Salutations MoQers and heretics alike :)
COMPUTERS DON'T MAKE CHOICES!!!!!!
Hmm! Really? That's news to me. Especially as I spent several hours today (and the
last
several weeks) writing and debugging a program to enable a computer to do exactly that.
It's true that computers don't make choices in the same way that humans make choices
or
cats make choices. But there's a damned good reason for that.
A computer isn't a cat or a human.
You have to consider the notion of computer choice in the context of computer
environment.
A programmer creates a piece of code in order to enable a computer to branch to a
particular action given certain stimuli. Sure, the outcome is "deterministic" in one
sense but
not necessarily predictable.The future state of the world is not known nor is it
knowable until
it has become the past state of the world.
You also have to consider the software as separate and radically different from the
hardware
(Chapter 12 Lila) and a number of other relevant details such as when you refer to a
"computer" do you mean a PC or a Mac, an embedded system, the firmware, the software
or what?????
Probably the best (IMO) examples of the type of computer code that make human-like
choices are to be found in the field of Artificial Life (AL). Have a look at work of
Rodney
Brookes at MIT.
One other thing to remember in denying that computers can choose is that it is a basic
principle of the MoQ that even a lowly atom can choose and experience the world.
Horse
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