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106 - Computer Power and Human Reason, Part 3 | General Intellect Unit
generalintellectunit.netIn which we are joined by Ezri of Swampside Chats, to continue our discussion of "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation" by Joseph Weizenbaum. In this episode we cover the prefaces, introduction, and chapter one.
Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) by Joseph Weizenbaum displays the author's ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out the case that while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom.
Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes one a human being. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.
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Links:
Computer Power and Human Reason on Wikipedia
Weizenbaum's Nightmares, on The Guardian
Inside the Very Human Origin of the Term “Artificial Intelligence”
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Emancipation Network
Poor author advocating for gamercide in the year of our lord
also bukharin with his mechanical dialectics infecting random scientist into crisis. I wonder also what author would think about flat earthers, because i somewhat sympathetic to the “they dont hurt anybody” but then you get to vaccines, and how do you solve credibility there
TLDL: They’ve discussed only introduction, so still no meat of the book
Ah also funny note about simulation vs reality in the real world, i think thats something that has been plagueing humans for long ass time, feinman also was very critical of some of the students of physics ability to have applied knowledge of equations in general world. Like what does a plane of glass at an angle does to incidental beam of light.
Maybe podcast hosts are little bit unskeptical in another direction however - simulations in science are frequently done cause experiments cost too much. Checking 1000s experimental conditions is easier with cfd than with as string, yet f1 cars will utilize those strings/smoke to check if cfd haven’t shit the bed later