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From: MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP
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Subject: AIList Digest   V5 #171
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Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 01:11:00 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jul  7 01:11:00 1987
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At the end of that long and angry flame, I think D.Norman unwittingly
hit upon what made him so mad:

>  Gedanken experiments are not accepted methods in science: they are
>  simply suggestive for a source of ideas, not evidence at the end.

And that's just what AI has provided these last thirty years - a
source of ideas that were missing from psychology in the century
before.  Representation theories, planning procedures, heuristic
methods, hundreds of such.  The history of previous psychology is ripe
with "proved" hypotheses, few of which were worth a damn, and many of
which were refuted by Norman himself.  Now "cognitive psychology" -
which I claim and Norman will predictably deny (see there: a testable
hypothesis!) is largely based on AI theories and experiments - is
taking over at last - as a result of those suggestions for ideas.