8 ms·

Gerald Sussman: "We Really Don't Know How To Compute"

181 points by puredanger 15y ago

CountHackulus 15y ago
I love listening to Sussman. You can just hear the passion in his voice.
puredanger 15y ago
One of my favorite talks from Strange Loop... Sussman has amazing breadth across several domains (math, physics, electrical engineering, computing) as well as a long perspective on where we've been and where we can go. He (and Julie) were a true joy to have at Strange Loop this year.
kenjackson 15y ago
I really didn't like his 1GB example in the beginning. You can't compare humans to computer programs in terms of capability. Computer programs do very different things. Sure we can spot the missing triangle faster, but we can't sort 1M names very quickly. And on flexibility of the human source code -- sure a small change results in a cow. But a small change in Windows (default registry settings) can make Windows start in its standard shell, command line, safe mode, Media Center mode, etc... While I can be in awe of the complexity and power of living organisms, I don't think its all that useful to compare them to programs -- at least not based on our current understanding of biology.
- swannodette 15y ago
  I think you're missing the point. Computer programs are processes. There's a whole lot of amazing biological processes out there. Why are current human formulations about the nature of process (programs) so brittle compared to these other processes we observe? It's a humbling talk. Our notions of computation are somewhere at the primordial soup phase.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    They're more brittle because they can be. For example, in computers loading and execution of a program generally occur w/o transcription error. With that said there are things about computer programs that are hard problems in human biology (and note the analog is really more of an OS to an animal -- the animal is a set of processes, not just one process). I can easily use libraries in my current program. Transplants are still non-trivial in humans. I can kill my shell and it will come back. I can even hit an unrecoverable error, reboot and things will usually still work fine. I can probably remove half of the files on my compuer and it will still work fine. I can hibernate my computer, store the state and send it to different piece of hardware. I can take an image of my machine and clone it to 100 other machines. I can add new features and upgrade my OS -- generally can't do that to my body -- at least not in any satisfactory way. Sure there are some animals for which there are non-necessary components, just like in operating systems. But if you remove a heart or the lungs or the brain from most animals -- they'll die. Cancers can kill most animals -- there's no real equivalent to operating systems. There is generally nothing that will flat out kill an OS.
    - gtrak 15y ago
      He's also saying our programs can't be un-brittled yet, and we want to solve more dynamic problems.
      - onemoreact 15y ago
        There are plenty of programs written based on the assumption that there will be tuns of memory errors. Where systems can not only detect problems automatically but try a range of solutions to fix the HW problems without intervention. But it's more a question of cost to develop vs deploy. If your sending a probe to Saturn or sending 100 million devices in the field to monitor power transmission without interruption for years you build a vary different system vs severs that can be monitored by people. PS: Don't forget your DNA is a single program that's been running continually for over 3 BILLION years because at no point did any of your ancestors die before having offspring.
    - 15y ago
wingo 15y ago
Non-flash link?
- gregsadetsky 15y ago
  Don't know about the video, but the slides can be downloaded here in PDF: https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussman-WeDontKnowHowToCompute.pdf https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussma...
- gtrak 15y ago
  you can set your user agent to ipad to get an mp4
- tednaleid 15y ago
  http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/11-sep-wereallydontknowhow.mp4 http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/11-sep-wer... You can get it with Chrome by launching with the iPad user agent and looking at source. Here's a gist with an alias for launching chrome on OSX with the iPad user agent. https://gist.github.com/1313794 https://gist.github.com/1313794
  - hakl 15y ago
    The page sends the filename to desktop browsers base64 encoded. Cute :).
  - Leynos 15y ago
    I just used wget, and it seemed to work. Thanks.
  - wingo 15y ago
    Thanks!
iradik 15y ago
In an older talk at hp Sussman's view is we are at the alchemy stage of understanding computer science. Hence why programmers are often compared to wizards. I guess not much has changed in 20 years.
stralep 15y ago
I was happy that Gerald Sussman shares my fear of floating numbers :) (because I'm not alone, not because he's afraid) [edit] clarification
pyrtsa 15y ago
Anybody noticed how closely this, being from the programmer's point of view, is related to what Bret Victor [1] has been talking about from the UI perspective? Take http://worrydream.com/#!/ScrubbingCalculator http://worrydream.com/#!/ScrubbingCalculator, or any of the "Kill Math" or "Explorable Xplanations" articles, for an example. Combining a good UI to the propagators as explained by Sussman in this video, would make a disruptive product on any field where decision making is needed. (Not like such tools didn't exist already in the hands of some, of course.) [edit] fix typo
- alxv 15y ago
  I have got the same feeling. It is this idea of moving away from the pencil-and-paper operating system for modeling complex systems. Victor is more about making computing explorable and accessible to the masses, whereas Sussman is more about figuring out new ways to compute things. However, both are basically arguing that our current abstractions are not enough anymore. That is, we need to revisit some of the assumptions that were made 40 years ago about how programs should be structured.
- msutherl 15y ago
  CNMAT's o.dot library for Max has a similar notion. As messages pass through the systems and affect new results, the resulting message preserves its entire history.
andrewcooke 15y ago
this seems vaguely like the kind of thing that hofstadter was working on with copycat etc (particularly if you think of hofstadter's version as being more complex because he didn't have the computing power to run many things in parallel and so needed higher level control to allocate resources).
gtrak 15y ago
It's too bad we only saw his face and not his interaction with the slides, watching him explain the circuit and math examples live was like watching an olympic gymnast.
- puredanger 15y ago
  He originally asked to use an old-school transparency projector and we had a camera-enabled one ready for him but he ended up creating actual slides. I kind of wish he'd actually had the transparencies!
Karellen 15y ago
"we are way behind in creating complex systems such as living organisms" Well, yes, but the genome has a ~4,000,000,000 year head start.
logjam 15y ago
Links to background of some of the work Gerry described in his talk: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/44215 http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/44215 http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/ http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/
CoffeeDregs 15y ago
Generally, awesome. But: The 1GB for a human thing, whether or not it's off by a factor of 10, is the cost to build an infant and dismisses the real complexity of a human. The cost to build a high functioning adult is vastly higher. I don't know what it would cost to build me now (complete with screwed up kidney!), but I'm sure that it's quite a bit higher than 1GB: I've learned English, Spanish, love (or so my wife would say), loveV2 (or so my kids would say), basically every computer language, how to catch a football, how to WALK, how to have sex, how to have a conversation over cocktails, etc. The magic of computers is that once N programs have run through the process of learning to do something, we can clone it. Getting to "how to speak English" is going to be hard; building 1e9 machines to do it will be relatively easy.
- robotresearcher 15y ago
  The 1GB was explicitly referred to as your ROM. Sussman does not talk about the streaming data that hits you at run time.
  - CoffeeDregs 15y ago
    meh... He referred to the 1GB a couple of times and I didn't hear he talk about how humans are much more complicated. Also [as an atheist], my point is not to argue against Sussman, but is to point out that calculating the storage requirements of a human is complicated. Putting aside all the guts, walking, eating, etc, we store an immense amount of information. What is incredible is that 1GB is what is required to specify the creation and evolution of the data structure necessary to become adult (and to die).

181 points by puredanger 15y ago

I love listening to Sussman. You can just hear the passion in his voice.

One of my favorite talks from Strange Loop... Sussman has amazing breadth across several domains (math, physics, electrical engineering, computing) as well as a long perspective on where we've been and where we can go. He (and Julie) were a true joy to have at Strange Loop this year.

kenjackson 15y ago

I really didn't like his 1GB example in the beginning. You can't compare humans to computer programs in terms of capability. Computer programs do very different things. Sure we can spot the missing triangle faster, but we can't sort 1M names very quickly. And on flexibility of the human source code -- sure a small change results in a cow. But a small change in Windows (default registry settings) can make Windows start in its standard shell, command line, safe mode, Media Center mode, etc... While I can be in awe of the complexity and power of living organisms, I don't think its all that useful to compare them to programs -- at least not based on our current understanding of biology.

swannodette 15y ago
I think you're missing the point. Computer programs are processes. There's a whole lot of amazing biological processes out there. Why are current human formulations about the nature of process (programs) so brittle compared to these other processes we observe? It's a humbling talk. Our notions of computation are somewhere at the primordial soup phase.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  They're more brittle because they can be. For example, in computers loading and execution of a program generally occur w/o transcription error. With that said there are things about computer programs that are hard problems in human biology (and note the analog is really more of an OS to an animal -- the animal is a set of processes, not just one process). I can easily use libraries in my current program. Transplants are still non-trivial in humans. I can kill my shell and it will come back. I can even hit an unrecoverable error, reboot and things will usually still work fine. I can probably remove half of the files on my compuer and it will still work fine. I can hibernate my computer, store the state and send it to different piece of hardware. I can take an image of my machine and clone it to 100 other machines. I can add new features and upgrade my OS -- generally can't do that to my body -- at least not in any satisfactory way. Sure there are some animals for which there are non-necessary components, just like in operating systems. But if you remove a heart or the lungs or the brain from most animals -- they'll die. Cancers can kill most animals -- there's no real equivalent to operating systems. There is generally nothing that will flat out kill an OS.
  - gtrak 15y ago
    He's also saying our programs can't be un-brittled yet, and we want to solve more dynamic problems.
    - onemoreact 15y ago
      There are plenty of programs written based on the assumption that there will be tuns of memory errors. Where systems can not only detect problems automatically but try a range of solutions to fix the HW problems without intervention. But it's more a question of cost to develop vs deploy. If your sending a probe to Saturn or sending 100 million devices in the field to monitor power transmission without interruption for years you build a vary different system vs severs that can be monitored by people. PS: Don't forget your DNA is a single program that's been running continually for over 3 BILLION years because at no point did any of your ancestors die before having offspring.
  - 15y ago

wingo 15y ago

Non-flash link?

gregsadetsky 15y ago
Don't know about the video, but the slides can be downloaded here in PDF: https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussman-WeDontKnowHowToCompute.pdf https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussma...
gtrak 15y ago
you can set your user agent to ipad to get an mp4
tednaleid 15y ago
http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/11-sep-wereallydontknowhow.mp4 http://d1snlc0orfrhj.cloudfront.net/presentations/11-sep-wer... You can get it with Chrome by launching with the iPad user agent and looking at source. Here's a gist with an alias for launching chrome on OSX with the iPad user agent. https://gist.github.com/1313794 https://gist.github.com/1313794
- hakl 15y ago
  The page sends the filename to desktop browsers base64 encoded. Cute :).
- Leynos 15y ago
  I just used wget, and it seemed to work. Thanks.
- wingo 15y ago
  Thanks!

iradik 15y ago

In an older talk at hp Sussman's view is we are at the alchemy stage of understanding computer science. Hence why programmers are often compared to wizards. I guess not much has changed in 20 years.

stralep 15y ago

I was happy that Gerald Sussman shares my fear of floating numbers :) (because I'm not alone, not because he's afraid) [edit] clarification

pyrtsa 15y ago

Anybody noticed how closely this, being from the programmer's point of view, is related to what Bret Victor [1] has been talking about from the UI perspective? Take http://worrydream.com/#!/ScrubbingCalculator http://worrydream.com/#!/ScrubbingCalculator, or any of the "Kill Math" or "Explorable Xplanations" articles, for an example. Combining a good UI to the propagators as explained by Sussman in this video, would make a disruptive product on any field where decision making is needed. (Not like such tools didn't exist already in the hands of some, of course.) [edit] fix typo

alxv 15y ago
I have got the same feeling. It is this idea of moving away from the pencil-and-paper operating system for modeling complex systems. Victor is more about making computing explorable and accessible to the masses, whereas Sussman is more about figuring out new ways to compute things. However, both are basically arguing that our current abstractions are not enough anymore. That is, we need to revisit some of the assumptions that were made 40 years ago about how programs should be structured.
msutherl 15y ago
CNMAT's o.dot library for Max has a similar notion. As messages pass through the systems and affect new results, the resulting message preserves its entire history.

andrewcooke 15y ago

this seems vaguely like the kind of thing that hofstadter was working on with copycat etc (particularly if you think of hofstadter's version as being more complex because he didn't have the computing power to run many things in parallel and so needed higher level control to allocate resources).

gtrak 15y ago

It's too bad we only saw his face and not his interaction with the slides, watching him explain the circuit and math examples live was like watching an olympic gymnast.

puredanger 15y ago
He originally asked to use an old-school transparency projector and we had a camera-enabled one ready for him but he ended up creating actual slides. I kind of wish he'd actually had the transparencies!

Karellen 15y ago

"we are way behind in creating complex systems such as living organisms" Well, yes, but the genome has a ~4,000,000,000 year head start.

logjam 15y ago

Links to background of some of the work Gerry described in his talk: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/44215 http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/44215 http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/ http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/

CoffeeDregs 15y ago

Generally, awesome. But: The 1GB for a human thing, whether or not it's off by a factor of 10, is the cost to build an infant and dismisses the real complexity of a human. The cost to build a high functioning adult is vastly higher. I don't know what it would cost to build me now (complete with screwed up kidney!), but I'm sure that it's quite a bit higher than 1GB: I've learned English, Spanish, love (or so my wife would say), loveV2 (or so my kids would say), basically every computer language, how to catch a football, how to WALK, how to have sex, how to have a conversation over cocktails, etc. The magic of computers is that once N programs have run through the process of learning to do something, we can clone it. Getting to "how to speak English" is going to be hard; building 1e9 machines to do it will be relatively easy.

robotresearcher 15y ago
The 1GB was explicitly referred to as your ROM. Sussman does not talk about the streaming data that hits you at run time.
- CoffeeDregs 15y ago
  meh... He referred to the 1GB a couple of times and I didn't hear he talk about how humans are much more complicated. Also [as an atheist], my point is not to argue against Sussman, but is to point out that calculating the storage requirements of a human is complicated. Putting aside all the guts, walking, eating, etc, we store an immense amount of information. What is incredible is that 1GB is what is required to specify the creation and evolution of the data structure necessary to become adult (and to die).