Humlab Share: Building an 8-bit computer & engineering phronēsis?

* Note that the time zone is CET (Swedish time) * 

Lessons in philosophy, phenomenology, and ethics of computing.

Charles Melvin Ess, Professor Emeritus, University of Oslo

Outline

My first goal in building the 8-bit computer designed and presented by Ben Eater was to try to understand – starting with the Pythagoreans faith in number and numerical ratio as fundamental reality – precisely how these devices actually work at the level of logic gates, as implemented in transistors and binary.

The project quickly became far more daunting than anything I’ve done in quite some time. It was not enough to simply follow the instructions delivered on 44 videos – the equivalent of starting out as a Script Kiddie, who only knows how to copy and paste. As Ben warns at the outset, things don’t often work as they should the first time around. I was thus forced into acquiring and practicing the skills and knowledge needed, e.g., as a start, to read circuit and chip pin-out diagrams in order to troubleshoot and then resolve problems with an actual circuit on a breadboard.

As Ben further notes, this requires in turn patience and perseverance – i.e., foundational virtues or capabilities (e.g., Vallor 2010, 2021). I would also ask those far more experienced than whether these most difficult experiences can be fairly described as ones of developing an engineering phronēsis – a practical wisdom and judgment that, as Socrates’ example of the cybernetes, the steersman or pilot, embodies, is a felt knowledge of what is possible and what is not; and, should s/he make an error, is able to correct for the mistake (Republic, 360e-361a, Bloom trans.; cf. Republic I, 332e-c; VI, 489c).

The project resulted in still other insights and new understandings far beyond my initial aims. I will take up some of these, as illustrated by some examples of how the device works:

• a phenomenology of computing as approached through the sorts of embodied knowledge gained at the level of cutting wires and testing circuits;
• developing phronēsis – the practical wisdom of a self-correcting judgment (the root of Wiener’s cybernetics) – in electronics vis-à-vis ethics; and
• understanding in much deeper ways the Church-Turing thesis and Turing completeness by learning how to build a flag register as enabling conditional jumps in programming.

There are still further implications for contemporary philosophy of technology, specifically AI / ML systems and ethics. Relying on many of these lessons I would argue, for example, that “it’s analogue all the way down,” which means in turn that a human form of phronēsis can only be approximated, not fully replicated, in AL / ML systems (cf. Zweig 2019, 2022). Similarly, the texts produced by Large Language Models (LLMs) are in effect the products of Script Kiddies who lack, as Phaedrus puts it in the dialogue named for him, “…the living and breathing word of him who knows, of which the written word may justly be called the image [eidolon]” (Plato [1914] 276 A / 567), and which thereby offer only the semblance of knowledge.

References, resources for possible preparation

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, I: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus. H.N. Fowler, trans. London: Heinemann, 1914.

Plato. The Republic: Books VI-X. Paul Shorey, Trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.

Vallor, Shannon. 2010. “Social Networking Technology and the Virtues.” Ethics and Information Technology 12 (2): 157–170. DOI 10.1007/s10676-009-9202-1

Vallor, Shannon, 'Virtues in the Digital Age', in Carissa Véliz (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics, Oxford Handbooks (2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 Nov. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198857815.013.2 

Zweig, Katharina. 2019. Ein Algorithmus hat kein Taktgefühl. Wo Künstliche Intelligenz sich irrt, warum uns das betrifft und was wir dagegen tun können. Heyne Verlag, München. Translated as: Awkward Intelligence: Where AI Goes Wrong, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do about It. MIT Press, 2022.

Eater, Ben. 2016. 8 bit computer update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM

Ben Eater introduces his project and his rationale for showing us how to build his SAP (Simple as Possible) 8 bit computer, including his belief that “anyone can build this,” presuming they have the patience to wire things carefully and “the persistence to troubleshoot the inevitable wrong connections or broken connections or something …Even if you don’t have any experience with this sort of thing, or with electronics.”  (4:32-5:02)

Eater, Ben. 2018. Making a computer Turing complete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNDk_UJW4k

“It is possible to invent a single machine , which can be used to compute any computable thesis” (Turing 1936: read here at 4:26). Ben Eater takes us through a fairly careful reading both Alan Turing’s and Alonzo Church’s 1936 papers that issue in our foundational notions of Turing completeness and the Church-Turing thesis – and then how Turing completeness can be designed and built into the 8-bit.