Gregory Arago wrote:
>
>
> I'm trying hard to understand your language and hope that you are
> doing the same with me. Unfortunately it seems we are still talking
> past each other. You seem to be wanting me to speak programming
> language, which you believe has several analogies to biological
> evolution. As a student of human-made things, including technology, my
> view is that technological evolution is nonsense! Humans (consciously)
> make technology, therefore technology doesn't 'evolve.'
>
OK Greg I almost give up as you seem to only accept your meaning of
terms and any other is nonsense. By the way I was not talking about
programming as such but about programming process or methodology which
IMHO seems related to Sociology of Science or Technology. It about how
groups of people produce larger programs.
In the 90s we hired people trained in the human sciences to help improve
the useability of our programs. The ones that learned our lingo and
concepts survived very very well and help us produce better products,
while other seemed to disappear as they were ineffective and I presume
were laid off.
Another example was when I was a co-op student in engineering. During
my work terms in 3rd and 4th years I was working on a large experiment
where the data contained a high degree of noise. The company hired a
statistician to analyze the data. It turned out that communications
between the statistician and the engineers was close to impossible, they
simply spoke different languages. The statistician spoke British
English and the engineers Canadian. If you don't believe me, tell me
"knock someone up means" or what is an iron-monger. Since I took many
more courses in math than anyone else in my electrical engineering
class, I ended up spending a good deal of my time explaining the
analysis results to the engineers and the engineers questions to the
statistician. I also grew up with teachers and fellow class mates who
spoke English, American, Canadian, Australian... Yes the engineers
probably were incapable of understanding the statistician 's none
professional language but she/he could have adapted her/his language to
something the engineers understood but simply refused as they were only
dumb engineers who did not even speak/understand proper English and the
language of Statisticians, at least that was how I as a somewhat neutral
party perceived it.
If you hope to have much effect on science or technology then it seems
to me that considering these two examples would be profitable.
> Thus, you prefer to call the phenomena of programming an 'evolutionary
> process,' which means almost nothing to me.
I did not say the phenomena of programming is an 'evolutionary process',
only that the process that seems to work most effectively uses an
evolutionary like process. Some styles of programming process clearly
are not or at best have a limited closeness to an evolutionary process
as I described.
> Yet, in the back of my mind I feel like I understand your felt need
> ("maybe punctuated equilibrium???", "It is the relatively immediate
> feedback, learning, selection of what works and what does not that I
> would prefer to characterize as evolutionary."), desire, hope to use
> the 'language of evolution' in your field, outside of biology and even
> outside of natural science.
Yes that is what I am trying to get at. But as Bill said even mouse
traps or I would add hammers are the way they are today. by a process of
usually small incremental changes after human people saw what works and
what does not. Evolution not revolution is how it is often described.
Sometimes revolution is possible and necessary. The handle on a hammer
is probably close to a revolution as it changes things drastically. A
certain development facility that I worked with had productivity issues
and were also unwilling to accept ideas they did not originate. Back in
the early 90s I can recall an IBM Fellow from Research saying that the
only way to fix the problem was to fire everyone at that laboratory and
hire all new programmers and management. I would term such a change as
being rather revolutionary to say the least and a bit too drastic.
(sarcasm in my last sentence)
> Of course I respect "the domain or context specific meaning of words,"
> as you write, which Murray cogently raised in his recent post on
> semantics. Yet it should be clear that sociology of science (SoS) and
> its forerunners/competitors sociology of scientific knowledge
> (SSK) and science and technology studies (STS) are now clearly
> positioned to influence the 'language of choice' of specialised domain
> knowledges with theories and methodologies that 'applied scientists'
> rarely think about. So a kind of 'trickle-down' effect is indeed
> implied in my attempt to massage your choice of terms away from the
> use of 'evolution'! -))
In my opinion that won't work if SSK professionals try to be too
prescriptive especially without a knowledge of the field you are trying
to help. I do understand your concern about talking to the public but
programming process even in the professional field is not something that
most programmers are very interested in and almost never talk about
unless they are being forced by management or senior technical staff to
change to a new process. In such cases the programmers fondly wish
assignation were an acceptable way of resolving disputes in our society.
I only talked about programming process here because of you insistence
that evolution only properly applies where there is not human
intentionality involved. What do you do in cases where modification and
selection is used intentionally by biochemists like my daughter to
produce a "new" engineered biological entity. Is this no longer evolution?
>
> Where I am coming from as a human-social thinker, which you seem to
> completely miss or conveniently ignore, is the terms 'free will,
> intentionality, purpose, meaning, goal-directedness, teleology,' etc.
> Why don't you address these? Without them, you cannot even be a
> programmer!! You cannot pick up your check (or bank deposit) for doing
> what you, and not the programs on their own (free will), do!
Of course intentionality, purpose, meaning, goal-directedness, teleology
is required to program and I never implied otherwise, and I would add
free will (within limits) since I am not a determinist, theologically or
philosophically.
>
> To me this notion of 'computers programming computers' is a moot point
> because someone (i.e. a flesh and blood and more...human person) had
> to program the/a computer IN THE FIRST PLACE. It is not even a
> question of infinite regress because we can trace (the origin of)
> computers to the action of human agents. Your post seems to undermine
> or at least undervalue this agency and the role of humanity in the
> 'emergence' of computer technology. This I find disturbing because it
> in a way echoes the 'dehumanization' motif of the evolutionary
> psychologists and sociobiologists. In fact, such language as saying
> 'computers (or computer programs) evolve' plays right into their
> hands! I remember reading the paper by Adami, Pennock & co. a couple
> of years back, contra- non-evolvability, shaking my head --> as if
> they think things happen without causes or effects!!!
Of course ultimately there is a human mind behind all programs and their
is no infinite regress. I absolutely do not deprecate the value of that
agency. Unless I fail to understand what the biologists are saying
there is not an infinite regress for biological evolution either. At
this point they do not understand at all well how life began. Evolution
in strictly a biological sense needs something that reproduces as a
starting point. Of course we could generate programs using large random
number generators or even exhaustive search and seeing if the output
works or even comes close, and also set up some kind of selection
process. Off the top of my head, I guess that even a Blue Geni that
contained all the silicon in the world would need the best part of the
life time of the universe to produce even the first release of Windows
98. Randy or Rich probably could give a better estimate that I can.
Let me make one thing very clear. We did not model the programming
process that we think works on biological evolution!!!!!!!!!!!!! We
figured out something that worked and then adapted a term by analogy.
But such analogies occur all the time, "the program thinks", "the
computer knows how to do that..." and so on. Some professionals refer
to the evolutionary programming process, I have described plus a few
additional features, as Extreme Programming. I doubt you would find
that any more helpful and the word Extreme has poor marketing
connotations. One group that I worked with and admire, selected product
code names based on local lakes, eventually they called one highly
successful future operating system by the code name "Superior" ,
needless to say other groups informally called it the "Inferior
System". (Greg an example of an operating system is Windows Vista or
Windows 98. but one or two others do exist :) ) Thus I do understand
that names and adjectives matter.
I strongly agree with what I think is your real point which is the a
priori adoption of a model in any field such as you seem to indicate the
evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists did is probably a very
bad idea. On the other hand trying out such a model in the kind of
thing Rich described when he talked about genetic programming is
definitely worth doing and can be quite fruitful.
>
> Does this help at all, Dave? Like I said, I'm trying to understand
> your language, but for me 'execution' is sometimes connected with
> 'capital punishment,' 'debugging' is spraying for cockroaches,
> 'processors' are a funny name for a machine making me think of all the
> processed foods in America and Canada, and when you say something like
> 'people write code' or 'programmers attempt' I simply assume agency,
> purpose, meaning, goals, teleology. Don't you?
Limited interest paragraph.
If you use computers at all except for mail and the web how can you not
know about computer bugs although some of the Apple bigots tell me that
they "never" fail or loose data when doing simple things like that. I'm
from Missouri, ie I have doubts about their veracity. Maybe your
system never has a crash or a failure? The causes of most software
failures are called bugs in programming, algorithims, design...
Although sometimes the entity with the bug is sitting looking at the
screen ie a human. Debugging is getting rid of these bugs in the
programs and it is a hugely expensive and hard process.
End Limited interest paragraph.
>
> For example, when you say, "Think of this like a selection process,"
> who or what do you think is 'selecting'? Please be clear on this. It
> is surely not 'nature,' is it? To what do you attribute 'selection
> agency'? This is where I prefer the term 'human selection,' which to
> me is either a non-evolutionary or post-evolutionary concept. Yet you
> seem to be invoking something like 'artificial intellgence' to counter
> my human-social conception of 'human selection.' Am I getting closer
> to the heart of your problem with my language now?
Almost all the selection can be attributed to human (not always
intelligent) programmers although chance, politics and other factors
does sometimes play a part and sometimes the chain is quite long till
you actually get back to someone you can walk into his office and
blame. I have know a case or two where people use a programming tool to
create programs but have lost the source programs to that tool and the
human programmer is no longer available.
>
> Of course, programmers themselves are free, sovereign to determine
> their own languages (C++, HTML, etc.) on their own. It just seems
> philosophically retrograde to use (19th and early 20th century)
> 'evolutionary' language in the (21st century) electronic-information
> age to me!
But you object when we use terms from other areas/fields to talk about
the process and activity of programming. Why do you not object to us
calling C++ a computer language, does not a language strictly imply
intelligence on both sides of the conversation. We even talk about C++
syntax and semantics. What about animal languages or would you say "so
called animal languages"
I agree that we need to be careful when explaining what we are doing to
none scientists especially the public. Some human languages tend to
make phrases and or very long concatenated words. Finish comes to mind
as Finns say that you only need to know a hundred words but a thousand
rules of grammar. German also seems to create very long words made from
other words strung more or less all in a row as I recall from my studies
in high school. Possibly such languages would better accommodate the
kind of expression you are trying to push us towards but that tends not
to be 'english as she is spoken'.
To repeat I separate the issues of a priori having an professional
intelligent human digital stored program electronic computer programmer
adopt an evolutionary programming process methodology vrs after the fact
having that same human observe an analogy and select a word from
another discipline. Note in the above sentence professional
intelligent human modify the noun programmer where as digital, stored
program, electronic modify noun computer although IMHO the programmers
brain is a digital device of a different type than the computer at my
feet is. Note I said brain not mind as I have no idea if the mind is
more than an effect embodied in a brain, whatever. Does my first
sentence in this paragraph not sound pedantic to you? It would
certainly be laughed at in my field and would slow down communication
immensely and inter human person communications are already a huge issue
for the programming field. But then I should not really say field as a
field is something that grows crops or grasses using natural processes.
One of the problems is that I really do not know where to be verbose and
where not to, when I talk about these issues with you. I also sometimes
have a problem where a word has been taken from another area of study
and I do not understand the analogy or even if there was on, eg field as
used in mathematics.
Dave W
My fingers hurt.
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Received on Thu May 22 15:23:28 2008
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu May 22 2008 - 15:23:28 EDT