5 ms·

I was just making a satirical joke. I know how he was treated by the government, and I'm sorry if I caused offense. What annoys me is what he could have accompl

by zandorg 17y ago

I was just making a satirical joke. I know how he was treated by the government, and I'm sorry if I caused offense. What annoys me is what he could have accomplished in the field of robotics if he hadn't been wrongly treated.

jacquesm 17y ago
That's a question many people would like the answer to. It's related to a funny story that goes like this: What if Bach had died before writing the WTK, then that music would not exist today, but all of us would be totally free to come up with it. Since Bach did live to write the WTK we don't have to wonder what it would be like if it did not exist. Now what other stuff would he have done if he had lived even longer... The problem with such thought experiments is that even though in theory we can come up with all the music that a composer would have written had they lived several hundred years longer in practice we probably will never do that because we are not that composer. For art this is easy enough because we readily admit to an artist bringing something unique to the table, why else would an 'original' be worth a load of money (it's uniqueness being the direct consequence of the hand of the master). For scientific things that is a lot less clear. I'm sure plenty of stuff will be invented anyway, no matter who comes up with it the first time. But that may not be true for all scientific ideas.
- akd 17y ago
  I think it is pretty obvious that if Bach lived another 10 years (or days), he would have written music that nobody would ever come up with (remember, human existence will not be infinite). With Turing, it's entirely possible that he could have come up with a novel way of looking at things, or an invention, which we have not achieved today. Thus, even if at some point, all technical discoveries have been made that would have been made in Turing's natural lifespan, we would be much farther along at any point in time if we had those contributions, and our way of looking at our field might be richer.

by zandorg 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

That's a question many people would like the answer to. It's related to a funny story that goes like this: What if Bach had died before writing the WTK, then that music would not exist today, but all of us would be totally free to come up with it. Since Bach did live to write the WTK we don't have to wonder what it would be like if it did not exist. Now what other stuff would he have done if he had lived even longer... The problem with such thought experiments is that even though in theory we can come up with all the music that a composer would have written had they lived several hundred years longer in practice we probably will never do that because we are not that composer. For art this is easy enough because we readily admit to an artist bringing something unique to the table, why else would an 'original' be worth a load of money (it's uniqueness being the direct consequence of the hand of the master). For scientific things that is a lot less clear. I'm sure plenty of stuff will be invented anyway, no matter who comes up with it the first time. But that may not be true for all scientific ideas.

akd 17y ago
I think it is pretty obvious that if Bach lived another 10 years (or days), he would have written music that nobody would ever come up with (remember, human existence will not be infinite). With Turing, it's entirely possible that he could have come up with a novel way of looking at things, or an invention, which we have not achieved today. Thus, even if at some point, all technical discoveries have been made that would have been made in Turing's natural lifespan, we would be much farther along at any point in time if we had those contributions, and our way of looking at our field might be richer.