mcandreb wrote:
Joseph Weizenbaum's seminal book "Computer Power and Human Reason"
explores these issues in such a beautifully human way. Do yourselves a
favour and read it. If computers could comprehend his art, they would
weep.
I have often recommended this book, which covers such topics as
how incomprehensible computer programs can lead us to define truth in
terms of their known errors which we don't dare correct, how
computers were one of the most powerful forces for social reaction
in the 20th century (What computer revolution?), etc.
Weizenbaum is part of the artificial intelligentsia, but
he got disillusioned when he wrote a simple psychotherapist
program and found persons confiding secrets to the computer
that they would not tell to another person....
I have a brilliant mathematician friend and computer whiz . He is also
world class bridge player. We've talked about "big blue" and its chess
exploits. He smiled and said "but can it play bridge"? Enough said?
I presume that here you are referring to John von Neumann's
notion of a game as involving bluffing and other non-algorithmic
social interactional components?
Here's a true John von Neumann story:
There was a weekly poker game among members of the mathematics faculty
at Princeton. The players kept asking von Neumann to join them and he
kept refusing. Finally, he gave in and joined a game. In each turn he
bet the limit, and, very soon, he lost all his chips and was out of the
game, at which point, he departed. The other players tried to figure
out why von Neumann had played such an obviously losing strategy.
Finally they figured it out:
Some persons have different goals than others.
What does the SUperbowl mean to *you*, today?
\brad mccormick
Brian
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Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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