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But there may be more significant ways to characterize civilizations than by the energy they use for communications purposes. An important criterion of a civilization is the total amount of information that it stores. This information can be described in terms of bits, the number of yes-no statements concerning itself…
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; other to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by…
Still other species have adapted via selection to human-caused changes in their environment. Insects have become resistant to DDT and other pesticides, plants have adapted to herbicides, and fungi, worms, and algae have evolved resistance to heavy metals that have polluted their environment. There almost always seem…
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
(1) I have told you more than I know about osteoporosis. (2) What I have told you is subject to change without notice. (3) I hope I raised more questions than I have given answers. (4) In any case, as usual, a lot more work is necessary.
This kind of data is hard to come by, but thanks to almighty Stackoverflow ands their wise decision (thanks Joel), to make this data publicly available we can mine this data to our collective benefit. With a simple bash script to download the data, a small Java program to extract the stats and Google Docs to make the…
I have a tolerance for ambiguity. It's clear to me that there's some questions that humans don't have the answers to and what arrogance to imagine we have answers to all questions. Science is sometimes, I know, attacked for supposed arogance, but I think it's the most humble occupation and discipline around. Because…
Again, the reason science works so well is partly that built-in error-correcting machinery. There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. That openness to new ideas, combined with the most rigorous, sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, sifts the wheat…
The NIIAC was a well-meaning attempt to collect a diversity of opinion to make sure the emerging "NII" was useful to all Americans, and it probably did more good than I suspected at the time ... The members included the usual suspects: a librarian; a grade school teacher; a communications workers' union official; the…
Assume good faith. Treat others as you would have them treat you--even if they are new. We were all new once. ...raw text may be ambiguous and often seems ruder than the same words coming from a person standing in front of you...Be careful of how you interpret what you read: what you understand might not be what the…
And man's relationship to his environment has changed. As a result of cybernetic efficiency, he finds himself becoming more and more predominantly a Controller and less and Effecter. The machine, largely self-regulating and highly adaptive, stands between man and his world. It extends his perception in furthest space…
We cannot expect to find a good child-machine at the first attempt. One must experiment with teaching one such machine and see how well it learns. One can then try another and see if it is better or worse. There is an obvious connection between this process and evolution, by the identifications Structure of the…