[From Bruce Abbott (950614.1835 EST)]
Scene IV: The Ranch House
It has now been over three hours since Pa rode off to town to confront Black
Bart, and Ma and the Kid are gettin' mighty worried. "Kid," Ma says, "this
doesn't look good. Pa should have been back by now. Head over to the Long
Branch and find out what happened. And Kid ..."
"Yeah, Ma?"
"Be careful."
Scene V: Back at the Long Branch
The Kid pulls up to the Long Branch and throws the reigns of his horse over
the hitching rail. The sounds of the honky-tonk piano and the cacophony of
many simultaneous conversations drift out through the saloon doors. Fearing
the worst, the Kid slowly pushes against the swinging doors and walks
inside. Everything looks normal, no sign of anything amiss. Suddenly a
familiar voice calls out over the din. Its Pa!
"Hey Kid, com'on over an' have a seat!"
There, sitting at one of the Long Branch'es round oak tables, are Bill
McGraw and Black Bart. The table is cluttered with empty glasses and peanut
shells. Neither of the two men look particularly dead, or even slightly
wounded. In fact, they seem to be having a pretty good time. His mind
reeling in disbelief, the Kid walks to the table and plunks down in an empty
chair.
"Kid," says Bill, "the whole thing's been a misunderstanding. Once we got
it all sorted out, there wasn't nothin' left to argue about. Have a drink.
Me an' Bart here were just gettin' warmed up."
Bill Powers (950613.0815 MDT) --
Thanks, Bill, for struggling with the problem I presented you, for being
willing to keep reexamining and testing your (and my) understanding of the
mechanism by which the ECOLI4a program was able to do what does. It would
have been much easier just to write my claims off as the misperceptions of a
sadly confused psychologist still trying to preserve some vestage of belief
in the old theory of behavior. There were times when you had me seriously
worried that perhaps your interpretation was right, that I was missing
something critical that you were seeing plainly. That forced me to
critically reexamine my own understanding of the program, and as a result I
gained not only a greater faith in my anlaysis but was able to develop a
quantitative analysis of the program's performance. The debate was not a
simple assertion of claim and counter-claim, but a true attempt by both
sides of the dispute to find the basis of their disagreement and resolve it.
It is really only through such testing that real understanding can emerge.
If this happens, everyone wins. Whose argument prevailed isn't all that
important.
When the resolution in this case turned out not to favor your
interpretation, you did not hesitate to say so. There's a name for people
who willingly change their opinions on the basis of sound evidence and
argument. We call them scientists.
Come on, somebody else make a comment that is really truly wrong. I need
someone to beat up on.
Give me a post or two, after I've gotten over the shock of being right about
something for once... (;->
Regards,
Bruce