I admire Donald Knuth for his contribution on algorithms and CS stuff. He is one of greatest computer scientist of our time. But would his every advice outside CS fields will be great? I am not sure about this.
[deleted]
Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
31–40 of 171 posts
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#32> they haven’t learned the fundamental ideas of algebra I'd very much love to know exactly what Knuth considers the "fundamental ideas of algebra"!
After reading the relevant article section, I'd guess he's talking about the idea that problems can be mapped onto mathematical structures, allowing use of pre-known rules within said structure, for transformation and identity and so on, such that the problem can then be solved. He's saying that for simple problems if you're clever you can intuit the solution without that mapping/manipulation/solve process, but as a result you can never see how to solve more complex problems. Implication being that if you had been slightly less smart, you'd end up understanding mathematical structure earlier in life, with associated benefits in terms of success in certain fields.
Like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#33>In Christian churches I am least impressed by a sermon that talks about how marvelous heaven is going to be at the end. To me that's not the message of Christianity. The message is about how to live now, not that we should live in some particular way because there's going to be pie in the sky some day. The end means almost nothing to me. I am glad it's there, but I don't see it as much of a motivating force, if any.…
Why should the journey be orthogonal to the destination? The Bible confirms that both are vital.
The Sermon on the Mount commands Christians to be kind, loving and good people in this life.
Verses like Matthew 6:19-21, Colossians 3:2 and 1 Corinthians 2:9 compel Christians to live this life in light of eternity.
To me, if you accept the presuppositions of the Christian worldview, this is logical. If this life and how you live in it is important, how much more so is eternity? After all, life is temporal. (Mark 8:36)
> That's not the message of Christianity > The end means almost nothing to me.
This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the Bible. Again, the Bible presupposes the existence of an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell. This life is the seedtime for eternity.
I'm not here to argue with non-Christians about the validity of these pre-suppositions. I'm saying for those who call themselves Christian and therefore hold the Bible to be true, the end (should) means everything to them.
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#34Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#35> Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald Knuth I have developed the conclusion that reading digestive summary from original source materials is ultimately ineffective for me at this stage of the life. Unfortunately, the author did not provide links to these interviews. For anyone who is writing a summary from other source material, please do provide references. That's one of the things I learn…
Donald Knuth interviews are so interesting, but would like to particularly
highlight this little piece of advice, out of this great playlist:
"Donald Knuth - My advice to young people": https://youtu.be/75Ju0eM5T2c
Complete Playlist - "Donald Knuth (Computer scientist)" [97 videos]:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzeNLngr1Jq...
Also the "Oral History of Donald Knuth" from the Computer History Museum is great.
"Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 1": https://youtu.be/Wp7GAKLSGnI
"Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqPPll3uDa0
Plus..
"Donald Knuth Interview 2006": https://github.com/kragen/knuth-interview-2006
"An Interview with Donald Knuth": https://www.ntg.nl/maps/16/14.pdf
"Interview with Donald Knuth": https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
This somewhat "colourful" page also tracks a few: http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/donald_knuth_interv...
PS: The story that he told Steve Jobs he was "Full of shit" is not true.
"Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit"
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#36> they haven’t learned the fundamental ideas of algebra I'd very much love to know exactly what Knuth considers the "fundamental ideas of algebra"!
It sounds like he's just talking about using variables to solve equations. I think the point he's making in that section is just about learning a good process so you can solve harder and harder problems, e.g. Problem 1: Two numbers add to 100, one is 20 larger. Smart student: oh, I see, 60 and 40. Dumb student Knuth: x + y = 100 and x = y + 20, solves to x=60, y=40. .. Problem 2: Four numbers sum to 1024, one is half…
x + y = 100
x - y = 20
2x + y - y = 120
2x = 120
x = 60
y = 100 - x
y = 40.
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
probably the Lex Fridman podcast interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE1R8FYUJm0 the second one is definitely where the last paragraph in the article is from. Weird that the interview is dated 2021-09-09 and the post is 2020-04-30?
Wow, Lex has gotten some of the greats on his podcast. I should probably give it a go. The few episodes I've seen were more shallow than I was looking for as an engineer, but I assumed that was because he's helping bring these interviews and ideas to a wider audience.
if you're looking for more technical ones the two interviews he did with Crhis Lattner on compilers are great. Francois Chollet and Schmidhuber and other ML related interviews were good also.
But he does seem to be doing less and less of the scientific interviews which is a little bit of a shame given the unique access he seems to have.
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#38This guys name shows up on almost every important combinatorics result . amazing how much he has done
that's got to be a typo: he is a venerable wizard, but combinatorics is a field far more vast than algorithmic things, often dominated historically by Hungarians
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The end, either heaven or hell (or purgatory), is everything to Christianity in the US Yes, unfortunately this is the case in the dominant US expression of Christianity, Evangelicalism. But I think it's changing in some quarters. I've heard several sermons lately about how "eternal life" starts right here on earth. Check out The Bible Project's video on the meaning of Eternal Life [1] I think The Bible Project is k…
In evangelical Christianity, there is also the Red Letter Christians movement https://www.redletterchristians.org which is very much a minority movement, but that I would hope is growing.¹ ⸻ 1. I say this, though as an outsider, being a Catholic. We Catholics have our own battles between those who would make Catholicism all about sex and those who think that maybe it should be concerned with a bit more than that.
This looks more like political agitprop and a rehash of the social gospel movement of the early 20th century than a serious biblical exegesis.
Re: Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The end, either heaven or hell (or purgatory), is everything to Christianity in the US Yes, unfortunately this is the case in the dominant US expression of Christianity, Evangelicalism. But I think it's changing in some quarters. I've heard several sermons lately about how "eternal life" starts right here on earth. Check out The Bible Project's video on the meaning of Eternal Life [1] I think The Bible Project is k…
In evangelical Christianity, there is also the Red Letter Christians movement https://www.redletterchristians.org which is very much a minority movement, but that I would hope is growing.¹ ⸻ 1. I say this, though as an outsider, being a Catholic. We Catholics have our own battles between those who would make Catholicism all about sex and those who think that maybe it should be concerned with a bit more than that.
It's hard to say whether these movements (Like Redletter Christians) still consider themselves Evangelical - at least in the current sense of the word. There's a huge movement of (mostly younger) people leaving Evangelicalism right now because the term 'Evangelical' has been co-opted to mean something political rather than a theological category (as it was in the past). At the same time there are people who wouldn't have considered themselves religious in the past who are now identifying as 'Evangelical' more for political reasons. These latter folks may never attend a church but they like the political alignment.
Historically, Evangelicalism was a reaction to Fundamentalism in the early part of the 20th century. I'm old enough to remember that there were Evangelicals who were politically liberal - my parents voted for McGovern in '72 and were very much anti-Nixon, antiwar, pro-environment and pro-civilrights, they considered themselves Evangelical in those times and they weren't alone - these are the folks that helped Jimmy Carter win in '76. Now Fundamentalism and rightwing politics have taken over Evangelicalism. Leading to the exodus away from Evangelicalism in many quarters (though many of them would still consider themselves 'Evangelical' in the earlier theological sense, they feel that the term has been co-opted so that it's not so much that they've moved it's that the wider Evangelical church has moved away from it's original moorings).