On Thu, 02 Aug 2001 16:52:59 GMT, Will Dwinnell as predictr@bellatlantic.net wrote: [ snip, much. Near the end, "While I have not studied these issues obsessively, I do tend to agree with the fuzzy critics' general complaint that too much has been made of fuzzy logic. " Then ... ]> On the other hand, people have built fuzzy systems that > work, that is, which solve the problems for which they were intended. > To me, it seems that issues like whether they could have been built > using some other formalism (be it probability or somthing else) are less > important than issues of economy and effectiveness.
Are you saying, they're okay because they seem to work? That's dangerous if you don't look any closer. More than a century ago, the magic elixirs -- all those products of the "snake-oil salesman" in the U.S. -- did tend to work. For *some* purpose. There *was* an active ingredient or two. Many of them were 100-proof drinking-alcohol (or more), and some had opium. As a medical potion, the dosing would slip past a lot of the "dry's"; and the retail price would be a big markup from the saloon. It has been my impression that "neuro nets" and "fuzzy logic" have been sold just as rationally as that, PROBABLY, where they do exist in commercial products. That is: people have bought a black box, with mystical assurances, paying several times what the price should be. Criticism is avoided by being obscure. An extra cost of no-criticism is no-improvement of the underlying model, whatever that was. -- Rich Ulrich, wpilib@pitt.edu http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html