Relation To Philosophy and Human Intelligence
This conflict goes much deeper than programming practices, (though it clearly has parallels in software engineering). For philosophical or possibly scientific reasons, some people believe that intelligence is fundamentally rational, and can best be represented by logical systems incorporating truth maintenance. Others believe that intelligence is best implemented as a mass of learned or evolved hacks, not necessarily having internal consistency or any unifying organizational framework.
Ironically, the apparently scruffy philosophy may also turn out to be provably (under typical assumptions) optimal for many applications. Intelligence is often seen as a form of search, and as such not believed to be perfectly solvable in a reasonable amount of time (see also NP and Simple Heuristics, commonsense reasoning, memetics, reactive planning).
It is an open question whether human intelligence is inherently scruffy or neat. Some claim that the question itself is unimportant: the famous neat John McCarthy has said publicly he has no interest in how human intelligence works, while famous scruffy Rodney Brooks is openly obsessed with creating humanoid intelligence. (See Subsumption architecture, Cog project (Brooks 2001)).
Read more about this topic: Neats Vs. Scruffies
Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation, philosophy, human and/or intelligence:
“The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.”
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“The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.”
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“It would be easy ... to regard the whole of world 3 as timeless, as Plato suggested of his world of Forms or Ideas.... I propose a different view—one which, I have found, is surprisingly fruitful. I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind.... More precisely, I regard the world 3 of problems, theories, and critical arguments as one of the results of the evolution of human language, and as acting back on this evolution.”
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“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.”
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