Scientists and engineers around the world are, with varying degrees of success, racing to replicate biology and intelligence in computers. Computational biology is already simulating the nervous systems of entire organisms. Artificial intelligence seems to be able to replicate more tasks formerly thought to be the sole preserve of man each year. Many of the results […]
Beneath language and concepts we encounter the world of phenomena. Not seldom we perceive things that we are unable to put in words. And in just a moment’s worth of experience, there are more perceptions and implicit judgments than anyone could describe accurately in hundreds of pages. The parts of our experience that enter into […]
Recently, I’ve become more and more aware of the limitations of conscious thought and formal models of entities and systems. We don’t understand how political systems make decisions, how world events occur, or even how we choose what to wear on any particular day. Cause and effect doesn’t exist in the form it is commonly […]
This year I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to read Martin Heidegger‘s great work Being and Time, using Hubert Dreyfus’ Berkeley lectures on the book as supporting material. By now I’ve almost finished division 1. I’m learning a lot, but it’s fair to say that this is one of the most difficult books […]
Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of the complexity of data. It is simple to define but appears to have deep implications. The K. complexity of a string is defined as the size of the simplest possible program, with respect to a given underlying computer, that can generate the data. For example, the string “AAAAAA” has lower […]