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Complexity, simplicity, springtime
Mar. 18th, 2003 11:41 amLast night I went to see Stephen Wolfram, the author of A New Kind of Science, give a talk at BU. ( Here's my synopsis of his synopsis of his 1200-page book, and my strangely personal reasons for wanting to hear him talk. )
Now, today, a new and long-running seminar on artificial intelligence is starting up at work. It's cool. I bogged the whole discussion down trying to figure out if an agent that gives no output can be considered an agent (I say, if it's changing itself in response to stimulus, yes! but only if you consider the agent a part of the environment, and the book we're reading says the agent is separate from the environment. Errrrrrggggh). I'm kind of excited about the seminar since it's being run by a good friend and I still have almost no background in a lot of this basic stuff. I'm going to try to be good and read the book at home on the weekends when it won't be such a chore.
So, I guess the summary is that I'm still kind of focused on nerdy/philosophical stuff. To me it is artsy as well. There are probably cool poems and screensavers in all these these ideas somewhere, if I cared to dig them out.
I forgot to say that this morning I saw not-so-small green plants growing UNDER a layer of transparent ice in my neighbor's yard. Some were in little melted spots but some were completely under the ice and seemed to be growing just as well as the others. You see the craziest things in spring.
Now, today, a new and long-running seminar on artificial intelligence is starting up at work. It's cool. I bogged the whole discussion down trying to figure out if an agent that gives no output can be considered an agent (I say, if it's changing itself in response to stimulus, yes! but only if you consider the agent a part of the environment, and the book we're reading says the agent is separate from the environment. Errrrrrggggh). I'm kind of excited about the seminar since it's being run by a good friend and I still have almost no background in a lot of this basic stuff. I'm going to try to be good and read the book at home on the weekends when it won't be such a chore.
So, I guess the summary is that I'm still kind of focused on nerdy/philosophical stuff. To me it is artsy as well. There are probably cool poems and screensavers in all these these ideas somewhere, if I cared to dig them out.
I forgot to say that this morning I saw not-so-small green plants growing UNDER a layer of transparent ice in my neighbor's yard. Some were in little melted spots but some were completely under the ice and seemed to be growing just as well as the others. You see the craziest things in spring.
