This hack-o-lantern only won second place, actually. You need to check out the Bjorn3d link to see the winner of the contest.
Re:Impossible
on
Lego Segway
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Not so.. there are plenty of devices able to move themselves around in 3D space autonomously, with only two sensors. In fact, I think there are about six billion of 'em... and you're one of them.
Every single one of you who mention how "the chaos theory" prevents this from working, need to shut off your computers NOW. Stop pretending you know what you're talking about--you don't. Pick up a good book on chaos (I reccomend "Does God Play Dice?" by Ian Stewart but plenty of others will do). Read it. Now you may turn your computer back on and come back.
If you're incapable of doing so, allow me to explain. There is no such thing as "the chaos theory". Stop saying it. Chaos is a mathematical concept, a way of categorizing things, not a theory. Certain things are chaotic, others are not. Weather, for example, is chaotic. This in no way means its unpredictable, it just means we can predict only probabilities in the long term. Another example would be the movement of gas molecules. We can never tell exactly where all of them will go. However, there are billions upon billions of them, so we can use statistics to get an overall picture of them that is extremely accurate. Perhaps you're starting to see the analogy here: weather and climate are the same way. We can't accurately predict each day's weather, but we can predict the statistical sum of all of them (climate). Not quite as accurately as we can with gases, but its still possible to get a fairly high degree of precision.
I remember reading an article in Time not too long ago about how a lot of psychologists are now considering phobias to be instinctual avoidance of dangers that we haven't yet evolved out of, even though the danger isn't really still there.
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This hack-o-lantern only won second place, actually. You need to check out the Bjorn3d link to see the winner of the contest.
Not so.. there are plenty of devices able to move themselves around in 3D space autonomously, with only two sensors.
In fact, I think there are about six billion of 'em... and you're one of them.
Every single one of you who mention how "the chaos theory" prevents this from working, need to shut off your computers NOW. Stop pretending you know what you're talking about--you don't. Pick up a good book on chaos (I reccomend "Does God Play Dice?" by Ian Stewart but plenty of others will do). Read it. Now you may turn your computer back on and come back.
If you're incapable of doing so, allow me to explain. There is no such thing as "the chaos theory". Stop saying it. Chaos is a mathematical concept, a way of categorizing things, not a theory. Certain things are chaotic, others are not. Weather, for example, is chaotic. This in no way means its unpredictable, it just means we can predict only probabilities in the long term. Another example would be the movement of gas molecules. We can never tell exactly where all of them will go. However, there are billions upon billions of them, so we can use statistics to get an overall picture of them that is extremely accurate. Perhaps you're starting to see the analogy here: weather and climate are the same way. We can't accurately predict each day's weather, but we can predict the statistical sum of all of them (climate). Not quite as accurately as we can with gases, but its still possible to get a fairly high degree of precision.
I remember reading an article in Time not too long ago about how a lot of psychologists are now considering phobias to be instinctual avoidance of dangers that we haven't yet evolved out of, even though the danger isn't really still there.