I hate to say it, but computers were at the point in my life at their very inception.
I try to look at it like I do a car. I don't really care how it works, I just care that it does. It's up to the genius's and brainiacs to figure out how to make them run and keep running.
I have a couple of these kinds of people in my life. I can't wrap my mind around the things they know. But, it fascinates me to listen to them. One of them is my son. I don't know where his genius came from, but he didn't inherit it from me. The other is my future son in law. He's an aerospace engineer. I often wonder if he thinks the rest of us are just hopelessly dense, and takes pity on us. These are some of the kindest, most compassionate people I know.
I expect the lights to come on when I hit the switch. If they don't, I can handle changing the light bulb, but if the problem goes deeper than that, I'm in trouble.
Their rule of thumb is not to adopt any technology if they don't know what its ramifications will be (analysis of Prof. Donald Kraybill, in "The Riddles of Human Society," 1999).
Who knew that the invention of the car would massively impact sexual mores? But it gave young people a 'private' place away from their parents' homes... The classic TV series "Connections" (James Burke) explored the unexpected threads of innovations, and the current one "The Link" tries to do the same (on a lesser intellectual scale). The Amish are playing it safe.
I said no such thing. I made the OBSERVATION that we LIVE in a world where nobody understands the full scope of all the technology. That is a far cry from saying we should not adopt the current or new technology.
My OBSERVATION has nothing to do with anything Amish.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2013 11:52AM by MJ.
We have become ultra specialists. Gone are the days of ecerybody knowing how to make everything. Even within a field of study there is too much knowledge for any one person to know. For example, there is nobody on this earth today who could build a car from scratch. I don't mean putting a bunch of parts together, I mean locating and mining/extracting the raw materials, refining the materials and turning them into the necessary parts and then putting all those parts together into a working automobile. It's just too much.
The beauty of science is that you don't have to understand it all, because regardless if you are a master mechanic or a baker that car is going to work just fine, no faith required. Go science!
If we made the computer and wrote the software that delivered answers we don't understand, then couldn't we create software to explain the answers? :-)
But what I wonder, too, is whether computers can find answers that we are too dense to even recognize as answers.
Don't limit it to the situation where WE write the software. There are already genetic algorithms where the software alters itself depending on the "environment." Computer-written software is not far off if not already here. And, contrary to Nedry in "Jurassic Park" no one person writes a program with two million lines of code.
For years one of the main areas of AI was chess. For the first decade or so computers played very bad chess. Human players laughed at them. Then they got better and better. A cover of "Chess Life" had the observation "Now it's getting serious," meaning that the computers were getting good.
Current programs running on commercially available PCs can play at a level well above any human. This has lead to the computers finding strong moves that defy explanation in terms of human chess heuristics. The only way humans can justify the strength of the move is that computers win with it. It just turns out that what would look like a mediocre move based on current human understanding of chess turns out, based on massive calculation of all possible continuations, to be "objectively" best according to a computer program. At this point what is a human to do? A human cannot explain why it's the best move other than a program which can defeat any human in a set match says so. The calculations which prove the value of the move are intractable for a human. So in the area of chess we have already reached that point.
ROFL - reminds me of MacReady (Kurt Russell) playing chess with the computer in the 1982 movie "The Thing". Computer says "Checkmate. Checkmate". MacReady dumps his drink into its tower, muttering "cheating bitch" as he gets up to leave.
As for technology becoming responsible for advancements we can't understand, those of us with Luddite leanings will continue to wring our hands. We already think we know a lot (and perhaps we do), but as the article points out there's far too much history littered with after-the-fact recognition of our errors.
What happens when we don't even know we're wrong - perhaps disastrously so, with consequences we also can't grasp - because we have no idea what we're doing (collectively speaking)?
And what happens if I'm unable to get Pat Benatar singing "My Clone Sleeps Alone" out of my head before I try to get some shut-eye?
Those types of articles frustrate me a bit. Doesn't it seem like this particular person is saying in part, "see how complicated this collected mass of information is that only a computer can figure out AND is true?" "Because, you know, its technology and you're finally out done humankind so, just believe what it says."
Other things I use all the time, but do not understand how they work:
• Microwave -- I mean, I get that the microwave speeds up water molecules, which heats up food. I just don't understand how it does that.
• My television -- Something about tubes and wires and circuitry, I dunno. I turn it on and pay no mind to how it works.
• My laptop and my smartphone -- Frankly, I wasn't too clear on the inner workings of an old-fashioned landline phone, nevermind wireless, nevermind cellphones.
• My car -- Back in the days of analog cars, I could mostly tell you how a car worked. But now, everything is run in your car by a computer chip. I don't know how any of it works.
* My refrigerator -- It plugs in and requires power. There's some "coils" in there. No clue how it works.
• My HVAC system -- I flip a switch, heat or A/C blasts through the vents. That is all I need to know.
The part I don't understand is how the first cars were able to get the ignition timing right. Because it seems to me that unless you had combustion at the right time in the cycle more than 50% of the time, you wouldn't get any power out of the engine - ignition at the exact opposite time would make the engine run backwards. But that's probably my inaccurate understanding of how I think engines work.
The first cars had a manual crank ignition. I don't think they always managed to start the car on the first try. I think car engines were closer to lawnmower engines back then.