Wetware, Software, All Around the Town

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I was think about the classical writer who demonstrated that dogs reason (because of this post), and so I Googled for "dogs reason syllogism fork road" and the second hit was this.

This illustrated something I've long held to be true -- computers are not some sort of proto-minds of their own, they are mind extensions. As my (wetware) memory gradually fails, I place my thoughts in silicon storage and then look them up again later. But nowhere on the Internet do I find any thoughts not put there by a human!

(This, by the way, is nothing new in human history -- we have been extending or body with tools for a long, long time. The blind man's cane is a classic case -- his hand is only touching the top of the cane, but that's certainly not what he's carrying it around to learn about! Polanyi noted this long before me.)

Comments

  1. Roderick T. Long4:06 PM

    By the way, I just commented on your original doggy post.

    ReplyDelete

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