Comments for James Gleick

Comment on A Paradox? A Paradox! by Oop

Oop — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:19:54 +0000

Actually, it’s quite easy. The smallest uninteresting number is “9,814,072,356 and then some”. (And yes, it is a number, if “root of -1″ and “divide this to that and get a pi” are. Evidently, descriptions are numbers, too.)

Comment on Meta Enough for You? by Tal K

Tal K — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:01:24 +0000

Nice touch – “Alf.laylah.wa.laylah” is Arabic for 1001 Nights (Arabian Nights).

Comment on Secret No More: Google and Power by Gavin Ritz

Gavin Ritz — Sat, 05 May 2012 07:56:19 +0000

Of course information and energy are tightly bound it takes 0.693kT joules to transmit one bit, where k is the Boltzmann Constant and T is the temperature in kelvins. There is where information theory and physics collide that’s it, you can muck around with the formula at photonic level and it becomes 1.44 (hf/kT) bits per photon.

But that’s it information theory has nothing to do with biological organisms, this concept is the biggest hoax of this century, there is not one piece of evidence, not one testable model, no propositions to prove. Basically it’s non-sense. How so many people are fooled is just baffling.

Comment on A Paradox? A Paradox! by Terry Novak

Terry Novak — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:55:33 +0000

on the thought of interesting and uninteresting numbers and such…
everything is the same thing as everything else….except not always

Comment on A Paradox? A Paradox! by Chris

Chris — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:17:37 +0000

I greatly enjoyed ‘The Information’ and had no sooner finished it than I stumbled across this quote:
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.”
― Francis Bacon
….which shows that a 16th century thinker had a good understanding of entropy!

Comment on Defining Information, Even More by ken

ken — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 06:50:32 +0000

Information = Change

Comment on Defining Information, Even More by Alastair McGowan

Alastair McGowan — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:56:33 +0000

Circularity seems to be our core problem. My own discipline in psychology of situational awareness (functional application of consciousness if you like) floundered on this problem of definition over ten years ago and in my work I got no further than ‘specific in relation to context’. Many many definitions of situation awareness were painfully drawn out but they all failed be be precise while avoiding circularity. Specific related with context – itself circular. When I put an agent in a simulated mathematical context and let it run, or two agents, or more, the degrees of freedom about states of the world eventually diminish to near zero given sufficient scale gradations. I often imagine that singularity is what is behind this. That there is no bit? There is no consciousness? Null hypothesis.

Comment on Secret No More: Google and Power by Alastair McGowan

Alastair McGowan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 05:45:10 +0000

Tightly bound indeed, possibly tighter than we may now imagine? The shortest path energy can take is one bit, or maybe we have that wrong, how about a fraction of a bit? Food for future thought…

Comment on Remind me: how dead is the Book again? by Roberto Guareschi

Roberto Guareschi — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:47:55 +0000

REMIND ME: HOW DEAD IS THE BOOK AGAIN?

If a book is not just paper and text, but text, audio and visuals, it will never die.
But it will not be called a book. So I guess there’s no point in discussing its death.

Comment on Una Macchina Automatica by jason kauffman

jason kauffman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:38:11 +0000

i enjoy your writing, and appreciate your research. but you speak as though this is something new (in reference to the information). certainly the way in which we transmit ideas has outshined the ideas themselves, but the premise never changed. gathering and hoarding of information as a means of social regulation existed long before humanity’s arrival. the fact that we have codified and articulated the importance of knowing what is where and who is doing what is not novel, it is the basis of evolution. that we can do it faster, more succinctly, and at greater distances, doesnt change the foundation.