From: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Subject: The Big Picture; and, e-mail ethics
Reply-To: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 21:40:34 GMT

To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.sf-bay.org

Greg Kuperberg made some uninformed statements about me, and about Japan:

"Jed Rothwell keeps assuring us that corporate giants (in Japan) don't
make mistakes"

Nonsense. I have been dealing with Japan for half my life, I have been ripped
off, cheated, and done in by Outrageous Japanese Corporate Incompetence more
times than I care to think about. I merely said that they have an excellent
track record, overall. Babe Ruth frequently struck out, but that did not make
him a poor baseball player. You have to look at the big picture, and compare
overall wins to losses in order to judge a corporation, or a nation. You
cannot zero in on a handful or failures, or successes. Also, you cannot judge
NTT by the actions of Hitachi or Nippon Steel. I happen to know a number of
top managers in NTT, and I have spoken with Yamaguchi several times over the
last few years, so I know that the people involved in this project are very
sharp. I can judge their behavior, and the likelihood of their success. I would
not, in a million years, be so bold as to predict the success of some unknown
start-up Japanese company; or even the success of, say, Toshiba, had I not
personally asked questions, read the paper, and talked to the researchers.

"For example, when Sony lost hundreds of millions of dollars marketing
Betamax, it did resemble a mistake." Quite right, even Homer nods. The
question is: over a period of many years, does Sony make a profit, and does it
develop more successful products than failures? How does Sony compare to U.S.
VCR, television and consumer electronics manufacturers? No company on earth is
perfect; they all make mistakes, and they all mismarket products from time to
time. You cannot judge Sony's performance in a vacuum, without reference to
the performance of other companies in the same business.

"Also, when major securities firms in Japan were caught transferring funds
from small clients to big clients, some company officials admitted that
mistakes were made." Those were not mistakes, that was deliberate, planned,
criminal behavior. We have seen similar incidents here in the U.S. recently.
In fact, Boesky and the S&L gangs have stolen and/or lost $500 billion
dollars, whereas the Japanese stock brokers stole about $5 billion, I believe.
We are two orders of magnitude ahead of them in this field, at least.

"MITI's recently concluded Fifth Generation Computer Project, which was
supposed to make million-Cray-power computers that could think like Homo
Sapiens." Incorrect. Nobody ever made such exaggerated claims or set such
unrealistic goals. I read a great deal about that project, and this
characterization: "think like Homo Sapiens" is silly. "Think like a chicken"
would be closer to the mark. However, as you point out, they did not even get
that far. A great deal of the project was devoted to machine translation and
other linguistic computation. That part did not work well because not enough
is known about linguistics or about the English language. In my opinion,
nobody has analyzed English with the kind of depth, precision and genius that
Martin brought to Japanese, for example. The groundwork has not been laid yet,
the algorithms have not been invented, so they cannot be programmed.

"And finally, nearly every stock market player in Japan has taken a bath in
the past couple of years." The Japanese stock market crash proves that there
are fools, liars, thieves, scoundrels, criminals and villains in Japan, just
as there are in any country. What did you expect? After all, look what they
did in China and the Pacific during the Second World War.


DB comments:

"You once told me, Jed (before I became your favorite enemy) that a particular
bit of raving you did (on the SKEPTICS list, remember?) was just an act. Maybe
you are still doing this act. Believe me, it doesn't do you much good here, on
the contrary, it damages - has damaged - your credibility."

Right, it is an act to some extent. Posting these messages is a hobby, not a
job. I do not get the least bit upset when people accuse me of being a fool,
or of raving, or anything else -- I rather enjoy it -- and I like to respond
in the same tone. It is a form of verbal dueling, it is good therapy, and it
sharpens and clarifies one's thought processes. I do not take it personally or
seriously, any more than I take it personally when I play chess or poker, or
when I help a Democratic candidate run for office. It is not good to take
these things too seriously, life is stressful enough already.

HOWEVER, as you point out, you are my favorite enemy. And you claim I have
damaged my credibility. Well, well, well... That is a very odd thing for you
to say, of all people. Let me put aside all kidding and sarcasm. Please do not
think that I am harping on this incident, but you apparently still do not get
it. I think you do not understand the gravity and seriousness of your own
actions. I may lose a little credibility from time to time, but what *you* did
was disastrous, crazy, and very serious, and as far as I am concerned, you
destroyed your own credibility forever. You are not my "favorite enemy" for no
reason. What you did was not some minor transgression, or an unplanned
outburst of rotten manners, like Prepparata's outburst at Nagoya. This is not
some minor tiff, some forgivable outburst of bad manners.

No, indeed. What you did was to deliberately and consciously post a series of
messages that might easily have shredded my reputation and destroyed me. If
MITI, Ikegami, or some other important contact had heard about your nonsense,
and believed it, I would have been up shit creek without a paddle. I am quite
certain you know that, so I have to conclude that you were deliberately,
mischievously, and maliciously trying to monkey into my affairs and cause me
terrible trouble. You are an adult, you know how the world works. What else
could I possibly conclude?

Let me make this perfectly clear: in the world of business -- where I come
from -- the action you took would have led to instant, grave, legal
consequences. Insulting a person is perfectly okay; denigrating the
competition is standard operating procedure; saying that Notoya or Rothwell
are incompetent fools who made a dumb mistake is fine (that is an opinion; you
have every right to express your opinion). But, spreading malicious and false
rumors about deliberate *actions* taken by people is unthinkable, and totally
unacceptable! In business, unless you have ironclad written proof, and
witnesses, even if you suspect fraud or some other serious *action* you never,
ever, accuse someone of it in writing. Certainly you would not make such an
accusation in a public forum! You have to realize that from my perspective --
as a businessman -- what you did was outrageous, unthinkable and incredible.

Perhaps I am exaggerating. Perhaps I do not understand the ethics of academia
or of these informal public electronic forums. That is why I am willing to cut
you slack, and not make a big deal about it. However, I would like to explain
my reaction here... so that everyone understands where I am coming from, and
what the rules are where I live. I want you, and my cadre of Gentle Readers,
to understand that I have not lost one iota of credibility, whereas you have
committed permanent credibility suicide. Let us imagine that an incident like
this had occurred in the world of business. Suppose this happened:

     Some guy from Dell, or NCR, or someplace, hears a rumor about Comdex,
     which is most important annual computer show (equivalent to the Nagoya
     Conference). He posts a message on Compuserve, and sends letters to
     various customers saying:

     "XYZ Corporation demonstrated a new computer at Comdex which they claimed
     was running at 66 MHZ and doing the Byte Benchmark in 20 seconds.
     However, I have inside information that they were lying, the computer was
     only running at 33 MHZ, and that it was running a doctored, fake version
     of the benchmark. I am convinced that it was a deliberate, preplanned
     fraud. There was some controversy, and one of them said there might have
     been a mistake, it might have been an old version of the benchmark. Let
     me tell you: he is lying."

     Please notice, I am not supposing that the guy simply sniped, or
     belittled XYZ's product, with a common retort like: "The Byte benchmark
     doesn't really show the kind of performance that matters. We could design
     our product to run that benchmark fast too, but our design is more
     oriented to real world applications, and bla, bla, bla..." No, I am
     saying the guy publicly accuses XYZ of lying during the most important
     annual computer conference.

Now, what do you think would happen to a person who posts a message like that?
What do you think would happen to his company? I'll tell you what: he would be
instantly fired. If his company had any sense at all, it would issue a
contrite series of apologies. If XYZ Co. sued, his company would be wise to
settle quickly out of court. In business, this kind of slanderous accusation
is VERY SERIOUS.

That is why I reacted so harshly. You have to understand my background and my
values. That is why you have zero credibility with me, and I will not *ever*
believe you are capable of fairly, impartially judging a scientific paper or
experiment. Quite frankly, I am forced to assume that you might be tearing
apart some other person's reputation with the same kind of incredible,
thoughtless, irresponsibility you showed when you tried to tear apart mine. I
don't believe a word you say, and I never will. I don't disbelieve you either;
I have no way of knowing whether you are lying or telling the truth. I do not
*ever* forget when somebody makes a serious effort to destroy me. I forgive,
but I do not forget.

- Jed


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