The Goal of Science
The goal of Science is
the algorithmic compression of the universe. Whether this is possible is a
lively area of inquiry.
And:
other, excessively erudite but possibly edifying discursia ...
The Analog and the
Abstract - 2/21/08
One day, several years
ago, my son and I were testing an audio amplifier we had built from a kit. We
hooked it up to a CD player and powered it up. There was noise, mostly, but the
music was barely audible. We looked around to see what the problem might be when
I noticed that I had connected the amp input to the digital output of the CD player. I reconnected it to
the analog output and the music came out, loud and clear. But I wondered: how
could we hear any music at all from the digital output? It should’ve been
nothing but noise! Then it occurred to me: of course the pattern of ones and
zeros was correlated to the music waveform. Not perfectly, but enough that the
music was discernible to my ear.
No one understands how the human perception apparatus perceives
patterns in input. What is the algorithm for seeing a face in a noisy photo?
How do we tell faces apart? What enables a cryptologist to see pattern in a
code?
If we knew the algorithm, could it be deployed to crack every
code ever conceived? Could it be used to scan the internet for photos of people
that we know? Could we glean content from any digital format thus creating a “format
agnostic” content extraction scheme?
How is information
erased? - 2/12/08
I forget. If only I
knew now what I knew then.
What is a computer? -
2/8/08
There are an unlimited
number of ways to physically represent data. And an equal number of ways to
have representations of data interact with each other physically. The idea is
to pick one that is analogous to the process being represented. It is simpler
that way. But to use an actual waterfall to determine the movement of water
molecules in a waterfall would be a challenge in instrumentation. Abstraction
can be useful.
Why the Novel
still Matters - 1/11/08
What is truth? We hope
it is deep. We want it to encompass all that we know, and so much more...
So, when we tell a story, are we telling the truth?
If our story is a reflection of human life, human feeling, suffering,
passion, hope, confusion, awkwardness, etc., then, YES. Although it is a
"lie" in the sense that it is "made up", a good novel tells
the Truth.
The Irony of Children
- 12/1/07
How to you get across
to someone that you care about them and want them to prosper and to be
deep and to "get it" and all of that? How about giving them someone
to feel the same way about? This is what God does to us.
How the World Will End
- 7/6/07
On "Judgement
Day", we, in a very real sense, judge ourselves. Everyday of our lives, we
make decisions affecting our ultimate alignment with truth and goodness. This
eventually becomes what we are and who we can be with. Heaven is a wonderful
place (by definition) but what kind of person would actually be comfortable
there?
For millenia, we have been sheathed in blissful ignorance.
But now, as technology compels us into an increasingly information-sodden
mileau, as more and more of our lives become recorded by digital means, from
our DNA to our web-surfing to our casual encournters with GPS-enabled cell
phones and diminutive video cameras, how will we escape ourselves?
The mirror captures us from every turn.
. Perhaps apocalypse will be the complete dissolution of
pretense and our confrontation with what we have become, as individuals and as
a race.
The Goal of Science
The goal of Science is
the algorithmic compression of the universe. Whether this is possible is a
lively area of inquiry.
Flascism - 3/12/07
Pretty soon you won't
be able to view a web-page (except mine) without using closed-source
software from Adobe, unless I am mistaken and they have published the spec on
how to write a Flash reader.
How to Find Stuff
Later
Do people live in
books or do they live in houses? Should you create your artwork for the inside
of a book or the inside of a house (the wall) with a frame and all? This in not
a rhetorical query - I am trying to figure it out. I have a feeling that there
IS a correct answer.
The Truth is Weird
... because you don't
already understand it ... how much can we know about our lack of
knowledge?
The Navels of
"Navels and Knees" - 7/4/06
... and man named the
animals, and eventually named everything. entire articles are devoted to
questions of naming. When is a molecule a peptide but not a protein? etc.
Why the formula for
future stock prices will never be found
Why do you think
you're smarter than everyone else? As soon as you find an indicator, it gets
priced in....
The Entropy of the
Human Face - 5/26/06
Why do cars resemble
faces? Is it an accident of functionalism or is it due to the appeal or
intrinsic aesthetic content of that gestalt? The human face may be the most
expressive image in the universe. But what is the nature of the information
contained. A better measure fo information is required. Perhaps one based on
the "non-explicit associations" such as those developed with
"neural networks" when trained.
incompleteness and
revelation
It has been shown that
all logical systems are incomplete in the sense that true statements can be
constructed that cannot be proved. So how can we know these things? God
knows.
A
Control-Theoretic Approach to Art and Aesthetic
The
pendulum, a frequency-oriented device, swings back and forth in apparent
response to apparent ... But the problem has to do with perception as a group:
how do we decide what is art and what is not as we wade throught the detritus
of our daily lives and place thing, mentally or physically, on one seid of the
equaiton or the other, the common things that we fail to see the preciousmness
of are determined by executtive fiat or some italian car brand until we decide
as a group like a school of fish suddenly changing direction or a group of
investors going sour on a stock
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copyright © 1998-2008 by David Crate.