10 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Asimov Story on Computation
■ N 1958, American science fiction legend Isaac Asimov wrote a very short story called "The Feeling of Power." In it, lowly technician MyI ron Aub discovers that he is capable of duplicating the work of his computer by multiplying two numbers together on a piece of paper. Amazing! This miraculous discovery makes its way up the chain of command, where the generals and politicians are stunned by Aub's black magic. The top general is intrigued by the possibility that human calculations could g... 1 
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notes24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
You Can't Predict What You Are Going to Do
In the physical world, the only way to learn tomorrow’s weather in detail is to wait twenty-four hours and see, even if nothing is random at all. The universe is computing tomorrow’s weather as rapidly and as efficiently as possible; any smaller model is inaccurate, and the smallest error is amplified into large effects.
At a personal level, even if the world is as deterministic as a computer program, you still can’t predict what you’re going to do. This is because your prediction me...Folksonomies: predictability modeling
Folksonomies: predictability modeling
1 Rudy Rucker on why our brains are like the weather, so complex that only the actual system can run the computation.
26 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Two Views of Consciousness
There is no end of hypotheses about consciousness, particularly by philosophers. But most of these are not what we might call principled scientific theories, based on observables and related to the functions of the brain and body. Several theories of consciousness based on functionalism and on the machine model of the mind... have recently been proposed. These generally come in two flavors: one in which consciousness is assumed to be efficacious, and another in which it is considered an epiph...Folksonomies: consciousness
Folksonomies: consciousness
1 notes
notesOne view is that it is the executive function of the brain, the other is that it is a byproduct of its processing.
08 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
The Earliest Account of Newton and the Apple
In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge... to his mother in Lincolnshire & whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (wch brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought. Why not as high as the moon said he to himself & if so that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a c... 1 notes
notesIncludes the fact that he extended the force pulling the apple to the ground up to the moon.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
A Reversible NAND Gate
The great discovery of Bennett and, independently, of Fredkin is that it is possible to do computation with a different kind of fundamental gate unit, namely, a reversible gate unit. I have illustrated their idea--with a unit which I could call a reversible NAND gate. It has thre inputs and thre outputs. Of the outputs, tow, A' and B', are the same as two of the inputs, A and B, but the third input works this way. C' is the same as C unless A and B are both 1, in which case it changes whateve...Folksonomies: computing
Folksonomies: computing
1 notes
notesFeynman describes a reversible logic gate, with three inputs and three outputs, one of which tracks the change in input and output, allowing the computer to reverse its operation and potentially pursue a different route.
