25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Cyberpunk RPG
The world of Cyberpunk is a combination of savage, sophisticated, modern and retrograde. Fashion-model beautiful techies rub shoulders with battle-armored road warriors, all of them making the scene in the hottest dance clubs, sleaziest bars and meanest streets this side of the Postholocaust. Each character in this world is playing a role--a face that the person projects to the outside world as the real thing. There are nine Roles in Cyberpunk: Rockerboys, Solos, Netrunners, Corporates, Techi...
1 21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Our Works Live On Beyond Us
A few of the results of my activities as a scientist have become embedded in the very texture of the science I tried to serve—this is the immortality that every scientist hopes for. I have enjoyed the privilege, as a university teacher, of being in a position to influence the thought of many hundreds of young people and in them and in their lives I shall continue to live vicariously for a while. All the things I care for will continue for they will be served by those who come after me. I fi... 1 
notes
notesQuoting Francis Albert Eley Crew's "The Meaning of Death."
24 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
Rudy Rucker on why our brains are like the weather, so complex that only the actual system can run the computation.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Synchronicity in Science
The famous Canadian physician William Osler once wrote, “In science the credit goes to the man who convinced the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.” When we examine discoveries in science and mathematics, in hindsight we often find that if one scientist did not make a particular discovery, some other individual would have done so within a few months or years of the discovery. Most scientists, as Newton said, stood on the shoulders of giants to see the world just a bit fa... 1 notes
notesClifford Pickover on the phenomenon of many scientists making the same discovery at once, because new knowledge has allowed them to see further over the horizon to see the same things.
06 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Knowledge Increases
The progress of the sciences secures the progress of the art of instruction, which again accelerates in its turn that of the sciences; and this reciprocal influence, the action of which is incessantly increased, must be ranked in the number of the most prolific and powerful causes of the improvement of the human race. At present, a young man, upon finishing his studies and quitting our schools, may know more of the principles of mathematics than Newton acquired by profound study, or discovere...By standing on the shoulders of giants, the college-graduate can know more than Newton learned in a lifetime through all his hard work and discovery.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Rapid Growth of Physics
As a result of the phenomenally rapid change and growth of physics, the men and women who did their great work one or two generations ago may be our distant predecessors in terms of the state of the field, but they are our close neighbors in terms of time and tastes. This may be an unprecedented state of affairs among professionals; one can perhaps be forgiven if one characterizes it epigrammatically with a disastrously mixed metaphor; in the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit si... 1 notes
notesReminds me of the rapid growth of IT, where working with people just 10 years older marks a phenomenal difference in technological understanding.
13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Seeing Farther From the Shoulders of Giants
We are like dwarfs [the moderns] sitting on the shoulders of giants [the ancients]. Our glance can thus take in more things and reach farther than theirs. It is not because our sight is sharper nor our height greater than theirs; it is that we are carried and elevated by the high stature of the giants. 1 notes
notesBernard of Chartres quoted, elaborating on Newton's famous quote.
12 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Foundation of Science, Not the Periphery, Is Where th...
A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.
I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up a... 1 notes
notesIsaac Asimov describing his young experience with a professor as he worked on new research.
