[Bmi] I was banned from connectionist mailing list?

Ben Goertzel ben at goertzel.org
Wed Apr 1 11:49:36 EDT 2015


John,

I agree that there are close connections between politics and
neuroscience.   However, as it happens, your politics articles in the
BMI Magazine seem to just give your opinions on political issues, and
do not explicitly draw connections with neuroscience.   If your
articles drew detailed connections between politics and neuroscience,
that would be rather interesting!

After all, every human behavior is rooted in neuroscience in some
sense.   But it still makes sense to distinguish papers and articles
that are explicitly related to neuroscience, from those that merely
describe phenomena which are in some way rooted in neuroscience.
Otherwise, "neuroscience" would simply come to mean "everything
related to creatures that have brains", and would be a much less
useful category..

-- Ben G


On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 11:06 PM, Juyang Weng <weng at cse.msu.edu> wrote:
>
> [Instructions to subscribe or unsubscribe are attached at the end]
>
>
> With Tucker's kind permission, I provide his full email with my reply below.
>
> On 3/31/15 9:53 PM, Tucker Balch wrote:
>>
>> John,
>>
>> I’m sending this to just you.
>>
>> You are free to do as you please of course.  I would just point out that
>> leading AI journals primarily contain articles about AI and very few open
>> letters to presidents.
>
>
> It is true.  But BMI is for both Natural Intelligence and Artificial
> Intelligence.  There has already been some key advances because of this
> vision.  This is the true value of the BMI mailing list.   AI for only
> machines is quickly obsolete, as you can sense.
>
>>
>> I agree that it would be interesting to have a venue for political
>> discussion at the intersection of AI and politics.  If it is your intent to
>> create such a venue, I’d suggest that you separate that from the Brain Mind
>> Magazine, and reserve content for BMM.
>
>
> Please see the above point.  Natural intelligence (including politics as
> a special case) and artificial intelligence (including
> multi-agent intelligence) should not separate.  Cross-disciplinary
> communication is the main goal of BMI and BMM.   At this early stage, it
> is hard for people to see this great need, like what happened to Charles
> Darwin's evolution, but this is a trend of science.
>
>>
>> I have to say that this has reached the limits of something I can
>> participate in.  If it continues I probably need to unsubscribe.
>
>
> Let us be a little open-minded, instead of just following the crowds
> elsewhere.  If AI converges to brain science, AI becomes more relevant
> to intelligence.   What do you think?
>
> Thank you for the inputs, as the number of people with your views is not
> small.
>
> Could I have your permission to make this communication available to BMI
> mailing list, after removing your name?
>
> -John
>
> --
> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
> Tel: 517-353-4388
> Fax: 517-432-1061
> Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
> ----------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw


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