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In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#21

Post by swayvil »

It suggests that thought is not necessarily generative. That we are not generating ideas. That my ideas are not created out of my head.

An alternative model is that thought is performed by the manipulation of references. References to an idea landscape. Anybody who writes software is familiar.

(Sequences and hierarchies of idea-references give us complex ideas)

> Leibniz’s central argument was that all human thoughts, no matter how complex, are combinations of basic and fundamental concepts, in much the same way that sentences are combinations of words, and words combinations of letters.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#22

Post by brundolf »

Banana699 wrote: post #8
brundolf wrote: post #6

I kept assembling points I wanted to make in the comments, and then the article would cover them itself, so I'll just quote it: > He imagined that this machine, which he called “the great instrument of reason,” would be able to answer all questions and resolve all intellectual debate. “When there are disputes among persons,” he wrote, “we can simply say, ‘Let us calculate,’ and without further ado, see who is right.”…

> flawed mechanical system I don't like what "mechanical" is implying here, it gives the impression that humans have weird magic in their head that makes them understand language or search for truth (whatever approximate version they like anyway). It's just a flawed system, period. Your brain circuits are a flawed system, and the artifacts produced by the data science craze are flawed. They are not flawed equally, bu…

The problem comes with rigidity and certainty. Using a flawed system with the acknowledgement that it's flawed is well and good. But "mechanical" components like hard data and logic often give the illusion of being flawless and true in some absolute way. That doesn't make them useless, but it means you have to work extra hard to keep in mind the fact that they are and always will be imperfect.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#23

Post by nathias »

Banana699 wrote: post #19
nathias wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you assume is false. I'm refering to the fact he came up with the modern concept now known as energy, which he called vis viva. Why are you making things up, he didn't have a mechanistic view of logic, he invented the concept of possible worlds, but for CS what is important is his side project of charachteristica universalis and his introduction of binary formalization.

>he came up with the modern concept now known as energy, which he called vis viva I forgot that, but crediting relativity and nuclear physics to Conservation Of Energy still feels like a big stretch to me. Maybe Thermodynamics. >he didn't have a mechanistic view of logic, he invented the concept of possible worlds I'm not sure I understand why those two things contradict each other. He envisioned a machine doing reas…

The paper you link is like garbage, there are plenty of resourcces that are intellectually honest. Leibniz did take binary form I Ching, where it was used to formalize bones thrown on turtle shells for fortune telling, to consider this 'plagiarism' is idiotic.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#24

Post by kwhitefoot »

nathias wrote: post #3

Leibniz invented the modern world as a side project. Computer science, relativity, nuclear physics can all be traced to him.

Relativity was one of Galileo's contributions, earlier than Leibnitz: 1632 in his 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#25

Post by Banana699 »

yawboakye wrote: post #12
Banana699 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flawed mechanical system I don't like what "mechanical" is implying here, it gives the impression that humans have weird magic in their head that makes them understand language or search for truth (whatever approximate version they like anyway). It's just a flawed system, period. Your brain circuits are a flawed system, and the artifacts produced by the data science craze are flawed. They are not flawed equally, bu…

> Your brain circuits are a flawed system What a roundabout way to admit limitation both in knowledge and tools to investigate them. Except this one is more sinister because it almost closes the curtain on approaching this natural order (of brain circuitry) with both humility and curiosity.

>What a roundabout way to admit limitation both in knowledge and tools to investigate them.

Why? I view humans (and all biological beings really) as machines, fantastic contraptions of unimaginable complexity that push the materials they are made of to the absoulute limits. Their brains are the pattern-matching subsystem responsible for Command, Control and Communcications. Maybe expressing limitations in terms of circuits is roundabout to you, but it's perfectly natural for me.

>it almost closes the curtain on approaching this natural order (of brain circuitry) with both humility and curiosity

Again, why? is it because "Circuits" somehow imply rigidity or fixity ? that's not true at all, plenty of circuits can change their structure while they're operating. And even fixed circuits can be so complex and of so many signal paths that they seem to have a mind of their own, especially in a dynamic changing enviroment.

I don't know about humility*, but the two grandfathers of neural networks, McCulloch and Pitts, were both very curious about the brain, and they used ideas from logic and cybernetics to study it. The Nobel-prize-winning Hodgkin–Huxley model is another framework that looks at the activity inside a neuron in circuit-theoritic terms such as capacitors and current sources.

* : That said, "All of your views and opinions are the product of a few billion capacitors wired together" seems to me like a pretty humble way to go through life.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#26

Post by ronenlh »

lordleft wrote: post #13

> Leibniz’s central argument was that all human thoughts, no matter how complex, are combinations of basic and fundamental concepts, in much the same way that sentences are combinations of words, and words combinations of letters. He believed that if he could find a way to symbolically represent these fundamental concepts and develop a method by which to combine them logically, then he would be able to generate new t…

Yes, I first read about Leibniz’s machine from the wikipedia page on the Entscheidungsproblem.

The research on this problem eventually led to the invention of Lambda calculus and the Turing machine (formal languages for computing), which proved that such a project is impossible, as on some inputs they infinitely recurse and can’t output True or False.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem

The source is Martin Davis, 2000, Engines of Logic

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#27

Post by KhoomeiK »

> if he could find a way to symbolically represent these fundamental concepts and develop a method by which to combine them logically, then he would be able to generate new thoughts on demand

Reminds me of some recent neurosymbolic work, like "DreamCoder: Growing generalizable, interpretable knowledge with wake-sleep Bayesian program learning" [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.08381

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#29

Post by Rebelgecko »

narag wrote: post #28

I can't wait for Apple TV to make a Leibniz biopic series as they did with Asimov's Foundation. It would be so interesting watching her developing Calculus, thanks to her sightseeing powers while working for the emperor.

Maybe they'll just pick up the rights to Stephenson's Baroque Cycle

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#30

Post by [deleted] »

lostmsu wrote: post #9
Banana699 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>relativity, nuclear physics Are those just there because of calculus? that's doubly unfair if so. Unfair beacuse there is a huge amount of work that went into those besides simply calculus, and unfair for all those who contributed to calculus before him. Frankly, I wouldn't even attribute CS to him, he did have a mechanistic view of logic, but that alone doesn't strike me as revolutionary, it was the age of mechanic…

The mathematics side of CS would be Gödel probably.

[deleted]
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