Like other commenters already pointed out, algorithms are scary because they always fail hard. Humans fail, but can recover. Hofstadter’s terms seem useful here. Humans can notice or be made to notice that something isn’t right and jump out of the system of the basic diagnostic procedure. All the algorithms we currently have are sphexish and will forever remain in their initial framework even when things go wrong.
Hofstadter uses it heavily in Gödel, Escher, Bach in 1979 as the metaphor for things that are unable to Jump Out Of The System. Dawkins only had The Selfish Gene out by then, and The Selfish Gene wasn’t really about algorithmic rigidity.
Like other commenters already pointed out, algorithms are scary because they always fail hard. Humans fail, but can recover. Hofstadter’s terms seem useful here. Humans can notice or be made to notice that something isn’t right and jump out of the system of the basic diagnostic procedure. All the algorithms we currently have are sphexish and will forever remain in their initial framework even when things go wrong.
Yes, that’s the point.
(I think sphexish is Dawkins, not Hofstadter.)
Hofstadter uses it heavily in Gödel, Escher, Bach in 1979 as the metaphor for things that are unable to Jump Out Of The System. Dawkins only had The Selfish Gene out by then, and The Selfish Gene wasn’t really about algorithmic rigidity.
Oops, you’re right