When a simulation of a complex phenomenon (brains, weather systems) reaches a certain level of fidelity, it becomes just as difficult to figure out what’s actually going on in the model—how it’s organized, or how it will respond to a set of inputs—as it is to answer the same questions about a live version of the phenomenon that the simulation is modeling. So building a highly accurate simulation of a complex, nondeterministic system doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately understand how that system works—it just means that instead of having one thing you don’t understand (at whatever level of abstraction), you now have two things you don’t understand: the real system, and a simulation of the system that has all of the complexities of the original plus an additional layer of complexity associated with the models implementation in hardware and software.
(…)
In the end, C2 is like having a (sorta) real cortex that you don’t fully understand, but that you can rewind, snap pictures of, and generally measure under different conditions so that you can do experiments on it that wouldn’t be possible (or ethical) with real brains.
57R34M #286
Posts tagged “ciência”
IBM makes supercomputer significantly smarter than cat
The Hubble Space Telescope’s new camera is returning incredibly detailed, stunning images of space. This close-up view of an area near the core of the iconic Southern Pinwheel galaxy, or M83, shows very rapid star birth.
“ There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ”
Douglas Adams
Google's algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers.
“In PageRank, a web page is important if important pages point to it. In our approach a species is important if it points to important species.”
Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems
Biologists have created a living computer from E. coli bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems
Multi-Galaxy Collision Caught in Action
Four galaxies are involved in this pile-up 280 million light years from Earth. The bright spiral galaxy at the center of the image is punching through the cluster at almost two million miles per hour.
“ We can only think certain thoughts because of the kind of language we use. If we get a thought that doesn’t fit into language we’re apt to think we’re having a mystical experience — unless we know where we got the drugs — but otherwise, we’re inclined to think it’s a mystical experience if it doesn’t fit into language. Therefore, language delimits us.
(…) There’s a natural tendency built into the Indo-European family of languages to divide things into “either-ors,” probably because we have two hands. Nobody realizes the influence on human philosophy — up in the highest levels — of the fact that 50,000 years ago children started playing the game of grabbing a rock, putting their hands behind their back, and then holding their hands out and saying, “Guess which hand I’ve got the rock in?” There’s only two possible choices, there. It’s gotta be in the right hand or the left hand. We’ve been so conditioned by that in the last 50,000 years that we think everything has a right and a left, or a true and a false. It’s a terrible shock to us discover something which the Orient discovered 2,500 years ago, or more, which modern science has just discovered in this century; namely, that most of the universe consists of maybes. There are very few things that we can hammer down into definite yeses or nos. ”
“ Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
Moreover, “fact” does not mean “absolute certainty.” The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. ”
Robert Anton Wilson explains Quantum Physics (via sloeber)
Translator: “She wants to know what Quantum Physics is…” *takes sip*
RAW: “WHAT?”
Translator: “Quantum Phsyics, explain it simply she asks”
Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion
Our brains don’t see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like. Magicians capitalize on those rules.
Thierry Legault: Transit of Atlantis and Hubble in front of the Sun
A Atlantis e o Hubble são os pontos no canto inferior esquerdo.
