Review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (2007) (review revised 2019)

Latest Sermon from the Church of Fundamentalist Naturalism by Pastor Hofstadter. Like his much more famous (or infamous for its relentless philosophical errors) work Godel, Escher, Bach, it has a superficial plausibility but if one understands that this is rampant scientism which mixes real scientific issues with philosophical ones (i.e., the only real issues are what language games we ought to play) then almost all its interest disappears. I provide a framework for analysis based in evolutionary psychology and the work of Wittgenstein (since updated in my more recent writings). Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

G\"odel's undecidability theorems and the search for a theory of everything

I investigate the question whether G\"odel's undecidability theorems play a crucial role in the search for a unified theory of physics. I conclude that unless the structure of space-time is fundamentally discrete we can never decide whether a given theory is the final one or not. This is relevant for both canonical quantum gravity and string theory.Comment: 17 pages, prize winning essay awarded by the Kurt G\"odel Circle of Friends Berli

Deep Learning: Our Miraculous Year 1990-1991

In 2020, we will celebrate that many of the basic ideas behind the deep learning revolution were published three decades ago within fewer than 12 months in our "Annus Mirabilis" or "Miraculous Year" 1990-1991 at TU Munich. Back then, few people were interested, but a quarter century later, neural networks based on these ideas were on over 3 billion devices such as smartphones, and used many billions of times per day, consuming a significant fraction of the world's compute.Comment: 37 pages, 188 references, based on work of 4 Oct 201

John Templeton Foundation: Capabilities Report

This annual report, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the foundation, includes letters from its leaders, a history of the foundation, details of current grantmaking and other activities, financial statements, and lists of trustees

Representation and Reality by Language: How to make a home quantum computer?

A set theory model of reality, representation and language based on the relation of completeness and incompleteness is explored. The problem of completeness of mathematics is linked to its counterpart in quantum mechanics. That model includes two Peano arithmetics or Turing machines independent of each other. The complex Hilbert space underlying quantum mechanics as the base of its mathematical formalism is interpreted as a generalization of Peano arithmetic: It is a doubled infinite set of doubled Peano arithmetics having a remarkable symmetry to the axiom of choice. The quantity of information is interpreted as the number of elementary choices (bits). Quantum information is seen as the generalization of information to infinite sets or series. The equivalence of that model to a quantum computer is demonstrated. The condition for the Turing machines to be independent of each other is reduced to the state of Nash equilibrium between them. Two relative models of language as game in the sense of game theory and as ontology of metaphors (all mappings, which are not one-to-one, i.e. not representations of reality in a formal sense) are deduced

The Un(solv)able Problem

After a years-long intellectual journey, three mathematicians have discovered that a problem of central importance in physics is impossible to solve—and that means other big questions may be undecidable, too. In Brief: Kurt Gödel famously discovered in the 1930s that some statements are impossible to prove true or false—they will always be “undecidable.” Mathematicians recently set out to discover whether a certain fundamental problem in quantum physics—the so-called spectral gap question—falls into this category. The spectral gap refers to the energy difference between the lowest energy state a material can occupy and the next state up. After three years of blackboard brainstorming, midnight calculating and much theorizing over coffee, the mathematicians produced a 146-page proof that the spectral gap problem is, in fact, undecidable. The result raises the possibility that other important questions may likewise be unanswerable