Steve Meyer's Research Web Page
Email: smeyer@tdl.com

If you are interested in Tachyon Design Automation's CVC Verilog HDL compiler, visit www.tachyon-da.com. CVC is now open source dual licensed software. You can download it by clicking on the web page's download button and use it for free for electronic design.

Extended abstract "Need for Pluralism in Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics" submitted to &HPS10 Conference. Conference abstract size limit and inability to include a list of references probably caused the paper to be misunderstood. Here is the full extended abstract with references.

Slides from my HOPOS 2024 talk "John von Neumann First Post Hilbert Philosopher of Computation". Also a list of refernces including background references. The submitted abstract is available in the HOPOS 2024 book of abstracts. I hope some logician will translate the 1968 Paul Finsler proof of the continuum hypothesis into English.

Extended abstract submitted to the 2024 International Assoiation for Computing and Philosophy conference (IACAP). It updates my paper falsifying AI from 2019 and updates a prelimary version submitted to the 2023 conference. This year's extneded abstracts allowed fewer words maybe to allow feeding them to LLMs. Not mentioned is that for algorithm people, LLMs and structural picture algorithms from computational geometry are almost the same. I hope you will read the original paper uploaded to the arXiv site (arXiv:1704.08111v3 [cs.AI]) and original Lighthill report.

Extended abstract submitted to the 2024 Feyerabend in Vienna Conference. Most interesting part of this abstract is the references.

Extended abstract that is being presented at the 2024 HOPOS Conference in Vienna. This version was not accepted by the 2023 EPSA conference. A HOPOS oriented variant with title "John von Neumann First Post Hilbert Philosopher of Computation" will be presented.

Slides from my 2023 International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology Conference (CLMPST) presentation on computational hardness and weakness of Turing machines. Criticism of the Cobham-Edmonds thesis.

Slides from 2022 Imre Lakatos Centenary Conference on Polya Influence on Laktos philosophy of Mathematics

  • George Polya's Contribution to Lakatos Philosophy of Mathematics

  • George Polya's Contribution Extended Abstract

    • Presentation from the Nov 2-4 2022 Imre Lakatos Centenary Conference. Paper was motivated by correspondence in the John Watkins Archive. Letters from Watkins to George Polya asking about his contribution to Lakatos "Proofs and Reutations" book and quasi-empirical philosophy of mathematics research programme. Slides also contain images and text of correspondence between Polya and Lakatos from 1958 to 1964 and a letter from Paul Feyerabend on philosophy of physics that Lakatos and John Musgrave helped with. Argument is that Lakatos quasi-emprirical research programme (Polya called it heuristics) is the best modern philosophy of mathematics. Added the submitted extended abstract. Also, added a reference to William Shockley's "Try Simplest Cases" paper on hidden momentum. "Try Simplest Cases" was an important topic at the conference. Shockley Paper started a recent controversy with some physicists still claiming hidden momentum violates conservation of momentum.

Slides from NEPLS 2022 Argument for Complex Languages and Compilers talk

  • Argument for Complex Languages and Compilers

    • Talk to the New England Programming Language Society (NEPLS) 2022 meeting. Idea is that when application programming speed is important, the fastest computation needs to have a special purpose language defined and a problem specific flow graph compiler developed that utilizes modern CPU multi-issue and pipelining capability.

Slides from IACAP 2019 falsification of AI presentation

Slides plus list of references from my Eurocrypt 2019 rump session talk

Slides from my Eurocrypt 2017 Rump session talk

  • Quantum computers are a delusion - Feynman's joke

    • My best argument yet showing that quantum computers can not exist. I added a item on Feyerabend and Bell's inequality because cryptographers were not aware of Bell inequality as proof of entanglement.

Slides from CLMPS 2015 Philosophy of Physics Presentation

  • Popper School Methodological Disproof of Quantum Logic

    • Slides from my Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Conference presentation session C2.7. Abstract is available on the conference web site, but as is described in these slides, talk changed. I need more time to prepare the list of references I agreed to also post here.

Eurocrypt 2015 Rump Session Talk on William Tutte's Enigma Colussus Method

  • Tutte's Colossus Method Beginning of Modern Computation

    • Slides from my Eurocrypt 2015 Rump session talk. I tried to show that William Tutte and the later Bletchley Park Enigma project that used Tutte's algorithms programmed on Colossus deserve more credit instead of Alan Turing and his logic substitution method. I ran out of time and was worried that the Rump chair's may have innovated some new unpleasant talk termination method so I was not able to explain the problem with P=NP. I think Hartmanis' PRAM (parallel random access memory) model where P == NP is a better theoretical model for modern Von Neumann style computation. I realized during the talk that my comparison of Tutte and Turing is the same as Peter Naur's criticism of Turing 1937 work. Namely, CS should be applied not formal mathematics.

IACAP (Computing and Philosophy) 2014 Conference Abstract and Slides

  • Two Computer Sciences: a Branch of Physics and Naur's Dataology

  • Slides from Conference Presentation

    • Paper presented at the 2014 International Association of Computing and Philosophy Association conference. The abstract has the references discussed in the talk added. Paper argues that computer science should be studied as Naur's dataology and the physics of computation instead of as engineering study of the computer as a tool. Talk concentrates on computation and calculation (historical too) part of CS.

IACAP (Computing and Philosophy) 2013 Conference Paper and Slides

  • Adding Methodological Testing to Naur's Anti-formalism

  • Slides from Conference Presentation with New Einstein and Feynman Quotes

    • Paper presented at the 2013 International Association of Computing and Philosophy Conference. Paper discusses Peter Naur's very interesting philosophy of computing (he calls it dataology). Naur is an important founder of computing winner of the 2005 Turing Prize. An earlier version of this paper is available on ArXiv archive (arXiv:1208:3739v1 [cs.OH]). New version here has some additional material on the newly discovered Bohm response to Feyerabend's review of his book. The new material ties Naur to the physics natural philosophy tradition. My talk adds more quotations from Einstein and Feynman.

DPG Spring 2013 Working Group on Philosophy of Physics Presentation Slides

  • Methodological Testing of Fast Quantum Computers as Illusions Slides

    • Slides from my presentation at the Deutsche Phsyikalischen Gesellshaft (DPG) spring meeting in Jena, Germany. I argued that quantum computers are an illusion to a meeting of the DPG Philosophy of Physics Working Group (AGPhil) symposium. I spoke in English and to mostly physicists who were not familiar with Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn philosophy of science and not familiar with the concepts from computational complexity theory. These slides give some background and references for things that I covered too quickly in my talk.

Feyerabend 2012 Conference Abstract and Presentation Slides

  • Feyerabend contribution to modern computational microphysics

  • Slides from my Presentation

    • During my presentation of Feyerabend's contribution to micro physics in the late 1960s talk at the Feyerabend 2012 conference in Berlin, I did not have time to show all my prepared slides and also included references not used in my conference abstract. I have included links to both the slides as a 28 page pdf file and the abstract here. The slides still have some typos that are not fixed because I wanted to get the slides up as quickly as possible. The abstract is also available in the contributed paper section of the Program and Schedule. Here is the link to the Feyerabend2012 conference.

Paper submitted to 2011 European Philosophy of Science Association Conference on Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn defense of Vienna Circle Unifed Science

  • Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn as Cooperating Defenders of Vienna Circle Unified Science

    • Paper argues these mid 20th century philosophers of science consciously worked together to support the Vienna Circle theory of unified science and to oppose the politicization of philosophy which they were already seeing. The recent 2008 Adam Curtis BBC documentary "The Trap" expresses a modern form of the LFK research programme - see especially episode 3's discussion of the idea that Adam's Smith's "invisible hand of the market" is an illusion - it does not exist.

ECAP-2010 Extended Abstract and Slides from Presentation

  • Empirical and Scientific Theories of Computation

  • Slides from the Talk

    • Extended Abstract and slides from paper presented at the 2010 European Conference on Computing and Philosophy. Conference took place October 4-7 2010 at the Technische Universitaet Munchen in Garching. Paper was just presented so the abstract and slides are still unedited. Paper discusses various Antinomies (Finsler's term for paradoxes and anomalies) in theoretical computer science. It defends Paul Finsler's alternative and more general but not accepted in the 1920s theory of mathematical foundations. Various antinomies from current theoretical computer science are discussed. Paper offers a sceptical view toward AI and explains how current formalist methods have become dominant in CS without any debate.

Recent Unpublished Book Review Defending Feyerabend

Two Extended Abstracts from 2008 defending Vienna Circle Knowledge

Slides from Eurocrypt-2009 Rump Session Talk

  • Maybe Non Number Theory Cryptography is Worth Trying

    • The pdf file contains the slides from my 2009 Eurocrypt rump session talk. I have been thinking that maybe there is something wrong with our current conception of infinity. The mid 20th Century Swiss mathematician Paul Finslser definitely thought so. The missing Finsler reference not given in the slides is Finsler, P. (Translated with introductory comments by Booth, D. and Ziegler, R.) "Finsler Set Theory: Platonism and Circularity." The following statement by Finsler started my thinking: "Every inconsistency in pure mathematics or in logic imperils the entire body of scientific knowledge and must therefore be cleared up and done away with." (p. 56). Since I only had four minutes to talk, I did not include Booth's discussion of Finslers combinatorics of his Non-Well-founded sets (pp. 213-256) as a possible self referential type of code.

ECAP-2008 Paper

  • Against Three Formalist Program Verification Methods - Extended Abstract
  • Text of Talk and Slides

    • I presented a talk at the ECAP-2008 (European Computing and Philosophy) conference in Montpellier France in June. The first reference is the text of the talk plus slides that argued using Vienna Circle philosophy. The Second extended abstract makes the same argument using the more confrontation Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn methodology of scientific research programmes philosophy. See the extended abstract for detailed references. The pdf files are also available with some discussion on the ECAP-2008 wiki that requires a login.

Original Lighthill Report that Showed Impossibility of AI

  • Lighthill Report published by the British Government in 1972
  • Cognitive psychology response by N. S. Sutherland published as Part II.
  • Computer science response by Dr. R. M. Needham published as Part III.

    • I found my copy of the Lighthill report booklet published by the British Government in 1972. Sir James Lighthill, Lucian Professor of applied mathematics at Cambridge, was commissioned by the British Science Research Council to assist the British Government in formulating research policy. My copy was handed out as part of the reading list for a UC Berkeley class. I do not know the author of the margin notations. Format is scanned-in pdf scanned using high contrast gray scale. was published with two responses. The pages are being scanned in now. Until they are ready, a typed in version of the Lighthill Report can found at:

    Methodology Papers

    • Scientific Disproof of Computer Program Verification

      • Rejected extended abstract submitted to the 2006 ECAP Conference (computers and philosophy). It appears that the wrong program verification by mathematical proof theory is still beyond criticism (see structured programming paper below). I feel it is important to follow the Vienna Circle belief that using analytical philosphy to correct scientific errors is important even if it is politically unpopular.

    • Proposal to Teach Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn Philosophy of Science

      • Essay defending Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn written as a proposal to teach a philosophy of science seminar in their style. Since the material is surprising, letters from the Lakatos archive at LSE were originally attached, but there is a problem with copyright permission so the letters are not attached. They are available online for situations involving Copyright fair use. The essay argues that much late 20th century scientific progress was engendered by the LFK programme.

    • Pragmatic Versus Structured Computer Programming

      • My intended UC Berkeley CS Department ph.d. thesis reformatted as a section for a once contemplated book.

    • Should Computer Programs Be Verified

      • I still have not been able to get any of my criticism of object oriented (structured) computer programming papers published. This short paper appeared in the unrefereed SigPlan Newsletter. My contribution seems to have been to change the once distinguished computer science publication Communications of the ACM into a popular science magazine and to eliminate the foreign language requirement from computer science graduate programs in the US.

    Slides From Recent Lectures

    • Toward Anti-formalist Computer Science

      • Lecture given at ECAP-2005 Conference that criticizes various aspects of current computer science methodology. Talk includes detailed criticism of current AI and quantum computing theories. A list of references has been added to the end. I am working on turning the material into a philosophy paper now.

    • The Vienna Circle's Successors in Minnesota and America

      • History lecture presented at the University of Minnesota Center for Austrian Studies. Also, explains the Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhn Methodology of scientific research programmes philosophical theory.

    SBIR Research Grant Proposal with Reviewers Negative Evaluations

    Spice Circuit Simulator Differential Equation Solver Improvement

    Rejected Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant proposal along with reviewer's comments. I have posted the in the hope it will help people prepare grant proposals. It contains examples of grant language and budgets. The lesson learned is: do not try to get an SBIR business grant by proposing a mathematical improvement (better differential equation solving). I still think huge improvements using symbolic searching of the flow graph equations coded from the Spice equations is possible.

    Two Probably Unpatentable Verilog HDL area software patent applications

    • Simulator Independent Object Code HDL Simulation Using PLI

      • A software patent applications that discloses a method that discloses how to use the Verilog Programming Language Interface (PLI) application programming interface (API) to produce a particular company or Verilog simulator independent model compiler (way of distributing circuit models for simulation in electronic systems). Patent was rejected and we have abandoned the application because the invention is probably unpatentable "abstract ideas, law of nature or natural phenomenon" that can "be implemented by the mind of a person or by the use of a pencil and paper". Since the patent application was filed in 1999, six of the 17 years have already elapsed. Finally, in the currently business climate, a model compiler that does not tie customers to a particular brand is not economically feasible. US publication number (application dates back to 2000 before patents were published) is US 2002/0138244A1.

    • Mixed Signal Simulation

      • A software patent applications that discloses a way to use the Verilog Programming Language Interface (PLI) application programming interface (API) for mixed Spice differential equations analog and digital boolean algebra electric circuit simulation. This is the form submitted to the World Intellectual Property Organization - a clearing house. Patent was also rejected by the US PTO and we have given up for the same reasons the model compiler patent was abandoned (see above). Published patent application reference is: WO0203310A1.

    • US Patent office response to the "Mixed Signal Simulation" patent

      • Interesting response from the US patent office to the 2nd patent. The inventions are probably not patentable under current European patent rules that the examiner is seemingly applying to our US application. I need not mention that we are research grant and patent application losers, but the writing helped improve our software. My current thinking is that the "software machine" the legal system uses does not correctly view computer machines (see the various Penrose books - Shadow of the Mind, etc.).

    Old computer science papers - mostly in the compiler area

    Slides from informal Rump Sessions Talks at Cryptography Conferences