On 23 Oct 2017, at 15:49, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 3:58 PM, John Clark <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 12:33 AM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected]> wrote:
The problem is that, like most real problems, improving computer
code has
no simple one-dimensional measure of "better". Go games are won
or lost.
A computer program that does the same thing as another but is
smaller and
executes faster is objectively better
; and although there is no guarantee small fast programs usually
have fewer
bugs than large slow programs, and the bugs they do have are easier
to find
and fix.
This is not necessarily the case. In engineering practice it is common
to use the expression "premature optimization". The idea is: don't try
to make programs as fast as you can, because this hurts readability
and maintainability. Only optimize for speed when you absolutely must.
There are biological equivalents, the idea of "evolution of
evolvability". Some species hit local maxima and strongly optimize for
a dimension, but this also places them in a dead end. Less optimized
solutions might have the property of being more easily evolvable
beyond the local maxima. This is why modern scientists use Python
instead of C whenever they can. Python is one order of magnitude
slower than C.
And if you complain that speed size and robustness are 3 dimensions
not one
then try making the most money. That's the great thing about the Free
Market, one dimension rules them all.
The above is also a problem with the free market. The free market is
incredibly efficient in utilizing resources to spread the maximum
amount of gizmos to the maximum amount of people. It is not
necessarily optimally efficient in preserving resources for what
really matters in the long term, or creating incentives for individual
happiness, or anything long-term to be honest.
I am not entirely sure of this. I think that in the long term, the
free-market can work, both for preserving resource and happiness.
We might have a different feelings due to the fact that it does not
seem to have work with us, but the reason is that we don't have a free-
market, given that we have the prohibition laws. Even at the start,
Henri Ford, who made his 300 first Ford car in Hemp, and using Hemp,
defended the Hemp for building car by saying that it is a renewable
resource, and that it would not perturb the current concentration of
0_2, C0_2. If the Market would have been free, most people would have
used Hemp (which was the petrol before petrol) instead of petrol. To
sell something as toxic and disgusting as petrol, you *need* to
abolish the free market, which is what happened. After that you do
lose happiness, and you do destroy basically everything quickly,
hopefully in a reversible way.
Free-market is like evolution. It does not see anything in the long
term, but can still lead to building things which can see in a longer
and longer terms.
Bruno
You seem to love astrophysics -- I do too, but you are surely more
knowledgeable. Who pays for the astrophysicists and their equipment?
Would the free-market ever do that? Maybe once there's a clear path to
profit. Elon Musk is banking on that, but would Elon Musk take the
leap without the previous efforts by NASA and other such agencies? I
think this is equivalent to the local maxima problem that I allude to
above.
Best,
Telmo.
John K Clark
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