“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
...Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The two pictures above have hidden messages. Can you find them? It's not hard at all, but without a bit of background it might be tricky. In fact, I believe many of my readers have the necessary background in principle, but will anyone do it?-) And for some, even the time would be right. I'll even give you useless hints, Disney has something to do with the first one and the second one is a story. Matlab helps.
Functions are just names for algorithms which paint a map and sometimes (if not always) two different functions paint maps of the same object, only with a slight twist.
Fucking magnets, How do they work? ...quite simple in fact.
Perhaps I want nothing. Perhaps I just wanted to know what you thought about it.
At least 5e120 calculations have been performed by the universe since the big bang. About 100 billion humans have walked on this planet since the beginning of time. The number of multiverses has been estimated to be around 10^(1e16).
...
Spock: Guessing is not in my nature, Doctor.
McCoy: Well... nobody's perfect.
Q: Do you think everything can be explained and will be explained?
A: Yes, though it depends what you mean by explain. I believe the Universe is everything and the only comprehensive explanation of the Universe is the Universe itself. However, explanation (the way I've learned that word) does not imply omniscience. Explanation is a model, an approximation of the whole, a valid generalization within certain (error) limits, something which attemps to converge towards the correct answer. Infinitely approach it, but never quite reach it. I believe we can make "the best guess" based on finite amount of information we've fed into the model, a guess we can be proud of, a guess which doesn't warrant regret even if we find points which won't fit. If that occurs, we'll just make a better guess, a more sophisticated guess, an educated guess.
We will never be right about anything, it's like trying to model a fractal by fitting polynomials into it. It is infinitely complex from the context of the polynomial, but is still something we can understand an approximate. Kind of like some peoples worldviews, I find it odd people get so upset when their worldviews are proven wrong, they should expect it, embrace it. The world does not flow along a smooth line you can draw on a map, you can never be sure your worldview is converging towards the global minimum (but that's why we need noise), and thank goodness for that, we'd be bored to death in no time at all if that was the case.
No matter how good you become, you'll never beat Moore's law, but even if you did, you'd still be stuck on this planet, in this solar system, this galaxy and this universe. How far is far enough?
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Looking into building small executables (for anything) and possibly a small os and compiler for the raspberry pi...
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ wget bellard.org/otcc/otccelfn.c
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ wget bellard.org/otcc/otccex.c
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ gcc -m32 otccelfn.c
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ./a.out otccex.c otccex
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ chmod a+x otccex
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ./otccex
usage: ./otccex n [base]
Compute fib(n) and fact(n) and output the result in base 'base'
Blogspot keeps failing to format the text properly (on windows, mac and linux :-D)
I decided to fiddle with my fire-effect code (at the end of this blog entry) again, simplify it a bit and have it compile on MacOS.
Typically I've been against macs, but I'm rather enjoying this one (MacBook Air 11") so far, they've come a long way. The keyboard takes some getting used to, but I find the laptop rather elegant in many ways. I especially like the battery lifetime which seems to be around 8 hours if I don't do too much heavy lifting on it. It can play 1080p videos smoothly, doesn't need a fan and can even do some 3D, and is small. Wakes up instantly and boots in 10 seconds or so. Even built in audio is decent for such a small package. The software is fast and responsive, the screen image quality nice, though I suppose FullHD would have been nice, but this is still quite sufficient for a laptop such as this.
I use tinycc on windows because it's just so small, elegant and simple, and handles libraries to my liking...
on mac I compile with gcc (I'm sure there's a better way, like Xcode, but I couldn't be bothered, I like to KeepItSimpleStupid): gcc macfire.c -I/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Headers -lSDL -lSDLmain -framework AppKit -framework Foundation -framework CoreFoundation -framework OpenGL
Yellow rose of texas (4k intro) seems to run fine on my MacBook Air 11" as well. A working binary wasn't available, but it's easy enough to compile your own.
I tried http://upx.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.crinkler.net/ but didn't seem to be able to compress it much, these are very small executables to begin with, but it seems tcc does something which these programs can't handle well. I suppose I should just write asm from the beginning, but it's just so bothersome. Maybe if I had plenty of time to fiddle. There's so much I'd like to do, like FTDT-simulator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-difference_time-domain_method), but just can't be bothered right now. Perhaps Aristotle was right, and all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. Perhaps I should simply do something mundane for a living and save all the really interesting jobs for my hobby. In another news, I was playing with simplicity...
http://alpinelinux.org/
(Later addition: http://tinycorelinux.net/) I wish I could just get an operating system and hardware where I understand every single line of code it runs and there is almost zero redundancy. Like stripped down linux kernel (possibly on raspberry pi), running uClibc, tinycc, busybox, vim etc. without any autodetection and such. In fact I'm not sure even X-windows is needed. Just run everything from console and draw the graphics (like browser) on framebuffer in separate ALT+Fn:s (desktops or consoles or fullscreen windows or whatever you wish to call them) + hardware accelerated OpenGL of course. I really like the idea of a SoC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip). If only the universe was full of stations (floating in space) which would provide all the bare essentials for the explorers and their space ships, food, gas and guns, and in practice all standard supplies, medicare and parts. :-D ...and why do we even needs wallets, cards, money, passports etc. these days. Should all this stuff be just software on our cellphones, laptops (or perhaps pads, which I don't believe in really). There is some elegance in Linux as well, in fact quite a lot. All three Windows (7), Linux and MacOS have come a long way I have to say. They are finally getting mature. Though X on Linux is still insanely slow and there is annoying hardware and software incompatibility and immaturity issues in Linux still, but for homebrew, flexibility, control and servers it just rules. Linux kernel is rather nice already I should say, but X and some of the software it runs really needs some work. It still often can't manage even the simplest things like proper vsync on videos which results in tearing.
I think I'll dump powerpoint for making presentation as well, LaTeX beamer seem to be nice enough and free for that stuff, I'll end up with cleaner outcome with it anyway, and I use LaTeX to write papers anyway so why bother with anything else. There are pretty much only a few commercial programs I really keep using, mainly Matlab and PhotoShop, both are more or less provided to me by the university. They can be replaced by octave and gimp, but neither are really as mature or pleasant to use as these. Additionally there is APLAC which I use for circuit simulation, there is Qucs, but it's again not quite as pleasant and can't do all the stuff APLAC can, perhaps with ngspice one could, but it's annoying and lacks a Josephson junction. If I really had to, I would just switch to Linux entirely. I still try to keep everything compatible even if I'm still waiting for better days. Mac is elegant and windows is diverse, but they are closed and commercial so they will eventually have to go. Then there is of course still minix, I haven't taken a look at that, but it might be a good place to start if I start writing my own kernel again one day. From windows alone I would miss this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmoothVideo_Project
24 fps just isn't good enough for movies these days anymore, the pans are jerky. The new 48 fps is much better, though the movie makers needs to adjust to it a little bit to make it look natural. 60 fps would be better, perhaps sufficient for all material. And 4K, such a nice resolution, I can't wait to get some material, nature documentaries, but then again, why bother buying 4K when there's 8K coming soon, perhaps that is finally enough for resolution. When I get dead silent (without fan) 8K projector with 60 fps capacity and 1000000:1 static ANSI contrast, not some crappy dynamic bullshit values like everything today which are actually more like 300:1 static ANSI, maybe with OLED, then perhaps I'm finally happy with my home theater. 3D? No way, hurts my head, feels unnatural. Maybe when they make the holodeck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck). 3D isn't needed anyway, there's enough to be experienced in other ways. Not to mention someone investing in a decent plot instead of graphics and number crunching. Though my audio system would require some improvements as well, it's pretty nice already, perhaps in some ways the biggest part of my system, but I'd prefer to go real loud real low. Now I can push maybe 130 dB(C) indoors respectably maybe at 30 Hz without distortion (4x15"), but what I would really like is to hit 140dB(C) outdoors to 10 meters or something at 20 Hz, well maybe for a concert at 35-40Hz would actually be sufficient. Perhaps impossible for my budget. Not the biggest problem though, bigger issue is that there are standing waves, frequency dependent constructive and destructive interference within the room. The whole room should be designed from the beginning to act as a horn or something to make decent acoustics and get rid of all this... http://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm ...like this perhaps. Why is it that nobody present the real specs for any of this equipment these days, none of the good stuff. It's almost impossible to find the ANSI contrast figures, black levels etc. for any TV or projector and finding the frequency response, harmonic distortion vs. SPL vs. frequency for speakers is equally nonexistent. This is easy stuff to measure and very important when making decisions about the quality of your stuff, but none of this just seems to be available basically anywhere - ever. Oh well, something for the better days maybe. --
All life occurs between order and chaos. No life can exist at the two extremes. Perhaps the best place to be is right in the middle of everything, a true neutral if you will.
Physically all information processing appears to occur through nonlinear processes which couple different modes together. Often through switches or amplifiers or something similar. One signal controls another, one way or another. All nontrivial evolution is non-adiabatic and entropy changes occur.
Yes, this photo is from my balcony as well.
If it is true that Pi has all possible finite sequences, and the universe is finite, then the entire universe is somewhere described in the digits of Pi. Talk about your compression algorithms.
...but is the zip-code any shorter than the universe it is pointing to?-)
(It is not known for sure that Pi has all possible finite sequences, it is believed to be that case however.)
"Dutch physicist and string theorist Erik Verlinde has generated a self-contained, logical derivation of the equivalence principle based on the starting assumption of a holographic universe. Given this situation, gravity would not be a true fundamental force as is currently thought but instead an "emergent property" related to entropy. Verlinde's approach to explaining gravity apparently leads naturally to the correct observed strength of dark energy."
In a larger and more speculative sense, the holographic principle suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.
"Space is in the first place a device introduced to describe the positions and movements of particles. Space is therefore literally just a storage space for information. This information is naturally associated with matter. Given that the maximal allowed information is finite for each part of space, it is impossible to localize a particle with infinite precision at a point of a continuum space. In fact, points and coordinates arise as derived concepts."
Begins to sound a lot like the uncertainty principle arising from digital information processing. I would say this makes it increasingly plausible that fundamental information processing in the universe (at the holographic screen) is fundamentally deterministic.
"Thus we conclude that acceleration is related to an entropy gradient. This will be one of our main principles: inertia is a consequence of the fact that a particle in rest will stay in rest because there are no entropy gradients."
"We identified a cause, a mechanism, for gravity. It is driven by differences in entropy, in whatever way needed, and a consequence of the statistical averaged random dynamics at the microscopic level. The reason why gravity has to keep track of energies as well as entropy differences is now clear. It has to, because this is what causes motion!"
"We are entering an unknown territory in which space does not exist to begin with."
I love this paper :D
"The assumptions we made have been natural: they fit with existing ideas and are supported by several pieces of evidence."
It appears someone had similar thoughts to me when it comes to information in the universe. I hinted about these a little bit in my entries "Nothing defies reason" and "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.". Of course the paper is kind of old news already, but I hadn't really read it before.
The paper presents a rather plausible model in my opinion for gravity as an emergent entropic force in the universe and supposedly the same idea explains dark energy as well.
If all this is true then our understanding of fundamental physics of this universe might in fact be rather complete in certain ways. Though we should still figure out the rules of the holographic screens.
...in other news today, philosophy is bullshit, according to none other than David Hume...
Perhaps the simple truth is that there are no paradoxes or unanswerable questions. The universe is simply a deterministic digital computer and it like everything else exists due to necessity, kind of like the value of pi. After all when we get right down to fundamentals, no coherent alternative to determinism has even ever been suggested.
In logic and philosophy, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, by giving reasons for accepting a particular conclusion as evident. Any rational postulate must have empirical predictive power over alternatives. Present me some repeatable empirical evidence to justify your postulate or you will have failed to persuade me and along with your failure to do so, your argument has failed by definition as well.
Seems to me this is simply a weakness of natural language. The word description to me is simply information about the way things moved (when someone saw the color red). Experience on the other hand is totally different set of cause and effect in the brain and can only happen with a proper cause which obviously is quite different from the cause like analytical information (obviously doesn't result in the same brain state as the real thing). To me there doesn't appear to be anything particularly puzzling about this.
They say happiness is learning to love what's in front of you. Perhaps I'm a fool, but I have a feeling that is something a quitter would say. Like giving up, I don't like the taste of that. I'd rather fight until the bitter end than accept a mundane existence.
We all have goals, some people just settle for less and some people never reach their goals. The point is to be able to choose what is in front of you and to make it something great. What is worth it and what is noble is a matter of opinion. Personally I'm not afraid of what people think of me, that is irrelevant. What I might be afraid of though, is that I might never get what I want. And yet to pretend that I don't want it, would be self-deception.
I'm an introvert and I don't see why I would want to be anything other than what I am. If I don't like certain activities which are normally considered extroverted, I'd prefer other people to change instead of me so that I could have fun my way. It's not like I hate all the people, I'm just saddened, bored and sometimes annoyed by people who don't love the things I do and that they love the things that I hate, if nothing else, it makes me a bit lonely.
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Learning refers to the process of observation and the statistical significance of that observation. Learned information doesn't have to be true and most often it is not, since learned information is most of the time only an approximation of the reality or a single narrow view of it, it can also be completely false. Learning only implies a gain of some new knowledge regardless if it is true of false.
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Luckily when it comes down to it, that fortune is a fallacy. Understanding does not imply a perfect model. It implies a model which approximates the behavior of the whole to fair extent and converges if expanded. We can understand what makes the brain "tick" even if we cannot grasp the entire complexity of the system. Of course no system with finite information content can ever perfectly understand another system with larger information content, but that's not what things are all about. It's like a jpg-picture, a lossy compressor. We can still approach perfection even if we'll never quite reach it.
They: The quote did not imply the understanding of a simplified or approximate model of the brain...so yes, understanding in this case does mean understanding the truth of it or of a perfect model if you will.
I disagree. Natural language contains that implication by default unless otherwise mentioned. It should be obvious from the way natural language is used in everyday life. I would even argue that nothing at all is and never will be understood absolutely perfectly. Absolute knowledge beyond things like "I think therefore I am" is impossible. They aren't by nature similar to understanding of observable things. I find it strange that anyone would even think absolutely perfect model is something which makes any coherent sense whatsoever in this sort of context.
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This is just an example of how natural language is vague, there is nothing particularly interesting about it. There are different categories to which irrelevant can refer to. The idea of god is irrelevant to the fundamental understanding of the universe even if it is not irrelevant to the understanding of human history and sociological aspects of the peoples faith to such a construct. The term god can be a placeholder or a name for peoples behavioral characteristics, faith etc. however as a name to a natural phenomenon it is totally irrelevant since it doesn't have any connection whatsoever to anything observable or identifiable neither directly or indirectly.
It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
But in the end... there are no genuine philosophical problems.
"The main point is the theory of what can be expressed by propositions - i.e. by language - (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what can not be expressed by propositions, but only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy."
