I believe most of the time these big disputes are mentioned, there is actually no dispute. Generally it’s just one group saying that there are two groups, and nobody actually fights for the other side. Also, it’s often a false dilemma. There is no real conflict, just orthogonal or unrelated choices.

One such naïve dichotomic fight that people like to describe is the famous one between reductionism and holism, about which I wrote here once. There are three more others I’ve been dealing with recently: the GOTO and structure programming controversy (wrote about it too), the Perceptrons and neural networks controversy, and finally the probability controversy (classical vs frequencialism vs bayesian). I want to write about all of them, specially because in all cases I defend the view that the conflict is fictitious.

The Perceptron is a very interesting entity that deserves the attention of all. The legend says that it was a great invention that were maliciously disregarded by Marvin Minsky, the merciless, who wanted to become the dominant alpha male of AI. This would have delayed scientific advance for decades. I will talk about how I find this concept ludicrous.

This is part one of the article. (It is huge, sorry.)

But let’s not care for the general media and try to return to a high-level debate, as the one that was started when the poll began. When reading the new article at Nature, with the poll results, I started to understand that we are mixing two subjects: that of transhumanism, related to other possible advances such as BMI, and on the other side the discussion of the current use of drugs such methylphenidate (Ritalin).

While I often support the idea of transhumanism, after reading that article I realized I am strongly opposed to the way people seem to be using Ritalin in the academic world, and consequently the way they are proposing that other such drugs should be used in the future. I’ll try to explain those concerns of mine below.

My field is computers, signal processing, AI and mobile robotics. For one side, I like neuronal networks and other said “connectionist” structures of computation and methods of learning. But I’m not a NN guy, I like complex computers, and complex programs and mechanisms. I like the shape of the computer structures that the so-called “symbolic paradigm” uses. But I don’t see the wall between the two areas, and I want to make a study to help bringing the two together. The way to do this is mainly studying the performance of different systems, and analyzing them “from the outside”, peeking at the computational structures a bit like a biologist and using tools like dynamical system analysis, and information theory.

After Mr. Watson’s controversial interview , many people were quick to deny anything he said, and call him a racist. I even confess I dismissed his sayings as senile stupidity. But then I read this interview with Charles Murray and decided that people were in fact too harsh with Mr. James…

You can read the part one of this article at this address .

This debate usually happens as a monologue: those who denominate themselves “holists” differentiate themselves from the opposing group that they call the “reductionists”, and claim that they are capable of studying phenomena that the supposed advocates of the other group can’t even conceive.

I believe humanity is wasting a valuable time in pretending that this dilemma actually exists. The self-denominated holists should stop being paranoid, and those candidates to the other denomination should try to stop the building of this pointless wall.

This is a series of two articles criticizing the idea of holism. In this first one I advocate that what many people perceive as an insufficiency of current science are actually well-known restrictions imposed by ourselves, completely understandable by the so-called “reductionist” framework.

You can read part two of this article at this address .