[catnaroek]

> You can't automate programming

Nobody is talking about automating programming. The point to my previous message is “There's no point to writing programs for users who don't know what they want.” At least not if you're acting in good faith. If you want to manipulate other people, that's a-whole-nother business, but I'm not enough of a psychopath to want to do that kind of thing.

> it is the very act of communication that defines the program

Programs are defined by the syntax and semantics of a programming language.

> Without some type of brain-computer interface that could download your mind and "execute" it, you still have to communicate.

You only need to communicate if you want to transmit an already existing program to someone or something else.

[fao_]

You're both arguing the same point...

[catnaroek]

Not at all. I emphatically disagree with this:

> it is the very act of communication that defines the program.

[fao_]

  > it is the very act of communication that defines the program

  Programs are defined by the syntax and semantics of a programming language.

In what way is the language of programming not communication?

[catnaroek]

You don't need to communicate your programs to anyone or anything for them to exist. If I write a program on a piece of paper, and don't give this piece of paper to anyone else, a program still exists. (I might have to transcribe it into a computer if I don't want to run it manually myself, though.)

[fao_]

And written language isn't a form of communication? (In your example, from yourself to a future form of yourself, or from yourself to the computer).

[catnaroek]

Well, if you take the view that persisting any representation of information from one spacetime event [0] to another is “communication”, then pretty much any physical process is “communication”. But then the term kinda starts to lose its meaning.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_(relativity)