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The author of the obituary, Roger Penrose, is also a distinguished and forward thinking scientist. I highly recommend reading his book "The Emperor's New Mind".

by davedx 9y ago

The author of the obituary, Roger Penrose, is also a distinguished and forward thinking scientist. I highly recommend reading his book "The Emperor's New Mind". It's especially relevant in today's climate of rapidly accelerating machine learning and A.I. advances (whether you agree with his premises or not).

nilkn 9y ago
Penrose isn't just a distinguished scientist: he's one of Hawking's most famous collaborators. The Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems are named after both of them. They were jointly awarded several prizes/medals too.
stochastic_monk 9y ago
Many of you will be familiar with the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse [0], a generalization of the matrix inverse which is defined for non-square matrices and zero matrices, frequently applied in machine learning and statistics. However, like Hawking, with whom he was a collaborator (as you read in the article), he also wrote several highly successful popular books. I haven't yet read the Emperor's New Mind and look forward to doing so, but I have read the excellent The Road To Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe [1]. I might also recommend some joint lectures between the two of them [2]. I don't think there could be a more fitting author for Stephen Hawking's obituary. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%E2%80%93Penrose_inverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%E2%80%93Penrose_inverse [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409195.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409195.pdf
codeulike 9y ago
One day I hope to decorate my bathroom with Penrose tiles.
SilasX 9y ago
How is it relevant? (The AI part of ) TENM is basically, "AI isn't possible, it will never do that." Well, they're doing it -- passing a lot of barriers that were assumed impossible. Now I don't want to be unfair or hasty here, so let me say this: If I were to claim that such a book were relevant under the above conditions, I would only do it if I could say something like, "Penrose wisely pointed out that attempts at AI run into the problem of -----, which manifests in such projects as -----, where they tried to ----, but predictably couldn't, because, as Penrose said, ----." (---- = blank) Can you do that for TENM?
robotresearcher 9y ago
Just for the record, almost nobody accepts the thesis of that book. Penrose is a great fundamental physicist who believes (or did back in 1990) that new fundamental physics is needed to explain how brains produce intelligent behaviour. The dominant contrary opinion is that this can be done using some form of computation. Other opinions are that something other than computation in the Turing sense is required, but that current physics is probably sufficient to describe it. Very few people think that a theory of e.g. quantum gravity is the right level of explanation for the phenomena of intelligent behaviour. I think Penrose fell into a common trap: when you are an expert on hammers, every hard problem looks like it needs a whack with a better hammer.
- antognini 9y ago
  I don't think Penrose's position is that you need new physics for intelligent behavior, but rather that new physics is needed to explain consciousness. There's a big metaphysical difference between the two.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    I guess that's true. Then it's even more bold and wacky to declare that we need new physics to describe a thing that is so controversial in its function or effects. I (possibly mis-)translated into intelligent behaviour in my memory, since that's something most people agree does real work and needs explaining.

by davedx 9y ago

nilkn 9y ago

Penrose isn't just a distinguished scientist: he's one of Hawking's most famous collaborators. The Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems are named after both of them. They were jointly awarded several prizes/medals too.

stochastic_monk 9y ago

Many of you will be familiar with the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse [0], a generalization of the matrix inverse which is defined for non-square matrices and zero matrices, frequently applied in machine learning and statistics. However, like Hawking, with whom he was a collaborator (as you read in the article), he also wrote several highly successful popular books. I haven't yet read the Emperor's New Mind and look forward to doing so, but I have read the excellent The Road To Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe [1]. I might also recommend some joint lectures between the two of them [2]. I don't think there could be a more fitting author for Stephen Hawking's obituary. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%E2%80%93Penrose_inverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%E2%80%93Penrose_inverse [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409195.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409195.pdf

codeulike 9y ago

One day I hope to decorate my bathroom with Penrose tiles.

SilasX 9y ago

How is it relevant? (The AI part of ) TENM is basically, "AI isn't possible, it will never do that." Well, they're doing it -- passing a lot of barriers that were assumed impossible. Now I don't want to be unfair or hasty here, so let me say this: If I were to claim that such a book were relevant under the above conditions, I would only do it if I could say something like, "Penrose wisely pointed out that attempts at AI run into the problem of -----, which manifests in such projects as -----, where they tried to ----, but predictably couldn't, because, as Penrose said, ----." (---- = blank) Can you do that for TENM?

robotresearcher 9y ago

Just for the record, almost nobody accepts the thesis of that book. Penrose is a great fundamental physicist who believes (or did back in 1990) that new fundamental physics is needed to explain how brains produce intelligent behaviour. The dominant contrary opinion is that this can be done using some form of computation. Other opinions are that something other than computation in the Turing sense is required, but that current physics is probably sufficient to describe it. Very few people think that a theory of e.g. quantum gravity is the right level of explanation for the phenomena of intelligent behaviour. I think Penrose fell into a common trap: when you are an expert on hammers, every hard problem looks like it needs a whack with a better hammer.

antognini 9y ago
I don't think Penrose's position is that you need new physics for intelligent behavior, but rather that new physics is needed to explain consciousness. There's a big metaphysical difference between the two.
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  I guess that's true. Then it's even more bold and wacky to declare that we need new physics to describe a thing that is so controversial in its function or effects. I (possibly mis-)translated into intelligent behaviour in my memory, since that's something most people agree does real work and needs explaining.