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Darwin S Dangerous Idea Daniel Den Nett
Darwin S Dangerous Idea Daniel Den Nett
Darwin S Dangerous Idea Daniel Den Nett
Daniel Dennett
Revolucin Darwin
Santiago, Chile
September 6, 2009
AlanTuring
Turings
strange inversion of reasoning
Pre-Turing computers
Darwin
IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT
REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE
IT.
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE,
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT
IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT
ARITHMETIC IS.
Compare
Sand castles
lobster trap
A common error:
We attribute more understanding to the
agent than Need Be.
We lack a familiar concept of semiunderstood quasi-representations
(or hemi-semi-demi-understood pseudorepresentations)
Turing gives us all of these.
Major transitions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Eukaryotic revolution
Sex
Multicellularity (and cell differentiation)
Language
Human Culture (art, religion, politics,
science, engineering. . . )
Major transitions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Eukaryotic revolution
Sex
Multicellularity (and cell differentiation)
Language
Human Culture (art, religion, politics,
science, engineering. . . )
Words
the most important cultural items.
Phylogenetic trees . . .
Glossogenetic trees . . . .
Proto-Indo-European languages
Finno-Ugric languages
Languages of China
Proto-Mayan languages
memes
as cultural items analogous
to genes
or to viruses.
They evolve by natural
selection.
norms of correction
Information about kayaks is stored in Inuit
brains
AND in kayaks!
But only on the (default) presumption that
the design is good.
Even if it isnt understood.
A kind of digitization.
Correction to the norm
Polynesian canoes
"every boat is copied from another boat... it
is the sea herself who fashions the boats,
choosing those which function and
destroying the others" (Alain, 1908)
Compare
Traditional
good things
invented with insight
valued
passed on
w/improvements
economic model
Darwinian
good, bad, soso
insight 0-100
value -100 - +100
passed on
with mutations
as a limiting case.
Compare
Top-down design
Turings computer!
DARUUIN
Delere
Auctorem
Rerum
Ut Universum
Infinitum
Noscas
DARUUIN
Delere
Auctorem
Rerum
Ut Universum
Infinitum
Noscas
Destroy
the Author
of Things
in order to
Understand the
Infinite Universe