Max wrote,
>Really, is this post some kind of Sokal-type snare for
>POMO-tistas? They should thank me for alerting them.
The snare's there, but not in the post. Just because there's a radical
separation between language and reality doesn't mean there's no reality or
even that reality is "unknowable". The snare is in the presumed dichotomy
that *either* our ideas and language can perfectly correspond with reality
or the relationship must be entirely arbitrary. But there's a third
possibility, which just happens to be a fairly classical position -- in any
*meaningful* information, there is an irreducible residue of ambiguity. If
anything, I'd call that Cartesian rather than POMO-tista.
>If what you said made any sense, no organization could
>function. Clearly they do, so you didn't.
Not at all. No organization could function with an imperative for completely
accurate information. I taught a course in project management in which the
greatest anxiety among students is about having to "make up" some of the
information they report. Same thing when I was collecting statistics from
school principals: "How do I fill this in?" You just have to guess. "How do
I know what to guess?" You just have to guess and so on.
I'll grant that if what I said made any sense, no organization could
function "all by itself" that is *without people to mediate the ambiguity*.
So, yes, "artificial intelligence" is a crock.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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