[HN Gopher] Feynman Computer Science Lecture - Hardware, Softwar...
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Feynman Computer Science Lecture - Hardware, Software, Heuristics
(1985) [video]
Author : nomilk
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-06-03 16:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture (1985) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23446445 - June 2020 (5
| comments)
|
| _Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture (1985) [video]_ -
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|
| _Feynman Discussing Machine Learning and Its Pitfalls (1985)
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16778460 - April
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|
| _Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15213747 - Sept 2017 (1
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|
| _Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457172 - March 2014 (9
| comments)
| _wire_ wrote:
| Feynman Messenger lectures: brilliant!
|
| Feynman on curiosity: lovely!
|
| Feynman on Manhattan project: fascinating!
|
| Feynman on cargo cults: funny!
|
| Feynman on bongos: cool!
|
| Feynman on quantum electro-dynamics: incomprehensible! (to me).
|
| Feynman on computers: exhausting.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It might be because of the audience in this particular case.
| Apparently talking to a bunch on non-technicals, soooo we spend
| 8 minutes saying that by "computer" we don't mean the "tv" and
| keyboard, and talking about 3x5 cards...
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| After the first few minutes I found the rest quite nice.
| You'd think it would be pointless and almost agonizing
| because it's all fundamental concepts that we all (I hope)
| know. But somehow I didn't find it a chore.
|
| I was just listening while doing something else that didn't
| involve much reading/writing, so not devoted time.
|
| I particularly liked the bits about asking if a machine will
| be able to understand the way a human does.
|
| "It's like asking if it will be able to pick lice out of it's
| hair like a human can." It has no hair and doesn't need to
| pick lice out of it and it doesn't matter. That one analogy
| was almost worth the whole listen.
|
| That's an argument worth undersdtanding but I'd say there is
| at least an important difference between a purely functional
| (mechanistic, deterministic) machine, or non-deterministic
| but only due to included randomness, and one that isn't
| either mechanistic or merely randomized.
|
| It's the difference between a greeting and an mp3 player
| producing the sounds "Hello neighbor!".
|
| That non-deterministic-nor-random one may or may not be a
| thinking being, but if it is a thinking being, it probably is
| a totally different form than ours, yet may still be
| equivalently an example of thinking rather than merely
| processing. (Just to be clear, I mean in theory in principle
| some day some where some how. There is no way any current
| llms are anything even remotely in the same galaxy as
| thinking.)
|
| For most things we probably shouldn't care too much about
| that. Thinking matters, but thinking the same way a human
| does probably does not, except for a couple things(1).
|
| And similarly, around the same time, "At some point people
| probably thought it was important that a machine couldn't
| flex a wrist or something as well as a human can." By the
| time of this talk there was enough robotics for enough years
| that everyone, even these laypeople, probably understood and
| were used to the idea that there was basically nothing
| physical that we can't build a machine to do, at least in
| principle, including every moving part of an organic body. So
| by that time no one was really pinning their sense of human
| value on the fact that robots are klunky and only humans can
| be fluid dancers and surgeons etc. Everyone knows that it's
| possible to make a machine that replicates everything
| physical about a human, and don't really feel threatened by
| that. So it's only more of that same process to next
| acknowledge that a machine could possibly think equivalently
| or even superiorly, even if maybe or maybe not in the same
| fashion or manner as a human, the way a plane flies faster
| than a bird but not like a bird. Though, we could actually
| make a machine that flies like a bird if we really wanted to.
| Though, why would we especially care to? Even if we did that,
| so what?
|
| Just turns the whole question in to a "who cares?" and "If
| you think you care, or think anyone should, why?"
|
| (1) I can only think of maybe 2 reasons anyone should care
| about that.
|
| 1, If we ever want to be able to re-home consciousness, we
| will probably need a substrate that works exactly like a
| human brain does. Some other equivalent level of processing
| and even equivalent appearance of self-awareness etc, won't
| do if it takes a different form. The end result would
| probably not be your consciousness in the way it is both
| before and after a sleep.
|
| 2, Trust, a feeling of predictability. We tolerate that other
| humans are self-directed and actually could do anything at
| any time and could be quite dangerous, mostly because every
| human has some understanding of every other human, or at
| least feel that we do. It might be valuable to have AI's that
| we knew percieved and understood and considered the world the
| same way we do, in order to trust them with jobs where they
| might wield the power to harm us.
|
| We take humans, treat them like absolute shit in boot camp,
| then give them a gun, and the grunt does not immediately
| shoot the drill seargent, because the grunt and the seargent
| are both humans who know how the other ticks. If one or the
| other was inscrutable, it wouldn't work.
|
| We also have actual humans that we don't understand or that
| we think don't understand us, and we call them psychopaths
| and sociopaths, and generally consider them highly dangerous
| or even evil, merely because of that tiny little difference
| in thought process. They have to be 99.9% the same as anyone
| else. Surely far closer to how you or I think than any
| imaginare machine or even an organic that isn't human.
|
| Yet we would probably have no problem letting thinking dogs
| or even octopi operate dangerous machinery as long as they
| simply behaved predictably for some amount of time. We will
| use literally anything as a tool if it works.
|
| These are not new trains of thought for me, yet this talk
| still made me think about it all over again. That lice remark
| really got me.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Something interesting towards the end. Feynman describes Lenat's
| fleet in the game as being one giant ship with all the armour.
|
| Previously I've heard that Lenat's winning fleet was many small
| ships.[0]
|
| In a sense the details don't matter; what matters is that the
| winning solution was apparently quite different from all the
| other entrants submissions.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/doug-lenat-artificial-
| intellig...
| IndrekR wrote:
| Listen again. He describes both -- single big ship the first
| year and many small chips the next.
| fat_cantor wrote:
| My favorite quote from the Feynman lectures on computation:
|
| "All we would lose by the omission of 'parallel processing' is
| speed, nothing fundamental.
|
| We talked earlier about computer science not being a real
| science..."
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I mean, that is definitely spoken from a place of ignorance.
| Yes, from a surface-level perspective, parallel computers can
| compute whatever a non-parallel computer can, and nothing more.
| However, deeper thinking about parallelism has inspired open
| problems in a diverse array of fields within CS, including
| computer architecture, operating systems, distributed systems,
| PL, and even theoretical computer scientists. People have won
| various prizes in their respective fields for solving some of
| these open problems.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I found it kind of humorous this was done at the Esalen
| Institute, ground zero for a lot of the new age woo, considering
| Feynman's no-nonsense public persona and being the origin of the
| phrase 'cargo cult.' Maybe it had other draws.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| "You're a helluva way from the pituitary, man".
|
| That is kind of an interesting question. The above quote from "
| Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman", (by my memory) is from a
| chapter that, iirc, deals with his time there giving talks
| trying to inject some logic amidst the woo.
| luuurker wrote:
| ot, but who's today's Feynman? Do we have someone like him?
| tombert wrote:
| Not exactly one to one, but I feel like Leslie Lamport kind of
| fits into that?
|
| Lamport has touched a ton of aspects of computer science and
| made many contributions, but manages to still explain things in
| a clear, easy-to-understand manner. I feel like his talks are
| just as fun to watch as they are educational, and I think his
| papers are generally very approachable while still being pretty
| information-dense.
| algernonramone wrote:
| I would love to see him write a book, or even just publish a
| nice compendium of his papers ala Donald Knuth's Collected
| Papers series (with light editing/updating, background info,
| commentary, etc.) I think that would truly be a pleasure to
| read.
| tombert wrote:
| I would too, though I should point out that I think all of
| Lamport's papers and books are free on his website: http://
| lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html?from=https:/...
|
| Some of them even have some basic background information if
| you click the link (e.g. Arbiter-Free Synchronization).
| trueismywork wrote:
| Multiple people.
| tombert wrote:
| Such as?
| java-man wrote:
| In terms of science popularization, Sean Carroll [0], I would
| think. In terms of the scientific impact (read: major advance
| in science) we'll have to wait for quantum theory of gravity
| Nobel prize, probably. I could be wrong, of course.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| Is Feynman just the GOAT'd physicist, computer scientist, bongo-
| player, and teacher of all GOATs? I'd be inclined to believe so.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| A new model to look at computers, dumb filing system :)
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