I like this post more for the responses than for the argument. It’s obvious that a lot of people here mean something by “algorithm” that is so general as to be useless: they mean any kind of (deterministic) procedure or process at all. Algorithms are effective procedures for calculation. Equations, laws, theories, and so forth, are not algorithms (note that algorithms are procedures and not descriptions). The sort of argument you’re making was common to early discussions of AI. The idea that everything a person can do can be explained algorithmically is really more a presupposition of AI rather than something it actively argues for. The idea is that the presupposition will be vindicated by the creation of AI programs that show the disputed properties.
I like this post more for the responses than for the argument. It’s obvious that a lot of people here mean something by “algorithm” that is so general as to be useless: they mean any kind of (deterministic) procedure or process at all. Algorithms are effective procedures for calculation. Equations, laws, theories, and so forth, are not algorithms (note that algorithms are procedures and not descriptions). The sort of argument you’re making was common to early discussions of AI. The idea that everything a person can do can be explained algorithmically is really more a presupposition of AI rather than something it actively argues for. The idea is that the presupposition will be vindicated by the creation of AI programs that show the disputed properties.