hn-classics/_stories/1994/14244316.md

[Source](http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/NegExp.mss.txt "Permalink to ")

Date: Jan 4, 1994 Negative Expertise Marvin Minsky Published as "Negative Expertise," International Journal of Expert Systems, 1994, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 13-19. Abstract: We tend to think of knowledge in positive terms -- and of experts as people who know what to do. But a 'negative' way to seem competent is, simply, never to make mistakes. How much of what we learn to do -- and learn to think -- is of this other variety? It is hard to tell, experimentally, because knowledge about what not to do never appears in behavior. And it is also difficult to assess, psychologically, because many of the judgments that we traditionally regard as positive -- such as beauty, humor, pleasure, and decisiveness -- may actually reflect the workings of unconscious double negatives. ================================= "An expert is one who does not have to think. He knows."--Frank Lloyd Wright Abstract: We tend to think of knowledge in positive terms -- and of experts as people who know what to do. But a 'negative' way to seem competent is, simply, never to make mistakes. How much of what we learn to do -- and learn to think -- is of this other variety? It is hard to tell, experimentally, because knowledge about what not to do never appears in behavior. And it is also difficult to assess, psychologically, because many of the judgments that we traditionally regard as positive -- such as beauty, humor, pleasure, and decisiveness -- may actually reflect the workings of unconscious double negatives. This inclination is expressed in the "rule-based expert systems" that emerged from research in AI. Virtually all of their knowledge is encoded as positive rules: "IF X happens, DO Y." But this misses much of expertise. Certainly, competence often requires one to know what one must do -- but it also requires you to know what not to do. "IF you are close to a precipice, DON'T walk toward it." An expert must know both how to achieve goals and how to avoid disasters. Sometimes we can take positive measures against accident -- but mostly we do it by avoiding actions that might cause trouble. This essay argues that much of human knowledge is negative. And the same applies to thinking, as well. In order to think effectively, we must "know" a good deal about what not to think! Otherwise we get bad ideas -- and also, take too long. This raises a number of theoretical issues: Why is negative knowledge important? The world is a dangerous place for life. For example, biologists tell us that most mutations are deleterious. This because each animal is already near a sort of local optimum (with regard to its local environment) in the space of mutational variants. And near the top of any hill, most steps go down. But why is each animal close to a local peak? Simply because evolution itself is a learning machine that is engineered to climb hills. All existing animals had ancestors that avoided enough accidents to have descendants, and those ancestors were just the ones that acquired machinery that enabled them to learn to avoid poisons, diseases, predators, competitors, and other dangerous situations. Of course we also evolved to learn positive goals and ways to achieve them; still, to the extent that our world offers more perils than opportunities, our topmost goal must be -- don't get killed! There are many ways to avoid dangers You can escape your enemies by destroying, controlling , or evading them. Perhaps our societies, cultures, and governments themselves originated in negative goals, namely, for protection against the most common causes of accidents. The evolution of intelligence brought great new opportunities -- but also gave us great new ways to fail. As soon as we were capable of reasoning, we became susceptible to fallacies. As we extended the range of our plans, we fell prone to more intricate kinds of mistakes. As the arts of speech evolved, this increased the risk of infection by more bad ideas from other minds. The mental, as well as the physical world may also contain more bad than good. Of course, communication can also transmit ideas that give immu
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			Date: Jan 4, 1994 Negative Expertise Marvin Minsky Published as "Negative Expertise," International Journal of Expert Systems, 1994, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 13-19. Abstract: We tend to think of knowledge in positive terms -- and of experts as people who know what to do. But a 'negative' way to seem competent is, simply, never to make mistakes. How much of what we learn to do -- and learn to think -- is of this other variety? It is hard to tell, experimentally, because knowledge about what not to do never appears in behavior. And it is also difficult to assess, psychologically, because many of the judgments that we traditionally regard as positive -- such as beauty, humor, pleasure, and decisiveness -- may actually reflect the workings of unconscious double negatives. ================================= "An expert is one who does not have to think. He knows."--Frank Lloyd Wright Abstract: We tend to think of knowledge in positive terms -- and of experts as people who know what to do. But a 'negative' way to seem competent is, simply, never to make mistakes. How much of what we learn to do -- and learn to think -- is of this other variety? It is hard to tell, experimentally, because knowledge about what not to do never appears in behavior. And it is also difficult to assess, psychologically, because many of the judgments that we traditionally regard as positive -- such as beauty, humor, pleasure, and decisiveness -- may actually reflect the workings of unconscious double negatives. This inclination is expressed in the "rule-based expert systems" that emerged from research in AI. Virtually all of their knowledge is encoded as positive rules: "IF X happens, DO Y." But this misses much of expertise. Certainly, competence often requires one to know what one must do -- but it also requires you to know what not to do. "IF you are close to a precipice, DON'T walk toward it." An expert must know both how to achieve goals and how to avoid disasters. Sometimes we can take positive measures against accident -- but mostly we do it by avoiding actions that might cause trouble. This essay argues that much of human knowledge is negative. And the same applies to thinking, as well. In order to think effectively, we must "know" a good deal about what not to think! Otherwise we get bad ideas -- and also, take too long. This raises a number of theoretical issues: Why is negative knowledge important? The world is a dangerous place for life. For example, biologists tell us that most mutations are deleterious. This because each animal is already near a sort of local optimum (with regard to its local environment) in the space of mutational variants. And near the top of any hill, most steps go down. But why is each animal close to a local peak? Simply because evolution itself is a learning machine that is engineered to climb hills. All existing animals had ancestors that avoided enough accidents to have descendants, and those ancestors were just the ones that acquired machinery that enabled them to learn to avoid poisons, diseases, predators, competitors, and other dangerous situations. Of course we also evolved to learn positive goals and ways to achieve them; still, to the extent that our world offers more perils than opportunities, our topmost goal must be -- don't get killed! There are many ways to avoid dangers You can escape your enemies by destroying, controlling , or evading them. Perhaps our societies, cultures, and governments themselves originated in negative goals, namely, for protection against the most common causes of accidents. The evolution of intelligence brought great new opportunities -- but also gave us great new ways to fail. As soon as we were capable of reasoning, we became susceptible to fallacies. As we extended the range of our plans, we fell prone to more intricate kinds of mistakes. As the arts of speech evolved, this increased the risk of infection by more bad ideas from other minds. The mental, as well as the physical world may also contain more bad than good. Of course, communication can also transmit ideas that give immu