On Wed, 7 Jul 1999 10:03:04 -0500, Bill Zimmerly <billz at inlink.com> wrote:
>F. Frank LeFever <flefever at ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:7luf9v$a8h at dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com...>>>> One often hears this basic argument (especially in the internet
>> newsgroups): Some great ideas were initially rejected. This idea is
>> rejected. Therefore this is a great idea.
>>But this is not what I argued. I simply pointed out that because YOU
>see no value in "pursuing such schemes", this does not mean that such
>pursuits aren't worthwhile.
No, but if he, and a bunch of others (I'd be one) see no value in
pursuing it, a preponderance of evidence and opinion can build up.
Of course, the real issue is whether that "preponderance of evidence"
accumulates from people that have competence in the area in question,
or whether it's merely whining that doesn't matter.
If someone is accumulating evidence about a theory of who the "New
Face Dancers" in Chapterhouse Dune, then there's not a big set of
people truly competent to say whether such a theory is grounded in
reason or not. (Frank Herbert never wrote another book, so we can
never know for sure.)
But that is a vague matter, fictional in nature.
>> Life being short, we do have to make some choices , without full
>> knowledge of the facts, as to what ideas are likely to be worth
>> pursuing. Sometimes one guesses wrong, but my impression is that some
>> people ALWAYS guess wrong and they seem to have a special attraction to
>> "rejected ideas". (as Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute)
>>The world is full of evidence to the contrary, the Xerox Parc example that I
>provided being but one. Do you need more? Here are the documented opinions
>of other men such as yourself. Brilliant and educated men who were proven to
>be simply wrong in their pronouncements of pursuits that are of no value...
>> "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas
>Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
>> "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with
>the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that
>won't last out the year." - The editor in charge of business books for
>Prentice Hall, 1957
>> "But what ... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
>Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
>> "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken
>Olson, President, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
>> "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
>as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -
>Western Union internal memo, 1876.
>> "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M. Warner, Warner
>Brothers, 1927.
>> "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca
>Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
>> "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin,
>president, Royal Society, 1895.
The fact that they were wrong does not establish that a half-baked
idea is actually *right.*
>> Given that this fellow seems to have no idea at all of how the brain is
>> actually organized, i.e. doesn't just disagree with the data others
>> have developed but seems not to KNOW of more developed concepts of
>> brain organization and/or lacks the capacity to see any contradiction
>> between them and his own armchair "analysis" of brain organization, I
>> think the probability of his somehow coming up with a novel but useful
>> idea is vanishingly small.
>>I'm sure he has a better idea of how the brain is organized than you give
>him credit for. Hey, time will tell, eh?
I'm not so sure. The monthly "spamming" of newsgroups with this "new"
AI model has been going on for quite a long time, and looks a whole
lot more like the ravings of a "net.kook" than it does Useful Code.
If he's a "kook," then it doesn't matter how long or hard he tries,
the ideas are still worthless.
Note that the .signature below was actually chosen randomly...
--
"But what....is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM about the microchip. 1968
cbbrowne at hex.net- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/ifilter.html>
