Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #00514
To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Justin jaf60@student.canterbury.ac.nz
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 17:06:09 +1300
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: A cry for help
> When I first started school, years ago, before I became an engineer, I
> studied philosophy, psychology, and religion. Discussions like those that
> have flooded this list for the last couple of weeks are the reason I
> dropped out of school.
No offense intended [WARNING! blatent stereotypes and generalisations
ahead!], but if BEAM were limited to only the aspects that engineers
found interesting, it would have died a long time ago.
One of the biggest things that held robotics up seems to have been that
it was the exclusive domain of engineering.
Modern robotics seems to have realised the value of things like
psychology and philosophy to robotics. Fuzzy logic for example, came
from the philosophers, and solved a lot of problems caused by the
engineering-based approach.
Your apparent dismissal of the philosophical/artistic aspects does seem
to me to be a bit behind the times. True, you might be jumping off the
bandwagon before it crashes, but I doubt it - it still seems that things
like the use of cognitive and psychological work in robotics is paying
off and will do for a good time yet.
I say let the merging of disciplines continue unabaited!
:-)
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