: "Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1b_nospam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: There's a lot of stuff people label "science" that on a personal level
they
: treat as "magic". How does an optical mouse work? Watch the blank
stares.
But that's not "treating it as magic". That's "treating it as something
they don't understand". Thus, it isn't evidence that people equate
"lack of understanding" with "magic". Not that they do, not that
they oughta, and not that it's a useful model.
I expect that most people expect that light is being bounced off the
surface beneath the mouse, and that sensors detect the relative motion
of mouse and surface from the properties of light that comes back. I
don't expect they expect that there's a miniature symbol or simulacrum
somewhere which reacts to the movements of the real mouse because it is
a symbol for it, and this is somehow detected optically.
Nor do I expect they expect it works because of the operators mental
model of how, or faith that, it works, as a magical explanation
might suppose.
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the
power off and on.
Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You
cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding
of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
--- AI Koans, Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
"When I got you to see Gail in the mirror, you had to think of it as
a computer link to make the magic work."
"Well I was also thinking of quantum entanglement and the
microtubules in the brain."
"Aye, you see? Knowledge is your axis, your power functions best
when you have some rational grasp of how it ought to work."
--- Thunderstruck, Sharon Curmen and Agnir
Wayne Throop throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sheol.org/throopw
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