Dealing With Rejection
May. 3rd, 2013 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7So I was rejected from the 2013 International Association for Computing and Philosophy. I knew it was likely that I'd be rejected, but it A) It's at the University of Maryland at College Park, MD, during B) July 15-17 2013 (the weekend of my birthday), and C)…Well. Just read the full email and reviewer's comments, below:
‘Dear Damien,
‘I regret to inform you that your paper has not been accepted for presentation at the IACAP 2013 conference. Please find the referee’s report below.
‘Best regards, Marcello Guarini
‘This paper should not be accepted for presentation at an IACAP conference.
‘To the extent that plausible claims are made, they are unoriginal and undeveloped. For example, in section 4, we get:
‘“As we create new and elaborate forms of machine intelligence, human agents will need to engage seriously the question of whether biologically human morals, expectations, and modes of existence can be applied to those of our creations which have innately none of those.”
‘Many articles and some books have been written about that — none of this work is cited here. Moreover the author does not even bother to develop the claim. Indeed, the claim comes as part of section 4, which is two short paragraphs at the end of the paper. The whole rest of the paper was a setup to section four, which is short indeed. That was where the material relevant to the conference was supposed to be. All two paragraphs of it. Really?
‘I could fuss over the definition of magic being too vague or too general, but there is no need. Given the way magic is defined, it is just not clear why it is needed to motivate claims like the one quoted above. Many, many authors have discussed seriously claims like the one above, and none of them needed the idea of magic to motivate such claims.
‘The treatment of Singer is inadequate and implausible, and utilitarians of almost any stripe would howl at the treatment of his utilitarianism. (For the record, I am not a utilitarian.)
‘Many, many serious philosophers have discussed recursivity, feedback loops, self-reflection, interpretation via symbol systems, different senses of “meaning”, and all that in relation to artificial intelligence. Virtually none of that work is cited here. Instead, we are treated to an unclear and vague discussion of magic that does not add anything new to the topics just mentioned. You don’t need to convince philosophers coming to an IACAP conference that there is an important relationship between the topics just mentioned: they already believe it. What is needed is to add something new to our understanding of the possible relationships, and the discussion of magic herein does not deliver on that.’
As they say, ” Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.”
So, fuck it, whatever, right? I guess that just means it’s time to figure out how to make the nuances of my position clearer, in under 4000 words.
To that end, if anyone wants to read this unoriginal and underdeveloped argument which rests on a too-vague definition of magic, which adds nothing to the discourse, here it is: Natural, Artificial, and Rational: At the Intersection of Magic and Autonomous Created Intelligence
I know, I just made it sound So Intriguing, how could you resist, right?
Right.
ANYWAY, if you want to read the general CFP, to see what they were looking for (content, length, girth, etc) that's Here. Of specific interest is Track II, or the "Minds and Machines" track.
And that's today's mood, in context.
Enjoy.
‘Dear Damien,
‘I regret to inform you that your paper has not been accepted for presentation at the IACAP 2013 conference. Please find the referee’s report below.
‘Best regards, Marcello Guarini
‘This paper should not be accepted for presentation at an IACAP conference.
‘To the extent that plausible claims are made, they are unoriginal and undeveloped. For example, in section 4, we get:
‘“As we create new and elaborate forms of machine intelligence, human agents will need to engage seriously the question of whether biologically human morals, expectations, and modes of existence can be applied to those of our creations which have innately none of those.”
‘Many articles and some books have been written about that — none of this work is cited here. Moreover the author does not even bother to develop the claim. Indeed, the claim comes as part of section 4, which is two short paragraphs at the end of the paper. The whole rest of the paper was a setup to section four, which is short indeed. That was where the material relevant to the conference was supposed to be. All two paragraphs of it. Really?
‘I could fuss over the definition of magic being too vague or too general, but there is no need. Given the way magic is defined, it is just not clear why it is needed to motivate claims like the one quoted above. Many, many authors have discussed seriously claims like the one above, and none of them needed the idea of magic to motivate such claims.
‘The treatment of Singer is inadequate and implausible, and utilitarians of almost any stripe would howl at the treatment of his utilitarianism. (For the record, I am not a utilitarian.)
‘Many, many serious philosophers have discussed recursivity, feedback loops, self-reflection, interpretation via symbol systems, different senses of “meaning”, and all that in relation to artificial intelligence. Virtually none of that work is cited here. Instead, we are treated to an unclear and vague discussion of magic that does not add anything new to the topics just mentioned. You don’t need to convince philosophers coming to an IACAP conference that there is an important relationship between the topics just mentioned: they already believe it. What is needed is to add something new to our understanding of the possible relationships, and the discussion of magic herein does not deliver on that.’
As they say, ” Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.”
So, fuck it, whatever, right? I guess that just means it’s time to figure out how to make the nuances of my position clearer, in under 4000 words.
To that end, if anyone wants to read this unoriginal and underdeveloped argument which rests on a too-vague definition of magic, which adds nothing to the discourse, here it is: Natural, Artificial, and Rational: At the Intersection of Magic and Autonomous Created Intelligence
I know, I just made it sound So Intriguing, how could you resist, right?
Right.
ANYWAY, if you want to read the general CFP, to see what they were looking for (content, length, girth, etc) that's Here. Of specific interest is Track II, or the "Minds and Machines" track.
And that's today's mood, in context.
Enjoy.
