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What's this thing called a "computer" that people keep going on about, anyway?
by oauea 5y ago
What's this thing called a "computer" that people keep going on about, anyway?
- theandrewbailey 5y agoIt's like a programmable loom, but for logical and mathematical operations.
- samhw 5y agoYou may be interested in the symbol grounding problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem#Grounding_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem#Groun...). It's like the binding problem, but for symbols.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- da_chicken 5y agoIt's a person who does mathematic calculations all day. For example, creating range tables for artillery, calculating averages or totals of a large range of values, or solving complex integrals or differential equations, and so on. They're commonly used in industry or government, especially in astronomy, aerospace and civil engineering for both simulation and analysis. Perhaps the most well-known computers were the Harvard Computers, which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a job, computers were largely automated out of existence by solid-state transistor based automated computers and integrated circuit transistor automated computers in the 60s, 70s and 80s, which replaced the enormously expensive and often largely experimental electro-mechanical automated computers while radically reducing cost and improving performance both by several orders of magnitude.
- samstave 5y agoHere - this explains it really succinctly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE1bS-Mn2Mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE1bS-Mn2Mk
- sundarurfriend 5y agoSort of related: [Expecting Short Inferential Distances](https://www.readthesequences.com/Expecting-Short-Inferential-Distances https://www.readthesequences.com/Expecting-Short-Inferential...)