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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 003
AIList Digest Monday, 9 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 3
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Re: the Whorfian hypothesis
Re: Artificial Languages
Putting programmers out of a Job?
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Date: Sun 8 May 83 23:05:43-PDT
From: Laws@SRI-AI <AIList-Request@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Administrivia
We have been joined by new BBoards or remailing nodes at
AI@NLM-MCS
AIList-Usenet@SRI-UNIX
Post-AIList.UNC@UDel-Relay
The Usenet connection is a two-way link with the net.ai discussion
group. More on this later.
I have been responding to additions by sending out back issues.
Henceforth I will only send a welcome message and statement of policy.
Back issues are available by request.
I have tried to establish contact with all who have asked to be
enrolled, but several sites have been unreachable for the last two
weeks. I cannot guarantee delivery of every issue to every site, and
may cut short the usual two-week retry period in order to reduce the
system load.
-- Ken Laws
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Date: 2 May 1983 1038-EDT (Monday)
From: Robert.Frederking@CMU-CS-A (C410RF60)
Subject: Re: the Whorfian hypothesis
I just thought I should point out that the Whorfian hypothesis
is one of those things which was rejected a long time ago in its
original field (at least in its strong form), but has remained
interesting and widely talked about in other fields. At the time
Whorf hypothesized that language constrains the way people think, the
views of language and culture were that language was a highly
systematic, constrained thing, whereas culture was just an arbitrary
collection of facts. By the time Whorf was getting really popular in
other circles, anthropologists had realized that culture was also
systematic, with constraints between different parts. In other words,
the likelihood that an idea will be invented or imported by a culture
depends to a degree on the kinds of ideas the people in the culture
are already familiar with.
The current view in anthropology (current in the 70s, that is)
is that language and culture do influence each other, but that the
influence is much weaker, more subtle, and more bidirectional, than
the Whorfian hypothesis suggested.
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Date: 3 May 83 17:31:01 EDT (Tue)
From: Fred Blonder <fred.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay>
Subject: Artificial Languages
[Fred has pointed out that the "DuckSpeak" I cited was officially
called Newspeak in Orwell's 1984. -- KIL]
Also: are you aware of Esperanto? It's grammar (only 16 rules) allows
any word to function as any part of speech by an appropriate change
to its suffix.
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[We are now linked to the Usenet net.ai discussion, which is
more nearly real-time than the AIList digest. The following
is evidently from a continuing discussion, and I apologize to
the author if he did not expect such a wide audience. A more
formal submission system might be arranged if Usenet members
want both private and public discussions, or if they object to
receiving digested copies of previously seen messages. The
possibility of forwarding undigested AIList submissions to Usenet
is being considered. -- KIL]
Date: 1 May 83 22:31:14-PDT (Sun)
From: decvax!utzoo!watmath!bstempleton @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Putting programmers out of a Job?
I hope the person who stated that this self programming computer
project will eliminate the need for programmers is not on the AI
project. If so they should fire him/her and get somebody who is a
good programmer. Programming is a highly creative art that uses some
highly complex technological tools. No AI project will put a good
programmer out of a job without being able to pass a Turing test
first. This is because a good programmer spends more time designing
than coding.
In fact, I would be all for a machine which I could tell to write a
program to traverse a data structure doing this and that to it. It
would get rid of all the tedious stuff, and I would be able to produce
all kinds of wonderful programs. Out of a job? Hardly - I'd be rich,
and so would a lot of other people, notably those on AI projects.
I doubt that ten years will show a computer that can do things like
design (or invent) things like screen editors, VisiCalc(TM),
relational databases and compilers. If it could do all that, it's
intelligent - not just a self-programming machine.
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End of AIList Digest
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