7 ms·

From Philosophy to Program Size (2003)

75 points by pizza 10y ago

rimher 10y ago
One of the most fascinating things I discovered when studying Computer Science is the deep connection that exists between CS and Philosophy in general. When CS was born, it wasn't by 'accident' or because some 'genius' invented it. There were some impressively intelligent people out there, that contributed in a very meaningful way. Philosophy paved the road to get there though, and it's always strange to discover how it has done so through the ages.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  Interesting, I'd love to hear more. Can you recommend any books or papers exploring this topic?
  - dmreedy 10y ago
    If you're interested in more about this particular subject, I think Gleick does a pretty good job of providing a 'road through history' on the subject of the representation/computation duality in "The Information". If you're keen on the broader problems of philosophy that will sound strikingly familiar to anyone who has studied a bit of computer science, Bertrand Russell's "Problems in Philosophy" is a tidy little dip into the fundamental problems philosophers have wrestled with throughout history, and the various tools they've invented to solve them (including logic, mathematics, and by extension, computer science)
  - rimher 10y ago
    This might be cliche, but one of the books that I felt had the best approach in tying it all together is "Gödel, Escher & Bach". It's brilliant in its simplicity and makes all the right connections between a simplified exploration of Computer Science and a lot of the important logical and historical aspects.
  - pizza 10y ago
    "The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems" https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022 https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022
- jonsen 10y ago
  Then maybe one of the very first computer scientist's take on philosophy would interest you. A PDF of his Antiphilosophical Dictionary is available here: http://www.naur.com http://www.naur.com
  - rimher 10y ago
    Awesome, thanks!
Bodell 10y ago
This is great I just got into a long conversation about this with a friend, because of comments in another recent post about "Mapping Mathematics." A specific comment had refereed to the information in the video about Godel as being false. Specifically they did not like the video claiming that Godel's incompleteness had impacted the way in which we view maths 'usefulness' all be it an over-simplification Godel's work definitely had a vast impact on the philosophical way that we view information, math, and science and does certainly beg some questions about the limits of mathematics). Being as I am currently in the middle of reading 'Meta Math' by Chaitin, (because of his recommendations in that book) 'NKS' by Wolfram, and 'Number: The Language of Science' by Datzig. I am glad to see this on the front page in an era where we have so many 'science loving philosophy deniers' out there. I'm assuming this being here at all is not a coincidence and that OP was maybe thinking something similar, but I could be wrong.
abelhabel 10y ago
I found this interesting. "if a physical law can be as complicated as the experimental data that it explains, then there is always a law, and the notion of “law” becomes meaningless! Understanding is compression! A theory as complicated as the data it explains is NO theory"... Then saying that program -> computing -> output has to follow from small to large in size, ie the program is the algorithmic information and the output is the data it explains. Looking at modern day web development we are seeing the opposite, where the program is many times bigger than it's output, suggesting to me that the modern frameworks do not come from any sound theory.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  I'm not sure how you get to the last assertion from the previous two statements. A lot of the bloat for modern web applications come from tracking / analytics.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Looking at modern day web development we are seeing the opposite, where the program is many times bigger than it's output You're seriously underestimating the size of output in a web browser. Consider that the CSS, JS and HTML describe the position of every pixel and its motion on the screen.
  - dmreedy 10y ago
    Not just the size of a given output, but the space of possible outputs. I am also of the opinion that webdev is bloated and miserable, but it is still a massive compression of the information it represents.
    - titzer 10y ago
      I don't really buy that acres of whitespace and gradients really describe much information. Considered at the boundary of your awareness--in that you are mostly unaware of all the pixels on the page, then absolutely not true. A typical news article might be a few KB of text but MBs and MBs of images that you never look at.
dmreedy 10y ago
For those who find this interesting, Chaitin's work is a subset of (or complement to) Kolmogorov's work on complexity theory; fundamentally, the unification of computation and representation under Shannon-style Information. It collapses so many superficially different ideas about representation and function as to be spooky. Or beautiful.
- westoncb 10y ago
  Is there some work of his in particular that you'd recommend? I remember coming across a pop-sci thing he'd written that seemed interesting, but I was ultimately turned off by cheesy graphic design kind of things. Just re-located it. It was called "Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega"
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
diego898 10y ago
If you enjoy this, I can recommend the excellent "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity"[1] by Scott Aaronson [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
- pizza 10y ago
  100% agreed! Also he did a cool lecture on the computational complexity constraints of simulation - using a thought experiment concerning Newcomb's paradox!
bootsz 10y ago
Very interesting topic. I also just generally enjoyed the liberal use of exclamation points throughout. "These are Irreducible Mathematical Truths!!! No rational justification is possible!" Imagine just shouting that at someone who you're having an argument with
equalunique 10y ago
"N-bit theory to prove that an N-bit program" Am I the only one who thought of Curry-Howard correspondence?

75 points by pizza 10y ago

One of the most fascinating things I discovered when studying Computer Science is the deep connection that exists between CS and Philosophy in general. When CS was born, it wasn't by 'accident' or because some 'genius' invented it. There were some impressively intelligent people out there, that contributed in a very meaningful way. Philosophy paved the road to get there though, and it's always strange to discover how it has done so through the ages.

chadgeidel 10y ago
Interesting, I'd love to hear more. Can you recommend any books or papers exploring this topic?
- dmreedy 10y ago
  If you're interested in more about this particular subject, I think Gleick does a pretty good job of providing a 'road through history' on the subject of the representation/computation duality in "The Information". If you're keen on the broader problems of philosophy that will sound strikingly familiar to anyone who has studied a bit of computer science, Bertrand Russell's "Problems in Philosophy" is a tidy little dip into the fundamental problems philosophers have wrestled with throughout history, and the various tools they've invented to solve them (including logic, mathematics, and by extension, computer science)
- rimher 10y ago
  This might be cliche, but one of the books that I felt had the best approach in tying it all together is "Gödel, Escher & Bach". It's brilliant in its simplicity and makes all the right connections between a simplified exploration of Computer Science and a lot of the important logical and historical aspects.
- pizza 10y ago
  "The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems" https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022 https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022
jonsen 10y ago
Then maybe one of the very first computer scientist's take on philosophy would interest you. A PDF of his Antiphilosophical Dictionary is available here: http://www.naur.com http://www.naur.com
- rimher 10y ago
  Awesome, thanks!

Bodell 10y ago

This is great I just got into a long conversation about this with a friend, because of comments in another recent post about "Mapping Mathematics." A specific comment had refereed to the information in the video about Godel as being false. Specifically they did not like the video claiming that Godel's incompleteness had impacted the way in which we view maths 'usefulness' all be it an over-simplification Godel's work definitely had a vast impact on the philosophical way that we view information, math, and science and does certainly beg some questions about the limits of mathematics). Being as I am currently in the middle of reading 'Meta Math' by Chaitin, (because of his recommendations in that book) 'NKS' by Wolfram, and 'Number: The Language of Science' by Datzig. I am glad to see this on the front page in an era where we have so many 'science loving philosophy deniers' out there. I'm assuming this being here at all is not a coincidence and that OP was maybe thinking something similar, but I could be wrong.

abelhabel 10y ago

I found this interesting. "if a physical law can be as complicated as the experimental data that it explains, then there is always a law, and the notion of “law” becomes meaningless! Understanding is compression! A theory as complicated as the data it explains is NO theory"... Then saying that program -> computing -> output has to follow from small to large in size, ie the program is the algorithmic information and the output is the data it explains. Looking at modern day web development we are seeing the opposite, where the program is many times bigger than it's output, suggesting to me that the modern frameworks do not come from any sound theory.

zitterbewegung 10y ago
I'm not sure how you get to the last assertion from the previous two statements. A lot of the bloat for modern web applications come from tracking / analytics.
naasking 10y ago
> Looking at modern day web development we are seeing the opposite, where the program is many times bigger than it's output You're seriously underestimating the size of output in a web browser. Consider that the CSS, JS and HTML describe the position of every pixel and its motion on the screen.
- dmreedy 10y ago
  Not just the size of a given output, but the space of possible outputs. I am also of the opinion that webdev is bloated and miserable, but it is still a massive compression of the information it represents.
  - titzer 10y ago
    I don't really buy that acres of whitespace and gradients really describe much information. Considered at the boundary of your awareness--in that you are mostly unaware of all the pixels on the page, then absolutely not true. A typical news article might be a few KB of text but MBs and MBs of images that you never look at.

dmreedy 10y ago

For those who find this interesting, Chaitin's work is a subset of (or complement to) Kolmogorov's work on complexity theory; fundamentally, the unification of computation and representation under Shannon-style Information. It collapses so many superficially different ideas about representation and function as to be spooky. Or beautiful.

westoncb 10y ago
Is there some work of his in particular that you'd recommend? I remember coming across a pop-sci thing he'd written that seemed interesting, but I was ultimately turned off by cheesy graphic design kind of things. Just re-located it. It was called "Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega"

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

diego898 10y ago

If you enjoy this, I can recommend the excellent "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity"[1] by Scott Aaronson [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf

pizza 10y ago
100% agreed! Also he did a cool lecture on the computational complexity constraints of simulation - using a thought experiment concerning Newcomb's paradox!

bootsz 10y ago

Very interesting topic. I also just generally enjoyed the liberal use of exclamation points throughout. "These are Irreducible Mathematical Truths!!! No rational justification is possible!" Imagine just shouting that at someone who you're having an argument with

equalunique 10y ago

"N-bit theory to prove that an N-bit program" Am I the only one who thought of Curry-Howard correspondence?