Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekcrl!brucec From: brucec@phoebus.phoebus.labs.tek.com (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: Penrose Penrose Penrose Penrose Penrose... Message-ID: Date: 30 Jul 90 18:42:01 GMT References: <6663@helios.TAMU.EDU> Sender: news@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM Distribution: comp.sys.neural-nets Organization: Tektronix Inc. Lines: 26 In-reply-to: jsaxon@cs.tamu.edu's message of 18 Jul 90 15:25:27 GMT In article <6663@helios.TAMU.EDU> jsaxon@cs.tamu.edu (James B Saxon) writes: ... > > I'm going to leave these points unsubstantiated for now. If > there's no argument, great. But, I wish to point out that we > mustn't let creations like this go unanswered! This deserves > a major rebuttal. It's up to us to not let the world continue > thinking "Computers can only do what their programmers tell > them to do." We must educate the people. > > Who is with me? There has already been an excellent rebuttal in the form of an open letter from Hans Moravec, of the CMU Robotics Institute. I saw it on the USENET nanotech news group in February, and I believe it got fairly wide distribution at the time. It's fairly long, so I won't re-post it here. It's not necessary to make a jihad out of this debate; we may (and I do) think that Penrose' position is wrong-headed, but the best way to deal with this is to a) convince him of this with rational discourse, or b) prove him incorrect with our work. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077