Hi folks, Here is an interesting interview of Scott Aaronson on philosophy, science, math and research. The interview ends with the following excerpt which caught my eye.
Regards, Ifti http://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/ Q: <snip> Which object-level thinking tactics, at roughly this level of specificity, do you use in your own theoretical (especially *philosophical*) research? Are there tactics you suspect might be helpful, which you haven’t yet used much yourself? Scot: <snip> Finally, you ask about tactics that I suspect might be helpful, but that I haven’t used much myself. One that springs to mind is to really master a tool like Mathematica, MATLAB, Maple, or Magma — that is, to learn it so well that I can code as fast as I think, and just let it take over all the routine / calculational / example-checking parts of my work. As it is, I use pretty much the same antiquated tools that I learned as an adolescent, and I rely on students whenever there’s a need for better tools. A large part of the problem is that, as a “tenured old geezer,” I no longer have the time or patience to learn new tools just for the sake of learning them: I’m always itching just to solve the problem at hand with whatever tools I know. (The same issue has kept me from learning new mathematical tools, like representation theory, even when I can clearly see that they’d benefit me.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
