On The Beginning of Infinity

Here's my review of "The Beginning of Infinity," a book that touches on many of my interests. Its author advocates a philosophy that's much closer than that espoused by the author of the previous book I blogged about.

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The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Beginning of Infinity presents a strong thesis about the importance of explanatory knowledge and its relationship to limitless progress. I’d heard Deutsch talk about this topic before, and I had assumed this would be yet another typical nonfiction book belaboring the same points. A friend whose tastes I respect recommended I read it anyway, so I gave it a try. I’m very glad I did!

The books thesis in clearly laid out, and the arguments for it are very persuasive. Deutsch confronts many possible philosophical objection, and attempts to obliterate each one by using very general arguments. He convincingly takes on inductivism, empiricism, justificationism, relativism, instrumentalism, and of course post-modernism, among many other philosophies. In fact, his arguments against other philosophies are probably stronger than his argument for his own thesis, but I think that still fits with the main worldview of the book: that progress requires replacing mistaken ideas.

Deutsch reinforced many of my views on some topics (eg the existence of objective values) and convinced me of some others (on why political compromise is bad). Even in parts of the book where I found him less convincing (eg in his defense of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or his views on AI), I feel I still learned something and have more to ponder.

I also appreciated Deutsch’s fearlessness. For example, he doesn’t buy into environmental sustainability and is willing to buck most academics on sacrosanct topics. You know where Deutsch stands and why. Go read this book if you have any interest in the philosophy of science and of human progress.

View all my reviews

Computing Conceptions

From Georgia Tech, many of us have been closely and concernedly watching our southern neighbors at the University of Florida, where budget cuts and a seemingly hostile dean conspired in an attempt to decimate their well-respected computer science department.  Dismantling the department, at a time when computer science research is so critical, would be a laughably bad decision on the part of the university.

I don't claim to fully understand the rationale behind this plan.  However, I have a feeling that part of the reason such an idea was even being seriously considered has to do with a couple misconceptions of what computer science research is, and I fear that such misconceptions extend beyond the state of Florida.  And I don't just mean that the average person doesn't understand computer science; that's to be expected. I mean that many academics, even scientists, don't understand the basics of what computer science is about and therefore tend to devalue it, especially as an academic discipline.

First, many people seem to assume that computer science is just programming or fixing computers.  As a graduate student at Yale, where computer science is a small department, I was often asked by other Ph.D. students why computer science even has a Ph.D. program.  They didn't view it as an academic pursuit, but more as a trade skill.  I fear that many scientists view computer science as limited to programming or getting computers to work, probably because that's the way most, say, physicists use computers.  They have little understanding of the beautiful, deep results and insights that computer science has brought the world.  Viewing it as an instrumental non-academic field, people think it would be okay to kill-off computer science research and leave the professors to teach programming (which, admittedly, is an important part of a computer science department's job).

(clip art from here)

something computer scientists do not normally do

The other, very related, misconception, one that was clearly in play at the University of Florida, is that the computer science department was somewhat redundant because the electrical and computer engineering department already has the word "computer" in it.  Their reasoning sounded more sophisticated than that, but only superficially.  But computer science and electrical engineering are very far in their central concerns.  Computer science, for the most part, is divorced from concerns about electricity, physical media, or anything of that sort.  Whether you work on operating systems, machine learning, or the theory of computation, you mostly don't really care about the underlying hardware, whereas electrical engineers do.  Greg Kuperberg, writing on Scott Aaronson's great blog post on this issue, puts it better than I could:

"Apparently from (Florida engineering dean) Abernathy’s Stanford interview, and from her actions, she simply takes computer science to be a special case of electrical engineering. Ultimately, it’s a rejection of the fundamental concept of Turing universality. In this world view, there is no such thing as an abstract computer, or at best who really cares if there is one; all that really exists is electronic devices.

[...] Yes, in practice modern computers are electronic. However, if someone does research in compilers, much less CS theory, then really nothing at all is said about electricity. To most people in computer science, it’s completely peripheral that computers are electronic. Nor is this just a matter of theoretical vs applied computer science. CS theory may be theoretical, but compiler research isn’t, much less other topics such as user interfaces or digital libraries. Abernathy herself works in materials engineering and has a PhD from Stanford. I’m left wondering at what point she failed to understand, or began to misunderstand or dismiss, the abstract concept of a computer."

(image from here)

something usually not of research interest to computer scientists 

It looks like a disaster in Florida has so far been avoided. And with each passing year, more scientists will have, at the very least, taken some basic computer science in college -- it is part of our job to teach the important concepts in our introductory courses.  I'm hoping this will improve the perceptions of our field.  But in the meanwhile, it has become apparent that we have much more PR to do to.

(image from here)

now we're talking!

Three Tweets

It is well-known that it's not always easy to explain scientific ideas to the public.  Scientists are often blamed for being bad communicators, but I don't think that's fair.  Most people simply aren't interested enough to read detailed explanations of science (or of anything for that matter).  And scientists are hesitant to give oversimplified explanations because, among other reasons, oversimplified explanations are by definition not correct.  The problem surely exists in all sorts of disciplines, but is probably exacerbated in the sciences/math, where one often needs years of postgraduate study to truly grasp what's going on.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't hurt to give simplified explanations of complicated phenomena.  Our universe is a cool and interesting place, and making some of what we've learned accessible to more people isn't a bad idea.  Maybe it will make more people excited about science and help with funding in the long run.  It's also fun to try to explain what you're doing to others, even if it's on a high level.

Unfortunately, there's still temptation for scientists to go into too much detail.  We can't help ourselves but to bore everyone around us.  This is where twitter comes to the rescue.  Its 140 character limit forces us to be concise, so if we're going to talk about science at all, we have to choose our words carefully.  So, when Sean Carroll, a physicist at CalTech, entertained a request to explain M-theory on twitter, and attempted to do it using only 3 tweets, he opened a floodgate of other scientists trying to explain the major ideas in their fields in just 3 tweets.  Check out the #3tweets hashtag, and you'll see all sorts of interesting things posted.

Sticking to three tweets strikes a balance between a blog post (which won't get a large readership) and just 1 tweet (in which one cannot explain anything).  And if you have followers who are reading your twitter stream, they won't be able to avoid reading some science.

I, too, got tempted and did my own three tweets on the Church-Turing thesis (to be read bottom-up):

If you have a twitter account (and if you don't, get one), try explaining something about what you do, whether it's science or not, in just three tweets (and don't forget to use the #3tweets hashtag).  It's harder than it seems.

Sean Carroll also blogged about this.