"Turing"

[fiefoe]

Mr. Christos H. Papadimitriou wrote the textbook used in my Theory of Computation class, so I'm experiencing not inconsiderable cognitive dissonance reading a novel by the same author in which lovers exchange fateful gazes:

• their faces, their eyes squeezing her neurons, never letting go.
• The same paternal eroticism flows from Alexandros's eyes to Ethel's eyes, spine, pelvis. {ewww.}
  
• Without asking her, without discussing it, as if he were following, hypnotized, the steps of an ancient ritual, he picks up his suitcase from his hotel and brings it to her room.
  

Computational terms are a much more welcome sight, though lines like 'Not a plan, really. No subgoals, no algorithm. A fantasy.' still read a bit off.

• "All my important men have left me," Ethel thinks. Not a tragic, self-pitying statement, just a circular construction:... a statement is not only a declaration of fact, but also a definition of its own terms. "Good guys die young." "Fit organisms survive.
• ... Lady Lovelace had designed and all but built their engines;... And thus the quest for truth entered, a little more than a century ago, its fatal collision course with computation. Come to think of it, our story now assumes the structure of an ancient Greek tragedy:
• The infinity of the real numbers is stronger than that of the integers. For Cantor this had implications that went well beyond maths, ramifications that were deep, cosmic, mystical. It meant that there are many strata of infinity-of deity- and Man had theretofore known only the lowliest, the whole numbers.
• Man's quest for the truth is about to be deeply transformed by computation. It will emerge from this momentous encounter as if middle-aged: Mature, wise, effective-but gone forever are the idealistic dreams and enthusiasm of youth, the sweet illusion of omnipotence.