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From: vis@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Tom Courtney)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,net.cog-eng,net.ai
Subject: Re: alive computers (HAL_from_IBM_P)
Message-ID: <339@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 26-Apr-86 12:32:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-tril.339
Posted: Sat Apr 26 12:32:29 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Apr-86 06:49:14 EDT
References: <154@lutton.tcville.UUCP> <601@qantel.UUCP>
Reply-To: vis@trillian.UUCP (Tom Courtney)
Distribution: net
Organization: MIT, Project Athena, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 15
Keywords: creativity
Xref: watmath net.sf-lovers:13548 net.cog-eng:666 net.ai:3430

In article <276@euclid.warwick.UUCP> gordon@euclid.UUCP (Gordon Joly) writes:
>In article <1800@mtgzz.UUCP> Mark leeper says:-
>
>> I talked to Clarke about 2001 in 1969 and he brought up the HAL/IBM
>> question himself.  He said that it was just a surprising coincidence.
>
>With odds of 1/8788 against, maybe it was more a case of subconscious
>reasoning, as in Kekule's discovery of the structure of the benzene
>molecule, and in the deciphering of Samuel Pepys' diaries. And the odds 
>must also take into account strings like S*X or BCA, musn't they?
>
The odds probably weren't so bad. Suppose Clarke was looking for a three letter
acronym that was actually a name? Then he's restricted to a much smaller set of
possibilities (HAL, SAL, SAM, ART, etc... [not ETC]). Furthermore, after the fact,
lots of things look like the odds were too horrendous to be coincidence.