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From: GLD%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: minority report
Message-ID: <15683@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jan-84 12:40:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.15683
Posted: Mon Jan 16 12:40:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jan-84 06:13:44 EST
Lines: 34


     From: MAREK
     To repeat Minsky (and probably, most of the AI folk: one can
     only learn if one already almost knows it).

By "can only learn if..." do you mean "can't >soon< learn unless...", or
do you mean "can't >ever< learn unless..."?

If you mean "can't ever learn unless...", then the statement has the Platonic
implication that a person at infancy must "already almost know" everything she
is ever to learn.  This can't be true for any reasonable sense of "almost
know".

If you mean "can't soon learn unless...", then by "almost knows X", do you
intend:

 o a narrow interpretation, by which a person almost knows X only if she
   already has knowledge which is a good approximation to understanding X--
   eg, she can already answer simpler questions about X, or can answer
   questions about X, but with some confusion and error; or
 o a broader interpretation, which, in addition to the above, counts as
   "almost knowing X" a situation where a person might be completely in the
   dark about X-- say, unable to answer any questions about X-- but is on the
   verge of becoming an instant expert on X, say by discovering (or by being
   told of) some easy-to-perform mapping which reduces X to some other,
   already-well-understood domain.

If you intend the narrow interpretation, then the claim is false, since people
can (sometimes) soon learn X in the manner described in the broad-
interpretation example.  But if you intend the broad interpretation, then the
statement expands to "one can't soon learn X unless one's current knowledge
state is quickly transformable to include X"-- which is just a tautology.

So, if this analysis is right, the statement is either false, or empty.