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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Definitions of intelligence and complexity
Keywords: Social construct, productivity measure
Message-ID: <7032@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 88 21:02:17 GMT
References: <448@uceng.UC.EDU> <42327@linus.UUCP> <6973@venera.isi.edu> <42575@linus.UUCP>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
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In article <42575@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Kort) writes:
>In article <6973@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP
>(Stephen Smoliar) writes:
>
> > In THE SOCIETY OF MIND, Marvin Minsky makes a plausible case for
> > the possibility that worrying, as well as other emotions, may actually
> > play a productive role in our ability to solve problems.  
>
>Stephen, I couldn't locate the above passage.  There doesn't seem
>to be an entry in the Index or Table of Contents on "worrying."
>
>Would you mind posting a pointer to the chapter in question?  Thanks.
>
>--Barry Kort


Barry is quite right that there is no direct pointer to "worrying" in THE
SOCIETY OF MIND.  It may be that I am performing an unreasonable inference
by analogy, but I realize that what I had in mind was much of the discussion
about an Anger agent which arises thoughout the book.  When Minsky first
introduces his "Professor Challenger" scenario in Chapter 4, Anger is
introduced as an agent which keeps him working despite the influence
of a Sleep agent to get him to stop.  It does not strike me as unreasonable
to assume that worrying could play a similar role.  Indeed, Minsky seems to
indicate that a principal purpose of emotions is the indirect control of agents
like "Work," which it would be impractical to control directly.  ("If WORK
could simply turn off SLEEP, we'd quickly wear our bodies out.")  Running
the risk of introspecting to much, I would argue that worry has been as much
an asset to my productivity as anger.  I hope this makes my case clearer.