Life predates death, but just barely. At some point in the dim past, in a small pond or in the depth of the ocean, a twiggy bit of proto-RNA, or a fat globule stuffed with hydrocarbons, appeared. It was random chance, an unusual reaction, but with that life had begun. And like all familiar forms of life, this ancestor set off to make a copy of itself.
It succeeded. It may have succeeded a few times, starting a small extended family with total ignorance about death. Mostly, they lacked any organelles remotely capable of conceptualizing anything, especially abstract concepts like death. But there was also a lack of practical experience at play.
Then, death swirled his metaphorical bony finger in that pond, announcing his arrival. Perhaps torsion in the water ripped a creature in two. Perhaps the reproductive act failed, leaving two molecules trapped in a deathly embrace. But just moments after life, death was here.
Odds are pretty good that life and death will depart together, the last creature exiting, hand in hand, with the last death. Entropy isn't the swiftest foe, but its a dedicated one. Still, the rules of death are amenable to change. As long as a star is fusing elements together, there's energy a life can use to extends its existence.
The younger among us may live to see the day when medical technology possesses power to banish non-accidental death. Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes even the middle aged will make it to that victory. Even if it comes centuries from now, some civilization is going to have to face the social repercussions of practical immortality. Our body does an impressive job keeping itself repaired, a little help from nanotechnology and the genetic engineering away of certain 'kill switches' in our genes, could push our maximum age back arbitrarily far.
The "replacement rate" for humans is currently somewhere around 2.3 children per woman. If every woman had 2.3 children, our population would remain constant. As we prevent childhood deaths and infertility, the number approaches 2. When we have more children than this, our population grows, and on a finite world we will eventually reach some maximum capacity for supporting life.
But the replacement rate assumes a constant rate of death as well. If nobody dies, there's no-one to replace, so the replacement rate falls to 0. Adding in voluntary death and accidents, a few babies become necessary, but a very small amount compared to our biological drive to reproduce. An immortal civilization will face very hard choices about how to handle birth and death, putting a choice once dictated by fate into human hands.
The most pleasant solution is pushing off the population cap. Immortality supplanted with the colonization of space could see each generation being sent to new, untapped worlds. Kurzweil predicts that the ability to upload the mind into a simulated Eden will avoid overpopulation issues. If the mind is just a physical pattern, and that pattern can be reproduced in bits, computers could provide a massive location for storing generations past, a location where the living could interact freely with the 'dead', removing the sense of loss from bodily expiration.
But its not clear that either of those solutions will come to pass, or provide a long term solution to geometric population growth. Absent new worlds, real or simulated, to keep our forefathers population balance will need to be provided by society. The fairest solution may be abstention: the technology to stop death exists, but isn't used. Or if the allure of an extra century or three of life is too great, life extension could be provided up until a point. At some predefined age, death is mandated.
Practically, the solution seems fair. Overpopulation is averted, and while the government will eventually have you killed, you'd have achieved a longer than natural life. Still, mandated death dates have a chilly, distopian feel to them. I suspect not everyone will go gently into that good night. And in a way its just another form of abstention, possessing life giving technology but refusing to hand it out.
What if we wanted to allow immortality, perhaps for the few? It'd be an interesting experiment at any rate: what would a youthful body 800 years old think of? Would they be like a species above us, masters of endless knowledge and skills? Or would their brain fill up, and their abilities fail to exceed our own? Would they become trusted advisers, fonts of first hand knowledge from centuries of civilization, or just a burden and source of jealousy for the rest?
Will we turn to the free market for a solution? Auctioning off slots to the next century? A free-market proponent could argue that wealth corresponds with an individuals contribution to society, and that the most contributing deserve more time on Earth, but the solution strikes me as too distasteful for adoption. While we already portion off life saving technology by wealth, I'm inclined to believe this discrepancy has a limit, and that the populace won't accept an immortal ruling class lightly.
There's one solution that frightens me most, because it feels so fair on the face of it. Immortal despots, death panels and brains encoded into 1's and 0's are very science fiction. They don't strike me as the sorts of solutions people would actually choose. But what if the 'replacement rate' was made more concrete? What if immortality is granted as long as you have no children? With the birth of a first child, some clock could be set, perhaps just the removal of age-defying treatments. The parent could live a traditional full life: 60 years, perhaps, to see the children grow up and make their own lives, before they need to pass on. Then death becomes a choice, a trade off for a deep biological need, and a morale obligation to give other lives a chance at realization.
Sounds fair doesn't it, or at least as fair as is likely when immortality is real? But what sort of world would this create? I suspect lots of people wouldn't wait much longer than they do now. Some would experience life for centuries, or longer, only passing on when they'd experienced all they wanted to experience in this life. But then there's the edge of the bell curve...
A few people would chose not to have children ever, preferring self preservation to reproduction. Perhaps sociopaths, having no concern for others, would see no need to create new life. The intensely narcissistic, the ego-maniacal, the greedy, seeing at no point in time an advantage in giving up their self-important life, would pass generation to generation. The well adjusted will accept death, sooner or later, as an integral part of being. Even if those self absorbed make up a minuscule fraction of the population, each generation would add a few more to their numbers. The good die, the bad live on. The good die, the bad live on. Then one day birth is all but gone, as only the self obsessed are left. Such a good meaning solution. Such a dreary end.
There's a theory that the reason we can't find signs of alien life is a tendency for civilizations to self destruct at some point in their evolution. This idea seems less popular now, being much more visceral during the threats of the cold war. I'd always dismissed it somewhat out of hand, as more a projection of fears than a reasonable theory. But on thinking about life extension, I can start to see the sort of seed that would rip societies apart. What if the technology was ubiquitous and strict rules could not be placed on the use? What if the solutions all require despotic control, the sort antithetical to a civilization's advancement? Will we adjust to the siren song of immorality? Do any species?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Do We Have Gravity Backwards?
Electromagnetic radiation allows us to see the universe. From radio waves as long as football fields, up through the colorful wavelengths of visible light and on to high powered x-rays and gamma rays, electromagnetic radiation is our principle tool for observation. Even when we switch to magnets or touch we've just swapped one form of electromagnetism for another.
What if some forms of matter don't react with electromagnetic radiation? A very clear plane of glass is transparent to the colors we see, but still opaque to other wavelengths. What if a structure was totally invisible? You could pass through it without ever knowing it was there. The only evidence would be the slight tug of gravity.
A globule of the stuff on Earth might evade detection forever, presumably drifting down into the molten core of the planet for an even better hiding spot. But on galactic scales the impact of the gravity would be visible on other matter. And astronomers have detected just that. Galaxies with insufficient mass to mathematically hold together do anyways. When you tally the things we see with the gravity we measure, they don't add up. Science has named this discrepancy dark matter. The leading candidate explanation right now is exotic particles that just don't react to light.
Einstein taught us that gravity is a distortion of spacetime by a massive object. The universe is like a trampoline: when something is placed on it, it bends the structure around it. Another object placed down will tend to roll towards the first object, obeying the attractive force of gravity (As an aside I've never really liked this way of explaining gravity. Why does the trampoline distort around an object? Gravity is pulling the object down towards the Earth, and the trampoline is in the way. We explain what gravity does by alluding to gravity).
There's an alternative explanation I've come up with. We see regular matter at the bottom of gravity wells, in exact proportions to the strength of the gravity, and as the matter moves the gravity does too. So we say that the matter distorts space, creating the gravity. What if that's backwards? What if spacetime is curved all on its own, and matter just pools in the low places? That is, what if protons, electrons and the whole gang don't bend space around them, just follow the existing grooves? You'd still see lots of matter in very dense places, but the cause and effect would be reversed. Gravitational distortions wouldn't follow a sun around, the sun would roll around to keep inside the distortion. Dark matter stops being a mysterious particle, and just becomes a gravity well that hasn't been totally filled.
Physical theories need tests. The most straightforward one I can think of is looking for cases where a massive body is caught in the grip of even larger one: A star passing by a black hole perhaps. If the gravity well travels too close to the blackhole, it may fall in. But if it skirts by its ever so closely, ejecting around the other side, the energy pooled in the star might fall in while the gravity well continued on its way. Dark matter being produced by super nova might also be a clue, with the great explosion ejecting mass from the gravity well. Finer measurements of gravity might allow us to use more practical sized objects.
What if some forms of matter don't react with electromagnetic radiation? A very clear plane of glass is transparent to the colors we see, but still opaque to other wavelengths. What if a structure was totally invisible? You could pass through it without ever knowing it was there. The only evidence would be the slight tug of gravity.
A globule of the stuff on Earth might evade detection forever, presumably drifting down into the molten core of the planet for an even better hiding spot. But on galactic scales the impact of the gravity would be visible on other matter. And astronomers have detected just that. Galaxies with insufficient mass to mathematically hold together do anyways. When you tally the things we see with the gravity we measure, they don't add up. Science has named this discrepancy dark matter. The leading candidate explanation right now is exotic particles that just don't react to light.
Einstein taught us that gravity is a distortion of spacetime by a massive object. The universe is like a trampoline: when something is placed on it, it bends the structure around it. Another object placed down will tend to roll towards the first object, obeying the attractive force of gravity (As an aside I've never really liked this way of explaining gravity. Why does the trampoline distort around an object? Gravity is pulling the object down towards the Earth, and the trampoline is in the way. We explain what gravity does by alluding to gravity).
There's an alternative explanation I've come up with. We see regular matter at the bottom of gravity wells, in exact proportions to the strength of the gravity, and as the matter moves the gravity does too. So we say that the matter distorts space, creating the gravity. What if that's backwards? What if spacetime is curved all on its own, and matter just pools in the low places? That is, what if protons, electrons and the whole gang don't bend space around them, just follow the existing grooves? You'd still see lots of matter in very dense places, but the cause and effect would be reversed. Gravitational distortions wouldn't follow a sun around, the sun would roll around to keep inside the distortion. Dark matter stops being a mysterious particle, and just becomes a gravity well that hasn't been totally filled.
Physical theories need tests. The most straightforward one I can think of is looking for cases where a massive body is caught in the grip of even larger one: A star passing by a black hole perhaps. If the gravity well travels too close to the blackhole, it may fall in. But if it skirts by its ever so closely, ejecting around the other side, the energy pooled in the star might fall in while the gravity well continued on its way. Dark matter being produced by super nova might also be a clue, with the great explosion ejecting mass from the gravity well. Finer measurements of gravity might allow us to use more practical sized objects.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Happy Labor Day
September 4, 1882 Thomas Edison turned on the world's first commercial electric power plant, lighting one square mile of Lower Manhattan. The following morning would mark the first observation of Labor Day in the United States.
From peasant uprisings, through strikes and political lobbying, labor disputes have been part of the fabric of civilization since its inception. But from the industrial revolution onwards they took a different tone. Work took a different tone. Man could now wield power external to his body.
Animals and fire served that role first, but the introduction of water wheels and the mastery of steam power greatly bolstered the force with which man could reshape his surroundings. Edison's electric station turned the electron to man's bidding, one more ally in reshaping the universe.
One of the defining questions of civilization is 'how should things be shared when want exceeds supply?' In a sense, this is the foundational question in politics and in economics. The basic answer we seem to always return to is: you deserve reward proportional to your contribution to the process of obtaining it.
But with mastery of the elements, and the introduction of repeatable, predictable, automatable processes, the balance of labor shifted. Within a factory, the ability of a man to produce was magnified immensely. Suddenly, measuring contribution becomes difficult.
Does the man toiling in a field not yet touched by automation suddenly deserve a much smaller portion of the society's goods? And what of the machinery's contribution? Does the man working the machine deserve the riches of the machine, or does the machine's inventor? Or the man who arranged to have the machine built?
The industrial revolution was a liquid period in human civilization. The rules were changing, new forces were at play. The labor movement was a series of physical battles fought between people to set the new rules of society. As the heat of change cooled, society started recrystallizing, new social norms in place for how to manage an economy in a world with electricity.
The story of the labor movement is filled with victories: the weekend, the slowly shortening workweek, rights for workers and comfortable wages. But in a sense, the entrepreneurs and investors won. They were the ones seen setting in motion progress. Society weighed down in favor of the idea that wealth mostly belongs to the inventor, to the machine owner, to the one organizing work.
Thirty-four years before Edison's factory opened, before Labor Day was observed, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. Marx believed workers would unite and claim ownership of the fruits of labor, destroying social strata and autocratic economic governance. That hasn't happened. Karl Marx's mistake, I'd argue, was believing that the 'crystallization' of society would keep proceeding at the rate it was during his life. That soon man would have invented what he was going to invent, that life would settle into pastoral routine of early ages, when each generation relived their parents' lives. Perhaps it will someday, and he was just early. But change is innate to complex organisms like a society. Technology can greatly disrupt established orders, but we manage to do so on our own even without it.
What Marx saw coming was a day when each generation looked exceedingly similar to the one before it. What would business be in such an environment? Each adult would have his role: keeping this machine functioning, seeing that coal was delivered from this mine to these factories. Businesses would not rise and fall, but plod along with predictable returns each year. In such an environment, of what use is the entrepreneur, of the investor, of the executives? The system today elevates them, treasures there ability to navigate in changing times, but that role is lost in a predictable environment.
His call for the workers of the world to unite never happened. Communist states appeared, but the brotherhood of the worker never overcame the social force of national identity. There was no need to question why grandchildren of businessmen deserved such power because technology kept everything changing, new inventions created new wealth. If anything change has been accelerating.
Labor Day celebrates the efforts of men and women in ensuring the quality of life of the worker, the right of the worker to exist as a powerful political and social entity. It's a story of struggle, requiring an antagonist, filled sometimes-fairly, sometimes-not by the executive. What's ahead in labor relations? I don't expect the struggle to ever end, really. Incredibly intelligent AI might achieve peace in labor relations, ending man's need to worry about such things. We may create a Matrix for ourselves, a simulation of world' without scarcity, man made gardens of Eden. But more strongly I suspect that our civilization will stretch out through the stars, and each passing millenia will see new battlefields for Labor Day remembrances.
From peasant uprisings, through strikes and political lobbying, labor disputes have been part of the fabric of civilization since its inception. But from the industrial revolution onwards they took a different tone. Work took a different tone. Man could now wield power external to his body.
Animals and fire served that role first, but the introduction of water wheels and the mastery of steam power greatly bolstered the force with which man could reshape his surroundings. Edison's electric station turned the electron to man's bidding, one more ally in reshaping the universe.
One of the defining questions of civilization is 'how should things be shared when want exceeds supply?' In a sense, this is the foundational question in politics and in economics. The basic answer we seem to always return to is: you deserve reward proportional to your contribution to the process of obtaining it.
But with mastery of the elements, and the introduction of repeatable, predictable, automatable processes, the balance of labor shifted. Within a factory, the ability of a man to produce was magnified immensely. Suddenly, measuring contribution becomes difficult.
Does the man toiling in a field not yet touched by automation suddenly deserve a much smaller portion of the society's goods? And what of the machinery's contribution? Does the man working the machine deserve the riches of the machine, or does the machine's inventor? Or the man who arranged to have the machine built?
The industrial revolution was a liquid period in human civilization. The rules were changing, new forces were at play. The labor movement was a series of physical battles fought between people to set the new rules of society. As the heat of change cooled, society started recrystallizing, new social norms in place for how to manage an economy in a world with electricity.
The story of the labor movement is filled with victories: the weekend, the slowly shortening workweek, rights for workers and comfortable wages. But in a sense, the entrepreneurs and investors won. They were the ones seen setting in motion progress. Society weighed down in favor of the idea that wealth mostly belongs to the inventor, to the machine owner, to the one organizing work.
Thirty-four years before Edison's factory opened, before Labor Day was observed, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. Marx believed workers would unite and claim ownership of the fruits of labor, destroying social strata and autocratic economic governance. That hasn't happened. Karl Marx's mistake, I'd argue, was believing that the 'crystallization' of society would keep proceeding at the rate it was during his life. That soon man would have invented what he was going to invent, that life would settle into pastoral routine of early ages, when each generation relived their parents' lives. Perhaps it will someday, and he was just early. But change is innate to complex organisms like a society. Technology can greatly disrupt established orders, but we manage to do so on our own even without it.
What Marx saw coming was a day when each generation looked exceedingly similar to the one before it. What would business be in such an environment? Each adult would have his role: keeping this machine functioning, seeing that coal was delivered from this mine to these factories. Businesses would not rise and fall, but plod along with predictable returns each year. In such an environment, of what use is the entrepreneur, of the investor, of the executives? The system today elevates them, treasures there ability to navigate in changing times, but that role is lost in a predictable environment.
His call for the workers of the world to unite never happened. Communist states appeared, but the brotherhood of the worker never overcame the social force of national identity. There was no need to question why grandchildren of businessmen deserved such power because technology kept everything changing, new inventions created new wealth. If anything change has been accelerating.
Labor Day celebrates the efforts of men and women in ensuring the quality of life of the worker, the right of the worker to exist as a powerful political and social entity. It's a story of struggle, requiring an antagonist, filled sometimes-fairly, sometimes-not by the executive. What's ahead in labor relations? I don't expect the struggle to ever end, really. Incredibly intelligent AI might achieve peace in labor relations, ending man's need to worry about such things. We may create a Matrix for ourselves, a simulation of world' without scarcity, man made gardens of Eden. But more strongly I suspect that our civilization will stretch out through the stars, and each passing millenia will see new battlefields for Labor Day remembrances.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Computers: Slightly Less Magic Than They Could've Been?
Our suspicions may have been confirmed: P may not have equaled NP all along.
The P=NP question has been the seminal problem in theoretical computer science since forever ago (for the computer value of forever: 40 years give or take). To simplify it past any resemblance of truth, P is basically the group of all 'easy' problems, and NP is the group of all 'easy to correct' problems. If I gave you a computer program and told you it could always win at chess, how would you go about confirming that's true? Not very easily. But if I told you there's a 3,000 mile car trip that visits every state capital in America, and tell you the roads to take, you'd just have to count up the miles to see if it's true. Proving a computer program does something is not in NP, but proving that there's a path of some length between cities is. The question, then, is if there's an easy way to confirm a solution is true, can you easily come up with the solution too? (If I give you a map, can you come up with the shortest path between all the state capitals?) Computer scientists have suspected 'no', but demonstrating this is true has been fraught with difficulty.
People try to prove this all the time, and they fail. Vinay Deolalikar apparently emailed a 100 page proof to a group of respected researchers, and the paper eventually ended up on the Internet. Then the Internet became abuzz, an article was written on slashdot, and tweets of 'Deolalikar' skyrocketed past any previous level he'd experienced. Daniel Lemire raised a good question: why? What about this proof has gotten such discussion, as opposed to countless other attempts at a proof? Which is a really interesting question in general.
News transmission requires two participants: someone to tell the news and someone to hear it. You're hearing, or rehearing, this news from me. All in all, I'll probably end up telling 15 or so individuals about this event. Each of you may pass the news on to someone new, or let this trail of the story of Deolalikar's proof attempt end.
Coincidently, just like in my last post linking auto-immune diseases, SEO and planted evidence there's a illness connection here. The study of news transmission began in the study of epidemics. Instead of giving you a disease, I'm giving you a fact. Sorry, antibiotics won't help this time. Maybe enough alcohol, consumed very quickly, will wipe the fact from your mind? On the plus side, P = NP would have been great news for robots, so Computer Science is arguably less likely to kill you now.
What was discovered in epidemics is that the crucial value for deciding if a sickness will turn into a pandemic is the average number of people a sick person passes the disease onto before dying or getting better. If they average, say, 0.9 people, then the disease will dwindle and vanish. But if the average is, say, 1.2 people, then it'll explode through the population, each day the legions of sick increasing. Same thing with zombies. Same things with news and memes.
The P=NP? proof is a particularly good example of this. The knowledge of this paper started out just in Deolalikar's head. He gave the paper to a few other researchers. If the proof was poorly done, it would have ended there. But it was exciting enough that the researchers wanted to share it with > 1 other person each. There was an initial outbreak of this knowledge, eventually reaching slashdot.
Slashdot, having a vast readership, is particularly apt at transmitting an idea. For an instant the average person told skyrocketed by its introduction. The analogy is that the virus has reached the water supply, or the zombies have entered New York City. There was a phase change in outreach.
Sometimes news sources provide stories that don't excite us, that don't have a viral spread > 1. These peter out of the public discourse. But the blog posts and tweets since the slashdot story demonstrate again that there's a viral nature to this story. And here I am telling you.
Viral spread isn't a constant value, as eventually the susceptible are all infected. And not everyone is susceptible, by genes or geographic isolation. Or in this case, interests. Not all the readers of this blog are computer science aficionados, so this is more likely to be the end of the line then the computer science-centric blogs I've read this story on. It still might have another major outbreak if it reaches a mainstream news source. Or alternatively, if other theoreticians can't find any problems with the proof the story will 'mutate', and grow even more viral. Million dollar prizes always make good stories.
Returning to Dan's question, what made the story viral? P=NP is about as pop-culture as unsolved mathematics can be. The proof is apparently plausible. Releasing the paper by email is novel and interesting. And "I am pleased to announce a proof that P is not equal to NP, which is attached in 10pt and 12pt fonts" is a great way to announce one of the pinnacle proofs of our time.
One of the interesting things about viral spread is how small the critical value is. 0.95 people per iteration is a non-story, 1.05 can spread across the world. Thus it may be that the font comment was enough to push it across, and without it we'd have had to wait for more actual confirmation of the proof before hearing about it.
I find networks to be an endlessly interesting topic, and this is a great practical example of it. It also shows a news source acting as a facilitator of a story with wide popularity rather than pushing a story because of the source's reach. It'd be an interesting metric to see what news sources respond to and create viral spread, and which just push ideas that couldn't hold up in an organic global discussion.
As cool as a P=NP world would be, best of luck to Deolalikar, I hope you've earned your way into the pantheon of computer science greats.
The P=NP question has been the seminal problem in theoretical computer science since forever ago (for the computer value of forever: 40 years give or take). To simplify it past any resemblance of truth, P is basically the group of all 'easy' problems, and NP is the group of all 'easy to correct' problems. If I gave you a computer program and told you it could always win at chess, how would you go about confirming that's true? Not very easily. But if I told you there's a 3,000 mile car trip that visits every state capital in America, and tell you the roads to take, you'd just have to count up the miles to see if it's true. Proving a computer program does something is not in NP, but proving that there's a path of some length between cities is. The question, then, is if there's an easy way to confirm a solution is true, can you easily come up with the solution too? (If I give you a map, can you come up with the shortest path between all the state capitals?) Computer scientists have suspected 'no', but demonstrating this is true has been fraught with difficulty.
People try to prove this all the time, and they fail. Vinay Deolalikar apparently emailed a 100 page proof to a group of respected researchers, and the paper eventually ended up on the Internet. Then the Internet became abuzz, an article was written on slashdot, and tweets of 'Deolalikar' skyrocketed past any previous level he'd experienced. Daniel Lemire raised a good question: why? What about this proof has gotten such discussion, as opposed to countless other attempts at a proof? Which is a really interesting question in general.
News transmission requires two participants: someone to tell the news and someone to hear it. You're hearing, or rehearing, this news from me. All in all, I'll probably end up telling 15 or so individuals about this event. Each of you may pass the news on to someone new, or let this trail of the story of Deolalikar's proof attempt end.
Coincidently, just like in my last post linking auto-immune diseases, SEO and planted evidence there's a illness connection here. The study of news transmission began in the study of epidemics. Instead of giving you a disease, I'm giving you a fact. Sorry, antibiotics won't help this time. Maybe enough alcohol, consumed very quickly, will wipe the fact from your mind? On the plus side, P = NP would have been great news for robots, so Computer Science is arguably less likely to kill you now.
What was discovered in epidemics is that the crucial value for deciding if a sickness will turn into a pandemic is the average number of people a sick person passes the disease onto before dying or getting better. If they average, say, 0.9 people, then the disease will dwindle and vanish. But if the average is, say, 1.2 people, then it'll explode through the population, each day the legions of sick increasing. Same thing with zombies. Same things with news and memes.
The P=NP? proof is a particularly good example of this. The knowledge of this paper started out just in Deolalikar's head. He gave the paper to a few other researchers. If the proof was poorly done, it would have ended there. But it was exciting enough that the researchers wanted to share it with > 1 other person each. There was an initial outbreak of this knowledge, eventually reaching slashdot.
Slashdot, having a vast readership, is particularly apt at transmitting an idea. For an instant the average person told skyrocketed by its introduction. The analogy is that the virus has reached the water supply, or the zombies have entered New York City. There was a phase change in outreach.
Sometimes news sources provide stories that don't excite us, that don't have a viral spread > 1. These peter out of the public discourse. But the blog posts and tweets since the slashdot story demonstrate again that there's a viral nature to this story. And here I am telling you.
Viral spread isn't a constant value, as eventually the susceptible are all infected. And not everyone is susceptible, by genes or geographic isolation. Or in this case, interests. Not all the readers of this blog are computer science aficionados, so this is more likely to be the end of the line then the computer science-centric blogs I've read this story on. It still might have another major outbreak if it reaches a mainstream news source. Or alternatively, if other theoreticians can't find any problems with the proof the story will 'mutate', and grow even more viral. Million dollar prizes always make good stories.
Returning to Dan's question, what made the story viral? P=NP is about as pop-culture as unsolved mathematics can be. The proof is apparently plausible. Releasing the paper by email is novel and interesting. And "I am pleased to announce a proof that P is not equal to NP, which is attached in 10pt and 12pt fonts" is a great way to announce one of the pinnacle proofs of our time.
One of the interesting things about viral spread is how small the critical value is. 0.95 people per iteration is a non-story, 1.05 can spread across the world. Thus it may be that the font comment was enough to push it across, and without it we'd have had to wait for more actual confirmation of the proof before hearing about it.
I find networks to be an endlessly interesting topic, and this is a great practical example of it. It also shows a news source acting as a facilitator of a story with wide popularity rather than pushing a story because of the source's reach. It'd be an interesting metric to see what news sources respond to and create viral spread, and which just push ideas that couldn't hold up in an organic global discussion.
As cool as a P=NP world would be, best of luck to Deolalikar, I hope you've earned your way into the pantheon of computer science greats.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
It was him.
The human body is equipped with a remarkably effective defense system. Once a dangerous substance has gotten into your body, it needs to push its way past the cell walls containing Defensin, a protein designed to keep bad things out. While the invader struggles to get in, it is liable to be eaten by Granulocytes and Macrophages, or marked for attack by a passing B cell. Even once infiltration is achieved, the body will seek out the compromised cells and destroy them with Killer T and NK Cells. Infections and illnesses come, but the body almost always wins in the end.
But such a powerful defensive weapon has a cost, as the HIV virus reveals. A powerful immune system can be turned against the body, destroying what it was built to protect. Some allergies exhibit a similar phenomenon, where the immune system gets over eager in destroying foreign particles. A lack of defenses leaves a system vulnerable to attack, but excessively capable defense systems are liable to be misused by outside forces.
The lesson doesn't just apply to the body. Google is caught in a war against 'black hat' search engine optimization. Do you ever see spam in the comments of an article? They often don't expect you to click on the link to purchase cheap knock-off purses, but they do expect Google to see the link, and return the target website higher in search results. Huge swathes of the internet are made up of dummy webpages, computer generated, intended only to look legitimate so the links to a real webpage are followed by Google and considered more authoritative.
When these tricks work, Google is left redirecting its users to scams and overpriced stores. So it works hard to identify these tricks and nullify them. If Google catches you gaming its system, it will remove you from its indexes, forever cutting you off from the biggest provider of pageviews around. The threat of banishment from its indexes is a very effective deterrent.
It also creates a powerful weapon to be abused. If you can't rank your website higher, causing your competitors to get kicked out of the index is the next best thing. Performing black hat search engine optimizations on another website can trigger Google's defenses against an innocent target, bringing advantages to the perpetrator. This is making Google's job harder.
And then there's law. Allegations of police officers planting drugs on suspects has a long history. It's difficult to catch someone in the act of a crime like drug use, so possession is used as a reasonable marker of intent and criminalized. But possession can be faked by an enemy, turning the sizable defensive weapon of the criminal justice system to twisted ends. Very recently, after 8 months of being abused and ostracized, a man was cleared of possession of child pornography after an employee of his bragged about planting the photos on his computer. In this case justice was eventually served, but its certainly the case that not every framer is foolish enough to leave behind a trail or brag about his crime.
The improper triggering of defensive mechanisms is, to some extent, unavoidable. The cost of letting an attack succeed in any setting can be too great to sustain. Thus a balance must be found that will inevitably include false positives, be it the creation of allergies or the imprisonment of the innocent. Still, it's a very important lesson to remember that evidence is easy enough to manufacture. When the penalties for a crime can ruin a life, especially based on the ultimately circumstantial evidence of possession of outlawed goods, some extra care must be taken. Things aren't always what they seem.
But such a powerful defensive weapon has a cost, as the HIV virus reveals. A powerful immune system can be turned against the body, destroying what it was built to protect. Some allergies exhibit a similar phenomenon, where the immune system gets over eager in destroying foreign particles. A lack of defenses leaves a system vulnerable to attack, but excessively capable defense systems are liable to be misused by outside forces.
The lesson doesn't just apply to the body. Google is caught in a war against 'black hat' search engine optimization. Do you ever see spam in the comments of an article? They often don't expect you to click on the link to purchase cheap knock-off purses, but they do expect Google to see the link, and return the target website higher in search results. Huge swathes of the internet are made up of dummy webpages, computer generated, intended only to look legitimate so the links to a real webpage are followed by Google and considered more authoritative.
When these tricks work, Google is left redirecting its users to scams and overpriced stores. So it works hard to identify these tricks and nullify them. If Google catches you gaming its system, it will remove you from its indexes, forever cutting you off from the biggest provider of pageviews around. The threat of banishment from its indexes is a very effective deterrent.
It also creates a powerful weapon to be abused. If you can't rank your website higher, causing your competitors to get kicked out of the index is the next best thing. Performing black hat search engine optimizations on another website can trigger Google's defenses against an innocent target, bringing advantages to the perpetrator. This is making Google's job harder.
And then there's law. Allegations of police officers planting drugs on suspects has a long history. It's difficult to catch someone in the act of a crime like drug use, so possession is used as a reasonable marker of intent and criminalized. But possession can be faked by an enemy, turning the sizable defensive weapon of the criminal justice system to twisted ends. Very recently, after 8 months of being abused and ostracized, a man was cleared of possession of child pornography after an employee of his bragged about planting the photos on his computer. In this case justice was eventually served, but its certainly the case that not every framer is foolish enough to leave behind a trail or brag about his crime.
The improper triggering of defensive mechanisms is, to some extent, unavoidable. The cost of letting an attack succeed in any setting can be too great to sustain. Thus a balance must be found that will inevitably include false positives, be it the creation of allergies or the imprisonment of the innocent. Still, it's a very important lesson to remember that evidence is easy enough to manufacture. When the penalties for a crime can ruin a life, especially based on the ultimately circumstantial evidence of possession of outlawed goods, some extra care must be taken. Things aren't always what they seem.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
The Flipbook Universe
The universe is a very active place. From the collision of stars and fiery supernovas down to the effervescent fizz of virtual particles that make up the smallest filaments of reality, things are always moving.
The dynamic nature of the universe is almost a given...and yet, is it real? Consider instead the flip book universe:
The flip-book, besides being a strategy in getting through a particularly dry lecture, serves as an interesting model for understanding the universe. It's a two dimension reality that exists within three, the third dimension making the passage of time possible. Each page is static, unchanging. But if you flip the book, creating varying perspectives on the pages, you can observe the arrow of time working its magic.
There are other ways to construct the same phenomena. The movie projector shines light through a series of static images to project them onto another object. Precursors like the kinetoscope would often rotate a cylinder with images, showing one at a time through a slit.
The same phenomena could be creating you and me. Are we really dynamic, three dimensional objects, or are we just fixed features on a higher dimensional rigid object, spinning on its axis, creating the illusion of a passing time? When the universe completes its rotation, will we be back where we started, ready for yet another pass through an unchanging story of life, the universe and everything?
I'm not sure that there are explicit, scientific tests you could run to ever answer the question. The idea may be trapped forever in the realm of philosophy. For any layer of dynamic activity could just be a transcription on a higher dimension. And how could the sketched character, unchanging moment to moment, leave his page to observe the full sketch book?
If it's true, though, I look forward to repeating my experiences with you the next time reality completes its cycle.
The dynamic nature of the universe is almost a given...and yet, is it real? Consider instead the flip book universe:
There are other ways to construct the same phenomena. The movie projector shines light through a series of static images to project them onto another object. Precursors like the kinetoscope would often rotate a cylinder with images, showing one at a time through a slit.
The same phenomena could be creating you and me. Are we really dynamic, three dimensional objects, or are we just fixed features on a higher dimensional rigid object, spinning on its axis, creating the illusion of a passing time? When the universe completes its rotation, will we be back where we started, ready for yet another pass through an unchanging story of life, the universe and everything?
I'm not sure that there are explicit, scientific tests you could run to ever answer the question. The idea may be trapped forever in the realm of philosophy. For any layer of dynamic activity could just be a transcription on a higher dimension. And how could the sketched character, unchanging moment to moment, leave his page to observe the full sketch book?
If it's true, though, I look forward to repeating my experiences with you the next time reality completes its cycle.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Pawns and Processors, Bytes and Bishops
In a game famous for it's prodigies, Magnus Carlsen of Norway stands out as something special. He was the third youngest chess grandmaster ever (age 13). Youngest #1 player ever (age 19). At 19 he also holds the third highest ELO score ever, putting him with the top chess players of all time (although wikipedia informs me that score is subject to inflation and thus debatable). Apparently you don't usually hit peak chess ability until 25 at the earliest, so being the best in the world at 19 promises for a long, dominating career.
Why do I bring him up? Because his childhood spent mastering chess included lots of time playing against computers. Carlsen is obviously one of those rare individuals that excel at some task far beyond the abilities of others. But could screen time have contributed to his almost unique skill? It's an answer we'll have to wait and watch for as new generations of chess players enter the world stage. Carlsen could be a fluke, or a precursor of what's to come.
The argument for software being a major cause of Carlsen goes like this: natural ability is not enough to be the best in the world. It's a requirement, but insufficient. Chess greats throughout history have put countless hours into studying chess: memorizing moves, playing games. This is true of any skill: you need to paint lots of pictures, write lots of words, hit lots of fastballs to make it big. Natural aptitude is a clay that gets formed into a specialized machine with repetitions and practice.
But not all practice is equal. Joe Mauer, 3 time A.L. batting champ, perfected his swing against a contraption his dad invented that would drop a ball at his eye level. With so little time between seeing the ball and the ball passing his waist, Joe had to develop an exceptionally quick swing. More generally, how often do strong high school sports programs exist for decades at a time? Partially elite performing schools attract transfers, but partially the talent in a program encourages everyone to perform at a greater level.
As a child, I played chess against my mother. For a long time she'd beat me every game. Eventually I surpassed her, winning most (but not all) of our matches. And then I stopped improving. It wasn't until years later that I started playing chess on Yahoo that I noticed myself improving again. I had found a challenge.
If you practice a competitive skill against players below your level, it's much harder to improve. Failures teach us. If you only see 50 mph fastballs, how do you learn to hit a 95 mph one? You're not developing the reaction time, the muscle memory, or the poise to do so. So it is with a chess prodigy. Eventually you surpass your parents, local children, then local adults. You can travel the world playing tournaments against the current generation of greats, but there's only so many such games you can get in. Often the chess prodigies will find a skilled player to mentor them, but the truly great will surpass even them.
Enter the computer, capable of calculating dozens of moves in advance. The computer can now play on par or better than any human in the world. In the coming years, that advantage will only grow. Any child with a computer now has access both to talented players across the world via the internet, and against their own, personal AI chess master. There is no need to arrange games against other greats, traveling far to play: from the comfort of your room you can pit yourself against the best.
As computers soar in their processing power, defeating all comers, they threaten to trivialize chess. But simultaneously they offer us the opportunity to reach previously unattainable levels of skill. And chess could just be the start. From math to literature, sports to debate, engineering to leadership computers may soon give us the opportunity to prove ourselves in challenges previously unknown. Carlsen is a wonderfully brilliant young man. He may also be a pioneer.
Why do I bring him up? Because his childhood spent mastering chess included lots of time playing against computers. Carlsen is obviously one of those rare individuals that excel at some task far beyond the abilities of others. But could screen time have contributed to his almost unique skill? It's an answer we'll have to wait and watch for as new generations of chess players enter the world stage. Carlsen could be a fluke, or a precursor of what's to come.
The argument for software being a major cause of Carlsen goes like this: natural ability is not enough to be the best in the world. It's a requirement, but insufficient. Chess greats throughout history have put countless hours into studying chess: memorizing moves, playing games. This is true of any skill: you need to paint lots of pictures, write lots of words, hit lots of fastballs to make it big. Natural aptitude is a clay that gets formed into a specialized machine with repetitions and practice.
But not all practice is equal. Joe Mauer, 3 time A.L. batting champ, perfected his swing against a contraption his dad invented that would drop a ball at his eye level. With so little time between seeing the ball and the ball passing his waist, Joe had to develop an exceptionally quick swing. More generally, how often do strong high school sports programs exist for decades at a time? Partially elite performing schools attract transfers, but partially the talent in a program encourages everyone to perform at a greater level.
As a child, I played chess against my mother. For a long time she'd beat me every game. Eventually I surpassed her, winning most (but not all) of our matches. And then I stopped improving. It wasn't until years later that I started playing chess on Yahoo that I noticed myself improving again. I had found a challenge.
If you practice a competitive skill against players below your level, it's much harder to improve. Failures teach us. If you only see 50 mph fastballs, how do you learn to hit a 95 mph one? You're not developing the reaction time, the muscle memory, or the poise to do so. So it is with a chess prodigy. Eventually you surpass your parents, local children, then local adults. You can travel the world playing tournaments against the current generation of greats, but there's only so many such games you can get in. Often the chess prodigies will find a skilled player to mentor them, but the truly great will surpass even them.
Enter the computer, capable of calculating dozens of moves in advance. The computer can now play on par or better than any human in the world. In the coming years, that advantage will only grow. Any child with a computer now has access both to talented players across the world via the internet, and against their own, personal AI chess master. There is no need to arrange games against other greats, traveling far to play: from the comfort of your room you can pit yourself against the best.
As computers soar in their processing power, defeating all comers, they threaten to trivialize chess. But simultaneously they offer us the opportunity to reach previously unattainable levels of skill. And chess could just be the start. From math to literature, sports to debate, engineering to leadership computers may soon give us the opportunity to prove ourselves in challenges previously unknown. Carlsen is a wonderfully brilliant young man. He may also be a pioneer.
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