🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5795@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
writes:
>From article <11104@venera.isi.edu>, by smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen
>Smoliar):
>" ...  The fundamental issue
>" of understanding then becomes one of how agent A, with his personal set
>" of schemata, can communicate with agent B, who may have quite a different
>" set of schemata. ...
>
>It's really quite a riddle if you insist that understanding
>and communication are all or none affairs, and that schemata
>must be wholly shared or wholly disparate.

Fortunately, there is no reason to be so insistent.  Communication, as it is
practiced in the real world among human beings, is hardly an all or none
affair;  and since I tend to follow Minsky's lead and avoid casual use of
the word "understanding," you won't find ME trying to pass it off as binary-
valued.  I realize this will probably draw flames from a variety of corners,
but do we want anything more from an artificial intelligence than an ability
to get on in the world?  This does not entail perfection.  It only requires
enough sense to get out of mistakes ("misunderstandings," if you prefer) when
it becomes apparent that they have been made.  (Would we ask any more of our
President?)

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USPS:	Stephen Smoliar
	USC Information Sciences Institute
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Internet:  smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu

"For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution--and it is always
wrong."--H. L. Mencken