Hayekian Linux

Although surely evolution had more time to work. Ruthlessly massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle is a very good development technique. But certainly in any real development cycle run by humans, there’s a room for a designer. The Honeycrisp apple was certainly developed faster with a directed effort than completely undirected effort ever would. There’s a balance between design and feedback. (And in actual program design, there’s collective human intelligence in the feedback, just like in economics.)

Of course, all this is inherent to analogies to evolution that try to do too much. Constantly analogizing processes that are “parallel intelligent design with openness and feedback from users” with evolution is likely to confuse people about evolution itself.

I’d have to see context, but I’ll (I’m sure wrongly) assume he’s making some kind of point about open source software development. And I’ll give that crowd lots of credit for reimplementing the obvious and making the economics of that kind of activity cheaper, but for the 1,257th time, someone name something new and revolutionary that’s come out of open source. Th incentive that drives creativity isn’t there. Real artists see no virtue in being starving artists.

I think the dissenters in this comment section are incorrectly conflating Torvald’s view of unplanned order with the rational planning and design that occurs amongst agents who comprise the aggregate order. You can design something for sure. However, without the process of survival of the fittest or trial and error that design is largely worthless. It is this ruthless “unplanned” system that constantly beats out the bad information and elevates the good to its highest use value that is responsible for the incredible complexity of human beings or for that matter the market economy.

Matt & Fundamentalist: Go out and learn something, anything, about Evolutionary Computation. Thousands of very complex systems have been designed through such random processes, and they not only work, but many work far better than the best human-designed solutions. Read about Holland or Koza and then tell me “only an intellectual would believe it.” You might as well be arguing against heavier-than-air flight because you have no legitimate arguments beyond “ha ha dumb scientists!”

Brad, as to motivation, a lot of useful systems get designed because one or two motivated hackers want a better solution to their own problems, not because they expect to get rich. I suspect that’s what’s motivated most inventors in the past as well. But the difference between today’s hacker and yesterday’s garage shop tinkerer is that the better mousetrap he built for himself couldn’t be shared with thousands of others because there were only as many as he could make.

Also, I think the motivational aspects of wanting to solve a problem for its own sake is often overlooked. Most people getting paid to design the next corporate widget aren’t going to be staying up late an thinking about it, or wrestling with the problem in the shower, forgetting to eat dinner because they’re lost in thought. But a lot of people working on problems they’ve chosen to attack, problems they find interesting, will do those things just for the satisfaction of finding the answer. And those same people overwhelmingly support free software.

He forgot to include self organization, emergence, information, and dissipative structures. These also all contributed.

We are so impressed with ourselves for what we have done with physics and linear dynamics, but the fact of the matter is that we have done almost nothing with a tiny corner of reality, using an almost insignificant, marginal form of dynamics. We’ve even done a few cute things with chemistry, and even fewer cute things with biology, but the fact of the matter is that we have not come even close to doing much of anything with either one of them, let alone tapped into the nonlinear possibilities of physics. Linear, entropic structures can be designed quite well by humans. But when we have tried to do anything with anything expressing nonlinear dynamics (which is something like 99.999999% of the universe), we show how woefully ignorant and incapable we truly are.

I’m perfectlhy ok with the idea that many simple systems come together to form more complex systems, which can be put together with other systems forming even more complex systems. It is a stretch (read, farce), however, to think that these simple systems just melded together randomly and somehow their interfaces just worked. Hmmm. Cool. Yer so smart.

It’s funny how upity “scientists” get when someone says “ha ha, stupid scientist”, but you should know that what really impresses me is mathmatics. A scientist is a mathmaticians piss boy. If you can prove your stuipd theories with mathematical equations, then let’s talk. Otherwise, “ha ha, stuipd scientists”.

Oh, and Jared, the question is have *you* read Koza? He makes a stronger case for needing complex thought processes (since that “design” word has been so horribly bastardized) before *creating* simple systems that can interact with each other. In his work, he’s shows (probably unintentionally) an utter necessity to have a creator who is… wait for it…. intelligent.

Friggtard!