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Donald Knuth is one of the greatest and most impactful computer scientists and mathematicians ever. He is the recipient in 1974 of the Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize of computing. He is the author of the multi-volume work, the magnum opus, The Art of Computer Programming. He made several key contributions to the rigorous analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms. He popularized asymptotic notation, that we all affectionately know as the big-O notation. He also created the TeX typesetting which most computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and scientists and engineers use to write technical papers and make them look beautiful.

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You did mention that you thought that understanding of the way ant colonies are able to perform incredibly organized tasks might well be the key to understanding human cognition.

So these fundamentally distributed systems.

So what do you think is the difference between the way Don Knuth would sort a list and an ant colony would sort a list or perform an algorithm?

Sorting a list isn't the same as cognition though, but I know what you're getting at.

Well, the advantage of ant cognitive is at least we can see what they're doing.

We know which ant has talked to which other ant, and it's much harder with the brains to know to what extent neurons are passing signal.

So I'm just saying that ant colony might be a, you know, if they have the secret of cognition, Think of an ant colony as a cognitive single being, rather than as a colony of lots of different ants.

I mean, just like the cells of our brain are, and the microbiome and all that is interacting entities, but somehow I consider myself to be a single person.

Well, you know, an ant colony, you can say, might be cognitive somehow.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I smash a certain ant and the organism says, that stung, what was that?

But if we're going to crack the secret of cognition, it might be that we could do so by psyching out how ants do it, because we have a better chance to measure the communicating by pheromones and by touching each other and sight, but not by much more subtle phenomenon like electric currents going through.

But even a simpler version of that, what are your thoughts of maybe Conway's Game of Life?

Okay, so Conway's Game of Life is able to simulate any computable process.

I mean, that's not its most powerful thing, I would say.

I mean, It can simulate it, but the magic is that the individual units are distributed and extremely simple.

Yes, we understand exactly what the primitives are.

The primitives, just like with the ant colony, even simpler

But still, it doesn't say that I understand life.

It gives me a better insight into what does it mean to have a deterministic universe?

What does it mean to have free choice, for example?

Yes, I don't see any reason why God should be forbidden from using the most efficient ways to, I mean, we know that dice are extremely important and inefficient algorithms.

There are things that couldn't be done well without randomness.

And so I don't see any reason why God should

When the algorithm requires it, you don't see why the physics should constrain it.


Speaker 0: You did mention that you thought that understanding of the way ant colonies are able to perform incredibly organized tasks might well be the key to understanding human cognition. So these fundamentally distributed systems. So what do you think is the difference between the way Don Knuth would sort a list and an ant colony would sort a list or perform an algorithm?

Speaker 1: Sorting a list isn't the same as cognition though, but I know what you're getting at. Well, the advantage of ant cognitive is at least we can see what they're doing. We know which ant has talked to which other ant, and it's much harder with the brains to know to what extent neurons are passing signal. So I'm just saying that ant colony might be a, you know, if they have the secret of cognition, Think of an ant colony as a cognitive single being, rather than as a colony of lots of different ants. I mean, just like the cells of our brain are, and the microbiome and all that is interacting entities, but somehow I consider myself to be a single person.

Well, you know, an ant colony, you can say, might be cognitive somehow. Yeah, I mean, you know, I smash a certain ant and the organism says, that stung, what was that? Right. But if we're going to crack the secret of cognition, it might be that we could do so by psyching out how ants do it, because we have a better chance to measure the communicating by pheromones and by touching each other and sight, but not by much more subtle phenomenon like electric currents going through.

Speaker 0: But even a simpler version of that, what are your thoughts of maybe Conway's Game of Life?

Speaker 1: Okay, so Conway's Game of Life is able to simulate any computable process. And any deterministic process is.

Speaker 0: I like how you went there. I mean, that's not its most powerful thing, I would say. I mean, It can simulate it, but the magic is that the individual units are distributed and extremely simple.

Speaker 1: Yes, we understand exactly what the primitives are.

Speaker 0: The primitives, just like with the ant colony, even simpler

Speaker 1: though. But still, it doesn't say that I understand life. I mean, I understand. It gives me a better insight into what does it mean to have a deterministic universe? What does it mean to have free choice, for example?

Speaker 0: Do you think God plays dice?

Speaker 1: Yes, I don't see any reason why God should be forbidden from using the most efficient ways to, I mean, we know that dice are extremely important and inefficient algorithms. There are things that couldn't be done well without randomness. And so I don't see any reason why God should

Speaker 0: be prohibited. When the algorithm requires it, you don't see why the physics should constrain it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You

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Donald Knuth: Ant Colonies and Human Cognition | AI Podcast Clips