On May 6, 2007, at 4:08 PM, J. Storrs Hall, PhD. wrote:
On Sunday 06 May 2007 17:59, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
On May 6, 2007, at 2:27 PM, J. Storrs Hall, PhD. wrote:
The only person, for my money, who has really seen through it is
Drew
McDermott, Yale CS prof (former student of Minsky). ...
Eh? Unless McDermott first came up with that idea long before he
wrote that book, it is just a rehash of a relatively old idea. ...
Assuming we're thinking about the same book, Li & Vitanyi was
published in
1993. McDermott came up with his theory/explanation in the 80's and
"published" it on the ARPANET AI list (which is where I first came
across
it).
Ah, okay, that would be a bit before my time. :-) I've been aware of
similar arguments since something like the late-80s, but not from
ARPANET.
Proofs of the necessary theorems have been around since the mid-1960s
and important ever since. I would be surprised if the idea did not
pre-date the 1980s. My point about Li & Vitanyi was more that it is
considered elementary in the scheme of things and has been for a long
time, not that it was original to that book. It surprises me that
people actually in the field still find the consequences of it to be
controversial.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
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