Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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| Quote | George Gilder in the Jerusalem Post
WAD
Ruthie Blum interviewed George Gilder in the Jerusalem Post late last month. Here’s a sample from the interview:
| Quote | RB: How do you explain how this “incredibly improbable world could exist”?
GG: Creation. I see creation in economics; I see creation in computer science. You can know everything there is to know about the physics and chemistry of a microchip, without having the slightest inkling of what function it’s performing, let alone what content it is processing. The same goes for network theory. You can know every electron or atom across a fiber-optic network, without having any idea of what contents are being transmitted.
In network theory, you have seven layers of abstraction. Those same seven layers also apply, in slightly different form, to a computer system. Both are exhaustively and intelligently designed, with elaborate and extraordinarily complex equipment, which itself is exhaustively designed, and not intelligible unless you know the “source code.” The theory that governs design in the microchip - invented 28-9 years ago by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway - is called “hierarchical design.” It is a top-down design, the crux of which is that it is independent of its material embodiment. |
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The iPhone must really be up there.
Of course, we already know that human beings design things, and that much of what we design is abstract, in that what is important is orthogonal to the causal powers of the underlying physical substrate. The implementation of a long division algorithm with paper and pencil proceeds through steps that are entirely orthogonal to the properties of graphite applied to paper as described from the perspective of physics. Much of the above describes similar, albeit more sophisticated, instances of human design activity instantiating similar forms of abstraction. What bearing does such "non-material" abstraction have upon the thesis of intelligent design? Zero.
But they may be onto something. To the extent that we can show that the abstract nature of computation (e.g. that computation is independent of the material substrates in which it is instantiated, as established by Turing) indicates that computation is "non-material" in the sense of "supernatural", we have another "proof of concept" for supernatural intelligent design, the only kind ID is really interested in.
(Now to establish that computation is supernatural. This may take a few hours. Be right back.)
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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