Subject: Re: Harlequin was: Re: Is LISP dying? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/20 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3141482796037292@naggum.no> * "Frank A. Adrian" <fadrian@uswest.net> | You assume, of course, that the people with their fingers on the budget | actually care about the fiscal consequences of their actions on common | people's lives and that they could be swayed by being shown these negative | consequences. In my experience, this is not likely. no, I assume that they care only about tax revenue, and that those who produce the tax revenue (i.e., companies) care about their customers and the cost of hiring people, which, in the nth degree, means caring about the consequences for common people, but it's the "nth degree" thing that far exceeds the mental capacity of those who make political decisions. introducing AI to such problems doesn't seem entirely bogus to me. my point was, however, not to go and do this, but to think in different terms, so maybe somebody out there might get an idea for how to help make budget reallocations in accounting software based on the decisions of politicians, to minimize the effects of their decisions immediately, instead of through getting burned and then trial and error, which is how it happens today, often with devastating secondary effects, such as whole companies folding or whole markets drying out. | But then, I'm a cynic. no problem. cynics are the only people who can deal with reality. the key is to let the right cynics set up the fantasies that people want to live. (yeah, I've seen the Matrix, but this is a different angle. :) #:Erik -- @1999-07-22T00:37:33Z -- pi billion seconds since the turn of the century