🚀 go-pugleaf

This article is from Len Popp <tektronix!watmath!watdaisy!lmpopp>
 and was received on Sat Jul 12 10:15:08 1986
 
In article <429@hplabsc.UUCP> Sherry Marcus writes:

>Webster's Dictionary defines common sense as a 'practical knowledge'.  I 
>contend that all knowledge both informal and formal comes from this 'practical 
>knowledge'.  After all, if one thinks about Physics, Logic,or Chemistry, much 
>of it makes practical sense in the real world. 

One would hope so, inasmuch as the *purpose* Physics and Chemistry is to
explain the "real world".  Unfortunately, much of quantum physics goes
totally *against* common sense!  So our "common sense" does not by any means
apply to all of the "real world".

>It is common sense which distiguishes man from machine. 

It is fingers which distinguishes man from machine. :-)

>If a bum on the street were to tell you that if you give him $5.00 he will 
>make you a million dollars in a week, you would generally walk away and ignore 
>him.  If the same man were to input it into a so called intelligent machine,
>the machine would not know if he was Rockefeller or an indigent.

This may be true, but it may have little to do with the machine's
"intelligence" or "common sense".  Most computers simply have not been told
that Rockefeller is rich, or what poverty is; in fact, the computer usually
isn't even told its users' real names!  A failure on *our* part to provide
the computer with sufficient data upon which to base its "common sense"
cannot be construed as a failure of the *computer* to reason.

[good point!  --Dave]

>My point is this, I think it is intrinically impossible to program common 
>sense because a computer is not a man. A computer cannot experience what man 
>can; it cannot see or make ubiquitous judgements that man can.  We may be 
>able to program common-sense like rules into it,but this is not tantamount 
>to real world common sense because real world common sense is drawn from a 
>'database' that could never be matched by a simulated one.

Why not?  Computers *have* been programmed with common-sense rules and
information in limited domains (i.e., expert systems).  They sometimes
exhibit better "common-sense" reasoning than people, within these domains.
What is the theoretical or philosophical reason that these domains could not
be extended to the larger but still limited ones that humans use?


							   Len Popp
{allegra,decvax,ihnp4,tektronix,ubc-vision}!watmath!watdaisy!lmpopp