Friday, November 17, 2006

Heh...Turing

I found this on Wikipedia. I don't know how long it will last, since it isn't in the supposed spirit of the site at all, so here it is (and with some context too! how exciting!):

    1. Lady Lovelace Objection: One of the most famous objections, it states that computers are incapable of originality. This is largely because, according to Ada Lovelace, machines are incapable of independent learning. Turing contradicts this by arguing that Lady Lovelace's assumption was affected by the context from which she wrote, and if exposed to more contemporary scientific knowledge, it would become evident that the brain's storage is quite similar to that of a computer. Turing further replies that computers could still surprise humans, in particular where the consequences of different facts are not immediately recognizable.

    (It is unfortunate that the brilliant Lady Lovelace had not the experience of exposure to the modern world's most epidemic computer operating system, which is undeniable proof that computers are INDEED capable of highly independent, diverse, illogical and unpredictable behaviour.)

    As a certain blender of small animals would say, Indeed.