3 ms·

The SI units are supposed to be used to define all other units. The mole is just a unitless number which isn't used for many definitions, while the bit (or pre

by snops 7y ago

The SI units are supposed to be used to define all other units. The mole is just a unitless number which isn't used for many definitions, while the bit (or preferably, Shannon) has a fundamental use in information theory and the wider field of physics. The mole is a human specific number, the bit is a property of the universe. Information is a physical quantity, just like mass or length, and deserves to have a unit in the SI system. You could use other bases, like the nebit (natural log) or Hart (base 10), but bit is most elegant as it uses the smallest integer base possible, 2.

no_identd 7y ago
"The smallest=the most elegant=the most desirable" seems like terrible reasoning, and similar to the reasoning behind the infamous 'Uno': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno However, I don't entirely disagree with where you go with this, but in my opinion, one ought to: 1. Use the nat an normalize everything else (which might seem like an odd idea at first, but think about it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_%28unit%29 But, if we assume you want to avoid the normalization, then it would seem more sensible, due to numerical efficiency, to use balanced ternary, which actually has, unlike what people who rather cluelessly apply the literal textbook (and terrible) metric of 'Radix efficiency'(an entirely artificial measure originally invented to account for engineering concerns related to vacuum tube spacing.) would presume, higher numeric efficiency than unsigned ternary, as shown here by a then Indian computer science student, Abhijit Bhattacharjee, whose work on this unfortunately only remains accessible via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20090312094241/http://abhijit.info/tristate/tristate.html#Base3 https://web.archive.org/web/20090312094241/http://abhijit.in... He actually got a reply by Marvin Minsky(to an email he had sent him) at some point (also available via archive.org, but only if you do a lot of trickery which I can't do from my mobile phone, I've however previously verified the quote he provided on the bottom of the page and it does, by all things I could account for, indeed seem genuine), which I'll quote here: "Yes it is a fascinating subject, and your explorations and descriptions are extremely readable. I hope it gets the interest of more mathematicians."

by snops 7y ago

no_identd 7y ago

"The smallest=the most elegant=the most desirable" seems like terrible reasoning, and similar to the reasoning behind the infamous 'Uno': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno However, I don't entirely disagree with where you go with this, but in my opinion, one ought to: 1. Use the nat an normalize everything else (which might seem like an odd idea at first, but think about it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_%28unit%29 But, if we assume you want to avoid the normalization, then it would seem more sensible, due to numerical efficiency, to use balanced ternary, which actually has, unlike what people who rather cluelessly apply the literal textbook (and terrible) metric of 'Radix efficiency'(an entirely artificial measure originally invented to account for engineering concerns related to vacuum tube spacing.) would presume, higher numeric efficiency than unsigned ternary, as shown here by a then Indian computer science student, Abhijit Bhattacharjee, whose work on this unfortunately only remains accessible via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20090312094241/http://abhijit.info/tristate/tristate.html#Base3 https://web.archive.org/web/20090312094241/http://abhijit.in... He actually got a reply by Marvin Minsky(to an email he had sent him) at some point (also available via archive.org, but only if you do a lot of trickery which I can't do from my mobile phone, I've however previously verified the quote he provided on the bottom of the page and it does, by all things I could account for, indeed seem genuine), which I'll quote here: "Yes it is a fascinating subject, and your explorations and descriptions are extremely readable. I hope it gets the interest of more mathematicians."