

Donald Knuth's IFAQ - mite-mitreski
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html

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tptacek
Donald Knuth is a Stanford academic, a serious Lutheran Christian, and a
liberal. For any of those three types of people, these viewpoints are
unsurprising. I share them, too, but I feel queasy about an HN headline that
says "Respect", as if it were contemptible to hold a different viewpoint.

~~~
colanderman
I think the respect is for him being bold enough to pose these questions, not
for the content of the questions themselves.

~~~
tptacek
He's a Stanford Emeritus and one of the most beloved computer scientists of
all time. This isn't exactly the riskiest page he could have put up (though,
if I wanted to be snarky, there's a wisecrack or two to be conjured about
professing Christianity, right?).

But at the end of the day, of course I'm glad he has this page. Like I said,
these are my viewpoints --- for the most part --- too. But I'm uncomfortable
with the way we've chosen to promote the page here.

~~~
jswinghammer
I sort of wonder how atheists process someone like him believing in God. Is he
being irrational? Is he just foolish in this one area of his life? Is it
hurting his life (as many atheists claim religion is)? And if any of those are
true do you feel like you have the intellectual authority or capacity to say
anything to him about his own life?

~~~
IgorPartola
I personally do not really care. Faith is a personal matter. As long as we are
not discussing it directly, why should it factor into a political
conversation? Einstein was deeply religious, down to refusing to accept
quantum theory because "god does not play with dice", but he also _had things
to say_. Would it have made his discoveries more wonderful if he was an
atheist? I believe that question is devoid of meaning.

~~~
jswinghammer
Well many atheists claim that being an atheist is a qualification for being a
serious scientist. Sam Harris wrote a pretty poorly thought out piece in the
NYT about how a person who is otherwise qualified was not a good candidate
because of their faith.

~~~
ohyes
As someone who has education in science, but never 'got religion' as a child,
I see atheism as the null hypothesis.

One way of formulating it would be: "There is(are) no all-powerful
supernatural entity(ies) which has(ve) influence over my daily life."

No one has given me sufficient evidence that would go against this and
contradict the null hypothesis, so I continue to not believe in God(s).

That said,

I don't think that believing things that are not scientifically
proven/provable disqualifies one from performing scientific research. I'm know
I have plenty of opinions/beliefs/biases that I couldn't back up for the life
of me. It is part of being human and having been raised in a given
environment. But it is important to be aware of your own biases in any
endeavor.

~~~
Someone
Your logic would apply equally well with theism as the null hypothesis ("There
is(are) an all-powerful supernatural entity(ies) which has(ve) influence over
my daily life, but (s)(t)he(y) have been playing a game called science for the
past few centuries")

I think agnosticism would be the better choice for a null hypothesis.

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mixmax
It's the obligation of the intellectual elite to point out fallacies,
inaccuracies and problems of the governing body of a country. There's a long
tradition of this, from Noam Chomsky to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To qoute Emerson _"Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use
it well."_ Intellectuals have the wisdom, and the brave ones speak truth to
power.

It's nice to see Knuth in good company.

~~~
mixmax
Here are a few more startup-related Emerson quotes that I just came across:

 _In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we
fail.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The ancestor of every action is a thought._

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OstiaAntica
It is ironic that Knuth fumes about his personal lack of consent for the Iraq
War (which was authorized and funded by dozens of votes in Congress) and in
the same breath calls for imposing the legal rule of an unelected
international criminal court on his fellow Americans.

Americans, a self-governed people, have established a proven system of rights
and freedoms in our Constitution, and that sovereignty should not be
transferred to international bodies -- particularly when those bodies are
controlled by groups that plan to use the courts against U.S. and Israeli
soldiers.

~~~
mak120
By the same logic, were the Nazi trials at Nuremberg a violation of German
sovereignty?

~~~
Helianthus16
Yes, but (so the argument goes) they were a legal violation, sanctioned by the
U.N. or whatever prototype of the U.N. existed at the time.

------
alexeiz
Proves once again that being an expert in one field doesn't mean you have a
slightest understanding in another.

~~~
kstenerud
Agreed. Albert Einstein's political views were laughably naive, for example.

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logjam
Oh really. Which views exactly do you find naïve? His views evolved
considerably over time.

~~~
kstenerud
An example:

"War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in
pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in
spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey
would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been
systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through
the schools and the Press."

When considered against thousands of years of human history, documenting wars
large and small, and the events leading up to them, such a view of the innate
goodness of fellow man that is pure and would never wage war but for the
corrupting influence of the elite, comes off as incredibly naive.

When compared and contrasted with, for example, Machiavelli and his discourses
on the first decade of Titus Livius, Einstein comes off like an episode of the
Care Bears.

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nandemo
Just because the author is Knuth doesn't make it on-topic.

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maw
Mistake one: thinking its his country. It is not.

Mistake two: the idea of a country's honor is ludicrous.

I'm with him, otherwise, although I don't think the case is as clear-cut as I
used to.

~~~
Helianthus16
If a country's honor as a concept is ludicrous, why should a country bother to
be moral?

Surely you can see that honor and morality are closely tied concepts, such
that a country's moral actions define its honor. In what respect can someone
deny the validity of honor and still evaluate the quality of a country's
actions?

In other words, did America 'do wrong' by Iraq?

~~~
maw
I don't think you can generalize much about a group of three hundred million
people. If you accept that premise, then there just isn't very far you can go
when talking about a country's honor or morality.

The people calling the shots in a country might be a small enough group to
make statements about their honor or morality meaningful -- but then
statements like "my country" don't mean too much either.

I think the Powers That Were (and largely continue to Be) in the US have
probably done wrong by many people living in Iraq, although I'm less sure
about this than I used to be.

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billmcneale
By the way, Knuth was at Google today. He started his presentation by saying
"I don't think I can top Lady Gaga".

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euroclydon
These are moral questions. There are equally perplexing related practical
questions, such as: Why did we go into Iraq? Wars are typically fought for
vengeance or gain. There was really nothing to avenge and clearly nothing has
been gained. I'm chocking the war up to pure foolishness.

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fourspace
This page seems rather silly. He isn't actually espousing any views; he's
saying he doesn't have any answers. You may read the questions as implying his
views, but he doesn't explicitly state any opinions on the matter.

I'm not sure why this is even on HN, even given its author.

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johnny22
" Is it possible for potential new leaders to raise questions about their
country's possible guilt, without committing political suicide?"

Well we did get the whole "apology tour" stuff on the tv and radio with Obama
and by then he wasn't a "potential new leader", but perhaps the answer is yes?
(at least it's not a no)

We're still here after all :)

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trurl123
Another question: Why does my country have the right to be occupying Libya?

