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From: REID%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Commonsense Reasoning
Message-ID: <134@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jul-84 11:18:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.134
Posted: Wed Jul 18 11:18:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Jul-84 03:17:10 EDT
Lines: 12

Regarding the Fahrenheit/Celcius problem (if 32 is 0 and 212 is 100 ...).
Even there, the "obvious" answer is only obvious due to cultural
biases.  A computer might indeed solve the problem without "blinking an
LED," but the answer it would likely to come up with is NOT what we
think of as obvious.  Simply put, the "data" given fits equally well
with the hypothesis that the mapping is just the lower 3 (or 4) order
bits of the binary representation of the first number.  It would seem
to me that a computer would be more likely to hit upon this mapping,
unless it were endowed with a lot of "common sense" and (human)
cultural information.

   --- Reid Simmons ---