This is a continuation of the "intractable problem" thread. I decided to moved it here so that we can all try to converge on the only point that matters. I'd hate having to hear Alex talk of Santa Claus o n e m o r e t i m e, he's a smart guy and can certainly understand what is a purely abstract problem.

Why is it that I can't keep evolution out of a debate on a purely abstract issue? I have no idea. Everyone seems to think that without biological evolution knowledge as an abstract thing cannot exist. That position necessarily implies that we did not discover knowledge, we invented it. The position is inconsistent with the claim that such knowledge is a good enough description of reality, although I doubt a lot of people would be willing to investigate where the inconsistency is.

I'll state the problem in yet another guise. It will be my last try, if you can't understand the exclusively abstract nature of the problem with this example I have nothing better to offer.

Some ETs dropped by our planet and gave us as a gift an electronic oracle. It's a gadget much like our computers, it has a keyboard and a screen. As you know from countless movies, ETs speak English and so does their machine. You type questions on the keyboard and get answers on the screen. When the machine doesn't understand a question, it asks you a series of questions back until it knows enough to either give you the answer or declare that the answer is nowhere to be found in its database.

At first the machine was pretty much useless. Almost all questions you typed on it prompted either an endless series of questions back or a simple no-answer-could-be-found. But people thought the gadget was cool and kept fooling around with it anyway, just for fun. Then something very interesting started to happen. The machine grew more and more knowledgeable, and in a few years it knew everything an average human being knows.

Now a team of scientists wants to understand how the machine works. My question is, if you were the chief scientist for that project, what would you do?

a) Tear the machine apart and look inside it
b) Do some x-rays of the machine while it's running to see how it works
c) Buy a copy of Darwin's Origin of the Species
d) Buy a copy of the Bible
e) Start looking for a new job

So far, with the exception of Dick, everyone is choosing one of the above options. Can't you guys do any better?

• How is this machine related to accumulation of knowledge by - alexander - July 25, 2001 - 19:44 UTC
  • Sorry, can't answer that - aurino - July 25, 2001 - 20:05 UTC
    • No, my question was different. - alexander - July 25, 2001 - 20:27 UTC
      • Your question was irrelevant - aurino - July 25, 2001 - 21:15 UTC
        • What do you mean by 'abstract' - harvey1 - July 25, 2001 - 21:33 UTC
        • If the question is purely abstract, then answer is too. - alexander - July 25, 2001 - 21:48 UTC
          • Evil machines - aurino - July 26, 2001 - 13:39 UTC
            • Alex strikes me as religious - harvey1 - July 26, 2001 - 14:05 UTC
              • Harvey, only people who do not know math call it religion. - alexander - July 28, 2001 - 16:21 UTC
                • Again - harvey1 - July 30, 2001 - 14:11 UTC
                  • I think... - stormcrow - July 30, 2001 - 14:40 UTC
                    • Alex is saying much here - harvey1 - July 30, 2001 - 17:12 UTC
                      • Title should read 'Alex is not saying much here' (nt) - harvey1 - July 30, 2001 - 17:12 UTC
                      • Harvey, do not be offended by the fact that math explains things - alexander - August 2, 2001 - 15:11 UTC
                        • Why would I - harvey1 - August 2, 2001 - 16:55 UTC
• Defining the problem - harvey1 - July 25, 2001 - 19:53 UTC
  • It's as simple as it gets - aurino - July 25, 2001 - 21:06 UTC
    • This is a different issue - harvey1 - July 25, 2001 - 21:22 UTC
      • No, it's the same - aurino - July 25, 2001 - 21:32 UTC
        • I don't how you think that - harvey1 - July 25, 2001 - 21:58 UTC
          • One question, nothing more - aurino - July 26, 2001 - 14:31 UTC
            • Don't get upset! - doctordick - July 26, 2001 - 15:54 UTC
            • I speak Greek and you Italian - harvey1 - July 26, 2001 - 17:07 UTC
              • Running out of time - aurino - July 26, 2001 - 18:54 UTC