> > > About the Granger paper, I thought last night of a concise summary of > how bad it really is. Imagine that we had not invented computers, but > we were suddenly given a batch of computers by some aliens, and we tried > to put together a science to understand how these machines worked. > > Suppose, also, that these machines ran Microsoft Word and nothing else. >
Amusingly, I used a very similar metaphor in a newspaper article I wrote about the Human Genome Project, back in 2001 (it appeared in the German paper Frankfurter Allgemaine Zeitung) http://www.goertzel.org/benzine/dna.htm " Consider a large computer program such as Microsoft Windows. This program is produced via a long series of steps. First, a team of programmers produces some program code, in a programming language (in the case of Microsoft Windows, the programming language is C++, with a small amount of assembly language added in). Then, a compiler acts on this program code, producing an executable file – the actual program that we run, and think of as Microsoft Windows. Just as with human beings, we have some code, and we have a complex entity created by the code, and the two are very different things. Mediating between the code and the product is a complex process – in the case of Windows, the C++ compiler; in the case of human beings, the whole embryological and epigenetic biochemical process, by which DNA grows into a human infant. Now, imagine a "Windows Genome Project," aimed at identifying every last bit and byte in the C++ source code of Microsoft Windows. Suppose the researchers involved in the Windows Genome Project managed to identify the entire source code, within 99% accuracy. What would this mean for the science of Microsoft Windows? Well, it could mean two different things. Option 1: If they knew how the C++ compiler worked, then they'd be home free! They'd know how to build Microsoft Windows! Option 2: On the other hand, what if they not only had no idea how to build a C++ compiler, but also had no idea what the utterances in the C++ programming language meant? In other words, they had mapped out the bits and bytes in the Windows Genome, the C++ source code of Windows, but it was all a bunch of gobbledygook to them. All they have a is a large number of files of C++ source code, each of which is a nonsense series of characters. Perhaps they recognized some patterns: older versions of Windows tend to be different in lines 1000-1500 of this particular file. When file X is different between one Windows version and another, this other file tends to also be different between the two versions. This line of code seems to have some effect on how the system outputs information to the screen. Et cetera. Our situation with the Human Genome Project is much more like Option 2 than it is like Option 1. " -- Ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=56327957-1b80ae
