Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsj!jwi
From: jwi@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Do dogs love their humans (was: Can machines think....)
Summary: Technobabble is not thinking
Message-ID: <4073@cbnewsj.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 Mar 90 14:51:12 GMT
References: <2313@ritcsh.cs.rit.edu> <1990Feb19.165835.9673@pcsbst.pcs.com> <2348@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 32

> >Jim Winer writes:

> >Language is exactly the point....
> >-- obviously, thinking is not a large part of our culture.

> Ronald BODKIN writes:

> 	That's not at all true.  My (very abridged) thesauraus gives
> [lots of synonyms for think]


> ....  And thinking is obviously a very large part of our
> culture anyhow.  Western civilization has been built on thinking.  English
> is currently the dominant language of that civilization.

Western culture has been built, like all surviving modern cultures, on 
superior weapons of war -- you may choose to consider this as superior
thinking ability. If our weapons weren't better than the German and
Japanese weapons, German and Japanese would be the dominant languages.
As the Japanese seem to have better economic weapons, Japanese may soon
be the dominant language.

If you think [sic] that thinking is a large part of our culture, I suggest
you examine any protohuman between the ages of 14 and 65. Unless the gonads
are organs of thinking, what drives our world is not thinking.

Jim Winer -- jwi@mtfme.att.com -- Opinions not represent employer.
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