4 ms·

Yes. "How much acceleration can this part withstand?" "I'd say violet, but with a shade of pink". "Perfect!". I'm sure their spaceships will work just fine.

by Udik 10y ago

IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago
So it doesn't work because you can't imagine a way different from what you know. Okay.
Razengan 10y ago
http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/ http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
alpha_squared 10y ago
That seems like an awfully ethnocentric perspective. It sounds like, "we understand things this way, therefore things can only be understood this way." I'm not saying there is or isn't more than one way to understand complex topics, but that it's possible there may not be only one way.
- catshirt 10y ago
  seemed like joke not a criticism. I laughed.
  - alpha_squared 10y ago
    The author is arguing that stance, quite strongly, in another comment.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971010
    - catshirt 10y ago
      hm. well, i can't argue. i'm not the expert on the aliens we haven't found yet.
panglott 10y ago
I think the musical metaphor makes more sense to us, with the obvious analogy to the length of a vibrating string. "This part is D-flat long, when it needs to be C-sharp!"
david-given 10y ago
You could totally do this. We tend to deal numbers by turning them into symbol sequences and then applying grammatical rules to them --- we're good at grammar, we have hardware acceleration for it. Digital computers work the same way: the quantity is measured, turned into a number, turned into a symbol sequence, then we manipulate those symbols before turning them back into a number. But analogue computers work by taking a measurement, representing it directly as a potential, and then performing various analogue operations on that potential to yield another potential. At no point during the operation is the potential converted to a number. (Disclaimer: our analogue computers do use numbers for I/O, because they measure the result potential and express it in ways we can understand, but that's just a UI issue.) So I can totally imagine an alien technology that manipulated quantities using mathematical operations without having any way to express those quantities themselves other than in relation to other quantities. They could use symbol streams to represent the relationships --- if so, they'd probably get on quite well with algebra --- but the idea of representing the potentials themselves as a power series would be completely alien to them.
- Udik 10y ago
  There are very good reasons for which we aren't typing these comments on analog computers, and we don't have analog computers in our pockets, and all the data we store, including everything that we experience as analog (music, images, video) are actually stored in digital format. And before that, the way we write language, numbers, and music is digital, not analog- despite the fact that we seem to think more in an analog way than a digital one. Come to think of it, even our language is digital, despite the fact that our experiences are not and we often struggle to find the combination of words that will better reproduce the meaning we have in our minds. Come on, this is HN, how can you not see the advantage of calculating with numbers, and writing down numbers, in place of approximate quantities? And why we converted an entire century's worth of audio and photographic recordings to a digital format?
  - david-given 10y ago
    Yes --- we do that because we are symbolic creatures. We serialise thoughts into sequences of symbols so that we can express them tonally, in series, to other people. We express mathematical concepts the same way. Naturally, the machines we built to help us do these things also work symbolically. Machines built by people who think differently will work differently.

Yes. "How much acceleration can this part withstand?" "I'd say violet, but with a shade of pink". "Perfect!". I'm sure their spaceships will work just fine.

by Udik 10y ago

Yes. "How much acceleration can this part withstand?" "I'd say violet, but with a shade of pink". "Perfect!". I'm sure their spaceships will work just fine.

IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago

So it doesn't work because you can't imagine a way different from what you know. Okay.

Razengan 10y ago

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/ http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

alpha_squared 10y ago

That seems like an awfully ethnocentric perspective. It sounds like, "we understand things this way, therefore things can only be understood this way." I'm not saying there is or isn't more than one way to understand complex topics, but that it's possible there may not be only one way.

catshirt 10y ago
seemed like joke not a criticism. I laughed.
- alpha_squared 10y ago
  The author is arguing that stance, quite strongly, in another comment.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971010
  - catshirt 10y ago
    hm. well, i can't argue. i'm not the expert on the aliens we haven't found yet.

panglott 10y ago

I think the musical metaphor makes more sense to us, with the obvious analogy to the length of a vibrating string. "This part is D-flat long, when it needs to be C-sharp!"

david-given 10y ago

You could totally do this. We tend to deal numbers by turning them into symbol sequences and then applying grammatical rules to them --- we're good at grammar, we have hardware acceleration for it. Digital computers work the same way: the quantity is measured, turned into a number, turned into a symbol sequence, then we manipulate those symbols before turning them back into a number. But analogue computers work by taking a measurement, representing it directly as a potential, and then performing various analogue operations on that potential to yield another potential. At no point during the operation is the potential converted to a number. (Disclaimer: our analogue computers do use numbers for I/O, because they measure the result potential and express it in ways we can understand, but that's just a UI issue.) So I can totally imagine an alien technology that manipulated quantities using mathematical operations without having any way to express those quantities themselves other than in relation to other quantities. They could use symbol streams to represent the relationships --- if so, they'd probably get on quite well with algebra --- but the idea of representing the potentials themselves as a power series would be completely alien to them.

Udik 10y ago
There are very good reasons for which we aren't typing these comments on analog computers, and we don't have analog computers in our pockets, and all the data we store, including everything that we experience as analog (music, images, video) are actually stored in digital format. And before that, the way we write language, numbers, and music is digital, not analog- despite the fact that we seem to think more in an analog way than a digital one. Come to think of it, even our language is digital, despite the fact that our experiences are not and we often struggle to find the combination of words that will better reproduce the meaning we have in our minds. Come on, this is HN, how can you not see the advantage of calculating with numbers, and writing down numbers, in place of approximate quantities? And why we converted an entire century's worth of audio and photographic recordings to a digital format?
- david-given 10y ago
  Yes --- we do that because we are symbolic creatures. We serialise thoughts into sequences of symbols so that we can express them tonally, in series, to other people. We express mathematical concepts the same way. Naturally, the machines we built to help us do these things also work symbolically. Machines built by people who think differently will work differently.