5 ms·
Whenever I hear about neuromorphic computing, I think about the guy who wrote this article, who was working in the field: Thermodynamic Computing https://knowm
by patcon 1y ago
Whenever I hear about neuromorphic computing, I think about the guy who wrote this article, who was working in the field:
Thermodynamic Computing
https://knowm.org/thermodynamic-computing/ https://knowm.org/thermodynamic-computing/
It's the most high-influence, low-exposure essay I've ever read. As far as I'm concerned, this dude is a silent prescient genius working quietly for DARPA, and I had a sneak peak into future science when I read it. It's affected my thinking and trajectory for the past 8 years
- evolextra 1y agoMan, this article is incredible. So many ideas resonate with me, but I never can't formulate them. Thanks for sharing, all my friends have to read this.
- epsilonic 1y agoIf you like this article, you’ll probably enjoy reading most publications from the Santa Fe Institute.
- afarah1 1y agoInteresting read, more so than the OP. Thank you.
- iczero 1y agoIsn't this just simulated annealing in hardware attached to a grandiose restatement of the second law of thermodynamics?
- pclmulqdq 1y agoYes. This keeps showing up in hardware engineering labs, and never holds up in real tasks.
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- saagarjha 1y agoEducate, then.
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago[flagged]
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y agoGenuinely like that’s all I wanted. Thank you for explaining, as a layman on this kind of thing it is genuinely very helpful.
- moralestapia 1y agoyw!
- saagarjha 1y agoI don't; I just wished you had posted this from the start.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoI will say that the philosophical remarks are pretty obtuse and detract from the post. For example... "Physics–and more broadly the pursuit of science–has been a remarkably successful methodology for understanding how the gears of reality turn. We really have no other methods–and based on humanity’s success so far we have no reason to believe we need any." Physics, which is to say, physical methods have indeed been remarkably successful...for the types of things physical methods select for! To say it is exhaustive not only begs the question, but the claim itself is not even demonstrable by these methods. The second claim contains the same error, but with more emphasis. This is just off-the-shelf scientism, and scientism, apart from what withering refutations demonstrate, should be obviously self-refuting. Is the claim that "we have no other methods but physics" (where physics is the paradigmatic empirical science; substitute accordingly) a scientific claim? Obviously not. It is a philosophical claim. That already refutes the claim. Thus, philosophy has entered the chat, and this is no small concession.
- vlovich123 1y agoI’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say. It’s not really questionable that science and math are the only things to come out of philosophy or any other academic pursuit that have actually shown us how to objectively understand reality. Now physics vs other scientific disciplines sure. Physicists love to claim dominion just like mathematicians do. It is generally true however that physics = math + reality and that we don’t actually have any evidence of anything in this world existing outside a physical description (eg a lot of physics combined = chemistry, a lot of chemistry = biology, a lot of biology = sociology etc). Thus it’s reasonable to assume that the chemistry in this world is 100% governed by the laws of physics and transitively this is true for sociology too (indeed - game theory is one way we quantifiably explain the physical reality of why people behave the way they due). We also see this in math where different disciplines have different “bridges” between them. Does that mean they’re actually separate disciplines or just that we’ve chosen to name features on the topology as such.
- MantisShrimp90 1y agoIts just not that simple. The best way I can dovetail with the author is that you are thinking in terms of the abstraction but you have mistaken the abstraction for reality. Physics, biological sciences, these are tools the mind uses to try and make guesses about the future based on past events. But the abstraction isn't perfect, and its questionable on whether or not it could or should one day be. The clear example is that large breakthroughs in science often comes from rethinking this fundamental abstraction to explain problems that the old implementation had trouble with. Case in point being quantum physics which has warped how we original understood newtonian physics. Einstein fucking hated quantum because he felt it undermined the idea of objective reality. The reality (pun intended) is that it is much more complex than our abstractions like science and we would do well to remember they are pragmatic tools and are ultimately unconcerned with the practice of metaphysics which is the underlying nature of reality. This all seems like philosophy ramblings until we get to little lines like this. Scientism, or the belief that science is the primary and only necessary lens to understand the world falls for the same trap as religion of thinking that you have the answer to reality so anything else outside is either unnecessary or even dangerous to one who holds these views.
- ahnick 1y agoIs this what Extropic (https://www.extropic.ai/ https://www.extropic.ai/) is aiming to commercialize and bring to market?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andrepd 1y agoThis is literally a borderline crank article. "A new framework for physics and computing" turns out to be quantum annealing for SAT lol The explanations about quantum mechanics are also imprecise and go nowhere towards the point of the article. Add a couple janky images and the "crank rant" impression is complete.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- patcon 1y agoYes, being clever in one domain (such that Navy and Air Force funds you work) does not mean you can't be a crank. But people funded by those orgs usually get a little more leeway: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0085175 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... To be honest, I don't expect much in the way of sorting through these fuzzy and high dimensional topics, from someone like yourself who gravitates toward formal logic system as a way to understand the world. I would expect someone from your world to dismiss such things
- patcon 1y agoSorry, that last bit was snarky. I would have preferred to phrase it that I'm very accustomed to receiving discerning feedback about this side of my expertise (intuitions that combine my biochem background with complexity science and related fields) from persons in fields like yours. I tend to assume the skills/affinities of people in highly logical domains like yours can make it hard to recognize other forms of skill and knowledge that are more ambiguous and highly integrational. I didn't need to frame it as a slight, because I imagine it comes part and parcel with the things you excel at (and someone who thinks like me, probably does not have affinity for such things) Anyhow, sorry for the initial disrespect, and thanks for taking the time to offer feedback
- antonvs 1y ago[flagged]
- vpribish 1y agoI dunno, man. strikes me as crazy persecuted-genius syndrome. red flags go up from the very start.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y agoYup. The framing of “matter spontaneously reorganizes into better energy-dissipating paths” is pretty cool, but it’s not really adding any information. As soon as you ask how, you’ll need all the same fields you already had. Thermodynamic computing is cool and I know of at least one place working on it, but they also kinda act like nick land lunatics about what’s ultimately just a cool potential technology for an efficient computer for some tasks. It makes me worry retroactively that the tech is actually useless and they just take a lot of adderall.