After writing your summary of today’s reading in class, type up your summary and copy-and-paste it as a comment to this post. Also, which reading–O’Shea’s or Marcus’–did you find the most persuasive/interesting/engaging, and why?
8 thoughts on “Gary Marcus’ Kluge, Chapter 1”
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Bertrand Russell’s “Remnants of History” Chapter 1 was actually very interesting to me.
He talks about the flaws of our mind by connecting it to kluge. Kluge is simply known as the easy way out of a situation. He gives the example of our spine. our spine’s purpose is to help support the weight of our bodies. he considers this a kluge because our weight could have simply evened out in our bodies. Instead we depend on the spine and cause stress to it and humans get a sense of back pain due to this. Our bodies are designed to walk on four legs. Thus the reason for our spine, because we only have two legs we need the extra support for when we stand, walk, run, jump, sit, etc… Most people have a bad posture when doing these things including myself. The posture of our bodies would be a lot worst if it had not been for our spines. He also talks about how “mistakes were made” in the process of developing our minds. If it were 100% perfect, everything would be literal, for example there would actually be “ham” in hamburgers. who knows, there might actually be “ham” along with other mystery meats and unknown things in the mean we buy, lol. however, Russell just wants to introduce the idea to us of our minds not being perfected. We make mistakes and our mind plays a part in it.
In Gary Marcus’s “Kluge,” he explains about the kluge of nature and evolution. Kluge is a clumsy- yet surprisingly effective- solution to a problem and the most fantastic kluge of nature is the human mind. There are many kluges in the world including powered windshields, the human spine, the retina, the male’s penis, DNA, etc. The reason for kluges is because nature doesn’t care if a product is perfect; if it works, it spreads, and it if doesn’t , it simply dies out. One sentence that stood out to me was “adequacy, not beauty, is the name of the game,” meaning capability overpowers appearance. Two things that kluges give us that perfection can’t is insight to evolutionary history and clues to improve ourselves as humans. This leads to evolution and Natural Selection. One possible inevitable outcome of evolution is optimization, making the best of anything. Optimization connects to Natural Selection and Evolutionary Inertia. Natural Selection waits for the next right set of genes to promote to the next best thing and Evolutionary Inertia, adapted from Newton’s Law of Inertia, is evolution that works with what is in place. Species become better suited to their environment sometimes reaching its theoretical limits. One interesting theory that stuck to me is the explanation of why we humans in the present, evolve much less and slower than the species in the past. The human genome is 98.5% identical to the chimpanzees, but why have we evolved from chimpanzees so easily? And it’s stated because they didn’t have language, culture, or conscious awareness, which is something we humans have, and need to worry about. Worrying about things like these tends to slow down our process of evolution because our brain starts questioning evolution. To sum it all up, all life is the product of “descent with modification,” meaning the new product is the old product with changes and adjustments. Evolution takes small steps to “satisficing,” obtaining an outcome that is good enough, by a progressive overlay of technologies, where new modifications are piled on to the old.
After going through both readings, “Kluge” by Gary Marcus, and “The Brain” by Michael O’ Shea, I found that both are very informative texts. O’ Shea’s text had a more broad, but descriptive brief explanation of the brain that leads to too much information thrown at the reader causing boredom. Marcus’s text, was a more interesting, engaging, and persuasive read. There is also a lot of information, confusing too, but the contents discussed are more interesting. Kluges of the world, nature’s perfect “mistakes,” evolutionary history are far more interesting and persuasive than reading about photoreceptors, sensory transductions, and synapses. So even though Marcus’s text is longer and more confusing, it was more engaging than O’ Shea’s text.
The Kluge peak’s my interest.
Mistakes are made and is meant for us to learn why they were made. A Kluge is a clumsy or inelegant-yet-surprising effective solution to a problem. I really liked this chapter because for one, the author used a comedic way/ example to explain a Kludge. The other reason is that the Author has a part that is based on an engineering perspective, in which it peaked my interest because my major is also an Engineer. The note which was made was that building a Kludge is not work for amateurs. The professional can spot it instantly. The engineering world is filled with Kludges. The comedic example was really well brought forward as the Author builds contrast to today’s’ windshield wipers vs. the early 60’s. Today’s wipers are powered electrically but back then they didn’t have much voltage to do that so a Kludge was made in which the wipers were powered by a vacuum in which works off the suction from the engine. Sounds cool right…? Sadly it isn’t lol. The performance of the windshield wipers also depends on how hard the engine works as well. So poor grandpa going up the hill in his 60’s Buick is in trouble as his engine is “strained” and then causes the wipers to move very slow in which will eventually stop. The point is that there are faults in ourselves and in the world, but it is our job as human beings to try and make things better or improve in life. The human mind is very powerful and can think about anything. In my perspective i agree with the author when it comes to the fault within ourselves. Human beings have faults and problems, our mind is very powerful in which we can try to improve our selves or even to correct our faults but we chose not to as we just accept the fault within ourselves in which i think is very sad. I read this chapter and it opened my eyes and mind a little further towards the future.
In Remnants of History the topic focused is “Kluge.” kluge has been explain in the way of nature . The most amazing kluge in nature is human mind. Kluge is very effective solution to any problem. Except brain there are many other kludges e.g DNA, Spinal cord and many more…. We humans are the smart enough to plan for our future and at the same time we are so dumb that for a little bit of happiness we forget our motives. The main example that has been given in the chapter is when someone is on a diet and they see the food that they love they forget the food just a lit bit if happiness and ruin their future because they say if not today we will start the diet from tomorrow.
After reading both the chapters “The Brain” by Michael O’Shea and “kludge” by Gary Marcus, I figured that both the texts are very informative. I didn’t really like “Kludge” this chapter is very informative but I didn’t find myself interested towards the chapter. On the other hand “The Brain” I really liked the way writer crossed his point toward the audience.I find “The Brain” more interesting than “kludge.”
Gary Marcus starts off the chapter by talking about how some biblical scholars have perceived human beings to be. They have said that human beings are perfect as can be. From this belief, Gary Marcus makes a great point saying that if human beings were perfect than we would never make any mistakes. He goes on to say that our thoughts would be rational and our logic impeccable. From this statement he goes on to talk about kluges. A kluge is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem. Since we aren’t perfect we need kluges to help correct what is wrong. For example our spine is considered a kluge. The spine helps support our weight, which he says would have made sense if the weight was evenly distributed throughout four columns. Our spines have evolved to support us and helps us stand, even thought it’s not the best solution it’s better than nothing. Although this was a very informative chapter, Michael O’Shea’s first chapter in The Brain captivated my attention more. I think that Michael O’Shea did a better job on getting my attention by using examples of my actions as I was reading the text. Gary Marcus put a lot of important and interesting information in his first chapter but in my opinion Michael O’Shea’s text was more intriguing.
This chapter serve as an introduction to the imperfections of the brain and how it have been affected based on the evolutionary history of the human body. Contrary to O’Shea’s The Brain, this chapter shed a new perspective on how we perceive the brain. Rather than the brain/mind be think of as a perfect machine, Marcus talks about how the human mind is rather flaw. It was quite a shocker for me, especially after reading O’Shea’s The Brain.
I especially liked the author’s strong argumentative tone and persuasive writing style. It made it more interesting to read as it almost felt like he was arguing with O’Shea. He raised question like, “Why do we forget?, why do we feel negative emotion? why do we make mistakes?” As for what side I believe was the strongest, I’m going to hand it to Marcus. As I finished the chapter, I, too, began to see that in fact our brain is flaw much like our body.
The reason for this follows back to the evolutionary history of the human body. He argue that human mind could’ve been perfect had it not been created through a kluge. Kluge are a collection of different parts in order to accomplish a necessity. The brain didn’t want to improve thy self nor reach it’s highest peak. This is exactly why it is still flaw after years of evolution. It does not seek change!
This chapter left me with a new perspective on our brain and left me thinking what if our brain was perfect…
Gary Marcus’ Kluge was kind of interesting. The whole chapter 1 was mostly about him defining the statement “Man is a rational animal’ and to explain what mistakes were made and why. He stated saying ” I don’t mean to suggest that the “design” of the human mind is a total train wreck, but if i were a politician, I’m pretty sure the way I’d put it is “mistakes were made.” He talks about the word Kluge that engineers say. A Kluge is a clumsy or inelegant yet surprisingly effective solution to a problem. He said not ever kluge saves lives. Engineers sometimes devise them for sport, just to show that something say building a computer out of tinkertoys can be done, or simply because they’re lazy to do something the right way. Others cobble together kluges out of a mixture of desperation and resourcefulness.
The reading by Gary Marcus’ kluge was much more engaging than our previous reading on “The brain”. Gary Marcus starts off by talking about a few thing us humans do that are both intelligent and strange at the same time. We are capable to thinking about the future but ignore or leave things we said we want to do aside for a short term satisfaction so here he makes us think why this is true because I’m sure we can all relate. Then he talks about our brains as being a kluge; impressive, intelligent yet clumsy full of flaws. Not just our brains but our bodies as well. Gary Marcus describes our bodies as a “bundle of imperfections” and points out certain things in our bodies that don’t really make sense for example we have naked tender skins that is exposed to things like cuts, bites, and the dangers or sunburns. In this reading he made me think deeply about myself instead of just blindly going along with my day I question things more and also realized things I wouldn’t have thought about.