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I don't know why you need to reply unpleasantly. It should be possible to give and receive criticism, even strong criticism, without having it turn into a flamewar just because we're on the internet.

Indeed, you yourself have criticised my work and my field mercilessly in this thread and I did not once reply with unpleasantness. In fact, what you keep dismissing as irrelevant and basically cheating (Louise) is my PhD research. I would be well within reason to be defensive about it. Instead, I believe I have remained polite and respectful towards you throughout and strove to answer all your questions about it.

Although you did take my criticism as snark, so this is perhaps something that is not entirely objective - you might perceive my criticism as a personal attack, say. Again, this should not be the case. In my field of work, criticism is what makes your work better and without criticism one never improves. So I do mean it when I say that my contribution to this thread was for your sake and to help you improve your knowledge of a subject you seem to be interested in.

In any case, I'm sorry this conversation turned sour. I didn't want to make you upset and I apologise for having done so.




> I believe I have remained polite and respectful towards you throughout

I disagree. I do not mind in the slightest being told I am wrong, or having my ideas criticized. But calling me too stupid to understand my own point, or too intellectually lazy to want to understand a subject, or to talk down to me like a child—that is not kosher. This conversation is not worth being attacked, or my day being made unpleasant because you choose not to avoid the impulse to throw insults.

To the other side of things, it might help calm you to know I never much considered what I was saying a criticism of Louise. Louise, from what I can tell, is fine, and an interesting take on the task. What I was objecting to was only the way you used it in the argument. A bike is cheating if you bring it to a 100 metre sprint, but that doesn't mean they serve no purpose. Eg. I do not consider SAT solvers particularly relevant to AI progress, but one can hardly deny they are quality tools.


As far as I can tell, I did not talk down to you as to a child, and I certainly did not call you intellectually lazy or stupid. I criticised the fact that you don't want to put in the hard work to understand the subject you are discussing, which is what you have stated from the start of the conversation, claiming you don't need to read up on the history of AI because it is not relevant (I'm paraphrasing your point but correct me if I misunderstood it).

It seems to me I am right to think that you took my criticism as an insult to your faculties. If I say something wrong, I expect to be corrected and criticised if I insist on it, but I don't take that as an insult.

>> To the other side of things, it might help calm you to know I never much considered what I was saying a criticism of Louise.

And still you persist with the same style of commenting. "Calm" me? And you complain that I talk down to you? You have replied to my original comment with arrogance to tell me that my entire field of study is "not AI" and irrelevant - and then continued to insist you don't need to know anything about the ~70 years of work you dismiss even when it became clear that this only causes you to make elementary errors. You speak of things you know nothing about with great conviction and then you get upset with me for pointing out this can only result in errors and confusion. Given all that, I have shown great patience and courtesy. Others would have just ignored you as ignorant and unwilling to learn. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Was that a mistake?


> "Calm" me?

A poor choice of words, sorry. I meant, I understood you to be saying you found the criticism of Louise unpleasant, and I thought it would lessen that to know that I didn't and don't think Louise was bad.




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