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:
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word “no.” To “no” there is only one answer and that is “yes.” Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)