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As someone with a major in philosophy, I can attest that it is in fact something we talked about often.

j2kun 12y ago
How deep do you go? Do you talk about P and NP? Or deeper, like interactive proofs or complexity-based definitions of randomness?
- zenogais 12y ago
  Philosophy generally has its own language for talking about these kinds of problems, and generally its own starting points. Gilles Deleuze laid a lot of the groundwork for using ideas from chaos theory to work on philosophical problems during his life (starting with some of his work in the 1960-70s). Some links: - http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/PDF/Remarks_on_Complexity_Theory.pdf http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/PDF/Remarks_on_Complexity_The... - http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jipt.2010.0004 http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jipt.2010.0004 It could perhaps be useful to do similar work with computational complexity theory.
  - throwaway183839 12y ago
    What is being discussed in those links is commonly called complex systems theory[0] which is a mathematical/scientific/philosophical field concerned with how complexity (in the natural language sense of the world) arises from what appear to be simple natural laws. For example, how chaotic dynamics arise from deterministic systems, how biology arises from chemistry, or how consciousness arises from neural activity. It is connected to chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics and systems theory. It is completely different to computational complexity[1] which is what is being discussed in Aaronson's article. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory
    - zenogais 12y ago
      My mistake, I meant it as a basis for incorporating computational complexity. The original article posted shows how computational complexity is applicable to non-linear systems, which I think are philosophically more interesting. Deleuze's work would provide some good groundwork for seeing how those kinds of ideas can be applied in a philosophical context.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
The difficulty is that if you get too deep into this stuff you stop doing philosophy and start doing something useful. Philosophers have to be very careful these days or they'll get dragged out of the tiny circle of darkness they insist on occupying. There is a place for philosophy, but it shrinks every time a new discovery is made. It hasn't been quite as roughly treated as theology has, but the lag is only about a century. The vast majority of what philosophers once spent their time talking about is now part of some empirically grounded special science, where making stuff up and asserting broad foundational claims without proof or testing is no longer viable. Linguistics, in particular, has carved off large chunks. Physics likewise: no fun speculating on the nature of space and time when we can pin them down pretty precisely. Various combinations of sociology, psychology, economics and political science have heavily encroached on moral philosophy. This is not to say that the world can't always use a few philosophers to poke around in the darkness and perhaps cross the boundaries of other fields to good effect, but the majority of the work that was once their exclusive preserve is now almost always better handled by people with actual, detailed, empirical knowledge of the subject. There is no value in privileging the human scale or human imagination, and fortunately no need to live within the artificial restrictions that philosophers place on themselves, particularly their refusal to do experiments or even make systematic observations to test their ideas, preferring instead to rely on "what just makes sense", because that has always worked so well in the past. Insisting on empirical testing is in no way limiting because ideas that cannot be tested are irrelevant, as they must not have any impact whatsoever on any aspect of existence (if they did, observing and/or manipulating that aspect of existence would allow the ideas related to them to be tested.) Philosophy does teach a certain kind of rigour in thinking, because without either empiricism or mathematical deduction to fall back on philosophers have to be extremely meticulous to avoid falling off the real axis entirely, but that starts to look more like a skill that ought to be taught to everyone rather than the basis for an entire academic discipline.
- yodsanklai 12y ago
  > There is a place for philosophy, but it shrinks every time a new discovery is made. How do you define philosophy? can't we see science as as subset of philosophy?

j2kun 12y ago

How deep do you go? Do you talk about P and NP? Or deeper, like interactive proofs or complexity-based definitions of randomness?

zenogais 12y ago
Philosophy generally has its own language for talking about these kinds of problems, and generally its own starting points. Gilles Deleuze laid a lot of the groundwork for using ideas from chaos theory to work on philosophical problems during his life (starting with some of his work in the 1960-70s). Some links: - http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/PDF/Remarks_on_Complexity_Theory.pdf http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/PDF/Remarks_on_Complexity_The... - http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jipt.2010.0004 http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jipt.2010.0004 It could perhaps be useful to do similar work with computational complexity theory.
- throwaway183839 12y ago
  What is being discussed in those links is commonly called complex systems theory[0] which is a mathematical/scientific/philosophical field concerned with how complexity (in the natural language sense of the world) arises from what appear to be simple natural laws. For example, how chaotic dynamics arise from deterministic systems, how biology arises from chemistry, or how consciousness arises from neural activity. It is connected to chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics and systems theory. It is completely different to computational complexity[1] which is what is being discussed in Aaronson's article. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory
  - zenogais 12y ago
    My mistake, I meant it as a basis for incorporating computational complexity. The original article posted shows how computational complexity is applicable to non-linear systems, which I think are philosophically more interesting. Deleuze's work would provide some good groundwork for seeing how those kinds of ideas can be applied in a philosophical context.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

The difficulty is that if you get too deep into this stuff you stop doing philosophy and start doing something useful. Philosophers have to be very careful these days or they'll get dragged out of the tiny circle of darkness they insist on occupying. There is a place for philosophy, but it shrinks every time a new discovery is made. It hasn't been quite as roughly treated as theology has, but the lag is only about a century. The vast majority of what philosophers once spent their time talking about is now part of some empirically grounded special science, where making stuff up and asserting broad foundational claims without proof or testing is no longer viable. Linguistics, in particular, has carved off large chunks. Physics likewise: no fun speculating on the nature of space and time when we can pin them down pretty precisely. Various combinations of sociology, psychology, economics and political science have heavily encroached on moral philosophy. This is not to say that the world can't always use a few philosophers to poke around in the darkness and perhaps cross the boundaries of other fields to good effect, but the majority of the work that was once their exclusive preserve is now almost always better handled by people with actual, detailed, empirical knowledge of the subject. There is no value in privileging the human scale or human imagination, and fortunately no need to live within the artificial restrictions that philosophers place on themselves, particularly their refusal to do experiments or even make systematic observations to test their ideas, preferring instead to rely on "what just makes sense", because that has always worked so well in the past. Insisting on empirical testing is in no way limiting because ideas that cannot be tested are irrelevant, as they must not have any impact whatsoever on any aspect of existence (if they did, observing and/or manipulating that aspect of existence would allow the ideas related to them to be tested.) Philosophy does teach a certain kind of rigour in thinking, because without either empiricism or mathematical deduction to fall back on philosophers have to be extremely meticulous to avoid falling off the real axis entirely, but that starts to look more like a skill that ought to be taught to everyone rather than the basis for an entire academic discipline.

yodsanklai 12y ago
> There is a place for philosophy, but it shrinks every time a new discovery is made. How do you define philosophy? can't we see science as as subset of philosophy?