Yep.
Cheers,
Alan
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At 8:31 PM +0200 5/30/01, Henrik Gedenryd wrote:
Alan Kay wrote:
We realize all this.
Alan,
Since this first happened, there has come about a new reason that will force everyone to become more careful. Creationism has been supplanted by a position that pits evolution against "intelligent design". Apparently this is a more credible position from an academic point of view (well how hard can that be), and with more academic proponents.
Exhibit A: http://theory-of-evolution.org/default.htm
There was also a good article in NYT on April 8 (I picked it up from there). Sorry, it's not on-line any more.
Dawkins and the rest of us have fallen back on the design metaphor because it is very convenient, it gets everything right, except it gets everything wrong if you see what I mean. Now, in what resembles an arms race, the opponents have sharpened their weapons and this will force the fish-with-legs guys to refine our position as well.
So let's. Now, from my point of view, the weakness of the "intelligent design" position is that it rests on a lay/"naive" notion of design. This is the idea that design consists in deriving a product from a pre-conceived specification or idea (the word "plan", in the AI sense, derives from architects' use of drawings in the 16th cent. or so).
(Am. Heritage:) plan (pl^n) n. 1. A scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand ... [ French alteration (influenced by plan flat surface); ground plan, map]
The planning paradigm and eg. the waterfall all share this layman's notion of design (and they are both wrong too). You will probably not be surprised that I found the origin of this idea dates back even to Aristotle's writings.
The problem is that design IRL actually closely parallels evolution. Strictly, they both are negative feedback processes. This is true even when a single designer is doing the designing. So the lay view is patently mistaken, as we developers know by the way.
In other words, evolution (in the biological sense) is the best available metaphor for how design actually works! (And in some parts of the Squeak image this is painfully obvious!)
But the bottom line is that these god-as-designer people will force the rest of us to refine our language, or we unwillingly lend them credibility. In a sense we should be grateful to them for refining our own position.
Henrik