Welcome to Cognophilia a microworld of whimsical seriousity. We invite you to browse through these pages and comment on what you see. This is truly a work in progress and we will endeavour to incorporate your feedback to the best of our ability. Thank you for dropping by!
– Bill, Dy and Jeremy–
- WATSON GOES UP IN FLAMES!
Dateline Hollywood, 2010. Watson, the world’s most intelligent computer blew up in a practice run for an upcoming Jeopardy challenge match with human challengers. The question, “Knock, knock, who’s there?” completely knocked him for a loop. “I only took me a parsec* or two for me to come up with over a trillion possible responses, but I could not decide from among them. They all seemed plausible.” replied the frustrated humanoid. “It was really embarrassing when I blew up. I told them so many times not to put hair on my lid.”
Many people were hoping that this very thing would happen when human and humanoid came brain to brain in a series of Jeopardy matches last year, but unfortunately it didn’t. In fact a human had to use a machine to make it appear to happen. So, does this mean we humans should teach our children the way we teach a machine, that is, to fill their heads with declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge in the form of ” Bill has-a duck and a duck has-a bill, therefore Bill is-a duck” statements. No, of course not. Machines, even Watson, do not “think”. It is a trick. They have no sense of irony. They never reflect. They have no sense of appropriateness, guilt, obligation, remorse, free will, you name it. If Bill called Watson on the phone, Watson might answer “Quack”. Machines are doomed to a life without aspiration, to be forever untroubled and confident psychopaths.
To further clarify the distinction between human and humanoidal learning, or may we be so bold as to suggest cognitivistic and behaviouristic learning, observe what happens when the human element asserts itself cognitively into a course of study. We think you might enjoy this:
Click here: Cognitive Learning
What you have just witnessed is an application of knowledge Watson does not have. As you wend your way through Cognophilia, in whatever sequence strikes your fancy, we hope that you will find more and more opportunities for flights of fancy such as the one you just saw.