

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity - rxin
http://eccc.hpi-web.de/report/2011/108/

======
DanielRibeiro
There are also lots of great comments on the sibling submission from a few
weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861825>

------
da_dude4242
"Philosophers" do care about computational complexity. System's Theory weaves
through both fields in the context of "irreducible" complexity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory#Developments_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory#Developments_in_system_theories)

In that case the inverse is also true. Computer Scientists should care about
what it means for something to be irreducible or computationally complex.

------
VladRussian
>As of 2011, the "largest known prime number," as reported by GIMPS (the Great
Internet Mersenne Prime Search),15 is p := 243112609 − 1. But on reflection,
what do we mean by saying that p is "known"?

what a rubbish. The "p" isn't "known". The "p" is "known to be prime".
Professional philosopher must be able to feel the difference.

~~~
mponizil
Not at all. This is ultimately an epistemic issue - what do we mean by
"known"? What property does the largest known prime have that the next largest
prime lacks? How can we articulate the difference? These are the types of
questions philosophy asks.

~~~
VladRussian
>This is ultimately an epistemic issue - what do we mean by "known"? What
property does the largest known prime have that the next largest prime lacks?

"known" is by "whom". Being "known" isn't an intrinsic property that one prime
has and another lacks. "Knowing" some specific number as a prime is a property
of the one who "knows". If some person (or alien race) knows p as the largest
known [to them] prime and another person knows q as the largest known [to him]
prime it has absolutely no bearing on the intrinsic properties of either p or
q.

>These are the types of questions philosophy asks.

if it really so nowadays, then it would explain why there is no philosophers
anymore

~~~
bumbledraven
_p_ is "known" by the mathematical community. As of 2011, _p_ is the largest
natural number such that (a) we know _p_ is prime and (b) we know a
polynomial-time algorithm to enumerate the digits in the decimal expansion of
_p_.

------
nandemo
Previous discussion (2 weeks ago):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861825>

------
thirsteh
Highly recommend Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas
Hofstadter for those who are interested by this: <http://amzn.to/qJVAAF>

------
ristretto
I am often under the impression that many philosophers take linguistic
constructions such as "meaning" and "morality" to be entities that can exist
on their own, outside functioning brains, while on the other hand they claim
to be materialists. They strive to find a way to make logic (syntax) produce
meaning, forgetting that semantic meaning is all about context, emotion and
behavior shaped by millions of years of evolution. Philosophers do care about
complexity (they care about everything, it's their job), but their metaphors
are always about metaphysics or notions of some kind of "x-liness" that, like
an "elan vital" will give meaning to the soulless constructions of mathematics
and physics (chinese room, waterfalls, qualia).

The paper gives numerous examples where a philosopher could use complexity
theory, but doesnt go so far as to make any conclusions, thus showing that
comp. complexity is actually useful for these problems.

