Motivation and Course Overview
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
- Edsger Dijkstra
What is a computer? Can computers think? This discussion- and reading-based course will consider those fundamental questions and more, spanning information theory, NP-completeness, the work of Turing and many others, AI ethics, and how language, biology, and the physical world compute. Throughout the course, we will also dialogue our experiences fitting into today’s computer science culture, and how we can all do better. We hope to expand both engineers’ and English majors’ understanding of computation and philosophy.
Our syllabus includes three clusters. Brief overviews and a selection of readings:
● The foundations of computation
What are the limits of computation, philosophical and technical? Information theory, Church-Turing computability, P vs. NP.
Readings include The Information , selections of Logicomix by Papadimitriou (Berkeley EECS).
● The poetics, biology, and physics of computing
Philosophy of language, semantics, programming poetry, digital physics,
thermodynamics and information theory, memory systems in nature, evolution of
computational systems.
Readings include selections from Berkeley Professors such as Kaiping Peng
(Psychology), Terrence Deacon (Anthropology), and Jerome Feldman (EECS/Cog
Sci).
● Artificial Intelligence, ethics, free will
We address the question posed by Lovelace and Turing all those years ago: Can machines think? Moreover, how should we develop moral AI?
Readings include Douglas Hofstadter and Stuart Russell (Berkeley EECS).
We encourage all majors and experience levels to join. All you need to bring is genuine engagement with the reading and your classmates—thoughtfulness in your words, openness toward others, and a willingness to fully participate. We believe that this interdisciplinary engagement around the philosophy of computation will not only provide major motivation for many more people to study computer science, but also make the department more welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, and areas of focus.
Assignments and Final Project
This is a reading-intensive course; over the course of the semester, you will read no less than 500 pages, mostly fairly accessible journalism-style writing and a few research papers. To pass and get the most out of the course, the weekly readings and written responses should be completed to the best of your ability. You will get 100% on your assignments as long as you show a genuine engagement with the topic. Attendance and participation in class discussions is also integral to your grade and enjoyment.
For the final project and presentation, for which you can either (1) write a collection of poems about computer science, or (2) a program that writes poetry, or (3) a 1000-2000 word essay or philosophical dialogue about a question such as, “If a self-driving car has to kill this person or that person, who should it kill, and how should it make the decision?” “Are humans universal Turing machines?”
See the Syllabus for more information on course policies.
Sign up link: https://goo.gl/forms/2HAUQT7Ln6QuPa292
Please feel free to email us at pocabdecal@gmail.com with any questions.
No day(s) left until application deadline!
Section | Facilitator | Size | Location | Time | Starts | Status | CCN(LD) | CCN(UD) |
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Section | Jongmin Jerome Baek, Dawnia Brody | __ | 230-C Stephens Hall | [M] 5:00PM-7:00PM | 09/11/2017 | Open | -- | -- |
Name | Download Link | ||
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POCAB DeCal Syllabus | Download |