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Donald Knuth's IFAQ
- nandemo 16y agoJust because the author is Knuth doesn't make it on-topic.
- mixmax 16y agoIt's the obligation of the intellectual elite to point out fallacies, inaccuracies and problems of the governing body of a country. There's a long tradition of this, from Noam Chomsky to Ralph Waldo Emerson. To qoute Emerson "Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well." Intellectuals have the wisdom, and the brave ones speak truth to power. It's nice to see Knuth in good company.
- mixmax 16y agoHere are a few more startup-related Emerson quotes that I just came across: In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries. Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science. No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. Our best thoughts come from others. Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. People only see what they are prepared to see. Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The ancestor of every action is a thought.
- tptacek 16y agoDonald Knuth is a Stanford academic, a serious Lutheran Christian, and a liberal. For any of those three types of people, these viewpoints are unsurprising. I share them, too, but I feel queasy about an HN headline that says "Respect", as if it were contemptible to hold a different viewpoint.
- colanderman 16y agoI think the respect is for him being bold enough to pose these questions, not for the content of the questions themselves.
- tptacek 16y agoHe's a Stanford Emeritus and one of the most beloved computer scientists of all time. This isn't exactly the riskiest page he could have put up (though, if I wanted to be snarky, there's a wisecrack or two to be conjured about professing Christianity, right?). But at the end of the day, of course I'm glad he has this page. Like I said, these are my viewpoints --- for the most part --- too. But I'm uncomfortable with the way we've chosen to promote the page here.
- jswinghammer 16y agoI sort of wonder how atheists process someone like him believing in God. Is he being irrational? Is he just foolish in this one area of his life? Is it hurting his life (as many atheists claim religion is)? And if any of those are true do you feel like you have the intellectual authority or capacity to say anything to him about his own life?
- IgorPartola 16y agoI personally do not really care. Faith is a personal matter. As long as we are not discussing it directly, why should it factor into a political conversation? Einstein was deeply religious, down to refusing to accept quantum theory because "god does not play with dice", but he also had things to say. Would it have made his discoveries more wonderful if he was an atheist? I believe that question is devoid of meaning.
- jswinghammer 16y agoWell many atheists claim that being an atheist is a qualification for being a serious scientist. Sam Harris wrote a pretty poorly thought out piece in the NYT about how a person who is otherwise qualified was not a good candidate because of their faith.
- johnny22 16y ago" Is it possible for potential new leaders to raise questions about their country's possible guilt, without committing political suicide?" Well we did get the whole "apology tour" stuff on the tv and radio with Obama and by then he wasn't a "potential new leader", but perhaps the answer is yes? (at least it's not a no) We're still here after all :)
- alexeiz 16y agoProves once again that being an expert in one field doesn't mean you have a slightest understanding in another.
- kstenerud 16y agoAgreed. Albert Einstein's political views were laughably naive, for example.
- logjam 16y agoOh really. Which views exactly do you find naïve? His views evolved considerably over time.
- kstenerud 16y agoAn example: "War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press." When considered against thousands of years of human history, documenting wars large and small, and the events leading up to them, such a view of the innate goodness of fellow man that is pure and would never wage war but for the corrupting influence of the elite, comes off as incredibly naive. When compared and contrasted with, for example, Machiavelli and his discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius, Einstein comes off like an episode of the Care Bears.
- Anechoic 16y agoWhile I don't disagree with this statement (I upvoted), it still happens all the time, including on this very site. It's just the nature of the beast.
- OstiaAntica 16y agoIt is ironic that Knuth fumes about his personal lack of consent for the Iraq War (which was authorized and funded by dozens of votes in Congress) and in the same breath calls for imposing the legal rule of an unelected international criminal court on his fellow Americans. Americans, a self-governed people, have established a proven system of rights and freedoms in our Constitution, and that sovereignty should not be transferred to international bodies -- particularly when those bodies are controlled by groups that plan to use the courts against U.S. and Israeli soldiers.
- mak120 16y agoBy the same logic, were the Nazi trials at Nuremberg a violation of German sovereignty?
- Helianthus16 16y agoYes, but (so the argument goes) they were a legal violation, sanctioned by the U.N. or whatever prototype of the U.N. existed at the time.
- kenjackson 16y agoIt is ironic that Knuth fumes about his personal lack of consent for the Iraq War (which was authorized and funded by dozens of votes in Congress) and in the same breath calls for imposing the legal rule of an unelected international criminal court on his fellow Americans. Actually read it again. He says no such thing. He says those are questions and then explicitly says he has no good answers for any of the questions, except maybe one of them (not one that you mention). Saying that this is a question that we should have a real discussion over is neither calling nor fuming.
- maw 16y agoMistake one: thinking its his country. It is not. Mistake two: the idea of a country's honor is ludicrous. I'm with him, otherwise, although I don't think the case is as clear-cut as I used to.
- Helianthus16 16y agoIf a country's honor as a concept is ludicrous, why should a country bother to be moral? Surely you can see that honor and morality are closely tied concepts, such that a country's moral actions define its honor. In what respect can someone deny the validity of honor and still evaluate the quality of a country's actions? In other words, did America 'do wrong' by Iraq?
- maw 16y agoI don't think you can generalize much about a group of three hundred million people. If you accept that premise, then there just isn't very far you can go when talking about a country's honor or morality. The people calling the shots in a country might be a small enough group to make statements about their honor or morality meaningful -- but then statements like "my country" don't mean too much either. I think the Powers That Were (and largely continue to Be) in the US have probably done wrong by many people living in Iraq, although I'm less sure about this than I used to be.
- billmcneale 16y agoBy the way, Knuth was at Google today. He started his presentation by saying "I don't think I can top Lady Gaga".
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- fourspace 16y agoThis page seems rather silly. He isn't actually espousing any views; he's saying he doesn't have any answers. You may read the questions as implying his views, but he doesn't explicitly state any opinions on the matter. I'm not sure why this is even on HN, even given its author.
- trurl123 16y agoAnother question: Why does my country have the right to be occupying Libya?
- euroclydon 16y agoThese are moral questions. There are equally perplexing related practical questions, such as: Why did we go into Iraq? Wars are typically fought for vengeance or gain. There was really nothing to avenge and clearly nothing has been gained. I'm chocking the war up to pure foolishness.