5.0520 Rs: AI; Maja; Abulafia; Eco; Computers in Lit (8/137)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 11 Dec 1991 18:24:01 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0520. Wednesday, 11 Dec 1991.


(1) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1991 14:31 CST (49 lines)
From: LEWIS@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU
Subject: computational intelligence and non-literal language

(2) Date: 11 December 91, 09:33:44 SET (9 lines)
From: Marc Eisinger +33 (1) 49 05 72 27 <EISINGER@FRIBM11>
Subject: Naked Maja

(3) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1991 08:11 CST (11 lines)
From: Mikeal Parsons <PARSONSM@BAYLOR.BITNET>
Subject: Computers in literature

(4) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 13:32:04 EST (19 lines)
From: jsgor@conncoll.bitnet
Subject: Abulafia, movie

(5) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 17:10:14 CST (9 lines)
From: dene grigar <ACA102@UTDALLAS>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum

(6) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1991 19:44:57 -0500 (11 lines)
From: warkent@epas.utoronto.ca (Germaine Warkentin)
Subject: Eco again

(7) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 17:47 PST (10 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum

(8) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 10:38:35 EST (19 lines)
From: Lorne Hammond <051796@UOTTAWA>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1991 14:31 CST
From: LEWIS@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU
Subject: computational intelligence and non-literal language

Like many others, perhaps, I'm of two or three minds, at least,
about artificial intelligence. I don't doubt that the intelligence
of our machines will in time be brought to approximate more
and more closely to our own, but I do doubt we can get there
from here. Our ideas about intelligence seem paltry, our
disagreements vast and profound. Stupidity, its opposite,
is even more mysterious and is commonly ignored. I have
never seen a clear, operational distinction between these two,
apparently symbiotic aspects of mind; yet, as is now being
said, how can we claim to understand artificial intelligence
if we don't understand natural stupidity?

Similar reflections are aroused by the recent call for papers on
the use of 'computational intelligence' to elucidate relations
between literal and non-literal language. I wish them well,
at the journal COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, but I doubt
their project will get very far. The distinction between
literal and non-literal language is not clear and begins to look as
if it may never be cleared up. The process, whatever it is, by
which literal language is transformed into non-literal language
seems not be rational or susceptible to any general formulation.
I watch my students tying themselves up in knots trying to
unpack or deconstruct even simple metaphors, ironies, jokes,
and I know that their difficulties are not caused by a lack of
method, logic or theoretical knowledge and have no
technological fix. In time, if they persist, they may get the
hang of it; or they may not. Some otherwise intelligent people
never learn how to unpack a metaphor. Take, for example,
the well known poem, "Epitaph" by Timothy Steele:
"Here lies Sir Tact, a diplomatic fellow,/ Whose silence was not
golden, but just yellow." The wit of these lines is not very
complicated but believe it or not most of my students missed it
completely, either because they had never heard of the phrase
'silence is golden' or did not remember that yellow is a metaphor
for cowardice. Others failed to notice that gold and yellow
are similar colors or that the connection between diplomacy
cowardice is enforced by the fact that 'yellow' rhymes with
'fellow.' Some understood all the words but missed the joke.
I predict that it will be a very long time before our computers
outperform our students in this regard; not, it may be, until
they have the capacity to learn about the world and language
as we do: painfully, over time, by making stupid mistakes
and being corrected.

Piers Lewis
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------12----
Date: 11 December 91, 09:33:44 SET
From: Marc Eisinger +33 (1) 49 05 72 27 EISINGER at FRIBM11
Subject : Naked Maja

On the 100 french francs note, there is the "Liberte conduisant le
peuple" with an open breast. This note is not accepted for change
neither in Saudi Arabia nor in Iran ... Conclusion is yours.
Marc
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1991 08:11 CST
From: Mikeal Parsons <PARSONSM@BAYLOR.BITNET>
Subject: Computers in literature

Sorry, I missed the original posting of this topic, but I take it from
subsequent responses that someone is interested in references to computers
in (non-scifi?) literature. How about Updike's _Roger's Version_ which has
as one of its four main characters a computer whiz religious fundamentalist
who is seeking a research grant to prove the existence of God via computer
Mikeal Parsons
Baylor University
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------31----
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 13:32:04 EST
From: jsgor@conncoll.bitnet
Subject: Abulafia, movie

Abulafia: I haven't read "Foucault's Pendulum" and don't know
whether Eco mentions this or not, but it may be of interest that
the original Abulafia was Abraham Ben Samuel Abulafia, a
thirteenth century Spanish Jew who proclaimed himself the
Messiah. He went to Rome with this message and barely escaped
being killed for it. The name appears in "Ulysses," where Eco,
an ardent Joycean, may well have encountered it.

Academic movie: I don't remember the Beatrix Potter detail, but
otherwise this sounds a lot like "Butley," an early seventies
movie (quite good, as I recall) directed by Harold Pinter and
starring Alan Bates.

John Gordon

(5) --------------------------------------------------------------15----
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 17:10:14 CST
From: dene grigar <ACA102@UTDALLAS>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum (7/97)

I have always thought that one of the major concepts coming out of Foucault's
Pendulum is "associative thinking run amok--" in other words, the idea that
one cannot rely on artificial intelligence to arrive at some or any level of
a truth. For this reason I thought the book extremely interesting, part-
icularly since I am so attached to my Mac.
(6) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1991 19:44:57 -0500
From: warkent@epas.utoronto.ca (Germaine Warkentin)
Subject: Eco again

If Kessler is indeed in correspondence with Umberto Eco, I wonder if
he would be kind enough to ask what Eco's reasons were for putting Lia's
explanation of the real meaning of "magic numbers" in chapter 63 of
_Foucalut's Pendulum_. Perhaps others on the list have thought about this,
and would like an answer to the same question. Or indeed have answers
themselves! Germaine Warkentin <warkent@epas.utoronto.ca>

(7) --------------------------------------------------------------196---
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 17:47 PST
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum (7/97)

Yes, anjd that is why it all slipped my mind: because it is instrumental merely
, whereas the substantial interest (for me) was the collocation of conspiracy t
heory. How could I have forgot Ab oulafia?Gee whiz! I sure did. Spongebrain, t
hat is me. But it tells us a little about the superficiality of the idea of the
computer in this novel, which is no more than a search and find mechanism, mu
ch like ours at UCLA's library, ORION, by name. Kessler
(8) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 10:38:35 EST
From: Lorne Hammond <051796@UOTTAWA>
Subject: Re: 5.0515 Rs: Foucault's Pendulum (7/97)

I found that Eco's introduction of the computer-assisted quest for the
names of God rang a bell. In 1953 Arthur C. Clarke published a short
story called "The Nine Billion Names of God", in which a computer
(bought by a monastery in Tibet?) is assigned the task of compiling
and finding all permutations of the name of God. The result of the
quest was the end of everything. This puts the BASIC program in Eco
in perspective as a minor exercise but the references to Judaism elsewhere
in the novel do link back to the Clarke story.

You might want to look at the entry for "COMPUTERS" in Peter Nicholls
(wonderful) THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Lorne Hammond
History
University of Ottawa