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WrongBot comments on Rationality Quotes: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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-- Often attributed to Pablo Picasso, but I can't find a reliable source.
I'm quite curious to hear what LW thinks of this one.
I don't think it would be controversial to say that "useless" is way too strong a term for describing shortcomings of computers.
I can't find the quote's context either, but consider this - why would someone ask Picasso about computers?
If the quote is correct, I wouldn't be surprised if it was in response to something like "Do you believe that computers can [be made to] create art [on their own]?". In which case the quote becomes much less categoric.
Well, in that case, it still sounds to me like View 2: "Only humans will be able discriminate against art upon learning a computer / monkey / child / prankster made it, pendejo!"
But that discussion was about science. Nonhuman science is the same thing as human science, so discriminating is irrational. Nonhuman art is (will) not be (necessarily) the same as human art, and it is quite possible that it will not be at all enjoyable by humans.
But it will (likely) be the case that people's opinions about particular artwork will dive sharply downward upon learning it was mostly the work of a computer, even as the pre-revelation opinion is higher than average.
And the experimental evidence for this is what?
More substantially - it is perfectly possible to have a great deal of difference in the emphasis placed on various subfields in the sciences. If we'd gone directly from vacuum tubes to Drexler/Merkle nanotechnology, do you think semiconductor device physics would have been studied as deeply as it has been?
He was no computer scientist, but he presumably knew a lot about specific non-computer things. The more important those things are, the less important computers are likely to be (relative to computers, that is). So I don't think Picasso had to have known much about computers to denigrate them rationally.
But I am assuming that Picasso knew some pretty important non-computer things. And it does help to remember when he stopped being able to learn more about computers.
Particularly if you consider the term literally rather than as a way to say "not particularly important".
What question was the Avatar movie an answer to?
How about the last flash game you played?
This conversation?
It may be worth noting, if the quotation's attribution is accurate, that Picasso died in 1973.
Okay - assuming that the quote's claim is accurate for its time period, that still leaves the fact that streamlining the process of getting accurate answers leaves more time for figuring out good questions or doing other valuable things.
I interpreted the quote as being more of a point about answers than about computers. But YMMV.
I saw it as saying "garbage in, garbage out."
Peoples' values vary. People who don't value answers wouldn't be very popular if they turned up here, but they do exist, and I don't see much point in passing judgment on them.
"It's not that I judge them, I just, just..."
"Don't see any reason for them to exist?"
"Exactly."
HP:MoR.
To be fair, I expect that most of them don't see much reason for people like us to exist, either.
A practical arrangement all round.
Hey, but I like you! ;-)
Seriously, in my line of work, answers only take you a step or two forward. The lasting value is in the questions, which can be reused over and over again to produce change as a side effect of the answering, while the actual answers can be consciously discarded once the process of answering is complete.
--'Mentat Zensufi admonition', Chapterhouse Dune; Frank Herbert
I think, the quote is useless and in rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of IT.
E.g. experimental mathematics would not exist without computers. Computer simulation is fantastic way to empirically produce and check hypotheses.