Comments from David Clark

• I am not impressed by the name dropping and jargon of most AI developers.
• Most ideas that any of us have, has come from or been influenced by someone else.
• I don’t have the time or patience to document where, when and from who I should attribute whatever I happen to believe at any one moment.
• We all owe a debt to all the other thinkers that came before us, as did they to those before them and let’s just leave it at that.
• I don’t have to publish a book or impress anyone with how many others’ ideas I happen to use.
• I wonder if the fixation on name dropping and references is just an envy of the writing methods of University professors who seem to have nothing better to do, than waste their time.
• Let arguments rise or fall on their own merits.
• If someone has a world class incite into one problem, does that make all their other pronouncements worth more?
• If your argument entails a reference to someone else’s life work, should the argument end because I don’t have the time to sift through huge amounts of work looking for the small relevant passages?
• How can it make sense in a discussion to just point a URL at a wiki site that has many differing opinions (and obviously no conclusions) and use that as an argument?
• Conclusions:
• Jargon should be minimized as much as possible.
• If an idea that takes 3 or 4 words to explain can be given a name of it’s own, just don’t do it.
• If you can’t put your argument on the table, then you have no argument at all.
• Arguing that you “feel” or “believe” something to be true or correct is no argument at all and worth nothing. (There are assumptions I have made that I just “believe”, about what will make an AI work. I am open on all such beliefs for something better to come along!)
• Arguing from past experience is reasonable but not proof that something is true.
• Opinions and conclusions without supporting arguments are worth nothing.