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Category Archives: Philosophy
To cheer you up in difficult times 29: Free will, predictability and quantum computers
I wrote a paper, in Hebrew, entitled “Free will, predictability and quantum computers.” Click for the pdf file (Version of Nov. 25, 2021; orig. version). As you probably know, the free will problem is the apparent contradiction between the fact … Continue reading
The probabilistic proof that 2^400-593 is a prime: a revolutionary new type of mathematical proof, or not a proof at all?
Avi Wigderson gave a great CS colloquium talk at HUJI on Monday (a real auditorium talk with an audience of about 200 people). The title of the talk was The Value of Errors in Proofs – a fascinating journey from … Continue reading
This question from Tim Gowers will certainly cheeer you up! and test your intuition as well!
I've rolled a die and not looked at it yet. The statement, "If the number I rolled equals 2+2 then it equals 5," is … — Timothy Gowers (@wtgowers) October 18, 2020 Here is a tweet from Tim Gowers It … Continue reading
To cheer you up in difficult times 4: Women In Theory present — I will survive
An amazing video (Update, May18 2020). I failed to explain what WIT is and this may have caused some misunderstanding. Here is a description from the Simons Institute site. “The Women in Theory (WIT) Workshop is intended for graduate and … Continue reading
Avi Wigderson’s: “Integrating computational modeling, algorithms, and complexity into theories of nature, marks a new scientific revolution!” (An invitation for a discussion.)
The cover of Avi Wigderson’s book “Mathematics and computation” as was first exposed to the public in Avi’s Knuth Prize videotaped lecture. (I had trouble with 3 of the words: What is EGDE L WONK 0? what is GCAAG?GTAACTC … Continue reading
Test Your Intuition 33: The Great Free Will Poll
Free will is defined (following Wikipedea) as the ability of humans to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. But you may take your favorite definition of free will. Philosophers (and others) have debated the definition of “free will” and the question if humans … Continue reading
Poznań: Random Structures and Algorithms 2013
Michal Karonski (left) who built Poland’s probabilistic combinatorics group at Poznań, and a sculpture honoring the Polish mathematicians who first broke the Enigma machine (right, with David Conlon, picture taken by Jacob Fox). Update: Here is a picture from 2015, while … Continue reading
Posted in Combinatorics, Conferences, Open problems, Philosophy, Probability
Tagged Poznan, RSA
4 Comments
Why is Mathematics Possible: Tim Gowers’s Take on the Matter
In a previous post I mentioned the question of why is mathematics possible. Among the interesting comments to the post, here is a comment by Tim Gowers: “Maybe the following would be a way of rephrasing your question. We know … Continue reading
Posted in Open discussion, Philosophy, What is Mathematics
Tagged Foundations of Mathematics, Open discussion, Philosophy, Tim Gowers
22 Comments
Why is mathematics possible?
Spectacular advances in number theory Last weeks we heard about two spectacular results in number theory. As announced in Nature, Yitang Zhang proved that there are infinitely many pairs of consecutive primes which are at most 70 million apart! This is a sensational achievement. … Continue reading
Combinatorics and more 