The Naive Witness and the Human Sciences
Jorn Barger
>The reason people in the sciences resort to the use of jargon is because
>jargon offers a shorthand method for providing precise meanings for ideas.
In the human sciences, *never*. Natural language will always be more precise.
>"Basic common sense" is a very misleading idea. To bring up just one
>physics example, "common sense" tells us that if we drop a ball out of a
>moving train, it falls directly down to the ground. However, with an
>understanding of Newtonian mechanics, we learn that the ball actually
>describes an arc as it falls toward the earth. If I was relying upon a
>'naive witness' to tell me what was happening, they would always choose the
>"common sense" explanation over the Newtonian explanation, because the
>ideas of Newton go against that of 'common sense.'
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, intuition about external objects
is not what I'm talking about-- intuii=tion about mental states is...
>What kinds of "bogus innovation" are you talking about, and on what
>standards are you making this claim? Surely you have a better method
>for evaluating the 'truthfulness' of things than the academics if you
>know that there is a huge amount of 'bogus innovation.'.
My naive witness is my standard of non-bogosity. The entire history
of academic human sciences appears to me a vast wasteland of empty
misleading jargon. What successes would you point to, that have
improved the human condition one tiny iota???
>I don't follow your line of argument. In the natural sciences, the
>hypothesis formation phase is almost never ignored.
I don't mean that it doesn't exist, but that the theory of scientific
method ignores the details of how hypotheses are generated, focusing
instead on the experimental-testing phase. The human sciences try to
imitate this and so have completely failed to invent any useful models
of the mind.
> The "human sciences"
>test their premises by using statistical tests, which are indicators of
>how well the psychological model will predict the future of the aggregate
>group. If a statistics test is significant, it means that the independent
>variable that is being manipulated is somehow affecting the dependent
>variable. Most psychological theories have been tested through statistical
>instruments.
The theories that have been tested this way are either tiny and
trivial, or large and impossible to properly control. You simply
can't create the sort of controlled experiment of human behavior
that the (false) theory of method demands.
No amount of statistical flummery can substitute for a ***model***
that's coherent enough to simulate by computer. And there's not even
a glimmer of such a model, that I've heard of... (If there were, it
would have to come from a group like Oz at CMU, eg.)
>: And an easier first step towards this goal would be to try to
>: build a simple WWWeb hypertext that presents the essence of that
>: specialty in the simplest and clearest possible language.
>
>Interesting view, but aren't you just substituting one mythology for another?
>Who's to say that this would improve at all how research is done?
1) If you reject it without a trial, that's just burying your head
in the sand.
2) *I've* tried it, and can point to solid results in many different
domains, including: AI, James Joyce's manuscripts and books,
hypertext theory, muscle contraction, snowflake symmetry, and
atmospheric physics. (Details on demand: see also my WWWeb site.)
3) How can it *not* benefit science to make it more accessible to
more people?
Jim Clark
With respect to this thread:
1. It is naive for a researcher to assume that most humans are "naive" in
the sense of not having hypotheses about the mental and emotional processes
that underlie their experience and behavior. These lay theories will color
their interpretation, which suggests that one should only have as much faith in
the reports as one has in the foundations for the lay theories. But we
generally do not know those foundations, and what we do know should lead us to
be extremely cautious. People acquire psychological beliefs about themselves
and others from a rather motley collection of sources (e.g., family, homilies,
Ann Landers, the Bible, school, television, literature, ...). I agree entirely
with the use of subject reports, but they must be used very wisely and filtered
through rigorous scientific methods if we are to glean some idea of reality
from them and use them to develop accurate mechanistic models. There is a
considerable literature in research methods on the issue of obtaining veridical
reports from subjects and verifying or falsifying the content of such reports.
2. One writer asserted that the scientific understanding of human
behavior in psychology and related disciplines had not had an iota of effect on
the human condition (rough quote). This shows a remarkable ignorance of the
considerable amount of basic and applied research that has been demonstrated to
be of benefit in numerous domains. Much of what we have learned about the
basic processes of conditioning, for example, has been used to develop
techniques to ameliorate anxieties and other disorders and to teach skills to
individuals who would otherwise not learn them (e.g., teaching retarded
children to put on their pants, a considerable achievement for them and their
parents). Psychologists have used psychological models to develop effective
methods of instruction for reading and other cognitive skills. That the
educational system fails to make as much use of this knowledge as we would like
is perhaps more telling about the gap between research and practice than about
the research paradigm itself. This same gap applies to many other domains that
attempt to understand human beings and/or ameliorate people's lot in life
(e.g., business, health care, computer science, engineering, ...). As a
cognitive psychologist, I am often quite astounded by how little of the huge
research literature seems to be known to people in other disciplines who are
trying to understand human cognition, emotion, and behavior. Recently on this
board, for example, an engineer posted a questionnaire apparently designed to
get at visual and verbal ways of knowing. Such individuals would be well
advised to learn how to use PsycLIT, Uncover, and other bibliographic resources
that would direct them to the substantial literature on individual differences
in imagery, language, and other aptitudes. I often wonder whether students in
other disciplines learn how to do literature reviews of the psychological
topics that they choose to investigate.
Sorry to be so testy, but it is a beautiful sunny day and I'm in here
working on the weekend, despite the above claim about the uselessness of our
paltry scientific efforts ;-) .
Best Wishes
Jim
James M. Clark CL...@UWPG02.BITNET (note ZERO-TWO)
Department of Psychology CL...@UWPG02.UWINNIPEG.CA
University of Winnipeg (204) 786-9313
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (204) 786-1824 FAX
R3B 2E9
David Longley
cl...@uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca "Jim Clark" writes:
>
> 1. It is naive for a researcher to assume that most humans are "naive"
> in the sense of not having hypotheses about the mental and emotional
> processes that underlie their experience and behavior.
>
> 2. One writer asserted that the scientific understanding of human
> behavior in psychology and related disciplines had not had an iota of effect
> on the human condition (rough quote). This shows a remarkable ignorance of
> the considerable amount of basic and applied research that has been
> demonstrated to be of benefit in numerous domains.
I'm an applied psychologist (though I prefer to call myself an applied
behaviour scientist because I seriously thing a science of psychology
per se is a contradiction of terms). I look to the literature for
support, so I use PSYCLIT and other resourced since I draw on disciplines
such as philosophy of mind, database technology and criminology to name a
few disciplines.
First of all, I'd like to say that I think that the naive psychology approach
is not what many understand it to be. I see much of the research in social
psychology since the days of Festinger, as being a description of the natural
assessments which people use, ie naive heuristics. This is also studied under
a different name as 'conditioning', and more recently, with the new look in
classical conditioning (e.g Rescorla 1988), as 'reasoning'. Now this is all
quite heady stuff, and unfortunately, from my experience of observing people
come into applied work, it is rapidly jetisoned for what they call 'Cognitive
Behavioural' approaches which amount very often in practice to little more
than popular folk psychology with intellectual dressing.
The second point is that there is now good evidence that the professionals do
in fact achieve very little (see Dawes 'House of Cards...(1994)). However,
once of the reasons for their retreat to pop psychology is that the research
methods in psychology are really quite bogus much of the time. Much still
depends on Null Hypothsis Statistical Testing (NHST), and for 30 years it has
been systematically pointed out that this is largely pseudo-science (see Cohen,
American Psychologist Dec 1994 for the latest lament). Now this criticism is
coming from people who teach stats and methodology, not people who want to
undermine psychology per se. The problem is that researchers largely do not
pay any attention to the criticism, and carry on with research which basically
practically tells us little to nothing, erecting theories which are woefully
inadequate to the point of being little better than common-sense (which is
why the research evidence suggests that lay judgement is as good as the
professionals).
Trying to correct this problem is a *big* problem. It requires psychologists
to work as behaviour scientists, and most don't want to do this, they want to
'work with people'. I am not laying *all* of the blame in academia, but I do
think it ill prepares graduates, even post-graduates for applied work for the
reasons I have briefly outlined.
I am practically interested in trying to do something about this, if only to
make my own job a little more bearable <g>, and have posted some materials(#)
here on the net outlining a diagnosis and possible corrective strategy, albeit
for a limited area of applied 'behaviour science'.
# Fragments of Behaviour: 1-14
The Extensional Stance
--
David Longley
Eric Shafto
: >: And an easier first step towards this goal would be to try to
: >: build a simple WWWeb hypertext that presents the essence of that
: >: specialty in the simplest and clearest possible language.
: >
: >Interesting view, but aren't you just substituting one mythology for another?
: >Who's to say that this would improve at all how research is done?
: 1) If you reject it without a trial, that's just burying your head
: in the sand.
: 2) *I've* tried it, and can point to solid results in many different
: domains, including: AI, James Joyce's manuscripts and books,
: hypertext theory, muscle contraction, snowflake symmetry, and
: atmospheric physics. (Details on demand: see also my WWWeb site.)
Your "solid results" with regard to muscle contraction and snowflake
symmetry are demonstrably false; ditto evolutionary theory (which you
fail to mention here, I am surprised to note). I don't know what
you've come up with for atmospheric physics, nor more than a hint of
what you've come up with for Joyce's work, and I'll let the comp.ai
readership judge the rest for themselves.
From what I can see, though, this doesn't look like a resounding
endorsement of your methodology.
Jorn Barger
> 1. It is naive for a researcher to assume that most humans are
>"naive" in the sense of not having hypotheses about the mental and
>emotional processes that underlie their experience and behavior.
What makes them 'naive' is that they don't have *ego* invested *in the
outcome of the experiment*. (If they do, then their views are
indeed worthless!)
>I agree entirely with the use of subject reports, but they must be used
>very wisely and filtered through rigorous scientific methods if we are
>to glean some idea of reality from them and use them to develop
>accurate mechanistic models. There is a considerable literature
>in research methods on the issue of obtaining veridical reports from
>subjects and verifying or falsifying the content of such reports.
In the hypothesis-generation phase, these issues are *irrelevant*.
Modelling a simplistic 'folk psychology' will be a great advance over
the current state. Fixing its errors will be comparatively easy.
> 2. One writer asserted that the scientific understanding of
>human behavior in psychology and related disciplines had not had an
>iota of effect on the human condition (rough quote). This shows a
>remarkable ignorance of the considerable amount of basic and applied
>research that has been demonstrated to be of benefit in numerous
>domains.
No, it shows a *variant analysis of the value of that work* (and of the
accuracy of crediting it to the 'social-scientific method').
> Much of what we have learned about the basic processes of
>conditioning, for example, has been used to develop techniques to
>ameliorate anxieties and other disorders and to teach skills to
>individuals who would otherwise not learn them [...]
How many sentences would it take to tell a teacher everything she'll
need to know to benefit from this? Ten sentences? How different are
these recommendations from the thousands of 'unscientific' things that
teachers learn and share?
> Psychologists have used psychological models to develop effective
>methods of instruction for reading and other cognitive skills. That
>the educational system fails to make as much use of this knowledge as
>we would like is perhaps more telling about the gap between research
>and practice than about the research paradigm itself.
I've heard that one before! "We've got these great things all ready, or
almost ready. Just front us a few more million for implementation..."
My recent motto is:
If it's such a great idea, prototype it on the WWWeb
and see if anybody ***links to it***.
> This same gap applies to many other domains that attempt to
>understand human beings and/or ameliorate people's lot in life
>(e.g., business, health care, computer science, engineering, ...).
>As a cognitive psychologist, I am often quite astounded by how little
>of the huge research literature seems to be known to people in other
>disciplines who are trying to understand human cognition, emotion, and
>behavior.
My challenge: express these concepts in simple, clear language, or
point me to a demo that incorporates them. I have heard too many
over-the-rainbow promises to give them *any* credibility...
Jorn Barger
>mental states than jargon? I think it's the other way around. For
>instance, the idea of pain, although a descriptor of a mental state,
>is a very imprecise term. [...]
That's an interesting example, because "pain" seems to refer to inner
'intuitions' but it almost fits better as reports-on-bodyparts-as-
unfamiliar-objects. Novelists, for example, have not spent much
effort on detailed descriptions of pain! Or, more to the point,
variations in pain don't usually make for interesting variations in
story-plots...
Guilt and shame are better examples, but realize the point is *not*
that these words have precise definitions, by themselves, but that
they have *natural uses* *in context*, and we can learn about the
phenomena by Austinian ordinary language analysis-- introspecting on
whether certain turns of phrase 'sound right'. ("I feel guilty" is
used very differently than "I feel ashamed".)
>I guess I am suspicious of the 'naive witness' idea for the very
>reason that people are so diverse in their perceptions of others'
>mental states.
Errors of judgment are very common, yes. But the basic functioning of
our psyches is much better agreed on by naive witnesses, than the
social sciences have *begun* to map.
>: What successes would you point to, that have
>: improved the human condition one tiny iota???
>
>Mass media communication. Cognitive psychotherapy. Well-designed
>appliances. Decision theory. Marketing. Political speechmaking.
I'll address these tomorrow, under the subjectline "20th C Social
Science: A Complete Fiasco?" Briefly, I'll suggest that they offer
common sense in an extremely counterproductive cloak of jargon.
>I don't think you can evaluate the merit of the "academic human
>sciences" on the basis of "improving the human condition."
Well it's certainly a very important criterion, but not the only one,
I agree.
> [...] "scientific" studies of the mind in psychology have only been
>around for less than a century. In that time, some incredible
>advances in understanding how the mind operates have been made.
> [...] Noam Chomsky, with his Deep Structure linguistics and how
>children learn language, or Jean Piaget, in his studies of children's
>mental development, have some extraordinarily insightful models for
>parts of the mind. And these observations are often counter-intuitive.
Piaget is worthless, imho, the very worst example of academic
bogosity. His writing style is an abomination, and you can't
summarize it in any interesting way. Chomsky I haven't studied, but I
suspect he's way off track...
> More evidence has to be gathered about the basic building blocks
>of the mind through empirical testing.
This is putting the lab before the hypothesis. You don't find new
concepts by *testing*, you find them by naturalistic observation and
even *play*...
Jorn Barger
>Your "solid results" with regard to muscle contraction and snowflake
>symmetry are demonstrably false; ditto evolutionary theory (which you
It slipped my mind. Meet me on sci.misc...?
j
Eric, the last I'd heard, you were hoping to use my ideas about
"rhetorical templates" as your thesis topic. Then I drew attention
to the fact that I still had our email correspondence proving my
priority, and the next thing I heard you were leaving ILS. Had
rhetorical templates indeed been your topic until that point? Did
the climate at ILS ever allow you to credit me for these ideas?
Jorn Barger
examples of how ordinary language analysis could give us psychological
insight:
>Guilt and shame are better examples, but realize the point is *not*
>that these words have precise definitions, by themselves, but that
>they have *natural uses* *in context*, and we can learn about the
>phenomena by Austinian ordinary language analysis-- introspecting on
>whether certain turns of phrase 'sound right'. ("I feel guilty" is
>used very differently than "I feel ashamed".)
Marvin Minsky has asked me to expand on this, and since I don't
have any well-formulated thoughts, I'd like to 'think out loud'
as a demonstration of how I think psychology *ought* to begin...
One place to start is with turns of phrase like "I feel guilty",
exploring what variations you can make without introducing a
'false note':
I feel guilty all the time.
I feel guilty about nothing.
I feel guilty but I don't know why.
I used to feel guilty but I got over it.
Or:
I feel ashamed all the time.
I feel ashamed about nothing.
I feel ashamed but I don't know why.
I used to feel ashamed but I got over it.
This last sentence makes one ask "ashamed about what?" and leads one
to guess that shame might need an 'object' more than guilt does.
"I feel ashamed all the time" differs from "I feel guilty all the time"
in that the guilt could be constant and unvarying, while the shame
seems more likely to be frequent episodes.
Another line of experiment:
I feel ashamed even though no one knows what I did.
I feel guilty even though no one knows what I did.
I tend to think that shame implies discovery... but you could have:
I realized that I would be discovered and was flooded with shame.
I realized that I would be discovered and was flooded with guilt.
This suggests to me that even when we keep secrets from others,
we may *feel* that they've discovered us, resulting in the shame.
And also that there's a question of intimacy levels-- if we're
distant from someone, or if they have no hold over us, we may
feel guilt instead of shame in this circumstance.
None of these insights are claimed to be 'science' or 'truth'. What
they offer is a range of potential complications that need to be
thoroughly explored before the matter of lab experiments or formal
hypotheses can even be broached!
Another tactic is to ask: where in literature have I seen vivid
depictions of guilt or shame? About the only image that endured from
Sartre's "Etre et Neant" was of the voyeur caught at the keyhole,
experiencing his own nothingness as reflected in the other's gaze.
Joyce's phrase "the agenbite of inwit" refers to conscience, so you
can expect that Joyce in Ulysses did some very careful literary
explorations of guilt. And in Finnegans Wake, HCE's guilt is
betrayed by his stutter-- which is a very curious sort of connection
to ponder!
j a new model of ulysses, with plot summary
jo...@mcs.com http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/jj/ulysses.html
David G. Mitchell
>Jim Clark <cl...@uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca> wrote:
>> 1. It is naive for a researcher to assume that most humans are
>>"naive" in the sense of not having hypotheses about the mental and
>>emotional processes that underlie their experience and behavior.
>
>What makes them 'naive' is that they don't have *ego* invested *in the
>outcome of the experiment*. (If they do, then their views are
>indeed worthless!)
Human subjects most certainly do have `ego' invested in the
experiment. Subjects are sensitive to - and affected by - what
they perceive the experiment to be about, what they guess the
experimenter wants to find, and how they suspect other subjects
will perform on a given task.
By your criteria, every experiment in human behavior is useless.
Some researchers have studied these issues, and tried to understand
under what conditions they are problems, and how to design good
experiments in spite of them. Of course, they are probably just
megalomaniac academics, so you wouldn't want to waste any time
learning about it before making extravagant claims.
David
(Still wondering what this has to do with AI).
Christopher McKinstry
hope you don't think i'm trying to do the same... the email i sent you
regarding the similarities between some stuff on your homepage and my
Loebner entry Jackie are predated by 11 years of well documented work on
ai and index theory... nothing published, but tons of email.
--
K. Christopher McKinstry http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/~cmckin/
======================================================================
-The Truth is of course, is the Universe is playing God with dice...
-Plutonium president kill for sale NSA CIA FBI hostage mole infiltrate
(above line designed to drive NSA's internet scanning computers crazy)
David Longley
>
> Errors of judgment are very common, yes. But the basic functioning of
> our psyches is much better agreed on by naive witnesses, than the
> social sciences have *begun* to map.
>
a few hundred years ago and consider what was done to people on the basis of
what was 'agreed on by naive witnesses'.
As I've said elsewhere, I don't think your main thesis is far off the mark,
but some of your examples don't do it justice.
--
David Longley
Eric Shafto
: Eric, the last I'd heard, you were hoping to use my ideas about
: "rhetorical templates" as your thesis topic. Then I drew attention
: to the fact that I still had our email correspondence proving my
: priority, and the next thing I heard you were leaving ILS.
Jorn, I've avoided discussing this here. But since you've made this
claim repeatedly in public, I'm going to respond to it publicly once.
Several of us independantly came up with an idea for reorganizing our
story frames. I pointed out a problem with this scheme, involving a
loss of information.
Some weeks later, you were pushing your own scheme, which included a
slot called rhetorical templates. I pointed out how that could be
made to solve the information loss problem, which you disagreed with
for a time. I built a taxonomy of rhetorical templates, and used them
to organize some stories. I built a small system that could
intelligently refute some arguments, and published one paper on the
system.
While I certainly got the term "rhetorical templates" from you, I
believe that the previous paragraph sums up your contribution to my
work. I do not doubt that you will be able to find some email that
suggests more. I tried very hard for a while to get you "on board"
this project, and to maintain at first our friendship, and, when that
failed, our working relationship.
I am sure that you will post some of my private email to you, out of
context, to claim that I have stolen work from you. I will not
respond further in this forum. I have no objection to discussing it
further in email.
In any event, none of this had anything to do with my leaving ILS.
: Had
: rhetorical templates indeed been your topic until that point?
No. I was using them, but they were certainly not the topic of my
thesis, to the extent that I had one.
: Did
: the climate at ILS ever allow you to credit me for these ideas?
The climate at ILS would never have prevented me from crediting you
for those ideas.
Jorn Barger
>> Errors of judgment are very common, yes. But the basic functioning of
>> our psyches is much better agreed on by naive witnesses, than the
>> social sciences have *begun* to map.
>>
>It that is so, why did we ever need to develop SCIENCE? Please think back to
>a few hundred years ago and consider what was done to people on the basis of
>what was 'agreed on by naive witnesses'.
(Has anyone understood yet what I've been saying about the hypothesis-
formation phase having different rules that the hypothesis-testing phase?)
j
Jorn Barger
>Human subjects most certainly do have `ego' invested in the
>experiment. Subjects are sensitive to - and affected by - what
>they perceive the experiment to be about, what they guess the
>experimenter wants to find, and how they suspect other subjects
>will perform on a given task.
>
>By your criteria, every experiment in human behavior is useless.
Counterexample: build your hypertext theory into your WWWeb-site,
and watch your html log to see if people are acting as predicted...
>David
>(Still wondering what this has to do with AI).
You might try reading my postings. I've been proposing that the
social sciences have failed, and that the only measure of success will
be constructing a simulated human personality.
j
Jorn Barger
projects that may be of interest to people who've explored Schank's
"Engines for Education" hyperbook-- see also
<URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/net/askjorn.html >]
In reply to a hostile assault from Eric Shafto, I wrote:
>: Eric, the last I'd heard, you were hoping to use my ideas about
>: "rhetorical templates" as your thesis topic. Then I drew attention
>: to the fact that I still had our email correspondence proving my
>: priority, and the next thing I heard you were leaving ILS.
Chris McKinistry mistook this as reflecting a general fear about
having my ideas stolen, but it was really intended to point out
Eric's hypocrisy in attacking my intelligence, and ILS's hypocrisy
in claiming that Schank isn't an intellectual tyrant.
Eric Shafto <sha...@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu> writes:
>Jorn, I've avoided discussing this here. But since you've made this
>claim repeatedly in public, I'm going to respond to it publicly once.
>Several of us independantly came up with an idea for reorganizing our
>story frames. I pointed out a problem with this scheme, involving a
>loss of information.
??? I think you're skipping ahead to fractal thicket indexing (called
"Barton" then) which debuted just before Thanksgiving break.
>Some weeks later, you were pushing your own scheme, which included a
>slot called rhetorical templates.
This was much earlier, when I was still taking 'agents' seriously,
and it was much more than 'a slot'!
The project Eric is talking about was called the Story Archive and
consisted of a thematic indexing scheme for video clips, using
templates like "agent values event because event aids goal". I
was one of the programmers and Eric was the main grad student on the
project. I repeatedly had to take the lead to keep things moving
forward, because Eric did not...
Schank asked us to add a 'agents' interface that allowed you to
specify the Herodotus agent if you were interested in history, or some
dozen other (white male) historical figures for other viewpoints.
He specified that he wanted to create the effect of different agents
arguing about a topic, so you could pick a topic and a 'speaker',
who'd present the topic from that point of view.
After some careful thought, I concluded that the indexing scheme
we were using didn't supply the right information to be able to
know if two agents were taking different viewpoints on a subject,
and that to achieve that, you had to develop a whole "theory of
argument" that discussed abstractly what it means to disagree, and
how one argues for an idea.
I suggested that this implied "rhetorical templates" like:
person believes X because celebrity believes X
and that to simulate an argument you'd have to index according to
those Xs and specify which side they supported, but that accumulating
a goodsized collection of such templates would be a very useful
research project.
> I pointed out how that could be
>made to solve the information loss problem, which you disagreed with
>for a time.
Refresh my memory?
> I built a taxonomy of rhetorical templates, and used them
>to organize some stories.
The version of this that I saw was almost entirely to traceable to
examples I'd introduced in our email.
> I built a small system that could
>intelligently refute some arguments, and published one paper on the
>system.
Did the paper mention my role? (Of course not! I'm Schankianly incorrect!)
>While I certainly got the term "rhetorical templates" from you, I
>believe that the previous paragraph sums up your contribution to my
>work. I do not doubt that you will be able to find some email that
>suggests more.
This seems rather self-contradictory.
> I tried very hard for a while to get you "on board"
>this project, and to maintain at first our friendship, and, when that
>failed, our working relationship.
This is nauseatingly disingenuous, Eric. You were the one who never
got around to doing his part. And you were the one who couldn't bear
to treat me respectfully, even when Ray requested that you do so.
(Like many grad students at ILS, Eric showed a deep-seated inability
to treat programmers' new ideas with anything but contempt.)
>I am sure that you will post some of my private email to you, out of
>context, to claim that I have stolen work from you.
Yes, ILS conditions you to be certain of such things. Funny there's
never any evidence for those certainties...
>: Did
>: the climate at ILS ever allow you to credit me for these ideas?
>
>The climate at ILS would never have prevented me from crediting you
>for those ideas.
And yet you didn't!?!
The climate at ILS, even while I was still there, was so dishonest
that Ray couldn't even use my suggestions for Orca, even without
special credit, even when everyone on the team agreed they were an
improvement, and even when they were already programmed and indexed...
And when I asked Ray to confirm with Roger that it *was okay* for
Ray to use my ideas, ***Roger denied he'd ever agreed to this***.
Ray could not get Roger to allow that it was okay for Ray to include
my ideas in Orca!
the Robot Vegetable
: Another tactic is to ask: where in literature have I seen vivid
: depictions of guilt or shame?
I was particularly affected by the depictation presented by
Salman Rushdie in _Shame_.
TITLE Shame
AUTHOR Rushdie, Salman.
PUBLISHER New York : Knopf, 1983.
ISBN 0394534085 : $13.95.
PR9499.3.R8S5 1983
veg
tom eddington
wondering if someone can fill me in on the science of this sort of
thing. Wow, maybe we can learn faster with some of these aides I have
seen in the magizines. Is it true?EDDTA