HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 07:24:28 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      analog NN chip

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To: dept47@BBN.COM, neural-people@BBN.COM, machine-learning@BBN.COM
Subject: re: CDSP Seminar
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 14:50:54 -0500
From: Jeff Morrill <jmorrill@BBN.COM>


  Communications and Digital Signal Processing (CDSP)
  Center for Research and Graduate Studies
  CDSP Seminar
  Title:        The Integrated Neurocomputing Architecture (INCA)
  Speaker:      Mark Dzwonczyk, The C. S. Draper Laboratory

Here are a few notes for those of you who wonder what you missed.
There were two issues of interest here, one regarding analog hardware
for neural nets and one regarding sonar signal processing.

Apparently analog hardware implementations of neural nets are in
disrepute because Intel tried and failed to make it work.  JPL
has tried again, however, this time successfully.  This talk was
about a proof-of-concept project to apply JPL's chip to several
practical problems.  The value of an analog implementation is that
it takes 11 transistors per neuron, whereas a digital implementation
takes more like 6000 transistors.  Thus an analog implementation
is better when miniaturization and low power requirements are important.

What Draper did was put several of JPL's chips onto a VME board
in a fixed configuration: a 4-layer feedforward neural net with
64 nodes per layer, or 256 nodes altogether.  Training was done
offline on a Sun Workstation, and the final connection weights
were "ftp'd" to the hardware.  To train they simply applied
backprop using commercial-off-the-shelf software (NeuralWare).
(They are now working on hardware-in-the-loop training.)  When
asked how long training took, he said simply, "three months of
a graduate student's time."

There were several applications that they used to "prove the concept,"
and the one he talked most of was realtime sidescan sonar target detection.
The data looks like distance vs. time map, with pixels colored according
to the amplitude of the echo.  Targets are white (loud) blips lost in a
bunch of noise, and it can be hard for a person to see them.  The algorithm
was to slide a 10x10 window around the image and look for underwater mines.
Using 2 hidden layers, they achieved a false alarm rate of .03%.  It is
impressive that this straightforward approach to the problem yielded such
a high degree of accuracy.  (Nevertheless, the navy wants to cut this false
alarm rate by another factor of 10 before fielding it, because the
penalty for being wrong about a mine is rather high.)

jeff morrill

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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:21:00 -0500
From:         Len.Lansky@UC.EDU
Subject:      *CSGintro* revised OK? -Reply

[len lansky (921119.0816)]

Thanks Dag.  I got all of it and it will print just fine.

Thanks also to  Bill P{owers re idea about margins.  I am working
on it; the problem is getting rid of hard returns--I think I or
our system is screwing up going back and forth between ascii and
wordperferct .  THanks again.

Len Lansky
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 11:50:29 -0600
From:         Cynthia Cochran <cochran@CLIO.STS.UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: dear Rick

M. Lee,
Your dissertation sounds interesting but complex.  I may be quite interested
in what you have to say about knowledge transfer from group to individual,
though, because my dissertation has to do with what kinds of information
people select from their group's texts in order to in turn write to their group
in their own, new texts.  This bboard helps me keep focused on the idea
that an individual can only select what s/he perceives, and perceives only
what s/he is oriented to perceive...I think.

Cindy Cochran
Depts. of English
U. of Illinois / Carnegie Mellon U.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
From: marken@aero.org (Richard Marken)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: Re: Fowl Language, Foul language
Date: 23 Nov 1992 20:46:02 GMT
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aerospace.aero.org

I'm in the new office. My new e-mail address does not seem to work
(I didn't get subscribed to the list) but I've found that I can still
access the net via my "old" address -- so I will continue using that.

Bill Powers and Greg Williams -- 

Sorry to hear about the Science article. Welcome to the club.

Hank Folson (921122) --

>Students of Language:
>
>In a recent post on language, I noticed something missing from the post and
>the replies: No one said or asked what the speaker and listener were
>controlling for. 

Excellent point, Hank. I completely agree; it doesn't make much sense
to try to apply control theory to a phenomenon if you don't know 
what variable(s) are being controlled; my mantra once again: Control
theory is about CONTROL. If language does not involve control then
control theory does not apply. 


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

Richard S. Marken                   USMail: 10459 Holman Ave
The Aerospace Corporation                   Los Angeles, CA 90024
E-mail: marken@aero.org
(310) 336-6215 (day)
(310) 474-0313 (evening)

Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Organization: Texas A%M University
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Sun, 22 Nov 1992 14:08:15 CST
From:         MLee <N336BZ@TAMVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Knowledge Transfer
              18 Nov 1992 11:50:29 -0600 from <cochran@CLIO.STS.UIUC.EDU>

Cynthia:

Thanks for your interest in my work.

The model I am developing is largely macro.  I draw heavily on
a preliminary model of sociecological self-organization proposed by
Lee Freese (Washington State Univ.) in his 2-part article "Evolution
and Sociogensis" in the 1988 _Advances in Group Processes_ pub. by
JAI Press.  Freese proposes a common unit for the analysis of change
in ecosystems and human social systems:  the resource transfer.  Resources,
as defined by Freese, may be tangible or intangible.  Transfers are essentially
one-way rather than reciprocal.  His model directly links local action and
higher-order "structure."

I try to elaborate an aspect of the model that Freese does not give adequate
attention to: how transfer of knowledge claims from one interactant to another
is a necessary to sustian larger (macro) resource configurations.

If this sounds interesting, you might want to read Freese.  I find
it difficult as yet to really discuss my work outside that contextual
reference.  However, I don't think that Freese or my own current
work would be helpful to your current work, as neither of us goes
in-depth into aspects of interpersonal communication.

However, Cecila Ridgeway recently (with past year) published an
article in the journal _Social Forces_ that I think would be
higly relevant to your work.  I don't have the exact reference, because
I have an advance copy of the draft.  Let me know if you have any problems
locating it and I'll get an exact reference for you.

Good luck on your writing!


Greetings,

Mary Lee
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 20 Nov 1992 11:34:36 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      association & g-ma neurons

[Avery Andrews 921120.1145]

 This may be pretty ignorant, but here goes anyway.  It seems to me that
a characteristic feature of classical `connectionist' systems is
precisely that they can in a sense recognize configurations without
having a `grandmother neuron' for each config. that is recognized.
E.g. you can have a bunch of input & output wires, with an arbitrary
association function connecting input to output patterns:

         ---
    --->|   |--->
    --->|   |--->
    --->|   |--->
         ---

For example on the input lines might be visual/auditory/olfactory
properties, on the output lines kinaesthetic reference levels, such that
for input combinations typically associated with the presence of
leopards, the output levels are those associated with running away,
etc.

This sort or thing should also be possible for connecting verbal &
nonverbal perceptions.  To account for actual learning of words, it
would have to be `programmable' very quickly (on the basis of a single
experience), but I think there might be a preadaptation to this sort of
things.

Imagine a very simple critter whose sense inputs are like e-coli's
(e.g. a vector), but which also has a `pain' perceptual system that
registers damage.  We imagine the sense vectors and the pain wire
going into a black box whose output will be labelled `fear':

              |
              | pain
              v
   s        -----
   e ----> |     |  fear
   n ----> |     |--------->
   s ----> |     |
   e        -----

The idea is that whenever the pain wire fires, something happens inside
the black box such that, subsequently, the closer the sense-vector gets
to what it was when the pain wire fired, the larger a signal comes out
along the fear wire.  This signal then is then handled in such a way
is to typically induce behavior that will alter the sense-vector.  (If
the organisms motor system is e-coli style, the fear signal would
contribute additively to the tumbling rate).

Stick a lot of these things together in the right way, & you might be
able to get a fast associative learner with no grandmother neurons.

& of course, for the optimists, a similar picture could be drawn with
wires labelled `pleasure', etc., where the output wire tends to do
things to cause the sense-vector to get closer to what it was when the
pleasure wire fired (e.g. reduce tumble-rate).

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 11:18:16 MST
From:         "Kenneth L. Hacker, Ph.D., Communication" <KHACKER@NMSUVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      primers

Can someone be kind enough to send me the Primers I and II.  I missed them,
but did file Primer III.  I would like to read through them in sequence.
Thank you.  Ken Hacker
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Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 16:40:22 -0700
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      one-neuron ECSs

This is a test of an automated "send" script, but I thought I'd make
it useful while I'm at it.

Martin Taylor (921119.1100) --

>If it is true, as we discussed some months ago, that an ECS can be
>represented by a single neuron, then that neuron seems to do
>exactly the combination your are talking about.  Each dendrite
>serves the reference-perceptual input-comparator functions, but
>they combine into a single output function.

An ECS _can_ be represented by a single neuron, but I don't know of
any examples where it _is_. The simplest control systems I know
about, the spinal reflexes, involve one neuron for a sensor, one
neuron for a comparator (the spinal motor neuron) and a muscle for
an effector. Furthermore, as in the interchange with Oded today,
these simple control systems operate in parallel bundles so the
effective control system probably involves dozens to hundreds of
neurons, plus the muscle fibers.

I would expect that a control system that senses and controls a
configuration requires dozens to hundreds+ of neurons even to carry
out a simple pattern-forming input function. The comparator can be
simple, but the output function may also need a rather complex
computation needing more than you can do with one neuron.

On the other hand, a neuron with 5000 input synapses might be able
to accomplish some pretty amazing analog computations. And that's
just the average number in the brain (roughly).
------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,

Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 08:31:50 -0600
Comments:     Warning -- original Sender: tag was cziko@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU
From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Science rejects are model -- unreviewed

[from Gary Cziko 9211212.0120 GMT]

Bill Powers (921120.2000) reported:

>News flash. Science has returned the arm model article by Greg and me
>unreviewed. The explanation was that its priority was judged against all
>other materials currently on hand and found too low to be among the 20%
>they will publish.

But didn't Science publish the Bizzi paper (or was that BBS)?

I can't help wondering how you and Greg identified yourselves on the
submitted paper.  Was it Powers, Independent Researcher, Durango, CO and
Williams, Independent Researcher, Gravel Switch, KY?  I am sad to admit
that if I didn't know you guys and saw such authors, I would not intially
expect much of the paper.  And if I had to decide to cut 50% or so out of
the review process based on initial encounters, bye bye Powers and
Williams.

Or do you at least give the CSG as your affiliation?  Perhaps you need to
have Bruce Nevin establish a P.O. Box for you in Boston or Cambridge to get
a respectable address.

While I can understand yours and Greg's frustration, it really is an
eye-opener in terms of how science in general (and Science in particular)
operates.  I hope you have better luck in _Adaptive Behavior_ (or whatever
the Jean-Arcady Meyer edited journal is called) or wherever else you decide
to submit it.--Gary




------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary A. Cziko                    Telephone: 217.333.8527
Educational Psychology           FAX: 217.244.7620
University of Illinois           E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street             Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
USA
------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:47:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Formatting

[From Dag Forssell (921116.1415)]

Feedback is wonderful. Gary just posted the CSGINTRO back to me as a
quality check. I am glad he did. Many of the lines were cut off with an
extra hard return, with an annoying number of little orphans as a result.
No important formatting lost this time, though, so my error signal is not
nearly as large.

Gary's re-posting appears to allow 74 columns plus a hard return. I had
used up to 77 plus hard return, leaving a margin of only two to the
screen width of 80. Obviously, I shall re-format and re-post, unless this
was an accident, caused by margin settings in Gary's word processor.

Before I do, I thought I would ask an open question of both Gary and
those knowledgeable on the net if there is a standard number of
characters that are desirable or maximum for the line length.

Bill, thanks for notes on file server.

Best, Dag
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:52:58 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      Machine Learning List

A while back several people asked about my ref to a machine learning list.
I just got another digest forwarded to me.  The list address is
ml@ics.uci.edu and the distributor (in the From: field of the email
header) is Michael Pazzani, pazzani@ics.uci.edu (this parenthetical
phrase is just to keep the period away from the address).

        Bruce
        bn@bbn.com
From: mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: Re: "perception" or "belief"
Date: 17 Nov 92 21:49:03 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

[Martin Taylor 921117 16:40]
(Bruce Nevin Tue 921117 12:46:29)

>An aside: a belief (it seems to me) is a perception that you assume
>(perceive) to be a true reflection of Boss Reality.  But that is not
>sufficient.  By that definition, when I look out my window and perceive
>that it is snowing I would have to call that perception a belief.  Only
>a PCT afficionado would find no error there ;-)  For most folks, a
>belief is an imagined perception that we perceive as veridical but
>unsupported by direct evidence.  But most folks (that is, most of us
>most of the time) identify beliefs with statements of belief, just as
>they (we) confuse perceptions in general with descriptions of them.

I have used "belief" to represent a structured perception.  Since "classical"
PCT takes the perceptual signal to be a single scalar value, and I identify
"perception" with "perceptual signal" at least some of the time, I need
another word to describe a complex of many simultaneous perceptual signals
at a common level.  "Belief" seems to me to be appropriate.  A perceptual
signal represents all you can know about the present state of a real or
imagined CEV.  A belief represents all you can know about a more complex
set of states in the real or imagined world.  And yes, when you look out
of the window and believe you see snow, it is a belief that it is snowing,
even though the flakes may be ash from a forest fire.  I'm sure I'm not
alone in finding that what I "directly" perceive is sometimes shown to be
false after more observation.

If you have a better word than "belief" to represent a complex of perceptions,
then I might well use it.  But for now, it seems to relate to the everyday
meaning of the word about as closely as the PCT meaning of "perception"
corresponds to its everyday meaning.

As for the word "proposition", I'm not happy with appropriating it from
its mathematical origin, but again, I have no better.  Propose one.

Martin
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:10:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Wordperfect formatting

[From Dag Forssell (921119.1100)]

len lansky (921119.0816)

>Thanks also to  Bill Powers re idea about margins.  I am
>working on it; the problem is getting rid of hard returns--
>I think I or our system is screwing up going back and forth
>between ascii and wordperfect.

I work in WordPerfect. Bet your problem is WP. What is your
default printer? (Shift F7) What is the default font? (edit)
Pick a small one! 12cpi or 10 points. What are default margins?
See setup (Shift F1) initial settings (4) and initial codes (5).

When you call up an ascii file - List Files (F5) and select it
(Ctrl F5) (best) or (1) your document gets formatted as
specified in all these places and hard returns inserted as
necessary to conform.

There is an alternate way to call up an ascii file, which may
solve the immediate problem. Directly from the screen, (Ctrl
F5) Dos text (1) Retrieve CR/LF to [Srt] (3) Document: C:\etc.

Remember, you can install any printer into the program, if you
want to see what another printer selection can offer you.

The above remarks apply to WP5.1 and 5.0.

Best, Dag
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 10:21:26 -0400
From:         Bill Silvert <bill@BIOME.BIO.NS.CA>
Subject:      Formatting

[Silvert 921117]

>[From Dag Forssell (921116.1415)]
>
>Gary's re-posting appears to allow 74 columns plus a hard return. I had
>used up to 77 plus hard return, leaving a margin of only two to the
>screen width of 80. Obviously, I shall re-format and re-post, unless this
>was an accident, caused by margin settings in Gary's word processor.
>
>Before I do, I thought I would ask an open question of both Gary and
>those knowledgeable on the net if there is a standard number of
>characters that are desirable or maximum for the line length.

The standard width (which is the default for fmt and other utilities) is
72 characters.  This leaves room for additional characters like the ones
used above to indicate material being replied to.

Lines that wrap are virtually unreadable, especially when preceeded by >.
Try this for example:

>Before I do, I thought I would ask an open question of
both Gary and
>those knowledgeable on the net if there is a standard
number of
>characters that are desirable or maximum for the line
length.

--
Bill Silvert at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography
P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2
InterNet Address: bill@biome.bio.ns.ca
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 23:16:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      {Server documents

[From Dag Forssell (921123.15.00)]     Martin today - direct

>I was looking over your intro dated Nov 18, which I printed out, and I
>noted that all the references to text files and programs seem to have
>a form that suggests IBM formats (file.exe and the like). I realize that
>Bill's demo programs are restricted to IBM compatibles, but the text
>files should not be.  Is my interpretation of the document correct, and
>there is no way of getting introductory documents if you don't have an
>IBM-compatible machine?
>
>If so, I think it should not be so, and if not, the document should tell
>those of us with good machines how we can use them for the good of our
>souls.
>
>Martin

I am taking the liberty of posting this so Bill Silvert and others can
see it, since I can't quite answer.

I have tried to keep the document to the point: "A number of ASCII
documents.....are available...". I am suggesting to download the
csg/Index. Have you done that? Several of the subdirectories are labeled:
document. Does that answer your question? I have suggested the addition
of comments to indicate ASCII, for this reason. Would that make a
b
difference? (That is not up to me and I am no longer pushing for that).

I can't quite see (with my IBM brain) where your impression comes from.
ASCII does not mean IBM, does it? Do other Mac enthusiasts have the same
perception? Please make a specific suggestion for future editions if this
is a real problem and not a fleeting impression.

Best, Dag
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:03:37 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      the image

(Avery Andrews (921118.1430) ) --

>                         images have the wrong kind of information in them.
>A classical example from  philosophy:  an image of a triangle has to
>either be isoceles or not isoceles, but the concept triangle is neither.
>It's got to be something that subsumes both.  Or another example, an
>image of Ronald Reagan on a horse, unobscured, will have the horse
>white or not white, Reagan with or without a hat, etc., while if I
>say `walk down the corridor until you get to the picture of RR on a
>horse', neither of these attributes matters.
>
>It is indeed something of a mystery how anything can translate between
>images and the `concepts' that we like to represent as propositions in
>logic, but that mystery has got to be solved anyway, & once it is, this
>solution could be used to build a concept-to-image comparator.

Bill's proposal covers this I think, about the input function of
a category-level ICS accepting a disjunction of input signals
corresponding to various perceptions, including a word or words.
Thus, your imagined perception of RR on a white horse with a hat
satisfies the category perception but without precluding other
possibilities or even boggling much when encountering another
instantiation.  One could even go down the hall without a
specific image in mind, but searching for any satisfier (other
than the words "picatuare of RR on a horse"--aye, there's a rub).

        Bruce
        bn@bbn.com