Occasional Comment

There are different ways of arriving at the same solution to a problem. You can be good at recognizing patterns and matching aspects of the problem at hand with problems that you have seen in the past. You can exhaustively enumerate the potential solutions to the problem, judging each one to decide if it solves the problem and how well. You can imagine the problem solved and work backwards toward the conditions from which you are starting. You can conduct experiments to determine what methods might be useful in solving the problem and which would not.

The list of ways to solve a problem goes on and on. The way to choose one of them depends upon how your mind works. For instance, you might be better at remembering things than you are at thinking of all the possible solutions. You may instinctively recognize patterns. Probably your style is some combination of methods. It may even vary from problem to problem.

I suspect that we will discover the same characteristics are evident in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). We will find that as we automate all of the various approaches to solving problems we will be producing a catalog of techniques that will serve the AGI as well as it does us. We are already building such catalogs. They are called library packages.

Every computer language has them. Most recent language have centralized repositories that make these packages available and sophisticated dependency management software that assist the programmer in ensuring that the versions of the libraries that are loaded to support any given application are compatible with each other.

Some cutting edge languages are building the package management facilities right in to the syntax of the language. This acknowledges the importance of dependency management while simplifying the task for the programmer. Instead of having to look for an external dependency management package and perhaps choosing between several competing solutions, the programmer just uses the built in facility.

Another feature of the modern computing environment is the facility with which languages are interoperating with each other. Whether it is through the facilities of a Foreign Function Interface (FFI) or an Application Programming Interface (API) or some other mechanism for interoperating with different software facilities, the modern programmer is more often faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to ways to implement commonly used library facilities.

When combined with the exponential increase in raw computing power, todays programmer is able to spend more time coming up with abstract solutions to the problem at hand and less time trying to conform their solutions to digital representations.

My major hope is that we don’t forget how all the underlying infrastructure works. It would be a shame if we got so sophisticated that no one knew how to fix the basic system software that interacts directly with the hardware. Of course, as time goes by, that will become abstracted into the design of the hardware as well.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

One of my favorite mathematical theorems is Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem. There have been several books written on it. My favorite one is Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. Just recently one of my favorite channels on You Tube, Numberphile, posted several videos on the topic: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (extra footage 1), and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (extra footage 2) all interviews with professor Marcus du Sautoy.  They do a better job than I can at describing what the Theorem is but I’ll give it a shot. If I confuse you, I refer you to the videos or Hofstadter’s book.

First, I draw your attention to the paradox represented by the following sentences:

The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.

If you think about it for a minute you will see that neither sentence can be either true or false. If the first sentence is true then it tells us the second sentence is true. But the second sentence tells us that the first sentence is false. If, as the first sentence asserts, the second sentence is true then the first sentence must be false in which case the second sentence must be false. As you can see, we can’t come to a consistent conclusion about the truth or falsity of theses sentences.

What Kurt Gödel did was encode mathematical statements such that each one had a unique number that was derivable from the axioms used to prove it. Then he encoded the statement that asserted that: “there is no proof of this statement”. If there is a proof of the statement, the statement is false. If there isn’t a proof of the statement, the statement is true but isn’t provable thus there is a true statement that is not provable within the constraints of the mathematical system.

This has profound philosophical implications. It implies that there are things that are true but unprovable. This other disturbing conclusion is that there may be no such thing as objective reality. Reality may be a product of our interpretation of our sensory input and yet everyone may be perceiving the world differently.

So then we think about some of the more practical aspects of this idea. Take for example programming languages. Programming languages are formal mathematical systems for expressing procedural statements. They are subject to the same analysis as other formal mathematical systems such that given any particular language, there are truths that cannot be expressed in it.

Taken to the extreme, all sufficiently sophisticated languages can be shown to be ultimately equivalent. This is called being Turing complete. Since this class of languages can be shown to be equivalent, it can be deduced that there are some truths that cannot be programmed.

Further, it can be extrapolated that since our minds are finite electro-chemical systems that there are some truths that cannot be understood by the human mind. Perhaps that is as close to a proof of the existence of a superior being as we’ll ever be able to understand.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

I’m going to write this post using the language favored by the writers of the Ancient Aliens series. I find it always entertaining and occasionally thought provoking. Their choice of language does more to destroy any confidence that I have in anything they say. Some of it may actually be true but I will be surprised if and when we discover that it is.

What if we’ve got the source of the ancient aliens all wrong? What if, instead of the stars, they come from alternate universes? The whole concept of alternate universes alleviates the question of how they overcome the immense distances between Earth and the stars.

Is it possible that the ancient aliens and the fairies are one and the same race? As Arthur C. Clark observed, sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic to sufficiently primitive peoples. Are we sufficiently primitive compared to the ancient aliens?

Did these entities reveal themselves to the administration of Dwight Eisenhower only to be surpassed by J. Edgar Hoover and the head of the CIA? How did the fiasco at Roswell even happen? Why did the US government spend seventy years denying the existence of aliens? Could it be that there were no aliens, only highly evolved humans from the future?

The key to the genre is to ask intriguing questions and propose fantastic answers to them while claiming that they are the only possible answers to the questions. The aren’t. They aren’t even the most likely answers but you gloss over that fact.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

Music proceeds from the beginning through the middle and finishes at the end. There are various patterns that have been developed over the ages and musicians learn them as they learn how to play their instrument. In classical instruction, the musician learns to play music that is written out in manuscript form. In some, more informal, forms of musical instruction the student is taught to reproduce the notes that the teacher plays for them.

Literary pedagogy is different. The student writer is given reading assignments that are intended to inform his or her grasp of the structure of various forms of literary expression. Sometimes, they are given writing assignments that serve to help bound the universe of potential topics and help the novice writer have a place from which to embark on their exploration of the literary landscape. Seldom are they told that the process is easier if you know what your destination is before you’ve made the trip.

Coming from a background where I have had more experience with musical composition than with literary composition, I struggle with this concept. It leaves me staring at the blank page wondering where it is I want to be when the page is full.

I have to admit, on those occasions where I have successfully approached a piece in that fashion, it has been orders of magnitude easier to write. It seems to me to encourage a kind of multi-pass approach to writing. In the first pass, you wander around looking for something interesting, recording your travels as you go. Then, once you’ve found something interesting that you want to write about you go back and edit out everything that is irrelevant to the point and fill in anywhere the supporting narrative is week.

It’s not the way I have worked. I’m not saying that it isn’t the way I ought to work but I have always just set out on the first pass and accepted whatever I ended up with as my final product. When that works it is exhilarating. When it doesn’t it’s depressing. I think it is time to start using method instead of depending upon serendipity to fuel my literary journeys.

Aristotle taught that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. He never mentioned in what order you should create them. Therein lies the difference between knowing what to write and how to write it. I won’t lie. I struggle with both questions. But at least now I have a better handle on the how, if not the what.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

I have become more and more concerned about a systemic disregard for objective, repeatable facts. It is often accompanied by bullying tactics where those reporting observations not in the interest of those parties controlling vast quantities of wealth and political power (but I repeat myself) are ridiculed, coerced, persecuted, prosecuted, and even mysteriously become victims of tragic accidents or illnesses. It would be paranoid to contend that accidents and illness do not happen. It would be just as undiscerning to ignore a systematic pattern of such mishaps.

I am referring to a series of breakthroughs in non-oil based energy production that have been either promiscuously classified by the military-industrial complex or, even more sinisterly, systematically suppressed and erased from public access. All in the interests of the small percentage of people that hold the vast majority of the capital world wide.

I know that just voicing these opinions will label me as being some kind of crackpot along with the many others that these elements have attempted to discredit in the court of public opinion with varying degrees of success. Being a writer, I always have the excuse that I am trying out some fictional plot. I say with all soberness that I am doing no such thing.

I am a sceptic, particularly when it comes to claims of the paranormal. I brook no nonsense about magical powers. On the other hand I do accept the assertion of Arthur C. Clark that sufficiently advanced technology will seem as magic to sufficiently primitive observers. Star faring entities seem to me to qualify as sufficiently advanced over our puny, largely planet bound technology.

We think that we have mastered the majority of the processes of the physical world but you only have to look back to the late nineteenth century to find assertions that the patent office should be shut down since every significant invention had already been made.

I also feel that I should point out that all new developments in science started out as pseudoscience, attacked by those scientists with a vested interest in the status quo. I believe we are on the cusp of even more magnificent scientific developments but we must first deal with those who  wish to constrain us to a zero sum economy of scarcity when an economy of plenty is not only possible but imminent.

We will travel to the stars and beyond. We will learn the vast secrets of the universe that we haven’t begun to imagine. We will not be oppressed by bullies for much longer. We came from the stars, we are made up of the elements formed by vast cosmic processes when the universe was young. We will return to the stars.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.