Indiscrete thoughts
by Gian-Carlo Rota · first published 1997
57% recommend43% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Irreverent, anecdotal essays on mathematical culture and personalities, including Princeton's Fine Hall and Ulam's arguments on AI. Suits readers who enjoy math history and lively storytelling over technical content.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I liked Ulam's Adventures of a Mathematician. William Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma is only partly a biography of von Neumann, still a good book. Gian-Carlo Rota's Indiscrete Thoughts is a mash of bits and pieces, largely about mathematical culture and personalities. I thought it was an interesting read. What I would really like would be a serious tome on Claude Shannon, he plays…
on “‘The Fractalist,’ Benoit B. Mandelbrot’s Math Memoir” ↗"Indiscrete Thoughts" by Gian-Carlo Rota (https://archive.org/details/indiscretethough0000rota).
on “Ask HN: Which autobiographies would you recommend and why?” ↗Indiscrete Thoughts by Gian-Carlo Rota is full of this sort of thing [1]. In fact he made me see mathematics as a unique domain that escapes both empiricism and rationalism. It's real and out there to be discovered timelessly…
on “The Forgotten Revolution” ↗…from now, people will be able to articulate similar reasons with respect to the problem of strong AI. A personal favorite in terms of arguments are those of Stanislaw Ulam, as presented in Chapter 4 of "Indiscrete Thoughts" by Gian-Carlo Rota. In the meantime, there are side benefits to be had from the pursuit of the ``strong AI challenge''; in a similar manner to the great progress in chemistry thanks to the problem of…
on “Navigating the coming A.I. hypestorm” ↗Fiction: Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7 Alexander Dewdney, The Planiverse Joseph Heller, God Knows Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams Non-fiction: Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image Michael E. Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads Michael Harris, The Atomic Times I may add guilty pleasures like the…
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗…entertaining, at times nostalgic. * "The Cauchy-Schwarz Master Class" by J.M.Steele. A guided tour of mathematical inequalities. Very entertaining and readable (for a math book) and extremely well written. * "Indiscrete Thoughts" by G-C.Rota. Irreverent anecdotes about mathematicians. * "Black Swan" by N.N.Taleb. Maybe overhyped and at times annoying and pompous, but extremely insightful nevertheless.
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗Though I cannot speak from experience, I recall reading similar reflections by G.C. Rota in his marvelous Indiscrete Thoughts (p. 203): My late friend Stan Ulam used to remark that his life was sharply divided into two halves. In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group; in the second half, he was always…
on “Surviving Your 40s” ↗…always a good read. I enjoyed his book of essays (with Jacob Schwartz and Mark Kac) "Discrete Thoughts" http://books.google.com/books?id=5waLQ06J9VwC&pg=PA1&... and I see he has another called "Indiscrete Thoughts".
on “Lessons I wish I had been Taught” ↗He was the author of Indiscrete Thoughts[1], a great book on Mathematics. [1] Review here: http://www.maa.org/publications/maa-reviews/indiscrete-thoug...
on “Ten lessons I wish I had learned before teaching differential equations (1997) [pdf]” ↗"Indiscrete Thoughts" is terrific, and there is a lot of gold in its pages. Of possible interest to those who work in artificial intelligence/machine learning is Chapter IV "The Barrier of Meaning", where Rota records Stanislaw…
on “Robert Langlands, Mathematical Visionary, Wins the Abel Prize” ↗Rota is sort of the RP Feynman of mathematics; his "Indiscrete Thoughts" was probably the best thing I read in 2019; I recommend it to anyone who enjoys two fisted tales of applied math.
on “Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]” ↗Would love to hear more about this. Indiscrete Thoughts is one of my favorite books.
on “Einstein went to his office just so he could walk home with Gödel” ↗…just the part about Church but the entire webpage, namely "Fine Hall in its golden age: Remembrances of Princeton in the early fifties") is, as the asterisked footnote alludes to, a chapter of his book Indiscrete Thoughts. The whole book is great reading.
on “Alonzo Church: Architect of computer intelligence” ↗…result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius!" - Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts
on “Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours” ↗…important in many fields of math - but its proof will be lost to collective memory. I'm not sure, but I think that state of affairs might be without precedent. (Here's a quote from Gian-Carlo Rota's _Indiscrete Thoughts_ on forgotten and rediscovered math: "The history of mathematics is replete with injustice. There is a tendency to exhibit toward the past a forgetful, oversimplifying, hero-worshiping attitude that…
on “Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time?” ↗