Gödel, Eschy, Blech
Sal Cordova inaction again.
Shimmies to Growth Rate nlgn.
UPDATED: MarkCC also takes down Cordova again at Good Math, Bad Math. Over and above the call of shimmies, Mark - shimmies and snake arms!
Shimmies to Growth Rate nlgn.
UPDATED: MarkCC also takes down Cordova again at Good Math, Bad Math. Over and above the call of shimmies, Mark - shimmies and snake arms!
Labels: Cordova, mathematics
posted by Kristine | Tuesday, February 06, 2007
7 Comments:
Thanks for the props! I appreciate it.
No, thank you! (Props? I was once a theatre major.) ;-)
Both well-written and informative. I've learned a lot of math by reading MarkCC over the last year or so. Sal could too if he'd only read it. But, no.
My favorite retorts from both critics:
- "Complete and utter horseshit." Not just your basic horseshit.
- "...qualifies in scientific phraseology as “not even wrong”." One of my favorite scientist quotes ever (Wolfgang Pauli)
- "the entire fucking metric" (author's emphasis) This is the one that kills me. These dweebs keep completely misunderstanding the relationshop between randomness and incompressibility no matter how many times it's been ointed out. Mark has said this in seveal posts alone. I can't imagine how this isn't being pointed out all over the place. Even I get it!
- "Bullshit and nonsense!" Yup. Both.
- "...a thoroughly dreadful pile of crap." Dreadful indeed.
- "absolutely incorrect, on two levels" Only two?
uh, that would be "pointed"
I need to take more time to read these...and to get to G,E,B, which I just bought. This stuff is so fun (including the takedown of Sal), but I'm indexing my little heart out right now for class (a book on Christian morality, no less). ;-)
I read GEB about 10 years ago. It was very cool but quite challenging. In fact, it was one of the few books that I started but didn't finish. I don't usually do that. But I couldn't resist and went back to it.
In order to get the most out of it, it's worth trying to learn the math/programming language that he uses later in the book.
BTW: Hofstadter's father won the Nobel in Fizix for his work on the Mosbauer Effect (when electrons are scattered by the atomic nucleus). One of my professors worked in his lab as a grad student. It's not often that I get to spout geeky so I just had to when I had the oppotunity. :)
Index on, Girl!
Index on, girl!
I’m done, dum-de-dum-dum. Just have to type it up. (I’ll bet I’m the only one in the class who pulled out verse quotes as headings. What a little goody-two-shoes I really am. Don’t tell anybody!)
Go to the library tomorrow, go to a party (a friend is moving to South Dakota, boooo), and then, yay! GEB, here I be! That’s the plan, anyway.
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