6 ms·

Engineering is clearly reaching a point where it is and will be much more integrated and coupled with pure and applied mathematics. I think it's more than time

by tw1010 8y ago

Engineering is clearly reaching a point where it is and will be much more integrated and coupled with pure and applied mathematics. I think it's more than time to start taking this implicit project seriously by making it explicit. We aught to think back to the foundations of the way we think about programming in the first place, and we should try to build a new mindset which takes the best parts of the hacker spirit and the pure mathematics mindset and create something new, something more fitting to the enviourment we've found ourselves in, where essentially the only limits to what we can produce is our ability to imagine them.

gmfawcett 8y ago
That's an optimistic idea, and I don't want to discourage optimism. But a common trait shared by both engineering and mathematics is the notion of constraints. The limits of what we can produce in such an idealized math/engineering framework are likely not to be our imaginative limits, but the inherent and necessary limits of the objects and abstractions that math/engg rely upon. You might discover that axioms, rules, boundary conditions, and formal abstractions can't produce the liberating blank-canvas that an imaginative hacker/artist would dream of -- at least not without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- tw1010 8y ago
  From one perspective, coding is just dry formal automata theory. But that's not how most coders think about it. We've developed more playful ways to think and learn about it. And the more experience one has with coding, the more one can ignore the details and just think with feelings and intuition. The same effect occurs after a mountain of experience with pure mathematics. After a while, it starts to change the way you think. The brain internalizes it, and makes it accessible on a much more natural plane than how you think about maths when you're starting out, when everything is detail and hard work. It's these two worlds I want integrated. I want the abstractions coders think about on a daily basis to be enriched by a rejuvenating syringe of math juice.
3pt14159 8y ago
Eh—sometimes I feel like we're repeating many of the same stupid mistakes our parents did only with AI instead of mechanized production. They had ugly, mass produced shirts. Big ugly homes. Big ugly cars on big ugly highways. I don't need AI to dress me. Looking good takes work, but it's nice to look sexy and to feel like all the effort you put toward finding the perfect shades or shirt was worth it. I don't need an algorithm to feed me or to determine exactly when I should wake up or how long I should exercise. I need algorithms to distinguish a tumour from a cyst at the hospital. I'd like to do the human stuff.

by tw1010 8y ago

gmfawcett 8y ago

That's an optimistic idea, and I don't want to discourage optimism. But a common trait shared by both engineering and mathematics is the notion of constraints. The limits of what we can produce in such an idealized math/engineering framework are likely not to be our imaginative limits, but the inherent and necessary limits of the objects and abstractions that math/engg rely upon. You might discover that axioms, rules, boundary conditions, and formal abstractions can't produce the liberating blank-canvas that an imaginative hacker/artist would dream of -- at least not without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

tw1010 8y ago
From one perspective, coding is just dry formal automata theory. But that's not how most coders think about it. We've developed more playful ways to think and learn about it. And the more experience one has with coding, the more one can ignore the details and just think with feelings and intuition. The same effect occurs after a mountain of experience with pure mathematics. After a while, it starts to change the way you think. The brain internalizes it, and makes it accessible on a much more natural plane than how you think about maths when you're starting out, when everything is detail and hard work. It's these two worlds I want integrated. I want the abstractions coders think about on a daily basis to be enriched by a rejuvenating syringe of math juice.

3pt14159 8y ago

Eh—sometimes I feel like we're repeating many of the same stupid mistakes our parents did only with AI instead of mechanized production. They had ugly, mass produced shirts. Big ugly homes. Big ugly cars on big ugly highways. I don't need AI to dress me. Looking good takes work, but it's nice to look sexy and to feel like all the effort you put toward finding the perfect shades or shirt was worth it. I don't need an algorithm to feed me or to determine exactly when I should wake up or how long I should exercise. I need algorithms to distinguish a tumour from a cyst at the hospital. I'd like to do the human stuff.