from FAZ.NET, 26. 4. 2010
The ash cloud of anti-knowledge
The software leads state in the intellectual passivity - Why do we go mad if we rely on computer simulations.
By David Gelernter
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in the FAZ of 19 April 2010 (see triumph of the simulations to the intuition ) Frank Schirrmacher, the cloud of volcanic ash, which led to a day-long shutdown of European airspace, interpreted as a metaphor and bad omen - I think rightly so. Just over a week ago plunged sophisticated computer models of Europe travel into chaos. Our growing reliance on such software simulations for the future involves at least two dangers.
First, that we are in a permanent cloud of ash be wrapped in anti-knowledge when meeting software models are wrong predictions that sanctioned by the venerable imprimatur of the scientific priesthood, brought by the press as an ugly rumor, approved by the United Nations in haste and made by politicians around the world as the basis of their actions be.
Software faith can lead to crippling dependency
Because many of the software models to which we rely, too complex, than to understand the public, they could - and often too complex than anyone they could understand - that are similar judgments they proclaim us, the inexplicable bureaucratic dictates a Kafkaesque state, which is unquestionably afford to follow, although no one can explain it.
is the second, even greater danger: So, how, in a litigious, spread with lawyers crammed state moral passivity, because law takes the place of ethics, engages in a software state intellectual passivity around. Software faith can be a crippling addiction. The college students I teach are grown naturally with pocket calculators. Consequently, they sometimes nonsensical answers to numerical problems, because their calculators or computers spit out nonsensical answers: The students have made errors in data entry, but have not enough common number sense to realize that in addition, the results of their calculations by orders of magnitude.
The thesis of the Erderwärung meet with skepticism
The blind faith in the mystery of Kafka's computer science leaders have already led to considerable difficulties. Carbon dioxide emissions could cause global warming, civilizational, and we do not know it yet. Global warming, which could be caused by carbon dioxide emissions could be dangerous and we do not know yet. What we know is that the civilization-related global warming a scientific hypothesis is a provisional basis, which should be approached with skepticism - because you should all such hypotheses with skepticism and since the climate naturally fluctuates between colder and warmer periods.
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We also know that we owe the computer models, which we predict by the man-made global warming, in turn, with Skepsis begegnen muss - weil man jedes komplexe Stück Software mit Skepsis behandeln sollte und weil das Klimageschehen derart komplex ist, dass unsere Softwaremodelle auf diesem Feld besonders grobschlächtig ausfallen; bei einigen einschlägigen Testläufen konnten sie die Vergangenheit nicht vorausberechnen - und die Zukunft erst recht nicht. Es geht darum, auch bei Dingen, die wir moralisch richtig finden, skeptisch und lernfähig zu bleiben, solange wir nicht imstande sind, die Aussagen rational nachzuvollziehen.
Wir haben reichlich Zeit zum Nachdenken
Skepsis ist in diesem Fall auch deshalb besonderes angebracht, because a substantial influence would cost the global carbon dioxide emissions trillion dollars - money we could for the medicine or science or issue for parks, for the formation or feeding humanity, for the exploration of outer space or for museums or for each village to help the planet to a decent sanitation and clean drinking water. Money we spend maybe not, and instead the people who generate it, could make for their own use. In any case the climate changes slowly when it changes, and we have plenty of time to think about it in peace. Instead, we have decided to put trillions of dollars and the health of the entire world economy on a roll of the dice.
What you have just read, could write a Erzgrüner. These considerations correspond to the most basic sense, they bring nothing to the expression as the control system on which the modern scientific era has rested from the beginning. But we are intoxicated by computer simulations that hide our eyes and dull our discernment. Why are we content ourselves with technologists and scientists to the one true adult and to explain to us how to behave themselves like children?
A new era of intellectual servitude
In England called a socialist community, in which government bureaucrats monitor a compliant citizenship, guardianship or Bevormundungsstaat. The software state is a Bevormundungsstaat par excellence, in which the nanny who only wants the best, replaced by the powerful priests of a mystery cult, was speaking a strange language and has the power to direct the lives of citizens and the fate of nations. How Schirrmacher wrote: "Today stops the computer simulation of air traffic, at a cost that go daily to the hundreds of millions. What will they do tomorrow? What she does now, without us knowing it? And what is the price "
Some time ago I published a book entitled" Mirror Worlds "(1991; German" Mirror Worlds in the computer, "1996)?. There I argued that the reality will be reflected in cyberspace the same way as a village in the motionless water of the village pond. The book concludes with a fictional debate between a technologist and a humanist. The humanist claims that mirror worlds - and sophisticated computer simulations are a form of "mirror world" - to bring about a new era of intellectual servitude are. "Not that I am suspicious of software experts who develop and build," says the humanist, "I think they are responsible, professional type. They are suited to take care of us. And that is precisely the problem. Slavery is a state of dependency - I do not understand these things, but I rely on them, not only for convenience, but to think at all. The result is called feudalism, whether an actual or an intellectual. "
is in my book, the humanist with his argument through. In real life wins the technologist, and the rest of us, all of us everywhere - we lose.
David Gelernter , born 1955, has created with his research, the foundations of the World Wide Web. His name is closely linked to the overnight success of the digital age associated his book "Mirror Worlds" (1991) takes almost all of the developments of digital communications in the last two decades in advance. On 24 1993 he opened a package: the explosive charge of the Una-bomber Ted Kaczynski, who wanted to kill the minds of the Revolution and one of the most important computer scientists had chosen. Today Gelernter Professor of computer science at Yale.
from English by Michael Adrian .
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