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Donald Knuth On NPR
StratoFlyer writes "This morning, NPR is running an interview with Donald Knuth titled Donald Knuth, Founding Artist of Computer Science. The persistence of this man is extraordinary, if not heroic. RealPlayer and MediaPlayer feeds will be available at 10am EST, according to the NPR.org site." Indeed they are.
Someone who accomplishes something important at great risk to his own life is a hero, not someone who plods along for years at a job no matter how important his contributions.
Knuth came across as charming, and funny, and classically geeky, re-computing the size of a piece of paper necessary for making a five-pointed star with one cut and rattling off the equation behind it, or describing his mental process behind brushing his teeth, but also clearly grounded in continuing scholarly work.
The narrator also mentions he's "abandoned email." Interesting detail, especially as I contemplate the 995 messages in my inbox this morning (80% spam, 19% mailing lists), I am starting to wonder why I don't get around to it myself.
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The original greek word means 'demi-god', and so its use in describing someone who makes an exemplary contribution in a field of endeavour is entirely legitimate. You may wish to use it to only refer to people who have done something risky, but that is not the entire meaning of the word.
I see no evidence that it's doing any such thing. He's a brilliant mathematician and computer scientist, and that's all. The world is full of different people. It's also full of arrogant, scared, jerks who do not like differences.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It may not be the entire meaning of the word, but it is certainly the meaning that has stood the test of time--except perhaps in the current Age of the Wimp where people such as sports stars, movie stars, and rappers are considered heroes.
Real heros are people such as Alan Shepard, Charles Lindbergh, and the men who participated in the Normany landings in 1944. To call people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Shaquille O'Neil "heroes" is an insult to all of the true heroes out there.
Well, let's hope you never apply for a job doing triage at a psychiatric hospital.
There's a world of difference between amusing yourself with puzzles and being obsessive. When you are obsessive, you can't stop yourself from thinking something even when it distresses or harms you.
Being enormously smarter and more creative than the average person is a form of weirdness, but not a form of sickness.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It only becomes an issue if you consider the perfectionism to be a mental illness. Which you do, and I don't. Someone not being the right person for the job is not a mental illness.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
> he came off as having some sever social disorders .... as normalcy is concerned, the guy comes up
>
> lacking
Ah, judicious terms like "disorder" and "normalcy".... Woe to those who don't confirm to the
canonical ways of behaviour. Let's be interchangable with anyone else.
Who cares that there is a direct link between extraordinary talent and "weird" behaviour. Who cares that these strange individuals might actually be, well, actually just *nice* people.
Once in a while, I even pass the Turing-Test
The narrator also mentions he's "abandoned email."
What seems strange to me about this is that getting thousands of letters a year is the same as getting e-mails, just in a different form. I agree that there is an expectation with e-mail that it will get answered quickly, but that is assumption can be changed by anyone who takes time to respond with a thoughtful response.
As to filtering out the useful from the junk, I feel like e-mail tools (web or desktop) are getting better every day (or at least every version) at allowing filtering and spam-blocking. I may have a different take on e-mail when I'm in my mid 60's but I just don't understand the reluctance to use a new technology when it allows the exact same type of communication as the old one, as long as you use it the way you want to.
Finally a good piece of news to share with the other guys that did not get slashdoted. This was definately a good article and a morning edition is always a good show to listen to.
...is an anagram for "Donald Ervin Knuth". So, his parents already knew he would be a great hero and named him accordingly.
Believing in something, without facts to support that belief, does not make it true. I believe I'm the King of San Francisco. Does that make it true?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
A Microsoft product, and a comparable non-Microsoft product are referenced in the article. The non-Microsoft product gets slammed first. I can't think of a better demonstration of the crappy corporate practices of Real.
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On an unrelated note, I love this note on his page about The Art Of Computer Programming:
I don't go to Professor Knuth for medical or particle physics advice, why would I go to him for religious advice?
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
They also mention it in the TFA.
But I hate how you refer to this as 'open source'. Can you change Knuth's books any way you want and redistribute them? Nope. So really, it is nothing like open source or free software, except for inviting collaboration.
And collaboration did exist long before OSS. Academic peer-review has been around for a hundred years. And collaboration has always been popular in the academic world. It was uses within academic collaboration which turned ARPANET into the internet. It was the collaborative ideals of the academic world which inspired RMS to create free software.
So, IMHO, calling this 'open source editing' or talking about 'open source science' is really putting the cart in front of the horse.
(Not that academia hasn't been influenced by OSS/Free software, but since OSS/Free Software also originated there, that's what you call feedback, not a new and direct influence.)
Donald Knuth is actually a Christian and has written a book where he analyses chapter 3 verse 16 of every book in the Protestant Christian bible. Each verse is illuminated with beautiful caligraphy.
He also gave some lectures about religion called Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About.
I was refering to personal letters, with a traditional stamp. However, even my junk mail is a vast improvement over spam. Because it costs money, the ads are at least SOMEWHAT targeted at my interests and demographics. This is the unforunae ide effect of making something free. It quickly becomes devalued as well (and no... those are not necissarily synonymous).
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Agnosticism, on the other hand, is saying "There is no evidence for God, but I choose to neither believe nor disbelieve." How crazy is that?
Not crazy at all, it is the foundation of science and critical thinking.
Do you also choose neither to believe nor disbelieve in invisible pink elephants? There's no evidence for them either, but if someone told you they existed, would you keep an open mind about that?
Yes.
An agnostic, however, sees the lack of evidence and yet continues to hedge his bets. Why?
It is not "hedging your bets." And there is no way of seeing a lack of evidence. That's the point -- get it? A scientific mind can only consider the evidence and form hypotheses, not the lack of evidence.
Here's a thought-experiment for you. It's 1940. The atom is the smallest element known to man. Does this mean there is nothing smaller?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I don't believe in pink fairies on the far side of Mars. Just because the possibility exists, I can't go round all day uumming and ahhing over the existence of such things.
If there's no evidence for something, there's no point saying "I may or may not believe in this", it's better to be skeptical and say "I won't believe it unless there's evidence to back it up". Using Occam's Razor, it's better to believe in the simpler option which is "There's no god", unless there's evidence for it.
Some people may find god a good working hypothesis, but I haven't seen any justification for that, except making themselves feel better.
I'm impressed that Knuth actively contemplates the existence of a god, and that he is willing to acknowledge his belief in public. That does not convince me that Christians (or Bhudists, or Muslims or Shintoists, ...) are smarter than athiests or agnostics.
For me, Knuth's belief in a god does not have the same authority as his ability to prove the efficiency or convergence rate of an algorithm. Mathematics and other branches of science are a rational and testable form of knowledge. Belief in a diety must ultimately come down to a personal choice -- a leap of faith -- beyond the realm of rational.
I have contemplated this leap and find a deeper mystery and deeper satisfaction and deeper challenge in not believing in the existence of god. That does not make me smarter than Knuth. It just means that we have reached different conclusions about a very personal matter.
Maybe he said it first, but the real kicker is that no one has been able to say it better since then.
MSH
People look to actors for political advice.
I think Knuth's shown that he thinks things through. So, I would take his ideas more seriously than an actor.
The sad truth is that people take other's thoughts and ideas as their own without thinking it through themselves.
Random is the New Order.
No, actually, it's not. Having an open mind is one thing, having a mind so open your brain falls out is quite another.
I have heard this quip before, but you are mis-using it when applying it to scientific and critical thinking. The original quote is making reference to people who will BELIEVE anything. Scientists must consider all possibilities until proven wrong.
This means invisible elephants MIGHT exist. However, as there is no proof that they do, and no theory for why they might, a scientist will not ponder the question long.
This also means wormholes might exist, and even though there is no evidence of them, scientists are open to the possibility because they'd fit in with other theories that are out there, and so they do consider these.
If someone told you there were invisible pink elephants in his back yard, you would keep an open mind about that and not think that maybe your buddy had flipped his lid? Even after going out and pointing out to your buddy that these elephants left no tracks, dung, or anything else behind to show their presence, or that you could walk over every inch of his back yard and not run into one, you would still choose not to disbelieve him if he insisted they existed and were there? Seriously? That's not science or critical thinking, that's just being foolish.
Would I disbelieve him? Of course. Would I go further and, without proof, tell him there is no way on Earth? For pink elephants -- probably so. For something much more mysterious, why bother?
I know you keep wanting to bring up these pink elephants, however the reality is that agnostics do not worry themselves over the question of God. There is neither proof or disproof, and so it is an interesting but pointless thought experiment.
For someone to see a lack of evidence and firmly come down against something is just as bad as firmly coming down in favor of it. This is why people often call Atheism a religion.
In addition, I would wager that many people that refer to themselves as atheists actually mean they are agnostic, but are perhaps not familiar with that terminology. Many of my so-called atheist friends would admit they are agnostic if you questioned them about what they really think.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
It amazes me how many of the responses to this post managed to so thoroughly misunderstand it, and how defensive the reactions were.
Some posters responded by saying, essentially, "Just because he's a smart computer scientist doesn't mean I have to believe what he says about religion." This is obviously true, and a very interesting response because no one suggested that you should believe what he says about religion. What the OP was saying, for those who need it to be spelled out, is that people who try to tell others they shouldn't believe in God "because only stupid people believe in God", need to rethink their position. Not that they need to start believing themselves, but that they should admit that belief in God is not evidence of stupidity.
The OP wasn't ridiculing unbelievers, he was ridiculing the intolerance and arrogant condescension of some unbelievers.
The responses I found really funny, though, were the ones who jumped right in and essentially repeated the claim that people who believe in God are stupid, in a knee-jerk reaction triggered by the word "God", apparently completely oblivious to the fact that they had just been lampooned.
The absolute best of the bunch, though, has to be the one who claimed that the fact that Knuth is Christian places his computer science research in question! That has to be the epitome of closed-minded stupidity -- to base a rejection of well-founded research on grounds of a gently-stated opinion on a non-scientific matter... mind-boggling.
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and they would like to have a written transcript of the interview with him.
Yeah, but Armstrong and Aldrin (and Collins) were the guys with their asses on the line during the mission. If anything went wrong, they were the ones who might have paid with their lives.
"For someone to see a lack of evidence and firmly come down against something is just as bad as firmly coming down in favor of it. This is why people often call Atheism a religion."
Hogwash. If someone tells you there are magic elephants in their back yard that can not be detected by any means, you have no evidence that they are right and no evidence that they are wrong. If choose to beleive that there are elephants, or choose to beleive that there are not, well, I say one of these positions is more reasonable.
An agnostic would say, it is impossible to determine for sure whether the undetectable elephants exist. This is true, so perhaps that makes me an agnostic.
An atheist would say, "I do not beleive there are elephants". Thus, I am an atheist. Perhaps Atheists and Agnostics are not entirely disjoint sets.
You seem to think an atheist has to say "There cannot possibly be elephants.", but this is not so. Atheist do not (all) say God is impossible. They say they do not beleive God exists.
I do not beleive God exists. I do not beleive undetectable elephants exist. I do not beleive either of those beleifs can reasonably be called a religion.
I submit that it is you who do not understand the terminology. You are not alone. Many people seem to like to redefine Atheism to mean only super-extra-strong-to-the-point-of-obvious-falacy Atheism. This is dumb, because I know of no one at all who subscribes to that beleif set, and so Atheist becomes a useless term. It seems much more useful to ditinguish between people who do not beleive God exists, people who do, and people who are undecided.
There are times where typing can be heard in the background, plus paper shuffling, and who knows what else. Knuth comes across as a little incoherent. The interviewer sounds like they've been pasted over the top of background noise of Knuth's life, and when he says something we don't know whether it's "inline" with Knuth (i.e. a question for him to answer) or offline commentary.
You missed the point here. Knuth is telling us that he thinks deeply about every aspect of his life, but it is not an obsession - it is amusing for him to think about that. There's no reason for a person to not consider an efficient way of brushing their teeth, and as another poster commented, you're awake when you brush your teeth so you might as well use your brain for something useful while you are doing it.
I suspect many math-related geniuses have some form of high-functioning autism - the "absent minded professor" is more than a cliche. However, Asperger's is only one of many forms of high-functioning autism - well known because it has specific associated behaviors. As the site says: "Sometimes people assume everyone who has autism and is high-functioning has Asperger's syndrome. However, it appears that there are several forms of high-functioning autism, and Asperger's syndrome is one form." I'm sure there are may ways the brain can be differently wired that don't produce social disfunction, and so aren't studied, and many unusual but useful mental abilities that show up as a result.
Adam Smith (the economist) once fell into an open manhole while walking with friends - so lost in thought he failed to avoid an obvious and immediate threat to his safety. Brilliant, but beyond absent minded.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Agnosticism is very similar to atheism with one key difference: agnostics believe that the theory "God exists" is not testable, and is thus disinteresting from the point of view of science.
Some view this as the "easy way out" of the deist question, but it's actually just another way of looking at the question from a scientific perspective. A theory must be testable in order for it to be verified or rejected through experiments. Theories which are not testable are nothing more than nice ideas or speculation from the perspective of science.
Most atheists and agnostics are not openly hostile to organized religion, but some are, and the rest of us get a bad name because of these loud few. Please do not associate atheism or agnosticism with anything more than differing opinions on how the scientific method should be applied to the question of God. Both atheism and agnosticism are closely related and in a different class from all other beliefs regarding God, in that they both reject faith as a way to find truth of God's existence or lack of existence.
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