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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Gotta say, I've never ever considered "the Ontology of Programs" or "The Epistemological Status of Computer Science" before. I'm trying to keep an open mind here, but I do wonder if some academics are really stretching to justify the latest grant money.

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> Ontology of programs

The presuppositions of programs or to program

Example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0602053v3.pdf

> The epistemological status of computer science

Do Neural Nets learn or memorize? What's the difference and how do we know what Neural Nets do?

Example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.05394.pdf

Or one of my personal favorites, the Epistemology of Computer Simulations in Science:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simulations-science/#EpiC...

Comparing and contrasting how computers think and learn compared to us certainly is an interesting idea. I tend to think of myself as epistemologically agnostic, but not for lack of trying. I haven't kept up to speed on neural net development, do there could be some fascinating insights there.

Thanks for the links. I'll definitely check this out.

Are you posting your opinion for Grant money? Or are there other things that motivate people to think about things and express their opinion?

There is no need to disparage people who geek out about edge cases in classification systems.

I don't think I've disparaged anyone here. Being skeptical is one of the oldest traditions in philosophy. If one can't handle skepticism, they are in the wrong field.

Laziness is not skepticism.

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