Sean Smith > Recent Status Updates

I enjoyed the description of Isaac Asimov's story "The Last Question." Multivac is the supercomputer that eventually becomes powerful enough to answer the same question mankind has been asking about reversing entropy..."LET THERE BE LIGHT!" I wish I felt the same way as Asimov.

A quantum computer given 10 input qubits can do 1,024 things at once. A quantum computer given 20 qubits can do 1,048,576 things at once. One with 300 qubits of input can do more things at once than there are elementary particles in the universe.

Laplace's demon is an intriguing thought. Laplace like Einstein was seeking to see the universe as predictable. ...if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

What he's basically saying is if random sequences become essentially software programs that start crunching the raw data of the universe in meaningful ways patterns begin to form. The software programs essentially can breed more software programs and the staggeringly immense improbability that order will exist gets cut down to size by these engines creating more engines on and on.

...it's clear that energy and information (visible and invisible) are the two primary actors in the universal drama. The universe we see around us arises from the interplay between these two quantities... Energy is conserved. Information never decreases.

...Averroes in his studies of Aristotle concluded that what is immortal in human beings is not their soul but their capacity for reason. Reason is immortal exactly because it is not specific to any individual; instead, it is the common property of all reasoning beings.

For years my wife and I would go for lunch to Josie's in Santa Fe. I, after spending a long time scrutinizing the menu, would always order the half plate of chili rellenos, with red and green chile, and posole instead of rice. I felt strongly that I was exercising free will: until I chose the rellenos half plate, I felt anything was possible. My wife, however, knew exactly what I was going to order all the time.

"Heinz Pagels..." "He encouraged me to develop physically precise techniques for characterizing and measuring complexity." This strikes me as an extremely accurate definition of science. If I were to describe the aim of science, it would be the development of physically precise techniques for measuring complexity.

What is it like to lose someone you love? Jane asked. You die, too, I said. And you wait around for your body to catch up.

"Well remember what I said about tachyons being theoretical to this point," Harry said. "That's sort of an understatement. They're less than real - they're mathematical abstractions at best. They have no relation to the real universes in which we exist and move. No race of intelligence that we know of has ever used them for anything. They have no practical application."

Do not mourn me, friends I fall as a shooting star Into the next life

What would I name my BrainPal?

This book is so good I'm going to lose a few hours finishing it tomorrow. Let us see if this addict can sleep with his drug of choice so close at hand.

Then, as now, dragonflies could cruise at over 50 kilometers an hour, instantly stop, hover, fly backwards, and far more, proportionally, than any flying machine humans have come up with. "The U.S. Airforce," one commentator has written, "has put them in wind tunnels to see how they do it, and despaired."