Comments on: A prophet will arise

By: Jerome

Jerome — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 07:27:00 +0000

Apparently you guys have missed the boat (or was it Noah’s Ark?) Here’s the absolute latest:
Einstein attempted to define God and Evil using Mathematics, but the problem therein is that God is not of Corporeality or Differentiated Relativity, as such may be defined by Mathematics, but is, instead, of Incorporeality and Undifferentiated Relativity, and is therefore Unknown! However, to his credit, Einstein did actually define God, Evil and much more, but unbeknownst to himself at the time of his passing! Years later, Einstein and his basic and joint works with the great Indian theoretical physicist Satyendra Bose, on BEC Condensates of Matter, became the basis for further contribution by other world-renown BEC physicists, and the modern science of QUFD Physics was born, in effect Einstein’s contribution thereto being the Philosophy, if not the Mathematics, of a BEC Condensate of Non-Matter, or Incorporeality! And thusly QUFD Physics does truly define God, Evil and much more, purely scientifically, with no Religion, New Age fantasy, Spiritualism or even Metaphysics to interfere with fact and truth! For more about this, read the RSS blog on your RSS Feed Reader, entitled, “QUFD, God and the Mind!”: http://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/blog/rss.xml

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 07:26:00 +0000

David: I read Infinity and the Mind when I was twelve, and it made a big impression on me. Later I met Rudy when I went to SJSU to give a talk, and he’s since become a friend. He’s a bit crazy, though.

By: Bram

Bram — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:54:00 +0000

If we’re discussing people who might be prophet, I’d like to nominate William Poundstone.

By: David Molnar

David Molnar — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:20:00 +0000

Rudy Rucker wrote an entire popular account of set theory and large cardinals among other things (_Infinity and the Mind_). Before that, he wrote a science fiction novel about trying to solve the Continuum Hypothesis (_White Light_). Both are worth a look.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 05:40:00 +0000

I was at the bookstore earlier and happened to pick up a copy of The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy by Rudy Rucker. Among the promotional quotes on the back cover was this by Stephen Wolfram: “Rudy Rucker is an outstanding prophet of what will probably be the greatest intellectual revolution of our times. …”

So there you have it; you need look no further than the sidebar to this blog. (And although the book may not exactly be theoretical computer science, anything with “gnarly computation” in the title has got to be worthy.)

By: Bram

Bram — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:54:00 +0000

The state of computer security is unfortunately more about pitiful software engineering than cryptography. The philosophers who claim that the church-turing thesis doesn’t apply to human brains are completely missing the boat. That’s one thing which goads me about penrose’s books - it’s completely obvious that he’s uncomfortable with non-computability, so he’s making stuff up to try to claim it doesn’t exist. As incredibly obvious as this is though, all reviewers completely miss out on it, which is a good example of just how removed the material is from a general audience.

The collision between quantum computation and the church-turing thesis, on the other hand, might actually work. But explaining it in a way where it wouldn’t be completely misunderstood by the general public and downright misrepresented by commentators would be a very tall order.

By: Greg Kuperberg

Greg Kuperberg — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 08:12:00 +0000

Of course the media is flooded with discussions of computers and technology in general, but sadly they don’t ever talk about complexity theorists. The reason is very simple: It is impossible to describe, or more importantly to pretend to describe, what a complexity theorist does in two sentences. It is easy to pretend to describe what a physicist does in one or two sentences. The audience that you can expect decreases exponentially with the length of this short introduction.

It isn’t any better for mathematicians than for complexity theorists. Even when it is much easier to actually explain what a given mathematician does than what his counterpart in the physics department does, it is harder to pretend to explain. So the journalists prefer to talk to physicists.

But then, what is it worth to be famous? It is nice to be well-known among people who actually understand you. Fame beyond that is a nuisance, or worse.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 05:57:00 +0000

Miss HT: Thanks! I actually thought of including Huxley (”Darwin’s bulldog”), who was definitely a prophet in my sense. (Darwin himself is a more borderline case — if he was a prophet, it probably wasn’t because of conscious positioning on his part.) But then I decided to focus on 20th-century prophets.

By: Miss HT Psych

Miss HT Psych — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 04:32:00 +0000

You forgot Darwin in your list… although I’m not sure he can be credited with all the work on making his theories popular. Francis Galton went a long way with that… and completely bastardizing them in the process.

By: Cheshire Cat

Cheshire Cat — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:23:00 +0000

Last anonymous, you are quite right, the ones I can think of are either not quite theoretical computer scientists (Ben Green) or not quite colorful enough (Mary Cryan).