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BITWASTES_THE_REAL_VS_THE_UNIDEAL
October 30, 2021
November 18, 2021
BITWASTES
About "Bitwise: A Life in Code" (2018) by David Auerbach
Page 75 of this book strikes me as a perfectly crazy piece
of exposition, it leaves my head spinning (not that that's
an unusual condition):
"Yet whatever truth may be we can safely conclude
that in order to interact well with the world,
computers must be able to distinguish between
true and false in the same way as humans do."
You mean, not at all?
Anyway, why on earth would you expect a computer
to be able to grasp truth in the same way a human
would? And are you sure you *want* that?
"The inadequacies of logicians' attempts to
collapse the difference between a logical truth
and a worldly truth have been made all too clear
by the computing age."
Okay, so the point is that strictly speaking logical
conclusions can be expected only to be consistent with
the given assumptions, the truth of the conclusions
rest on the truth of the assumptions. Is that all?
This is looking like a dressed-up version of
"its hard to know what's true".
"Mathematician and phenomenologist
Gian-Carlo Rota put this bluntly:
'Mathematicians are therefore mystified
by the spectacle of philosophers
pretending to re-inject philosophical
sense into the language of mathematical
logic... The fake philosophical
terminology of mathematical logic has
misled philosophers into believing that
matehmatical logic deals with the truth
in the philosophical sense. But this is
a mistake. Mathematical logic deals not
with the truth but only with the game of Maybe I'm not up on the
truth. The snobbish symbol-dropping latest philosophical
found nowadays in philosophical papers journals... I'd like to
raises eyebrows among mathematicians, see some names named.
like someone paying his grocery bill
with Monopoly money.' It's a problem with
academic literature in
"Rota here echoes Plato, who was one of the general, I would say, using
first to find that truth is a *practical* an injection of mathematics
matter, a matter of action rather than of to impress without
pure theoretical abstraction." necessarily increasing our
understanding of anything.
And I'm not the greatest expert on Plato,
either, but I find these remarks very
puzzling.
Did the Sophists not have a "practical"
understanding of truth? You could argue
they were the original pragmatists.
Plato is famous for a kind of
idealism, he speculated about an The practical
unknowable True Reality of which we applications of
only can perceive the barest hints. Plato seem a bit
illusive to me.
Plato is, however, a
good source to learn
how hard it is to nail
down a fundamental
understanding of anything.
Bertrand Russell saw Plato as tremendously
influenced by Pythagoras-- and Russell
describes his own intellectual progress as a
movement away this groping toward a simple,
perfect understanding of everything.
PYTHAGOREAN_RETREAT
"In Paul Friedlander's summary, 'Truth, in Plato's
system, is always both: reality of being and
correctness of apprehension and assertion.'"
I'm tempted to chide Auerbach for relying
on someone's interpretation of Plato here... Still: isn't there a
But arguably that would be a cheapshot of quotable quote from Plato
an unusual degree of hypocrisy from someone establishing his notion of
like me, who often works with bits and truth? But then, Plato's
pieces, quick skimming and indirect sources. writings can be rather
slippery, it's not so easy
to pick out definite
But okay, so truth is an understanding pronouncements about
of what exists, a correspondence between anything from Plato.
idea and object. That's a common enough
approach, and certainly a respectable Friedlander's take may just
place to begin: it has the virtue of be yet another opinionated
intuitive appeal. interpretation of Plato.
But what does that have to do with
that babble about the computer age,
and computers needing the ability to Okay:
grasp this kind of truth?
The robot cars may hit
bicycles because of
quirks of the settings
of the huge number of
adjustable weightings
in those "neural nets".
I suppose fixing the behavior of
the cars could be called
"improving their understanding",
making them perceive the world
more like human beings do.
Here Auerbach has a footnote:
"Or in William James words, 'Truth *happens*
to an idea. It *becomes* true, is *made* true
by events.'"
That's got a nice ring to it, but once
again, *what is Auerbach really getting at*?
Is it critically important to distinguish
between a notion being true because it
corresponds to reality, or *becoming* true
when it's shown to correspond to reality?
"The troublesome gap is not between logic and
language, but between logic and reality. Symbols
and proofs cannot close that gap on their own."
Well yeah. And the weatherunderground just
repackages what the national weather service
is saying, because weatherunderground doesn't
actually have any sensing devices of it's own.
Is purpleair the breakthrough that Auerbach
was waiting for? A site that reports Truth
because they have gadgets sending them information?
Maybe Auerbach would like to see an AI
that evaluates information based on the That sounds like a
respectability of it's sources-- the difficult trick,
way we wish human beings would, though but perhaps not a
they rarely do-- so that when it gives complete
you some news you also get a sense of impossibility.
how trustworthy the information is?
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