HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 4 Sep 1992 09:54:52 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      Re: Interactions; bit-blitting;Mind reading & chaos

[Avery Andrews (920904.0950)]
  (Bill Powers 920903.1000)


 >This is how you'd have to do it on a computer screen using standard
 >polygon-filling software and hardware. As all graphics programmers
 >know, this is a slow process.

But presumably it would go quite quickly if each bit had its own processor
looking after it, as is plausible the case for brains (c.f. sheets of
neurons).  But I do like your way better, on casual consideration (& it
also seems quite consistent with the kinds of things that Chapman does
with rays).

Re busses:  fine.  But as far as I can see, Chapman's architecture is
consistent with this - as long as you have a finite system of categories
sent along the bus, you can have a single wire coming off for each one.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au

PS did Harry Erwin really send something to CSGNet?  I posted something of his
yesterday, but I also lost a whole swag of unread messages 2 days ago, so
might well have missed a posting by him.
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Date:         Fri, 28 Aug 1992 08:57:53 PDT
From:         Ray Allis 5-3583 <ray@ESPRESSO.BOEING.COM>
Subject:      Re: steering
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU

[ Ray Allis 920828.0845 ]
----- Begin Included Message -----

From: Eileen Prince <eprince@DS5000.DAC.NORTHEASTERN.EDU>
. . .
The centipede stopped and thought.  He wanted to answer the caterpillar's
question.

Unfortunately, he could not.  Nor could he ever walk again.

Eileen Prince
Northeastern University

----- End Included Message -----

I memorized this from a "Sugar Creek Gang" book about 40? years ago:

   A centipede was happy, quite,
   until a frog, in fun,
   said "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
   This roused his mind to such a pitch
   he lay distracted in the ditch
   considering how to run!

It helped make me aware that there's a lot more to intelligent
behavior than conscious, logical "reasoning".  "AI" as presently
constituted is a crock!

Ray Allis
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Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 16:28:45 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: Agre's Cooking problem
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              31 Aug 1992 19:07:15 -0700
              <92Aug31.190811pdt.11636@alpha.xerox.com>

(ps 920901.1600)

   [From Jeff Hunter (920831)]

	   This was (if you pardon the pun) a cooked example. None
   of the subtasks interfered with any other in any major way.
	   To show why, here is an example of weekend goals:

	   - wear sunhat
	   - get new car tires
	   - spend weekend at cottage

	   And these are fed into Agre's weekend planner (main mechanism
   recapped below):

i'm quite certain that neither agre nor horswill would dream of
suggesting using toast for planning a weekend.  (and *i* certainly
wouldn't use a planner for my weekend!)  is it unreasonable to assume
that different sorts of activities can use different sorts of planning,
in both the technical and the colloquial sense?

	   Any decent planner can find the best ordering for these
   weekend goals in nearly the same time that Agre's one would
   find a lousy one.

substantiation?

	   The "planning weenies" have considered a lot of cases of
   conflicting tasks, and their work should not be discarded lightly.

yes, the planning weenies have spent a lot of time worrying about
subgoal conflicts (sometimes called ``goal clobbers brother goal'').
one of agre's points is that usually you just don't have to worry
about it.  and making breakfast is (claimed to be) a good example of
just that.

	   I think I see why the planner died. At least part of it
   is that Toast is implicitly told that any pat of butter is the
   same as any other pat, whereas the SNLP planner was not.
	   Why are there 15 pats of butter? Why so that the planner
   must consider more than 23 factorial orders of placing butter
   and eggs in the frypan.

have you ever seen a kitchen w/ one pat of butter in it?  in fact i
bet you've never seen a kitchen w/ *any* pats of butter!  i assume
there are fifteen pats of butter becasue that's roughly what you'd get
out of a stick and they didn't want to get into individuating the
stick into pats so they assumed it came that way.  i think both toast
*and* the snlp would have a tough time simulating slicing off a piece
of butter!

   De apibus semper dubitandum est.	Winni Ille Pu

;-}

				--Penni
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Date:         Thu, 3 Sep 1992 20:53:33 -0400
From:         psy_delprato@EMUNIX.EMICH.EDU
Subject:      Strange Bedfellows

Subj:	RE: A Strange Bedfellow?

[FROM: Dennis Delprato (920903)]
(Greg Williams 920903)

Greg, I don't get the point of all the quotations from Fred Skinner
on control.  You sum up: "In short, for Skinner, the results of one
person's responses to his/her environmental stimuli (which CONTROL
him/her) can be another person's CONTROLLING stimuli."  Do you
mean he is a strange bedfellow for himself?  Seriously, what is
the message I am missing?

Skinner's thinking is more advanced than that of the typical
psychologist, hopelessly behind that of others, and he is
extremely careful in his selection of words and their organization.
The effect of the latter is that it is virtually impossible to pin
him down--he's slick.

As far as individual-subject research, it was Skinner who offered that
"no one goes to the circus to see the average dog jump through a hoop
significantly oftener than untrained dogs raised under the same
circumstances."  A snappy line for which I give him credit.  Too bad
Runkle cited not one (as I recall) Skinner-inspired paper on actuarial
vs. single-subject research.  Don't know where Phil has been since 1938.
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Date:         Fri, 28 Aug 1992 08:44:49 EDT
From:         Eileen Prince <eprince@DS5000.DAC.NORTHEASTERN.EDU>
Subject:      Re: steering
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BitNet@pucc.princeton.edu

Forgive -- if need be -- this humorous interlude.  The writing on
steering reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

A caterpillar watched a centipede moving through the rain forest (?)
and was amazed at how he used all of his hundred feet in such a
coordinated way.  He went over and asked:  "how do you do it?
How do you walk with all of those feet?"

The centipede stopped and thought.  He wanted to answer the caterpillar's
question.

Unfortunately, he could not.  Nor could he ever walk again.

Eileen Prince
Northeastern University
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Date:         Fri, 4 Sep 1992 20:19:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Phenomenon - Demo

[From Dag Forssell (20904-1)]

Tom Baines, Penni Sibun, Ray Jackson:

Mailing information packet this weekend. Glad you asked.

Dag
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Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 10:03:39 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      anesthesia system
X-To:         csg-l@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu

[Avery Andrews 920901.0957]
  (Hans Blom, 920831)

Thanks for the very interesting posting.  As a practicing cog. sci.
softy (Chomskyan generative grammar), I always am interested to see how
actual engineers look at things - there's something to be said for the
idea that with the rise of cognitive science in the fifties, the
engineers disappeared into the basement with the grownups' toolbox,
leaving everyone else to play with the duplo bricks.

The anesthesia monitoring systems sounds like an instructive integration
of thought and action - is there a comprehensive writeup anywhere?

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 09:15:29 CDT
From:         "McClelland,Kent" <MCCLEL@GRIN1.BITNET>
Subject:      Dag's comments

[From Kent McClelland (920902)]
Dag Forssell (920901-2)

Thanks Dag for your comments on my revised manuscript.  Your points are well
taken.  The paper is into the second round of reviews at the American Journal

of Sociology, and I have hopes that they'll take it without too much further
revision.  When my work calms down here slightly, I'll make this draft
available on the net.  Gary, what's the best way to handle that now?  The
paper, as you know, is not any shorter than the last time (unfortunately).

Kent


Kent McClelland                   Office:  515-269-3134
Assoc. Prof. of Sociology         Home:    515-236-7002
Grinnell College                  Bitnet:  mcclel@grin1
Grinnell, IA 50112-0810           Internet:  mcclel@ac.grin.edu
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Posted-Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 14:26:10 PDT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 31 Aug 1992 14:26:10 PDT
From:         marken@AERO.ORG
Subject:      e coli/anniversary

[From Rick Marken (920831.1430)]

By the way, I didn't finish my description of the e coli model.

I said:

>In our models, a "counter" is set
>after each tumble. The rate at which it counts down depends on the currently
>experienced gradient of attractant.

I should have added:

e coli continues to move (at a fixed rate) in its current direction until
the counter reaches zero at which point e coli tumbles (selects a new direction
at random); the counter is reset and e coli proceeds in the new direction
until the counter reaches zero again.  Since the count down is faster when
e coli is moving away from the target, e coli tends to spend more time moving
toward the target and less time moving away -- even though it always moves at
the same rate. The behavior of the model matches the actual behavior of e coli
(as reported in experiments done by Koshland and others). The controlled
variable is the gradient of attractant. The refernce for this variable can be
anything from 1 (maximum gradient -- ie. attraction) to -1 (avoidance).

----

I was reading a biography of John B Watson this weekend -- called "Mechanical
Man" by K. Buckley (Guilford, 1987) Very interesting look at the early
politics of psychology. I noticed that 1993 will be the 80th anniversary of
the publication of Watson's classic "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it"
which appeared in Psych Review in 1913. I think someone might consider
submitting an article called "Psychology as the Control Theorist Views It"
to Psych Review for publication in 1993.

Hasta luego

Rick


     **************************************************************

Richard S. Marken                   USMail: 10459 Holman Ave
The Aerospace Corporation                   Los Angeles, CA 90024
E-mail: marken@aero.org
(310) 336-6214 (day)
(310) 474-0313 (evening)
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Date:         Tue, 25 Aug 1992 16:20:39 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: Modeling vs. WHAT?
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              25 Aug 1992 13:57:43 -0700
              <92Aug25.140146pdt.11810@alpha.xerox.com>

(ps 920825.1400)

i was quoting agre....if that wasn't clear.  (i agree w/ the content,
but the words as such aren't mine.)

   [From Bill Powers (920825.1400)]

   Penni Sibun (920825) --

   > why conduct elaborate deductions about yr surrounding when
   >you can look and see?  in particular, why maintain elaborate control
   >structures when you can look and see what needs to be done?  why make
   >highly detailed Plans when you can improvise?  why required instant
   >expertise when you can improve by just keeping on doing it?  why try
   >figuring it out yourself when you can collaborate w/ others who have
   >been there?  why insist on figureing out every situation afresh when
   >you can trust yor accumulated experience?

   These questions, at another level, imply accepting as an explanation
   of behavior what I would consider a statement of the problem.

yes.  but you need to ask the right questions to get the right
explanations.  it's *hard* to reformulate a problem in a radically
diff. way, as you should know.

   as representation. It sees "doing" as a process of control. Are you
   really suggesting that we put all that intelligence into the non-
   living world? If so, I'd say that you have a mammoth job of
   explanation ahead, if you want anyone to believe you.

the suggestion is that the intelligence is not simply and completely
in the org., but in its interaction w/ the world as well.

cheers.

				--penni
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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 14:28:19 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      Gathering Interactionism

[Avery Andrews 920827.1428]

On the general theme of Interactionism, the GURU parameters of CROWD
( = Gatherings) produce a very nice Interactionist result:  people
to tend to gather in arcs around gurus at gatherings, and a cognitivist
might suppose that this happens because the individuals are trying to
make their collective configuration match an `arc around the guru'
schema.  But Bill's model shows that the phenomenon could be a consequence of
the dynamics you get from certain reference levels for proximity and distance.

And in the absence of real evidence that the arc configurations are being
controlled for, the dynamics explanation is clearly superior, on grounds
of parsimony.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
From: bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM (Bruce E. Nevin)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: candidate models of reorganization
Date: 28 Aug 92 17:36:44 GMT
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[From: Bruce Nevin (Fri 920828 13:21:43)]

It doesn't take long to fall far, far behind the stream here.  I will be
gone all of next month, so I suppose I will just have to tune in as a
newcomer when I get back :-)  But first, one note out of many scribbled
while on the train.

(Martin Taylor 920820 19:15) --

> I think we have three candidate reorganization systems that are plausible,

Add to this one more, Bill's fallback position and the one I like as
primary, though it is harder to model.  In this view, reorganization is
carried out by the constituents (cells) of the control system
experiencing conflict and chronic error.  Call the latter a control
system of order n; then its cells or constituents are a population of
control systems of order n-1 (e.g. nerve cells).  The hypothesis is that
when a control system of order n experiences error, it produces
something intrasomatically that, if it persists, is the occasion of
error in its cells as control systems of order n-1.  They then begin to
change shape, contacts with one another, reactiveness, etc.  They do so
until their local error is reduced.  But reducing that order-n-1 error
corresponds to reducing the order-n error, in precisely the sense that
reorganization continues until it reduces the error that occasioned it.

This is difficult to model.  Would you have soldered joints respond to
overheating by rearranging themselves?  The problem, of course, is that
soldered joints are not control systems.  (Similarly for other
constituents of our means for modelling).  But conceptually,
intuitively, this is very satisfying to me.  Seems to fit with Edelman's
ideas too.

	Bruce
	bn@bbn.com
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Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 14:57:00 GMT
From:         Henry James Bicycles Inc <0005096370@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Promoting PCT;Science Musings
X-To:         "ems: internet" <CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>

[From Hank Folson (920901)]

Dag Forssell (920830)-promoting PCT:
>We need to reach people who are dissatisfied with what they can
accomplish, >people with a yearning for something better. A
dissatisfied person will be >open to suggestions and interested in
trying a different solution.
And later Dag says:
>in collaboration with Hank Folson,
>whom I am proud to have sponsored onto this net).

I am an anecdotal example of what Dag is talking about: I wonUt
embarrass Dag by listing all the different things he has tried to get
me interested in over the years, but there were many. I never acted on
any of them because I had no error signals that would be reduced by
his proposals. But when Dag first told me about PCT, I was looking for
a general theory of business management to help me run my business
better. I had an error signal, a dissatisfaction with what I saw in my
business experience and in the literature. PCT offered the hope of
reducing my error signal, and I have become a convert, although I
wonUt hound people at airports for donations, yet.

Dag Forssell (920830)-About Science:
>Verbal exercises can be carried on indefinitely without any tests ever
>possible.

Dag, if people are controlling for intellectual stimulation, more
interested in the hunt than the kill, they will happily do aerobic
verbal exercises forever.

A person who is interested in the kill and is controlling to get to
the meat of the matter can still appear to be willingly participating
in a never-ending verbal exercise. This is the result of not having an
effective strategy or techniques for communicating.

The first instance is not a serious problem on the net. The delete key
has been suggested before. The second case is harder. A useful thread
on the net would be the application of PCT principles to communication.
Teaching ourselves more effective PCT based communications skills could
really speed up the scientific process.

>I am suggesting that those who have a soft science background and are
>wrestling with PCT may have a greater personal challenge than those
with
>a hard science background.

If you come from a world where soft narrative science is the norm, hard
science creates an error signal, which you will control to reduce. PCT
says you are asking a lot of someone to make that degree of change.

>You need to experience PCT, in hard experiments and/or in your own
life.

PCT does not give easy answers. It tells us why and how the world
works, but it doesn't tell us directly how to apply this understanding.
Don't feel bad, Bill. I know that E=MC2, and I don't know what to do
with that either. My personal bias is to put more emphasis into
developing techniques for applying PCT.

Hank Folson, Henry James Bicycles, Inc.
704 Elvira Avenue, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
310-540-1552 (Day & Evening) MCI MAIL: 509-6370 Internet: 5096370@MCIMAIL.COM
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Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 09:48:16 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      Planning and Agre's Cooking Problem

[from Avery Andrews (920902.0914)]
  (Thomas Baines 92090909)

 > I think Avery almost has it.

Spurred on by this, I'll dump the rest of this file.  Before Penni
introduced me to Interactive AI, but after I started getting CSGNet,
it struck me that there was something very wierd about the discussions
of the `frame problem' in my AI books, because they seemed to be
concerned with the problems faced by programs that attempted to imagine
everything that might happen in some domain that they had no practical
experience in.

By contrast, real planning, as carried out with some modicum of success
by real people (we have 4 people, 1 car, 7 hard commitments & 3 wishes --
how are we going to get thru Saturday?) is carried out in domains where
people have a lot of practical experience.  Consider a typical operator
(= step in a plan).  In addition to its desired effect, it will have
various side-effects, which can be grouped into three types:

  a) irrelevant (when I execute DRIVE(OWEN,BELCONNEN), the place on the
      driveway where the car is normally parked will get wet if it
      rains).

   b) relevant, but routinely controllable (as a result of the driving, the
       fuel-level of the car will decrease).  One of the effects of culture
       is to increase the routine controllability of side effects.

   c) relevant, but uncontrollable.  (while I am doing the driving, there
        won't be any car at home, so no other person can do any driving).

So the real-world planner can find out from hearsay and experience what the
type (c) consequences of his/her actions are, and construct `clean' sets of
operators that have few such consequences.  The general intractability of
planning means that real plans have to be quite short, so that experienced
and competent people would have large libraries of operators, which might
be individual quite complicated (like the tricks that people make up to do
the last layer of  the Rubik's cube).

In terms of everyday live, it strikes me that errors are very often made
when a side-effect of an operator switches from type a) to type c).
E.g., when a family with two drivers is reduced from having two cars to
only one, they are constantly making plans which presuppose that another
car will be available when one has been driven off somewhere.  It took
My wife and I a tremendously long time to stop making up these kinds of
errors after we had the use of a friend's car for six months (tho we did
usually manage to spot our mistake before anyone actually drive off to
somewhere).

And, as Penni has been saying to me recently, a lot of the info about
useful operations doesn't have to be figured out at all - you can pick it
up by watching and listening, because it's just floating around in the
culture.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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