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This blog used to be called Cantor's Paradise or something like that. Article is an ok popular-level description of uncomputability, focusing mostly on biograp
by throwaway81523 5y ago
This blog used to be called Cantor's Paradise or something like that. Article is an ok popular-level description of uncomputability, focusing mostly on biographical details of early researchers in the field (Turing, Church, etc). As with other articles from the same blog, it mostly rehashes info well known from other sources. There's nothing exactly wrong with it, but I don't really see what is gained.
I'm nowhere near a real expert in this topic but almost everything I've seen in the blog so far, I've already seen elsewhere, quite a lot of it in Wikipedia. Nothing is copied or anything like that, but there are only so many ways to tell the same stories.
- stared 5y agoWhy so much negativity? Especially as it is discouraged here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. I know these topics, yet find the presentation nice (structure, style, images). Nothing new? Well, good popular-level articles are often in the "nothing new" category.
- throwaway81523 5y agoI got annoyed that this blog appeared here repeatedly under another name and after a while I stopped clicking on it, but then it showed up again under a new name and I clicked. The author has since explained that the blog is published under the two names on separate hosting sites (medium and substack), which I guess makes sense. That's much better than changing names to slip past people's filters, which we've all seen from time to time. Since you're quoting HN rules I would point to the one saying not to use HN for promotion. These posts do come across to me as promotional, once there have been more than one or two of them. That all said, it is an ok article. I'll leave the other issues up to others going forward.
- privatdozent 5y agoIndeed! I’m not claiming to change the world or anything, I just like writing about this stuff
- throwaway81523 5y agoCan I ask why you changed the name of the blog?
- privatdozent 5y agoI didn’t change it, I moved my content to Substack (under the name Privatdozent). Cantor’s Paradise is still on Medium
- throwaway81523 5y agoFair enough, thanks.
- ProfHewitt 5y agoDear Jørgen Veisdal: Fair enough. But it would be helpful if the article could be updated to get some information corrected as pointed out in other posts on this page.
- strulovich 5y agoI know plenty about computability, and found this to be a fun read. Especially since when being taught it my teachers didn’t spend the time going over the biographies of the people involved.
- ProfHewitt 5y agoHistory of the people involved is indeed very interesting. Particularly recommend the BBC2 film "Dangerous Knowledge". BTW: The article "Turing Uncomputability" got some of the history wrong about the 1930 interaction between von Neumann and Gödel. See the following: Jan von Plato. "In search of the sources of incompleteness" Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians. 2018.
- dempedempe 5y agoSure you can learn all of this stuff on Wikipedia, but the difference here is that the author has turned it into a narrative, given it character, and a stylish presentation. Like many people today, I have an attention problem. But my eyes were glued to the screen for this whole article.
- ProfHewitt 5y agoUnfortunately, Wikipedia is often not a reliable source of information because its articles are posted and maintained by largely unaccountable anonymous parties.
- dempedempe 5y agoI'd say it's pretty reliable overall.
- ProfHewitt 5y agoIt's useful enough to have gained an effective monopoly. However, it cannot be relied upon in specific instances.