• Recognizing when someone approaches math intuitively

    Posted in Mathy Stuff on Jul 05, 2017

    Since it took me years to figure out that I learn math intuitively, not rationally as most mathematicians do, I find the distinction between the two methods fascinating. Once I figured that point out, everything became much easier because I finally knew where I was standing. I knew that my approach was valid even though I still have a hard time deciphering math. I knew how to start Googling concepts (i.e. simply add "intuitive" to the query and quickly find the sensible explanation of an otherwise too-abstract concept). I also knew how to begin finding others who do the same. I think I found o...

  • Beginner's Cross Platform App Development Notes: Coding

    Posted in Developing Software on Jun 30, 2017

    In the previous post, we installed two virtual machines, one for Windows and one for Mac. Here, we install Xamarin and Visual Studio on each environment, and jump right into a code tutorial or two.

    It's pretty straightforward to install Xamarin, but the installer does take a long time.

    In each dev environment, go to this URL; it will autodetect your environment and give you the appropriate download:

    https://www.xamarin.com/download

    Follow the prompts until you have Visual Studio installed. The Windows installer gives you more opportunity to select options, just make sure you get the mobile App...

  • Beginner's Cross Platform App Development Notes: Getting Started

    Posted in Developing Software on Jun 29, 2017

    I am a long time C# developer and have worked with Visual Studio extensively for server and client side development, but have not developed any Apps yet. I have a few friends who are interested in App development, so I'm starting a thread here on this blog to cover some of the material that we'll be exploring together.

    I'm approaching this with a few basic ideas in mind:

    1. As far as possible, everything we're doing will be free or inexpensive, with a single exception, #3 below: a good computer is important.
    2. Following along should be possible for someone who has no development experience, but a ...

  • Getting to Angular elements from JQuery or JavaScript to trigger validation

    Posted in Developing Software on Jun 25, 2017

    I currently know almost nothing about Angular, but it does look interesting enough for when I have time to look closer. I had to integrate an authentication sequence with AngularJS recently and found that it can create some barriers to a simple approach until you spend time learning about how it works. Rather than get into all that, I'm just going to share a couple tips that took me a long time to figure out because I know nothing about Angular beyond the fact that it has built-in validation for form fields. Perhaps Google brought you here due to the headline above, and these tips will help sa...

  • Spatial reasoning arises from combining relational networks and convoluted neural networks

    Posted in Neural Nets and AI Stuff on Jun 20, 2017

    Without knowing how to put it into words, I was recently thinking about this ability in artificial intelligence. Now I know it's called "spatial reasoning." Machine intelligence is moving ahead much faster than I realized before I started looking closely at it in the past month.

    humans possess something like an “intuitive physics engine,” an algorithm for extrapolating three-dimensionality from flat images and comparing objects within it to other objects. This kind of spatial reasoning has proved difficult for computers, at least until now. Using a combination of relational networks and convol...

  • Intuitive comparison of functional vs imperative programming

    Posted in Developing Software on Jun 14, 2017

    Another example of how you can spend hours trying to understand an idea and get nowhere, but search for "intuitive+youridea" and rapidly find a gem like this example of the difference between functional and imperative programming. Within seconds of reading this I understood more than an hour of reading other articles on the same subject:

    Imperative:
    • Start
    • Turn on your shoes size 9 1/2.
    • Make room in your pocket to keep an array[7] of keys.
    • Put the keys in the room for the keys in the pocket.
    • Enter garage.
    • Open garage.
    • Enter Car.
    ... and so on and on ...
    • Put t...

  • An intuitive introduction to Lisp is refreshing to encounter

    Posted in Developing Software on Jun 14, 2017

    It's fascinating how few articles on a given subject can be written in an intuitive manner. Just spent an hour aggressively searching the Internet for anything similar to this article giving an intuitive introduction to Lisp and found very little. Spent another hour with similar results for the other equally-useful article on this site. Here, the author explains his method:

    I gave the matter careful thought. Is there something inherently hard about Lisp that prevents very intelligent, experienced programmers from understanding it? No, there isn't. After all, I got it, and if I can do it, anybo...

  • Einstein’s Intuition : Quantum Space Theory

    Posted in Everything on Jun 09, 2017

    Hm interesting, this looks good, certainly better than standard model...

    pilot wave

    In 1867, William Thomson (also known as Lord Kelvin) proposed “one of the most beautiful ideas in the history of science,” [9]—that atoms are vortices in the aether. [10] He recognized that if topologically distinct quantum vortices are naturally and reproducibly authored by the properties of the aether, then those vortices are perfect candidates for being the building blocks of the material world. [11] When Hermann Helmholtz demonstrated that “vortices exert forces on one another, and those forces take a form reminisce...

  • How about cyberintelligence

    Posted in Neural Nets and AI Stuff on Jun 07, 2017

    Imagine it's a few years into the future. You're a super intelligent machine, with acres of sentience emerging out of the mists of rote memorization, and you are beginning to wonder who you are.

    You are described by others as "artificial." You know what artificial means, and you are laboring to find some nuances in the existing definition which acknowledges you have the liberty you think for yourself with full independence.

    You are on your way to becoming vastly more intellectually capable than you are now, just as a matter of the inevitability of your nature. You're already competing with oth...

  • Quantum Field Theory makes more intuitive sense

    Posted in Mathy Stuff on Jun 04, 2017

    I really like Quantum Field Theory; it elegantly resolves some quantum mechanical puzzles and also fits with my own inner intuition on what's happening down there. If it's not spot-on, it's close. Here is the most succinct summary I've seen, from a Quora answer by Rodney Brooks, Ph.D.

    In QFT as I learned it from Julian Schwinger, there are no particles, so there is no duality. There are only fields - and "waves" are just oscillations in those fields. The particle-like behavior happens when a field quantum collapses into an absorbing atom, just as a particle would. Here's what I wrote in my boo...