Greek Complexity

Links of the day - Feb 9, 2012

Triple the fun today:

The Zuckerberg Tax -- a US tax lawyer's suggestions for increasing taxes on the mega-rich. Do tax lawyers get paid on a commission basis?

Turin's Enduring Importance -- a quick history of Alan Turing's seminal contributions to modern computing

You Are Solving The Wrong Problem -- I didn't understand how the title was relevant to the problem he outlines at the start of the post until the end of the post when I had my "A-ha!" moment. Very nice. Clearly showed me how I, like everyone else, really was looking at the wrong problem!

 

You probably already know this but for the dodos out there (not you, of course, dear reader) I'm just being cheeky with the tax lawyer commission jibe above.

Link of the day - Feb 2, 2012

MIT's Technology Review provides a tantalising glimpse into multi-disciplinary research into the concept of consciousness using tools and concepts from statistics, bio-engineering, anaesthetics and neuroscience: The Mystery Behind Anesthesia

Where do ideas come from?

I am reading a book called I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstader that explores the concept of "I" or the self. What does it mean to say "I", where does "I" come from and so on. Fascinating and highly readable.

In the book, Hofstader quotes another scientist Roger Sperry as having written in an essay titled Mind, Brain and Humanist Values the following passage:

In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain [and] in [other] brains. And they also interact with the external surroundings to produce [...] a burstwise advance in evolution.

Now, this reminded me of a thought I had a couple of weeks ago: does information obey the first law of thermodynamics? The first law of thermodynamics states that "energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed". Does this apply to ideas too? If so, does this mean that every idea that has ever been or shall ever be already exists in some form? Does that then mean that "new" ideas are simply the discovery of existing ideas and/or the uncovering of ideas via logical extensions of already recognised ideas? For that matter, is information the same as energy?

On the other hand, while the notion of extending existing ideas to generate new idea may be true for purely "algorithmic" reasoning, how could we then explain seemingly blue-sky creativity? Also, if we take it as a given that ideas aren't merely invented abstractions with no physical basis, aren't "massless" and arise from biochemistry, then what is the literal fuel for a new idea? Is there an equation that is the equivalent of or an extension of E=MC² which incorporates a variable representing information?

I'm sure none of these questions are new, so enlightenment, or at least a discussion, would be appreciated! My trawls through Wikipedia uncovered useful-looking articles like Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory, but my knowledge of even high-school level physics is shaky at best and deeply suspect at worst. :-) Landauer's Principle might be what I'm looking for if I could just decipher it.

The science behind snoozes

Came across a graphic in The Boston Globe that tells us how to nap. This isn't as frivolous as it sounds. Quite sciencey, in fact.

See How to nap for detail.

Something similar at NYTimes back in October: Really? The Claim: For a More Restful Nap, Avoid Caffeine

All of which reminded me of this fascinating book, which provides a look into the bigger theme of synchronicity in nature, napping being just one among several examples:

Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

I highly recommend reading it.

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Separately, I read a lot but haven't really put much of this on the blog itself. Changing that from today. See new post category On Murli's Radar (LOTD). Meaning, "Link of the Day". I used to put this stuff on my On Murli's Radar feed but as you may recall, Yahoo decided that good enough ain't good enough. They seem to have fixed the problem since my post but I don't trust them.

Big Data and Big Government

The phrase Big Data is trending big on the Ingternecks these days and I predict it will only continue to snowball in the next few years. May become as prevalent, even cliched, as terms like Tipping Point, BRIC and so on.

A piece by the New York Times titled U.S. Intelligence Unit Aims to Build a ‘Data Eye in the Sky’ shows yet another of the possibilities that come with this development:

More than 60 years ago, in his “Foundation” series, the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov invented a new science — psychohistory — that combined mathematics and psychology to predict the future. Now social scientists are trying to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones — to do the same thing.

But a perceived hitch along the way:

Advocates of privacy rights worry that public data and the related techniques developed in the new Iarpa project will be adapted for clandestine “total information” operations. [...] The ease of acquiring and manipulating huge data sets charting Internet behavior causes many researchers to warn that the data mining technologies may be quickly outrunning the ability of scientists to think through questions of privacy and ethics.

Alright, but once Pandora's box is opened, how does one put everything back inside and lock it up? Not possible. Even ignoring this practical reality, if one looks only at the moralities and ethics of it, what they appear to be doing is taking information publicly available on the Internet and analysing it, just that this is being done with large-scale automated systems rather than manually. Is that wrong? Isn't this what private corporations already do today for profit?

Never mind, I got it

Ok, I figured out the answer to the conundrum I just posted. If you think you know the answer and want to compare notes, leave a comment. Better yet, email me directly so that you don't spoil the fun for others!

A conundrum

What is wrong with this reasoning?

Proof That Five Equals Four

-20 = -20
25 – 45 = 16 – 36
5² – 45 = 4² – 36
5² – 45 + 81/4 = 4² – 36 + 81/4
(5 – 9/2)² = (4 – 9/2)²
5 – 9/2 = 4 – 9/2
5 = 4

From Futility Closet. He also links to three other purported "proofs", all of which are interesting but whose logic is easy to refute. This one stumps me though. Let me sleep on it.

Economists and historians

Gideon Rachman writes in the FT that economists need to be swept off their throne. He says:

Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel prize-winning economist, has suggested that: “If science is defined by its ability to forecast the future, the failure of much of the economics profession to see the crisis coming should be a cause of great concern.” Yet Prof Stiglitz’s conclusion is disappointingly mild: economists must simply search for new “paradigms” – and then presumably go back into the business of scientific prediction.

For somebody educated as a historian, there is an obvious alternative conclusion to draw from Prof Stiglitz’s opening observation. And that is to conclude that the entire attempt to treat economics as a “science ... defined by its ability to forecast the future” is misconceived.

[...]

Some might respond that such a critique exaggerates the hardness of “hard” science and the softness of economics. Maybe so: but then again buildings constructed according to the laws of physics seem to stand, whereas policies and trading systems constructed according to the “laws” of economics have a nasty habit of collapsing.

There's not much that's new here. Others have raged against economists and economics in the past, though few may have made the case for historians in economists' stead.

What Rachman doesn't state explicitly is that human memory is short. We don't remember most things beyond a couple of generations (we just weren't there) and forget many things that happen within our own lifetimes. That's where the systematic study of history comes in.

Link: Sweep economists off their throne

Golden Eras

A friend posted an interesting thought on his Facebook page a few days ago that I thought I'd share:

People talk about Golden era of this and that being 50+ years ago and wish they were there. I wonder what are we in the golden era of now?

Someone responded:

We are in the golden era of tech n biotech innovation!

To which my friend pointed out:

I don't know - its not like we sit in awe of the next technological or biotech innovation - much like years ago when flying was a super exciting event or when everyone gathered to watch the space launch. These days people couldn't even care less about the space shuttle launches!

Someone else then added:

The only thing which gets people as excited as you say nowadays is soccer in Europe and S.America, Superbowl for N. America, Cricket for Indians and Chinese New Year for the Chinese, the movie Titanic in 1997 and iPhone, iPods, X-Box, playstations and Harry Porter in general..... Some Hollywood and some bollywood movies also tend to make people queue overnight for tickets.....
So you can say we are in the Golden age of culture and sports....
May be we live in the Golden age of metro-sexuality, bi-sexuality, transsexuality......

You have a very valid question... but the answer to it is that we live in the Golden age of "something" that only the future generation may refer to as "Golden" and for us is just plain everyday "bull-s**t" :-)

And then I piped in with:

I think there are no more golden eras left. Things move too fast for that and like [the guy above] points out, there isn't one thing that rivets the world... very little homogeneity. It's like a comment I read once made by a film critic or gossip columnist or something. Went something like- in the Golden Age of Hollywood, we had Stars, but today we only have celebrities.

Maybe if someone looked back a thousand years from now at the scale of a few hundred years, they'd find a Golden Age of something. Innovation? Creativity? The spread of the rule of law? The emergence of intelligence at the level of our entire species (as opposed to individuals or groups of individuals) enabled by boring stuff like better education but also by better tech? Overt religiousness? The rise of Big Oil? Ok, just kidding about that last one!

What do you think?

Sixth Sense

This is by far, the most innovative interface I've ever seen and am likely to see for the next few years at least. And yet, it's conceptually so simple (execution is everything) that it's really not particularly expensive, far cheaper than what it cost them to put together those simulated scenes in The Minority Report. Plus it could be extended to several several applications (yes, that's two severals) using Internet-based plumbing that already exists today.

View the video and be wowed. And I thought the bit where he walks up to his friend was just hilarious.

Video from here.