10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Applications for Simulated Worlds
Consider that applications of simulated worlds and simulated games to science and social science research are on the increase. Businesses build virtual worlds for commercial purposes. Scientists utilize video games to crowd-source solutions to protein folding, to invesfigate complexity theory and artificial life, to visualize the physics of black holes, and to research economic, social, and psychological behaviors. Call of Duty, Second Life, World of Warcraft—and the software that makes the... 1 
notes
notes13 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Why We Can't Have "Intuitive" Programming Languages
If a procedure named INSIGHT has been defined and then called seventeen times in the program, and the eighteenth time it is misspelled as INSIHGT, woe to the programmer. The compiler will balk and print a rigidly unsympathetic error message, saying that it has never heard of INSIHGT. Often, when such an error is detected by a compiler, the compiler tries to continue, but because of its lack of insihgt, it has not understood what the programmer meant. In fact, it may very well suppose that som...Folksonomies: programming intuition
Folksonomies: programming intuition
1 notes
notes09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
A Lack of Uncertainty Impacts Learning in Adults
Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain (uncertainty), outcomes are surprising (surprise) or contingencies are more likely to change (hazard rate). In this study, we combine computational modelling with an age-comparativ...
1 24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Religion or Science, Our Purpose is the Same
Though much has been written foolishly about the antagonism of science and religion, there is indeed no such antagonism. What all these world religions declare by inspiration and insight, history as it grows clearer and science as its range extends display, as a reasonable and demonstrable fact, that men form one universal brotherhood, that they spring from one common origin, that their individual lives, their nations and races, interbreed and blend and go on to merge again at last in one com... 1 notes
notes13 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Freestyle Chess
In fact, the best game of chess in the world right now might be played neither by man nor machine.47 In 2005, the Web site ChessBase.com, hosted a “freestyle” chess tournament: players were free to supplement their own insight with any computer program or programs that they liked, and to solicit advice over the Internet. Although several grandmasters entered the tournament, it was won neither by the strongest human players nor by those using the most highly regarded software, but by a pai... 1 notes
notesSimilar to correspondence chess, where computer programs are allowed to offer suggestions and the players act like coaches directing the moves.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Why is Scientific Illiteracy Considered Acceptable?
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you...When failing to read Shakespeare is considered unacceptable?
20 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Max Plank's Inspiration to Go Into Science
My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery which has never ceased to fill me with enthusiasm since my early youth—the comprehension of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that, therefore, pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In this connection, it is of paramount importance that t... 1 notes
notesThe realization that the world can be understood rationally.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Reason Comes After a Plan
When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had himself previously determined, to roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made the air carry a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or in more recent times, when Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime back into metal, by withdrawing something and then restoring it, a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that reason has insight only into that which it produces a...Folksonomies: experimentation
Folksonomies: experimentation
1 notes
notesThere must be experiments to guide reason, without which reason will make up it's own explanations.
06 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Model, Experiment, Theory
Model-making, the imaginative and logical steps which precede the experiment, may be judged the most valuable part of scientific method because skill and insight in these matters are rare. Without them we do not know what experiment to do. But it is the experiment which provides the raw material for scientific theory. Scientific theory cannot be built directly from the conclusions of conceptual models. 1 notes
notesModels, the creative part of science, is neccessary to know what experiments to perform, and experiments lead to theories.
04 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
The Atheist's Prayer
Our brains, which art in our heads
treasured be thy name. Thy reasoning
come. Thy best you can do be done
on earth as it is. Give us this day new
insight to help us resolve conflicts and
ease pain. And lead us not
into supernatural explanations;
deliver us from denial of logic.
For thine is the kingdom of reason,
and even though thy powers are limited,
and you're not always glorious,
you are the best evolutionary adaptation
we have for helping this earth now and
forever and ever.
So be it.
A play on the lord's prayer.
