Talk:Neats vs. scruffies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

Someone who subsequently decided they needed a wiki vacation said it isn't clear why this page is important. I find this a bit rich having just been going through the full theory of Dr. Who's origins on wikipedia (for no good reason --- o wait, I think the TARDIS was actually a featured article! now that's important) a few days ago, but anyway there may be a point. It's clear to a computer scientist that while we treat holy wars and everything else somewhat light-heartedly, that this page actually reflects a serious, long-term debate in the field. Is there a way to communicate this to the general reader? (besides linking to the holy war page?) --Jaibe 16:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point, changing the name of the page might help I guess; there's no debate anyway scruffies RULE! :) But yeah anyone who says something like this isn't a worthwhile page should look in to the amount of Stargate pages ;) Ultima 22:41, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I would go farther: it's not just a serious, long-term debate; it's central to the field of AI. I don't think one can really claim to understand AI (to the extent anyone does) without understanding the distinction and how various approaches fall on either side of it or combine elements of both. Slburson 23:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Origin of term?

Does anyone know who came up with this terminology? The earliest I've seen is T.R.G. Green's chapter "The Nature of Programming" in "Psychology of Programming" by Hoc, Green, Samurcay & Gilmore, Academic Press 1990, p. 21: "Different programming cultures stress different values, on one hand neatness and well-defiinedness, and on the other hand openness and effectiveness. The neat-scruffy differences show themselves both in . . . "

good question, no idea... --Jaibe 21:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I can't find any reference that is earlier than that from some quick searching. MattOates (Ulti) 13:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

FIXED.CharlesGillingham 04:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Elegant != Formal

A provably-correct solution is not necessarily elegant (see the Four Color Theorem for an example), nor is an elegant solution necessarily provably correct (for example, the human brain). I can't help but wonder if this is a false dichotomy. Metasquares 16:58, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] intro

The intro currently reads:

The distinction was originally made by Roger Schank in the middle 70s to characterize the difference between his work on natural language processing from the work of John McCarthy, Alan Newell and others whose work was based on logic (Prolog, Soar, etc.).[1] The "frames" introduced by Marvin Minsky in 1975 were also considered "scruffy" at the time.

Since casual readers will not understand the difference between Schank's work and McCarthy's, this first sentence is a poor description. Can someone familiar with the details of the differences add some qualification to "his work on natural language processing"? E.g., ", which was more ad-hoc" or "which was based on approximate heuristic solutions". This will set up an opposition to "work ... based on logic". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.2.175.74 (talk) 20:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Well-known neats and scruffies

Are the individuals listed in this section self-described as being in these categories, or has the label been attributed to them by others? Each individual should have proper sourcing for the label. If they all called themselves that, then the section might be more suitably renamed "Self-described neats and scruffies". "Well-known" is not an encyclopedic term and should be avoided, like the word "obvious". (Obvious to whom? Well-known to whom?) Robert K S (talk) 20:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The word obvious isn't used in the article is it? The reason the title “well-known” is used, is that they have been defined by the nature of their own work. The terminology links in with the two main philosophical viewpoints of strong and weak AI with both Neats and Scruffies having a specific point of view on both. Scruffies - believe that Strong AI can only come about from emergent processes, and not an ontological representation of knowledge. Essentially Scruffies differ from Neats in that they believe human like intelligence can only come about from representing the underlying system of intelligence, rather than trying to qualify high-level mental process as logic or something similar. Although it might not appear particularly encyclopaedic the list of names helps to define the difference between the two points of view in a way that is more tenable for people not familiar with AI. Can you think of something different we could do to better illustrate the difference? MattOates (Ulti) (talk) 13:47, 24 February 2008 (UTC)