Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Lisp history: IF, etc. Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 18:18:09 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 14 Message-ID: References: <86cyr6pb2l.fsf@williamsburg.bawden.org> <875xwy412p.fsf@nightsong.com> <868r1up0wk.fsf@williamsburg.bawden.org> <871q7m3wrj.fsf@nightsong.com> <86zfu9ooux.fsf@williamsburg.bawden.org> <87frw03b4j.fsf@nightsong.com> <877chbfs00.fsf@yaxenu.org> <87r0f61jkb.fsf@nightsong.com> <87il0iynlu.fsf@nightsong.com> <87edb5yxn5.fsf@nightsong.com> <87a5lszqvp.fsf@nightsong.com> <875xwgzal9.fsf@nightsong.com> <87pluondm6.fsf@bsb.me.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:20:55 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="0ab5125231e1e59b5eaf5d8b47afede1"; logging-data="1935703"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18ma3BDq9rt5QL2moIecsiKzxmGjL+nSYE=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:6yJ+GV3wLEsdHyknLOXUtIfyhpo= sha1:namcRGLW5wqzVqW9bp9IzKwx2pI= Bytes: 2207 > Mathematicians seem to be scared of paradoxes. But if you realize that > they are just equivalent to endless loops in a computation, which is > something we deal with all the time in Comp Sci, then they are no longer > so scary. The problem is that mathematicians don't run their proofs, so such an inf-loop trips them up into thinking that everything is true. It's also a problem for computers when we don't want to run our proofs either (e.g. when we don't want to wait for that proof that the index is within bounds to finish before we access the array?). Stefan