Category: Philosophy

• Please Stop Writing so Much Code

Everywhere I’ve worked, there’s a hidden (and sometimes not-so-hidden) expectation that code constantly get pushed out. Code not being pushed is a red flag. Make sure you take no longer than a week for a Jira ticket or a Github issue. Have you been taking longer than a week? Expect to get pinged on Slack: […]

• Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem for Programmers

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have been hailed as “the greatest mathematical discoveries of the 20th century” — indeed, the theorems apply not only to mathematics, but all formal systems and have deep implications for science, logic, computer science, philosophy, and so on. In this post, I’ll give a simple but rigorous sketch of Gödel’s First Incompleteness […]

• Scalia: Dead Wrong on Capital Punishment

In this essay, I’d like to tackle an argument made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in an article published in First Things. I’ve always enjoyed reading Scalia’s SCOTUS opinions (and have been reading them for close to a decade now) and have been fascinated by how he was, on one hand, a staunch Catholic, […]

• Confusing Math with Morality

This essay is in response to Counterintuitive problem: Everyone in a room keeps giving dollars to random others. You’ll never guess what happens next. Dan Goldstein attributes the problem to Uri Wilensky, of Northwestern, who formulates it thusly: Imagine a room full of 100 people with 100 dollars each. With every tick of the clock, […]

• How to prove there is no Universe

Years ago, when I first read Paul Halmos’ seminal Naive Set Theory, I was blown away by how easy it was to prove that there is no universe. In fact, not even three sections in, he drops this italicized bombshell: $$nothing\text{ }contains\text{ }everything$$ or, “more spectacularly,” he continues $$there\text{ }is\text{ }no\text{ }universe$$ Luckily, we only […]