Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Acting irrationally (was Re: Free Will & Self Awareness)
Message-ID: <1192@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 19 May 88 09:05:38 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <5499@venera.isi.edu> <180@proxftl.UUCP>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 33

In article <180@proxftl.UUCP> tomh@proxftl.UUCP (Tom Holroyd) writes:
>Here's a simple rule: explicitly articulate everything, at least once.
Sorry, I didn't quite get that :-)
>
>A truly reasoning being doesn't hesitate to ask, either, if something
>hasn't been explicitly articulated, and it is necessary for continuing
>discussion.
Read Irvine Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" and
you'll find that we do not correspond to your "truly reasoning being".
We let all sorts of ambiguities and incompleteness drop, indeed it's
rude not to, as well as displaying a lack of empathy, insight, intuition
and considerateness.  Sometimes, you should ask, but certainly not
always, unless your a natural language front-end, then I insist :-)

This idealisation is riddled with assumptions about meaning which I
leave your AI programs to divine :-)  Needless to say, this approach
to meaning results in infinite regresses and closures imposed by
contingency rather than a mathematical closure
                                    n+1              n
			information    = information

where n is the number of clarifying exchanges between the tedious pedant
(TP) and the unwilling lexicographer (UL).  i.e there exists an n such that
UL abuses TP, TP senses annoyance in UL, TP gives up, UL gives up, TP
agrees to leave it until tomorrow, or  ...

TP and UL have a wee spot of social negotiation and agree on the meaning
(i.e. UL hits TP really hard)
-- 
Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science,  The University, Glasgow
	gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert

		The proper object of the study of Mankind is Man, not machines