Didn't read the article, but it's totally bunk. The two dimensional TSP is not NP complete (unless P=NP), it's actually in P. In order for the 2d TSP to be NP complete, you have to allow crossing paths and arbitrary values (not just the euclidean distance between the nodes) for the lengths of the edges.
I'd honestly say that writing a code generator to generate 1 million lines of code at random, and then analyze what it produces is probably the easier way to approach this - 1 million random lines of code have less potential variations than 100 billion neurons do, after all.
The variation in human brains is only a very small part of the potential variation in brains containing 100 billion neurons.
I'm not saying we can engineer a million line program to grow a human brain, only that we'll never know whether it's possible unless someone actually does it.
"There are lots of very smart people actively trying to simulate human intelligence. While a million lines of code is a fairly large undertaking, it's not an unmanageable amount."
There were lots of smart people trying to prove Fermat's last theorem, and it took hundreds of years to succeed. In the end, the proof was only a few hundred pages, which is way less than a million lines of code. Writing million line programs is easy, but you are basically saying we have a good understanding of space of algorithms that can be described in a million lines, which is clearly false. In general, the apparent complexity of a program's output has little to do with how short that program is.
"ANYTHING into 1 bit by using the function that takes that and returns the bit "1" (and which takes anything else and returns "0" + that)"
And how many bits do you think it would take to encode that function?
"If it was possible to do in a million lines of code, it would have been done by now."
That's a pretty tremendous leap in logic. The only way you could know this for certain is to check every million line program and see if it simulates a brain, which isn't ever going to happen, at least not in this universe.
You don't need additional axioms to define the reals, they are defined using infinite sequences of rational numbers. Oh, and any creative enough theorem prover (mechanized or not) would eventually invent analysis (the study of real numbers)just because it is useful to number theory. Most really hard questions in number theory are difficult or impossible to prove without analysis.
If the civilization blew itself up, we would probably see some sign of the super-heated matter being ejected from the region.
More likely is that the civilization gobbled up all the available matter and then decided to slip into a universe with favorable physical properties and more room for computation.
...Actually one number, made up of a chain that is known -- so far -- to be more than one trillion digits long. I think the mean "known to" rather than "known to be", since the sequence of digits of pi are known to be longer than any finite number!!
From the article:
The format can also accommodate "lossless" and "lossy" compression, two methods of compressing photo data with different effects on image quality. The journalist clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. Lossless compression doesn't effect image quality at all.
...is to use a small chain whose shape when suspended at both end and check if shapes match (checking if the shape is "catenary") Just to be clear, a catenary is not a parabola. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary
I agree. In a few hundred years, at most, inter-stellar travel will become far more feasible. Sending whole humans is wasteful. Why not just send the uploaded consciousness and genomes of the astronauts and, if need be, grow the bodies when you get there. The starship would very tiny and far less expensive to accelerate to a good fraction of light speed.
I thought they already had a conventional algorithm that could solve Sudoku without utilizing quantum effects? Quantum computers can only solve problems that conventional algorithms can solve. Potentially, they could solve them faster.
Nature doesn't seem to have utilized the method There are a lot of useful things nature hasn't discovered, like wheels (macro sized) and transistors. The nervous system doesn't take advantage of ANY molecular scale computation, so how could it build a quantum computer?
... short of preventing consumers from accessing the material altogether. Clearly, this is the next logical step in DRM technology. In the future, consumers who purchase digital movies will simply receive a certificate stating that they own the rights to said material and some tiny white pills that induce a vague memory of having watched something new.
This new form of content distribution has countless advantages. The bandwitdth required to send a movie is reduced by a factor of at least 100,000. Additionally the replay value of movies encoded in this manner actually increases over time!
Much of this technology already exists; The MPAA has recently engaged in informal negotiations with the makers of ambien to develop such a scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
The above poster is correct, I just looked it up. I was thinking of the corresponding optimization problems. Obviously, IANACT.
Didn't read the article, but it's totally bunk. The two dimensional TSP is not NP complete (unless P=NP), it's actually in P. In order for the 2d TSP to be NP complete, you have to allow crossing paths and arbitrary values (not just the euclidean distance between the nodes) for the lengths of the edges.
I'd honestly say that writing a code generator to generate 1 million lines of code at random, and then analyze what it produces is probably the easier way to approach this - 1 million random lines of code have less potential variations than 100 billion neurons do, after all.
The variation in human brains is only a very small part of the potential variation in brains containing 100 billion neurons. I'm not saying we can engineer a million line program to grow a human brain, only that we'll never know whether it's possible unless someone actually does it.
"There are lots of very smart people actively trying to simulate human intelligence. While a million lines of code is a fairly large undertaking, it's not an unmanageable amount." There were lots of smart people trying to prove Fermat's last theorem, and it took hundreds of years to succeed. In the end, the proof was only a few hundred pages, which is way less than a million lines of code. Writing million line programs is easy, but you are basically saying we have a good understanding of space of algorithms that can be described in a million lines, which is clearly false. In general, the apparent complexity of a program's output has little to do with how short that program is.
"ANYTHING into 1 bit by using the function that takes that and returns the bit "1" (and which takes anything else and returns "0" + that)" And how many bits do you think it would take to encode that function?
"If it was possible to do in a million lines of code, it would have been done by now." That's a pretty tremendous leap in logic. The only way you could know this for certain is to check every million line program and see if it simulates a brain, which isn't ever going to happen, at least not in this universe.
And that's why internet 2 will just be complicated network of pneumatic tubes.
You don't need additional axioms to define the reals, they are defined using infinite sequences of rational numbers. Oh, and any creative enough theorem prover (mechanized or not) would eventually invent analysis (the study of real numbers)just because it is useful to number theory. Most really hard questions in number theory are difficult or impossible to prove without analysis.
Hmm, not sure google would be too happy if this became widely adopted.
If the civilization blew itself up, we would probably see some sign of the super-heated matter being ejected from the region. More likely is that the civilization gobbled up all the available matter and then decided to slip into a universe with favorable physical properties and more room for computation.
...Actually one number, made up of a chain that is known -- so far -- to be more than one trillion digits long. I think the mean "known to" rather than "known to be", since the sequence of digits of pi are known to be longer than any finite number!!
...is to use a small chain whose shape when suspended at both end and check if shapes match (checking if the shape is "catenary") Just to be clear, a catenary is not a parabola. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CatenaryI agree. In a few hundred years, at most, inter-stellar travel will become far more feasible. Sending whole humans is wasteful. Why not just send the uploaded consciousness and genomes of the astronauts and, if need be, grow the bodies when you get there. The starship would very tiny and far less expensive to accelerate to a good fraction of light speed.
... short of preventing consumers from accessing the material altogether. Clearly, this is the next logical step in DRM technology. In the future, consumers who purchase digital movies will simply receive a certificate stating that they own the rights to said material and some tiny white pills that induce a vague memory of having watched something new.This new form of content distribution has countless advantages. The bandwitdth required to send a movie is reduced by a factor of at least 100,000. Additionally the replay value of movies encoded in this manner actually increases over time!
Much of this technology already exists; The MPAA has recently engaged in informal negotiations with the makers of ambien to develop such a scheme.