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what's wrong with reductionism? | 456 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
what's wrong with reductionism?
Authored by: danielpf on Thursday, November 29 2012 @ 03:07 PM EST
Reductionism is a wrong attitude when trying to describe complex things. A
human is not merely a bag of atoms, because this bag of atoms is also organized
in a very special way. Saying all software is in the end bit flipping is
correct, but does not capture the diversity and complexity of softwares that can
be produced either by humans or machines.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

what's wrong with reductionism?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 29 2012 @ 03:11 PM EST
The problem is you could just as easily argue that all mechanical inventions are
math as well, since they act only in accordance with mechanical laws which can
be expressed as math. So this line of argumentation is not very useful since it
does not lead to any basis for deciding which kinds of patents should be allowed
versus those which should not.

Show me the invention that is not math.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

What's a material object?
Authored by: Wol on Thursday, November 29 2012 @ 06:05 PM EST
Not everything is made of atoms. For example, an electric current is not made of
atoms.

Being pedantic, I could claim that salt (common table salt) is not made of
atoms! :-) A sodium ion isn't actually an atom. Nor is a chloride ion :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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