MIND-STRETCHING RECOMMENDED READING
Some genuine thought-provokers:
” Dreaming 5th Generation War ” by Dan of tdaxp:
Dan accomplishes some quality reification of the 5GW concept here before moving on to illustrate an example. This one has earened a detailed response from me but it is not a good idea to launch in to it without first letting readers familiarize themselves with Dan’s magnum opus. I should be following up soon however.
“Measuring the Depth of Ideas” by Lubos Motl:
This is a fantastic, horizontally conceived piece with potentially wide application across fields.
Unfortunately, Lubos has cast many of his examples in a vertical subfield expertise format – and since Motl is a String theorist that leaves those of us without a strong grasp of the nuances of modern physics in the dark at times. Understandable since The Reference Frame is a String Theory heavy blog but the core idea of the argument is really a general one as explained in Motl’s summary:
“Deep ideas are those that are unique among conceivable similar statements at comparable levels of complexity and that are able to cover a large set of particular examples (models, phenomena, metaphenomena) and explain a large number of patterns using a small number of independent assumptions and parameters, especially if the deep ideas are inevitable. Whether or not a given idea is unique among ideas that a priori look analogous, may often require hours or years of calculations. These calculations are crucial because we must choose our deep ideas not only according to the impression they make in the first 3 minutes, but also according to their ability to offer us true insights in the long term. “
” Knowledge and Information Part I.” by Matt at Conjectures and Refutations:
A multi-part epistemological investigation on the implications and interpretation of Karl Popper’s ideas and information theory ( Part II, Part III and Part IV) this thread may be of particular interest to readers like Von, Dan, Critt, Younghusband and Jacob H and anyone else of the computer-math-physics tribe.
Ah, my brain spins just from posting…. :o)
July 24th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for the link Mark! I originally started thinking about this problem in response to a challenge from Aaron Haspel (godofthemachine.com), but it gradually evolved into something a lot bigger than I’d originally planned. Glad you liked it anyway.
(BTW, you can take Verisimilitude out of your links now. It’s gone for good.)
— Matt McIntosh
July 25th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
Hi Matt,
Glad to have you on the roll in your newest incarnation ! Hopefully some traffic went your way from the link.