| Sajha.com Archives | |
| Username | Post |
| rauniyar | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 03:02 PM
Hi all, two statments from no less than all time celebrated human beings makes me ponder a bit.What say you all? Uhi Rajeev, CT, Amrika All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in binary fashion. We can someday replicate that on machine.... Eventually, we'll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in carbon-based system. Bill Gates in Time Mag Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable.... The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. My 2 cents... Of course Einstein did not have computers, he "only" had his brains to come up with this statment. |
| bisun | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 06:41 PM
As an opening statment to a paper in a Evolutionary Biology class, I once wrote that search for truth is like an assymptotic line on a graph paper. It always progresses towards an axis but never actually touches it. Truth is the axis and the human knowledge is the assymptotic line. We will always progress towards the truth, but will never actually get to the whole truth. This is inherent in the human limitations. Yes, we can always reduce our limitations, but will never be able to fully eliminate them. There will always be room for us to progress, and we will always progress towards the truth. So eventhough what Bill Gates says might come true one day, it will only be approximate repliaction of nature's intelligence. There will always remain minor (no matter how minor) unsloved mystery of nature and hence in words of Einstein, nature will always be "beautiful," and it will alwyas attract us to find more about itself. And we will keep progressing...reaching one step nearer to the truth and yet always a few step farther from it. |
| rauniyar | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 07:10 PM
Bisun, you are duly right in putting this thread to some thoughtful direction. I truly agree that there are limitations when it comes to learning truth. But of that quest for THAT whole truth is rather a phenomenon that each human beings shall have to seek on their own. If you were to ask me how elusive it can be, I would readily tell you that it is one of those thing that at least, is beyond my layman existence. If your post was not close to truth in itself, I would not have found my coveted electrical professor pick up that book on philosophical/sprititual stuff trying to understand the unknowns. He already knows how to do second-degree differentials in his head. He already knows that his studenst are making calculation errors on the calculator when dealing with complex circuits. That is that on my frame of expreience for quest of truth. Cheers! Uhi Rajeev, CT, Amrika |
| confused | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 08:45 PM
beautiful post rauniyar, two of the greatest mind of 20th century and both greatest in their own perspective way. "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious." This quote by Einstein has always fascinated me, and indeed it’s true. No matter what we do and try solving anything that comes across us, there will always be something more to learn about it. And as, greatest scientist of our time has suggested, Steven Hawking, if we come to know everything, then we will be knowing "THE MIND OF GOD" ... Beautiful post indeed! Keep continuing ...very exciting to know people's thoughts in subjects, which have fascinated the whole mankind. |
| DWI | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 09:06 PM
Bisun, A good comparison of truth with Asymptotic line (or delta on ramp). My take on it is that there is no such thing as absolute 'Truth.' It is the perception, we generally refer to as truth. A 'fact' is the flux of general perception that most of us agree upon. What we refer to truth is an abstract model of our perception. Rauniyar, If you agree with me, What Bill Gates is talking about is encoding of the perception. Einstein is talking about the perception (truth) itself. Over the centuries we have battled with truth and compromised with it everytime. Our compromise results in what we percieve as happiness/satisfaction (i.e. we are satisfied with what we know) and our battle is our conquest for the immediate(not the ultimate) truth. With the way this civilization has been progressing, the output of this battle is increasing in geometric progression. It is almost exponential, but like an exponential curve, we will never reach the end. |
| scatterbrain | Posted
on 27-Apr-04 10:42 PM
Quantify my thoughts Or capture my soul in strings of zeros and ones, Let my wisdom flare in C-Sharp Anger be measured by a function, Let my vices be discrete Life be simple as Y or N... And all Hail to Mr Gates I have rebooted my love in XP Thank God it doesn't crash like the Millenium Edition, |
| u_day | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 11:24 AM
>>>My 2 cents... Of course Einstein did not have computers, he "only" had his >>>brains to come up with this statment. Let's sue Bill Gates. If we win we can get part of his $10 billion worth properties. |
| rauniyar | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 01:31 PM
u_day, make no mistakes when I write this. It is nothing to do with suing as such, I say so coz, the statments were picked from two differnt reading materials that were not at all connected. Meaning, neither Einstein (did I spell it right this time) nor Gates no about these statements. One died a long time before the other who is still living. Both of them are great characters to learn from, that is my personal perspective hai. Ani, last but not the least. The thread was composed to evoke some pourings on philosophical stuff, which some true Sajha Patrons were able to pick. Tyati matra ho. Uhi Rajeev, CT, Amrika |
| gator_guy | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 03:22 PM
Rajiv mitra very interesting thread indeed - solution at philosophical levels only. Your thread gave me a feeling that i should browse sajha from time to time. The battle between artificial intelligence and human intelligence has been the most fascinating curiosity to me all these years, and it started with Garry dai and the Deep Blue. I think that created avenues for future cooperation between machines and humans. Both Einstein and Gates are the greatest figures. It would not be wrong to say that there is a subtle balance between human creativity and machine computation. I like the comparison : human creativity and intuition, against, brute and mechanical force of man-made machine. Our brain has a finite capacity to think (although the extreme value in the range is extremely high), but the machine will also have limitations in subjective judgment. So, there lies the battle. Gates has prospects because the question is only of what depth of search is required to match human skill and judgment, which indeed is true. However, I find difficult to envision (at least to my peanut brain) that binary coding can replicate humans exactly. I personally believe there is nothing that can be compared to or imitate the beauty of human thinking. I think I prefer to stay closer to Einstein than with Gates, here I am biased and thats a human errro. |
| DWI | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 04:24 PM
Two things: 1. Comparison between Gates and Einstein. There is no way you can compare these two entities. Einstein was a Nobel prize winning scientist whose greatest contribution could be the Theory of Relativity. Bill Gates is a brilliant Businessman with a good sense of Science (specially Computer Science). A better comparison would be Einstein with Stephen Hawkings and Bill Gates with Larry Ellison (Oracle) or Steve Jobs (Apple). 2. Gator_Guy's reluctance on accepting the binary model of life. A good example is human being, or any matter in existence. Every thing is composed of atom, isn't it? Now how can you imagine trillion and trillions of atoms combining to make a being, that can talk and type in Sajha? Similarly, all complex logic can be attributed to simple Binary Operation. Now it could be simply a binary operation or Hex or even Decimal for that matter, but what is for sure is that thought manifestation is a result of a complex pattern of 'On' and 'Off' (or more if Hexadecimal is considered). One emotion can be thought of a big logic table with different pattern as the column title and 'On' and 'Off' as the values within them. Hope that helps. |
| oys_chill | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 05:42 PM
Interesting thread! had my thoughts quantized :P btw, Rajeev bro, where in CT are you? katai ghetto najikai ta hoina? jus curious! DWI bro, talking about comparisions....I happen to witness this poster in our science building recently. Can it get better than this in terms of comparision? http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~jr/gif/phys/solvay27.jpg This 1927 conference of modern physicists was the scene for vigorous discussion of quantum theory. How on earth did they all get together? :P |
| oys_chill | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 05:43 PM
aee..html ma kamjor chu...photo kasari talni re? :P |
| yadav | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 05:49 PM
That picture doesn't show all the participants of the conference. I was in the conference hall when they took the picture. |
| yadav | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 05:50 PM
yes sari:  :P |
| confused | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 05:53 PM
Talking about Steve Jobs vs Bill gates, you all have to see the movie called Pirates of the Silicon Valley. This movie gives out the brief history of founding of apple, their founders, bill gates and founding of microsoft. Its a very good movie. If you are interested in bussiness world i suggest you to watch it :) And about Steven Hawkings, his book, The Brief History of Time, challanges the Einstein Theory of Relativity. This is a very good book, basically its targeted towards Einstein's Theory of Relativity. |
| DWI | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 06:28 PM
Oys, that should be the picture of the century (millenium?). Scientists like Schrodinger (His equations are harder than his name), Heisenberg (uncertainty principal, Quantum Mecha rings bell?), Bohr (model of atom), Curie. Lorentz (famous with Maxwell; time and space) and Einstein along with all other Maharathis of Science (I couldn't recognize the rest), don't come together that often. Thanks for the picture (gonna be my desktop wallpaper for few days). Confused, confused on History of Time? Hawkings doesn't really challenge Einstien's principal but rather re-inforces it. He does spot out Einstien's mistake but gives a rather simpler way of understanding the Theory of Relativity. Critical Value of Universe's density is the most mysterious topic covered in the book, atleast for me. |
| oys_chill | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 07:27 PM
DWI bro, That's what I thought. The poster gives the contribution of each of the scientists in concise details. Maybe that's why I haven't skipped my physics classes lately. Err..not so much for the topics, but our professor is an amazing trivia master, so he gives a lot of anecdotes of the physicists.....and constantly says "That was an amazing conference" |
| confused | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 07:33 PM
DWI thax for clearing out the confusion :) i have read the book and there was some of the lines i simply couldnt understand..as hawkins describes : "One such black hole could run ten large power stations, if only we could harness its power. This would be rather difficult, however: the black hole would have the mass of a mountain compressed into less than a million millionth of an inch, the size of the nucleus of an atom! If you had one of these black holes on the surface of the earth, there would be no way to stop it from falling through the floor to the center of the earth... So the only place to put such a black hole, in which one might use the energy it emitted, would be in orbit around the Earth - and the only way that one could get it to orbit the earth would be to attract it there by towing a large mass in front of it" does this have anything to do with THeory of Relativity?? anyone can clear this out?? |
| DWI | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 08:01 PM
Confuse, The concept of Blackhole was presented officially right after Einstein came up with his Theory of 'General' (as opposed to 'Special') Relativity. Aside from ascerting the fact that the speed of light is constant and is independent upon the relative motion/orientation of the observer; this theory also established the principal of Curved Spacetime. Presence of any matter(with mass) curves space-time plane. Stephen Hawkings presents it as a ball in a cloth (or was it a paper, please check), wherever you place the ball you will see that part of cloth curved to the mass of the ball. Bigger the mass, bigger the curve. A black hole is a massive matter compacted so small that its escape velocity equals the speed of light. And as you know not even light can escape the black hole's pull. In curve-space term, the curve-space around the black hole is so steep (so highly curved) that nothing can escape out of it. Einstein's theofy of General Relativity was thus able to ascertain LaPlace's original idea about Black Hole (I don't remember the name of the scientist who came up with the final idea of Black hole). |
| SITARA | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 08:34 PM
The neurons and the pattern sequences may be replicated but the MIND may be too elusive and or illusive to be captured in any code or data. In this I will go along with Einstien, any day! The ascent of the mind in the mammal(primates) can only be assumed and concluded upon empirical data. However, lateral knowledge which falls beyond the boundaries of empirical data cannot be proven, replicated or recorded; the mind, which is a product of the brain and a major contributor to peception, falls into this gray area. |
| Bramha | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 08:57 PM
It's really immature to compare Bill Gates here with the Father of Modern Science, Eienstein. As somebody mentioned already, Bill Gates is a clever businessman with some technical knowledge. Whatever he said inTime Magazine isn't his own, this theory has beed supported for long by some of the greatest scientists/physicists,not businessmen. As far as the study goes, replicating human intelligence in its entirety is almost impossible, but capturing/sending certain signals to the brain and expect certain results has already been done. Making AI comparable to human brain is definitely possible, but replicating human brain...!!!we have to wait for centuries! But this is really an interesting TOPIC! |
| aakar | Posted
on 28-Apr-04 11:04 PM
But i think this world is ruled by lies that is why there is so much of problems. You see if there were only truths around, then we would not be suffering so much. it is the super powers who flioat this lies around and we get caught in them thiking this is our passion and follow it like their slaves and get caught in the long run So i think we need to persue things that is real to ourselves forst. |