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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 057
AIList Digest Wednesday, 9 May 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 57
Today's Topics:
AI Tools - Structure Editor Request,
Bindings - Judea Pearl,
AI Software - LISP on a Data General,
Linguistics - Metaphors & Puns & Use of "and",
AI Funding - The End of British AI?,
AI Literature - Touretzky LISP Book Review,
Consciousness - Discussion,
Conference - IEEE Workstation Conference
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 May 84 18:17:03-PDT (Thu)
From: hplabs!hao!cires!boulder!marty @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: wanted: display-oriented interlisp structure editor
Article-I.D.: boulder.175
I've been using Interlisp-VAX under VMS for a while now and am getting a bit
tired of the rather antiquated TTY editor. I know Dave Barstow had a sort of
semi-display interlisp structure editor known as DED, but this seems to have
fallen into a black hole. Does anyone out there have a screen-oriented
residential structure editor for interlisp? (Yes, I know the real solution is
to get an 1108, it's on order ... But I've got too many interlisp users to
point them all at one Dandelion ...)
thanks much,
Marty Kent
csnet:
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!kpno | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!kpno}
!hao!boulder!marty
arpanet:
polson @ sumex-aim
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 May 84 07:54:13 PDT
From: Anna Gibbons <anna@UCLA-CS.ARPA>
Subject: Bindings - Judea Pearl Address
FROM JUDEA PEARL: Please disregard the old address "UCLA-SECURITY",
any messages should be sent to "judea@UCLA-CS.ARPA".
Sorry for the inconvenience and confusion.
------------------------------
Date: 19 Apr 84 14:30:21-PST (Thu)
From: decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!bet @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: LISP on a Data General? (sri-arpa.122209)
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2347
Here at Duke, someone ported a public domain implementation of an
extremely simple subset of LISP (xlisp) to our MV-8000. It suffices
for some robotics programming. I learned LISP on it. Sources in C.
Send me a note if you are interested; it is probably rather big to mail,
though I believe it was originally acquired from net.sources.
We can work out some way to transfer it.
Bennett Todd
...{decvax,ihnp4,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bet
------------------------------
Date: 2 May 84 8:35:51-PDT (Wed)
From: hplabs!tektronix!ogcvax!sequent!merlyn @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: metaphors
Article-I.D.: sequent.478
> "Telephones are like grapefruits" is a SIMILE, not a metaphor. To be
> a metaphor, it would be "Telephones are grapefruits", and would be harder
> to interpret...
>
> Will
Ahh, but "Telephones are lemons" is fairly easy to interpret.
It just depends on the type of fruit. :-}
Randal L. ("life is like a banana") Schwartz, esq. (merlyn@sequent.UUCP)
(Official legendary sorcerer of the 1984 Summer Olympics)
Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. (503)626-5700 (sequent = 1/quosine)
UUCP: ...!XXX!sequent!merlyn where XXX is one of:
decwrl nsc ogcvax pur-ee rocks34 shell teneron unisoft vax135 verdix
P.S. I never metaphor I didn't like. (on a zero to four scale)
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 84 14:25:47-PST (Wed)
From: harpo!eagle!mhuxl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!ecsvax!hes @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: what you see ain't what you get
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2291
At the end of Bentley's column in the April CACM, he mentions the
AI seminar titled:
How to Wreck a Nice Beach
and I thought of that today when I saw a poster describing "Cole's Law".
For those unfamiliar with the concept it refers to
"niht decils egabbac" reversed.
--henry (almost ashamed to sign this) schaffer ncsu genetics
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 84 8:46:33-PST (Wed)
From: harpo!ulysses!burl!clyde!watmath!watrose!japlaice @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Use of "and"
Article-I.D.: watrose.6717
[For some reason this took almost a month to show up in the AIList
mailbox. Other messages may have been similarly delayed. -- KIL]
There are several philosophical problems with treating
`Indiana and Ohio' as a single entity.
The first is that the Fregean idea that the sense of
a sentence is based on the sense of its parts,
which is thought valid by most philosophers,
no longer holds true.
The second is that if we use that idea in this situation,
then it would probably seem reasonable to use
Quine's ideas for adjectives, namely that
`unicorn', `hairy unicorn', `small, hairy unicorn'
(or other similar examples) are all separate entities,
and I think that it is obvious that trying to
derive a reasonable semantic/syntactic theory for
any reasonable fragment of English would become
virtually imposible.
------------------------------
Date: Mon 7 May 84 17:31:17-PDT
From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: Re: The End of British AI?
Having learned recently of yet another attempt by the SERC to foist
upon unwilling AI researchers totally unsuitable equipment chosen for
narrow political reasons, and seeing those researchers wasting their
time fighting off the attempt or reimplementing AI software which they
could get with little effort if they had the right equipment, I am
maybe feeling a bit paranoid. Knowing of the contortions British
researchers are going through to get Alvey money doesn't make me very
optimistic either. Astronomers and high-energy physicists don't seem
to have the same problems.
While I was a graduate student and then a research fellow in the UK, I
had to waste my time fighting off two such attempts, again based on
narrow political considerations. That in the two cases the side I was
on ended up (partly) winning is small consolation when I think of the
time I and others could have used for more productive work.
As to bureaucratic statements of that kind being forgotten, do you
remember the Lighthill report, a ``statement'' that sent British AI
into internal exile for at least five years causing the drain of US of
British AI talent we all know about?
- Fernando
------------------------------
Date: 7 May 84 0255 EDT
From: Dave.Touretzky@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Subject: book announcement
Since people have begun using AIList to announce their latest books (an
excellent idea), I thought I'd briefly describe my new Lisp book.
"Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation",
by David S. Touretzky, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.,
New York, 1984. Softcover, 384 pages, $18.95 list.
I originally wrote the book because I wanted to teach an introductory
programming course to humanities students using Lisp. Although most readers
of this mailing list are interested in the advanced applications of Lisp,
the language is an excellent one for beginners. It turned out to be a heck
of a lot better for them than Pascal, which is what we teach most beginners
here at CMU. And Stanford University's freshman programming course is now a
combination of Lisp and Pascal, with my book used for the Lisp component.
Trinity College, in Hartford, CT, uses it in a freshman AI seminar taught
by the Psych dept. At CMU it was used for several semesters by the English
department (!) for the programming component of a computer literacy course
for grad students.
Of course, the question you're all dying to ask is: how does this book
differ from Winston & Horn, and from Wilensky's new book. My book is the
only GENTLE introduction to Lisp. As such, its pace is too slow for a
graduate level or advanced undergrad CS course, which is where I feel
Winston & Horn is most appropriate. On the other hand, I know lots of grad
students in other departments, such as Psych, who found Winston & Horn too
advanced; they were more comfortable with my book. Wilensky's book is a
wonderful reference for Franz Lisp, which is covered in its entirety,
while my book is based on MacLisp and Common Lisp (although there is an
appendix which mentions Franz) and covers only the basics of those dialects.
If you are an experienced programmer and want to know all about Franz Lisp,
Wilensky is the obvious choice. On the other hand, if you're new to Lisp,
my book offers the easiest route to becoming fluent in the language. In
addition to the gentle, easy-to-read style, it contains 75 pages of answers
to exercises. (Winston & Horn has 60 pages of answers; Wilensky has none.)
-- Dave Touretzky
------------------------------
Date: 3 May 84 16:55:34-PDT (Thu)
From: ihnp4!ihuxr!pem1a @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: New topic for discussion
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.1064
Phaedrus' article made me think of a story in the book "The
Mind's Eye", by Hofstadter and Dennett, in which the relationship
between subjective experience and physical substance is explored.
Can't remember the story's name but good reading. Some other
thoughts:
One aspect of experience and substance is how to determine when
a piece of substance is experiencing something. This is good to
know because then you can fiddle with the substance until it stops
experiencing and thereby get an idea of what it was about the
substance which allowed it to experience.
The first reasonable choice for the piece of substance might be
yourself, since most people presume that they can tell when they
are having a conscious experience. Unfortunately, being both the
measuree and measurer could have its drawbacks, since some experiments
could simulaneously zap both experience and the ability to know or not
know if an experience exists. All sorts of problems here. Could you
just THINK you were experiencing something, but not really?
What this calls for, it seems to me, is two people. One to measure
and one to experience. Of course this would all be based on the
assumption that it is even possible to measure such an elusive
thing as experience. Some people might even object to the notion
that subjective experiences are possible at all.
The next thing is to choose an experience.
This is tricky. If you chose self-awareness as the experience, then
you would have to decide if being self-aware in one state is the same
as being self-aware in a different state. Can the experience be the
same even if the object of the experience is not?
Then, a measuring criterion would have to be established whereby
someone could measure if an experience was happening or not. This
could range from body and facial expressions to neurological readings.
Another would be a Turing test-like setup: put the subject into a
box with certain I/O channels, and have protocols made up for
measuring things. This would allow you to REALLY get in there and
fiddle with things, like replacing body parts, etc.
These are some of the thoughts that ran through my head after reading
the Phaedrus article. I think I thought them, and if I didn't, how
did this article get here?
Tom Portegys, Bell Labs, ihlpg!portegys
(ihlpg currently does not have netnews, that's why this is coming from
ihuxr).
------------------------------
Date: Sun 6 May 84 11:15:48-PDT
From: Dennis Allison <CSL.ALLISON@SU-SIERRA.ARPA>
Subject: IEEE Workstation Conference: Call for Papers
-----------------------------------------------------
1st International Conference on Computer Workstations
-----------------------------------------------------
San Francisco Bay Area, May-June 1985.
Sponsored by: IEEE Computer Society
Computer Workstations are integral to productivity and quality increases, and
they are the main focal point for a growing fraction of professional activity.
A "workstation", broadly defined, is a system that interacts with a user to
help the user accomplish some kind of work. Included in this definition are:
CAD systems, high-resolution graphics systems, office productivity systems,
computer-based engineering support stations of all kinds, architectural sys-
tems, software engineering environments, etc.
"Workstations" includes both hardware and software. Hardware to run the ap-
plications, software to customize the environments.
Technical Program
Papers are solicited from the technical community at large in a widely seen
series of advertisements. Sessions to be organized from submitted papers and
from Program Committee contacts.
The technical program will have approximately 32 sessions, arranged in three
tracks, spanning 3 full days. Technical sessions will be derived from submit-
ted papers and from Program Committee organized sessions. The Program Commit-
tee will include leaders and important contributors to the field of computer
workstations. International representation will be sought.
There will be an invited keynote speaker and a formal opening session, best
paper awards, and a set of pre-conference tutorials. Also, a "Special Ad-
dress" on the 2nd day.
Exhibits
Over 150 "booths" are expected to be populated by nearly as many companies ex-
hibiting hardware and software pertaining to workstations of all kinds. High
standards of technical exhibitions will be maintained by the IEEE to assure a
technically sophisticated and educational set of exhibits. Wide international
participation is anticipated.
Exhibits are set up on Monday, shown Tuesday through Thursday from 10 AM to 7
PM, and dismantled on Friday.
Program Chairman:
Dr. Edward Miller
Software Research, Inc.
580 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 957-1441 -- Telex: 340 235
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End of AIList Digest
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