> Then Cory Doctorow ponders the other eternal question: is this all > bullshit? > > https://doctorow.medium.com/machine-learnings-crumbling-foundations-bd11efa22b0 > <https://doctorow.medium.com/machine-learnings-crumbling-foundations-bd11efa22b0> > > -- rec --
After decades at LANL, I'm painfully aware of "Technological Debt"... I have built few technological assets in my subsequent decade+ on my own and in consequence, very little technological debt. I feel more of that in my personal extended phenotype (home/stead, vehicles, computer tech, hand-tools) these days. Am I hampered in some way by my dependence on (now 15 year old) Ryobi 18V cordless hand-tool technology? Is my 2001 Dodge Diesel Truck "holding me back" in some way? Certainly the maintenance demands some of my archaic (e.g. 50 year old well and water distribution network) systems are more finicky than a modern refresh of them might be? This article leads me to ponder whether "evolution of species" itself does not accrue "Technological Debt"? Is the "Junk DNA/genes" we like to credit as being more of a "boneyard" to pull out in a pinch (closer in mutation space than "creating" entire new genes, etc.?) also in some way a burden? Certainly we want to believe that vestigal features such as the Appendix or Tonsils or Tailbones, etc. are "harmless", but we also know that they do represent (sometimes) liabilities which might outweigh their remaining functional advantages? Is this (also) how some species (or more aptly clades like Marsupials) end up going extinct? By building a house of cards of functional-enough-but-not-quite-good-enough-in-the-context-of-yet-better technology, do we set ourselves up for eventual failure? Trees are self-pruning, are evolutionary trees also? - sas - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
