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Problems with the Objective Function: the Monkey Pawn

Nick Bostrom, in a wonderful Ted Talk (below), muses about the problem of emerging superintelligence within…
Community life and chipped silicon

“If you open a modern computer case and stare at the mother board, it really appears…
Artificial Photosynthesis: some social implications of technology

The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenathen invented the first historic monotheism, according to Freud’s Moses and Monotheismus (1939).…
Ipython: simple finite differences

Ipython as a prototyping tool for scientific computation is very neat and useful indeed. After the…
Ipython in Windows 8: “Hello World”

This post documents the installation of Ipython in Windows 8. As an example of Don Knuth’s…
Pythagorism for the masses: or the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεός ἦν…
On Genes and Memes

Fact: “Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 850 individuals, of whom at least 22% (without…
Wiener on learning & Gödel

This is a marvellous paper by former colleague of Norbert Wiener, N. Levinson. The bibliography of…
A. Burgess: “Clockwork Condition”. A tale on Skinner and Free Will

The real polemic target of Anthony Burgess in The Clockwork Condition (The New Yorker) (here the Italian…
Science Friction (1)

Mersenne numbers, when they are primes, are routinely used to feed MonteCarlo random number generation. They…