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...

 Extropist Philosophy

Endless eXtension - Extropists seek perpetual growth and progress in all aspects of human endeavor. We are, as a species and as a culture, never finished or in any essential way complete. Instead, we continually pursue knowledge, we constantly experiment, we forever continue to develop techniques that improve our minds, our bodies, our culture and our environment. Extropists affirm this belief and take it to its logical conclusion. We desire the technology and understanding that allows us to...

 Human Communication with Matrioshka Brains

Communication between humans and MB is essentially pointless.  The computational capacity difference between a MB and a human is on the order of 1016 (ten million billion) times greater than the difference between a human and a nematode (~109)!  A single MB can emulate the entire history of human thought in a few microseconds.  It is important to consider that intelligence may not be a linear process.  There is a rather large difference between the...

 Hu Shi's Advice on Writing

Hu was well known as the primary advocate for the literary revolution of the era, a movement which aimed to replace scholarly classical Chinese in writing with the vernacular spoken language, and to cultivate and stimulate new forms of literature. In an article originally published in New Youth in January 1917 titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", Hu originally emphasized eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart in writing: 1.Write with substance. By t...

 Life is "Enclaves" in a Whirlpool of Chaos

THE FOLLOWING IS QUOTED FROM BERGAN EVANS ON NORBERT WEINER, NUCLEAR PHYSICIST The second concept Wiener has to establish is that of entropy. Probability is a mathematical concept, coming from statistics. Entropy comes from physics. It is the assertion-- established logically and experimentally-- that the universe, by its nature, is "running down", moving toward a state of inert uniformity devoid of form, matter, hierarchy or differentiation. That is, in any given situation, less organizat...

 How Intuition Messed Up the Laws of Motion

A most fundamental problem, for thousands of years wholly obscured by its complications, is that of motion. All those motions we observe in nature that of a stone thrown into the air, a ship sailing the sea, a cart pushed along the street are in reality very intricate. To understand these phenomena it is wise to begin with the simplest possible cases, and proceed gradually to the more complicated ones. Consider a body at rest, where there is no motion at all. To change the position o...

 The Laws of Anthropology

Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought. Now we begin to see their differences. We recognize that these are no less important than their similarities, and the value of detailed studies becomes app...