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From: SOWA@IBM.COM (John Sowa)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Gibber in AI, social sciences, etc.
Message-ID: <050388.124141.sowa@ibm.com>
Date: 3 May 88 16:41:39 GMT
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I agree with the following comment by Thomas Maddox:

>                           ...anyone in such an inherently weak field
> should be rather careful in his criticism:  he's in the position of a
> man throwing bricks at passers-by through his own front window.

But I wish he would apply that remark to himself.  Just scan through
back issues of AI List to see the controversies, polemics, fads, and
fallacies.  The arguments between connectionists and representationalists
convey just as much heat and as little light as any argument between
Marxists and Freudians.  The dialog between LISPers and Prologers is no
more meaningful than the dialog between Catholics and Protestants in
Northern Ireland.

My position:  Every field has good people, dummies, charlatans, and
religious fanatics.  AI certainly has its share of all four types (and
sometimes the same person shifts position from one type to another).
The sociologist who was bashing AI was wrong, and so are the AI people
who bash the social scientists.  The human mind is the most difficult
subject of all, and we'll all learn more by approaching each other's
disciplines with a little sympathy than with a lot of loud polemics.

John Sowa