>> If this line of logic is correct... um... we may have a problem here.
>
> Fortunately it isn't.
>
> Humans suck at /any/ calculations requiring higher degree of precision
> than rule-of-thumb estimates. The human brain is "designed" to work
> /despite/ uncertainties rather than avoid or eliminate them.
>
> However, humans also suck at understanding systems, and are much better
> at understanding single entities working on a problem sequentially. At
> least that's typically true for men - maybe the next generation of
> computers needs women as software developers.

I don't think I agree with any of this.

Pick any two locations in London. Ask a London cabbie how to get from 
one to the other. I guarantee they can do it faster than any satnav 
computer.

Pick up a picture of Harrison Ford. Show it to a bunch of people. Almost 
all of them will instantly be able to tell you who it's a picture of. 
Now try getting a computer to figure that out. Good luck with that.

The human brain is really very, very good at certain tasks. Quite 
astonishingly good, when you actually think about it. But it's very bad 
at certain other tasks.

I think of it as being a bit like GPGPU. The brain is a special-purpose 
computational device which is absurdly good at the tasks its designed 
for, and quite bad at everything else. To get good performance on other 
problems, you have to artificially transform them into a problem that 
"looks like" one they're good at. (A bit like the way GPGPU originally 
meant encoding your data as video textures before you can process it.) 
There are people in the Guinness Book of Records who can do crazy things 
like compute the 72nd root of a 15-digit number in their head in under 
10 seconds. It's just that most people can't do that.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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