On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 9:49 AM, alex <[email protected]> wrote: > 2010/1/22 Alan Blackwell <[email protected]>: >> I think Dijkstra said a number of things suggesting he didn't have >> particularly profound insights into either human cognition, or human use of >> language. He was a brilliant computer scientist, and in my experience, >> brilliant computer scientists quite often think about things differently to >> how most people do. When he says things about computation, algorithms, or >> formal proof, we should listen carefully to what he says. When he says >> things about metaphor, we should be a little more careful. > > Yes, well put.
and yet it was Dijkstra who wrote: "...whereas machines must be able to execute programs (without understanding them), people must be able to understand them (without executing them). These two activities are so utterly disconnected -- the one can take place without the other..." so perhaps he understood something about use of metaphor. sincerely.
