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Turing Oversold?

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Re: Turing Oversold?

#281

Post by jecel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #260
bo1024 wrote: post #101

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…

> Similarly, there's no clear way how to mechanize lambda calculus. Is Lisp such a mechanization?

Any computer (with enough resources) can simulate any other computer. So if you have Lisp by running such a simulation (interpreter) on your PC it is not the same thing as a direct implementation of lambda calculus.

The famous Lisp Machines of the 1980s were reasonably traditional Von Neumann computers with nice features like tagged memory and optimized stacks.

Much closer to mechanizing lambda calculus, but still a bit Von Neumannish, is the SECD virtual machine for Lisp and friends:

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

Re: Turing Oversold?

#282

Post by sandwall »

Retric wrote: post #102
sandwall wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Historians are all storytellers. Critical review is important. I really like this paper which starts by paraphrasing Jane Austen, "i think it quite odd history should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention" :

https://www.cmu.edu/epp/people/faculty/research/Fischhoff-Fo...

Re: Turing Oversold?

#283

Post by jecel »

chubot wrote: post #96
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…

Tangential, but one thing I learned from dense computer history book The Dream Machine is that the term "von Neumann architecture" is improperly assigning credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture von Neumann simply described the work of Eckert and Mauchly on the ENIAC in a written report. And his name was on the report which made people think that he came up with the idea, which was false. It al…

> von Neumann simply described the work of Eckert and Mauchly on the ENIAC in a written report.

Actually, it was a study group to come up with the successor to ENIAC (called EDVAC) which included Eckert, Mauchly, von Neumann, Goldstine and Burks. Von Neumann was the last to join, but wrote down the group's conclusions in a memo meant for the group. Herman Goldstine typed that up into a nice report but listed von Neumann as the sole author and distributed 24 copies to researchers. Many new copies of the report were made and circulated causing confusion about who had created the ideas.

George Dyson's "Turing's Cathedral", on the other hand, argues that von Neumann's close relationship with Gödel had a major role in getting the stored program idea adopted by the EDVAC group.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#284

Post by jecel »

jmartrican wrote: post #132

Honest question here, how much of the CS theories play a role in the history of the practical computers we use today? For example, if we play back the history of the the modern computers that we use from a perspective of the CPU (with its instruction set), RAM, disk, high level languages, and operating systems... do they have a foundation in CS theories? Or do these constructs come from a more practical engineering b…

Many theories were developed after the practical implementations. It is really hard to separate the two. Relational databases, for example, is a case where the theory came first. But would have that been created without the experience of using hierarchical databases?

Re: Turing Oversold?

#285

Post by cybernautique »

jecel wrote: post #279
cybernautique wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that David Harland's Rekursiv[1:] machine _is_ the manner by which lambda et al. might be implemented at the machine level. Unfortunately, Rekursiv seems to have died an ignominious death, with the last Rekursiv chip having fallen off the side of a steamboat (apocrypha; I remember having read this, but I'm unable to find the original citation.) The Rekursiv advantage is its ability to do recursion on th…

I always mention the Rekursiv in my talk about Smalltalk computers. Its problem was being a CISC in the era of RISC. The Manchester Mushroom from just a little later had initially the same problem but went through a major redesign when they saw the JIT compilers for Self on the Sun Sparc processor.

I'd never heard of the Mushroom! Thank you for making me aware of it! A quick DDG search returned no results; I'd appreciate any links you have on the topic!

I'd also love to see your talk! Do you think a RISC Rekursiv could be achieved? What value, if any, do you think such might have in our current world?

Re: Turing Oversold?

#286

Post by mr_toad »

3pt14159 wrote: post #120
KingOfCoders wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, it was claimed that Turing founded computer science.[...] Turing's 1936 paper provided the "theoretical backbone" for all computers to come." So your argument is, because it is unclear how to "physically implement the arbitrary-function minimization operator", Turing is the better "theoretical backbone" and has founded computer science?

Not OP, but I agree with them. The word computer means multiple things. In one sense it the abstraction of universal computation. Imagine a world where actual physical computers didn't progress to universal computation, but were stuck being purpose built to the present day. The field of computer science would be utterly different because they couldn't actually compute anything with their science. They could just disc…

> Imagine a world where actual physical computers didn't progress to universal computation, but were stuck being purpose built

It’s not clear that you need a theory of computation to build a stored process computer. You might not clearly understand the theoretical capability of such a machine , but that wouldn’t prevent you from doing many useful things with it.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#287

Post by mangodrunk »

convnet wrote: post #267
coldtea wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She didn't write the "first program" but she was the first to understand what computers would be capable of doing Or merely the first to express it? I'm pretty sure Babbage himself, as the inventor, understood well what computers would be capable of doing.

He was focused on using his machines to efficiently generate mathematical tables. It was Ada who realized the potential of the analytical engine as a universal computer. She even wrote that given a good numeric representation for sound, one could program the analytical engine to generate algorithmic music based on mathematical rules. Babbage himself wrote examples of programs for the engine, but they were all very si…

Well, the often inaccurate title of "first programmer", which clearly Charles Babbage was for at least his machine. Perhaps it would be better to describe Ada Lovelace as an early enthusiast / evangelist / adopter.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#288

Post by mangodrunk »

simonh wrote: post #47
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,…

Right, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of narratives. We need narratives about the theoretical foundations of computer science, and Turing is the perfect figure to weave many of those narratives around. It's good for young people and the general public, and good for the field. The Turing machine is a key conceptual model for understanding the basics of computation. The Turing Test is a great model for think…

I don't think it's true that these narratives (false or true) are helpful, especially when their false. I think it's counterproductive, and ultimately takes away credit from others which can impede collaboration (say one country disagrees with another on who invented something).

Re: Turing Oversold?

#289

Post by mangodrunk »

slibhb wrote: post #174
breuleux wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why do we need idols, though? Because we're flesh and blood, i.e. utterly irrational. > 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? Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on. It is entirely unrealistic to imagin…

>Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on

That might do more harm than good. Once someone wins a Nobel, their productivity tends to decrease. Fighting over credit can be really toxic (see Newton vs Leibniz which probably stunted the development of calculus) and lead to less collaboration and knowledge sharing.

It may be unrealistic to think we can be different, but at least seeing that it's problematic should be unrelated to that. It's unrealistic to think crime will stop, but we should at least try to minimize it.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#290

Post by slavik81 »

cs702 wrote: post #152
bo1024 wrote: post #101

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…

Jürgen Schmidhuber has a track record of complaining about unfairness in the conventionally accepted view of the scientific record, especially in the English-speaking world. For instance, he has claimed for years that his own early research on AI has been unfairly overlooked or ignored by a "conspiracy" (his word, not mine).[a] At one point, the NY Times called him the "Rodney Dangerfield of AI research" because he d…

> But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity... Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it... Who knows whether the best of men be known? Or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?

~ Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (1658)

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