Philosophy

A recent discussion with a friend, Ramya, on the topic of Computational Creativity got me thinking. For sure my views will change in the course of time, but at least I would have penned down - and safely stored - my initial views that I may come back in a month or so and chuckle at my naivety. A nice question that Ramya asked was not the standard “Could computer programs even be capable of creativity?” (which is IMHO a completely philosophical discussion and I side an author a work I read - it entirely depends on how you define creativity), but rather, “Why would you want ‘creative’ programs in the first place?”. Computer programs that detect or comprehend things that humans can do (like how programs can detect handwriting, or pictures, etc.) are immensely useful to us, it helps simplify a lot of routine work. ...

Introduction For quite a while I’ve wanted to share my trials, tribulations, and final wonder for programming, and how it’s opened a plethora of insights into how I perceive the world to work. You might question the utter T-ness of such a discussion, and indeed I’ve been known to overdo many a topic. I’m probably doing the same for this one, but I can’t really help my romantic view of the world. I apologise before hand for the length and absolute abstract-ness of much of this discussion. I hope to have made it easier to digest by creating subsections, so you can skim through more easily. ...