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Re: academic freedom (The Mentifex Manifesto)


At 11:38 рм 1/12/1996 -0800, Jeff Fox wrote:
>>Go back to Atlantis where you cam from!  PS Atlantis is most likely
>>know to Biblical scholars as Sodom, which was flooded by the Dead Sea
>>after the destruction chronicled in Genesis.  Your New Age tripe is
>>not welcome on this list!

:-)  ...Mr. Fox, it's the most hilarious dispute I've seen on a
scientific microprocessor-oriented list for a long time now! :-)
I also find the "insult" "Go back to Atlantis where you came from"(!!)
extremely exquisit, and magnificiently respectful of its target. May I
infringe your... copyright on this and use the insult on my... friends?
(new age freaks, some of 'em)? :-) 


Right...

I guess I'd better introduce myself. I write PROLOG code, Assembly code,
'C', etc, and focus a lot on Natural Language Understanding...
I've written theorem-provers based on George Spencer Brown's "Laws of
Form", and was truly amazed to discover the activities about MISC, and
the parallels between Laws of Form and Forth. Though I'd request some
further explanations, if at all possible, and some source code to
illustrate the parallels. If there is hesitation due to mistrust, I
can compensate by sending my own code (though please bear in mind this
may take time -I also run a small software business and time is scarce).






>If other people have strong opinions about AI they are welcome to
>discuss the merits of their own approaches or the problems they
>see in other approaches.  

I am in communication with Dr. Nick Vainos in Crete (the "Research
Park" of companies affiliated to the university there), about theorem
proving using a variant of Brownian Logic implemented entirely in
Optical Hardware. The high level of parallelism of such Hardware
is amazing, but there are some problems. (e.g. the tendency of quartz
crystals to "forget"... )

Nick and I are close friends from the past, but we have a small
disagreement about what is best to do _now_, (before Massively
Parallel Optical Computers come into the scene): I look into silicon
processors more, and feel it may be worth working with them first.

So I discovered your list, after browsing at F21 and downloading S21...



>I would characterize mentifex as a combination of neural nets and
>expert systems in that many concepts and linguist translation is
>hard coded in the program and what is not is simply pattern matching
>and association. 

I will browse again at your site, in case I missed this (if it's there).



>The MISC mail list has been open to many types of discussions: 
>hardware theory, documentation, kit details, future hardware
>design tradeoffs, software tricks, etc.  I think there is room
>for people to promote discussions of the kind of software they
>would like to see ported to MISC chips.

I am mostly concerned with applying Brownian Logic to Automatic
Translation. (Released a product, highly unintelligent, three years
ago, in Greece, but prepating the "next version" using Assembly-
Language-based simulations of parallelism -with Brownian Logic).

If you have hardware or software needing clients and _markets_,
I am your man in Greece: A pleasure and an honor to be your client.

And if your hardware can help in speeding-up Brown Theorem-Proving,
and is also affordable, I will build a (new-age-) altar for you! :-)



>I see no problem with information about mentifex being posted here
>but I would like to see more details and less hype.
>
>Jeff Fox

Indeed Mr. Fox.

(apologies for ignorance on important issues about your work,
 but learning fast).

Greetings from Greece
George Stathis


(P.S. Do mail me privately if you have problems about me being on the list,
      for any reason).