That is surprising that they don't teach you digital logic in terms of FSM's (or DFA's). I suppose combinational logic isn't much like FSM's, but sequential logic is nothing but FSM's. In any case, you seem to have a nice clear understanding of what an FSM is (unlike some of the people who have posted (I'm not pointing out anyone in particular)).
This is tough problem. So far, I haven't been able to come up with any solution independent of N, much less one that finishes within 2N - 2 steps.
I refuse to lookup a solution. I will try to make one myself. It's kind of odd; I couldn't care less about most of the social ills of the world, and yet mathematical games like this one really inspire me.
I'd like to see precisely where you draw the line between patterns of chemical reactions and `life'.
Here's a really interesting introduction to self-replicating structures even simpler than viruses: Subcellular Life Forms. I think it does a lot to show that the classification of things as `alive' or `not alive' is just an arbitrary human distinction.
I get frustrated when people suggest we need to halt some area of research until we can determine if it is `ethical'. How the hell do we do that, and we should we? Would someone please define precisely what `ethical' is and why it matters, because as far as I can tell, the term ethical is just used to denote a bunch of vague, spiritual, fuzzy feelings that vary from person to person.
As for all the people who are worried about reincarnating as rats or whether we ought to "employ other animals for our own purpose", I think these concerns only make sense in the context of some metaphysical world view. If you don't want to ruin your karma or go to hell, then don't experiment on rats. But please stay out of the way of the scientists; not everyone sees things the way you do.
I used to wonder why standards compliance on the web is so abysmal and why so many web sites are filled with cruft (needless Java, Flash, client-side scripting, images used for layout, etc.). The goal in making a usable website seemed obvious to me: make sure there aren't any nasty design bits tangled up in your content. If you want, include the design bits cleanly separated off to the side (e.g., in a stylesheet) so they can be easily disregarded, changed, or removed.
After reading your post, I realized that not everyone has the same purpose in mind for the web that I have. As a programmer / computer engineer, I tend view the web as a means of conveying essentially non-artistic content. You want to keep the content in the form of clean, well-defined data so it can be properly interpreted and further transformed by programs. But for some people, the web is a medium used not only to convey information as simple data, but to convey information through artistic sensibilities.
Perhaps in some cases, content cannot be separated from design because part or all of the content *is* the design.
To me, the ideal website is still close to a text-only, content-structured document, but I think I now understand why a seemingly intelligent person might make an entire website in a Flash applet.
Dc has a lot more going for it than just reverse polish notation.
Its best feature is extremely terse notation. Most of its operators are a single character (ones involving a register are two or three). Whitespace is rarely necessary. Here is your example in dc:
$ dc
16o2i10101010p
AA
Dc also has great macro facilities. Here is code to calculate the 1000th Fibonacci number: 2se1 1[dsx+lxrle1+dse1000>p]dspxp.
Only 34 keystrokes needed! Here is another fun bit of dc code: [91aPdP93aPp]91aPdP93aPp . Here is more:
Wow, did you write that? That was an impressive bit of sci-fi prose. I found it fascinating and believable. I think the 'review' seemed very real to me largely because of the unfamiliar jargon and details interspersed in it. Reminds me of the entire slang language Anthony Burgess made up for A Clockwork Orange.
Naturally, I figured, as I launched out on this story, these folks can't do faces because, as everybody knows, faces (as opposed to, say, bellies or thighs) are the Seat of the Soul, and souls simply aren't quantifiable, they don't resolve themselves into so many bits - no matter how many.
When I first read this I thought he was joking. As I read further, I realized he was dead serious. Does anyone else find this highly ridiculous? I'm not suggesting that the concept of people having souls is ridiculous; I just think the idea of the presence or absence of one giving away a computer rendering is absurd.
For anyone who feels the same way as the wired author, I propose the following hypothetical question: If some rendering was constructed (that is, produced algorithmically with the help of an artist) that was a truly perfect copy of a view of an actual person (i.e., every photon given off by either was matched), would a viewer be able to visually distinguish the two?
If someone answers "Yes", then this becomes a matter of belief in supernatural powers and will not benefit from further discussion.
If someone answers "No, but any rendering that could actually be created would be distinguishable from the human", I would give the following argument.
First of all, I don't think the rendering of the actual surfaces involved is a point of contention. If believable "bellies or thighs" can be done, then we can adequately render the surfaces of the face as well. The issue is positioning those surfaces to create a convincingly human expression. What if the artists were to take photographs of the actual person and use points of reference on the person's face as control points to position the artificial model? (Of course, they already do this.) As more control points are used the model will become increasingly like the original. The wired author essentially addresses this very point with his analogy of approximating a circle using many-sided polygons:
Keep adding sides - a hundred, a thousand, a million - and true, Cusa conceded, it seems like you'd be getting closer and closer to the encompassing circle. But in fact, he pointed out, you'd be getting farther and farther away, because a million-sided polygon has precisely that: a million angles, a million sides. Whereas a circle has no angles and no sides. It seemed to me that the face stalkers have set themselves a similarly impossible challenge, because a billion-bit face, no matter how seemingly close, was destined to fall infinitely short of the simple, seamless whole that is any actual face (and any actually human way of perceiving that face).
This concept falls apart when you consider the content of the final phrase (in parentheses (heh-self describing)). While a face can be considered continuous, human vision is just as discreet as computer graphics. We have a finite number of rods and cones in our retina. The number of possible responses of those rods and cones to different intensities of light may be harder to quantify, but it is certainly true that given two light sources of increasingly similar brightness there exists a point at which they will be humanly indistinguishable. A rendering does not have to be actually perfect to be perfect as far as human vision is concerned.
Anyway, my point is that the problem of creating believable computer representations of humans is a matter of engineering. It certainly is a very difficult problem, but I don't think you can reasonably claim it is insurmountable due to a computer's lack of a soul unless your argument is based on something like telepathy.
Slashdot Mirror
That is surprising that they don't teach you digital logic in terms of FSM's (or DFA's). I suppose combinational logic isn't much like FSM's, but sequential logic is nothing but FSM's. In any case, you seem to have a nice clear understanding of what an FSM is (unlike some of the people who have posted (I'm not pointing out anyone in particular)).
This is tough problem. So far, I haven't been able to come up with any solution independent of N, much less one that finishes within 2N - 2 steps.
I refuse to lookup a solution. I will try to make one myself. It's kind of odd; I couldn't care less about most of the social ills of the world, and yet mathematical games like this one really inspire me.
I'd like to see precisely where you draw the line between patterns of chemical reactions and `life'. Here's a really interesting introduction to self-replicating structures even simpler than viruses: Subcellular Life Forms. I think it does a lot to show that the classification of things as `alive' or `not alive' is just an arbitrary human distinction.
No kidding; I couldn't agree more.
I get frustrated when people suggest we need to halt some area of research until we can determine if it is `ethical'. How the hell do we do that, and we should we? Would someone please define precisely what `ethical' is and why it matters, because as far as I can tell, the term ethical is just used to denote a bunch of vague, spiritual, fuzzy feelings that vary from person to person.
As for all the people who are worried about reincarnating as rats or whether we ought to "employ other animals for our own purpose", I think these concerns only make sense in the context of some metaphysical world view. If you don't want to ruin your karma or go to hell, then don't experiment on rats. But please stay out of the way of the scientists; not everyone sees things the way you do.
Hearing your anecdote was very interesting to me.
I used to wonder why standards compliance on the web is so abysmal and why so many web sites are filled with cruft (needless Java, Flash, client-side scripting, images used for layout, etc.). The goal in making a usable website seemed obvious to me: make sure there aren't any nasty design bits tangled up in your content. If you want, include the design bits cleanly separated off to the side (e.g., in a stylesheet) so they can be easily disregarded, changed, or removed.
After reading your post, I realized that not everyone has the same purpose in mind for the web that I have. As a programmer / computer engineer, I tend view the web as a means of conveying essentially non-artistic content. You want to keep the content in the form of clean, well-defined data so it can be properly interpreted and further transformed by programs. But for some people, the web is a medium used not only to convey information as simple data, but to convey information through artistic sensibilities.
Perhaps in some cases, content cannot be separated from design because part or all of the content *is* the design.
To me, the ideal website is still close to a text-only, content-structured document, but I think I now understand why a seemingly intelligent person might make an entire website in a Flash applet.
Dc has a lot more going for it than just reverse polish notation.
Its best feature is extremely terse notation. Most of its operators are a single character (ones involving a register are two or three). Whitespace is rarely necessary. Here is your example in dc:
$ dc 16o2i10101010p AA Dc also has great macro facilities. Here is code to calculate the 1000th Fibonacci number: 2se1 1[dsx+lxrle1+dse1000>p]dspxp.
Only 34 keystrokes needed! Here is another fun bit of dc code: [91aPdP93aPp]91aPdP93aPp . Here is more:
035 070 084 078 070 084 109 035 047 088 080 102 088 095 088 107 035 070 090 078 063 084 087 070 090 035 020 048 086 080 102 086 095 086 107 063 090 102 109 078 063 090 087 035 020 048 088 080 102 088 095 088 107 102 109 253 078 036 035 084 067 080 102 101 035 070 090 036 102 100 078 087 087 070 090 036 035 035 034 039 043 030 084 067 087 036 035 035 024 036 035 034 039 043 030 084 067 036 035 024 039 043 030 084 067 038 037 084 067 095 100 087 036 030 037 035 024 102 100 035 048 101 109 035 047 085 080 102 085 095 085 107 253 095 088 107 102 109 253 078 036 038 030 037 040 041 024 084 067 109 035 047 087 080 102 087 095 087 107 253 0Sa[Saz0
Wow, did you write that? That was an impressive bit of sci-fi prose. I found it fascinating and believable. I think the 'review' seemed very real to me largely because of the unfamiliar jargon and details interspersed in it. Reminds me of the entire slang language Anthony Burgess made up for A Clockwork Orange.
When I first read this I thought he was joking. As I read further, I realized he was dead serious. Does anyone else find this highly ridiculous? I'm not suggesting that the concept of people having souls is ridiculous; I just think the idea of the presence or absence of one giving away a computer rendering is absurd.
For anyone who feels the same way as the wired author, I propose the following hypothetical question: If some rendering was constructed (that is, produced algorithmically with the help of an artist) that was a truly perfect copy of a view of an actual person (i.e., every photon given off by either was matched), would a viewer be able to visually distinguish the two?
If someone answers "Yes", then this becomes a matter of belief in supernatural powers and will not benefit from further discussion.
If someone answers "No, but any rendering that could actually be created would be distinguishable from the human", I would give the following argument.
First of all, I don't think the rendering of the actual surfaces involved is a point of contention. If believable "bellies or thighs" can be done, then we can adequately render the surfaces of the face as well. The issue is positioning those surfaces to create a convincingly human expression. What if the artists were to take photographs of the actual person and use points of reference on the person's face as control points to position the artificial model? (Of course, they already do this.) As more control points are used the model will become increasingly like the original. The wired author essentially addresses this very point with his analogy of approximating a circle using many-sided polygons:
This concept falls apart when you consider the content of the final phrase (in parentheses (heh-self describing)). While a face can be considered continuous, human vision is just as discreet as computer graphics. We have a finite number of rods and cones in our retina. The number of possible responses of those rods and cones to different intensities of light may be harder to quantify, but it is certainly true that given two light sources of increasingly similar brightness there exists a point at which they will be humanly indistinguishable. A rendering does not have to be actually perfect to be perfect as far as human vision is concerned.
Anyway, my point is that the problem of creating believable computer representations of humans is a matter of engineering. It certainly is a very difficult problem, but I don't think you can reasonably claim it is insurmountable due to a computer's lack of a soul unless your argument is based on something like telepathy.