[32896] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 4174 Volume: 11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Mon Mar 17 03:09:28 2014
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:09:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Mon, 17 Mar 2014 Volume: 11 Number: 4174
Today's topics:
Re: How did PHP and Python take over such a huge market <rweikusat@mobileactivedefense.com>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
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Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:29:19 +0000
From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mobileactivedefense.com>
Subject: Re: How did PHP and Python take over such a huge market-share of Perl?
Message-Id: <87zjkqngjk.fsf@sable.mobileactivedefense.com>
Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen@gmail.com> writes:
> On Sat, 15 Mar 2014 16:53:51 +0000, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
>> You shouldn't include Douglas Adams in here as he was somewhat apt at
>> ridiculing the idea of 'artificially constructed intelligent beings', eg
>> with a 'brain of the size of a planet' comes a depression of equal
>> proportions, rendering the 'superbeing' really 'super' in every respect:
>> By design incapable of partaking in what humans consider pleasurable,
>> fucking, eating and maybe sleeping, and additionally immortal, the
>> inevitable result are eons of brooding over one's inadequacies.
>
> Well, Douglas Adams was actually a satirist, not a science fiction
> writer. His Marvin, the paranoid android, is really a funny creation.
Not so much when thinking a little about it: Marvin as a character is
really very much similar to a classic tragic hero whose life
ultimatively leads to a catastrophic failure because, considering the
situation and himself, that's the only possible outcome.
And there's something to learn here for the 19th-century fixated reverse
luddites who believes the solution to any conceivable problem must be
that some (heroic) engineer builds a more complicated machine: Computers
are already so complicated than controlling them in order to make them
do useful things is an engineering discipline in its own right in
everything but the name. Assuming that an even more complicated machine
can be built, chances are that it will be impossible for humans to
control it. It can then be said to be 'intelligent' but it won't
be useful as a machine anymore. Possibly because - as a side effect of
'intelligence', it gained all the human deficits enabling machines to
produce better results than humans in certain circumstances, eg, a
memory which - while capable of storing every piece of information a
human encounters during its lifetime, is heavily priorised towards
keeping "knowledge which is useful for the individual right now" easily
accessible at the expense of keeping the less important stuff in ever
more remote 'attic areas': That "intelligent design" by "bright minds"
can beat nature itself in this area is - at best - an unproven and
highly optimistic hypothesis.
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Date: 6 Apr 2001 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Users-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01)
Message-Id: <null>
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End of Perl-Users Digest V11 Issue 4174
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