Computation and Human Experience

[Dace]

>Physics is full of casual terminology that makes believe material is
>animated with will, needs, motivations, desires and so forth. Just
>about any textbook explanation of electricity and magnetism is full of
>these personae and so they get passed on to the science and
>engineering students, who of course end up thinking in those
>terms. Engineering and comp sci is much worse in this
>regard. Engineers have their babies, their idiot children who they are
>convinced will end up in college some day, hopefully soon, before the
>grant runs out. AI carries this pretend business into a kind of
>religious fervor, a sort of techno-mysticism. On the other hand
>cognitive science turns the process around and from a personification
>of the material, I get the impression they re-mapp that mechanical
>personification back onto the biological phenomenon of mind and body.
>
>Chuck Grimes
>
We project our mental capacity for computation onto "computers" and then
close the circuit of self-alienation by injecting it back into ourselves.