Computer science recycles key philosophical terms with similar but different meanings. This causes systematic patterns of confusion for CS people thinking about philosophy.https://twitter.com/everytstudies/status/1042660178796142592 …
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It seems that lossy compression algorithms are a kind of re-creation of the "usual" type of abstraction inside the unusual, precise kind of abstraction.
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The BCS talk says the first thing you do after implementing digitality is to implement non-digitality on top of it :)
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“Representation” and “reference” are other major trouble sources. In CS, each is a relationship between perfectly crisp software things; elsewhere, at least one end of the relationship is nebulous, in the world.
BCS discusses in this:
Mathematical logic was invented to eliminate all nebulosity; it conclusively failed. But computers are logic made flesh; as a consolation prize, we got the whole contemporary world out of logicism’s failure.
Gregory Chaitin’s delightful explanation:
Hardcore rationalism makes natural sense to people with computer science backgrounds. What would the world have to be like for rationalism to be true of it? It would need to conform perfectly to some set of rules—as software does, and practically nothing else can.
Given how utterly unlike reality logic is, it’s astonishing that we were able to build devices that conform to it so precisely. But, for many decades, we did devote most of the time of the smartest people in the world, plus trillions of dollars, to the effort.