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Turing Oversold?

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Re: Turing Oversold?

#71
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…

He just wants to get the facts right, esp the correct attribution to the original scientific contributions (who did it first).

Originality is easily defined as who did sth first.

This might not be the same as influence of some work. It might be that someone else does a lot of groundbreaking work which actually makes sth work (e.g. Goodfellow et al for GAN). You can say the GAN paper had more influence than Schmidhubers Adversarial Curiosity Principle.

Also, of course some newer authors might not know of all the old work. So it might be that people get the same ideas. So when Goodfellow got the idea for GAN, he might not have known about Schmidhubers Adversarial Curiosity.

The problem is, sometimes people did know about the other original work but intentionally do not cite them. You can not really know. People of course will tell you they did not know. But this can be fixed by just adding the citation. It looks bad of course when there are signs that they should have known, so it was really intentionally.

There is also a lot of arguing when sth is the same idea, or when sth is a different novel idea. This can be ambiguous. But for most cases which are discussed by Schmidhuber, when you look at the core idea, this is actually not so much the case. Also, this is also not so much a problem. There is less argumentation about whether sth is at least related. So this still should be cited then.

The question is then, which work should one cite. I would say all the relevant references. Which is definitely the original work, but then also other influential work. Many people just do the latter. And this is one of the criticism by Schmidhuber, that people do not give enough credit (or no credit) to the original work.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#73

I watched the "Imitation Game" and read the biography of Turing by Andrew Hodges. What I found fascinating about the biography was recognising what Turing was describing in theoretical terms, as actual hardware and software concepts today. I know some parts are somewhat obvious, but it was still nice to trace the concepts back to excerpts from his work. The Imitation Game is a nice fiction, but doesn't portray Turing…

The Imitation Game is awful and should never be screened.

It is a good movie. It introduced Turing to the masses in a compassionate way. Also it showed normal people that cryptography, despite being rather boring and mathy, is extremely important in everyday life.

I also enjoyed Breaking the Code – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115749/

Re: Turing Oversold?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness) This is a misunderstanding of the Turing machine model. The Turing machine is not designed to be a realistically implementable physical machine, and indeed there are no details in Turing's paper on how such a physical machine could be achieved. Instead, the Turing machine model is designed to be a mechanistic model of…

> This is a misunderstanding of the Turing machine model. The Turing machine is not designed to be a realistically implementable physical machine, and indeed there are no details in Turing's paper on how such a physical machine could be achieved. I’ve read the paper. I think we just take different things from it, possibly because you have a background in mathematics? To me, the main takeaway (if I imagine reading it…

The Turing machine has a tape of unbounded size so can’t be built simpliciter.

Moreover although it turns out that that model of computation is very robust and sufficient for all purposes in physics (unless black holes or something allow hypercomputation) Turing does not really definitively show that and in a way that can’t be definitively shown. All we have is a lack of counterexamples (admittedly a very convincing one.)

I don’t see why this intuition is that helpful generally either; Turing machines don't really help at an implementation level with modern engineering problems as far as I can tell. Most of the time you know that what you want to do is possible in finite time &c.—presumably the difficulty is doing what you want to do, and going via the Turing formalism would be a bit odd.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#75
post #62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also shouldn't underestimate the importance of truth. Dealing with the world as-it-is has better results than interacting with a story we'd like to be true but isn't. People waste their lives in service of causes and ideas that just are not grounded in reality. Not just in the philosophical sense that we cannot know truth, but in the practical sense of "the outcome you want will not flow from the actions you are t…

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 society that forgets the names of contributors since they're all just part of the flow of humanity

Re: Turing Oversold?

#76

Having an educational background in physics I find the Turing Machine a much more intuitive model of computation than say lambda calculus. To me this is Turing’s main contribution: linking the abstract world of computation to the physical world, and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness). That’s no small contribution.

> and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness) This is a misunderstanding of the Turing machine model. The Turing machine is not designed to be a realistically implementable physical machine, and indeed there are no details in Turing's paper on how such a physical machine could be achieved. Instead, the Turing machine model is designed to be a mechanistic model of…

> the Turing machine model is designed to be a mechanistic model of what a mathematician does (in rote day-to-day tasks at least)

Or more accurately, what human computers did in those days (i.e. the rooms full of people algorithmically working out numerical calculations for e.g. physicists or whatever without understanding what they were doing beyond the mechanical steps they were taking). In other words a formalization of so-called effective methods.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#77
post #2

There's some confusion towards the end about Engima and Colossus: However, his greatest impact came probably through his contribution to cracking the Enigma code, used by the German military during the Second World War. He worked with Gordon Welchman at Bletchley Park in the UK. The famous code-breaking Colossus machine, however, was designed by Tommy Flowers (not by Turing). The British cryptographers built on earli…

> It's so bad it shouldn't be considered canon.

Since when are movies supposed to be accurate historical references? They are made to be entertaining, so facts get kicked out of the door from Day 1.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#79
It's certainly true that Turing didn't invent computer science. As a point of order:

> A popular British movie [The Imitation Game] even went so far as to say he invented the computer.

The Imitation Game that was financed by a US production company, with an American screenwriter and Norwegian director? That British movie?

Re: Turing Oversold?

#80
post #56
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…

> But if you need to choose a Founding Father of Computing Science for the general public, I'd say Alan Turing is the best candidate. Scholars will give due credit to Church, Zuse, von Neumann and all the others. I agree with this. It's certainly the case that I wish more people knew of Alonso Church and Kurt Gödel, but you have to realize in a "PR" sense that it's simply not going to be feasible to teach the general…

> The fact that he was shamed into suicide is just all the more reason to celebrate him now.

Please don’t diminish his legacy by repeating this lie. Turings suicide is contentious and circumstantial at best. His documented behaviour had none of the very common signs of suicide - there was no note, he had plans for later in the week, and none of his close friends noted any change in behaviour.

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