to destabilize Western countries by infiltrating trade unions, pacifist movements. The Eastern block can remotely cause strikes. But since now, there was now way to retaliate by doing precise desorganizing actions. In the context of the ideological war, softwar gives another way to strike back. The book also shows that the Soviets have no choice. They know that by buying or getting by other means this software, they are taking a big risk. But if they stop getting this software, the time it will take them to develop it by themselves will increase the gap. This is a fact. So soft bombs, like atomic bombs, can be a means of deterrence. For political people who are just dicovering this new strategy, the book is that of a new generation showing to the old one that what was a tool has become a weapon." [This reminds me of an anecdote I heard Captain (now Cmdr) Grace Hopper tell. It seems some company began to pass off a Navy-developed COBOL compiler verifier as their own, removing the print statement that gave credit to the Navy. When the Navy came out with an improved version, the company had the gall to ask for a copy. Her development group complied, but embedded concealed checks in the code so that it would fail to work if the credit printout were ever altered. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed 20 Jun 84 20:07:35-PDT From: Richard Treitel Subject: softwar @= [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The article Jean-Luc (or whoever) translates sounds like a typical piece of National Enquirer-style "reporting", namely it describes something that is *just* feasible theoretically but against which countermeasures exist, and which has wider ramifications than are mentioned. I'm sure the Russians are too paranoid to allow network access to important computers in such a way as to trigger these "bombs". But: it is widely rumoured that IBM puts time-delayed self-destruct operations into some of its programs so as to force you to buy the new release when it comes out (and heaven help you if it's late?). And in John Brunner's book "The Shockwave Rider", one of America's defence systems is a program that would bring down the entire national network, thus making it impossible for an invader to control the country. I love science fiction discussions, but I love them even more when they're not on BBoard. - Richard [Another SF analogy: there is a story about the consequences of developing some type of "ray" or nondirectional energy field capable of igniting all unstable compounds within a large radius, notably ammunition, propellants, and fuels. This didn't stop the outbreak of global war, but did reduce it to the stone age. All that has nothing to do with AI, of course, except that computers may yet be the only intelligent beings on the planet. -- KIL] ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 24-Jun-84 10:36:46-PDT,17098;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 24-Jun-84 10:34:07 Date: Sun 24 Jun 1984 10:19-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #78 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 24 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 78 Today's Topics: AI Programming - Characteristics, Commonsense Reasoning - Hypothetical Math, Cognition - Humor & Memory & Intuition, Seminar - Full Abstraction and Semantic Equivalence ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 Jun 84 12:14:49-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!intelca!glen @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Definition of an AI program Article-I.D.: intelca.317 As a half-serious/half humorous suggestion: Consider the fact that most of man's machines are built to do the same thing over and over and do it very well. Some random examples: - washing machine - automobile hood fastner in production line - pacman video game AI programs (hopefully) don't fit the mold, they don't spend their lives performing the same routine but change as they go. ^ ^ Glen Shires, Intel, Santa Clara, Ca. O O Usenet: {ucbvax!amd70,pur-ee,hplabs}!intelca!glen > ARPA: "amd70!intelca!glen"@BERKELEY \-/ --- stay mellow ------------------------------ Date: Fri 22 Jun 84 11:28:46-PDT From: Richard Treitel Subject: a third of ten Please. Everyone knows that 2*2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2. More to the point, if you take the square root of 5 and round to the nearest integer, you get 2. Again, if you take half of 5 and round to nearest using accepted method, get 3. A third of ten now becomes 3 as well. How many AI people does it take to change a lightbulb? - Richard [One graduate student, but it takes eight years. -- KIL (from John Hartman, CS.Hartman@UTexas-20) ] ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jun 84 10:51:26-PDT (Thu) From: decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-rayna!swart @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Commonsense Reasoning? Article-I.D.: decwrl.1845 I am reminded of an old children's riddle: Q. If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? A. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so. Mark Swartwout UUCP {allegra,decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!decwrl!rhea!rayna!swart ARPA MSWART@DEC-MARLBORO ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jun 84 22:07 PDT From: Shrager.pa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Memory This might amuse. Authorship credit to Dave Touretzky@CMU. From: Dave Touretzky (DT50)@CMU-CS-A To: Jeff Shrager Subject: Q-registers in the brain ENGRAM (en'-gram) n. 1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram." 2. A particular memory in physical form. [Usage note: this term is no longer in common use. Prior to Wilson & Magruder's historic discovery, the nature of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists, psychologists, and even computer scientists. In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of thirty seven genetically-transmitted cooperating TECO macros. Human memory was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman-coded uppercase-only ASCII strings. Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that time.] --- from the New Century Unabridged English Dictionary, 3rd edition, A.D. 2007. David S. Touretzky (Ed.) ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 84 16:02:49-PDT (Tue) From: ihnp4!houxm!mhuxl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!rlr @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: pyuxn.769 > (2) Intuition - by this I mean huge leaps into discovery > that have nothing to do with the application of logical > association or sensual observation. This kind of stuff > happens to all of us and cannot easily be explained by > the physical/mechanical model of the human mind. > > I agree that if you could build a computer big enough and fast > enough and taught it all the "right stuff", you could duplicate > the human brain, but not the human mind. Intuition is nothing more than one's subconscious employing logical thought faster than the conscious brain can understand or realize it. What's all the fuss about? And where's the difference between the "brain" and the "mind"? What can this "mind" do that the physical brain doesn't? A good dose of Hofstadterisms and Smullyanisms ("The Mind's 'I'" provides good examples) puts to rest some of those notions of mind and brain. "I take your opinions and multiply them by -1." Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 84 13:55:43-PDT (Tue) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!bill @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: utastro.114 > (1) Subconscious memory - a person can be enabled (through > hypnosis or by asking him the right way) to remember > infinite details of any experience of this or prior life > times. Does the mind selectively block out trivia in order > focus on what's important currently? One of the reasons that evidence obtained under hypnosis is inadmissable in many courts is that hypnotically induced memories are notoriously unreliable, and can often be completely false, even though they can seem extremely vivid. In some states, the mere fact that a witness has been under hypnosis is enough to disqualify the individual's testimony in the case. I have personal, tragic experience with this phenomenon in my own family. I don't intend to burden the net with this, but if anyone doubts what I say, I will be glad to discuss it by E-mail. Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) utastro!bill@ut-ngp (ARPANET) ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 84 9:22:50-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!ut-sally!riddle @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: ut-sally.2301 Now that Chuqui's obligingly created net.sci, why don't we move this discussion there? Is there any reason for it to go on in five newsgroups simultaneously? If interest continues, perhaps this topic will form the basis for net.sci.psych. Followups to net.sci, please. --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 84 15:47 CST From: Nichael Cramer Subject: Memory > >From: hplabs!hpda!fortune!crane @ Ucb-Vax.arpa > > (1) Subconscious memory - a person can be [...] But, brain is mind is brain is mind is brain is mind is brain... [what else have you got to work with?] So long and thanks for all the fish, NLC ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jun 1984 1825-PDT (Friday) From: gd@sri-spam (Greg DesBrisay) Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: aplvax.663 >The other thing to note is that while each 'memory cell' in a computer >has ~2 connections, each 'memory cell' in the brain has ~100. Since >processing power is relative to (cells * connections), a measure of >relative capacities is not sufficient for comparison between the brain >and the CRAY. -Lloyd W. Taylor In addition, many connections in the human brain are analog in character, so any comparison with a binary digital computer must multiply the number of connections by the number of bits necessary to digitize the analog range of each synapse. To do that, one would have to know what analog resolution is required to accurately model the behavior of a synapse. I'm not sure if any one has figured that one out yet. Greg DesBrisay SRI ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 84 9:20:43-PDT (Wed) From: decvax!mcnc!unc!ulysses!allegra!princeton!eosp1!robison @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: eosp1.954 I'm not comfortable with Rich Rosen's assertion that intuition is just the mind's unconscious LOGICAL reasoning that happens too fast for the conscious to track. If intuition is simply ordinary logical reasoning, we should be just as able to simulate it as we can other tyes of reasoning. In fact, attempts to simulate intuition account for some rather noteworthy successes and failures, and seem to require a number of discoveries before we can make much real progress. E.g.: I think it is fair to claim that chess players use intuition to evaluate chess positions. We acknowledge that computers have failed to be intuitive in playing chess in at least two ways that are easy for people: - knowing what kinds of tactical shots to look for in a position - knowing how to plan longterm strategy in a position In backgammon, Hans Berliner has a very successful program that seems to have overcome the comparable backgammon problem. His program has a way of deciding, in a smooth, continuous fashion, when to shift from one set of assumptions to another while analyzing. I am not aware of whether other people have been able to develop his techniques to other kinds of analysis, or whether this is one flash of success. Berliner has not been comparably successful applying this idea to a chess program. (The backgammon program defeated then world champion in a short match, in which the doubling cube was used.) [There was general agreement that the program's play was inferior, however. Another point: while smooth transitioning between strategies is more "human" and easier to follow or explain (and thus to debug or improve), I can't see that it is inherently as powerful as switching to a new optimal strategy at each turn. -- KIL] Artists and composers use intuition as part of the process of creating art. It is likely that one of the benefits they gain from intuition is that a good work of art has many more internal relationships among its parts than the creator could have planned. It is hard to see how this result can be derived from "logical" reasoning of any ordinary deductive or inductive kind. It is easier to see how artists obtain this result by making various kinds of intuitive decisions to limit their scope of free choice in the creative process. Computer-generated art has come closest to emulating this process by using f-numbers rather than random numbers to generate artistic decisions. It is unlikely that the artist's intuition is working as "simply" as deriving decision from f-numbers. It remains a likely possibility that a type of reasoning that we know little about is involved. We are still pretty bad at programming pattern recognition, which intuitive thinking does spectacularly well. If one wishes to assert that the pattern recognition is done by well-known logical processes, I would like to see some substantiation. - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) allegra!eosp1!robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison princeton!eosp1!robison ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 84 18:14:17-PDT (Wed) From: decvax!linus!utzoo!henry @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: utzoo.3971 John Crane cites, as evidence for the human mind being impossible to duplicate by computer, two phenomena. (1) Subconscious memory - a person can be enabled (through hypnosis or by asking him the right way) to remember infinite details of any experience of this or prior life times. Does the mind selectively block out trivia in order focus on what's important currently? As far as I know, there's no evidence of this that will stand up to critical examination. Even disregarding the "prior life times" part, for which the reliable evidence is, roughly speaking, nonexistent, the accuracy of recall under hypnosis is very doubtful. True, the subject can describe things in great detail, but it's not at all proven that this detail represents *memory*, as opposed to imagination. In fact, although it's quite likely that hypnosis can help bring out things that have been mostly forgotten, there is serious doubt that the memories can be disentangled from the imagination well enough for, say, testimony in court to be reliable when hypnosis is used. (2) Intuition - by this I mean huge leaps into discovery that have nothing to do with the application of logical association or sensual observation. This kind of stuff happens to all of us and cannot easily be explained by the physical/mechanical model of the human mind. The trouble here is that "...have nothing to do with the application of logical association or sensual observation..." is an assumption, not a verified fact. There is (weak) evidence suggesting that intuition may be nothing more remarkable than reasoning and observation on a subconscious level. The human mind actually seems to be much more of a pattern-matching engine than a reasoning engine, and it's not really surprising if pattern-matching proceeds in a haphazard way that can sometimes produce unexpected leaps. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 84 17:14:58-PDT (Wed) From: ucbcad!tektronix!orca!shark!hutch @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: A Quick Question - Mind and Brain Article-I.D.: shark.838 | Intuition is nothing more than one's subconscious employing logical | thought faster than the conscious brain can understand or realize it. | What's all the fuss about? And where's the difference between the | "brain" and the "mind"? What can this "mind" do that the physical brain | doesn't? | Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr Thank you, Rich, for so succinctly laying to rest all the questions mankind has ever had about self and mind and consciousness. Now, how about proving it. Oh, and by the way, what is a "subconscious" and how do you differentiate between a "conscious" brain and a "subconscious" in any meaningful way? And once you have told us exactly what a physical brain can