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eye-opening and mind-boggling conference on the state of the art of artificial intelligence programming, andI genuinely and innocently in my enthusiasm forgot that robots are popularly supposed to be inflexible idiots. I also have to apologize for the fact that, without my knowledge, the cover of the German edition of
The Selfish Gene
was given a picture of a human puppet jerking on the end of strings descending from the word gene, and the French edition a picture of little bowler-hatted men with clockwork wind-up keys sticking out of their backs. I have had slides of both covers made up as illustrations of what I was
not
trying to say.
    So, the answer to Symons is that of course he was right to criticize what he thought I was saying, but of course I wasn’t actually saying it (Ridley 1980a). No doubt I was partly to blame for the original misunderstanding, but I can only urge now that we put aside the preconceptions derived from common usage (‘… most men don’t understand computers to even the slightest degree’—Weizenbaum 1976, p. 9), and actually go and read some of the fascinating modern literature on robotics and computer intelligence (e.g. Boden 1977; Evans 1979; Hofstadter 1979).
    Once again, of course, philosophers may debate the ultimate determinacy of computers programmed to behave in artificially intelligent ways, but if we are going to get into that level of philosophy many would apply the same arguments to human intelligence (Turing 1950). What is a brain, they would ask, but a computer, and what is education but a form of programming? It is very hard to give a non-supernatural account of the human brain and human emotions, feelings and apparent free will,
without
regarding the brain as, in some sense, the equivalent of a programmed, cybernetic machine. The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1964) expresses very vividly what, it seems to me, any evolutionist must think about nervous systems:
    Looking back [at evolution] I am overwhelmingly impressed by the way in which chemistry has gradually given way to electronics. It is not unreasonable to describe the first living creatures as entirely chemical in character. Although electrochemical processes are important in plants, organized electronics, in the sense of data processing, does not enter or operate in the plant world. But primitive electronics begins to assume importance as soon as we have a creature that moves around … The first electronic systems possessed by primitive animals were essentially guidance systems, analogous logically to sonar or radar. As we pass to more developed animals we find electronic systems being used not merely for guidance but for directing the animal toward food …
    The situation is analogous to a guided missile, the job of which is to intercept and destroy another missile. Just as in our modern world attack and defense become more and more subtle in their methods, so it was the case with animals. And with increasing subtlety, better andbetter systems of electronics become necessary. What happened in nature has a close parallel with the development of electronics in modern military applications … I find it a sobering thought that but for the tooth-and-claw existence of the jungle we should not possess our intellectual capabilities, we should not be able to inquire into the structure of the Universe, or be able to appreciate a symphony of Beethoven … Viewed in this light, the question that is sometimes asked—can computers think?—is somewhat ironic. Here of course I mean the computers that we ourselves make out of inorganic materials. What on earth do those who ask such a question think they themselves are? Simply computers, but vastly more complicated ones than anything we have yet learned to make. Remember that our man-made computer industry is a mere two or three decades old, whereas we ourselves are the products of an evolution that has operated over hundreds of millions of years [pp. 24–26].
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