Don't Be Afraid of Deep Blue
Don't Be Afraid of Deep Blue In "Be Afraid" (May 26), Charles Krauthammer has approached a controversial subject and addressed it with original insights and engaging writing. The fearful...
...God, however, has the ultimate power to put Professor Narcissus [in ly'in Mi^r M tV convftuxt orr-ri^'u.'j-'iif: 11 urn an end to His creation at any time...
...But if one looks at the rapidly progressing technology of the computer from the creationist point of view, things don't look so bad...
...Elizabeth Whelan New York, NY...
...But given the wishy-washy label and the fact that the industry has been stonewalling for decades— as you note—this is hardly the case...
...But what does this mean...
...Nor, as Kasparov and Krauthammer both claim, should human beings be afraid of things beyond our understanding...
...The swift advances in computer science during the past few decades are testaments to the abilities of computer creators, not the machines...
...In the abstract, that is true, but living in a world in which we are bombarded with health warnings about products that are perfectly innocuous, such generalities as are currently found on cigarette packs are basically meaningless...
...It did, however, contain one factual error...
...After reading her recent article, I had a picture in my mind of the public swimming pool when I was a boy: At the shallow end of the pool was the matron with a whistle attempting to make order out of chaos...
...It would be terrifying—or at least very strange—if Kasparov responded to his defeat by leaving his wife and declaring his eternal love for Deep Blue...
...Today, books are not edited...
...Nick Ostrowski Aliso Viejo, CA Solipsistic Parenting While I agree with James Q. Wilson ("The Paradox of Cloning," May 26) that if we are going to permit human cloning, we should insist that clones have parents, it seems that parenting a clone will present a set of difficulties...
...Professor Wilson is right about one thing...
...Unfortunately, these displays of intellectual self-indulgence are not particularly appealing or substantive exercises for readers...
...Also, raising a clone could heighten the temptation to use our children as a means of self-gratification...
...Perhaps, borrowing his optimistic view that the success of human cloning is imminent, we can plan for overwhelming numerical superiority when Krauthammer's evil silicon rebels rise up to conquer the world...
...Do they know that smoking a pack a day for 10 to 14 years appears to double the risk of colon cancer, and that this is irreversible...
...My impression, as I began reading, was that someone was finally willing to discuss the ridiculous ascent in modern academic writing of "theory," or the formula-bound methodology that despoils "scholarly" publications...
...John E. Heaney Bethesda, MD Be Afraid of Smoking Icertainly agree with The ^Weekly Standard's editorial "A New Direction on Tobacco Road" (May 5) that the motives of the trial lawyers and state attorneys general involved in tobacco litigation have been less than pure, and that the AGs' arguments that smokers are costing society money are specious...
...The fearful implications that he draws from Deep Blue's celebrated chess victory over Garry Kasparov, however, are misplaced...
...Favor is given to self-indulgent tirades written according to whatever formula the author depends upon: feminist theory, Marxist-lesbian-feminist deconstruction, etc...
...Even so, parenting a cloned child may turn out to be more, not less, difficult...
...First, there is nothing worrisome about a machine's passing the Turing test for artificial intelligence (which is passed when we cannot tell whether a certain task was performed by a man or a machine...
...There is a chance that Wilson's article may actually provide an opportunity for hope...
...But he responded in an all too human way: with petulant anger at being denied access to Deep Blue's computer logs during the match...
...Computers, no matter how closely they may come to imitating human thought processes, will always be subservient to man...
...It is hardly terrifying that no man can beat a machine in chess, any more than it is terrifying that no man can alert a community to impending disaster better than a machine...
...The old adage that computers are only as good as the people who program them will always hold true...
...Do most smokers know, for example, that serious health risks of smoking may begin with the use of as few as four cigarettes a day...
...Mark Gerson Short Hills, NJ Charles Krauthammer's otherwise fine article presupposes the belief in an evolutionary system as the means to explain man's present state...
...Man, God's greatest creation, only has the power and ability that God has given...
...Please take the whistle and give it to a trainee-writer for articles concerning adolescent behavior and send Professor Himmelfarb back to the deep end of the pool where she belongs...
...Directly following this dire warning is an article by James Q. Wilson, which smooths over the perceived evils of human cloning ("The Paradox of Cloning...
...Himmelfarb has made a good start...
...No matter how stunning Kasparov's defeat by Deep Blue may seem, one must remember that Deep Blue is a machine...
...William S. Brewbaker III Tuscaloosa, AL Narcissism: a Personal View Gertrude Himmelfarb's expose of the personal and professional lack of integrity in the academy ("Professor Narcissus," June 2) deserves a sequel...
...One possibility is that you will be a better parent because you Correspondence will understand many of the struggles your child will face...
...First, most of us are better appraisers of strengths and weaknesses in others than in ourselves...
...You, the parent, have spent a lifetime getting to know yourself...
...It would take several articles to tackle this aspect of the academy's narcissism...
...If computers ever get to the point of somehow taking control of their creator, their creator can always pull the plug...
...Red lights pass it all the time...
...or that there are a number of dangerous synergistic effects between tobacco and alcohol—for example, that users of both substances risk a spectacular increase in the likelihood of esophageal cancer...
...Having children who are not literal chips off the old block creates a healthy distance between us and our offspring...
...Mankowski writes of picturing "the puzzled editor at Random House rapping his teeth with a pencil as he read the manuscript...
...Perhaps the average citizen will decide that cigarette companies should be held to the same standard as any other industry—which has not been the case for the last 30 years only because of the raw political power exercised by the industry in gaining the Teflon-like protection of the warning label in 1965—rather than being accorded special treatment that no other enterprise would dream of...
...Nonetheless, I find it surprising that the conservatives of The Weekly Standard would endorse a big-government solution to the problem of cigarette smoking, and equally surprising that they would trot out the old saw that "everyone knows smoking is bad for you...
...John Hayek Carthage, MI A Discontented Reader The review of Norman Mailer's latest whatever-it-is by Paul Man-kowski ("Mailer's False Messiah," -May 26) was the funniest and most perceptive review yet published by THE Weekly Standard...
...The topic of academic research, be it art, an event, or a person, is set aside and only occasionally mentioned...
...Edward Whelan Arlington, VA Having finished the May 26 issue, I am a trifle too amused...
...Not only is it a machine, it is a machine that was programmed by intelligent men and women to play the best game of chess possible...
...Every reader knows this...
...It should take two parents to raise a clone—one to provide the genetic material and the other to protect the child from "himself...
...Chess is reducible to a game of calculation...
...We should be afraid—and paging Arnold Schwarzenegger...
...Imagine raising a child whose genetic makeup is identical to yours...
...They are assembled and sold...
...She is an outstanding scholar...
...Who understands how a phone call is patched through, how a car runs, how a television receives signals, how a fax is transmitted, how the newspaper appears on our doorstep every morning, how an e-mail message is received an instant after it is sent...
...Krauthammer marvels that Deep Blue in Game 2 displayed the "look and feel" of a grandmaster...
...Charles Krauthammer previewed the doom we shall encounter at the hands of omnipotent supercomputers descended from Deep Blue, which even now comes perilously close to thwarting the benign intentions of its human masters...
...If parents are already tempted to see their biologically different children as a second opportunity for success they never achieved, how much greater the temptation when Dad can literally see himself on the baseball diamond one more time...
...If we feared everything, or even many things, beyond our understanding, the only people who could cope would be Luddites...
...The key question is, Will man be wise enough to do that...
...Gregory Giordano New Port Richey, FL Like Garry Kasparov, Charles Krauthammer has blundered and panicked in the face of Deep Blue...
...Grandmasters calculate, or do rough calculations, far better than lesser players...
...I have read a number of Professor Himmelfarb's books...
...He draws an analogy between human evo-lution—the theory that a single-cell organism clawed its way into a human being over a vast period of time—and the development of the computer...
...Conservatives may loathe trial lawyers, but we also trust the wisdom of juries...
...Nothing else would explain so much of what is now in print...
...Beth E.K Williams Westampton, NJ Why was Professor Himmelfarb assigned to write about a tramp with a high IQ...
...Supposedly, the recent 2-1 chess victory points to a future where humans will be at the mercy of cold and calculating silicon masters bent on little other than the destruction of humanity...
...When God created man, He put into play all the good and bad that His creation would ever accomplish...
...a traffic light can stop cars just as easily as a traffic cop can...
...Under this belief system, the advance of computer science is frightening indeed...
...Yes, consumers must take responsibility for risks about which they are well informed...
...Many Americans who declare smoking to be hazardous believe that this refers only to "heavy" smokers, and that surely they do not fall into this category...
...Let Big Tobacco have its day in court, and let average citizens judge the case against the tobacco companies on its merits, rather than have a new layer of bureaucracy impose a solution by legislative decree...
...In short, Krauthammer has it backwards: Rather than say that Deep Blue played with the "nuance and subtlety" of a grandmaster, he ought to recognize that grandmasters sometimes manage to replicate the calculations of computers...
Vol. 2 • June 1997 • No. 39
