Nick writes.. "I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea that not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations. "
A program can guess randomly (or from probability distributions tabulated from past experiences) or simulate some physical process that realizes an observed procedure. Then the argument reduces a question of what constitutes sufficient fidelity of the process. -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 1:06 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks I didn't ask it because I wasn't smart enough to think of it. I guess what I was fishing for is some sort of exploration of the idea that not all procedures for arriving at answers are computations. Not so smart, after all, eh? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 2:47 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks "Ask" could be a higher order function that takes as an argument a "says" function. Provided those are made precise enough to be operational, then you would have a "consult the Oracle" program/algorithm. Details such as "how to acquire the Dad" (and what to do in his absence) would need to be spelled-out. With such a program one might build another program which would be "predict what the Oracle will say given different values". That program would demonstrate insight on the part of the author. I'm not sure what you are driving at here. Why don't you just say? I thought it was probably "computing is not insight" or something like that? -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 12:33 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks Thanks, Glen, I assume that the following is NOT a program in your sense. ;;Compute the sum of 2 and 2;;. Begin Ask Dad, "Dad, what is the sum of 2 and 2? Dad says, "Four" Four End. It is, however, an algorithm, right? Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of glen ep ropella Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2016 11:56 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Understanding you-folks Nick, It's fantastic how you punch right through the rhetoric to the deeper philosophical points. Thanks. It all depends on how you define "compute". I think the best definition offered here (by Lee) is Soare's: "A computation is a process whereby we proceed from initially given objects, called inputs, according to a fixed set of rules, called a program, procedure, or algorithm, through a series of steps and arrive at the end of these steps with a final result, called the output. The algorithm, as a set of rules proceeding from inputs to output, must be precise and definite, with each successive step clearly determined. (Soare, 1996, p. 286; definitional emphases in the original)" The tricky part, in my opinion, is the "definite" requirement. Definiteness seems like a relatively simple concept. But it's not. cf eg: https://aphilosopherstake.com/2016/06/11/is-the-universe-part-of-the-world/ "We often speak as if we can quantify over absolutely everything, or at least absolutely every-actual-thing, but then continue to reason as if all of those (actual) things form a set. In many cases this looks perfectly harmless. If we’re talking about medium-sized dry goods, for example, we can think of our quantifiers as being implicitly restricted to e.g. physical objects (our second-order quantifiers to sets of those, etc). As on even the most liberal views of what counts as a physical object, there aren’t more than continuum-many (the cardinality of the real numbers) of them, we shouldn’t run into an immediate problems." On 07/05/2016 09:43 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Thanks, Frank. > Now all is clear. > > On 07/05/2016 07:31 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: >> You can decide what it means to compute the square root of 2. For example, >> you can program the Turing machine to enter an accept state if it finds a >> number (it can) whose square is within 10^-9 of 2. >> >> On 07/05/2016 06:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Thanks, Eric, >>> >>> Can one “compute” the square root of two? -- glen ep ropella ⊥ 971-280-5699 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
