minow@thundr.DEC.COM (Martin Minow THUNDR::MINOW ML3-5/U26 223-9922) (07/15/87)
From "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," by Douglas Adams.
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987):
"Well," he said, "it's to do with the project which first made
the software incarnation of the company profitable. It was
called _Reason_, and in its own way it was sensational."
"What was it?"
"Well, it was a kind of back-to-front program. It's funny how
many of the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You
see, there have already been several programs written that help
you make decisions by properly ordering and analysing all the
relevant facts.... The drawback with these is that the decision
which all the properly ordered and analyzed facts point to is not
necessarily the one you want.
"... Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed
you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach,
and only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, ...
was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding
steps to connect the premises with the conclusion." ....
"Heavens. and did the program sell very well?"
"No, we never sold a single copy.... The entire project was bought
up, lock, stock, and barrel, by the Pentagon. The deal put WayForward
on a very sound financial foundation. Its moral foundation, on the
other hand, is not something I would want to trust my weight to.
I've recently been analyzing a lot of the arguments put forward in
favor of the Star Wars project, and if you know what you're looking
for, the pattern of the algorithms is very clear.
"So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over the
last couple of years I think I can be fairly sure that the US
Navy is using version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for
some reason only has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd, that."
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