artificial intelligence

[Alex Martelli]

Arthur wrote:
   ...
> *Our* intelligence seems to give us a read as to where on the bell curve a
> particular event may lie, or a least some sense of when we are at an

Wrong: human beings are *eager* pattern-matching devices, extremely prone
to detect "patterns" that just don't exist in statistically significant
ways.  There's quite a substantial body of literature, by now, on the
general issue of frequent fallacies on reasoning about probabilities.

Skeptical literature that tries to show up various kinds of unfounded
beliefs (in "pseudo-sciences" as well as more traditional superstitions)
is also quite productive in examples; I recall a wonderful essay by
Asimov (centered on Pompey's career) and a few by Gould (in "I have
Landed", centered on his discovery that his immigrant grandfather,
whose diary inspires the whole collection's title, landed in the US
on September 11 1901) trying to shake the reader into believing that
coincidences ARE just coincidences, bereft of cosmic meaning, even
when they appear to loom inexhorably strong to our inborn pattern-
matching mechanisms.  I also recall the original formulation of Wilson
and Shea's "Law of Fives" (including the snide reference to
ingenuity on the part of the demonstrator:-), before Wilson, at
least, got a tad too fascinated with the increasing amount of such 
coincidences he noticed (and I speak as one born on 5-10-55...:-).


Alex