{"id":178,"date":"2026-11-09T14:42:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T19:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=178"},"modified":"2026-11-09T14:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T19:42:59","slug":"programmer-gambler-and-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2026\/11\/09\/programmer-gambler-and-scientist\/","title":{"rendered":"Programmer, Gambler, and Scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Programmer, Gambler, and Scientist<\/strong><\/p>\n

S. M. Gollmer<\/p>\n

What do computer programmers, gamblers, and scientists have in common?\u00a0 If you read Weizenbaum\u2019s Computer Power and Human Reason<\/em>, the commonality is the temptation towards megalomaniac fantasies.\u00a0 As a scientist, I object to the comparison, but as a programmer I can see his point.\u00a0 In chapter 4 of his book, he describes the compulsive programmer as one who believes the computer can do anything.\u00a0 Yes, computers and the software they run are constrained by the physical reality of processing speed, memory size, and power consumption.\u00a0 However, the worlds constructed within a program have no such limitations.\u00a0 Consider the book and movie Ready Player One<\/em>, where virtual reality allows every dream and fantasy to come true.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Weizenbaum acknowledges there are professional gamblers, who are really not gamblers at all since they know the odds and use applied statistics and psychology to their favor.\u00a0 In like fashion, there are professional programmers and scientists, who use their knowledge and the challenges of their field to generate new designs and explore the complexity of the world.\u00a0 But there is a dark side to each of these pursuits, that tempts individuals to obsess over the possibilities of what next.<\/p>\n

He cites Edmund Bergler\u2019s three principal convictions of a gambler.\u00a0 First, there is some certainty that he will win.\u00a0 Second, that he is clever enough to win when others don\u2019t.\u00a0 And finally, life itself is a gamble anyway.\u00a0 For the compulsive programmer, there is a belief that what he can imagine can be translated into a program.\u00a0 When faced with challenges of bugs and unpredictable outcomes, he is clever enough to bend the software to his will and eventually make it work.\u00a0 Finally, when asked about the value of his project, he is satisfied with the challenge of the task rather than any practicality.\u00a0 In like fashion, a compulsive scientist believes the world is understandable and, with enough effort and insight, the mysteries of creation will be revealed.\u00a0 The value comes from the thing itself rather than the greater context.\u00a0 Science is a laudable profession, but when obsession clouds judgment and pride refuses to be wrong, the scientist is led to the same irrationality as the gambler.<\/p>\n

When Weizenbaum made this comparison fifty years ago, the largest computers were measured in megahertz and megabytes.\u00a0 Today we think in terms of gigahertz, terabytes, and networked computing clusters on the order of millions.\u00a0 No wonder data centers require gigawatts of power to operate.\u00a0 With this much computing power available, the temptation towards megalomania is that much greater.\u00a0 This explains the obsession of having the foremost AI models.\u00a0 There is a belief that we can reach artificial general intelligence (AGI). \u00a0If we are clever enough, we can eliminate the obstacles that have limited this achievement in the past.\u00a0 To what end?\u00a0 That this intelligence can elevate humanity to something greater since we are all here by chance anyway.\u00a0 The frightening prospect is that these obsessive individuals are no longer lone programmers hunched over a computer terminal, but tech leaders controlling trillion-dollar companies that are gambling with our future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Programmer, Gambler, and Scientist S. M. Gollmer What do computer programmers, gamblers, and scientists have in common?\u00a0 If you read Weizenbaum\u2019s Computer Power and Human Reason, the commonality is the temptation towards megalomaniac fantasies.\u00a0 As a scientist, I object to the comparison, but as a programmer I can see his point.\u00a0 In chapter 4 of… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}