Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity · HackerPapers discussions

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — mentioned by nopinsight

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 08:22:16 GMT

As someone who's always loved synthesizing ideas and having lightbulb moments, I find the headline flattering. I wonder, though, if there's any more rigorous and general analysis (hah!) of the complexity of these two modes of thought. EDIT: Fable 5 turned up some relevant references: [1] Richardson, D. (1968). "Some Undecidable Problems Involving Elementary Functions of a Real Variable." Journal of Symbolic Logic, 33(4). — Differentiation is a simple recursive algorithm; deciding integrability in elementary terms is undecidable in general. [2] Risch, R. H. (1969). "The Problem of Integration…

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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — mentioned by eru

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:32:38 GMT

You probably want a fast algorithm. Compare https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791 and why computational complexity is often more interesting that computability.

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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — mentioned by eru

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 23:19:52 GMT

Indeed. And it's fairly trivial to see that computability isn't the right lens to view intelligence through: The classic Turing test takes place over a finite amount of time. Normally less than an hour, but we can arbitrarily give the interlocutor, say, up to a week. If you don't like the Turing test, then just about any other test interaction we can make the system undergo will conclude below some fixed finite time. After all, humans are generally intelligent, even if they only get a handful of decades to prove it. During that finite time interaction, only a finite amount of interaction will…

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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — HN submission

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 16:31:44 GMT

Why philosophers should care about computational complexity (2011)

171 points; 143 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — HN submission

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 18:51:22 GMT

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity (2011)

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — mentioned by Locke1689

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 03:23:20 GMT

This is 99% correct, but you're wrong about the last sentence. Actually, science is about the most accurate model, but it turns out that what we mean by "beauty," is actually about simplicity, and thus about correctness. There is a sound mathematical background behind simplicity and its likelihood of being correct, as outlined in Scott Aaranson's paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791

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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — mentioned by eru

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:05:17 GMT

Did you mean superset instead of subset? Anyway for my statement I was only interested deterministic polynomial time (perhaps with access to randomness) with or without quantum capabilities. "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity" (http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791v3) is a good read about this---amongst other things.

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Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity — HN submission

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:02:23 GMT

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity

2 points; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.