Donald Knuth on Machine Learning and the Meaning of Life | Hacker News Reader

Donald Knuth on Machine Learning and the Meaning of Life

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66 pointsamelius38 comments

As a Christian, I really like that Donald Knuth is a devout Christian. In general, it feels like being an outcast as a Christian in tech.

Silicon Valley kind of nailed that https://youtu.be/TWoRVaGlFRc

Larry Wall is another, and always entertaining when he writes about it.

Matz (Ruby creator) is a Mormon.

There are probably far more Christians out there than people realize.

Indeed. As is Jon Skeet.

Not read any but I will rectify that!

It’s surprisingly hard to find any research on this. The last survey I could find was articles saying the Lincoln project did a survey in 2018 showing about 50% of tech workers are Christians. Which is less than the 64% of Americans, but still much more than the global average of about 32%. But 5 years isn’t a small amount of time, and also unknown how much that number changes as you go “higher” up the rung of tech companies.

I’ve worked in tech companies that had Christian “diversity groups”. Not a lot of software engineers in those, from my experience, but they are decently sized.

It's difficult to be Christian and be in tech in this day and age.

Christians absolutely dominated US tech for most of Don Knuth's life.

The fact that you're making a comment about how your Christianity makes you feel outcast probably means you feel compelled to push those beliefs onto others, which is deeply unlike Christ. Remember the first apostles were people who found meaning in the message, not in identity

The fact that you even made this comments makes me feel like you’re compelled to push your beliefs on others.

You don’t know anything about me.

Like I said, as a Christian I feel like an outcast because I have to deal with assholes like you.

“The fact that you're making a comment about how your Christianity makes you feel outcast probably means you feel compelled to push those beliefs onto others”

Rather seems like you’re reaching to push your opinions to others. The logical conclusion you took out of that outcast comment is crazy.

What a mean spirited comment.

I feel deeply distributed by the modern Christian community's very un-Christ focus on "exclusion". The notion that the divine word does not support itself and we need the approval of "the tech community" is deeply offensive to me

No. Christians are supposed to proselytize.

And to they tend to have persecution complexes even when they are in the clear majority.

"The meaning of life" is maybe the most persistent myth ever.

It's only real competition is "the invisible guy in outer space".

Both are stone age mythology that are embraced by the weak minded to avoid facing reality:

There is no "meaning", we just grew here...

...just grew here with the capacity to develop myths and theories. If a theory of an invisible guy drives progress, then that's what works. Machines without our motivations will find themselves simply contributing to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, making no sense of progress, and shutting themselves down. We will embed our myths on them to keep going. Enjoy the 2nd law, we grew here for it.

Did the myths drive progress, or did progress happen despite the myths?

History is replete with examples that strongly suggest “despite”. Hell, they are still holding us back.

As said, whatever it's that works. In the meanwhile let's wait for that progress isolated from culture, beliefs, not even a language?

Language facilitates idea sharing. Clearly that’s useful for progress. What’s less clear is the mechanism in which mythology acts on progress. Especially when we have counter examples where mythology explicitly hindered progress, e.g. the resistance to the ideas Copernicus by the church.

Yes we have mythology and yes we have progress. But that doesn’t mean mythology enables progress.

So is "progress."

National Lampoon put the question thusly:

Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin ?

There's an irony to religious people saying, "It's about the journey, not the destination."

Faith in God is literally an assertion about the destination (conclusion), and not the journey (evidence).

Anyway, this article has a short bit about solving tik-tak-toe with "ML-like methods", but not much else.

Faith in God is an assertion about the journey as well. I can’t speak for everyone, but a lot of us believe that God works actively in our lives.

Not to mention, the journey gets a lot better when you realize what’s at the end.

That's still an assertion about the conclusion affecting the journey, meaning it's still from the conclusion!

Every argument for God is circular. Without assertion for the conclusion, there is no assertion, and therefore no argument.

I'm not telling you whether or not that conclusion is correct. I'm talking about the reasoning itself.

If you choose to believe that God is affecting your life, then you are still applying circular logic. You are applying faith in God (an assertion of the conclusion) to your perception of life.

It's no more than a semantic obfuscation:

Putting it your way phrases it semantically as, "God is, in effect of my experience."

Putting it in formal language, we can say equivalently, "Given God is, my experience is affected thusly."

What I have done is no different from factoring out a variable or scalar in a mathematical equation. "God = 1". The effect of identity to your life experience is "God * life_experience = life_experience".

If God were anything other than the unit multiplied, then the effects of God would be trivially provable, and we would therefore know the nature of God by evidence, and it wouldn't be God anymore.

> Every argument for God is circular

Without starting a religious debate here, that's not the case. Feel free to email me (email in profile) if you wish.

What’s at the end?

More journey.

I dunno. If you offered to make my body un-aging, I'd much rather take what will certainly be a longer journey than what I have to just hope for. Why go through contortions to accept death as the opposite of what it clearly looks like when it's so much more straightforward to just reject death and go do the engineering to conquer it?

"the end" sounds like a destination.

AMEN.

This is a deeply ignorant comment.

Ignorant of what?

The pro-religious perspective? If I am required to take that perspective, am I required to be ignorant of the atheist/agnostic perspective?

I call that requirement itself ignorance. So I'm ignorant of ignorance... Double negative.

You're setting up a strawman. Knowledge of one perspective does not entail ignorance of another perspective. The more perspectives we can integrate, the more thoughtful we can express ourselves to others. (Since many of us have different perspectives.

Note that this is from October 2021.

Some interesting quotes show how someone as brilliant as Knuth has enough self-understanding to adopt profound humility:

"[when asked the meaning of life] I personally think of my belief that God exists, although I have no idea what that means [...] I try to imagine that I’m following somebody’s wishes.

  Lex: Even though you’re not smart enough to…

  Knuth: …to know what they are."

Later: "it struck me that if I were in a position of responsibility for people’s lives, in most cases I wouldn’t have any confidence that any of my decisions were good — that these questions are too hard, probably, for any human being, but certainly for me…"

It reminds me of the first two commandments:

1. Put no other gods before me

2. Do not take my name in vain, i.e., in vanity as yours

i.e.,

1. You're not expected to believe is something greater, but if you do, don't just project your wishes for a good harvest

2. Don't use any belief as a source of personal pride

Doctor, heal thyself! Programmer, program yourself!

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