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Mind over Computer 17

In 1935, Turing was made a Fellow
of King’s College, Cambridge, and became
interested in whether mathematical
proofs could be found automatically.
He wanted to know whether solving a
mathematical puzzle was simply a matter
of working through all the possibilities in a
methodical manner, or whether something
more subtle was required. Although chess
is a fantastically complex game, it is finite,
a big enough, fast enough computer can
play the perfect game. Is this the case
with discovering knowledge? Could a big
enough, fast enough computer calculate all
the knowledge in the Universe? Is Douglas
Adams’ fabled computer Deep Thought a
possibility, able to calculate the answer to
the ultimate question of ‘life, the Universe
and everything’, albeit with a more
enlightening answer than 42?

Model of the Antikythera Mechanism

Turing boiled down the process
of pencil and paper computation to a
systematic program – a computer program.
He proposed a thought experiment where he would run every possible
program and see if such a procedure would yield the solution to every
imaginable mathematical problem. He was able to show this would lead
to a paradox and concluded the universal problem solver could not exist.
His discovery is one of the most important of the 20th century – in the
same league as relativity and quantum mechanics – and I will use it as
my main tool in trying to explain the difference between brains and
computers.

Although Turing’s original paper was not intended as a blueprint
for a practical device, he was one of those rare mathematicians who also
liked to tinker with real world machines. The outbreak of the Second
World War made the practical application of his work very important,
and in Chapter 8 I will relate some of the code breaking stories that were
to make him famous and caused Churchill to credit him with shortening
the war by two years.

Calling Turing’s work an ‘invention’ is probably the wrong term;
‘discovery’ might be more appropriate. Whatever you call it, people
immediately equated human brains with computers. This is not new.

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