Sunday philosopher
I finally read two of the books I bought Friday.
First out was Walter Gratzler’s The undergrowth of science, a fascinating collection of stories about really bad theories that became extremely popular. The serious point Gratzler makes is that even for good scientists there are plenty of ways to get carried away.
Casti & de Pauli’s Kurt Gödel, a life of Logic is not really a biography. It’s a short, clear description of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, with the added background of Gödel’s life and intellectual environment. Towards the end of the book there are short overviews of the current relevance of Gödel’s work. The last part of the book talks a lot about Gregory Chaitin, an IBM researcher with an information-theoretic approach to Gödel.
Gregory Chaitin’s homepage has lots of material, including the full text of several books. Here is a juicy quote from the preface of his book The unknowable:
In a nutshell, Gödel discovered incompleteness, Turing discovered uncomputability, and I discovered randomness—that’s the amazing fact that some mathematical statements are true for no reason, they’re true by accident. There can be no “theory of everything,” at least not in mathematics.
Science writer John Horgan has a good interview with Chaitin in The end of science, which Chaitin concludes by saying: mathematics is dead. Or maybe I’ve just eaten too many bagels. While I certainly don’t agree with everything Horgan says, he is extremely readable.
On a personal but somewhat related note: I spent part of the Eighties riding high on AI-hype and learned the hard way that some things just weren’t true. So Jaron Lanier’s one half of a manifesto (and also his recent interview, which I read yesterday) felt like a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the links to Lanier, Greg!
October 12th, 2000 at 9:48
You’re welcome, Jonas! I wasn’t kidding when I said I had stereotyped Jaron as the VR guy. I think in principle it helps to be suspicious of people who come off as “evangelists,” but it’s pure prejudice to do so just based on some dumb Wired Magazine list, which is what I did!
I was happy to encounter something written by the man himself. He and I are now simpatico.
And now for my question. You mentioned you spent part of the Eighties in the midst of some AI hype. What principles were you being hyped about and how did reality differ? I’m interested in learning more.
I am familiar with the Marvin Minsky theory of “societies of the mind” and agents, but have not seen any real-world evidence of such societies, although it reads well on the page. I assume the model of “computer = mechanical brain” was considered old and inaccurate, which is what Minsky was trying to get around with his agents model.
I just got around tonight to reading your links to science writers, particularly J. Horgan and M. Chaitlin. Thanks for the links!
I’m a math major, so I actually understood the preface of some of Chaitlin’s papers, and of course I’ve read the Goedel/Escher/Bach book. This was a rediscovery for me.
Both your “philosopher” days and your “coder” days read very well and I hope you don’t give up writing about them in JB.ETP.com. Take care….
Greg, chief of the flying chihuahuas