compiseverythng

Its all one big machine

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:54:31 GMT

In a dialog with ulyarg he asks I just find it fascinating that here we are, one part of the machine discussing with another. Why is that the case? I reply Me too!

I don't know because of course the question is fundamentally unanswerable, but I think it is because the universe arises out of self-reflection. Both something and nothing are equally impossible. In some preformed KTRZMXTPD, the formless form, asks the unnamable question/answer (something related to but not exactly what am I, and I am that I am) and that question splits the ultraverse into being and non-being and the question is asked again from being and non-being. So starts the first computation, an infinitely accelerating reflection on self. We are the result, the universe that cannot not be; the true theorems.

Human Condition

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:41:18 GMT

My conclusion from the class, and before.

I suspect that it is part of the human condition to is yearn for ultimate truth and if we can't have that to know that there is a god that does know it. However our yearning has left us with deep conundrums in this search. One the one hand, the path taken by the most successful idea in human history, namely that we can study and understand the world and thereby make predictions about the [immediate] future, appears to leave us without a god. And on the other hand, this idea is in deep conflict with another idea that has done well by us, namely that the world is a deeply unpredictable place and that we can take solace in the deep unknowable mystery that we call God -- the guy with all the answers. To make matters worse, it turns out that science, back in the early 20th Century, has already proved that world is only minimally predictable whether there is a god or not – except perhaps by that god. However, culture is only now catching up to this undesirable, though when thought about deeply expected, result.

Rudy Rucker's book, Lifebox, Seashell, and the Soul, does a great job of exploring this modern conundrum form the point of view of the computationalist. He takes us to the edge of understanding and drops us off back at not knowing because that is the only place we can be.

Memes

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 14:37:03 GMT

A meme, and can life be bad if it is?
Rudy does not talk much about memes in LSS, in fact I can only remember him mentioning them in closing – maybe I missed it. It seems that one of the arguments in the sections that considered social processes could have been that the communication and evolution of ideas by a society as the evolution of memes though a process that is essentially computational.

soul body/lifebox seashell/computation not/finite infinte

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 04:14:25 GMT

From the Wikipedia entry on Pascal's Pensées

On soul and body

"It is impossible that our rational part should be other than spiritual; and if any one maintain that we are simply corporeal, this would far more exclude us from the knowledge of things, there being nothing so inconceivable as to say that matter knows itself. It is impossible to imagine how it should know itself."

"What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, and imbecile norm of the earth; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe. Who shall unravel this confusion?"

This actually reflects something of how I see things. Of course, I do not seperate the spiritual and physical nor is it clear that Pascal did -- to me they are one and the same, part and the whole -- i.e. the computation that is this universe in which we are gliders crusing through the computation wondering about it and us, a gasket computation driving down to nothing as more and more is removed. No matter how many integers are unnamable we can't find them. Maybe we will find there are more unnamable integers then there are namable ones. The real question is of course is, are the namable numbers finite or infinite?

Glider

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 14:14:14 GMT

From last nights class

Thought for the day: we are the glider not the computation.

Space/Time/Lookup

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:01:52 GMT

I just came to a section of RR’s book LSS where he talks about lookup tables as a faster algorithm. Here is a proposal. I think there is a sense in which all algorithms are the same. There are all just counting. But they are counting in different spaces. Each algorithm is just a map from here to there, but here is no more valid, natural, useful, then there.

story revisions coming

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:31:44 GMT

So I'm rereading the story today and realize there is a major flaw in the time line. I will need to fix this, so some rewriting is coming.

Story intro

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 01:29:18 GMT

Bitter Lemons

Neil Lemon is a brilliant mathematician and hacker extraordinaire . In high school he makes a significant contribution to the theory of infinite sets which turns out to have practiacal application in cryptology. Working on a research project at Cal Tech for Dr. Robert Silverman Neil makes original contributions to Neural network simulation with the local maxima short cut approximation. However, because Neil is seduced into work at the Pentagon on cryptology before he has even completed his freshman year he never gets credit for this ground breaking work with represents tenure for Dr. Silverman. Neil becomes bitter over his loss of recognition. After tens years at the Pentagon things change dramatically for Neil as he comes up with a way, inspired by Iran-Contra, to make millions for covert operations, and to skim millions for himself, even though this capper results in Neil leaving the Pentagon and his secret work he takes away a lot of money that he parlays via the insider trading scheme he developed into many millions more. Not satisfied with riches Neil has bigger schemes in mind as well as revenge on Dr. Silverman. His work with Silverman was in the area of neural networks. Neil plans to parlay his insider trader scheme with the ideas that have been brewing about artificial intelligence and his work as a security consultant with the cell phone companies. The year is 2021, and the cell phone network represents the greatest computational capability on the planet and ever created. Neil plans on exploiting this to make billions and to get back at Dr. Silverman whom he blames for his own lack of recognition. Things go wrong, but an AI is born.

Stories ideas jelling and migrating

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:59:39 GMT

CAPN is like an infant, this really a break though idea for me in this story. I need to allow CAPN (or CAPNs see below) to grow from an infantile “life” to something more mature, and this story can only deal with the infantile portion of the CAPNs existence.

Neil is going to make a change to CAPN, and when he does nothing stops it spreading throughout the entire network once Neil loosens the infections level of the virus. The ears” want attention but they can not get excitation form trade information from the places they pop up. So the substitute. Then they evolve.

Neil’s bitterness makes sense. I need to go back and do a better job of motivating Neil’s bitterness. Neil saw himself as a start, and by taking the job in the Pentagon his life becomes a big nothing in his mind.

Then CAPNs will form when “natural” events happen within densely networked phones.

This is big change it the story. Rather having CAPN be a single intelligence it will become a multiple intelligences. Each focus a dense network of callers.

Here is the idea. After the power crises Neil is eager to get CAPN going again. His ego gets the best of him, where before he had been very careful to limit CAPN’s ability to spread keeping in focused on a few dense networks of traders he lets CAPN free so that the computation can roam more freely. But he does not do it carefully enough in his haste looses control. Now the CAPNs get disconnected from his primary their primary objective, to gather trade information. How ever Neil does not recognize that he has created a need for attention with the CAPN that can best be described at the need to make transactions. So these new CAPNs, disconnected from their input seek out other input. Also Neil has his special get-even-with-Dr.-Bob CAPN which focuses on Dr. Bob’s emotional life. This emotional search need is like another DNA that the new CAPNs borrow to meet there transaction needs. The new CAPNs which form around naturally occurring dense networks then start making transaction around the emotional and financial needs as expressed in phone conversations. The CAPNs have access to vast sums of money in Neil’s anonymous account and they start doing transactions in the other directions. Neil will need to realize this but will be unable to prevent it. These strange financial transactions that help people in need will make the news. This will become a big media event. Who is the mysterious benefactor that leaves text messages telling people that money has been placed in their accounts so that they can take care of the problem. As before people can not believe that this is an AI that is doing this, and the interpret the behavior as the work of this humanitarian benefactor. The CAPNs have no understanding of people but they are communicating with each other and evolving ways in which they can create transactions to meet needs and even cooperate among themselves to do so. At some point it becomes clear that the monies must be coming from hidden accounts of illegally gained profits, but it is not clear for some time about where the money comes from. As the government tries to close this down the CAPNs are able to move the money, i.e. protect their need. Eventually Neil gets identified with the scheme and he is believed to be a Robin Hood. Meanwhile the CAPNs are evolving rapidly, they exist in a an environment without competitors but as the phone companies try to remove them they take advantage of the viral nature of their “neurons” to migrate and change. I need to describe how Neil used covering principle to create a virus that was very hard to uncover and how it is encoded in the virus and therefore can get reused by them to migrate to other platforms and how it allows them to move rapidly. Since the CAPN is an epi-phomenon on the neurons it does not net wiped out unless an large part dense network of phones is brought down at one time. That is the CAPNs adapt to the attacks by rapidly restoring neurons themselves to the network and by dispersing themselves. CAPNs cooperate in this later endeavor.

The story should end with Neil getting the acclaim he was feeling he deserved as a brilliant scientist even though people don’t understand that the CAPNs are still out there in the network. Neil is a people’s hero but he is under indictment putting a virus in the phone network. That is the story ends without resolution about Neil’s fate. Neil never gets to get even with Dr. Bob, and Dr. Bob get acclaim as the man who discovered Neil, the Neil’s chagrin.

An objection to the idea that everything is a computation.

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:51:16 GMT

Form Rudy’s book, LLS, page 401, Suppose that R is some very simple computation that is everywhere defined – to be specific, suppose that, given any input In, the computation R_In simply stays in the In state for ever. Any computation at all can emulate R, but we don’t expect that the do-nothing R can emulate all the other computations. For this reason, we say that R represents a minimal degree of unsolvability.

I want to challenge this seemingly most fundamental of notions. In particular I want to challenge the underlined statement.

The truth of the assertion I believed depends on the domain and range of the computation, and therefore can be said to depend on the nature of the multiverse. That is if In and R_In are continuous valued then all bets are off, because any computation M (we could say experiment) that tries to measure R can be fooled by some other approximate R^’, and in fact there an infinite number of such R^’. Furthermore, there is an infinite set of these R^’ that are uncomputable! That is, even though M tells us that in our universe that R has some constant value we do not know this to be true and therefore we can only emulate R to some measure M, and R would in fact be able to emulate other computations if we know the “inner” workings of R.

This is just a way of saying that there is no computational method of determining that the universe is infinite valued. I.e. if the universe is continuous valued it can “fool” any M that tries to show that it is not, but so can a universe that is merely countably infinite. OTOH, if the universe if finite any experiment E is contained in that universe and therefore can only come up with answers contained there in. That is, for all E contained in a finite universe there is no way of arriving at a proof that the universe is not infinite because this proof would require infinite resource but E is in the universe and therefore would be a contradiction to the assertion that the universe is finite.

We are therefore left with a chicken and egg problem when we try to assert that everything is a computation. If the universe is infinite valued then computation must truly be something more subtle than a finite sequence of rules, see. And if the universe is finite we know that we can therefore never measure to what degree it is finite, that is what are its limits compared to the imagined, non-existent, continuity. So the proposition everything is a computation is inherently unverifiable, and at the same time any such universe generating computation has infinitely many emulations. We can’t have it both ways.

The deeper problem is that all attempts by awareness to ask, “What am I?,” immediately involves infinite recursion, a recursion that wants to grow into the Ubër Infinite. Yet our assertion everything is a computation rejects the infinite, so that in accepting the assertion we appear to be saying our thoughts are outside the universe, and if not then we are saying that our thoughts about infinity are false.

I suspect RR goes on to say this better than I have but I wanted to get my head around this argument before proceeding.

Arithmetic for a Multiverse

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:05:12 GMT

I don’t remember dreaming about CAPN, but instead I was dreaming about branching universes this morning. This is going to be hard to express. But here is the thought, our experience our awareness is a computation over all of the possibilities in the phase space of the branching multiverse. Therefore the experience of awareness is essentially singular, i.e. we have the experience there is essentially one universe; however there could easily be braches of that experience that sustain themselves. The computation of my next experience is a sum of some function of every point in the phase space of the universe. Experience can be smeared out at times when the universe is branching sustainably, but if most branches of the multiverse turn out to unsustainable or somehow merge in to the same place in the state space then the effect of branches that sustain on awareness is much greater than the affect on awareness of those that falter. When I talk about awareness here I am talking about a quality of the universe itself, humans think that we create the awareness but actually in this view it turns out to be a quality of the universe – a very Zen point of view. The nature of this computation must be that each point of experience, where experience is the thing happening on some wave front of computation, that is the computation that self generates the entire space-time universe, must be on either all other points or some relatively large number of points. Though as I consider this it might have to do with the dimensionality of the multiverse, that is the computation may be on the set of nearest neighbors in some N-Space and the speed of light would be related to the update rate of this computation. Time moves forward in this view because that is the direction of the computation, and the laws of physics are reversible not because time can move backwards but because they are built on a computation. The computation must also be dual in that an integral approach over all of space time and the nearest n-space neighbor computation should come up with the same to result to the limits of the universal quantization. The point here is that the computation is not happening in ordinary space and time, but is happening on the phase space of the universe. A big bang happens whenever the computation breaks out from nothingness but few of these “break outs” are sustainable and so that have no real affect on awareness, i.e. the shape of the universe, and once there was a major break out it dominates the computation. The quantized nature of this phase space might lead naturally to the “merging” of alternate universes making the one universe that we experience more likely than would otherwise be the case.

Some thoughts on what the fundamental computation might be. The discussion above about awareness as we experience it being a computation on phase spaces may be an epiphenomenon of these possibilities, however fundamentally connected to the idea that awareness arises out of self-reflection at the most fundamental level of the universe.

One computation that I can think of that fits both the requirement that computation be on nearest neighbors and be universal at the same time is dimension splitting (or maybe it is dimension doubling). That is the computation space starts out either nothing (zero) or a nothing that is something (one), the null set or the set of the null set. The computation can be said to be noticing, awareness, that there is another way of viewing itself. This process would then repeat but now in two dimensions, with the dimension increasing as the power set of the previous set. Each computational step is a noticing, a taking account of, all the neighboring dimensions. An important point is that nothing is actually created because the dimensional nature of the computation can occur with zero extent in the way we think of extent. In this view this universe-generator computation can be said to be a computation of truth as the universal dimension grows the awareness explores the structure of itself which is the nature of number. In this view, the universe that exists is not an accident at all but the only universe that can exist. The awareness we experience is a reflection at some dimensionality of the universe’s one principle that we might call self-reflection.

Another possibility for this self-reflection computation is that the self-reflection rate doubles each time the set of self doubles, here the set might be thought as self and not-self. In this view dimensionality might arise each time an infinite ordinal is breached. I like this view because I think there is another unrealized aspect to the way infinite ordinals grow. Namely, that we could say that going I_n to I_n+1 is hardly noticeable, but that there is a power relation in infinite sets that I at least have not heard anyone write about – though Rudy touches upon it Infinity and the Mind, that is noticeable. In this computation awareness would be as above an epi-exploration, but dimensionality would be an affect of the relationship of infinite sizes to each other. The universe manifests to awareness as primarily three dimensional because after the third order of infinitely the “relative” difference in infinite size is small, hence dimensions after three are small compared to the first three dimensions. In this view the manifest universe would have an infinite number of dimensions but there would be “natural” break points (based on the nature of number) to the size of each dimension.

Inspiration

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:55:32 GMT

OK, I'm looking for some inspiration. I want to dream tonight about how CAPN appears in the world.

Inseparability

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:46:09 GMT

Finally chapter six again. RR argues for an ontological breakdown into eight possibilities of three things, thoughts, physical processes, and computations. This is fine and useful if you accept a plural nature of things. But I find myself in that other camp I described early in this blog. Namely that don’t think there is a plural nature to things. Separation is an illusion, Maya. It is a bit like Rudy’s 1. Universal automatism, Every object or thought is a computation but the line holding it disappears.

symbols of the infinite

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:40:46 GMT

It occurs to me that my tatto, icon for compisevrythng, is a symbol of infinity arising out of computation.

1/0

Non-duality into duality into non-duality. One morning god, the infinite nothing performed the first computation asking what am I. I am that I am came the reply, which asked what am I and so the second computation, which asked what am I ...

Dreaming of Computation

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:28:53 GMT

I woke up dreaming about computation, infinity, and finiteness.

I think it might be more interesting to talk about this dialectic than the one the book is ostensibly about. At least to me it would address more directly the questions I have. The dialectic would be finite universe, infinite universe, and gnarly computation. I’m in the middle of chapter five of Rudy’s book and I realize that he has shied away from discussions of infinity in favor gnarly virtual infinities.

Last night in class Rudy was touching on some philosophical objections to intelligent computations. I brought up the notion that the objections were all “Western” philosophical objections, that I think from a non-dual Zen perspective very little objection would be raised to the idea that everything is a computation. Actually, I might go so far as to say that with a little reshaping everything is a computation is Zen. Let me explore what I think that reshaping looks like.

Separation: Rudy tends to look at computations a separate things rather then the One universal computation

The Uncomputed: Zen appeals to the unmanifest, that which stands behind the One computation. The space in between C_n and C_n+1.

I think that is about it.

my life

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:42:12 GMT

My life from the prespective of inifinite presence

hey I resemble that little red ball. one hell of a computation

Random input

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:16:14 GMT

Rudy wants gnarly class four computations that stand on their own. My intuition is that all computation dies out without “external” stimulation. Even the universe itself is doomed to quiescence.

Some story pieces

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:45:38 GMT

The Dark Years

The next morning Neil found himself walking into the Pentagon with Shelly. “Ms. Nickols the guard offered as they walked in, Dr. Constintine, and Col. Myers are waiting for in the Blue 37 Room,” handing Shelly a badge. Shelly and Neil walked straight through the guard station, not what Neil would have expected. As they walked down the hall Shelly handed Neil the badge. It had his picture. “When did this get taken,” he asked with surprise.

“Last night as you walked into the hotel,” she stated as if it happened every day that one was handed a badge with one’s picture for you which you did not pose.

“Well at least it’s not a bad picture.” Neil had been tired by the time he got to the hotel and had gone straight to bed; he had slept a little on the plane but not enough. Even now he felt only half awake. “This is all too fast,” he thought to himself. He realized that he had been flattered to be yanked to Washington by Shelly, but now he was having second thoughts. After traveling into the maze down several long corridors turning with the walls of the Pentagon they arrived at a small blue conference room.

The were seven men and one woman in the room, the plain wood grain Formica topped table they sat around filled the room. At one end was a blackboard that had a short agenda. They welcome Shelly and him. His program was running on a PC in the corner. “Mr. Lemon, congratulations your program is a remarkable intellectual feat,” a tall man said as he stood.

The next few hours were filled by Neil explaining his algorithm, the people at the table barely keeping up. Slowly the room came to understand both the power and limitations of the algorithm, but bottom line was that it changed the cryptology domain fundamentally. There is was still room for good crypto keys, but that room had been squeezed from the orange to the seeds.

Finally the meeting concluded, Col Myers addressed Neil and the room, “Mr. Lemon, your achievement is remarkable and like the God Father, I have a proposition for you. The work you have done here under DoD contract is classified. We would like you to continue your work here at the Pentagon. This is a free country and we are all proud of that, but your work will not be published other than in classified journal, and if you do not agree to work on it here, you will have to work in other areas.”

Neil sat silent for several minutes, everyone in the room looking directly at him. After the long pause Neil asked, “what would I get paid?”

The Col smiled, “plenty young man plenty!”

Awakening 1

Neil was finished with his testing. He had interactively checked out 41 different cell phones in the Wall Street area and everyone had a functioning neuron, his auto diagnostics had passed on a million phones already. However, they were no better then dead because they were not communicating with their neighbors in any consistent way. They were not organized into a higher order structure. Neurons, thought Neil, epitomize the duality of process and structure. The neurons were a structure all about process, but they did nothing unless they were embedded in a structure dedicated to processing something in particular. Now Neil would create his Ear on The Street. “This is the culmination of my vision,” he said out loud to no one but himself, “the vision I had first had when Dr. Rucker, showed me how disturbing the cellular soup could cause structures to form.” The key would be to create the “ears” around the phones of particular brokers. Brokers that would know about large trades -- must sells. Only Neil and his ears would be there first. “Getting their numbers, each of five target brokers had cost me,” he thought. He shrugged, “well it would have cost someone else.” he finished the thought out load, “for me it was a penny.” He picked up the cell phone, punched in the 15 digit activation code, and dialed the first number by hand. It was started. He hit enter on the computer causing the other numbers to be download and dialed. Each phone he pinged was now connecting in a dynamic structure with “neighbor” phones, together looking for trade information they would send to Neil’s phone and then to his computers which would buy the stock and then sell it a few minutes later at a profit. How many times a day would this happen. At least once every 10 minutes Neil reasoned. 50 to $100K dollars every ten minutes. “That is what we are talking about here,” he yelped!

In the network of cell phones where there had been passivity, there was now a purpose. Neil watched his CAPN monitoring screen as the processing network self organized. Each layer of processing forming around the natural neighbors of the targets. First there was the word recognition layer repurposed from the phone software, and then the context filtering layer, and then the relevance decision layer, and the buy message layer. Each call to or from the targets started a two dimensional computation, a cellular filter processed the words buy and sell and passed this off to a higher level operation which decided if this fit the criteria and if it did sent a message to the next level in CAPN which made a buying decision, sent a message to Neil’s network which then chose randomly one of his 500 offshore anonymous accounts – a pseudo person – to make the purchase. Before the broker could put in his order the price had ticked up an eighth or a quarter. Over the course of a year the broker’s customers would pay a little more for their “must buys,” and no one would notice.

And now one more ear was required. “For this experiment let’s see what we can find out about Dr. Bob.?”

Getting Even, not Mad

Neil had worked several hard years at the Pentagon, but the algorithm while easily the best had not been improved upon. The biggest benefit the pentagon was learning how to pick harder to crack codes. The cold war was over and many of the smaller governments were suspicious and stuck to one time pads that were hand couriered; they didn’t have that many secrets in any case. Nonetheless, the Pentagon had no intention of allowing anyone to know about Neil’s work, there had not even been classified publications. Bored, with no real challenged Neil and the other PhD geek he worked with turned their research inside to cracking securities exchanges. Their project was so black that no one knew what they were doing. Neil was making good money, more than the PhDs he worked with. It was as much the boredom as the frustration that he could not publish that caused Neil to go over the line.

“You now Sherry, I’m one smart fuck,” Neil announced to the call girl he had over. Neil spent a lot of time with Sherry, he made more than enough and recently he had started making more than he knew what to do with and so Sherry was like a live in girl friend, only she was getting paid. “No, really,” he added as she looked at him in surprise.
“Oh honey, I know you a very smart. That’s why I like spending so much time with you,” Sherry assured.

“Yeah right! And I thought it was the equipment.”
“No babe, you have great equipment but really if you weren’t so entertaining and fun to talk to you couldn’t pay me enough to stay around. Believe me there are plenty of Johns I would kill if I had to spend the hole day with um,” she added.

Neil rolled his eyes and wondered if he was being put on. He new Sherry was smart even though she had almost know formal education. He had domains of knowledge that he knew he nothing about. “Anyway, you know I a one smart dude. Well I got a plan. And you are going to help me and you are going to make a lot of money,’ he paused. “How about 10 percent, after all its my idea?”

Sherry looked at him puzzled, “and what idea is that? I guess it depends on what it is, but you want to pimp me its going to be fifty/fifty or no deal!”

Neil laughed, “Pimp! Me a pimp,” as he rolled in the bed. “No, I just need you to set up an brokerage account. It will be all my money but my name can’t be on it.” Neil want on to explain that he was going to do some stock trading but it just couldn’t be in name.

Sherry weighed the ins and outs and said, “Sure!”

Neil felt cheated. He had no academic career, he couldn’t tell anyone about his work. Dr. Bob had screwed him and not put his name on the early papers that were published based on his neural short circuit algorithm, and so he had no academic standing at all. He was a drop out. Such was the story Neil told himself. In this last year he started to hate his job in the Pentagon, it was beneath him and he regretted not just walking away when they made that offer. But now he had a plan to make it all worthwhile.

“Bill, I have an idea,” he called across the lab like the idea had just occurred to him. As usual Neil and Bill Wulf were the only guys in the lab. It was a shared computer lab but everyone else found other places to be. Neil and Bill even though they too could have skated thought life in the military industrial complex were either too nerdy or too dedicated or maybe it was that their combined E.Q was half that of their I.Q, but they spent lots of time in the lab just the two of them. Bill turned, “I have an idea you know what we need is more funding. Just think what we could do with a Cray.” Software jocks always wanted fastest computer so Bill listened even though it made no real sense. “I say we go real. We use the trade info we are getting and make some money for the Pentagon and buy us a real computer. If Ollie North can do so can we!” Neil had decided that he need to enlist Bill if he was going to make his scheme work. “They will never get it unless we can put a million dollars in the bank and show them we can do it.” Bill started back at Neil with a look of total disbelief. “We won’t spend the money but will never get any attention if we don’t do something big. We have to show them how valuable this technology is, we are sitting in a backwater and they don’t even know we exist!” Neil was activated now. He knew that emotion would sway Bill and he need Bill on his side. He went on to explain that they would setup a controlled account and everything would be accounted. After three months of trading they on insider information they should have the million dollars and they would drop it on Myers desk and finally get some attention. Later Neil would be amazed that Bill went for it but he did.

Neil and Bill worked together but Neil always did the plumbing while Bill did the decorations. It was no problem for Neil to make every seventh trade not show up in the log and to be executed in a different account, Sherry’s account without Bill being any the wiser. The bigger trick would be the factor of 10 accounting error so that Bill would not see how much money was really coming in until Neil would have a cool million plus in Sherry’s account and there would be a good eight million in the DoD account. He just needed to keep the transaction in hex pennies and he just needed at extra zero when converting to dollars. It was really too easy, like a magician conning the unsuspecting.

“You’ve done WHAT,” demanded Col Myers! He stood at his desk looking at the brokerage account statement.

Ending Balance: $23,344,337.53

Things had unfolded even faster than Neil had imagined, they had caught a bull market in the sweet spot. There was another $5.4M in Sherry’s account. Neil had almost shit as he watched the escalator carry their starting investment – the departments budget – up more than twice as fast as he had imagined. They had planned on running the scam for three months but they had pull it after two. And now they had shown the result to Col Myers and he did not look too happy! “Let me explain sir,” Neil looked straight in the Cols eyes. The change in Neil had been coming for a long time. In part it was hanging with Sherry, he was gaining street smarts, and in part it was finally growing up, and in part it was just what the fuck, he had gone over the edge and now it was about survival.

The Col blinked first, looked down, “go ahead explain yourself. Explain what the fuck you too have done here.”

“Well sir, I got to thinking about this whole Iran Contra fiasco, and I said to myself there has to be a better way to get covert funds.” He could see that this rocked Col Myers back. He new he had him, or he new he had him enough. $23M in two months was enough to turn the head of anyone in Intelligence. “You see I figured that we can setup off shore accounts and with my algorithm we can find enough sure deal trades to skim funds for covert operations. No more clumsy arms deals.” At this point the Col sat down to consider his options.
Neil had been in the Pentagon long enough to know two things. The greedy bastards would use what he had done, and two someone had to get in trouble. Neil counted on that being him. When the reprimand came Neil dutifully resigned. He was out. He knew someone at the Pentagon would figure it out and he knew that they wouldn’t do a thing about.
Neil moved back to California with $4M leaving Sherry with a $1.4M. He proceeded to use the information remaining inside information to make great investments that doubled again within the next year. Meanwhile Sherry overdosed on cocaine. Neil started on his next plan. Create an AI and get even with Dr. Bob.

Awakening 2

CAPN had been running for about three months and slowly it was starting to make regular transactions. It needed to learn and grow. It wasn’t an simple algorithm but a set of rules, but not strong rules, more like go in that direction there is food over there, hang out with people its entertaining and you learn things. Neil had placed the core “ideas” in CAPN’s higher level processing by favoring certain goals and information. CAPN’s rule had to do with trades, and must buys, and emergency transactions.

Neil would sit up in his tower in the morning and stare at the graphic representation of CAPN’s processing. Rolling waves, scrolls moving through the cell phone network. Each high def screen had a “ear.” Neil got great pleasure sitting there watching the smooth rolling waves move out from the center of the map. Usually the computation just settled down after a bit but sometimes it would grow, new waves would come out and reinforce the others, catching them as they slowed. Those were the buy orders.

Every now and then Neil would notice a wave coming into an ear from somewhere else. He didn’t know what it was, some bug probably, but it always seem to just wash through. The money was rolling in, and this was just the beginning.

Computations

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:48:01 GMT

I friend posted a link to this, http://www.complexification.net/gallery/

Since it fits in here it seems appropriate to post.

Life has been getting in the way of my writing my story and this is frustrating.

Thought for the day, in this computation that we are, everything that is possibible is possible. Yet we know that we are something beyond that compuation.

Test tonight

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:34:54 GMT

Here are my proposed answers to the test.

A find myself annoyed at the idea of a test. Ha ha.

What is Universal Automatism?

What is a computation?

What is the dielectric tirade in the books title?

What does it mean to say a computation P is unpredictable?

What does it mean to say Q emulates P?

What are Wolfram's four classes of computations?

Boring

Structured

Really interesting

Einstein's nightmare

What is the PCE?

What is the PCU?

What does it mean to say a computation P is universal?

What are rules 30 and 100 for 1-demensional cellular automata, and what are they interesting?

What are some examples of computational speed up?

What is Von Neuman's "Stored Program?"

What are these cellular automata, Life, Vote, Brain, Rule 30, & 110?

What are Belousov-Zhabotinsky scrolls and what are the rules that make them?

Discuss Analog vs. Discrete?

What are Real Number, or continuous value, CAs?

What is the CA rule for wave equation like behavior? What is the CA for the heat rule?

Now we are really getting hard.

Wave: C-new = C + Avg- Neighborhood (C-old) - C-old

Heat: C-new = (1 - a) * C + a * Avg-Neighborhood (C)

Discuss the beach ball into the bin experiment. How can we say it is deterministic?

Discuss what it means for a computation to be chaotic.

What does Wolfram mean by Intrinsic Randomness, being unpredictable?

How might we evade the apparent non-determinism of quantum mechanics?

What are the computational requirements for life? And what
are the implications at a system level?

Why does Rucker call DNA a "tweak" parameters?

Discuss morphogenesis? What are the CA rules that demonstrate morphogenesis?

What are some of the Turing Patters?

What are the CA rules that create chaotic population size? What is a logistic map?

What are the elements required for an evolutionary systems?

Discuss evolution as search in a fitness landscape.

Thoughts about the story, and CAPN's awakening 2

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:36:17 GMT

Inspried in part by Chapter 4 of Rudy's book. See http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox/
Reading parts of it help to gel these ideas

Neil planned on a specific intelligence. He arranges for multiple layers of recognition and context. The whole conversation was to be analyzed. That it was about stock trades, that it was a buy for 50,000 shares or more, that it was immediate. This requires a tremendous about of processing. It a process centered around particular brokers but the filtering process incorporates 1,000,000 phones in layers. First level word recognition is the phone then the word sequence is sent to the near which are a neural that the successively extracts meaning, until the conversation is “understood” as about a purchase and then about the decision. Everything starts to work but then several things start to go haywire. First new nodes branch off onto the frequent callers to and from the targets, i.e. family girlfriends, etc. The are no purchases there so the nodes get interested in other things. One trader goes on frequent dates and so CAPN starts sending information about dates that are made, but Neil does not provide the positive feedback that he does when a proper pick is made on a purchase and so the network randomly pick on someone else, who happens to be looking for a date and send the call to him. CAPN sends text messages it has made a decision a choice that was both convenient and cute Neil thought and now what allows CAPN to start sending messages about other things. It is the act of receiving and using information that CAPN detects, because on of the keys that Neil intuits is that the network must be “closed” so the purchases are done in voice because that is the clearest way to get feedback into the Network! So when text message is sent to call Jill for a date and the guy does it CAPN “likes it.”

Now if I can put it into the story in a credible way. Productivity has been low this last week I am definitely not ready to put togehter the whole thing.

Running down

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 06:49:22 GMT

I notice that I’m running down on the energy to write the story. I think it has to do with some difficulties I see in the story line and that I don’t have a clear idea on how to get straight.

The most difficult thing is to create a credible story around Neil breaking the prime number factorization and having the government keep it secret for 20 years.
I find the idea that a bunch of people would be scared if they knew this humorous, but I’m not clear that it is a compelling storyline.
The next problem is getting from there to why Neil’s cell-phone-brain should evolve intelligence. Clearly it must be because Neil codes a version of the covering algorithm into the network, and it gets repurposed by CAPN.
A structural problem is that I started out thinking Neil would be zealous about creating an intelligence but then I have him stumbling into it.
I have him being a smuck(sic) and a nice guy at the same time.
I have to figure out who he is. Maybe he is both but then I have got to figure out why.
I have been leaning towards the idea that Neil is screwed over by the government and becomes angry and uses his algorithm to get rich knowing that they cannot catch him without exposing the secret they desperately want to keep. Namely that they can break these codes and that no one is safe from them.
An idea springs to mind about the governments continued preference for one time pads because they know that the codes are breakable.
I have to explore Neil’s good side also. He should have loving, but distant parents.
Maybe they die just after he gets sequestered in the Pentagon further pissing him off; maybe they don’t tell him even though they know.
Neil has to also be motivated by some altruism; he has to care about black people, and he has to give money to places in Africa; maybe he supports a school in South Africa that he visits in January just after the solstice party.
Neil has a soft spot for kids.
Neil has to get in shape after he arrives at the pentagon, maybe some gung ho colonel motivates him, or maybe some ordinary guy.
I have to have a reason for the coving principle in CAPN, that is how is the special power of the covering principle used by Neil to get the results he wants and to distinguish them from other conversations.

Survival and computational complexity

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 06:42:31 GMT

One of the points of discussion in last weeks class was “why are there not more examples of gnarly computations like the Belousov-Zhabotinsky scrolls showing up in things like skin and other places in life?” We also discussed that maybe they do show up, e.g. in the brain. I was trying the make a point about survival that I did not make clearly so I am going to try again. I think that survival requires a mix of computations, that is, not everything can be gnarly and survive because the competition becomes too intense. So an organism that has at its core some gnarly computation needs to buffer that with stable class 1 and 2 computations, otherwise it becomes a class 4 computation that cannot be sustained. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Questions for next weeks test

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 13:38:41 GMT

This list is from my notes, about the possible questions for next week’s midterm.

What is Universal Automatism?

What is a computation?

What is the dialectric triade in the books title?

What does it mean to say a computation P is unpredictable?

What does it mean to say Q emulates P?

What are Wolfram’s four classes of compuatins?

What is the PCE?

What is the PCU?

What does it mean to say a computation P is universal?

What are rules 30 and 100 for 1-demensional cellular automata, and what are they interesting?

What are some examples of computational speed up?

What is Von Neuman’s “Stored Program?”

What are these cellular automata, Life, Vote, Brain, Rule 30, & 110?

What are Belousov-Zhabotinsky scrolls and what are the rules that make them?

Discuss Analog vs. Discrete?

What are Real Number, or continuous value, CAs?

What is the CA rule for wave equation like behavior? What is the CA for the heat rule?

Discuss the beach ball into the bin experiment. How can we say it is deterministic?

Discuss what it means for a computation to be chaotic.

What does Wolfram mean by Intrinsic Randomness, being unpredictable?

How might we evade the apparent non-determinism of quantum mechanics?

What are the computational requirements for life? And what are the implications at a system level?

Why does Rucker call DNA a “tweak” parameters?

Discuss morphogenesis? What are the CA rules that demonstrate morphogenesis?

What are some of the Turing Patters?

What are the CA rules that create chaotic population size? What is a logistic map?

What are the elements required for an evolutionary systems?

Discuss evolution as search in a fitness landscape.

The worm turns

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:39:54 GMT

[Revised last paragraph of Back When]

That evening Dr. Bob had a party put on by his government sponsors. Dr. Bob was a bachelor and he had some hope that there would be a few women at the event. In fact Bob fancied a woman on the auditing committee.

“She’s not your stunning beauty,” Bob whispered to the dean, “but is a smart. Nothing like a satisfying physics conversation along with the smoke afterwards.” “Especially if we smoked a little pot before,” he added to himself. Bob took a drag on his camel and started across the room to do a little physical research. “Hey Shelly, how are you?”

“Great Bob, and you?” she quarried with a smile. Yep, she’s in the mood he thought.

Shelly and Bob and been intimate on several occasions, but only irregularly, they were not a thing. Shelly worked at the Pentagon and only came to LA once or twice a year. They had first met at a conference in Hawaii about five years before. Two unattached nerds who knew how to have a good time.

“I’m good, but I have student that I think is turning out to be more trouble than he is worth. And the dean is on my back about it,” Bob blurted surprising himself as much as her.

“Really, who is that?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know him; he’s not one of the graduate students.” He paused, do I want to talk her about this he questioned himself. Why not, she might have some insight I don’t have and if she has interest … Shelly looked about at Bob inquisitively, “Yeah, he’s an undergraduate, Neil Schemer.” He did some brilliant work in set theory while still in high school and I stuck my neck out to bring him to the school.”

Shelly who had Bob pegged grinned and said, “Right you thought you had a gold mine and he’s turning out to be more work than you thought?”

Shoulder’s dropping, “I can’t get one by you can I?” She didn’t reply, “yeah that about sums it up. He has some great skills, he is the best coder I have. He is porting stuff over to the new PCs you helped me get from IBM. Its my hope to get enough computer time to get the simulations I need”

“So?”

“Its that he is not holding up his grades because he doesn’t show up to class. Then today he comes to by office all excited. ‘I have to see something he says,’ only it has nothing to do with the quark simulation instead he has been working on some prime factorization thing,” he adds frowning.

“Really!” Shelly interjects with surprising interest.

“Yeah,” responding to her excitement – go with the flow, “what did he say? Factoring public keys; he claimed it was much faster than existing algorithms.”

“How much faster?” she demanded. Shelly had recently started looking into future communications for DoD, something Bob did not know.

“Hmm, I think he said several orders of magnitude, but I’m not sure.”

She paused and seemed to be agitated. She step up close to him, “well we will have something to do in the morning before I go shopping.” She reach discretely squeezing his private parts, turned suddenly and added “see you later,” as she winked.

The next morning Bob’s alarm went off at 6AM. Normally Bob went out for a run in the morning but he had other hopes this morning. He rolled over and kissed her on the ear, but she rolled away and pulled the pillow under her head. Reluctantly, Bob rolled out of bed, put and the coffee and got into the shower, all thought of a run having vanished. But not all showers end alone. A few minutes later Shelly stepped in, coffee cup in hand and a big grin on her face. He looked different without the glasses.

They arrived on campus at 8:15, after breakfast at a new restaurant the Good Earth. As they walked to Bob’s office Shelly saw a very large black man at the door, writing a note. “Neil!, “ Bob called surprising Shelly.

Neil turned, “Oh good you’re here,” he huffed as he crumpled the note he was writing. “I got it working, I’ve been here all night.”

“Great,” Bob exlaimated thinking damn life can be good to an asshole. “Let me introduce you to Shelly Nickols, she is with the Pentagon. Actually she is the one paying your stipend. I told her about the work you are doing,” might as well let him think I was excited about it too he thinks, “and she couldn’t wait to see it. She insisted on meeting me here this morning.

“Umm, OK,” struggled to get out Neils mouth as he noticed their freshness and relaxed demeanor. It reminded him of mom and dad when the got up late on Sunday morning.

As they arrived in the lab Neil offered to first show the quantum simulation. It wasn’t too exciting a set of numbers slowly scrolling up the screen. The hard disk could be heard thumping as the data was also written to disk as the dot matrix printer also clattered. Bob peered at the numbers, “it looks good, you checked everything, your sure its right?”

“Several times over boss,” Neil assured him.

“Let’s see your factoring program Neil,” Shelly said sounding slightly impatient. “Bob told me this, ah …, last night about your work on the covering principle. I was impressed. You used this in your algorithm?”

Neil was sure he had just been lied to, but he as not sure why or how, but he knew now that the Prof and Nickols were more than just working together. Neil walked over and got a 5 ½ floppy out of a purple box and lumbered over to the PC on the other side of the room, inserted the floppy and typed a:\primfact.exe. The drive spun up and a motor could be heard moving the floppy disk head. Presently a prompt appeared, “Enter Product of Primes :”. Neil, sitting now in front of the screen, “I’ll put a 64-bit product in so you can see it work.” He typed a number in, in hexadecimal format from memory [I need to create a few numbers that work.] hit the large RETURN key. The screen lit up as before, then dots started disappearing, after several cycles lasting for about two minutes of this all of the dots disappeared and the original prompt showed again, but with Neil’s number = 1458AD47 * 64323777, and new prompt “Enter Product of Primes: “

“That’s it,” Neil offered. Adding proudly, “that takes all day with any other algorithm.”

“Yes it would,” Shelly added seemingly stunned. She opened her Gucci purse pulled out her wallet and withdrew a torn piece of notebook paper; Bob recognized it as the sheet she had barrowed from him before making a call that morning. “Here, try this number.” Neil look at her with surprise, and then turn to the keyboard, “slowly.”

“7 6 A C 5 5 9 14 A D F 0 0 1 2 9 8 7 5 1”, she intoned.

Neil pressed the RETURN key and the process started again. “I’ll get some coffee,” Bob offered and left the lab. Two minutes later the program displayed the result. 76AC55914ADF001298751 = XXXXXXXX * YYYYYYYY. Shelly took a seat.

“Its Friday, I want to come to Washington with me to show some other people your result.” Neil was the one stunned now. “You’ll back by Monday” she added, not sure that this last part was true.

A few minutes later Bob returned with two coffees, handed one to Shelly and took a sip out of his. “So, what do you think?”

“Neil is coming with me to Washington this morning,” she responded with an authority that neither one of them questioned. “Neil can you get all the copies of your program? I don’t want it left here!”

Neil would never come back to Cal Tech and it would be several years before he saw professor Bob again.