Xref: utzoo comp.ai:1583 comp.society.futures:484
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.society.futures
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@csri.toronto.edu (Tim Horton)
Subject: Re: The future of AI [was Re: Time Magazine -- Computers of the Future]
Message-ID: <8804290103.AA02313@dixon.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <8803270154.AA08607@bu-cs.bu.edu> <962@daisy.UUCP> <5789@swan.ulowell.edu> <978@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <445@novavax.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Date:	Thu, 28 Apr 88 19:43:20 EDT

In article <445@novavax.UUCP> maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) writes:
>...  Ideologues, special interest groups, purveyors of outworn
>dogma (Marxists, Freudians, et alia) continue to plague the social
>sciences in a way that would be almost unimaginable in the sciences,
>even in a field as slippery, ill-defined, and protean as AI.  

I suspect people just haven't run into it.  It's there, but not as strong
in the natural sciences because (I suspect) there are externalized measuring
sticks in most of them on which to depend for evaluations.

My experience has been that such silliness, whether in the natural or social
sciences, is practically always about the status of a paradigm or theory for
which no demonstrable procedure exists for verification or judgement either
way.  (And there's way more backstabbing in the social sciences, as a result).

Such situations *do* occur in the natural sciences!  I'm sure that you too can
name some paradigmatic zealots.

In AI research environments, certain problems are "worth" study, certain
things are allowed, certain things are required, certain approaches are
a priori valid.  The rationale for such biases is generally vacuous, or at
least as moot as can be.  And there's been some heated arguments to highlite
the strength of these biases:  the "procedural versus declarative" debate,
and more recently debates about the relevance of logic, for instance.  This
whole debate, here in this newsgroup, requires that there are unsubstainated
differences of opinion that people are willing to commit themselves to.

The history and philosophy of science, although a social science, is well
worth looking into -- it is, I think, an exception to the "social science is
weak" tendency the article above aluded to.  I doubt that if anyone were to
follow one of the quality expositions of the development of science thru
history, that s/he would still find science such silliness so unimaginable.

(Among my favorites, by the way, are the old chemistry theories of caloric and
phlogistine, which once completely dominated research.)

Current conceptions define the problems, the approaches, the value of a piece
of work, and even what will be seen or imagined.  I find it hard to believe
that AI doesn't have a strong case of this disease right now.