tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post8724482242070674330..comments2023-09-27T07:44:19.769-04:00Comments on Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Growing MountainsSabine Hossenfelderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-81686257084619052232008-01-23T17:01:00.000-05:002008-01-23T17:01:00.000-05:00While I was looking for something else, I just stu...While I was looking for something else, I just stumbeled upon this article about Vannevar Bush and some precursors to him: <A HREF="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=657204&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0269889706001128" REL="nofollow">Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory</A> by Richard Yeo (<A HREF="http://stefanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09495628046446378453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-81477557417990480382008-01-23T07:29:00.000-05:002008-01-23T07:29:00.000-05:00Hi Amara,Well I guess it boils down to this. I th...Hi Amara,<BR/><BR/>Well I guess it boils down to this. I thought that when having trouble in finding the needles in the haystack that we not throw them there. On the other hand you believe it more beneficial that we do and let technology compensate for it. It is true that by doing so it will improve our technical ability for searching for needles. It’s just that I believe the time and effort Phil Warnellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15671311338712852659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-39493506618139800842008-01-22T19:00:00.000-05:002008-01-22T19:00:00.000-05:00Data mining is about finding patterns in massive a...<A HREF="http://www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/Coxeter.pdf#search=%22Donald%20Coxeter%20%22" REL="nofollow" TITLE="DONALD COXETER THE MAN WHO SAVED GEOMETRY by SIOBHAN ROBERTS"><I>Data mining is about finding patterns in massive amounts of raw information.</I></A><BR/><BR/>Who knows what that noise can present? Often without a "comprehensive view of the data" what use the data without the view of PlatoHagelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00849253658526056393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-12541036095545147532008-01-22T10:31:00.000-05:002008-01-22T10:31:00.000-05:00Dear Phil, Bandwidth and the state of technology i...Dear Phil, Bandwidth and the state of technology in computer hardware has _always_ been an issue in what humans desire in their communication! In the middle sixties, I played the game Wampus over a 300 baud acoustic modem with my 8 year old sister when the mainframe computer wasn't being used to compute sailboat race results. Of course I would have liked our game to be more interactive! Twenty amaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-90032305576210391822008-01-22T05:33:00.000-05:002008-01-22T05:33:00.000-05:00Hi Amara,“However, isn't the Web just a snapshot o...Hi Amara,<BR/>“However, isn't the Web just a snapshot of the Real World? Do you think that Second Life is different? I think that humans just carry their Babble with them to whatever is their favorite communication medium at the moment.”<BR/>I agree that for the most part the Web simply has become an extension (sometimes substitution) of the important social aspect of our species and I’m not Phil Warnellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15671311338712852659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-62053209947333088072008-01-22T00:43:00.000-05:002008-01-22T00:43:00.000-05:00Phil Warnell:The primary problem is that the overw...Phil Warnell:<BR/><I>The primary problem is that the overwhelming proportion of what is on the Web is not information at all, yet rather what I would call babble.</I><BR/><BR/>However, isn't the Web just a snapshot of the Real World? Do you think that Second Life is different? I think that humans just carry their Babble with them to whatever is their favorite communication medium at the moment.<amaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-48451935758408838992008-01-21T23:55:00.000-05:002008-01-21T23:55:00.000-05:00As one of the readers said "I actually use a utili...As one of the readers said <I>"I actually use a utility program to record the URLs and page titles of every internet page I view..."</I>, one might be interested in checking out a web-utility that we've developed, <B>hooeey (www.hooeey.com) </B>, which is a toolbar that records your web hops. The entire hooeey application is based on the idea that browser history is useful and can be re-purposed.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11039914650040239716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-59007851501625968582008-01-21T20:21:00.000-05:002008-01-21T20:21:00.000-05:00Hi Bee,Interesting post as is usual. Yours and oth...Hi Bee,<BR/><BR/>Interesting post as is usual. Yours and others thoughts on how to organize sort and find relevant information are all part of what must be done. There is one aspect of this that I feel has be overlooked and that being that the primary problem is that the overwhelming proportion of what is on the Web is not information at all, yet rather what I would call babble. The internet isPhil Warnellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15671311338712852659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-87495861462862691352008-01-21T19:35:00.000-05:002008-01-21T19:35:00.000-05:00Hi Tkk:Thanks for your interesting comment! Actual...Hi Tkk:<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your interesting comment! Actually, while writing the post above I was at least 99.9% sure there is already work in this direction. I understand the economical problems. I had been hoping it would be possible to do something like this as a browser addition that could be shareware. A further question to this point: are there any studies on how it could help to improve Sabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-72067467765788809282008-01-21T19:21:00.000-05:002008-01-21T19:21:00.000-05:00Hi Kaleberg,Who is the Vannevar Bush of today?Best...Hi Kaleberg,<BR/><BR/>Who is the Vannevar Bush of today?<BR/><BR/>Best,<BR/><BR/>B.Sabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-82534612343521023322008-01-21T19:18:00.000-05:002008-01-21T19:18:00.000-05:00Dear Amara:Thanks so much for the links. In fact, ...Dear Amara:<BR/><BR/>Thanks so much for the links. In fact, it was via several detours a comment of yours that lead me to the article above. I find these topics very interesting, though my understanding is somewhat peripheral. <BR/><BR/>On a meta-level this comment section is actually a very nice example of information collection that is incredibly hard to achieve via an algorithm: very often itSabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-28263571279102772292008-01-21T17:22:00.000-05:002008-01-21T17:22:00.000-05:00Having only just seen Redator versus Alien, or was...Having only just seen Redator versus Alien, or was it Alien versus Predator - quite amazing the notion that the perfect hunter would create the 'perfect' prey<BR/><BR/>And ultimately the prey (alien) manages to take over the hunter to become a super predator, the hunter becoming the prey?<BR/><BR/>The Universe is a funny place, and the imagination stranger still. I love those predator suits, and QUASAR9https://www.blogger.com/profile/00593390598251093182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-86159673484668835382008-01-21T17:03:00.000-05:002008-01-21T17:03:00.000-05:00Bee,Your 'random thought' actually touches on a mo...Bee,<BR/>Your 'random thought' actually touches on a most profound and challenging topic.<BR/><BR/>As you might know, the idea behind the web, cross-linked dynamic presentation, was invented by a physicist at CERN as part of his research into solving the problem of how to present the immense amount of data from collider experiments. The solution is so innovative and general that it can be Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-48966977033827085252008-01-21T14:03:00.000-05:002008-01-21T14:03:00.000-05:00When I was a student at MIT I was most impressed b...When I was a student at MIT I was most impressed by Vannevar Bush. Let's face it, he predicted point of sale terminals and iTunes coverflow. If you read that article, you can see an awful lot of what he proposed has come into use, and there are still al ot of great ideas there. <BR/><BR/>I actually got to use one of the products of his research when I was doing some research. I needed to go Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-32941887357371313302008-01-21T12:09:00.000-05:002008-01-21T12:09:00.000-05:00The small infinity is the countable number of inte...The small infinity is the countable number of integers. An infinitely larger infinity is the number of points on a line. An infinitely larger infinity than that is the number of functions through a point.<BR/><BR/>You will need a lot of storage for your paths unless you embrace minimum action paths achieved by summing over all paths. Then, you are damned: Efficiency destroys serendipity.<BR/>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-52008437871509787262008-01-21T10:40:00.000-05:002008-01-21T10:40:00.000-05:00The Xanadu ideas incorporated bi-directional links...The Xanadu ideas incorporated bi-directional links and much more. The original Xanadu crew are well aware of the crippled nature of the Web today. If you couldn't manage through my munged links (I still don't know why that happened), then here is another, I hope good reference by <A HREF="http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/hacklinks.html" REL="nofollow">John Walker</A> that describes a subset of amaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-55063228758682244032008-01-21T05:11:00.000-05:002008-01-21T05:11:00.000-05:00The new PI site looks very nice.Interesting idea t...The new PI site looks very nice.<BR/><BR/>Interesting idea to have a "map of paths" to a given information. Quite often we get to some information starting from a completely different site. So a program could be made to trace possible paths to a given information "under some constraint" given by the user. Otherwise the map could easily end up to be too large and useless as well (one more "sea of Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-15552492616017316072008-01-20T22:35:00.000-05:002008-01-20T22:35:00.000-05:00And the first link, unembedded is:Ted Nelson / Xan...And the first link, unembedded is:<BR/>Ted Nelson / Xanadu<BR/>http://escience.anu.edu.au/lecture/comp1710/introduction/history5.en.htmlamaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-55639151853359863382008-01-20T22:31:00.000-05:002008-01-20T22:31:00.000-05:00That's odd.. my last three links were converted to...That's odd.. my last three links were converted to something unworkable. Here they are again, not embedding them.<BR/><BR/>Some of the original Xanadu folks correcting Wikipedia's mistakes:<BR/>http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-August/037191.html<BR/>http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-August/037192.html<BR/><BR/>Some of the historical Xanadu papers are being amaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-134776850100921142008-01-20T22:25:00.000-05:002008-01-20T22:25:00.000-05:00Dear Bee, If you are reading up on Vannevar Bush, ...Dear Bee, If you are reading up on Vannevar Bush, then here are some references that I think would be useful for you to have. These refer to Vannevar Bush's large influence on the first hypertext project: Xanadu<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://escience.anu.edu.au/lecture/comp1710/introduction/history5.en.html<br/>" REL="nofollow">Ted Nelson / Xanadu</A><BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.digibarn.com/amaragrapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15769062084934190681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-73617617602866699122008-01-20T21:04:00.000-05:002008-01-20T21:04:00.000-05:00Hi Geo:Yes, that is true. Sorry if I am somewhat s...Hi Geo:<BR/><BR/>Yes, that is true. Sorry if I am somewhat sloppy in my writing, I am still trying to get into the topic. I would have said: data needs a decoding system to be of use - I have touched that topic in the above mentioned post about communication. It doesn't matter what you say, if nobody can (or doesn't want to) extract its meaning it is useless. One should not underestimate the Sabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-90357361940639328092008-01-20T20:58:00.000-05:002008-01-20T20:58:00.000-05:00I find it helpful to distinguish between data and ...I find it helpful to distinguish between <B>data</B> and <B>information</B>. It takes work, such as adding structure, context or interpretation, to convert data into information.<BR/>Thus, the problem is rather that "we are drowning in a sea of" <B>data</B>, not information.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the blogs!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-3086316734557545712008-01-20T20:13:00.000-05:002008-01-20T20:13:00.000-05:00Oha - I just noticed the new PI websites are onlin...Oha - I just noticed the new PI websites are online, <A HREF="http://perimeterinstitute.ca/" REL="nofollow">check this out</A>!Sabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-9549823203143245852008-01-20T20:01:00.000-05:002008-01-20T20:01:00.000-05:00Dear Stefan:I have to admit I didn't dig it out bu...Dear Stefan:<BR/><BR/>I have to admit I didn't dig it out but took the reference out of another article that however focused on a different aspect. <BR/><BR/>Yes, I agree, the method would be useful only in cases where one could distinguish the more-taken paths. I.e. if statistics is too low, or the situation is too unclear, all paths will look more or less equal. Still, it might be useful for Sabine Hossenfelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06151209308084588985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22973357.post-40395167466089510142008-01-20T19:45:00.000-05:002008-01-20T19:45:00.000-05:00Dear Bee,thank you for digging out that old paper ...Dear Bee,<BR/><BR/>thank you for digging out that old paper - that's really fascinating! <BR/><BR/>Hmm, about tracing the trails to data, sounds interesting, it may help if you are are not so sure about good keywords. But on the other hand, when looking for reliable information about a bit more obscure stuff along rarely used paths (like Newton's theological views, or the role of GR in spacecraftstefanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09495628046446378453noreply@blogger.com