
John McCarthy Has Died - apgwoz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist)
======
asolove
For a fun portrait of McCarthy's early life and aspirations, see the passages
about him in "What the Doormouse Said". [1]

\- Born to communist activists in 1920s Boston

\- Studied math with John Nash at Princeton

\- Organized the first computer-chess match in 1965, pitting his own algorithm
against one created by computer scientists in the USSR, with moves
communicated by telegraph.

While many will remember him for Lisp and his contributions to AI, perhaps
equally important was his role in running a research lab in what became a
characteristic West Coast fashion: finding intelligent people, setting them
free to do what they wanted, and obdurately arguing with them over very little
provocation. He was far enough from mainstream to be familiar, and even
sympathetic to the 60s counterculture, but also cynical enough to embrace
technology, rather than revolution, as a way forward. If this sounds a bit
like running a startup today, there's one main reason it does: John McCarthy.

[1]
[http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&lpg=PT113&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&lpg=PT113&ots=1FLa3U0gfc&dq=john%20mccarthy%20what%20the%20dormouse&pg=PT113#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
gabeiscoding
Excellent book BTW, would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of
not just computing but what we think of as UI/UX.

It's almost depressing to see the same problems we keep (re-)solving have had
great minds beating on them for quite a while now :)

------
pg
Unfortunately it's true. I just heard back from Peter Norvig, who says "He
died peacefully in his sleep last night."

~~~
Hitchhiker
October 2011 is turning out to be one sad month.

~~~
rbanffy
We should declare tomorrow November minus 6th...

------
0x12
What a pity.

I sense a black bar coming.

The last few weeks have been terrible, one icon after another has fallen. What
is different from other fields is that computing is still a young enough field
that almost all of its luminaries except for the earliest ones are still
alive.

I fear the avalanche has only barely begun, and at some point the frequency of
these will become high enough that either we will stop to notice or we will
have that black bar on here more or less permanently.

~~~
TruthElixirX
Eventually, I think, there will cease to be icons within the industry. What we
have now are the people who invented the internet/computers and the basic
components.

The people who are doing the inventing now are just as smart, but they aren't
creating fundamental things, they are improving on an existing system.

We don't say, "engineer team y invented the iCore series of processors." we
sort of just say "Intel is coming out with a new set of processors."

I'm not sure if I am making my point very clear. :\

~~~
redthrowaway
Between Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry and Sergey, Torvalds, RMS, Knuth, and a few
others, there're still plenty of icons left and so I don't forsee your
scenario happening anytime soon. I am generally an optimist, and think the
number of icons to come is far greater than those who have come and gone.

~~~
jrockway
Is it really fair to compare Zuckerberg to Knuth? Zuckerberg made a PHP site
for people to stalk their classmates. Knuth wrote TeX, hundreds of papers, and
a series of books considered among the 100 most important scientific works of
the 20th century.

[http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/100-or-so-
boo...](http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/100-or-so-books-that-
shaped-a-century-of-science)

Zuckerberg is definitely a successful dude that one can look up to. But in
terms of advancing the field of computing, he hasn't done a whole lot yet.

~~~
rayiner
Your comment presupposes that advances in mathematics are more important than
advances in social communication. Is Mozart less iconic because his
achievements were in music?

~~~
prodigal_erik
I think it's more about how hard it is than how important. Facebook represents
a lot of work but nothing that seems to demand superhuman insight; an army of
Stanford CS grads supplied with pot and Red Bull could probably make a
tolerable substitute in five or ten years. But it's far from certain any of
them could ever produce the kind of work Turing or McCarthy brought us. (And I
say this knowing I won't, either.)

~~~
Game_Ender
I think an army of top end CS grads with caffeinated beverages is what
Facebook currently employs.

------
agavin
For nearly two decades I was a diehard LISP advocate. I even forced all my
programers to code three Crash Bandicoot and four Jak & Daxter games in custom
LISP dialects that I wrote the compilers for (an article on one here
<http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban...>). But by the
mid 2000s I started doing the kind of programming I used to do in LISP in
Ruby. It's not that Ruby is a better language, but mostly it was the momentum
factor and the availability of modern libraries for interfacing with the vast
array of services out there. Using the crappy unreliable or outdated LISP
libraries -- if they worked at all -- was tedious. Plus the LISP
implementations were so outmoded. It was very hard to get other programers
(except a couple enthusiasts) to work that way. Ruby struct a decent
compromise. And it's type system and object model are better than CL anyway.
The syntax is more inconsistent, and the macro model nowhere near as good. But
it turns out. Libraries and implementation matter a lot. Still, you can feel
lots and lots of LISP influence in all the new runtime typed languages (Ruby,
Python, etc). And 30 years later, listeners still rule!

Anyway I bundled up some of my thoughts on this on my blog: [http://all-
things-andy-gavin.com/2011/10/25/lispings-ala-joh...](http://all-things-andy-
gavin.com/2011/10/25/lispings-ala-john-mccarthy/)

~~~
getsat
You!

Reading about all the cool stuff you guys did with GOOL is the reason I got
into Lisp.

Awesome to see that you post here on HN. :)

~~~
malkia
Same here!

------
mtraven
Here lies a Lisper / Uninterned from this mortal package / Yet not gc'd /
While we retain pointers to his memory

~~~
0x12
You've missed your calling, unless you are a visiting poet.

That was beautiful.

------
samj
"If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future,
then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the
telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the
basis of a new and important industry."

— John McCarthy (speaking at the MIT Centennial in 1961).

It's been pointed out that McCarthy used the term "utility" rather than
"cloud", but many of us would argue they are one and the same. Indeed
Wikipedia defines it as:

"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a
product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to
computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a
network (typically the Internet)."

In any case, can anyone think of anyone more deserving of the honour of the
title "father of cloud computing" than McCarthy? I certainly can't.

~~~
narag
Just the cloud? It seems a prediction of the Internet.

------
estel
This really needs a better source. There's no citation provided, and Wikipedia
can't keep any details of his death up without one.

Basically, I have a spoonful of salt to hand.

~~~
redthrowaway
Agreed. I did a quick Google News search and turned up nothing. Could be
legit, or vandalism, but there's really no way to know until we have
confirmation.

-

 _\--EDIT--_ Since I wrote this, I've seen one source appear, in
Portuguese[1]. It's still unclear whether this story is legitimate, or if they
simply copied wikipedia / the buzz surrounding the story.

-

 _\--EDIT 2--_ Globo is apparently the largest media conglomerate in South
America[2] and thus unlikely to publish unsourced stories, so this looks
(sadly) to be true.

[1] [http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-
mc...](http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-mccarthy-
pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html)

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizações_Globo>

~~~
vasco
*Portuguese

~~~
redthrowaway
Fixed, much obliged.

------
ColinWright
In response to the skepticism being expressed, I've just had a message from
Wendy Grossman saying:

    
    
       "... his daughter phoned me. I'm the
        ultimate source for the wikipedia entry."

~~~
hristov
Looks like someone has been doing "original research" on Wikipedia again.

~~~
ColinWright
I'm not sure what you're sayimg or implyimg here, but it feels like an insult
directed either at me or at Wendy, I'm not sure which. So let me state this a
little more clearly.

    
    
      I, Colin D Wright, hereby state that my colleague,
      Wendy M Grossman, personally sent me a message stating
      explicitly that she had been phoned personally by the
      daughter of John McCarthy and told of his death.
    

Now, in what way does that involve wikipedia, and who are you accusing of
using WP for "original research"?

~~~
hristov
I did not in any way wish to insult you or Wendy. I was just making a
sarcastic comment about the fact that Wikipedia discourages one from entering
information on the site even if one had first hand direct knowledge of said
information.

This is one of the more controversial and often debated Wikipedia rules.

------
xxcode
I got a call this morning from his daughter that he has died this morning.
Sorry to have him go.

~~~
bluemoon
Are there any other verifiable sources?

------
monochromatic
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

~~~
LearnYouALisp
]

------
j2labs
What a terrible month for computing...

~~~
TruthElixirX
I have a feeling this will start being a lot more common in the computer
world. The founders of everything are starting to hit their later ages. :(

~~~
bartl
Yes.One of the more exciting things about computer science, a few decades ago,
is that it was all brand new. Even the pioneers were contemporaries. These
were exciting times to live in, since it made me feel like we were on the edge
of a brand new technology.

But now, the pioneers have gotten old. And the excitement is slowly ebbing
away.

------
noblethrasher
Still awaiting a better source. The Wikipedia entry asserting his death has
been reversed at the time of this writing...

~~~
bluemoon
Yeah, i'm still waiting on a source too other than twitter

------
edward
Time for the black bar to appear at the top of Hacker News?

~~~
wanorris
Yes. Unless the information is actually inaccurate, there's not even any
question.

What an amazing pioneer. He will be missed.

------
apgwoz
Does anyone have a better article? I can't find any other information about
it. I found out from the NYC Lisp mailing list, and Wikipedia confirmed it.

Sad, sad, sad day. :(

~~~
ErrantX
Do you have a source (i.e. link to the mailing list)? Unfortunately the person
who added it to the Wiki article didn't add one.

~~~
apgwoz
The archives to the mailing list are private, so I can't link. You can see in
the wikipedia history that who ever made the edit claims to have received word
from McCarthy's sister.

~~~
ErrantX
Yeh; unfortunately that's not a strong enough source, particularly for this
sort of edit :)

Thanks anyway - I am sure it will appear in time.

Usually stuff like this is legit; but sometimes it isn't. So the policy is to
have a reliable source or nothing.

------
sajid
Death date removed from Wikipedia.

Latest edit shows:

"(Protected John McCarthy (computer scientist): Violations of the biographies
of living persons policy: Rumors of his death added to page. May be true, but
better to wait than edit war."

~~~
ColinWright
Death date now reinstated. (22:09 BST, 21:09 Zulu)

~~~
felideon
It [edit: the Brazilian article] cites Steven Levy, senior writer of Wired, as
the source. It does not say where the source is found, but I assume it's this
tweet:

<http://twitter.com/#!/stevenjayl/status/128568370055491584>

He may be a writer for Wired, but he doesn't seem to have a solid source
either.

EDIT: There seems to be someone that claims Stanford has confirmed it by
phone, as you can see in the Discussion page of Wikipedia, though:

"I spoke to the Associate Director of Communications at Stanford School of
Engineering, and Dan Stober of Stanford News Service. Both have confirmed that
Professor McCarthy passed away this weekend. They both said there were not a
lot of details available at this time. An obituary will be issued by Stanford
soon. <http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320> \-- I
apologize for bad formatting. I'm not a regular Wiki editor. Joseph Chiu 24
October 2011, 2:11 PDT. I have not edited the article page."

~~~
nassosdim
Stanford tweeted that they're still in the process of gathering information
<https://twitter.com/#!/stanfordeng/status/128580022675054592>

------
getsat
<http://i.imgur.com/Y02DM.jpg>

RIP. Thanks for inventing all that awesome stuff modern languages are
constantly rediscovering.

~~~
LabThug
I have this sign on my office door. I'll be putting his timeline on it
tomorrow.

------
gonzo
McCarthy's wife died in 1977 in a climbing accident

[http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Vera.h...](http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Vera.html)

~~~
SkyMarshal
Very interesting. Off-topic thought, but...

 _"So she joined the group to climb Annapurna, and was part of the second team
to attempt the summit. You go up in pairs, so you do pairwise summit attempts
- these Himalayan style things where you do base camps. So she was working her
way to the upper camp as the first summit team was coming down between the
topmost and the second topmost. They passed, and then she was lost - she and
her partner were lost. We're quite sure they fell. They were roped together;
we think one fell and took the other with them._ "

As I was reading that I was thinking, 'why twos? that's not enough to anchor
someone if they fall through an ice crevice or something, need at least three
for that.' And then I get to the end, and that's exactly what happened. I
wonder if people still attempt Himalayan mountains in twos like that.

~~~
bhickey
Crevasses are normally encountered during glacier travel. These aren't
particularly common on steep slopes.

Moreover, climbing as a trio tends to be (much) slower than traveling as a
pair. When weather and hypoxia are your biggest threat, speed can literally be
the only thing keeping you alive.

</climber notes="got sick around 4100m, big wimp">

------
jmatt
This is my favorite John McCarthy story.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803627>

I like how one simple succinct relevant question can say so much about
Norvig's claims. It seems appropriate coming from the creator of LISP. And, of
course, the mutual respect, professionalism they both had to leave it at that.

------
tef____
This seems to be the original tweet
<http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128554733714669568>

~~~
burke
Not to be "that guy", but does she have any connection to him? Why should I
believe she isn't just some random that made that up?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Looking at her linked webpage from Twitter, she's a freelance journalist who
has written on tech topics, including articles about McCarthy.

<http://www.pelicancrossing.net/credits.htm>

------
dreamux
He has a string of accomplishments that still live on in active development...
and he made it to 84. That's a good run.

------
jcromartie
I got into programming through Logo in elementary school. Logo is a Lisp
dialect. Even if it took me 15 years to rediscover Lisp, I am thankful for the
good beginnings.

Thanks to John McCarthy for making such huge contributions to the computing
world, and to my hobby and career.

------
rooshdi
"Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to
be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose
master, the user, should be able to control it. If designers and programmers
think about the apparent mental qualities that their programs will have,
they'll create programs that are easier and pleasanter — more humane — to deal
with."

Thank you John, RIP

------
sramsay
Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie were obviously major pioneers (and I admired
them both), but of the three, McCarthy's work impresses me the most. I still
marvel at the profound degree of lateral thinking evident in his articles.

I suspect this will be the least well reported obituary, which is kind of sad.
He was surely one of the greats.

------
rblion
Visionary. Shine On!

"His 2001 short story The Robot and the Baby[9] lightheartedly explored the
question of whether robots should have (or simulate having) emotions, and
anticipated aspects of Internet culture and social networking that became more
prominent in the ensuing decade."

~~~
finnw
Can be found here: [http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...](http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.html)

~~~
rblion
thanks a lot. will read soon.

------
sp332
I always liked this poster: <http://www.xach.com/img/doing-it-wrong.jpg> (from
<http://xach.livejournal.com/170311.html>)

------
sspencer
Long live the first Knight of the Lambda Calculus!

------
rbanffy
John McCarthy would say we are doing news completely wrong.

------
ORioN63
I think one of the most important things you can do, while you're alive, is to
change the world...

Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy managed to do it. May them rest
in peace, now, and be remembered for ever.

------
Protonk
WP article is now updated. The techcrunch piece cited HN but the author also
contacted Stanford faculty. Gamasutra also ran a short piece. The article is
no longer protected if you guys want to update it or clean it up.

------
kinghajj
(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))

~~~
pjscott
Whenever people make Lisp jokes by nesting parentheses without regard for the
semantics that they denote, I get a little disappointed. It's not anger, nor
contempt; just a feeling that we can do better.

    
    
        (will-be 'john-mccarthy (modifier 'missed 'dearly))
    

Incidentally, "I feel like we can do better" would probably be a pretty good
summary of what John McCarthy was about.

~~~
kinghajj
I thought about doing something like that, but decided against it. I'm
expressing condolences, not writing an obituary program!

~~~
lukeschlather
It would at least be nice to have the parentheses in some sense represent the
parse tree for the sentence, like:

(He (will be) (dearly missed))

That's not very Lispy, and I'm sure some linguists would have a thing or two
to say about my tree, but it at least has a structure related to the meaning.

------
bootload
I never understood why McCarthy was never featured at YC or Startupschool.
Listening & being able to ask McCarthy questions would have been like peering
into the past & future at the same time.

~~~
protagonist_h
Here's a recent interview with him -- an excellent way to understand his
perspective on the future of programming languages:

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/mccarthy-elephant-2000>

------
dpritchett
Here's the 1960 paper describing the original Lisp: <http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html>

------
SlipperySlope
My primary development computer, over many generations of system builds, has
always been named mccarthy.

Rest In Peace.

------
toybuilder
I'm the guy that called Stanford. Look, it's not that hard -- someone here
must have talked to a Bay Area reporter about their company or their job at
some point -- can you please tell her/him to follow up with Stanford and talk
to Dan Stober at Stanford News Service and/or Andy Meyer in the Engineering
Department? <http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320>

------
bradhall
Brazilian source:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fg1.globo.com%2Ftecnologia%2Fnoticia%2F2011%2F10%2Fmorre-
john-mccarthy-pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html)

------
sajid
Anyone got a reliable source corroborating this?

~~~
apgwoz
The WikiPedia history states that there was some personal communication with
his sister.

------
bluemoon
I am deeply saddened with this loss to our community. He was such an influence
to computer science as a whole.

------
shrikant
Well shit. I said it about a week back [1] (maybe a little indelicate, but in
my defence, was a little over-wrought):

 _The technology pioneers who were in their 20s/30s in the the 60s/70s are now
really old. The next few years will likely see a bloodbath._

Granted, he wasn't that young in those times, but the point holds. We're going
to see a bunch of luminaries 'move on' in the coming months :(

[1] <https://twitter.com/#!/shr1k/status/125712526397816832>

~~~
cies
bloodbath? c'mon... that's a word reserved for death of a bunch of beings, in
a short time span, by an 'unnatural' cause. he apparently died peacefully and
naturally.

------
michaels0620
Here is another link (via google translate) with the news although with no
source listed, they may have just been going off wendyg's tweet.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fg1.globo.com%2Ftecnologia%2Fnoticia%2F2011%2F10%2Fmorre-
john-mccarthy-pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html&act=url)

------
edwardshen
It reminded me of the death of Push Singh a few years ago, after I just
started to know him personally. Rather than focusing on the woe, we tried to
celebrate his life, achievements, and great inspirations he had brought us.
It's really difficult to handle such sadness, but I guess it's very important
for the rest of us to think about how we may continue their good will to
advance the way we live and think, to inspire others, and to change the world
to a better place.

------
damienfir
Sorry but, what is your source ?

------
Mithrandir
This has got to be the most depressing month in awhile.

------
runevault
If this is true may have to get CL or Racket set up tonight and do some coding
in memory. Ungh what a crappy month for Computer Science.

------
TheCondor
This is selfish... but Dr. Knuth, please oh please pick up the pace a notch
and select a side kick to finish your work. Please!

~~~
cpr
This is an understandable impulse, but completely ignores the nature of the
work itself, which is essentially Knuthian. I don't think there's anyone else
in the world, let alone an associate of his, who could continue this work.

It's been years since I was around him (I worked at a Stanford spin-off
startup in the early 80's that commercialized some TeX printing technologies),
but it's hard to overestimate what he's accomplished. What a wonderful man!

------
beefman
Progress and its Sustainability

<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/>

Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts

<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/elephant/elephant.html>

------
mark_l_watson
I saw him speak a few times at AAAI conferences - few people, if any,
contributed more to the field of AI.

~~~
tcanthony
You're absolutely right. He was a living legend.

------
devindotcom
Confirmed by Stanford Engineering:
<https://twitter.com/#!/stanfordeng/status/128615022044790784>

I've changed the attribution on the TechCrunch story by the way, though it
still gives this thread a shout out.

------
tyng
I saw the black band at the top of the page and I knew another great has left
us - it's the black band of sorrow

R.I.P

------
faizanaziz
Seems like October 2011 has taken the best of tech, each great in their own
way... RIP John McCarthy

------
bjgraham
John McCarthy was an exceptional man. I wrote a short article on AI, Siri, and
the fourth interface. His concept of engineering an artificial intelligence is
soon materializing. <http://blabeat.com>

------
edu
I'll cross my fingers and hope it's just a hoax of really, really, really bad
taste.

------
gmcabrita
It is truly a sad day for AI and LISP. I can only hope he did not suffer in
his last moments.

RIP

------
tete
Damn, with all that people dieing I always have to think about American Pie.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6U>

------
TedSelker
He was deeply excited about the neutrino experiments reported in the last
month and following it and other such news till the end.

His daughter told me actually died while in the bathroom sitting on the pot.

------
patrickod
The death has not been added to nndb, so I'm slow to believe it. nndb, for
those of you who don't know, is the information source used by wolframalpha
for its people results

~~~
felideon
How quick would it be added to nndb?

~~~
patrickod
nndb has been very fast for reporting deaths in the last few months. A few
hours at most.

------
ewest
Recently published article with some citations of McCarthy's contributions:
<http://goo.gl/luVMq> [The Australian Eye News]

------
Caligula
This is very sad. John was a brilliant man who always made himself available
to not only his students but random people(myself) emailing him for research
advice.

------
grosales
Thank you John McCarthy. For your work, for your relentless curiosity, and
inventiveness that helped us all. Without knowing, you set the path for many
of us.

------
Jach
I totally called it. "They always go in threes."

God damn it though. And fellow programmer students have no idea whom I'm
talking about. Grar. (RIP '(JOHN MCCARTHY))

------
brndnhy
Is there any way to implement these memorial black bars in a way that doesn't
break the mobile HN apps? I assume they're scraping.

------
naeem
I really hate waking up to a black bar at the top. RIP McCarthy, you are a
legend through and through.

------
arjn
Earlier Ritchie and now McCarthy. "The old order changeth, yielding place to
new."

I wonder who the "new" will be ?

~~~
LearnYouALisp
MULTIVAC aka Wolfram Alpha

------
ww520
Oh no! Lisp has a huge impact on computing. It's hard to imagine how old it
is.

~~~
georgemcbay
It is 53 years old. You don't have to "imagine" how old it is.

~~~
ww520
53 years are like an eon in computing. Probably older than most of us. It's
hard to imagine because it is very much relevant today despite its old age.

RIP.

------
antoinehersen
)

------
tavisrudd
(let ((john-mccarthy '())) (with-backtracking john-mccarthy))

------
agentultra
He left a legacy that touched my intellectual life.

In that he will live on.

------
drygrass
What a grim year. Jobs, Ritchie, and now McCarthy.

------
Jun8
What, no HN black ribbon for McCarthy?

~~~
chc
There was one for a little while, but it apparently got removed as there was
uncertainty about the claim. I'm sure it'll be back soon.

------
Anilm3
I am without words, rest in peace.

------
jonutzz
To those who know LISP, here's a response from benfitz which sums it up

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) :-(

------
kraftbai
idol died 1by1 in dark october god bless Knuth I want to see vol7

------
antimora
We need better source.

------
kbradero
worst year for CompSci.

------
TruthElixirX
Wikipedia has removed this claim now.

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LoveLinux
Are there any modern people who make great contributions to science who are
not Jewish? As a non-Jewish person, I'm thankful for what Jews have given the
world. Thank you Mr. McCarthy.

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wyclif
Death always comes in threes.

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vixen99
What a supremely provincial comment.

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wyclif
Oh, _yes_. Terribly, terribly provincial.

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umjames
Isn't there something about deaths happening in 3s?

1\. Steve Jobs

2\. Dennis Ritchie

3\. John McCarthy

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0x12
Let's hope that it is limited to 3. I get terribly antsy just thinking about
who else in computing has reached their 70's and 80's.

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umjames
Agreed, and the close proximity of their deaths makes me think that that's it
for a set of 3.

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unexpected
Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, and now John McCarthy - maybe some truth that
deaths always come in 3's. Quite unnerving.

We should propose National Computing Month or something for October.

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scott_s
You can take any arbitrary, long running sequence and partition it into
threes. Also: selection bias.

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gwern
To quote the wise _Principia Discordia_:

> "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."

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cpher
Why in G-d's name are you people hemorraging about who or where the source
came from? As great a man as he was, this doesn't warrant coniption fits about
who knew what first. You're acting like he held national secrets that upon his
death would lead to some catastrophe. Give it a rest. The man was in his 80s
and led a wonderfully productive life. Get back to work, assholes.

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elliottcarlson
While there may be a bit too much bickering going on about it - having a
factual source is important instead of just believing a single tweet or
Wikipedia edit.

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cpher
A _bit_ too much? Half of the posts in this thread are debating this very
topic. It's like everyone missed the forest for the trees.

~~~
scott_s
It's not about "who knew what first." It's about figuring out if it's actually
_true_.

