Well I'm still in a bad mood and coming back from Mass makes me that much
more determined to question the placid acceptance that the human mind can
comprehend all processes in the universe and more importantly that we
basically already have.
Jay starts with:
>I rather like robots, or at least the idea of robots.
I do too - it certainly would be nice if we could actually build some
devices that handled the most basic of human chores. The fact that we
cannot build something as simple as a self-guided lawn mower or vacuum
cleaner should tell you something about the limitations of our
understanding of intelligence.
>Another is via the
>autonomous lifeforms possible in the substratum of silicon chips and their
>networks,
Hubert Dreyfus makes a very good point about how in every age human
beings seem to think they have the required machinery to "build another
human." Hobbes and Descartes both make references to "clockwork men."
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde is an
expression of the growing understanding of Chemistry in their age. In
the 1920s, the human mind was seen as analogous to telephone
switchboards. "I, Robot" and all the "fiction" surrounding it (passed
off as research and otherwise) is based on the premise that electronics
is the right metaphor to build a human. I go back to Dreyfus's example
of climbing the tree to fly to the moon. In this case, we have is an
unshakeable faith the myth of human progress - even if past history does
*NOT* bear up those claims. Hume gives us reason to doubt even when we
are successful. Yet, the scientific/technological complex has so
brainwashed us, that we cannot even conceive of the possibility that we
are not on the right track.
I would like to coin a phrase here that illustrates the problem quite
potently. I call it:
Microsoft Myopia:
The inability to conceive of a software solution to a
given computing problem without some use of Microsoft
technology.
Now in our diverse and well-connected world, how could such a thing
arise? The answer is simple: Microsoft Certified Training Facilities.
Microsoft controls the curriculum, the equipment used, the student's
training experience, and Microsoft issues the diploma. As a UNIX system
administrator, I spend my days trying to convince computational novices,
who have only experienced Microsoft products their entire lives, that
indeed UNIX can do the job and in particular settings infinitely better
than it's Microsoft counterparts.
Now this is a very particular example, but I would like to argue that
*ALL* of us suffer from a similar myopia:
>To shift to more practical issues, what sort of job for a gifted teacher
>(or any capable person) is it to endlessly repeat the same basic
>information, endlessly demonstrate the same basic machine/tool functions,
>the same cautions and warnings, the same set procedures for the engine room
>to class after class of novice submariners?
I'd like to deconstruct this paragraph because it has most of the
assumptions that Lave and Packer point to as part of the "refinement"
learning model. Note that the teacher is dispensing information,
performing procedures, demonstrating functions. What the teacher does
has been defined in terms of computer science: "databases," "procedures,"
and "functions." The problem has been set up so that only a computer
science solution makes any sense. Isn't it Microsoft Myopia in the large?
Now this could be seen as just the usual academic joisting between Jay
and I, but I don't mean it at all in this way. My indictment is far
deeper. What I am questioning is whether we have lost some of own human
capabilities in the attempt to make rationalism work.
I'll borrow from Graham Hancock's work again since I'm presently
engrossed with it, but any careful study of the astronomical structures
of the ancient past will due. Just consider Stonehenge: the accuracy of
the positions of the stones in that monument would require for us large
databases or at least tables upon tables of data. Yet, the first
astronomy at Stonehenge is at least 8000 years old - and there isn't a
scrap of evidence that any notations where used at all. How could a
civilization build a device capable of predicting eclipses and other rare
astronomical events do so without the tons of data and computing power
now find ourselves so dependent on today?
Hancock offers no answer, but makes an interesting observation: All the
ancient civilizations thought in a mythological or "picture thinking"
way. As a rough quote: "There was no contradiction between exact
scientific data and stories as there is today, instead both were weaved
into the one mode of thought - that was the way their brains 'worked.'"
It is with this puzzle that I wish to leave all of you. What would a
"picture thinking" human brain be like? Could we understand one? Could
we even make sense of the few ragged survivors which do exist? - alas
little more than living museum specimens to our modern world. Is this a
capability we have lost in the name of rationality? and like the
"Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer," have we lost the means to think
about the world in any other way?
Peace, Edouard
============================================
Edouard Lagache, PhD
Webmaster - Lecturer
Information Technologies
U.C. San Diego, Division of Extended Studies
Voice: (619) 622-5758, FAX: (619) 622-5742
email: elagache who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
+==============================================================+
| Human Knowledge is fragile and the treasures of wisdom are |
| easily destroyed as the experience of Easter Island proves. |
| There may be many explanations for the similarities between |
| these ancient cultures, but I believe the best explanation |
| is a lost civilization, lost in the night of time that once |
| touched them all. |
| |
| I think it is possible that this civilization knew something |
| that we do not, and that the survivors of the great |
| cataclysm at the end of the last ice age went to |
| extraordinary lengths to keep that knowledge alive. |
| |
| It was, fundamentally, a spiritual teaching, concerning the |
| mission of humanity on earth: Not to lose ourselves in the |
| illusion of material things, material greed, material |
| ambition, but to understand that life is a precious |
| opportunity for each individual to learn, to grow, and to |
| develop - to equip the soul for immortality. |
| |
| The teachings still exist, locked away in the myths, |
| the monuments, and the Astronomy - and it can be retrieved. |
| |
| Posed on the edge of a millennium after a century of |
| unparalleled wickedness and bloodshed, perhaps we need the |
| ancient wisdom more than ever before. |
| |
| Graham Hancock ,_Quest for the Lost Civilization_,1998 |
+==============================================================+