(3089/898) Weizenbaum speaks

355) Surely, much of what we today regard as good and useful, as well as much of what we would call knowledge and wisdom, we owe to science. But science may also be seen as an addictive drug. Not only has our unbounded feeding on science caused us to become dependent on it, but, as happens with many other drugs taken in increasing dosages, science has been gradually converted into a slow-acting poison. [...] [T]he attribution of certainty to scientific knowledge by the common wisdom, an attribution now made so nearly universally that it has become a commonsense dogma, has virtually delegitimitized all other ways of understanding. People viewed the arts, especially literature, as sources of intellectual nourishment and understanding, but today the arts are perceived largely as entertainment. [...] Today [...] the people hunger only for what is represented to them to be scientifically validated knowledge. [...]

Joseph Weizenbaum
Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

356) The man in the street surely believes [...] scientific facts to be as well-established, as well-proven, as his own existence. His certitude is an illusion. Nor is the scientist himself immune to the same illusion. In his praxis, he must after all suspend belief in order to do or think anything at all. He is rather like the theatregoer, who, in order to participate in and understand what is happening on the stage, must for a time pretend to himself that he is witnessing real events. The scientist must believe his working hypothesis, together with its vast underlying structure of theories and assumptions, even if only for the sake of the argument. Often the "argument" extends over his entire lifetime. Gradually he becomes what he at first merely pretended to be: a true believer. I choose the word "argument" thoughtfully, for scientific demonstrations, even mathematical proofs, are fundamentally acts of persuasion.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

357) [M]an has been seduced into wishing and working for the establishment of an age of rationality, but with his vision of rationality tragically twisted so as to equate it with logicality. [...] Belief in the rationality-logicality equation has corroded the prophetic power of language itself. We can count, but we are rapidly forgetting how to say what is worth counting and why.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

358) Astrology [...] has constructed an enormously complex conceptual framework, a system of theories and hypotheses which allegedly permit the cognizant to control events. [...] But the hypotheses of astrology are routinely falsified by events. How then does astrology, and how do other magical systems, remain at all a force in the minds of men? [...] First, any contradiction between experience and one magical notion is explained by reference to other magical notions. Thus the entire structure of the magical system of beliefs is supported by its own circularity. The way of protecting the system against assaults by reality is especially effective if objections are met one at at a time, for then the very demonstration that an apparently anomalous fact can be incorporated into the system serves to validate the system.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

359) Programming is rather a test of understanding. In this respect it is like writing; often when we think we understand something and attempt to write about it, our very act of composition reveals our lack of understanding even to ourselves. Our pen writes the word "because" and suddenly stops. We thought we understood the "why" of something but discover that we don't. We begin a sentence with "obviously." and then see that what we meant to write is not obvious at all. Sometimes we connect two clauses with the word "therefore," only to see that our chain of reasoning is defective. Programming is like that. It is, after all, writing too. But in ordinary language we sometimes obscure our lack of understanding, our failures of logic, by unwittingly appealing to the immense flexibility of natural language and to its inherent ambiguity, The very eloquence that natural language permits sometimes illuminates our words and seems (falsely, to be sure) to illuminate our underserved logic just as brightly. An interpreter of programming-language texts, a computer, is immune to the seductive influence of mere eloquence. And words like "obviously" are not represented in the primitive vocabulary of any computers. A computer is a merciless critic.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 766 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.