Jonathan B. Marder (marder@agri.huji.ac.il)
Fri, 24 Jul 1998 16:09:32 +0100
Hi Squad, Horse, Magnus and Platt,
I'd like to offer my support to Horse on the "fuzzy logic issue" because
I think that Magnus's and Platt's comments have in my opinion missed the
main issue.
I would describe the issue as one of DIGITAL vs. ANALOGUE logic. Most of
us know that the average computer is a "digital" system and programmed
with digital logic. On the other hand, the average human is much faster
at doing analogue evaluation than digital calculations. Consider looking
at a graph or chart compared to a list of numbers!
Graphs are analogue representations - what people find easiest to look
at.
Now consider the way many of us use computers today. The interface is
usually some variant of Windows (Microsoft, Apple or Xerox flavours),
which I consider ANALOGUE interfaces. By that I mean that the user is
primarily concerned with the spatial relationship of pictorial objects
on his screen. That's very different from the digital command-line
interfaces of a few years ago.
But the computer still works internally by digital logic. All those nice
pictures and graphs are encoded in millions of bits and bytes. At that
level, it ain't very pretty. Modern computer applications are often
bloated because we aren't very good at designing and programming them to
emulate the analogue from the digital, and do it by the sledgehammer
approach.
Most people consider the human brain as also operating digitally, with
the "bits" represented by molecular interactions. However, the exact
relationships between thought and manipulation of those bits is quite
obscure.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the brain is excellent at manipulating
certain types of analogue patterns e.g. pictures, sounds, motor control.
These skills are exploited by the modern computer interface (inc. the
mouse for motor control). On the other hand, numbers, grammar,
dialectics and computer command lines push us towards digital binary
thinking (A *or* NOT A). We do this using clumsy discreet "objects"
which are sometimes too large for the task.
Magnus wrote:
>I think one of the reasons I don't like [fuzziness] is that it
>sounds too much like contradiction, or platypus. Just
>think about the original platypus, the animal that was
>both a mammal and laid eggs. It wasn't a mammal and it
>wasn't a reptile, so it must have been something fuzzy in
>between!? We all know that it was the stupid
>classification of mammals vs. reptiles that got us into the
>mess in the first place.
Exactly! The class objects (mammals or reptiles) were too big. They
could only be used by approximation, leaving a large rounding error!
It's similar to the problem of buying a sandwich with a large
denomination banknote. The crisp, rigid Boolean (binary) logic system is
a cause of the fuzziness.
Thus it is wrong to think of "fuzzy logic" as fuzzy thinking. Its goal
is precision.
Horse, how did I do?
Regards,
Jonathan
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