I found the end of this conversation, in which Professor Goodman and Brendan Meade talk about not understanding the math behind some scientific research, really interesting. I appreciated when Professor Goodman said, “If you can predict but can’t tell me why, I don’t care,” because it seems like it goes against some sort of scientific principles that I assume exist. When scientists really challenge the status quo and move into uncharted territory, some of the guidelines that we have come to take for granted could disappear. This idea is both scary and exciting in ways that everyone in the conversation seemed to appreciate. I imagine Ben Shneiderman would strongly disagree with some of the conclusions about the need, or lack thereof, to understand what’s going on underneath the hood in the algorithms some scientists use in their research. This debate about the need to understand what the computers are actually doing will probably only become more extreme as computers become more and more advanced.
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Hi William, great post! I thought it was particularly interesting how you combined speakers from different videos by including Shneiderman in your post.