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I think that an overly literal and precise reading of his pithy phrase misses the point. Computers do exactly as we tell them to do, and we might also know wha
by pron 6y ago
I think that an overly literal and precise reading of his pithy phrase misses the point.
Computers do exactly as we tell them to do, and we might also know what we'd like them to do but we usually don't know what we'd like about the result of what they do. Since the birth of computer science we've known that computers are mysterious in the sense that even though their operation is deterministic in a very natural sense, its outcome is not generally knowable; so deterministic but indeterminable. Dowek merely points out that this is not just a problem with computers but also the very point of them. If their operation's outcome were easily determinable, we wouldn't need it.
- magicalhippo 6y ago> I think that an overly literal and precise reading of his pithy phrase misses the point. I suppose you're right. I get what you're saying, and based on that it seems what Dowek should have said was that "if we knew what computers would do, we would not use them". For me that's a pretty crucial distinction though. In any case, I agree that computation being deterministic yet indeterminable is indeed fairly surprising[1] and quite interesting, and indeed it is this potential for complexity that makes computers useful. [1]: in the common sense of the word, if not both