
The Cathedral of Computation - dmckeon
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-cathedral-of-computation/384300/?single_page=true
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gjm11
From the article:

> _Here’s an exercise: The next time you see someone talking about algorithms,
> replace the term with “God” and ask yourself if the sense changes any._

This comes immediately after a paragraph that lists four instances of people
saying things about "algorithms" ... not one of which would have meant the
same thing if it had said "God" instead.

Most of the recent occasions when I have used the word "algorithm" it's been
in contexts like "We can probably come up with an algorithm to distinguish
this case from that case" and "I spend a lot of my time designing and tweaking
algorithms". Replacing "algorithm" with "God" doesn't make much sense there,
either.

I suppose the author isn't really thinking about people who actually work with
algorithms every day, but about the general public. I would hazard a guess
that at least 75% of the general public have no idea what "algorithm" even
means, are not familiar with (e.g.) the fact that Google's search engine is
(kinda) executing one, and as a consequence don't have an attitude to
"algorithms" that remotely resembles that of religious people towards their
gods.

The sentence I quoted seems like the kind of thing people say to sound clever
and insightful, without actually paying too much attention to whether it makes
any sense.

There are (I think) some good points in the article, but having such overblown
bullshit so prominent so early in it really doesn't encourage me to read it
with the care the author presumably thinks it deserves.

~~~
cbd1984
> "I spend a lot of my time designing and tweaking algorithms"

"I spend a lot of my time designing and tweaking Gods." sounds like the first
line to a good Charlie Stross short story.

~~~
Kalium
Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence is a lot like this.

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jacquesm
The biggest obstacle to overcoming this is the bloody jargon. If there is one
thing that helps to establish a moat that the unwashed masses can't cross and
so forms a cornerstone of the cathedrals foundation it is the fact that two IT
people talking might as well be from mars when it comes to comprehension by
non-IT people.

Obviously this applies to just about any field and is a form of data-
compression to save bandwidth in communications but it can certainly leave a
non-initiate totally in the dark.

~~~
ashark
A personal favorite of my in the use of big-O where a short phrase involving
the words "exponential", "linear" or "constant" would have sufficed, and been
comprehensible to any humanities major who didn't sleep through math in junior
high.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
But Big-O does transmit useful information that is not captured by 'constant',
'linear' and 'exponential'.

Quadratic time doesn't fall into your categorization, nor does O(n \log n)
time.

Technical jargon exists for a reason, and that reason is that it is precise
and specific. It conveys exactly what it means, no more and no less. Dumbing
down terminology so that everyone can understand it is a poor tradeoff if said
terminology becomes vague and thereby loses meaning.

~~~
sp332
GP said _use of big-O where a short phrase ... would have sufficed_. That's
pretty common, with people throwing around O(1) and O(n).

~~~
ashark
Precisely what I meant. In those cases its use serves little purpose save as a
shibboleth.

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auggierose
I liked the article very much. I don't believe that we know or are even near
to explain consciousness for example. When working on the fundamentals of
computing and mathematics, it is important to remember that these things are a
part of life, but do not explain all of life (yet maybe). Any kind of religion
is wrong. That does not mean that you cannot have beliefs, but you should be
prepared to change them.

