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From: ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: The Library! -- Possible Future History
Message-ID: <4043@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 3-Dec-83 17:31:16 EST
Article-I.D.: rocheste.4043
Posted: Sat Dec  3 17:31:16 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Dec-83 09:23:28 EST
References: <4114@uiucdcs.UUCP>, <1095@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 33

Don't forget--the ancient Greeks felt that the right way
to find out about the nature of the universe was to think and reason
about it, NOT to do experiments. Thus, they thought heavier bodies
fell faster, etc.  Our modern "scientific method" says the opposite.
Can we tie this in with the idea of looking something up in the Library?
I suspect the important thing, from the point of view of the
intelligence and creativity of the civilization, is how the information
in the library is perceived.  

There is bound to be a combination of raw observational data,
statistical and other data which comes from analysis of the
raw data, and theories (and "laws") explaining them. This applies to
the physical sciences as well as the social sciences, and could even
spill over into art, literature, religion, etc.
Example--one of the arguments about capital punishment is whether it
deters crime. Given several billion years of data on crime rates in
various civilizations and species, you could do a huge regression 
analysis on things like penal codes, affluence levels, etc., 
and find the (statistical) causes of crime under various circumstances
for various types of beings.  How valid are these results in predicting
future behavior?

The upshot is--do the library users ask the library computers for
alternative hypotheses and their likelihood of being correct,
or do they ask for the most likely answer, or do they
ask for "the ANSWER" and assume it is absolutely and forever true?

Excuse me if some of this has already been addressed in the 
books in question. I haven't read them yet.


Mike Ciaraldi
ciaraldi@rochester