Correcting our errors about errors

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek explores the secrets of the cosmos. Read previous columns here.

In the days when top-of-the-line computers contained rooms full of vacuum tubes, their designers had to keep the tubes’ limitations carefully in mind. They were prone to degrade over time, or suddenly fail altogether. Partly inspired by this problem, John von Neumann and others launched a new field of investigation, epitomized by von Neumann’s 1956 paper “Probabilistic Logics and the Synthesis of Reliable Organisms from Unreliable Parts.” In it, he wrote, “Our present treatment of error is unsatisfactory and ad hoc. It is the author’s conviction, voiced over many years, that error should be treated by thermodynamical methods.” He added, “The present treatment falls far short of achieving this.”

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