11 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Library of Babel
Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. I say that...
1 
The library contains every permutation of 25 characters that can fit in a book, resulting in 25^1,312,000 books. The librarians investigating the library search for books of ultimate meaning, but the author notes for every book containing a fact a book exists containing the opposite assertion.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Scientists Emulate Babies
We think there are very strong similarities between some particular types of early learning—learning about objects and about the mind, in particular—and scientific theory change. In fact, we think they are not just similar but identical. We don't just think that the baby computers have the same general structure as the adult-scientist computers, in the way that perceptual learning and artistic learning and political learning may all have the same general structure. We think that children and ...
1 We have even institutionalized an environment of infancy for scientists in academia, where they are allowed to explore freely in general research, understanding that the discoveries made there may hold great benefits for the human race. This meme also suggests that free inquiry is an important aspect of raising children and maintaining an environment of free inquiry for parents is important as well.
