Stephen P. King (stephenk1@home.com)
Sun, 04 Apr 1999 12:43:53 -0400
Ben,
I am soo happy that you are on the team! :)
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that you Hitoshi, are at the root of our tree.
> > Stephen is attacking it brute force and climbing every branch
> > while maintaining a good center of gravity near the trunk.
> > Ben is also clinging to the trunk but straying onto the branches,
>
> I would like to change the metaphor.
>
> I think that the tree is not yet built -- we are building the tree, using
> tree fragments produced by us and others in the past. Many others have tried to build the
> tree but have either gotten stuck building roots (John Wheeler, 'it from bit';
> my own work on Ons) or have built a lot of intricate branching structures with no roots and
> only half a trunk (string theory)
>
> I am trying to build the roots and the trunk first, before building the
> branches!!
>
> Matti has already built a lot of interesting branches, and it's not yet
> clear to me if the trunk we build is going to link up to all of his branches, or just
> some of them.
>
> Hitoshi has built part of the trunk and some branches too, but the part of
> the trunk he has built is in my view still 2 feet up in the air ;)
>
> Stephen is thinking about principles for building trees -- roots, trunks
> and branches -- and has a lot of branches in mind, it not being clear which ones will
> become part of this tree as we build it and which will not.
I agree. ;) My 'tree' looks more like a spider web... I am Inktomi...
:)
> And your plan is not 100% clear to me, but seems to me to be to focused on
> issues that will be more relevant once we have built more of the tree than we have done
> right now.
> Maybe we should pay more attention to these issues right now, but on the
> other hand, maybe that would distract us from actually building the tree.
>
> To shift from a tree metaphor to a programming metaphor... I have learned
> that, in software design, there is a time for planning and plan-based execution, and a time for
> hacking. Now we are still at the stage where we need to "hack together" our first prototype of a unified > physics theory.
> Once the prototype is hacked together, then we can step back, look at its flaws, and rebuild the
> theory more systematically, making sure there are no gaps, removing bugs, refining our language etc.
Absolutely, maybe we'll get a grant. NOT! :)
> At least, this is the view from my corner of the intersubjective universe ;)
> Ben
Onward,
Stephen
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sun Oct 17 1999 - 22:31:51 JST