che" that "Polly Nomial" has in the R-media. My suggestion is that someone, even the original author of "Polly Nomial", come with a competing story, and throw it into the replicative media (electronic mail, bulletin boards, and copy machines) and see what happens. [Someday there will be AI (or other buzzword) systems to translate documents into alternative styles, with or without semantic modification to accentuate particular effects such as puns and alliteration. We will then be able to produce as many variants of the Poly Nomial style as we wish -- but will no longer have any interest in doing so. Such is the nature of art. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed 27 Mar 85 01:40:39-CST From: CL.SHANKAR@UTEXAS-20.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Constructive Type Theory (UTexas) Colloquium: David Turner, Wed. Mar. 27, Pai 3.14, 4PM Title: Constructive type theory as a programming language Abstract: Constructive type theory is a formal logic and set theory which has been developed by Per Martin-Lof as a foundation for constructive (or "intuitionist") mathematics. Curiously, it can also be read as a (strongly typed) functional programming language, with a number of unusual properties, including that well-typed programs always terminate. The talk will give an overview of the main ideas in constructive type theory from the point of view of someone trying to use it as a programming language. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 26 Mar 85 10:26:09-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Conference - Commercial AI Forum I have received literature touting the Gartner Group's first annual forum on AI, Commercial Artificial Intelligence: Myths and Realities, May 20-22, Century Plaza Hotel, 2025 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles. The $800 seminar ($700 with payment by March 31) consists of a couple of talks and a series of panels by knowledgeable executives and corporate officers. Topics include AI in computer operations, manufacturing, financial services, office information systems, user interfaces, personal computers, and specialized hardware, as well as management and investment. For more information, contact Ashley Pearce, (203) 967-6757, Gartner Group, Inc., P.O. Box 10212, Stamford, CT 06904. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From csvpi@vpics1.VPI Sat Mar 30 20:42:33 1985 Date: Sat, 30 Mar 85 20:42:26 est From: csvpi@vpics1.VPI Return-Path: csvpi@vpics1.VPI To: fox@opus (JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX) Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Status: R Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a008853; 30 Mar 85 1:37 EST Received: from SRI-AI.ARPA by SRI-AI.ARPA with TCP; Fri 29 Mar 85 21:32:44-PST Date: Fri 29 Mar 1985 21:06-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #42 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Sat, 30 Mar 85 20:36 EST AIList Digest Saturday, 30 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: Administrivia - AIList Mailboxes, Applications - Chemistry AI Expert Systems & Spelling Check Algorithms & Planning in a Dynamic Environment & Associative Processing, Help Wanted - AI Lecturer, AI Tools - MacIntosh Lisp, Games - GO, Recent Articles - Expert System Shells & Survey, Linguistics - Development of Pidgin, Creole, and NL, Description - Edinburgh Intelligent Knowledge Based Designer System, Conference - Workshop on Expert Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 29 Mar 85 09:51:10-PST From: Ken Laws Reply-to: AIList-Request@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: AIList Mailboxes I have recently been getting many messages in inappropriate mailboxes. In most cases I can deduce the sender's intention and forward to the appropriate mailbox, but it would be a help to me if readers would observe the following convention: AIList@SRI-AI.ARPA - Submissions for broadcast to the list. AIList-Request@SRI-AI.ARPA - Messages related to list administration or policy, for private reply. Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA - Messages unrelated to AIList policy. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 85 12:38:12 EST From: Morton A Hirschberg Subject: Request for chemistry AI expert systems I am looking for information about expert systems in chemistry. More specifically, documentation if any exists, such as rules or flow charts. They need not be in the public domain. Of course, more information is better (prices for commercial stuff). Thanks. Mort [Some of the famous systems are Stanford's DENDRAL and META-DENDRAL for mass spectrometry and NMR analysis, SUNY(Stonybrook)'s SYNCHEM system for chemical synthesis, Stanford's MOLGEN and GA1 for DNA analysis and synthesis, Stanford's CRYSALIS for protein crystallography, UCSC's SECHS for chemical synthesis, and Rand's SPILLS for locating and identifying chemical spills. I don't know which of these are commercial systems, though IntelliCorp (formerly IntelliGenetics) has derived commercial systems from some of them. For rules and other info I would suggest that you do a search of the chemical literature or contact the universities for technical reports; the AI conference proceedings and journals would discuss mostly the data structures and reasoning methods. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 03/28/85 13:34:17 From: ADIS@MIT-MC Subject: Spelling Check Algorithms [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] Does anyone know of some good references for spelling checking algorithms? Human or written references acceptable. Andy diSessa (ADIS@MC) [Check the following from Communications of the ACM: J.L. Peterson, Computer Programs for Detecting and Correcting Spelling Errors, Vol. 23, No. 12, Dec. 1980, pp. 676-687. Replys in Vol. 24, No. 5, May 1981, pp. 322 and 331-332; Vol. 24, No. 9, Sep. 1981, pp. 608-609; and Vol. 25, No. 3, Mar. 1982, pp. 220-221. P. Robinson and D. Singer, Another Spelling Correction Program, Vol. 24, No. 5, May 1981, pp. 296-297, followed by R. Nix, Experience witha Space Efficient Way to Store a Dictionary, pp. 297-298. Replys in Vol. 24, No. 9, Sep. 1981, pp. 618-619 [from a pseudonymous Joaquin Miller], and Vol. 25, No. 2, Feb. 1982, p. 159. M. Mor and A.S. Fraenkel, A Hash Code Method for Detecting and Correcting Spelling Errors, Vol. 25, No. 12, Dec. 1982, pp. 935-938. D.J. Dodds, Reducing Dictionary Size by Using a Hashing Technique, Vol. 25, No. 6, June 1982, pp. 368-370. J.J. Pollock and A. Zamora, Automatic Spelling Correction in Scientific and Scholarly Text, Vol. 27, No. 4, Apr. 1984, pp. 358-368. These papers provide references to dozens of others. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 85 08:57:42 pst From: coates%usc-liddy%usc-cse.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: World models for Planning in a Dynamic Environment Does anyone know of research on representation scemes for world knowledge that facilitate planning for an agent which actually executes in a dynamic domain? I am interested in modelling an agents ability to detect anomalies iplan due to unexpected results during plan execution. Additional complications in plan enactment may occur if the world contains other agents whose behavior is unpredictable. If anyone can recommend papers on appropriate knowledge representations and/or methods for anomally detection in dynamic worlds contact me at: COATES%USC-liddy@USC-CSE.CSNET [I have sent a copy of Les Gasser's reference list. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Fri 29 Mar 85 16:14:33-PST From: MOHAN@USC-ECLC.ARPA Subject: Associative Processing I am working on identifying system software requirements for an array processor (based on associative processing and cellulaer array processing). The processor is to be used primarily for Artificial Intelligence and Image Undersatnding tasks. Main system software requirements would be in the area of a suitable language, its compiler and an operating system. (A host computer is assumed to be attatched to this processor). Some pointers to relevant work and literature will be welcome. Please send mail to me or to AIList. Thanks. Rakesh Mohan ARPA- mohan@eclc US Mail- Rm #224 Powell Hall University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90007. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 85 21:23:43 pst From: jeff@aids-unix (Jeff Dean) Subject: wanted: travelling AI lecturer I've just received a request from someone at California State Polytechnic (in San Luis Obispo) for a lecture on "AI" (yes, that provides considerable leeway). Unfortunately, San Luis is a little out of the way for most of us, being halfway between SF and LA (a four hour drive from either place). However, if there are any ("qualified") folks out there who might be interested in making a presentation, please let me know. Thanks... P.S. There is no expiration date on this opportunity, but the presentation should be given during the school year. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 29 Mar 85 09:18:40-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: MacIntosh Lisp I have heard a rumor that Expertelligence of Santa Barbara has now come out with their version of a Maclisp/Commonlisp for the 512K MacIntosh, priced just below $500. I haven't checked it out, but (805) 969-7871 was given as the phone number for more information. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 29 Mar 1985 0555-PST From: MEYERS%UCI-20A@UCI-ICSA Subject: game of GO In response to a query about Go programs: Wilcox, Bruce and Walter Reitman The Structure and Performance of the Interim.2 Go Program. IJCAI, 1979. pp.711-719. Address: University of Michigan 205 Washtenaw Place Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 Unfortunately, this is the most recent work I know of; it references most other work. Theirs is a long-term, conceptual approach. Also: David J H Brown Hierarchical Reasoning in the Game of Go. IJCAI, 1979. pp.114-116. Address: Computer Science Department Teesside Polytechnic Middlesborough, Cleveland, England Good luck! Amnon Meyers (meyers @ uci) (2-dan) ------------------------------ Date: 29 Mar 1985 09:52-EST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles - Expert System Shells Infoworld April 1, 1985 page 46 Volume 7 no 13 There is a review of a revised version of "Expert Ease." This is a system which sets up a classification system based upon examples given by the user. Many feel that it is not a true "AI" system but rather a decision table development tool that is being marketed by people as an AI system for the purposes of making a fast buck. It is has dropped in price from $2,000 to $695.00 and is being marketed by Human Edge Software. The ratings are: two out of a possible four diskettes performance: good documentation: fair ease of use: good error handling: excellent support: good ____________________________________________________________________________ Electronics Week, March 25, 1985 page 35 NIXDORF has announced an expert system shell which runs on its 32-bit minicomputer, the 8832. The cost is $47,00 at current exchange rates. Nixdorf is also selling a system called Twaice which is designed to build expert systems to help diagnose malfunctioning objects. There is also a joint venture between the British Racal Electroinics and Norway's Norsk data selling an expert system shell. Matra S. A. is selling an AI system for military training. Also there are a few paragraphs on GCLisp's Golden Common Lisp. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 1985 18:10-EST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles - Survey ComputerWorld March 18, 1985 "Engineers behind Expert Systems" A reprint from Patel Harmon, Dave King "AI in business" ____________________________________________________________________________ JACM Vol 32 no 1 Jan 1985 1 Three Approaches to Heuristic Search in Networks A. Bagchi and A. Mahanti 28 And/Or Graph Heuristic Search methods ____________________________________________________________________________ IEEE Trans on Industrial Electronics Vol 32 No 1 Feb 85 Design and Implementation of a Binocular-Vision System for Locating Footholds on a Multi-Legged Walking Robot F. Ozguner S. J. Tsai Page 26 ____________________________________________________________________________ ComputerWorld March 25 1985 Page 11 Usefulness of micro expert systems called limited ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Mar 85 18:40 CDT From: Patrick_Duff Subject: Development of Nat. Langs., Pidgin, Creole, Lang. Trans/Unders/Gener. I have a newspaper clipping which quotes Dr. Laurence McNamee, a linquistics professor at East Texas State University, as follows: "Theories on the origin of language became so rife and so romantic that in 1886 the Linguistic Society of Paris passed a resolution outlawing any more theories on this topic, a resolution that has since been reaffirmed. "The truth is that scholars simply do not know how languages developed because they have never observed one develop. We have seen many languages die, and recently even witnessed the rebirth of a language (Hebrew), but never a language from its initial stage." Can anyone elaborate on the resolutions and why the issue came up? Derek Bickerton writes in "Creole Languages" (Scientific American, July 1983, pages 116-122) that new languages have developed... "... many times over the past 500 years among the children of slaves and laborers who were pressed into service by the European colonial powers. "These laborers, who were shipped from many parts of the world to tend and harvest crops in Africa, the Indian Ocean region, the Orient, the Caribbean and Hawaii, were obliged to communicate within their polygot community by means of the rudimentary speech system called pidgin. Pidgin speech is extremely impoverished in syntax and vocabulary, but for the children born into the colonial community it was the only common language available. From these modest beginnings, new native languages evolved among the children, which are generically called creole languages. It can be shown that they exhibit the complexity, nuance and expressive power universally found in the more established languages of the world." "... scholars have noted a remarkable similarity of structure among all the creole languages. It can now be demonstrated, by considering the origin of creole language in Hawaii, that similarities among creoles cannot be accounted for by contact with other languages, either indigenous or imported. The finding suggests that what is common to creole languages may indeed form the basis of the acquisition of language by children everywhere. There is now an impressive body of evidence to support this hypothesis: between the ages of two and four the child born into a community of linguistically competent adults speaks a variety of language whose structure bears a deep resemblance to the structure of creole languages...." Besides recommending that interested parties read this Scientific American article, I'm curious about whether it would be useful to use a creole language as an intermediate language for translation, what "pidgin speech" with its "impoverished syntax and vocabulary" could tell us about how to design command languages for computer systems, whether the current state-of-the-art in natural language parsers and generators are up to the task of using pidgin or creole, etc.. After looking at some of the sample sentences in the article, it seems to me that it would be easier for a computer program to generate or understand a sentence in Pidgin or Hawaiian Creole than it would be for it to handle the English equivalent. regards, Patrick Patrick S. Duff, ***CR 5621*** pduff.ti-eg@csnet-relay 5049 Walker Dr. #91103 214/480-1905 (work) The Colony, TX 75056-1120 214/370-5363 (home) (a suburb of Dallas, TX) ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 29-Mar-85 17:06:35-GMT From: GIDEON FH (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Edinburgh Intelligent Knowledge Based Designer System UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH DEPARTMENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Alvey Large Scale Demonstrator Project "Design to Product" at the University of Edinburgh: The Alvey Directorate have awarded a major contract to a consortium of companies and universities: GEC Electrical Projects, GEC Marconi Research Centre, GEC Avionics, Lucas CAV, the National Engineering Laboratory and Edinburgh, Leeds and Loughborough Universities. The part of the project to be carried out at Edinburgh will involve the development of a novel Intelligent Knowledge Based Designer System. This Designer System will enable a design engineer to communicate interactively the conceptual function and form of a design, and to interface the resulting product description to a manufacturing capability. It will be implemented in POP-11, Prolog and Lisp, running in the Poplog environment, under the UNIX operating system. Further information is also to be had from tims%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa. If you are interested and have questions, don't hesitate to ask them. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 85 18:03:46 cst From: porter@anl-mcs (Porter) Subject: Workshop on Expert Systems Workshop on Knowledge Engineering/Expert Systems The twenty-fourth annual workshop sponsored by the Western Committee of the IEEE Computer Society will be held September 4- 6, 1985 at the UCLA Conference Center at Lake Arrowhead. The subject of the workshop is: "Knowledge Engineering: How?" Sessions are planned on knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, inferencing strategies, and programming environments. Topics of discussion include the following: Are there domain- specific approaches to knowledge acquisition? How can an expert system tell when it is in an area outside of its competence? What is the best way to choose inference strategies? How much can expert system builders help? How important are user models? How does one deal with the uniqueness of an expert's knowledge? How do questions of acquisition relate to representation and inference strategies? Due to the limited facilities, attendence will be by invitation. People working in the knowledge engineering and expert systems area are encouraged to contact the program chairperson, Greg Kearsley, Courseware, Inc., 10075 Carroll Canyon Road, San Diego, Ca 92131, (619) 578-1700 or the general chairperson, Sig Porter, Merdan Group, Inc. 4617 Ruffner Street, Box 17098, San Diego, CA 92117 (619-571-8565). (note: Greg will be out of communication until about April 20, and Sig will also be unreachable until April 8.) ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From comsat@vpics1 Tue Apr 2 04:06:40 1985 Date: Tue, 2 Apr 85 04:06:30 est From: comsat@vpics1.VPI To: fox@opus (JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX) Subject: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Status: R Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a001294; 1 Apr 85 16:23 EST Date: Mon 1 Apr 1985 09:39-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #43 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Tue, 2 Apr 85 03:58 EST AIList Digest Monday, 1 Apr 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 43 Today's Topics: Expert Systems - EURISKO & DENDRAL/META-DENDRAL & OPS5 for PCs, News - MCC's Bob Inman named to SWB's board of directors, Symbolic Math - Functionals, Meeting - NAIL Journal Club, Seminars - Plans and Situated Actions (UCB) & Models in Syllogistic Reasoning (CSLI) & Programming Descriptive Analogies by Example (MIT) & Functional Role Semantics (CSLI) & NL Understanding and Generation (CMU) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat 30 Mar 85 18:18:45-PST From: Lee Altenberg Subject: EURISKO Does anyone know who in the Stanford area is actively working with EURISKO, if anyone, now that Doug Lenat is in Texas? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Apr 85 09:02:48 mst From: cib@LANL.ARPA (C.I. Browne) Subject: DENDRAL/META-DENDRAL Can anyone tell me where either source or object code for DENDRAL and META-DENDRAL may be obtained? SUMEX advises that they no longer either support or distribute the program, and refer me to Molecular Design Limited. While that company markets several interesting programs, neither DENDRAL nor META-DENDRAL is among them. It would be a pity if such programs have disappeared from the scene and become unavailable to sites wishing to include them in an AI library. Thank you. cib ------------------------------ Date: 30 March 1985 1049-EST From: Peter Pirolli@CMU-CS-A Subject: OPS5 for PCs I just received a flyer for a language called TOPSI which is supposed to be an OPS5 clone developed for CP/M and MS-DOS machines. Here are some quotes from the flyer: "TOPSI has the full power of the original language PLUS extensions to improve its computational and list management capabilities. Usage of memory and computer time is optimized for use on home computers." "TOPSI rule are written in a simple, legible form and compiled into a memory-efficient data structure enabling fast execution." "TOPSI's rule base and data base can be saved separately allowing a system to be exercised easilty with different data sets." "TOPSI is available on 5 1/4 in diskettes for 65k CP/M systems or MS-DOS with at least 128k of memory. It comes complete with a users manual, example programs, a tutorial section on writing your own production systems, and a 30 day warranty." The company is: Dynamic Master Systems Inc. P.O. Box 566456 Atlanta, GA 30356 [404] 565-0771 ------------------------------ Date: Sat 30 Mar 85 15:21:43-CST From: Werner Uhrig Subject: MCC's Bob Inman named to SWB's board of directors [ from the Austin American Statesman - March 30, 1985 ] Bob Inman, chairman and chief executive officer of MCC has been elected to the board of directors of Southwestern Bell Corp. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Mar 85 09:48:24 PST From: "David G. Cantor" Subject: If f(f(x)) = x^2 - 2, what is f(x)? [Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.] Q: "Can a computer solve the query: "If f(f(x)) = x^2 - 2, what is f(x)? If so, how?" [This question was forwarded to the Prolog Digest a few weeks ago by Nils Nilsson. -- KIL] The solution is essentially contained in the article by Michael Restivo in the March 20 issue of Prolog Digest. The nth Tchebycheff Polynomial may be defined as n n T (x) = u + v , n where u = (x + d)/2, v = (x - d)/2, with d = sqrt(x * x - 4). It is easy to check that, when n is an integer, the powers of d cancel and hence that the above functions are really are polynomials. These polynomials satisify numerous identities. The pertinent one here is that T (T (x)) = T (x) . m n m * n This can be verified by elementary algebra (note that u * v = 1). It holds certainly for all complex numbers m and n, subject to choosing appropriate branches of the mth and nth power as well as the square root, in the complex plane. The function f(x) = T (x) sqrt(2) then satisfies f(f(x)) = T (T (x)) sqrt(2) sqrt(2) = T (x) sqrt(2) * sqrt(2) = T (x) 2 = x * x - 2, and hence solves the original problem. As to how a computer could solve this: It need only search the mathematical literature to find a paper by Michael Fried giving all solutions to the functional equation (due to Issai Schur): F (F (x)) = F (x) . m n m * n Fried shows that, under very general conditions, the solutions are either n F (x) = x or F (x) = T (x) , n n n as given above. The computer then need only recognize that the given function f(x) = T (x) . 2 Alternatively it could recognize the latter first, and be led to study identities of the Tchebycheff polynomials. -- David G. Cantor ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 85 12:13:39 pst From: Jeff Ullman Subject: NAIL! (Not another implementation of Logic!) Journal Club [Forwarded from the Stanford BBoard by Laws@SRI-AI.] There is a meeting of people interested in implementation of database systems with a "knowledge" component, i.e., a logical language providing access to a database. We primarily read and present papers, and present our own ideas on the subject. The first Spring meeting is 1PM Weds. 4/3, in 252MJH, and subsequent meetings are Wednesdays, 11AM in 301MJH. You can get on the nail list by mailing to mailer@diablo a message with *subject heading* add to nail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 85 14:45:45 pst From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Plans and Situated Actions (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B TIME: Tuesday, April 2, 11 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center (followed by) DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: Lucy Suchman, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Xerox PARC TITLE: ``Plans and Situated Actions: the problem of human-machine communication'' Researchers in Cognitive Science view the organization and significance of action as derived from plans, which are prere- quisite to and prescribe action at whatever level of detail one might imagine. Mutual intelligibility on this view is a matter of the recognizability of plans, due to common conventions for the expression of intent, and common knowledge about typical situations and appropriate actions. An alternative view, drawn from recent work in social science, treats plans as derived from situated actions. Situated actions as such comprise necessarily ad hoc responses to the actions of others and to the contingencies of particular situations. Rather than depend upon the reliable recognition of intent, successful interaction consists in the collaborative production of intelligibility through mutual access to situation resources, and through the detection, repair or exploitation of differences in understand- ing. As common sense formulations designed to accomodate the unforseeable contingencies of situated action, plans are inherently vague. Researchers interested in machine intelli- gence attempt to remedy the vagueness of plans, to make them the basis for artifacts intended to embody intelligent behavior, including the ability to interact with their human users. I examine the problem of human-machine interaction through a case study of people using a machine designed on the planning model, and intended to be intelligent and interactive. A conversation analysis of "interactions" between users and the machine reveals that the machine's insensitivity to particular circumstances is both a central design resource, and a funda- mental limitation. I conclude that problems in Cognitive Science's theorizing about purposeful action as a basis for machine intelligence are due to the project of substituting plans for actions, and representations of the situation of action for action's actual circumstances. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 27 Mar 85 17:18:44-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - Models in Syllogistic Reasoning (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, April 4, 1985 2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar Redwood Hall ``Manipulating Models in Syllogistic Reasoning'' Room G-19 Marilyn Ford, CSLI Discussion leader to be announced Johnson-Laird has argued that reasoners do not use formed rules of inference in solving problems involving syllogistic reasoning, but rather that they come to a solution by manipulating mental models. I will show that while this certainly appears to be true, a number of details of Johnson-Laird's theory appear to be incorrect. An alternative theory will be presented. --Marilyn Ford ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 1985 12:06 EST (Thu) From: "Daniel S. Weld" Subject: Seminar - Programming Descriptive Analogies by Example (MIT) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] AI REVOLVING SEMINAR Programming Descriptive Analogies By Example Henry Lieberman Before making programs that can perform analogies by themselves, we can attack the more modest goal of being able to communicate to the computer an analogy which is already understood by a person. I will describe a system for "programming by analogy", called Likewise. This new approach to interactive knowledge acquisition works by presenting specific examples and pointing out what aspects of the examples illustrate the more general case. The system constructs a general rule which abstracts out the important aspects so the rule can be applied to "analogous" examples. Given a new example, the system can then construct an analogy with the old example by trying to instantiate analogous descriptions which correspond to the descriptions constructed for the first example. If a new example doesn't fit an old concept exactly, a concept can be generalized or specialized incrementally to make the analogy go through. The operation of the analogy system on a typical concept learning task is presented in detail. Tuesday April 2, 1985 4:00pm 8th floor playroom ------------------------------ Date: Wed 27 Mar 85 17:18:44-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - Functional Role Semantics (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, April 4, 1985 4:15 p.m. CSLI Colloquium Redwood Hall ``Two Cheers for Functional Role Semantics'' Room G-19 Ned Block, Massachusetts Institute of Technology There are two quite different frameworks for semantics: REDUCTIONIST approaches attempt to characterize the semantic in non-semantic terms. NON-REDUCTIONIST approaches are more concerned with relations among meaningS than with the nature of meaning itself. The non-reductionist approaches are the more familiar ones (eg., Montague, the model-theoretic aspect of situation semantics, Davidson, Katz). The reductionist approaches come in 4 major categories: 1. Theories that reduce meaning to the mental. (This is what is common to Grice and Searle.) 2. Causal semantics--theories that see semantic values as derived from causal chains leading from the world to our words. 3. Indicator semantics--theories that see natural and non-natural meaning as importantly similar. The paradigm of meaning is the way the rings on the tree stump represent the age of the tree when cut down. (Dretske/Stampe, and, in my view, though not in Barwise and Perry's, Situations and Attitudes) 4. Functional role semantics--theories that see meaning in terms of the functional role of linguistic expressions in thought, reasoning, and planning, and in general in the way they mediate between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. After sketching the difference between the reductionist and non- reductionist approaches, I will focus on functional role semantics, a view that has independently arisen in philosophy (where its sources are Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use, and pragmatism) and cognitive science (where it is known as procedural semantics). I will concentrate on what theories in this framework can DO, e.g., illuminate acquisition of and knowledge of meaning, principles of charity, how meaning is relevant to explanation of behavior, the intrinsic/observer-relative distinction, the relation between meaning and the brain, and the relativity of meaning to representational system. The point is to give a sense of the fertility and power of the view, and so to provide a rationale for working on solutions to its problems. Finally, I will sketch some reasons to prefer functional role semantics to the other reductionist theories. A copy of a paper which the talk draws on will be in the Ventura reading room. --Ned Block ------------------------------ Date: 29 March 1985 1352-EST From: Theona Stefanis@CMU-CS-A Subject: Seminar - NL Understanding and Generation (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Name: NL Seminar Date: 3 April Time: 11:00-12:00 Place: WeH 7220 The Janus System: Coordinating Understanding and Generation Norman K. Sondheimer USC/Information Science Institute Technology for natural language understanding and generation differs significantly. In cases where they have both been employed in the same system, the results have been an impression of a system that could not understand what it could say. As part of ARPA's Strategic Computing Initiative, researchers at USC/Information Sciences Institute and Bolt Beranek and Newman have begun the design of a system that may be able to avoid these problem. The system employs the ATN parsing, KL-ONE based semantic interpretation, and the NIGEL systemic grammar generator. Much of the integration of understanding and generation will come from a large domain knowledge base developed in the NIKL (New Implementation of KL-One) knowledge representation language. This talk will be a short, informal look at the goals of the effort and the system's initial design. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From csvpi@vpics1 Tue Apr 2 04:11:40 1985 Date: Tue, 2 Apr 85 04:11:30 est From: csvpi@vpics1.VPI To: fox@opus (JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX) Subject: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Status: R Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a004031; 2 Apr 85 3:09 EST Date: Mon 1 Apr 1985 22:47-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #44 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Tue, 2 Apr 85 04:00 EST AIList Digest Tuesday, 2 Apr 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 44 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Sexism in English, Opinion - Sexism in AIList, Psychology - Imprinting & Humor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Mar 1985 1952-PST (Sunday) From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Hofstadter on sexism in the English language [Forwarded from net.women by Miriam Blatt .] [Excerpted from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The most interesting work of writing I have seen on sexism in the English language is by Douglas Hofstadter (writing under the name William Satire) and is called "A Person Paper on Purity in Language". It can be found in his wonderful book "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern". Hofstadter is strongly in favor of removing sexism from our language and writes about it in this paper using biting sarcasm. Included at the end of this message is an excerpt from the paper (included without permission -- I don't think Hofstadter would object). Doug Alan mit-eddie!nessus Nessus@MIT-MC [I presume that this message is socially acceptable and of some relevance to an AIList issue on the psychology of sexism. It has to do with AI only in that it touches on linguistics and psychology and was written by Doug Hofstadter, so I have reduced the extract to a single representative paragraph. Anyone thinking of replying to this message should bear in mind that sexist language was discussed for many months in Human-Nets a couple of years ago; I am unaware of any single issue resolved by the debate. -- KIL] Most of the clamor, as you certainly know by now, revolves around the age-old usage of the noun "white" and words built from it, such as "chairwhite", "mailwhite", "repairwhite", "clergywhite", "middlewhite", "Frenchwhite", "forwhite", "whitepower", "whiteslaughter", "oneupswhiteship", "straw white", "whitehandle", and so on. The negrists claim that using the word "white", either in on its own or as a component, to talk about *all* the members of the human species is somehow degrading to blacks and reinforces racism. Therefore the libbers propose that we substitute "person" everywhere where "white" now occurs. Sensitive speakers of our secretary tongue of course find this preposterous. There is great beauty to a phrase such as "All whites are created equal." Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Indepedence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say "All persons are created equal.", or "All whites and blacks are created equal." Besides, as any schoolwhitey can tell you, such phrases are redundant. In most contexts, it is self-evident when "white" is being used in an inclusive sense, in which case it subsumes members of the darker race just as much as fairskins. [...] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 85 21:54:10 est From: BostonU SysMgr Subject: Sexism, censorship and degrees of reaction I have resisted thus far but now I give in to an opinion on the Sexist Joke issue: I for one am offended by such public displays of locker-room humour. On the other hand, I am offended by censorship. The obvious solution to such a situation like this comes from the realization that one cannot utilize as powerful and hard to apply instrument as the 'law' for obnoxious and 'potentially' dangerous behavior (the law is always very cautious when words like potentially have to be used.) The 'law' I equate here with the moderator being asked to filter such jokes. The error comes from the desire for authoritative revenge, either from the police or a moderator. In a situatiion like this you are quite powerful enough as human beings to correct this situation. I simply suggest that it be left at the level of: 1. If something offends you tell the offender and, if appropriate, the net audience. 2. Remember the individual involved. Next time something comes up about that person you will know their character is probably suspect, or at the very least, their sense of judgement. I for one would feel severely punished if someone so seriously suspected my character. An entire audience like this would be crushing. Never doubt your power as a human being, nor that the power of your words and opinions are at least as powerful as the ones that offended you. Don't look so quickly to others for solutions. [Before the flames start I am not advocating this for something like a violent act like rape...call the cops and have the beast caged, they're paid to do that.] -Barry Shein, Boston University I ain't afraid o' no paradox ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 85 12:18:15 PST (Thu) From: Jeff Peck Subject: linguistics, humor, the subconsicious, pathogenic 'memes' The meta-message of pollynomials... The humor (if any) in this story is based on the differences between the syntactic level (mathematical language) and the semantic level (a story about rape). This story allows one to write, publish, and read this story and always say, in the back of the mind (at the other level) "this only a play on mathematical terms", and therefore one can talk about, think about, accept and even enjoy this story about violent rape without having to expose oneself as a sexist psychopath; it is (was) socially acceptable. Now, there are some people who don't yet understand why this story is objectionable, they see it as just a harmless little play with words. And perhaps those people really are not tuned into hearing it at its true semantic level. That is no excuse, because the semantic message of the story can still be learned subconsciously. [There is a second level of meaning which says "it is ok to write, publish, and read this type of material without comment, under the guise of 'humor'."] The objectionable elements of this story center around the rape myths which are expressed quite blatently. These myths are: "She wanted to get raped", "She deserved to get raped", "She had no choice but to allow the rape", "She enjoyed getting raped", "The rapist is not to be blamed", "The rapist is to be admired". And the moral of the story states quite clearly that rape and fear of rape should be used to control freedom. For those who contend that stories such as these are really harmless, please consider this: The story was written to be harmless mathematical/linguistic humor, and yet, all these myths are expressed in the story, without even trying; obviously THE AUTHORS KNEW ALL THESE MYTHS, AT LEAST AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL. And I suspect that they did not pick them up in a textbook or a course on rape myths; THEY WERE LEARNED BY READING OR HEARING STORIES JUST LIKE THIS! And now, a few words about humor and censorship. As I mentioned above, the humor (socio-linguistic survival value) of this story is based on the switching between levels of meaning. The masquerade of mathematical/linguistic wordplay allows this story to easily enter the social--literary--cognitive system. (and it is a masquerade, just try publishing this under the subject line: "rape humor"). A vivid analogy comes to mind; this story (and others like it) interact with the system much as a virus interacts with biological systems. [This analogy is similar to the "memes" presented in Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene"] The story is wrapped in a double protective cover of humor and mathematics so it can slip past the usual antibodies of sensitivity or sensability. But underneath this coating is a cognitive "DNA sequence" (meme) which when injected into and nutured by the host, produces attitudes and behaviours which protect and perpetuate both the pathogen (the story) and the disease (rape and fear). Those who are surpised by the flaming about the publication of this story, perhaps don't realize that over the past twenty years, parts of our societal organism have developed antibodies for this particular virus. So, should it be published? Maybe, but not as humor; it should be quoted (mention vs use) as an example of vicious pseudo-humor. If must always be presented in the context of its reality, its disguise must be removed. The alternative is to publish it naively, and as in the case of the AIList, it may become a relatively innocuous "vaccine". The flurry of commentary is, in fact, nothing more or less than the swarming of antibodies to this virus, to engulf it, and label it as the pathogen that it is. And now, maybe a larger segment of the population will be able to detect the antigens of rape myths. There are those who will fight for the rights of viruses to reproduce and otherwise express themselves, but in this case, I think it can be shown that the organism as a whole will be healthier if this infection can be eradicated. Jeff Peck (peck@sri-spam) PostScript: For those who still claim that Polly Nomial is not a story about rape, please reread the first paragraph: "our heroine is accosted by villain..." Even without this statement of the plot, anyone who refuses to accept that this is a story about rape is simply failing to acknowledge the distinction between syntax and semantics, the use of allegory and metaphor. This story was not generated just by conjoining mathematical phrases, it was clearly written to use all those phases to describe a rape. That is an important point, this story did not spring from the pen (or keyboard) of "anonymous", it was written by a person, or more likely, a team of persons, who thought that it would be funny. This story reflects the attitudes and enlightenment of those people at that time, in that society; and they clearly believed that rape was humorous, justifiable [!!! -- KIL], etc. In today's society such attitudes must be exposed and identified as sick. [Very cleverly put, but under the syntactic sugar is a questionable premise: that anyone who enjoyed reading the story (even if female?) is a "sexist psychopath". I found humor in the word play and novel semantic mappings in spite of the subject matter; perhaps I am just more sensitive to linguistic patterns than to social concerns, at least in the intellectual context of AIList peer discussion -- that doesn't mean I'm "sick" (I hope). I think there is general agreement that the plot of the item (as opposed to its "message" or "intention", perhaps) concerned rape, that rape is abhorrent and a serious social problem and not a joking matter, that any message with intent to denigrate, subjugate, or offend is offensive, that the piece had little to do with AI, that it would have been more palatable if run with a commentary discussing its linguistic merits and decrying its subject matter, and finally that it would have been better for all concerned if I had kept it out of AIList. A reasonable amount of protest, or "sensitization", was in order. That having been done, let's get back to the theme of this list. AIList is a forum for discussion of AI and information science; it has little capacity for social subversion or reform. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1985 03:11 EST From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Imprinting and Humor I don't think rape-jokes are a good idea, either. In fact this is discussed tangentially in Chapter 294 (seriously -- the chapters are only 1 page long) of my almost-finished Society of Mind book. ***************************************************** TIME-SPANS of MEMORIES Contemplate the plight of a mother with a new infant! The baby will demand her time and attention for many years -- and sometimes she may wonder why. ["Why must I do all this?" "How could this baby justify such sacrifice."] Then various answers might come to mind: ["Because it will repay you some day,"] or ["This is to carry on our race"]. But these are not the arguments that end the questioning; all cultures recognize that mother-love is far from rational. Instead, an instinctive attachment-bond is formed, which then protects itself from change. The final reason to keep nurturing that child is simply, ["Because I love it."] The problem is still a real one, and there are frequent, secret, tragedies in which a mother's frustration and strain overwhelms those attachment bonds and all the other personal pleasures and social compulsions that come with rearing a child. But rather than stray off to talk about those other matters; let's focus on the nature of the mother-child bond itself. I'll argue that it's based upon a special kind of memory. We often think of all our memories as much the same in character, and all stored in the same huge container. But certain kinds of memories [ought] to be less changeable than other kinds. For example, because human infants are so utterly dependent on their parent's sustenance, our species had to evolve attachment-bonds which last at least for several years. This is seen in many other animals as well, in the form of what psychologists call "imprinting" -- the kind of learning in which an infant animal learns to recognize its parent. These special memories are very swiftly formed -- and then they're very slow to change. It can be very difficult to get those babies to transfer their attachment to foster-parents. On the other side, there are similarly rigid constraints of parents' attachment to their babies. Many adult mammals will eject alien babies from their nests, if they have not been involved in the normal process of attachment shortly after birth. The parent-child bondage, too, forms rapidly and decays slowly. These are not our only long-persisting person-bonds. There are many animal species in which an individual will choose a mate and then remain with it for all the rest of life. Many people do that, too. And of the ones who don't do that, something rather similar instead: they keep on changing person-mates but choose from those of similar appearance or character -- as though they cannot change some underlying stereotype. And on a shorter scale of time, many persons find themselves enslaved by unwanted infatuations and one-way bonds that can't be made to go away -- because the parts of the mind which do not desire those attachments are unable to control the parts of minds which made them. It's little use to complain about this; the slowness of those memory-systems evolved to suit our ancestors' requirements, not our own. We all know, too, the seemingly inexorable time-span of mourning. It often takes a year or more to manage and accept the separation or loss of those we love. This, too, could be a product of the slowness of attachment-change. Perhaps this, too, explains the prolonged, mourning-like depression that follows sexual or other forms of personal assault. No matter that the unwelcome intimacy of violence may be brief; it nonetheless affects one's attachment machinery, however much against one's wish. And then, because those agencies are do inherently slow, recovery involves a profound and prolonged disturbance to ordinary social relations. And since that happens inside agencies we can't control, it does not help very much for the victim to view the incident "rationally" -- since that can only slowly bring those sluggish mechanisms back to their normal states. It is the worst of injuries, to lose the use of precious sections of one's mind. ------- Then a chapter on Freud's theory of jokes and censors concludes: Why does humor seems so humorous when it is actually concerned with unpleasant, painful, and disgusting subjects? There's nothing very "funny" at all about most jokes - except, perhaps, in the skill and subtlety with which their dreadful content is disguised; the joke itself is often little more than ["look at what happened to somebody else; now, aren't you glad that that wasn't you"?] The censor theory not only explains this, but also why jokes are usually not so funny when heard again. That is because, each time, those censors learn a little more, and become harder to fool. Then why do certain kinds of jokes, particularly those about forbidden sexual subjects, seem to remain persistently funny to so many people? Our theory suggests that the censors in that area area must be peculiarly inept at continuous learning: the peculiar robustness of sexual humor means that the censors of sexuality are among the "slow learners" of the mind, like retarded children. In fact, we could argue that they literally [are] retarded children -- that is, frozen remnants of our earlier selves. But why should these particular censors stay unchanged so long? We saw, in [S257B] one reason why it could be good to stop some agency from learning more, and we'll see more such arguments in [S295]. There are good reasons why our sexual censors should be slow to change their ways. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From comsat@vpics1 Wed Apr 3 04:47:08 1985 Date: Wed, 3 Apr 85 04:47:02 est From: comsat@vpics1.VPI To: fox@opus (JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX) Subject: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Status: RO Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a010698; 3 Apr 85 2:55 EST Date: Tue 2 Apr 1985 22:22-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #45 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Wed, 3 Apr 85 04:34 EST AIList Digest Wednesday, 3 Apr 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 45 Today's Topics: Administrivia - Short Vacation, Query - PRIME Installations, Games - GO, Expert Systems - Process Control & Database Systems, Opinion - Living Programs, Humor (if any) - Subjective C & Machine Forgetting, Seminars - Adaptive Algorithms (SU) & Generation of Expert Systems from Examples (Northeastern) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat 30 Mar 85 20:00:43-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Administrivia - Short Vacation Expect about a ten-day interval between this digest and the next. I'll be attending an SPIE conference, among other activities, and I haven't yet trained my computer to issue the digest automatically. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: TUE 2 APR 85 1240 MEZ From: U02F%CBEBDA3T.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (Franklin A. Davis) Subject: Any PRIME installations doing AI research? We are interested in exchanging tools, compilers, & hints with any PRIME users who see this note. Our research includes computer vision using a CAD model, robotics & collision detection, and expert systems. Please contact me directly. Thanks. -- FAD Institute for Informatics and Applied Mathematics University of Bern, Switzerland ------------------------------ Date: 2 Apr 85 09:25:08 PST (Tuesday) From: LLi.ES@XEROX.ARPA Reply-to: LLi.ES@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Re: game of GO Steve, Lester Buck at shell!buck@ut-sally.arpa sent out a fairly extensive bibliography on computer Go to Usenet net.games.go. I only have a hardcopy of that message dated 1/14/85. If you can't get in touch with him and can't get someone to retrieve that file from Usenet, I can make a copy for you. Leonard Li. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 2 Apr 85 15:30:17-CST From: David Throop Subject: Small Expert Sys & Process Control I just returned from the AIChE conference & Petroleum Exposition in Houston. I saw a single-loop process controller from Foxboro there. It's advertised as the first AI technology to come out as a commercial process control product. It's a hardwired expert system for dynamically resetting the loop control parameters. It has seven rules. Now I'm currently taking an Expert System course in which the term project involves building an ES with ~100 rules, and a 7 rules system doesn't seem that impressive. However, the competition at the show was not pooh-poohing it, at it did seem to do some pretty good level control on the demo system they'd rigged up. Research has focused on systems between 100 and 3000 rules. But I remember that working in a engineering office, people often wrote 30 line FORTRAN programs for one shot calculations, throwing the code away after we'd generated our one-time-use output. As we develop robust Expert System tools with ties to good editors and explanation facilities we may find that there are many areas where the control and decision process is best expressed (and developed) in an ES, even though the knowledge in the program fits in less than a dozen rules. These will include systems where the "expert" knowledge is not expert at all, but just well expressed in the production rule form. There was not much AI activity shown there. The process industries are very interested in the AI technology (the oil companies showed up in force at AAAI 84) but almost nothing has been published, or come out as a product package. The most obvious areas of development are AI in process design (engineering databases etc) and in process control. What seems to be holding things back? The ES packages out there don't seem to be talking to any of the engineering database formats already in place. And there are some very tough representational & computational problems to work on for process control. Expert systems would have a tough time matching the well developed supervisory programs already in place out there. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 2 Apr 85 11:49:46-PST From: MARCEL@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Living Programs It's no secret that what a body does for its living is sometimes obvious even when the body is not working at its living. After an operating systems course I was once caught behaving like a scheduler, starting longer jobs (a coffee pot) earlier and at low priority, then time-sharing my CPU between my homework, my TV and my brother. Obviously, that's a simplistic example; the effect can be much more subtle. Programming brings with it: 1. an assumption that all problems are solvable (all bugs can be "fixed"); 2. sharper programming "techniques" yield better programs sooner; 3. reason is adequate for all aspects of the task; 4. issues are polarized (the program works or it doesn't, this algorithm is or is not faster than that); 5. every functional goal can be achieved by correct analysis of conditionals in branches and loops. In short, software gives us a world which may be very complex, but in which we can still feel a sense of control denied us in day-to-day life. After all, we created the machinery in the first place. I contend that a good many of us (eg myself until a while ago) take the assumption of control away with us from our programs. This applies especially to "hackers", meaning people who spend much of their time programming as opposed to doing conceptual design first. It might apply less to AIers faced with the problem of human intelligence, though we tend to believe that machines will be intelligent someday (read: the problem is solvable, we have better languages now, and sufficient analysis will tell us what intelligence is). Question: am I right about the false sense of power; have I misdiagnosed the cause; and how much is AI the projection par excellence of this illusion? Marcel@SRI-AI (M.Schoppers) ------------------------------ Date: 1 Apr 1985 09:22-EST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles - Expert Database Systems >From the 1985 SIGMOD Conference Program, May 28 to May 31, 1985 Austin Texas May 30, 1985 4-5:30 3DP1 Panel: Expert Database Systems (Workshop Review) Chairperson Larry Herschberg May 31, 1985 9:30 - 11:00 P. M. D. Gray "Efficient Prolog Access to CODASYL and FDM Databases" J. D. Ullman "Implementation of Logical Query Languages for Databases" ------------------------------ Date: 1 Apr 1985 16:05:34 EST (Monday) From: PSN Development Subject: subjective C [Forwarded by Susan Bernstein .] Subjective C, a new programming language. Recently researchers in the computer language field have shown much interest in subject oriented languages. Subjective programming languages draw upon concepts developed in the fields of subjective probability and philosophical subjectivism to enrich the field of programming semantics. `Subjective C' is such a language based on the programming language C. Subjective C grew out of the AI concept of DWIM, or "do what I mean". The subjective C compiler infers the mood of the author of the input program based on clues contained in the comments in the program. If no comments (or verbose identifiers) are present, the programmer is judged to have insufficiently thought out his problem, i.e. to have insufficiently specified the computation to be performed. In this case a subjective diagnostic is issued, depending on the compiler's own mood. Assuming comments or other mood indicators are present, an amalgam of inference techniques drawn from various reputed-to-be-successful expert systems are used to infer the author's mood. A trivial example of a mood revealing comment with accompanying program text is the following: a = a - 1; /* add one to a */ A too simple analysis of the dichotomy between apparent meaning of the statemen