Dear Bruno,
You have, more than once, referred to something I (jokingly) said a month ago:
"I've endured this thread long enough! Let's get back to something I can understand!"
I said this because I am hungry for more informed speculation on "Why does anything exist?" and related questions.
Most recently you have very kindly offered to help me understand some of the foundation concepts you are so proficient at.
I have spent years doing scientific Fortran programming, and am already familiar with elementary math concepts such as trig, number bases, statistics, differential equations and the like. It even makes sense to me that natural numbers are countable and real numbers are not.
However my aged brain is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to exert the time and effort it would take for me to learn concepts such as eigenvalues, diagonalization, Godel's incompleteness theorem, Turing's proof that no algorithm can solve the halting problem, the Universal Dovetailer Argument, etc.
I accept those and many other concepts on faith - enough respected experts (such as yourself) affirm their truth that I have no doubt that they are correct.
Computationalism makes sense to me, and I do not accept this quote from a recent book: ". human cognition is too rich to be simulated by computer programs" (Horgan and Tienson 1996, p. 1).
Thanks again for your offer, but I do not want you to spend your valuable time attempting to get blood from a turnip.
Norman Samish
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Received on Wed Jul 05 2006 - 13:18:10 PDT