Last week I was studying outside of a lecture hall where someone was teaching an introductory course on computer programming. There was a lot that I overheard that I disagreed with; this essay is an attempt to help me crystallize what exactly I disagreed with.
Mathematics describes truths. In this, it is almost unique. If I have a theorem, what it says is unconditionally true! Of course, we might be in error, .
Conclusion (~1,700 words).
All backed up by over 200 references (~6,500 words).
We must stop crediting the wrong people for inventions made by others.
Instead let s heed the recent call in the journal
Nature: Let 2020 be the year in which we value those who ensure that
science is self-correcting [SV20].
Like those who know me can testify, finding and citing original sources of scientific and technological innovations is important to me, whether they are mine or other people s [DL1][DL2][HIN][NASC1-9]. The present page is offered as a resource for computer scientists who share this inclination.
By grounding research in its true intellectual foundations and crediting the original inventors,
needs philosophers.
This thought has been nagging at me for a year now, and recently it s been growing like a tumor. One that plenty of folks on the net would love to see kill me.
People don t put much stock in philosophers these days. The popular impression of philosophy is that it s just rhetoric, just frivolous debating about stuff that can never properly be answered. Spare me the philosophy; let s stick to the facts!
The funny thing is, it s philosophers who gave us the ability to think rationally, to stick to the facts. If it weren t for the work of countless philosophers,