Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!uflorida!novavax!maddoxt
From: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Social Construction of Reality
Keywords: reality, concensus
Message-ID: <539@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jun 88 05:45:42 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1157@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <218@proxftl.UUCP> <514@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk>
Reply-To: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Lines: 18

In article <514@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk> simon@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Simon Brooke) writes [. . .]:
>Wells, like fanatical adherents of other ideologies before him, first
>hurls abuse at his opponents, and finally, defeated, closes his ears. I
>note that he is in industry and not an academic; nevertheless he is
>posting into the ai news group, and must therefore be considered part of
>the American AI community. I haven't visited the States; I wonder if
>someone could tell me whether this extraordinary combination of ignorance
>and arrogance is frequently encountered in American intellectual life?

	I would say that any combination of ignorance and arrogance is
no more frequently encountered in American life than in British.
Consider, for instance, your own posting--ending as it does in a
gratuitous insult to American intellectual life in toto--as well as the 
umpteen postings of Cockton's--virtually all charcterized by arrogant 
dismissal of AI--that provoked Mr. Wells. 
	Rude conjecture:  "Gilbert Cockton"'s postings are in fact
output from a rather silly AI program (probably out of MIT) called DREYFUS; 
it is a logical successor to ELIZA and also its own best critique.  It
remains to be seen whether "Simon Brooke" is one of its sub-programs.