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To computer addicts
Computer is doing lots of processing for you. It connects you with information and people. It runs program to get output. It becomes your playground to do all sorts of things.
What type of computations you can do as person. Is it very limited in most sense. You can know what a computer can do in terms of its computing abiities. Do you know what you can do? ie.. besides ordering Pizza and deleing junkmails. ..
Well, it's time to recognize what you can do in terms of what computer is able to do.
Surfer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
uh?
Thursday, February 19, 2004
wha?
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Um...I can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, and vice versa, in my head.
Is that what you're looking for?
Kyralessa
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Finally! Somebody says what we've all been thinking!
Joe Blandy
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can derive the quadratic formula in my head.
anon
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Yeah sure, but can anyone derive what this guy is saying?
old_timer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
You'll need a computer...
Joe Patterson
Thursday, February 19, 2004
<my guess at translation>
Surfer is asking if we are aware of our own limitations as far as "computation" goes as we are aware of a computers limitations as far as "computation" goes.
I would guess that that cryptic message was the result of one of those wonderful translation programs. Sometimes their output is just plain funny.
Elephant
Thursday, February 19, 2004
What I am saying...
You use computer for lots of proccessing abilities etc.. How do you use yourself as a human. What are the potential which are given to you that you use to fullfill a goal. for example, with computer you can click and get a link and find out the results of the search. What are the task that you can perform computationally?. It's is not just about math or formula. It's about whatever humanly possible in terms of computational abilities.
Surfer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can tell the difference between a cat and dog just by looking at it with >99% accuracy. How's that for image processing!
Bathmophobic skier
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Are we unwitting participants in a Turing test here?
Joe Blandy
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Bathmophobic skier 's reponse about image processing accurately reflect what I am trying to say. Do we have list of such item somewhere which I can take a look?
Surfer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Stay away from the purple acid...
Craig
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can imagine pornographic images.
name withheld out of cowardice
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can to 21, but not in mixed company.
Doug Withau
Thursday, February 19, 2004
That looks strangely like one of the "what happens when you get your punctuation wrong" exercises from long ago...
Greg Hurlman
Thursday, February 19, 2004
He avoided any use of a comma though, must have heard abouts Joel's reputation.
Aussie Chick
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I _think_ I understand what you're trying to say. And, yes, I've thought of it often.
The example that I think of is football. It's raining and the ball is wet. There's a 10 MPH southernly wind. The QB is running East and the Receiver is running a flag route North, then at 10 yards out veers North West. The QB takes the snap, backs up and starts running to the right, throws a perfect spiral, and hits the Receiver on the numbers.
At first glance, the problem is simple Newtonian mechanics. But it's really more complex than that. In his mind, the QB is calculating all kinds of things that would be a onerous task to write a program to do. But he's not concious of the calculations. He just does it.
And even though we all know that the brain is an amazing "computer", I still marvel at it all the time.
Nick
Thursday, February 19, 2004
well said Nick. Also, try hard-wiring a computer to find puppies "cute".
eaw
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Thanks Nick for helping. You said my point very well with a very complex example.
We compute only at certain point in the life. Not all time. We are allowed to be lead by computations that we have made in the past.
The use of computer tells that we have urge to compute soemthing. If we practice computing in our head, we will try using our own computational abilities rather than making heavy use of computers.
Surfer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can walk upstairs forwards or backwards carrying an unbalanced load while thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner or how tight I'm going to play in the Hold 'em tourney when I get home. I can ride a bike, with and without using my hands. I can type without thinking about what keys I'm hitting. I can almost carry a tune. I can recognize words phonetically without them being spelled correctly. I can stand on one leg. I can compare the color blue with a sweather I had as a child and a band I saw last week, at the same time. All your brain does is computations, you just notice them about as much as a fish notices water.
Kero
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Vaguely remembered from "Heart of the Comet" by David Brin and Gregory Benford:
"The difference between a computer and a human? The computer will detect an incoming meteor, and start solving the ballistic equations and be happily crunching along while the rock impacts, smearing the computer across the landscape.
"The human will look, do a quick estimate of the vectors involved, and jump out of the way!"
Chris Tavares
Thursday, February 19, 2004
One reason for the extreme efficeny and speed is the training set that humans have. Take for example an OCR product. It has a physical training set indicating what the letter 'A' should look like, and how to recognize variations on it. By the time you're an adult, you've undoubtedly seen millions if not billions of this symbol. No wonder we are able to recognize it so quickly. The training set is enormous. We may not understand the physics of every day life, but we are able to deal with it and process it for the same reasons that we can recognize the letter 'A'. The amount of time training and recognizing how the physics behaves allows us to make better estimates. Or so goes my estimate.
Elephant
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I use myself to procreate. (Take that translation engine!)
pdq
Thursday, February 19, 2004
I can say "Hello, world!" in 23 different languages.
Kevin
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Wow,
I really love the responses. If taken not lightly, it has ability to form the list of applied common sense technology which shapes our daily life.
Technlogy has shaped computer world. New things in the computer science are discovered daily. Which means lots of progress of computer technology. New technology is making the use of already discovered technoloy.
l
Similarly if we discover new technlogy in common sense field, ie.. computational ability it means lots of progress for us. An average human being is trying to posses the common sense throught the life.
Disovering own computational abilties provide a base for forming higher abilties and grwoth.
Surfer
Thursday, February 19, 2004
translation engine? I like the turing test theory better.
But kind of puts a spin on the turing test when we are so used to having an english-as-a-second-language type person enter the room and expect bad english.
Though I wouldn't expect it would count as a succesful pass of the turing test if all the participants thought you were a foreigner...
Aussie Chick
Thursday, February 19, 2004
> try hard-wiring a computer to find puppies "cute"
I'll leave out "main" etc.
bool bPuppiesCute = true;
Since all puppies are cute, it is really easy. Maybe one could expand it so that they are not cute at the point in time that you find their poop on the carpet, but I will leave the coding of that as an exercise for the reasder.
Friday, February 20, 2004
I can read upside down (a book that is)
apw
Friday, February 20, 2004
Surfer, you've started with a false premise. You write
"Technlogy has shaped computer world. New things in the computer science are discovered daily. Which means lots of progress of computer technology. New technology is making the use of already discovered technoloy.
l
Similarly if we discover new technlogy in common sense field, ie.. computational ability it means lots of progress for us."
The computer techncology to which you refer is simply the result of human computational ability. Your statements imply that we're neglecting human development in the pursuit of technology, but the technological advances are based on human abilities to observer, analyze, compute and act.
That said, I've observed that a reliance on electronic devices has undermined some fundamental skills in general. For example, typos now seem to routinely occur in books, national magazines and professional publications. Part of the problem (and I am basing this on decades of experience in the publication industry) is an over-reliance on spellcheck programs. Another example is that of basic math skills: clerks in supermarkets rely on cash registers and do not have the math skills to recognize an obvious error when incorrect numbers are entered. Recently, a clerk entered an incorrect amount for the cash I handed over for a $95 grocery bill. I was owed $5 in change, but because of the error, the register said I was owed $55. She insisted on handing me $55, unable to grasp the concept the 100 minus 95 is a lot less then 55. We had to call the manager over to sort it out ...
EdithW
Friday, February 20, 2004
EdithW, I would have taken the money. Any cashier who is that inept with numbers deserves to have to make up the shortfall out of her own pocket.
Martha
Friday, February 20, 2004
EdithW: ===>The computer techncology to which you refer is simply the result of human computational ability. Your statements imply that we're neglecting human development in the pursuit of technology, but the technological advances are based on human abilities to observer, analyze, compute and act.
I never said that we are neglecting human development.
I said.. because of the advancement and interaction with computers, we should be more aware of computation taking place inside us.
Surfer
Friday, February 20, 2004
That's a rather cutthroat way to live, Martha. Next time _you_ make a mistake at work, you think they should dock you half a day's pay to be sure you learn from it?
Kyralessa
Friday, February 20, 2004
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