4 ms·

Thanks, I'll take a look. A wit would be the smallest unit of meaning in computing, then. I.e. the smallest part that needs processing beyond that of a primitiv

Thanks, I'll take a look. A wit would be the smallest unit of meaning in computing, then. I.e. the smallest part that needs processing beyond that of a primitive.

DougMerritt 4y ago
I forgot to mention that I like your idea. And yeah, semantics and computing are related in a complex way, but certainly are not the same thing. I was distracted, trying to think of where I'd seen something like that in science fiction, and now I think (but can't check right now) that Robert Heinlein's novelette "Gulf" had something about the smallest unit of thought; the "psychon" or some such. There may also have been something in Keith Laumer's "The Great Time Machine Hoax", but I'm less sure about that.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  I should point out that I'm not entirely serious about the concept of wit really being any measurable amount of meaning, I just wanted a catchy name that sounds cool :-) The true minimum meaningful computation is probably the lambda function, anyway.
  - DougMerritt 4y ago
    Certainly lambda is Turing equivalent, so sure. Seems like you could say the same for other things that are Turing equivalent, OTOH. Lukasiewicz logic [1] ; MOV [2] ; Semi-Thue string rewriting [3], and so on. But since such things usually suffer from the Turing Tarpit [4], perhaps there's one that has some kind of minimax to be ideally terse and require ideally-few steps for its Turing equivalency, similar to the way that radix 3 (closest to e) has been claimed to have been proven to be the ideally efficient representation system. [5] (I say "claimed" simply because I recently saw a claim that there's a loophole in the usual reasoning.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81ukasiewicz_logic#Real-valued_semantics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81ukasiewicz_logic#Real-val... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Thue_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Thue_system [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy

Thanks, I'll take a look. A wit would be the smallest unit of meaning in computing, then. I.e. the smallest part that needs processing beyond that of a primitive.

DougMerritt 4y ago

I forgot to mention that I like your idea. And yeah, semantics and computing are related in a complex way, but certainly are not the same thing. I was distracted, trying to think of where I'd seen something like that in science fiction, and now I think (but can't check right now) that Robert Heinlein's novelette "Gulf" had something about the smallest unit of thought; the "psychon" or some such. There may also have been something in Keith Laumer's "The Great Time Machine Hoax", but I'm less sure about that.

TuringTest 4y ago
I should point out that I'm not entirely serious about the concept of wit really being any measurable amount of meaning, I just wanted a catchy name that sounds cool :-) The true minimum meaningful computation is probably the lambda function, anyway.
- DougMerritt 4y ago
  Certainly lambda is Turing equivalent, so sure. Seems like you could say the same for other things that are Turing equivalent, OTOH. Lukasiewicz logic [1] ; MOV [2] ; Semi-Thue string rewriting [3], and so on. But since such things usually suffer from the Turing Tarpit [4], perhaps there's one that has some kind of minimax to be ideally terse and require ideally-few steps for its Turing equivalency, similar to the way that radix 3 (closest to e) has been claimed to have been proven to be the ideally efficient representation system. [5] (I say "claimed" simply because I recently saw a claim that there's a loophole in the usual reasoning.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81ukasiewicz_logic#Real-valued_semantics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81ukasiewicz_logic#Real-val... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Thue_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Thue_system [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy