∂28-Mar-90 1724 guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu most recent version of the cyc paper
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Date: Wed, 28 Mar 1990 17:26:51 PST
From: "Ramanathan V. Guha" <guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: most recent version of the cyc paper
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638674011.guha@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
I left the most recent version of the cyc (mid term report) paper
with your secretary.
Guha
∂29-Mar-90 0730 VAL UBC
Maria Klawe called last night and said that the department had unanimously
voted in favor of offering me a full professorship with tenure. But this
is not the end of the road yet, she said. The position is currently funded
not by the department, but by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research,
so that I need to get a fellowship from them (or another source of funding
should be found). This may take weeks, if not months. But then, she said,
an offer from another place can speed up the process.
∂29-Mar-90 1242 jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu Current Developments
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From: jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu (james fetzer)
Message-Id: <9003292042.AA27338@ub.d.umn.edu>
Subject: Current Developments
To: M_and_M_EB@ub.d.umn.edu
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 90 14:42:21 CDT
Cc: jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu
X-Mailer: Elm [version 2.1 PL1]
MINDS AND MACHINES
Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science
(ISSN 0924-6495)
We have some additions to the editorial board and need more submissions:
(1) Paul Smolensky and Donald Rumelhart have joined the editorial board,
which now includes Jon Barwise, Andy Clark, Robert Cummins, Fred Dretske,
Jerry Fodor, Clark Glymour, Stevan Harnad, John Haugeland, Jaakko Hintikka,
David Israel, Philip Johnson-Laird, Frank Keil, Henry Kyburg, John McCarthy,
Donald Nute, Zenon Pylyshyn, Barry Richard, Donald Rumelhart, Roger Schank,
John Searle, Paul Smolensky, Stephen Stich, and Terry Winograd. A few in-
vitations remain outstanding, but the editorial board is now largely fixed.
(2) As I previously indicated, when manuscripts reach me, I am contacting
you directly to ask if you would be willing to serve as a referee rather
than announcing each item as it arrives to the entire board. If you have
something that you think should be published but accompanied by a critical
response, be sure to let me know, because this is definitely a policy that
I want to pursue. Do not hesitate to take me up on this alternative. As
a rule of thumb, I hope to have your reports back to me within four weeks.
(3) This is an exceptional editorial board and it should be an exceptional
journal. ALL WE NEED NOW ARE MORE SUBMISSIONS. Our standards are higher
than most other journals because of the quality of our board. This means
that we need plenty of manuscripts to referee. If you have colleagues or
students (or papers of your own) that appear promising for this purpose, I
hope you will encourage their submission. And when you know of books that
we should review, be sure to mention them to me or Bill Rapaport to pursue.
Jim
P.S. In lieu of phil@ub.d.umn.edu, I am now using jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu.
∂30-Mar-90 0900 JMC
Cate and Okner
∂30-Mar-90 0912 GERRY%epvax.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK AAAI
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Date: Fri, 30 MAR 90 17:50:12 GMT
From: GERRY%epvax.sussex.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
To: JMC <@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK:JMC@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: AAAI
[The first version of this bounced back to me, but you may nonetheless
have received this]
Professor McCarthy,
I wrote to you last September about the possibility of AAAI once again
providing some funding for a workshop which I organize on models of
speech processing. Not having had any feedback, I assume that funding
will not be possible for the coming meeting in June. I would be very
grateful if you could confirm whether this is the case (I am in the
process of finalising the available budget, and working out the degree
to which I can subsidise the US participants' expenses, and hence my
contacting you at this time).
For your information, production of the book from the last meeting is
proceeding well, if slightly slower than originally anticipated. I have
been careful to include mention of AAAI in the preface.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Gerry T.M. Altmann
(gerrya@uk.ac.sussex.syma)
∂30-Mar-90 0924 CLT calendar item
wed 4-apr 8:15 Ruth Malen (principal Lucile Nixon School)
∂30-Mar-90 0957 chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU re: Pat....
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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 1990 9:58:42 PST
From: "Joyce R. Chandler" <chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: re: Pat....
In-Reply-To: Your message of 30 Mar 90 0948 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638819922.chandler@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
OK, John. I'll try to remember that.
∂30-Mar-90 1001 ME re: Will this address work
∂30-Mar-90 0946 JMC Will this address work
gerrya@uk.ac.sussex.syma
or do I have to reverse part of it?
ME - Reverse the whole host part (UK puts things in other order):
gerrya@syma.sussex.ac.uk
∂30-Mar-90 1720 bergman@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU new task
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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 1990 17:21:05 PST
From: Sharon Bergman <bergman@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Cc: clt@sail.Stanford.EDU, mps@sail.Stanford.EDU, littell@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Subject: new task
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.638846465.bergman@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
John, Funding for Task 26 has arrived and here is your new account number:
Account no.: 2DMA823
Fund no.: 187X089
Performance period: 3/1/90-9/30/90
Amount: $154,275
-Sharon
∂30-Mar-90 2047 U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU "Never again socialism" may be a winning slogan in China....
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Date: Fri 30 Mar 90 17:07:46-PST
From: D. J. <U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: "Never again socialism" may be a winning slogan in China....
To: jmc@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Message-ID: <12577943601.79.U.UNDERDOG@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
as soon as free elections return!?!?
Just because some university students are too young to remember
the corrupt regime of Chiang Kai-Shek does not imply that free elections
in China will appear within our lifetimes--at least not mine.
In order for some semblance of democracy to appear in China,
there must be support for change by a large portion of the population,
not just some students in the ivory towers. Large portions
of the populations East Germany and other Eastern European countries
wanted change and got it, assuming of course that some external
force like the USSR refrains from intervening. In the PRC,
the situation is different. I don't believe that the majority of
the people in China want democratic change. They may want
some kind of change, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't a change
in the direction of democracy.
Unlike the Eastern Europeans, the Chinese (most of whom
are ignorant peasants) have little idea about what democracy
really is. Many of them even think that Li Peng did the right
thing in suppressing the "hooligans" (from the ivory towers)
who made all that noise last summer.
-------
∂31-Mar-90 1207 haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu Re: Current Developments
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Date: Sat, 31 Mar 90 15:06:42 -0500
From: John C. Haugeland <haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Message-Id: <9003312006.AA19737@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
To: M_and_M_EB@ub.d.umn.EDU, jfetzer@ub.d.umn.EDU
Subject: Re: Current Developments
Do you perhaps mean DAVID Rumelhart?
John
∂31-Mar-90 1333 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
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Date: Sat, 31 Mar 90 13:32:16 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003312132.AA04903@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: jmc@sail.Stanford.EDU
Do you want to have dinner tonight with McAllester and me?
Ramin
∂31-Mar-90 1530 rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU Re: reply to message
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Date: Sat, 31 Mar 90 15:29:00 -0800
From: rdz@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Ramin Zabih)
Message-Id: <9003312329.AA05958@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
To: JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, rdz@GANG-OF-FOUR.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Re: reply to message
How about 6:30.
Ramin
∂31-Mar-90 1710 underdog@portia.stanford.edu gopher
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Date: Sat, 31 Mar 90 17:10:41 PDT
From: Dwight Joe <underdog@portia.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <9004010110.AA24265@portia.stanford.edu>
To: jmc@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: gopher
Hi.
Do you still need a gopher to look up references for your
book for about 10 hours per week (that's all the my dept
allows for students on scholarship)?
---Dwight