13 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Inconsistent Spelling-to-Pronunciation Rules Inhibit Educ...
Since the bulk of human knowledge is recorded in
books, one of the first steps in the education of the
child is to teach him to read. Told that each separate
letter, or group of letters, printed in his primer or
reader represents a spoken word, the child, being
gifted with reason, expects to find an invariable re- lationship between the sound of any given word and
the letters composing it. He soon discovers, to his dis-
may, that no such invariable relationship exists.
Unreason in Sp...
1 24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Three Types of Artificial Intelligence
Lighthill begins by dividing artificial intelligence into three areas which he calls A, B, and C. A stands for advanced automation, the objective being to replace human beings by machines for specific purposes, for example, industrial assembly, military reconnaissance or scientific analysis. A large body of work in category A is concerned with pattern recognition, with the programming of computers to read documents or to recognize spoken words. C stands for computer-based central-nervous-syst...Folksonomies: artificial intelligence
Folksonomies: artificial intelligence
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notes
notes26 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
Science is Growing Bigger and Bigger
The history of physics is littered with unrealized grand experiments: old blueprints buried in file drawers, half-built machinery packed in crates, excavated earth filled with pooling rainwater—the detritus of Big Science. As the frontier of human knowledge pushes forward, so, too, does the cost and the complexity of further exploration. Telescopes grow larger. Space is probed at greater depths. Atomic particles are smashed more forcefully. Many scientific questions now demand resources tha... 1 notes
notesAnd in order to keep expanding it is requiring more and more collaboration between countries and more resources to build more and more epic experiments.
14 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Problem of Machine-Aggregated Knowledge
he nuts and bolts of artificial-intelligence research can often be more usefully interpreted without the concept of AI at all. For example, in 2011, IBM scientists unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Suppose IBM had dispensed with the theatrics, and declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained IBM’s team as much (deserved) rec... 1 notes
notesIf an AI works by aggregating the works of the sum total of human knowledge, should the humans that discovered that knowledge be compensated? Science works the same way, but ideas remain free.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Post-Modernism in Ancient Thought
In the midst of the decline of Greece, Athens, which, in the days of its power, had honoured philosophy and letters, owed to them, in its turn, the preserving for a longer period some remains of its ancient splendour. In its tribune, indeed, the destinies of Greece and Asia were no longer decided; it was, however, in the schools of Athens that the Romans acquired the secrets of eloquence; and it was at the feet of Demosthenes’ lamp that the first of their orators was formed.
The academy, t... 1 notes
notesWith the idea that nothing is knowable, philosophy fell into a rut. Aristotle came along with the brilliant idea that everything we know comes through our senses, but failed to take that idea anywhere useful.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Chinese Cultural Innovations Turned to Ritual
When Europeans first arrived in China, three hundred years a^ago, they found that almost all the arts had reached a certain degree of perfection there, and they were surprised that a people which had attained this point should not have gone beyond it. At a later period they discovered traces of some higher branches of science that h had been lost. The nation was absorbed in productive industry; the greater part of its scientific processes had been preserved, but science itself no longer exist...
1 An account of the amazing art and inventions found in China, but how these had turned into unquestioned rituals--performed exactly over and over again through the ages without alteration or innovation. The culture had stagnated.
27 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
An Early Passage on Taxonomy
NATURE, by descending gradually from great to small, from strong to weak, coun|terbalances every part of her works. Attentive solely to the preservation of each species, she creates a profusion of individuals, and supports by numbers the small and the feeble, whom she hath left unprovided with arms or with courage. She has not only put those inferior animals in a condition to perpetuate and to resist by their own numbers, but she seems, at the same time, to have afforded a supply to each by m... 1 notes
notesThe ability to distinguish and categorize species based on more and more minute differences, and yet be able to group them into larger categories as well.
02 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
Facts Need Theory to Guide Them
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would b... 1 notes
notesWithout theory, we have no framework within which to contain them.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Nature to be commanded must be obeyed
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule. 1 notes
noteswhere the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced
29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Contents of the Doomsday Chest
The contents of a Doomsday Chest will include stainless steel or titanium sheets, laser etched with an archive of the fundamentals of human knowledge.
Each sheet would be carved, front and back, in the five most widely spoken languages of the 21st Century; Mandarin, Spanish, English, Arabic and Hindi. To aid in their translation, aRosetta Disc style object would also embedded in the Chest, providing easy visual translation between the "key" languages and over 2,600 other languages.
The le...Folksonomies: knowledge civilization
Folksonomies: knowledge civilization
A list of the media, dimensions, and list of subjects to be covered on the sheets that go into the doomsday chests.
