From: joke@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Date: 10 Jan 1993 15:29:48 GMT
Organization: CS Department, Dortmund University, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: keule.informatik.uni-dortmund.de

		From the moment I picked your book up until
		I put it down I was convulsed with laughter.
		Some day I intend reading it.
                -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"


By coincidence I wrote an article entitled:

	"Do we need GOD-2 ?"

in which I wanted to comment on the Weizenbaum interview in the
January issue of c't.

Now that the Colbys made the 1st step, I think it's necessary to
tell the rest non-German readers of this group what they "left out"...


In article <1993Jan8.201329.13876@cs.ucla.edu>, colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu
(Kenneth Colby) writes:
[..]
|> it is immoral to use computers for psychotherapy.  Colby believes
|> computers should be used to help millions of mental sufferers who
|> (a) cannot afford private therapy, or (b) prefer not to consult a
|> mental health professional.  Weizenbaum believes using computers
I think you forgot: (c) want to make Colby "wealthier".

Weizenbaum states that OD-2 tries to fill a market hole: those millions
that Colby mentions above: OD-2 comes for $200 which is of course not
"much" compared to privat therapy costs, but "millions times $200" is
*very much* for the Colbys, and their so-called "help".

I would go a bit further: it's made to squeeze the rest out of a
(probably) profitable big market: big deal...

I thus would suggest a little NET project to write a non-commercial
e.g GNU version of OD-2, called GOD-2 ;-) 

|> for psychotherapy is simply immoral.  The argument is well-summarized
|> in "Paradigms Lost" by John Casti who quotes Colby (p. 327):
|> 
|> 	"Over the past four centuries the scientific community has
|> 	come to mistrust suppressions of inquiry, not only because
|> 	they protect the status quo but because so often the
|> 	finger-wagging moralist has turned out himself to be morally
|> 	confused, piously self-serving, and irresponsibly blind to
|> 	the consequences of his own oppresive actions".
I think Weizenbaums idea is NOT just to say what's immoral and what's
not. His claim is to *make people think about* what's immoral and what's
not, instead of taking everything for granted or "god given" esp.
the STUFF developed by so-called scientists, (cf. my definition of
"idiots savants").

|> 	The controversy has been dormant for a few years until
|> recently, in an interview with Thomas J. Schult in the German
|> magazine c't, Weizenbaum attacks our (Peter and Kenneth Colby)
|> cognitive therapy program Overcoming Depression 2.0 claiming that
|> it is nothing but ELIZA (es wirklich nichte anderes als ELIZA)
|> (absolut ELIZA) and that it is a lie because it uses the pronoun
|> "I" (Ich) when "no one is there" ("niemand ist da").
Hmm...wasn't the principal goal of Rogers idea, that the depressive
person has to feel that someone else (the interviewer) is able to love
him and thus he might also be able to love himself?

Well, ELZA was a parody on Roger's interviewer, and there IS NO SELF,
AND NO "I" in OD-2. That's what Weizenbaum insisted on.

Which is TRUE (obviously) "for every well educated person", as J.R.
Searle begins his lines of reasoning in his recent book.

So: if your computer tells you that he/she/it loves you...the only
thing you know is that every other *computer* might also be able to
*love* you, which is a bit different from the original ideas of
Rogers, I guess ;-)

[..]
|> tool to help allevaite depression.  Weizenbaum is mistaken in saying
|> the structure and function of the dialogue mode of Overcoming Depression
|> 2.0 (OVD) is exactly that of ELIZA (absolut ELIZA).  He obviously
|> has not studied our program.  The clear differences are:
Weizenbaum states "das ist absolut ELIZA", because OD-2 uses the
same tricks, that ELIZA did. And thus falls into the same pits.
He doesn't speak a word on the structure or design issues of OD-2.

	USER:  "I think that curiosity is the MOTHER of invention."
	ELIZA: "Tell me more about your family."

I thus have the odd feeling that the following enumeration of OD-2 
features is pure marketing...
[..]

|> 	(3) ELIZA uses surface words from the input as part of its
|> 	output.  OVD does not.  Its outputs are the right-hand sides
|> 	of the program's production rules.
Wow. Sounds real techspeak...what it means is, that OD-2 is a mere
collection of if-then-else cascades. (Production systems, proved to be
computationally complete (Post '43, Minsky '67) and are thus higly
recommended to "represent knowledge"? (I doubt upon it for already
mentioned reasons...))

[..]
|> In the case of OVD, the "I" obviously refers to the designer of
|> the program, one step removed.
Then why doesn't it output: "Ken Colby thinks that..." ?

|> Weizenbaum seems to believe
|> there must be a person inside the box for therapeutic dialogue to
|> be conducted, much as small children believe there must be people
|> in the TV set.
...and the Colbys think that there are enough (helpless?) fools
hanging around on this planet, who have nothing better to do than
spending $200 on non-sense...I fear that they are right ;-)

|> Copies of the original Weizenbaum interview (English translation)
|> are available by E-MAIL.
You should post it to this forum, I would be interested how
biased this translation is...

BTW: Thanks for helping me with my depressions! There's nothing better
than writing NEWS articles...

	-joke

--
Joerg Heitkoetter
Systems Analysis Group
University of Dortmund, Europe
(joke@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de).