Workin’ for the Man
This last week, I showed what I’ve been working on for the last 7 months to my superior, only to be shot down. I’m responsible for ‘porting’ (really, it’s a complete rewrite) a Geospatial Information program from M$ windows to…
Linguistic Engineering
I’m going to found the field of Linguistic Engineering. I wish to study the relationship between what people think (algorithms) and what they say (programs), with the end goal being a set of design principles for the creation of programming…
The Rules of Logic
Taken from Scott Aaronson’s PHYS771 Quantum Computing Since Democritus Propositional Tautologies: A or not A, not(A and not A), etc. are valid. Modus Ponens: If A is valid and A implies B is valid then B is valid. Equality Rules:…
Bureaucracy 2.0
buzzword: Achieving higher levels of inefficiency through the inappropriate application of technology. I was sitting in a meeting yesterday, and realized that the conventional approach to software design (more generally, any big project) is for upper management think that they…
Bayesian Priors and Quantum Mechanics
I was reading The Quantum Times, and it occurred to me that much of the stuff about Alice and Bob sharing a Quantum State, and then Alice changing Bobs particle by measuring hers, strikes me as counter-intuitive. It seems to…
Humanity’s self-conception
In most of the Sci-Fi that I’ve read humans are depicted primarily as a wild unknown of unequalled potential. When Jane and the Bugger Queen discuss humanity, it is pointed out that humans have a crude system by which many…
Alan Kay
I recently watched Alan Kay: The Computer Revolution hasn’t happened yet. Keynote 00PSLA 1997 and Alan Kay: Graphical User Interfaces. (Both available through Google Video) What a cool guy. The videos of computer interfaces from the 70’s and 60’s make…
The Sins of Public Education
I was reading Why Geography Matters by de Blij, and in the first chapter (page 15) he says But, as so often happens when social engineers get hold of a system that’s working well, the wheels came off. Professional educators…
The P vs. NP Continuum Hypothesis
Abstract: This paper presents an isomorphism between the set of problems in P and the Natural Numbers, and an isomorphism between the set of problem in NP and the powerset of the Naturals. Using these isomorphisms the properties of the…
Information Distributed Fractally in the Market
Last week I couldn’t get to sleep because I was thinking about economics. I stumbled upon an interesting theory. If you believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and you believe Mandelbrot when he says that a stock price moves up…