Turing Oversold? • Hacker News Board

Re: Turing Oversold?

#101

Post by bo1024 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC

We've been over this. Gödel's mu-recursive functions were a poor model of computation because it's completely unclear how to physically implement the arbitrary-function minimization operator. So people didn't see how to build a machine that calculates this way. Similarly, there's no clear way how to mechanize lambda calculus.

Turing Machines, on the other hand, were instantly obviously mechanizable. It was clear that one could build a physical machine to run any Turing program without human input. By proving that they could simulate the other systems, Turing showed that those other systems could be mechanizable as well.

I don't understand why Schmidhuber continues to ignore this crucial point.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#102

Post by Retric » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

sandwall wrote: post #75

simonh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating telling lies. Sometimes we simplify, and doing so can be perfectly appropriate. Unfortunately that does open the stage for nitpicking and pedantry.

Story telling is how our society has transferred information since we started to communicate-- understanding the map is not the territory, nor should it be. A beautiful narrative can convey important kernels more efficiently than endless minutiae-- Awareness of this is important and elaborations are helpful for those interested in the details. I'm reminded of, "The Glass Bead Game," which discusses an academic societ…

The issue with stories is they focus on unimportant bits often for propaganda reasons. Pick some arbitrary first and every country can find someone to play up as a home town hero. The US just happens to be rather quite around who “invented“ electricity but longer lasting incandescent lightbulbs and kites in lightning storms that’s the ticket. The British tend to streamline the Benchley park narrative by dropping the preceding polish contribution etc etc.

In that context narratives end up glorifying endless minutiae.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#103

Post by hyperpallium2 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #38

Just the references here are probably an amazing resource for early computer science, and I'm not going to argue against such a force. Seems to be a lot of uneasiness, of late, about the way credit is allocated in science. IMO, it's mistaken to point this at the top: nobel laureates, heroic icons like Einstein or Turing. These figures are supposed to be idolized and idealized. Yes, this is "untrue," technically. But,…

An aspect of lionization is a wish and motivation to emulate and become heroic oneself...

But one soon realizes you probably won't get heroic credit even if you do contribute something heroic, neutralizing that encouragement.

Therefore, you'd better do it for the love of the work itself or for how it helps others.

There's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't mind who gets the credit.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#104

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

yann2 wrote: post #24

pantulis wrote: post #4

There are a lot of true facts thrown in the article, but it does not explore the reason why this is. I feel the era of great thinkers who single handledly performed disruptive breakthroughs in their field, the Galileos and Newtons, was over with the Einstein-era (and even Einstein also stood in the shoulders of giants). No one works in isolation any more, and that is not a bad thing. You can subject any relevant figu…

No one worked in isolation in the past either. Move Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Einstein 10kms away from where they were born, surround them by a different set of chimps and the story doesnt end the same way. A good book from Niall Ferguson - the Sqaure and the Tower - makes the case tradionally Historians have studied individuals instead of groups because its easier to collect data on one chimp versus the entire tr…

The idea that history is wrong to focus on "chaps" derives from marxism; and Fergusson is very much anti-marxist. The marxian view would be that historical change is the result of economic forces; that if (e.g.) Turing hadn't done it someone else would have, because economics was driving history in that direction.

I'm sympathetic to the marxian view of Great Men; I think it's no coincidence that the related work of Godel and Turing was published within a couple of decades of one-another, or that the ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo emerged around the same time as one-another.

I'm certainly impressed by the greatness of Great Men; but I'm hard-pressed to find one whose discoveries were so remarkable, in the context of their times, that noone else could have been expected to make similar discoveries around the same time.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#105

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #46

mhh__ wrote: post #30

Relative to the 0 times I have ever heard his name mentioned vs. the countless times I have read about him on manic midnight wikipedia binges, I think Zuse seems very unsung.

"I think Zuse seems very unsung" Of what I know, this might be, because he worked for the Nazis and his prototypes were mostly destroyed in the war and somewhat forgotten and seemed to have not been influential to the general branch of computing.

Von Braun also worked for the Nazis.

Interesting to speculate what would have happened if Zuse had been paper-clipped to the US and given a huge budget.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#106

Post by adrian_b » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #46

mhh__ wrote: post #30

Relative to the 0 times I have ever heard his name mentioned vs. the countless times I have read about him on manic midnight wikipedia binges, I think Zuse seems very unsung.

"I think Zuse seems very unsung" Of what I know, this might be, because he worked for the Nazis and his prototypes were mostly destroyed in the war and somewhat forgotten and seemed to have not been influential to the general branch of computing.

There is an indirect influence of Zuse in the daily life of most programmers.

The "for" keyword used in the "for" loops comes from Algol 60, which inherited it from its predecessor from 1958, IAL.

The "for" loops were introduced in IAL by Heinz Rutishauser, who had used "fuer" loops (i.e. "for" in German) for the first time in 1951, when he had published a paper describing a computer programming language, 3 years before Fortran introduced the "do" loops in 1954.

In the Rutishauser paper from 1951, he quotes Zuse with his paper about a programming language (published in 1948) as the inspiration for his own improved programming language, which included the "for" loops.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#107

Post by rtpg » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #94

rtpg wrote: post #13

After watching the Imitation Game, I did some googling/trying to find out how the Bombe worked. I expected it to not be very exact, but I also kinda felt like the entire narrative around that history in the industry was just super off! - The core mechanisms of the machine for running the Enigma "quickly" was from the Polish - The machine wasn't even a generalized computer! I just felt really misled! Perhaps the bigge…

I knew some of the real history beforehand and the movie really annoyed me, so I’m glad to hear you were able to uncover the facts yourself and had a similar reaction! Among so much that’s just plain wrong, I really dislike the insidious idea that Turing’s horrible punishment at the hands of the state was wrong because he was a unique genius and war hero. No, it was wrong because he was a human being and being gay sh…

> I really dislike the insidious idea that Turing’s horrible punishment at the hands of the state was wrong because he was a unique genius and war hero. No, it was wrong because he was a human being and being gay should not be a crime!

100% agree, an unfortunate mentality all too present in society, where we tend to build narratives of feeling bad for people because are exceptional, and not because they are people

See the classic kids story of “oh the store tried to kick the hobo out but actually he was a millionaire!!!” How about treating all people like human beings even if they aren’t like… valuable to you

Re: Turing Oversold?

#108

Post by netcan » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

breuleux wrote: post #98

netcan wrote: post #38

Just the references here are probably an amazing resource for early computer science, and I'm not going to argue against such a force. Seems to be a lot of uneasiness, of late, about the way credit is allocated in science. IMO, it's mistaken to point this at the top: nobel laureates, heroic icons like Einstein or Turing. These figures are supposed to be idolized and idealized. Yes, this is "untrue," technically. But,…

Why do we need idols, though? If there was no narrative, no idols, no celebrities, would people be less motivated to do science? Why do we need to lie to ourselves so? > If you're already deeply interested in computer science, of course the detailed narrative recognizing dozens of brilliant early computer scientists is richer. Of course! Personally I'm mostly uninterested in who did what, but maybe that's just me. It…

>>They're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

The point isn't to prove that they're special. The point is that something special happened and these people are designated symbols for that... and they're kind of selected for being good at this. We're not doing this for them, they're dead. The celebrity of Einstein is a deification of his relativity theories. We need idols for our symbolic world, to work without them in the real one.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#109

Post by IshKebab » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

Labo333 wrote: post #40

I'm not going to comment on the actual content that is mostly [1] scientifically correct, but Schmidhuber (the author) has a record of wanting to be the center of attention [2] (even though LeCun is not better on that matter). Also, a third of the sources are written by him... Just look at his previous blog post [3], in which he explains that the most cited neural networks all cite works by him. These papers cite doz…

> of wanting to be the center of attention

It seemed more like he felt he was unfairly being uncredited. Which is probably why he wrote this - he now cares deeply about giving credit to the right people.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#110

Post by schlupa » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #105

hutzlibu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think Zuse seems very unsung" Of what I know, this might be, because he worked for the Nazis and his prototypes were mostly destroyed in the war and somewhat forgotten and seemed to have not been influential to the general branch of computing.

Von Braun also worked for the Nazis. Interesting to speculate what would have happened if Zuse had been paper-clipped to the US and given a huge budget.

One funny anecdote about Zuse during the war was that he managed to save his Z4 because it was named as V4 in the paperwork. The wehrmacht officers thought it was one of these retaliation weapon V1, V2, V3 so V4 was very important and got high priority to be hidden away somewhere.