A few months ago, I received a puzzling advertising for this book, Randomness through Computation, and I eventually ordered it, despite getting a rather negative impression from reading the chapter written by Tomasso Toffoli… The book as a whole is definitely perplexing (even when correcting for this initial bias) and I would not recommend it to readers interested in simulation, in computational statistics or even in the philosophy of randomness. My overall feeling is indeed that, while there are genuinely informative and innovative chapters in this book, some chapters read more like newspeak than scientific material (mixing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, quantum physics, and NP completeness within the same sentence) and do not provide a useful entry on the issue of randomness. Hence, the book is not contributing in a significant manner to my understanding of the notion. (This post also appeared on the Statistics Forum.) Continue reading
Archive for Kurt Gödel
Randomness through computation
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags A Search for Certainty, Alan Sokal, Alan Turing, Andrei Kolmogorov, Apple II, Benford's Law, computation, Hector Zenil, Kurt Gödel, Martin-Löf, Ockham's razor, pseudo-random generator, randomness, statistical tests, Wolfram Research on June 22, 2011 by xi'anlogicomix
Posted in Books with tags Bertrand Russell, foundations, graphic novel, incompleteness theorem, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Russell's paradox on December 11, 2010 by xi'an
Thanks to Judith Rousseau (who gave me the book to read), I have enjoyed very much Logicomix: An epic search for truth, which is written in the format of a comic book or a graphic novel (just like Nietzsche, even though it is drawn in an altogether different if pleasant and colourful style). This bestselling book is about Bertrand Russell‘s doomed quest for the logical foundations of mathematics and about the intense debates in the philosophical and mathematical communities at the turn of the century, ending with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus. (Which reminded me of another book, Wittgenstein’s poker, that I read ages ago.)
Mathematics and realism
Posted in Books with tags Anathem, cosmology, Kurt Gödel, Liberation, mathematics, perspectivism, physics, platonicism, Pythagorean theorem, realism, Stephen Hawking, The Guardian on November 27, 2010 by xi'an
I read in Liberation a rather surprising tribune (in French) by “Yann Moix, writer”. The starting point is a criticism of Stephen Hawking (and Leonard Mlodinow)’s recent book The Grand Design, With regards to its conclusion that a god is not necessary to explain the creation and the working of the Universe: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” I haven’t read Hawking’s book (although I briefly considered buying it in London last time I was there, here is a Guardian review), I had never heard before of this (controversial) writer, and I do not see the point in debating about supernatural beings (except when reviewing a fantasy book!). However, the arguments of Moix are rather limited from a philosophical viewpoint.
