[rtens]

I remember a draft of the manifesto that had indeed way more classifiers in it. I guess removing almost all of them for better readability was maybe not the best idea.

DecoPerson and noxToken are right about this being a general statement about computing and not present day technology. Whether or not the human brain can be completely simulated by a machine is still an unanswered question but nothing I came across so far convinced me that it's not possible.

While it's true that not all mathematical problems can be solved algorithmically, that doesn't limit at all the kind of things a computer can simulate. Most physical phenomena don't have a mathematically precise answer and approximations are usually good enough. I hope I understood you correctly there.

If you say "computers can't correctly model everything" then I probably disagree with your definition of a "model". In my understanding of the word the concept of correctness doesn't even make sense. I'm convinced that models should be first and foremost be judged by their "usefulness".

To make this discussion more concrete, it would be very helpful if you could provide an example of something that cannot be modeled with a computer.

[BuuQu9hu]

Sure! Most real numbers are uncomputable, for starters. "approximations are usually good enough" is a smoke screen that assumes that it's always possible to make approximations and iteratively improve their accuracy, something which generally is only true for computable numbers!

Another example, something I've been studying recently, is the phenomenon of patterns. Patterns are very abstract, and it's not at all clear how a computer can model a pattern without resorting to some concrete instantiation of it. At best, we have blueprints, models, code, designs, and instances; these are all themselves occurrences of patterns, but they fail to embody the pattern itself.

While I've got your attention, "Cryptography also enables a high level of security." is a ridiculous line. Cryptography, by itself, is only a building block. Security is structural. Check out object capabilities: http://srl.cs.jhu.edu/pubs/SRL2003-02.pdf

Edit: Scott Aaronson discusses limits of quantum computation in this talk: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2903 Basically it is totally possible that minds cannot be simulated by computers without destroying the mind in question!

[rtens]

I must admit that I have only very limited understanding of numeric and cryptography. But I do find these very interesting discussion points.

The uncomputable real numbers are the irrational ones, no? But those you can compute to an arbitrary precision. It's just for most applications, you don't need much precision. But again, I've not done very much simulation so I might miss something.

Patterns are something I haven't thought about in this context. I'm not entirely sure what kind of patterns you're talking about. I'm guessing software patterns. I was thinking about abstract patterns and had to think of Deep Mind and how it learned to play Go by recognizing patterns.

I stay with my statement about security. I never said that it's sufficient. But necessary. I think a cryptography-enabled capability-based security model could be very interesting.

Will definitely read Aaronson's talk. That's a very interesting subject.

[inimino]

Simplify your message. What is the core, key idea of what you want to do? If you can't explain it in a sentence, keep trying.

[rtens]

I want to "increase the number of people who are able to write, modify, combine and share software by building a tool that makes writing software easy and fun, and accessible to everyone." I even have a slogan. I call it "Enabling Software Literacy"

That said, I'm highly skeptical towards the "good ideas can be stated in a sentence" heuristic.

[inimino]

If you want anybody to listen, you're going to have to keep repeating it.

It's a good start. I can support software literacy. Now you need to state your plan to get there just as concisely. Probably not as easy.

[cr0sh]

> Whether or not the human brain can be completely simulated by a machine is still an unanswered question but nothing I came across so far convinced me that it's not possible.

If you haven't read this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

...you probably should.

It may or may not change your mind, but it will bring up some interesting concepts and other meanderings that will keep you thinking about things.

Let me put it this way: Before I read it, your words above echoed my ideas. Interestingly, they still do. That said, after I read the book, there are certain nagging issues deep in the recesses of mathematics where few have dared to delve that raise interesting questions...

[rtens]

That's one of my all-time favourite books so if I hadn't read it I'd be eternally thankful to you for pointing me to it =) It definitely blew my mind.

It didn't make me feel that mathematics is somehow limited though. As far as I understand Gödels theorem, all he says is that there is no such thing as a contradiction-free system of axioms a la Principia Mathematica.

But that's fine with me. I keep tons of contradicting believes in my head all the time. And I'm actually not that interested in simulating an entire brain (although that would be very exciting) but the thing I really care about is the ability to express a part of my mind that I care about in software, sort of like expert systems do. And as a software developer, that's exactly what I do everyday with the minds of my clients. That's also the main idea behind DDD in my opinion.

This topic deserves an essay. If I manage to wrap my head around it, I'll publish something on my blog this week.