4 ms·

I am 99% certain this is not novel and I've seen it in old ( in the CART times ) papers....

PaulHoule 3y ago
In the "symbolic AI" area it is so common for results to just be forgotten for 20-30 years and then come back. For instance Datalog was developed in 1986 but when I got interested it in 2006 I found it was really obscure, by 2016 there was some literature and a few good implementations and it is rolling on. There were those old "rules engines": many of the classic expert systems were developed before the famous RETE algorithm and even then there were RETE implementations that were terribly slow because they didn't use hashtables! When that stuff was fashionable people thought 10,000 rules were a lot, today it is more like 10,000,000 rules are a lot and I'd credit that more to algorithms being better than the computers being more powerful. Similarly since the mid 2000's there has been a revolution in SAT and SMT solving which goes back to the very early (1960s) work on trying to solve problems w/ logic it is just now we succeed instead of fail. (It's a lot like the neural network revolution and used the same method of competition as seen in TREC and visual recognition.)
- riku_iki 3y ago
  there is probably difference if the paper claims that it resurrected some old concept and implemented it with better results compared to "this paper introduces X" as in case of this post.
micro_cam 3y ago
I've got a ~10 year old implementation that does something similar calling it "three way splitting" here: https://github.com/ryanbressler/CloudForest https://github.com/ryanbressler/CloudForest And i got the idea from a lab mate, Timo Erkkila's RF-ACE project though neither of us thought it was a particularly novel idea.
mathisfun123 3y ago
Pardon me for being a currently pissed off PhD student dealing with a rejected paper but: who gives a fuck? Like honestly what is the harm of someone reinventing something, especially when the previous instance is long dead and buried/forgotten (like in this case). Oh it's a waste of resources you say? As if the constant demand for novelty isn't also. My paper got rejected because a reviewer dug up some vaguely similar thing from 3 years ago and claimed it is "well used and well supported" even though the repo has had 3 commits in 3 years. Oh that's an extreme case you say? The presumptive necessity of "novelty" is what enables such extremes. Like the schizophrenia of modern society is hilarious: 15 brands of potato chips is good (competition in the market is healthy) but one molecule in common (in science) and you're a failure.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > reviewer dug up is there any way to appeal such decision? it is not healthy when single person can block lots of hard work..
  - mathisfun123 3y ago
    nope - welcome to peer review where everything's made up and the points don't matter. note: some venues have a rebuttal phase which 99% doesn't make a difference anyway but this one didn't. note2: if you're thinking i got rejected for some other reason: i got (weak accept, accept, reject) and the lone reject came from the wackadoodle. btw how does (weak accept+accept+reject) == reject? see my earlier comment about how the scores don't matter - i emailed the PC and they said they use the scores to resolve a failure to come to a consensus by the reviewers (which is 180deg the opposite of how a scoring system is used - scoring systems "objectively" measure and then humans break ties). note3: this isn't a podunk conference - it's a big name, prestigious conference.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - robotresearcher 3y ago

In the "symbolic AI" area it is so common for results to just be forgotten for 20-30 years and then come back. For instance Datalog was developed in 1986 but when I got interested it in 2006 I found it was really obscure, by 2016 there was some literature and a few good implementations and it is rolling on. There were those old "rules engines": many of the classic expert systems were developed before the famous RETE algorithm and even then there were RETE implementations that were terribly slow because they didn't use hashtables! When that stuff was fashionable people thought 10,000 rules were a lot, today it is more like 10,000,000 rules are a lot and I'd credit that more to algorithms being better than the computers being more powerful. Similarly since the mid 2000's there has been a revolution in SAT and SMT solving which goes back to the very early (1960s) work on trying to solve problems w/ logic it is just now we succeed instead of fail. (It's a lot like the neural network revolution and used the same method of competition as seen in TREC and visual recognition.)

riku_iki 3y ago
there is probably difference if the paper claims that it resurrected some old concept and implemented it with better results compared to "this paper introduces X" as in case of this post.

micro_cam 3y ago

I've got a ~10 year old implementation that does something similar calling it "three way splitting" here: https://github.com/ryanbressler/CloudForest https://github.com/ryanbressler/CloudForest And i got the idea from a lab mate, Timo Erkkila's RF-ACE project though neither of us thought it was a particularly novel idea.

mathisfun123 3y ago

Pardon me for being a currently pissed off PhD student dealing with a rejected paper but: who gives a fuck? Like honestly what is the harm of someone reinventing something, especially when the previous instance is long dead and buried/forgotten (like in this case). Oh it's a waste of resources you say? As if the constant demand for novelty isn't also. My paper got rejected because a reviewer dug up some vaguely similar thing from 3 years ago and claimed it is "well used and well supported" even though the repo has had 3 commits in 3 years. Oh that's an extreme case you say? The presumptive necessity of "novelty" is what enables such extremes. Like the schizophrenia of modern society is hilarious: 15 brands of potato chips is good (competition in the market is healthy) but one molecule in common (in science) and you're a failure.

riku_iki 3y ago
> reviewer dug up is there any way to appeal such decision? it is not healthy when single person can block lots of hard work..
- mathisfun123 3y ago
  nope - welcome to peer review where everything's made up and the points don't matter. note: some venues have a rebuttal phase which 99% doesn't make a difference anyway but this one didn't. note2: if you're thinking i got rejected for some other reason: i got (weak accept, accept, reject) and the lone reject came from the wackadoodle. btw how does (weak accept+accept+reject) == reject? see my earlier comment about how the scores don't matter - i emailed the PC and they said they use the scores to resolve a failure to come to a consensus by the reviewers (which is 180deg the opposite of how a scoring system is used - scoring systems "objectively" measure and then humans break ties). note3: this isn't a podunk conference - it's a big name, prestigious conference.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - robotresearcher 3y ago