TagHermann Weyl
Trying To Refute Free Will Without Being Sure What It Is…
Stephen Barr offers some thoughts on neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky’s Determined, which argues against free will
Chaitin’s Discovery of a Way of Describing True Randomness
He found that concepts from computer programming worked well because, if the data is not random, the program should be smaller than the dataIn this week’s podcast, “The Chaitin Interview II: Defining Randomness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin on randomness. It’s a subject on which Chaitin has thought deeply since his teenage years (!), when he published a journal paper on the subject. How do we measure randomness? Chaitin begins by reflecting on his 1969 paper: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-125-Gregory-Chaitin.mp3 This portion begins at 1:12 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Gregory Chaitin: In particular, my paper looks at the size of computer programs in bits. More technically you ask, what is the size in bits of the smallest computer program you need to calculate a given digital object? That’s called the program Read More ›