The Philosophy of Computer Science • Hacker News Board

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#41

Post by sedachv » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #19

sedachv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

> Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy A program may direct its attention to any sort of digitally represented piece of information–as computer science progresses the things that can be represented expand over time. What in the main analytic philosophers care about are philosophical concepts which are a subset of all knowledge. Therefore by this reckoning computer programming is not applied analytic ph…

Here is a definition of analytic philosophy from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_Philosophy):

"As a philosophical practice, [analytic philosophy] is characterized by an emphasis on argumentative clarity and precision, often making use of formal logic, conceptual analysis, and, to a lesser degree, mathematics and the natural sciences."

That is exactly what you do when you are doing computer programming. So computer programming is the practice of applying the techniques of analytic philosophy to computers.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#42

Post by justin66 » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

neokantian wrote: post #25

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually ab…

> The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities.

I don't think Taleb would say his work was more important or "surprising" than the work of Mandelbrot, an academic.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#43

Post by igravious » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #41

igravious wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy A program may direct its attention to any sort of digitally represented piece of information–as computer science progresses the things that can be represented expand over time. What in the main analytic philosophers care about are philosophical concepts which are a subset of all knowledge. Therefore by this reckoning computer programming is not applied analytic ph…

Here is a definition of analytic philosophy from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_Philosophy ): "As a philosophical practice, [analytic philosophy] is characterized by an emphasis on argumentative clarity and precision, often making use of formal logic, conceptual analysis, and, to a lesser degree, mathematics and the natural sciences." That is exactly what you do when you are doing computer program…

No it is not.

Read your own excerpt. analytic philosophy is a philosophical practice; computer programming is a software engineering practice.

They are not the same thing.

That's not to say that the practice of philosophy couldn't be done digitally. I'm sure over time more and more of it will. But to go from there to applied analytic philosophy is computer programming is nonsensical.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#44

Post by pasabagi » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #39

pasabagi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world. I also think that, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, OO patterns make some kind of sense - since they allow us to clarify problems as being subsets of more general ones.

> Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world. That is exactly the issue - computing is the closest thing we will ever have to Platonic Idealism. You can create simple, elegant, symmetric worlds. Many people instead assume that whatever poorly designed programming language is around at the moment is the be-all, end-all Platonic world that they must inhabit, and then procee…

>OO patterns do not make any kind of sense.

Isn't this a matter of perspective, though? I've been thinking recently that programming languages are kinda like hexidecimal numbers or logarithms - essentially shorthands that allow us to handle stuff the human brain isn't built for. In this sense, object oriented thinking shouldn't be any worse than any other kind of thinking, provided the practitioner finds it useful for making the problem at hand tractable.

I can see there would be two obvious problems with this kind of relativism - if there were performance implications, or maintenance implications. But I don't see OO stuff causing these in and of itself.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#45

Post by sjg007 » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 12:59 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #31

neokantian wrote: post #25

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually ab…

I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.

Yes. I mean wikipedia answers it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#46

Post by GuiA » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #45

GuiA wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.

Yes. I mean wikipedia answers it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

That article provides little to no insight as to how his work has been incorporated within academic philosophy. It does provide a brief "Selection of papers" section, all of them in finance and statistical mechanics, so my original question remains.

The answer might be “his work hasn’t really intersected with academic philosophy”, that’s fine, I’m just curious to hear about it from people who have done more than read a Wikipedia page about him.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#47

Post by nullpunkt » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #14

zengid wrote: post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

+100000000

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#48

Post by nullpunkt » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

igravious wrote: post #43

sedachv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a definition of analytic philosophy from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_Philosophy ): "As a philosophical practice, [analytic philosophy] is characterized by an emphasis on argumentative clarity and precision, often making use of formal logic, conceptual analysis, and, to a lesser degree, mathematics and the natural sciences." That is exactly what you do when you are doing computer program…

No it is not. Read your own excerpt. analytic philosophy is a philosophical practice; computer programming is a software engineering practice. They are not the same thing. That's not to say that the practice of philosophy couldn't be done digitally. I'm sure over time more and more of it will. But to go from there to applied analytic philosophy is computer programming is nonsensical.

I find your reasoning quite short-sighted.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#49

Post by sedachv » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

igravious wrote: post #43

sedachv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a definition of analytic philosophy from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_Philosophy ): "As a philosophical practice, [analytic philosophy] is characterized by an emphasis on argumentative clarity and precision, often making use of formal logic, conceptual analysis, and, to a lesser degree, mathematics and the natural sciences." That is exactly what you do when you are doing computer program…

No it is not. Read your own excerpt. analytic philosophy is a philosophical practice; computer programming is a software engineering practice. They are not the same thing. That's not to say that the practice of philosophy couldn't be done digitally. I'm sure over time more and more of it will. But to go from there to applied analytic philosophy is computer programming is nonsensical.

Sorry, I don't think you know anything about the history of the relationship between computer programming and philosophy. Kurt Gödel was an analytic philosopher. John McCarthy's work stems directly from analytic philosophy, and goes all the way back to Descartes' ideas.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#50

Post by ssivark » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:43 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #31

neokantian wrote: post #25

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually ab…

I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.

I don't think Taleb has engaged with academic philosophers. He prefers to portray himself as someone grounded in empiricism, and talks down "intellectual-yet-idiot" academics who lose the forest for the trees, in loving their flawed simplifications/abstractions more than the reality they are trying to model [1]. A lot of his ire is directed at economists' over-reliance on flawed mathematical assumptions (particularly relating to modeling randomness), and more broadly, academics in the less empirically grounded fields. I take his principal point to be that the modern approach to decision making under uncertainty (due to being neither theoretically nor empirically rigorous) is just a bunch of fashionable nonsense that has displaced several useful traditional/folk thumb rules which might superficially appear to conflict with the modern scientific models, but represent valuable insights won through hard experience. Most of his writing/speaking directed at a general audience is polemical, and often feels like he is ranting, so YMMV. If you're interested in getting a quick flavor of his work, try his talk at the National Science Foundation [2].

FWIW, several of Taleb's key points expound on some statements by Hume [3] and Seneca [4], so he does value certain works/ideas nominally considered philosophy.

[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e... (Taleb shares several of his articles/book-excerpts on Medium)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsYJBMoIJU

[3] https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4MhC5tcEv0&feature=youtu.be...

PS: Having written this comment on HN makes me feel very weird, stating (my understanding of) the opinions of some particular person, but I just felt like responding to a sincere question.