Re:“Computer science is not about computers”
by kaba0 on Sunday May 30, 2021 @04:36AM
(#27331643)
> The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them. Computers simulated complexity
I think this part is backwards, and I would even say that CS is about complexity itself. In some ways it is even meta-mathematical even though it is a subset of mathematics.
There is an interesting paper measuring the complexity of different things in terms of a minimal Turing machine (sorry, I’m not sure about the details but will try to find it) and it gave a relatively small number for the complexity of the base axiom set of modern maths (few kb, or maybe MB?) It really put it in perspective for me what is mathematically provable and all the rest of things that we don’t even have the tools to reason about, at most we can compute it.
I think this part is backwards, and I would even say that CS is about complexity itself. In some ways it is even meta-mathematical even though it is a subset of mathematics.
There is an interesting paper measuring the complexity of different things in terms of a minimal Turing machine (sorry, I’m not sure about the details but will try to find it) and it gave a relatively small number for the complexity of the base axiom set of modern maths (few kb, or maybe MB?) It really put it in perspective for me what is mathematically provable and all the rest of things that we don’t even have the tools to reason about, at most we can compute it.