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What Computers Really Can't Do
What can't computers do? Why don't we hear more about their limitations, along with the mushroom clouds of hype about their limitless capabilities? By now, the public might well expect computing to restore the environment, cure cancer, prolong life and reason through the world's most complex and intractable problems.
Not so fast.
The good news, writes author David Harel in his new book, "Computers LTD: What They Really Can't Do," from Oxford University Press, is that computers are indeed incredible, capable of amazing feats.
The bad news is that they also face major problems, serious limitations on what they can ever be expected to accomplish, and that few people, even with advance computer science degrees, really grasp that there are fundamental barries no amount of hardware, software, brainpower or money can ever overcome.
Harel explores the boundaries of computable and noncomputable problems, and find's a lot to be pessimistic about. "..our hopes for computer omnipotence are shattered. We now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers, even with unlimited access to resources like time and memory space." In fact, he adds, problems relating to computer programs, particularly running time and memory space -- he calls these difficulties computational complexity -- severely limit just how much computers will ever be able to do.
Harel, who's a mathematics and computer science dean at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, may have written one of the first books in recent memory that focuses on the limits of computers. For a community grown understandably arrogant by years of hubris and hype, this is probably a much needed dose of reality. Why focus on the negative?, the author asks. His answer:
l. To satisfy intellectual curiousity. Computer scientists need to know what can be computed and what can't.
2. To discourage futility. Computer experts who tackle problems that are simply insoluble need to stop wasting their time.
3. To encourage the development of new paradigms. Many of the most exciting areas of computer science research -- including parallelism, randomization and quantum and molecular computing would not be advancing at their current speeds if it weren't for increased understanding about what computers can't accomplish.
4. To make possible the otherwise impossible. (The author saves much of the answer to what might be possible a surprise in the book, so I can't give it away here).
Harel acknowledges that our society could barely function without them. But he warns against the widespread mythology that computers will be able to do almost anything we can think up.
Typically, Harel writes, when people have problems making computers do what they want them to do, their excuses that fall into three categories: more money would buy larger, more sophisticated computers; being younger would permit us to wait longer for time-consuming programs to be terminated; being smarter could lead us to solutions we don't currently seem able to find.
But the truth is that computers are simply not equal to solve many complex problems. Harel raises, then mostly sidesteps, the debate over whether computers can be endowed with human-like intelligence. "In its wake," he writes, "a host of questions arise concerning the limits of computation, such as whether computers can run companies, carry out medical diagnoses, compose music or fall in love."
For non-techs, this book is on a pretty high plane. Even with Harel's impeccable credentials and engaging writing style, plenty of concepts are rough for someone who's not a programmer or computer scientist to grasp, especially when he gets to tiling and algorithms.
But the question is significant. The limitless potential power of computing has all kinds of implications for technology, education, culture and politics. We do need to know more about what's realistic. This splash of cold water is welcome, and more than a little shocking.
Purchase this at ThinkGeek.
Flip open any biology or medical publication and see how many details of biology are still being discovered, thus couldn't be simulated even if you had a computer powerful enough for the job.
Has anyone a little more sophisticated than Katz read this book? Is this just another rehash of decidability and intractability? Or is there something new here?
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
It is for the best, anyway. I don't want to be superceded mentally and made redundant, like the industrial revolution made my muscles redundant. So I am very glad conscious computers are impossible. It would be dangerous for us if they were.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
Why doesn't this review tell us at least one thing that computers can't do. Is this a P-time vs NP-time maths book? Is it a social problems book? What? Just tell us!
Does my bum look big in this?
Where did this idea come from precisely? Maybe i don't read to same books, see the same movies, etc. but I've never seen computer porteyed as all knowing and/or all powerful. From Star Trek to the Matrix, even the most advanced computers seem to need human intervention to function and/or are vulnerable to human sabotage and control. I really don't see where the author, or katz, came up with this idea.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Is it just me, or did he just tell us, "Here's this book ... I won't tell you what's in it, but you can go buy it and find out." Even if you didn't want to ruin the book's 'surprise', you could at least tell us whether it's worth reading. What we ended up getting here was a question suited for 'ask slashdot', along with an attached advertisement.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Apparently it's only shocking to Katz and to other true believers of the one faith of computers©. Anybody involved with computers that has any semblance of sanity realizes that computers are not capable of solving every problem/question humanity has ever formulated. And the chances are that they never will. Even people that are into far-future sci-fi style writing usually keep a realistic stance about such things. Dan Simmons, a great author of many styles, wrote of a future with AI (autonomous intelligences, not artificial) computer units that were so intellectually superior to humans that most humans could not even fathom the depths of their 'minds', yet even these great beings couldn't answer some of the most fundamental of questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Who else is out there? How do we do
The whole premise of pure (and completely unfounded) belief in the abilities of machines is just as laughable as any religiously clung to belief. If you believe without question, then you lose your ability to see reality. If Katz sees this as a splash of cold water, then perhaps he needs to regain some perspective.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that Katz has shifted gears over the past few weeks from the "computer people are the smartest, bestest, wonderfullest, most misunderstood" to "computers suck, and they are damaging our society beyond repair"? I wonder if he just had a major system crash a few weeks ago?
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Well, some would argue that people are also just automata who respond in a predictable manner, if you know everything about their life from conception till the moment of the action in question. The issue is that humans are so complex, and have such a complex web of influences and forces, that the human mind cannot reliably predict what another human may do. In some sense humans, it could be argued, are psuedo-random, we are predictable, just not to any intellect we have yet spwaned or encountered.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
So now this Harel decides that a problem is insoluble? If a team of researchers try to solve a problem, should they stop because Harel says it can't be done? Who does this guy thinks he is, the All-knowing deus? Isn't it so that the effort to solve a problem can yield other results? Isn't that what science is about?
How to make a sig
without having an idea
Lets assume that the current trend of rapid increases in computing power continues a decade or two.
;)
The most interesting problems crunched on today (IMHO) with computers are simulation and complex problem solving. The latter meaning various algorithms for finding optimal solutions to combinatorial problems.
Simulation meaning the ability to predict the behavior of physical structures, chemicals, processes, etc.
Combinatorial optimization solving traveling salesman, design - VLSI, chemical engineering, etc. using algorithms such a simulated annealing, genetic or eveolutionary, nueral networks, etc.
These types of processing will continue to grow in power and flexibility to a point where we can design incredibly complex systems entirely in silico.
Once this is accomplished, the majority of human 'work' will consist of manual labors, or 'creative' tasks. The engineering types of processes, VLSI, CAD/CAM, structure design, will be crunched out by computers at a fraction of the cost, using incredibly powerful eveolutionary processes to find solutions no human could dream of.
This is already happening in quite a few fields of expertise.
Thus, we will be the eternal dreamers, searching for the endless areas of which to apply our computing power, and provide direction for its use. The rest will be done by the black box brutes.
At least, that's my opinion...
Washing the dishes
Taking out the garbage
Cooking
Going to the bathroom
Eating
Breathing
Drinking
Dying
This article really ticks me off!
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Except no one, in this generation at least, is saying anything of the kind. Where as we have Katz and countless other people on slashdot saying that they can, are, or will frequently to varying to degrees. Not everyone on slashdot is either an engineer or a programmer. In fact, I'd wage that the vast majority of frequent readers are between the ages of 16 and 20...those who generally don't have much professional experience.
Sure they can. Go into your preferences menu, and check the box marked "JonKatz". You will never see one of his stories on Slashdot again as long as you're logged in. Stop whining.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Get me a date.
----
Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.
It explains what algorithms are, what complexity and the "big-O" notation are, and has a good discussion of P vs NP, and decidability.
Given this background, I suppose this book also covers the "computers can't do everything" from that angle.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Harel, [...], may have written one of the first books in recent memory that focuses on the limits of computers.
...
Search on Amazon.com (or others) for books on "Complexity Theory" or "Theory of Computation". I get 277 hits.
We now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers,
Now? This has been known for 50 years (The halting problem, etc). The book might be very good, but please don't make it sound like this is news.
-- Slef
I'd probably disagree with most of this book. There's no reason that even a Turing machine couldn't simulate a problem solving device as complex as the human brain, provided you'd figured out all of the physiological properties that contribute to intelligence.
But even before that goal is reached, computers are going to go a very long way in enhancing our own intelligence and problem solving capabilities. Hell they already have.
Another point is that the solution to some of these problems may not take the form this guy expects. We could change the laws of physics by building a virtual reality indistinguishable from reality, putting everyone into it and then changing the rules.
Computers are tools and they will solve whatever problems we tell them to, eventually.
2. To discourage futility. Computer experts who tackle problems that are simply insoluble need to stop wasting their time.
4. To make possible the otherwise impossible.
Computers are unable to interpret English to discover typos in words spelled correctly. Forget the unsolvable problems, I prefer insoluble ones more. They go so much better with tea.
They can't make the author appear smarter either. First I will state computers cannot solve a problem, then I will say I will use computers to solve problems which were once impossible.
Huh. That really flies in the face of what we thought about the power of computers back...when? Circa Fritz Lang's Metropolis?
Perhaps the above should read:
"My hopes for computer omnipotence are shattered. I now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers, now that I've read through decades' worth of essays written by some of the greatest computer scientists ever to live."
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
From what I understand though JK's description, Mr Harel is probably talking about the NP-hard problems, ie problems which take exponential time to solve (exponential being related to their "size", eg solving the travelling salesman problem for N cities takes k*exp(N) steps).
Although those problems are effectively unsolvable through the classical, algorithmic way, quite a lot of them can be solved using the most recent AI techniques - the drawback being that the solution is not 100% guaranteed optimal. Genetic Algorithms [?], for example, are the most powerful optimization tool that ever came out of AI. It can deal with the travalling salesman's problem (see one version here), just as well as other technique such as "Ant colonies"
Furthermore, complexity theory (which deals with "computability") only holds for Turing machines. DNA / quantum computers do not fell in the "NP-cursed" category of computers.
Mr Harel's thoughts, while being perfectly snesible as far as his own field is concerned (Turing-like algorithmics), should not be taken as holy scripture. Digital calculators are only a couple of decades old. It took thousands of years to fully exploit the power of the steam engine. We can try to imagine what "computers" will be like in 30 years from now, but expecting such a forecast to be accurate would be foolish.
Thomas Miconi
Pay attention to the second definition here...
insoluble (n-sly-bl)
adj.
1.Abbr. insol. That cannot be dissolved: insoluble matter.
2.Difficult or impossible to solve or explain; insolvable: insoluble riddles.
Of course you could edit your preferences and rid yourself of katz .. but that has been mentioned already.
Here's a better solution: if you run Unix, edit "/etc/hosts" and add this line:
If you run windows, simply get a large pair of all metal scissors and cut the power cord to your computer. The shock should hopefully kill you, and if not, your computer will be disabled. Thereby protecting you from katz. (unless he shows up at your house.)
(Haven't read it yet, BTW)
People trying to make a point often seem to invent an "prevailing opinion" to argue against. I don't think that many people really think computers are omnipotent. Good idea for a book though.Another good reason for tackling this point is that understanding what computers *aren't* highlights some really odd things about what minds *are*.
Books like this one, "The Emporer's New Mind" and "Godel, Esher, Bach" do do seem to imply some truly wierd things about the capabilities of human brains.
Incidentally, does anyone know of any research into analogue computing approaches to artificial intelligence? It seems fairly clear from the maths that nothing which is limited to carrying out tasks a Turing machine could perform will ever shed that much light on the nature of the mind
Ooh... ooh... I know! They can't solve the halting problem! Do I get participation marks?
-y
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Any operation that CAN be done is called a "computable problem" (great surprise, that one!), and ANY computation device with sufficient time and memory can solve ANY computable problem.
The "classic example" that University text books the world over still use to this day is the infamous "halting problem" as an example. Can you write a program that, given ANY code, determine if it'll ever halt?
The answer is no. You can't. You =can= write programs that'll work for a =range= of programs. (It takes no great feat to write a program that'll check "Hello World".) But a generic program is impossible.
(The proof of that involves feeding the program itself. Since knowing whether it'll ever stop is dependent on knowing whether it'll ever stop, you have an infinite loop. The computer's molecules will decay long before it ever gives an answer.)
One of the great challanges "Hard" AI scientists is this. If the human brain is a computational device, is reverse-engineering conciousness a computable problem? If not, then (by definition) the scientists can't do it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They are equivilent because they can do the same things, but they are not the same. No-one can build a turing machine because it requires an infinite amount of tape.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Warning: Some might consider this flame bait. Caveat Emptor.
Katz is a hack. He doesn't really care to think or challenge anything. All he wants to do is make a name for himself, sell "books", etc. To do that, when you have mediocre skills and limited intelligence, you must find your niche. Katz does this by being the loudest voice in the heard.
When computers are "hot", he'll be their greatest cheerleader. When the internet is hot, he'll be there too. But when the Dot Coms start crashing, and there is a large sentiment that he can cash in on AGAINST it, he'll be there just as quickly. Never mind consistency. Just read his stuff over the past couple of years.
I see Katz as a Clintonesque figure, albeit, without the charisma, intelligence, etc...always holding his finger out to the wind of public opinion or, rather, his niche audience of teenage "geeks".
Computers cant do book reviews.
Jon Katz cant do book reviews.
Jon Katz is a computer.
QED.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm not saying it is or isn't. What I said, or meant to imply, was that no one in this day and age is saying that cars are the cure to all the ills of the world, while many still are hyping computers up to be just that. A lot of this applies to slashdot too.
...that I have an infinite amount of tape right here in my pocket.
Basic Chaos Theory [?].
The very essence of being conscious is an ability to behave in a random fashion, also known as free will
There's no such thing as true randomness on the non-quantic scale. What we call "free will" is the result of a (highly structured) bunch of intercommunicating neurons. While the process of decision (ie will) remains one of the darkest parts of the Neurosciences realm, we already have enough clues to figure out where we should look (can you say "basal ganglia" ?).
Thomas Miconi
Some moderator marked the above as flamebait. That's bollocks. This is a highly valid point and totally on-topic for the subject of "what computers can't do".
"Contentious" does NOT equal flamebait. Stuff like that NEEDS to be discussed. We can't just pretend a subject will go away just because some people feel passionately about it.
SEWilco is quite right. You can't model what you don't know.
In addition, computers require absolute parameters. Not only can you not model what you don't know, but you can't do worthwhile simulations (ie. those used for human life or death decisions) based on educated guesses.
I only have respect for anti-vivesectionists who are vegans- not only in diet, but in clothes, tools, furniture and cosmetics too. Either animals are something we eat, or something we don't. Any half-way stance is hypocrytical.
Since there is absolutely no chance of any nation enforcing veganism on it's population, anti-vivisectionism is ultimately futile.
What I personally feel doesn't come in to it. There is no point arguing for a law if it will never get voted in or be enforced.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Flamebait == does not fit in with the majority opinion. You know, thinks like abolishing slavery, that was flamebait.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Computers are just simple turing machines. This means that everything they do is utterly predictable."
You obviously don't run Windows on your PC.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It took thousands of years to fully exploit the power of the steam engine.
The steam engine is only a few hundred years old, and the development of the first practical steam engine (by James Watt) kicked off the Industrial Revolution. If you date computers to WW-II, the steam engine is only about three times older than computers.
If you date computers to Charles Babbage, which is not entirely unreasonable, then computers and steam engines are nearly the same age!
While it's true that a steam-driven novelty was known in classical times, it was not an engine capable of doing practical work. While a hollow sphere with directed vents will spin when heated by an external flame, it doesn't generate much usable power.
In contrast, a "steam engine" works by filling a sealed chamber with steam, then rapidly cooling it causing the steam to condense and the external air pressure to move a piston. This requires good metallurgy (so the chamber doesn't collapse) and tight manufacturing tolerances (so the piston will slide, but not let air leak around it), and a dozen other things to keep it from seizing up within hours. Calling the classical toy a "steam engine" is comparable to calling your walkman -- no, your cd-player -- a Cray supercomputer because both contain silicon-based circuitry.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You sound like you hold the same viewpoint as Roger Penrose, famed mathematician and author of The Emperor's New Mind (which is probably a lot better than this book). Nonetheless, quantum computing offers an answer to all your criticisms of computers as conscious machines.
Quantum computing introduces true randomness, non-determinacy, and other strange things into computing. It's hard to imagine how it it would not be possible to build a conscious quantum computer (theoretically, that is).
I would bet most of the people who Jon Katz is talking about are rather naive when it comes to anything about computers, not just the limits of their capability.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
What's the difference? I dont see it. I dont think turing saw it either because he used the word "infinite".
How we know is more important than what we know.
He rates the classic VAX 11/780, generally considered to be a 1 MIPS machine, at 6x10^7 bits/second. So supposedly a top of the line desktop today, about 1500 times the power of the old VAX, is comparable to a mouse. A 1000-machine cluster should reach human power.
But we're not even close.
your web site has nothing on it. And a turing machine without an infinite tape cannot run all the programs that a turing machine with an infinite tape can run. So you may say that your computer is equivilent to a turing machine but it is only equivilent to a turing machine with a certain length tape, make the tape any longer and your computer is now not equivilent.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The question to Multivac (and its incarnations throughout Time) was (moreorless) "How to stop the eventual heat death of the Universe."
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Problems unsolvable by computers roughly fall into three categories:
1. Mathematically proven impossible
The Halting Problem and similar. These are inherently impossible to solve exactly or exhaustively. Note that this impossibility applies regardless of whether the entity tackling the problem is carbon-based or silicon-based.
2. Theoretically possible (exact algorithm is known), but time-/space-consuming.
The Traveling Salesman and his friends in NP. The jury is still out on whether their intractability is a human limitation (i.e. we just haven't managed to come up with a working algorithm in P) or whether they're really that hard, but if the latter is true, then again they're hard to solve exactly for anyone, not just computers.
3. Things involving creativity, feelings, "true understanding", etc.
A suprising number of technically knowledgeable people are willing to grant that one without further questioning, and that's understandable. After all, one can't quite imagine what an algorithm for coming up with a new idea or a subroutine for falling in love would look like, and yet humans are able to DO these things, and they're easy.
So why is it hard to teach a machine to do that? Well, look at it from a different angle: how hard is it to teach a human to do that? Have you ever tried to explain what exactly "being in love" is? The best we've come up with so far in that area is art, music, poetry, which seems to evoke similar feelings in different people, but that's by no means fail-safe. So, from a not too unlikely point of view, humans can't do these things either - we don't know how to do them. They do us instead. Machines might suffer from the same shortcoming, but given the state of our knowledge about this area of human behaviour, we're not even in a position to find out yet.
But then again, maybe the author of the book reviewed here has found a way...
While you are right that Heron's steam Aeolipile would not have been capable of much power, what IS amazing is the fact that the ancient Greeks had all the essentials for a true steam engine, but didn't take the route of combining the elements to create such a machine.
The knew of valves and pistons - Heron even had an automatic temple door system that relied on air pressure drawing up water to activate the doors to open when a fire was burned on an alter nearby. Other uses were various automata for stage plays and productions, and for various waterworks (fountains and such).
The truth of the matter probably revolves around the fact that they didn't need such machines - there isn't much practical benefit of a machine that only somewhat works, when slaves are much, much cheaper (and in plentiful supply)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'm not 100% against animal testing, and I'd rather things were tested on some rabbit before it gets to human testing, but, at the same time, most of the animal testing industry needs several hob-nailed boots to the head to correct it.
Yeah. PETA goes a little too far; animal testing is a necessary evil. And I think most rational people see it as that.
Though, perhaps if the PETA people would like to volunteer to spare a few guinea pigs...?
Nope, didn't see any mad rush to the research labs for *that* one.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
There are two famous books by the phenomenologist philosopher Hubert Dreyfus on the folly of Artificial Intelligence.
"What Computers Can't Do: A Critiqe of Artificial Reason"
"What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critiqe of Artificial Reason"
AI folks hate these books for many reasons, but especially because Dreyfus is a technical doofus. He consistently misunderstands what computation is, how computers are programmed, etc. (Sometimes with comical results -- there's a great story in Levy's "Hackers" about Dreyfus claiming (in the 1960s) that no computer would ever play decent chess and then being soundly defeated by a primitive chess-playing program shortly thereafter.)
It's pretty clear that the title of Harel's book ("What Computers Really Can't Do") plays on the titles of Dreyfus's books, reasoning soundly about the formal limits of computation rather than insinuating rhetorically about what computation cannot be based on a particular philosophical (phenomenological) critique.
Turing machines can be built, and can be functional and even useful.
"Can be built", I'll buy. "Functional" I will also acknowledge. But "useful"?
Other than as an educational toy, what use is a physical Turing machine (that can't be done cheaper and better by a PIC chip or something)?
--
I read only a small fraction of Pennrose before deciding that he was a bigot. There is no intellectually honest reason to invoke wierd physics to explain the operations of the human brain.
The best book on this subject IMO is The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. It came out a few years ago. It is basically a critique of AI, but to get there he discusses the theory of computing, Godels Incompleteness theorem, Quantum Mechanics and much much more. The aim of the book is to argue that there are certain things a human mind can do that a computer can never do. Roger Penrose is himself a top mathematician and although the book is aimed at the general public it's not for the faint hearted. Having said that though it is simply stunning, it is a tour of all the major scientific ideas of the last century, and is incredibly stimulating. If you want to read a book on the subject, read this one.
The set of languages that can be accepted by a FSM is the set of "regular languages." The set of languages that can be accepted by a TM is the set of "recursively enumerable" languages. The second is a strict superset of the first.
Theoretically, you can solve more problems with unbounded storage than without. Of course, practically, for a given problem, if the finite storage is big enough...
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Here's one thing computers *can't* do:
Shorten the work week.
Technology was initially embraced because, allegedly, it would give us more leisure time. Popular Mechanics magazine has made some of the funniest wrong predictions over the years. One of my favorites was that in 1950, they said that by the year 2000, we'd all be working only 2 days a week, and machines would take the drudgery out of menial tasks by simply eliminating our need to do them.
Of course, that hasn't happened: if anything, the reverse is true.
An ex-neighbor of mine has an interesting collection: he collects lawn mowers. So, he's got a gadget called "The Lawn Ranger". It's a late-1980s computer controlled lawnmower that uses optical sensors to figure out where it has and hasn't already cut. You put it in the middle of your lawn, press the start button, and it goes merrily along, destroying your garden hose, the toys that the kids left in the lawn, and generally wreaking havoc. It's cool, and the task of mowing the lawn is pretty braindead, but it's hard for the computer to grasp it.
He's also got a far more practical device called a Hovermower. It has no wheels, and uses a fan built onto the blades to hover above the lawn like a hovercraft. It, too, is great: sweep it around corners. But, like the Lawn Ranger, it's not a very good idea: when it runs out of gas, as the motor slows down, it ceases to produce enough lift, and the blades end up tearing up a big chunk of sodding. And you don't want to ever leave the thing idling unattended, as it has a tendency to slide around like a puck on a crooked air hockey table.
Technology, and all associated good ideas, have their limits.
Sure, we're more productive during our working ours because of technology. And it's given society a whole lot *more* career choices than before, when you could basically either be a farmer or a burden to your family.
Computers are merely an incremental step along the path away from a one-lifestyle existance, whereever that path may lead. They simply join the ranks of everything starting from the steam engine and Jaquard's Loom all the way to the modern transportation infrastructure and the fax machine.
Cars can't do everything.Nope. But they've freed us from the shackles of public transportation, allowed us to independently venture further than the first town down the road, and given us the ability to be more productive in the workplace. And, in doing so, they entertain us and diversify the working world.
This is prolly a good book and all but get real people, computers are just tools and the audience this book was intended for knows this.Agreed. But I'd wager there are some reading this discussion right now to whom computers are *everything*; while that's not necessarily wrong if your work and hobbies involve nothing else, but it's a very narrow (ie. wrong) view of the big picture.
Computers are cool toys. And then when you've got valuable information spinning around at 7,200 RPM on your hard disks, then they're very important tools.
A slot screwdriver can be used for turning screws. Or, it can be used as a pry-bar (I have a big one that my buddies and I call "The Persuader"). Or a chisel. Or as a weapon. Even as a fireplace poker. They're a very versatile tool.
A computer is simply a very versatile tool: They're the 21st century screwdriver.
And that is a rational perspective.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Jon Katz is an idiot
One other thing is that most animal testing is not beneficial - more cosmetics and such than anything else.
I agree. Is it really necessary to test eyeliner on rabbits?
However, animal testing of potentially life-saving drugs, techniques and procedures, I'm all for. As long as, again, it's well planned, and viewed in the light of the necessary evil that it is.
We have a large criminal population who will never do any good for society. This would be an excellent pay back.Yeah, even Hitler had a good idea from time to time. Though, I suspect, that the thought of being a guinea pig and potentially used in really nasty experiments would be a very strong deterrent to the criminal population. However, it goes completely against the existing standards regarding cruel and unusual punishment. That's a slippery slope to start going down.
Perhaps an agreement to be used in testing for a reduced sentence?
One might argue that giving a convicted bank robber 10 years off his prison term when he gets the placebo is unfair; I'd argue that the coin could have landed either way and he could just as easily have been the guy getting ten years off his sentence for some really nasty experimentally-induced neurological disorder.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
... is whether we can determine whether John Katz brain will ever stop churing out these worthless articles.
Computability was discussed to death years ago in Roger Penrose's "The Emporer's new mind".
IMO until we know in far greater detail how the brain works, then claims as to whether the brain achieves non-computable things are useless. Penrose's whole argument was based on quantum level computations taking place in the nanotubes of the glia, rather than at a neural net or higher level. Hardly a mainstream view.
I apologize. I misinterpreted your comment. I think that Katz's opinion on the book may be, in one regard, more useful than an opinion from a reader who is versed in computing theory. That is, this book doesn't seem targeted as a textbook, so its market is for enthusiasts as much as professors and researchers, who may have a level of understanding closer to Katz's.
Regardless, I apologize for being rude.
Of course this leaves the question: how did the frickin' logic get there?
It was a human-made invention of Aristotle. There's plenty of logic defying randomness in nuclear decay, the Uncertainty principle, and heck, one fellow used the Gödel theorm to show that there's randomness in arithmetic!! The atomic API is still not completely defined.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Please read The Human Use of Human Beings. I'm pretty sure this is all covered there if you read closely.
There are mechanical problems that are hard to do. They're called "Hard Problems" - one way or nearly one way algorithms that plausibly could be solved given enough time.
There are math problems that don't lend themselves to discrete mathematics. I'm not sure a computer would have help Georg Cantor develop set theory. Also there are certain problems that lend themselves well to approximation but not an exact solution. If I dust off my solid analytic geometry books I'm sure I can find a few. That or real time celestial navigation problems using polar calculus.
Then there are all of those problems that don't lend themselves to computation at all. Knowledge and insight come from the synthesis of new ideas out of different, multiple sources. So for example the sharpest mining bit in the universe doesn't by itself help you to understand the chemistry of the Earth's crust.
A) You as an information bearing automaton have a finite (or fixed infinite) amount of storage and processing power. Most of this is being used to run yourself. Thus you physically cannot have enough resources left over to wholly concieve of another of your class.
Um, so what?
Not only does this contribute nothing to the debate, but it's also true for any other object or system (deterministic or not).
B) Indistinguishability != the same.
Then how do you prove that your model of the human mind (a "conscious", nondeterministic system) is better than mine? For either of us, we can only compare the predictions of our models to actual observations. If our predicted behaviour is indistinguishable from actual behavior, we assume that our model is a working one (note that many different models may work).
Apparently nondeterministic actions are adequately explained by strong sensitivity to input and the chaotic, effectively unpredictable nature of this input.
C) Unsubstatiniated "Apparently" : please list source for this external verification.
You seem to be confused by my perhaps-unclear statement above. A clearer version is: "Actions that appear to be nondeterministic are adequately explained as being the results of a deterministic system interacting with input that is chaotic and thus effectively unpredictable."
This is self-evident. If you feed something random into a deterministic system, of course you'll get random-looking data out. This is my point; nondeterministic actions do not require a nondeterministic mind.
D) As for "a very large deterministic system in a chaotic environment" It falls when you point out two things. The deterministic system must itself be a "chaotic environment" as the individual is always a piece of its environment.
The system itself doesn't need to be chaotic to give chaotic output when given chaotic input. It may very well be chaotic; this is a very different thing from being nondeterministic. Either way, my point holds, so I don't really see what you're getting at here.
"To obsever is to influence, and to be influenced" Professor Klemke.
Again, so what?
E) A far better model of "consciousness" is the imaginary numbers models.
[...]
This example is vague enough that it is difficult to tell what, if anything, it contributes to the argument. However, I'll take a shot at the two points I did manage to find in it:
Short answer: No. You've just defined extra symbols for your own mathematical system. There are actually an inifinite or near-infinite number of possible mathematical systems. Talking about whether a given symbol in the system, like "sqrt(-1)" or "sqrt(JonKatx)", exists in the "real world" is not meaningful. The number "5" doesn't exist in the real world - it's just an idea that we choose to associate with certain structuring in the world about us. The manipulation of such symbolic "ideas", under *any* mathematical system, can be performed deterministically. Thus, this example doesn't seem to affect my argument much.
Firstly, this entire example seems to stem from some questionable hand-waving, as mentioned above. Secondly, you've already *claimed* to prove that the human mind is non-deterministic. I'm challenging you to provide support for this proof.
The only device created thus far to emulate a human mind is the universe, and as you've already said that's a chaotic environment.
This scores a big "so what?" on two counts.
Firstly, chaos can easily occur in *deterministic* systems. Look up "chaos".
Secondly, the only device created thus far that emulates the human mind is the human brain - much smaller than the universe. This also does not constitute a proof by any stretch; you have to prove that emulation by any other method is *not* possible (i.e. disprove the existance of anything other than the human brain which can host something indistinguishable from a human mind).
It can be shown that as the limit of the accuracy of the emulation approaches == the mind it is emulating, the complexity of the system == universe.
Um, no.
The mind has finite complexity, as all of its state information is contained within the human brain. The uncertainty principle and a few other laws place constraints on the amount of information that can be contained in that volume at its measured temperature.
The proof that you are quoting is flawed hand-waving (one of my complaints about The Emperor's New Mind, among other things).
No, I would disagree with that. It might be possible to approximate a brain with a turing machine, but that might not be good enough.
I'm not saying we will never have AI, or anything like that - I just don't believe it will be on a digital computer. I'd suspect that the hardware for developing an artificial intelligence will end up having many of the same features as a biological brain.
--
Clear, Dark Skies
Yeah, but by the time it solved the problem, it was too late.
Of course, the solution solved that problem too...
--
Clear, Dark Skies
but after the thing dow chemical (or was it some paint company?) did with genetic algorithms, i'm not so sure.
early nineties: it was getting more and more difficult to make paint. volatility and lead laws, customer demand for particular qualities (glossy, long lived) etc. were driving chemists nuts. drop volitility, get short lived/fugly paint. they were having some luck, but not much.
the scientists brought in a consulting company to see what could be done with genetic algorithms. after some months of design and encoding of the basic chemical makeup and physical properties of paint, they were stunned that, after a few days processing, the algorithms cranked out several formulas that far exceeded all legal and usability requirements.
it was estimated that the labs, using traditional processes, would have taken 100+ years to develop these formulas.
i'm not so sure that you could not take some non-deterministic physical process and use it to drive genetic or neurofuzzy algorithms and blow all the NP stuff out of the water at some point.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
You've sidestepped an important point in the question of hypocrisy: eating meat is, in essence, killing an animal purely for the pleasure of the taste of animal flesh. Never mind the environmental consequences of beef cattle (both inherent to raising the number we do, and flaws in the system that are not inherent but motivated by profit concerns.)
OTOH, using animals for medical testing often answers questions that simply cannot be answered without involving some animal (though one could experiment directly on homo sapiens, but current ethics seems to find that a lab rat's life is of less value than a human life, but let's not sidestep into that gray area).
So, in essence, to be non-vegetarian and to oppose medical testing with animals is to say that the death of animals for pleasure is okay, but the possible death and/or suffering of animals for the advancement of medical knowledge (which will benefit both veterinary science as well as human medical science) is not okay.
Something to think about, anyway.
(As it happens, I am a vegetarian who doesn't purchase leather or other animal-death products, except for cat food because cats do -not-, biologically, have the option of being vegetarian even if their owner is, and yet I support animal use in medical testing, not without some ambivalence, but it is, at present, the best option; in the future, other options may arise, ie, using cloning technology to develop individual organs to experiment on without needing a living animal, or even computer simulations once we know enough to simulate usefully, though I doubt such technologies will ever completely replace live testing, they may well result in far fewer deaths and less suffering by filtering out less promising technologies early...
I also somewhat agree with the claim that being against medical testing without being an ethical vegetarian is hypocritical, though I can see the potential for non-hypocritical philosophies that resolve the contradictions, even if I wouldn't, personally, agree with them; I think, though, that many people simply don't ask the questions and formulate their personal opinions on vague feelings and the effectiveness of propaganda directed at them... but then, that's true on every issue.)
Parity Even
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
And we all get the privilege of witnessing Katz's excruciatingly slow education. Someone should pay for him to go do CS at MIT or something. The way he's going, he should discover LISP by 2021.
... who wants to talk to you about vacuum cleaners.
(Word to the humor-impaired: the Traveling Salesman problem has been proven NP-complete, which means it can only be solved by a deterministic Turing machine if P=NP. Nobody's proven any relation yet between P and NP, but it's widely believed P!=NP, which means no deterministic Turing machine will ever be able to solve the Traveling Salesman problem.
In other words, my comment of "there's a Traveling Salesman who wants to talk to you about vacuum cleaners" is a carefully-worded flame. Translated, "it's good that you got out of computer science, because, buddy, you suck if you don't know the intractability of NP problems.)
Can you tell me what polymorphic lambda-calculus is, and where I might find an good introduction to it? It sounds interesting, and I was not aware that there is another calculus besides the one you learn in math class.
Thanks!
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
The subject says it all. Pennrose misquotes and misunderstands Godel's Theorem in the first few chapters, and makes it the basis for all of the retarded bunk quantum-mechanics ramblings that appear later in the book. Read it if you want, but don't be suckered into thinking anyone takes his argument seriously.
Huh? Sure neural nets can have loops, and that is precisely where they do gain state.
Minksy may have been an AI pioneer, but what has he done lately other than ride his own tattered coat-tails? I don't know where I'd even begin to critisize "The Society of Mind" - it doesn't even begin to address the hard problems of AI, and competely ignores the absolutely fundamental problems of perception and representation.
Minsky may pay lip service to connectionism and synthetic approaches, but he comes across to me as a died-in-the-wool symbolic AI adherent, who's work in that field has simply been eclipsed by others usch as Allen Newell and Doug Lenat.
Minsky wants to come across as the "wise old man" of AI, but his essays are no more than tired and masturbatorily self-indulgent fluff pieces.
Not everybody is able to do IT work. In my company, we hire some mentaly deficient people who are great at recycling cardboard but could never use a computer if their life depended on it. You have to understand that the old adage "every one is born equal" is a myth. In the same respect,not everyone has the urge to go forward like you do.
So, we'll bring everyone down to the level of those who have no motivation, no intelligence. Goody. I can't wait. When are where can I report for my lobotomy?
(I'm sure my life will be a lot less stressful.)
Not everyone has the competitive edge.And that's my fault how?
Some people actualy like manual work, getting their hands dirty.I like manual work. A lot of my job involves manual work. Even been in the crankcase of an engine that is 4 stories tall? Ever had to climb to the top of the mast on a Great Lakes bulker to change an EPROM in a radar transceiver?
you might say that these people are weak and that they should be eliminated by natural selection.I might. In fact, I do. It's ironic how those who espouse the most socialist views (countering Darwin) are also those who most fanatically defend Mother Nature, who is about nothing but the survival of the fittest.
Why can't socialists reconcile their beliefs? It undermines your credibility as a group.
(And don't tell me about socialism, trust me: I *live* in a socialist country. And don't tell me you're not a socialist, either - you and Stalin would have been buddies.)
I say they bring us back to earth. they ground us into reality.Well, they ground us, anyway.
IANAAC: I Am Not A Anonymous Coward (i am just too lazy to register)Hmmm... You're not helping your point all that much. Are you also too lazy to show up at work on time?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Human minds are just simple turing machines. This means that everything they do is utterly predictable. The very essence of being conscious is an ability to behave in a random fashion, also known as free will. Human minds will never have free will and will never be conscious, not in their present Turing Machine form, anyway. It is for the best, anyway. I don't want to be superceded mentally and made redundant, like the industrial revolution made my muscles redundant. So I am very glad conscious minds are impossible. It would be dangerous for us if they were.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Twenty years later (in 1993) Dreyfus wrote the sequel What Computers Still Can't Do - it's still in print.
Another good book for the philosophical approach to AI is a 1985 collection of essays called The Mind's Eye, edited by Douglass Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. This one includes John Searle's Chinese Room experiment and various other gedankenexperiments intended to explore how we think about how we think.
Also, those interested should look up "complexity theory" to see what mathematicians and computer scientists have to say about the nature of intractable problems.
I play Nerd-Folk!
...in polynomial time, you mean, right?
:)
I don't know; I've never seen "polynomial time" or "exponential time", only the time on my wristwatch.
Polynomial time = exponential time = real time. The only difference between polynomial time and nonpolynomial time is how much time is required, nothing else.
When I say that no deterministic Turing machine will ever be able to solve the Traveling Salesman problem for a reasonably large set of cities, I meant it. Do the power analysis--just flipping enough bits to do the processing would require orders of magnitude more energy than could be liberated from making an entire galaxy go supernova. Do the time analysis--even assuming an ungodly fast machine, the computation couldn't be finished before the computer itself evaporated away due to proton decay.
The only way you can posit that NP problems are solvable is either (a) prove that P=NP, or (b) come up with computers which are made of something other than normal matter, or which run in something other than normal space, or which run on something other than normal energy, or which run in something other than normal time.
In other words, to solve an NP problem requires either (a) a Godlike feat of mathematics, or (b) a Godlike feat of engineering.
If you grant either (a) or (b), then yes, NP problems become solvable. But my counter to that is that once you assume that you're God, everything becomes possible, so the entire godhood argument tends to solve nothing.
It's actually kind of nice that he picked chess. If he had have picked poker, he'd still be gloating. Anyway, he annoys me because he came to what have turned out to be irrefutable (at the moment) conclusions (ie that conventional computers can't give you general "intelligence") through erroneous premises and logic.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
At this point you've crossed the line into blithering idiocy. Saying "I'm not quite as confident in the fundamental limits of computational power as defined by heat death" is all fine and well, provided you can show reason to believe thermodynamics is not an ultimate limitation.
If I say "I'm not quite confident that reality exists", I can give all sorts of philosophy to back it up. But guess what? Until I present evidence which suggests something that radical, I'm just philosophizing.
If I say "I'm not quite confident that time really exists", ditto. But if I'm Julian Barbour and I can present evidence to back up my beliefs, then people take me seriously.
Now you're saying "I don't think thermodynamics are the ultimate limitation in computation that people make them out to be." That's great. Tell you what; as soon as you can present me with evidence that suggests thermodynamics, particularly the First and Second Laws, are invalid in the context of computation, then I'll take you seriously.
Until then, you're a blithering idiot.
Please provide one example of a person solving a problem (whether that be sailing around the world, space travel, whatever) that was mathematically proven to be unsolvable.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.