This is what happens decades after something that WAS status signalling at one point, no longer is status signalling.
Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
201–210 of 348 posts
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#202This is what happens decades after something that WAS status signalling at one point, no longer is status signalling.
People don’t like to admit that it is a signal though.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#203The Tortoise. Not Tortoise . Author doesn't seem to have delved too deeply into this unique book.
I haven't read the book. Can you elaborate on why the definite article is an important aspect of how the book is written or interpreted?
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me rephrase that to hopefully make it sound a little less insulting: if you are able to identify an aspect of computation that cannot be described mathematically then you will be remembered alongside Turing, Godel and von Neuman as one of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever produced. (But a priori, the odds of your being able to do that seem pretty low to me.)
well you've just gone and been inaccurate yourself - I said that I didn't believe all mathematical discoveries had an impact on computability, but you just suggested I was saying that not all computation is based in mathematics. Which is absurd and it's clear you think I'm stupid, where to me it's pretty clear you are misinterpreting what I'm saying, whether that's poor communication on my part or uncharitable interp…
> I said that I didn't believe all mathematical discoveries had an impact on computability, but you just suggested I was saying that not all computation is based in mathematics. Which is absurd
No, that's not what I said. What I said was that this statement:
"I don't think the space I'm talking about is equivalent to the state of all of our mathematical knowledge, as AFAIK not all problems relate directly to this space."
is false. This is not a matter of opinion. There is a formal equivalence between math and computability. For every theorem, there is a corresponding program that halts IFF the theorem is true, and for every program, there is a corresponding theorem that is true IFF the program halts. Therefore, it is necessarily the case that all mathematical discoveries have an impact on our knowledge of computability because there is in fact no distinction between math and computability. They are the exact same field of study, just with different window-dressing.
> and it's clear you think I'm stupid
No, I don't think you're stupid, merely ignorant (and a bit defensive). And this has nothing to do with your lack of rigor, it has to do with your intuition that there might be something worthwhile to be discovered by trying to examine the structure of known halting and non-halting programs. This is a well understood problem. It is possible that you could discover something that everyone else has overlooked. But if you do, it would be a breakthrough of the highest order, a major revolution in both computability theory and mathematics.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#205I probably asked that before but anybody knows about ebook of GEB?
As far as I know, there's no legal ebook of G.E.B.
I've this vague memory of hearing that the author regards it as a physical work of art; plus maybe the "ambigrams" were only licensed for the print edition, and the book won't be legally distributed without them.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#206There's a discussion in GEB about mystery/detective novels, and how the physical fact of seeing that you're near the end of the book leaks information about the state of the plot to you. He muses - what if you inserted some number of blank pages at the end, so you weren't sure where the end was? But no, that's too easy - you might flip through and see them. What about Lorem Ipsum text? Well, that's better, but still…
I appreciate being able to turn off the percentage progress indicator in the Kindle app for exactly this reason when reading fiction.
I notice HN makes my Chrome plugin Win7 Scrollbars invisible - perhaps for the same reason.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#207I first bought GEB in the early 80's. At that point, I had only a year in college and I made little headway with the book. Went back to college and ended up double-majoring in Japanese and Computer Science and took a bunch of math courses. Have now spent something like 30 yrs as a software engineer and, in particular, I've worked with many interesting people including one mathematical logician who taught me about such as Alonzo Church and the history of functional programming languages.
So picked up GEB again a couple of years ago and found it much easier going. But then put it down again because most of the ideas, in addition to being very verbosely explained, are now old and there really wasn't a whole lot new there aside from elaborate explanation.
I imagine that the book served its purpose in its time although if not Hofstadter, someone else would probably have come along and put together the various ideas.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for our children by causing them to come into existence? I mean, c'mon. The only way for there to be something good, or great, from a first-person experience, is for there to be a first person to actually do the experiencing. Caveat, of course, bringing something into an existence that is only suffering is probably not so great. This is why we need…
David Benatar is the most famous exponent of the opposing view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism Edit: though several weaker views are more common in animal rights advocacy, for instance that being born in order to be raised for food is not a benefit to an animal, that being born in order to be raised for food in a factory farm is not a benefit to an animal, or th…
This is such a patently ridiculous, self-defeating viewpoint. Simple teleology defeats it, in the sense that everyone who holds this view will probably die childless, and will not be very successful at spreading their views generationally.
As for the animals - hey, I said I want them treated decently. I don't extend them the same courtesies as I extend to humans because they're not human, and I don't shed a tear for their deaths because to do so is to anthropomorphize them, a quintessentially childish way of viewing the world.
> being born in order to be raised for food in a factory farm is not a benefit to an animal
Said animal wouldn't exist otherwise, and could not benefit from not existing, so the potential for benefit is always higher on the existence side, even if the probability is very low - it's still higher than a guaranteed 0.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it such a great thing to be born that we are doing something good for our children by causing them to come into existence? I mean, c'mon. The only way for there to be something good, or great, from a first-person experience, is for there to be a first person to actually do the experiencing. Caveat, of course, bringing something into an existence that is only suffering is probably not so great. This is why we need…
My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives. This is especially true for animals. So I don’t believe we are doing pigs any favours by giving them life.
> My intuition is that suffering dominates our lives
Maybe your life. I feel pretty good. Have you considered doing things to reduce your suffering? There are a lot of great options. Take a few deep breaths and consider whether it's really as bad as all that.
Suffering in the human context is also very relative to tolerance. Experiencing the occasional great suffering (whether physical or emotional) puts your daily aches and pains and disappointments into proper contrast so you can tell that you should learn how to not take them very seriously.
Re: Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach
#210There's a discussion in GEB about mystery/detective novels, and how the physical fact of seeing that you're near the end of the book leaks information about the state of the plot to you. He muses - what if you inserted some number of blank pages at the end, so you weren't sure where the end was? But no, that's too easy - you might flip through and see them. What about Lorem Ipsum text? Well, that's better, but still…
Chuck Palahniuk wanted one of his novels to direct the reader to a page number when the chapter ended so you wouldn't be able to tell when the book was going to end, seems like a sensible solution.
I am reminded of the Choose Your Own Adventure Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure