Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!garth!smryan
From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption
Message-ID: <1369@garth.UUCP>
Date: 4 Sep 88 22:57:57 GMT
References: <19880820041348.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> <1311@garth.UUCP> <545@cseg.uucp>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 24

>This is not to say that Science never indulges in this sort of intolerance
>of beliefs.  But at least Science as a whole does not state as part of its
>fundamental platform that you must accept such and such a belief as fact,
>without evidence and without question (regardless of what individual scientist
>may do).

Frequent mistake--to do science you have to accept the scientific method on
faith. Essentially science states that the universe is rational and
objective. Ultimately, any way of viewing the universe is based on assumptions
taken on faith.

A similar subject is the Church-Turing hypothesis (after all, this is comp.ai).
Minsky-style people assert it is true and justifies their most ambitious scheme.

>> I do take issue that Christians are held in checked by the wider society. In
>> this country Christians are the majority: it is eternal internal conflicts
>> between the sects that holds things in checks.
>
>And am I ever grateful for that.

I once heard that in English Civil War Protestant Anglicans and Puritans
fought each other with the hatred normally reserved for Catholics.

I suppose the battle between pro-ai and anit-ai programmers is similar.