A while back I wrote about language modeling without neural networks, where I generated Shakespeare with an unbounded n-gram model: no weights, no training, …
  • AnAmericanPotato@programming.devEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    The coolest, and often most confusing thing about computer science, information theory, and perhaps reality in general, is how everything becomes more or less equivalent if you boil it down and twist it around a little.

    Everything is sorting. Everything is compression. Everything is geometry. Everything is language. Everything is music. Everything is, like, waves, man. *puff*

    Or more accurately, everything can be expressed in any of those other things’ terms.

    These are not new ideas, but computers have made them provably and demonstrably true in many contexts, and I think that’s super cool.

        • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
          1·
          2 days ago

          But can everything be waves? Waves need to propagate through a substrate… so if everything is a wave, what is space?

          • AnAmericanPotato@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Now we’re getting into linguistics with the question of “what is a wave?”

            In quantum physics, basically everything is waves, in the sense that the same mathematical formulae used to describe waves are used to describe quantum phenomena. The intuitive human-scale dynamics of waves don’t necessarily apply though.

            For example, sound waves can’t propagate through a vacuum, but light waves can. Aside from that, they follow mostly the same rules. You can use the same math the describe interference of sound waves and light waves, for example.

            People talk about the “particle/wave duality” of photons because in some ways they behave like waves and in some ways they behave like particles. But both of those words are stretched a little from their everyday plain-english usage, and the precise reality would require years of study to understand.

            Plain English wasn’t made to be that precise or objective. That’s why we use math. :)

            I’m no expert in quantum physics so take this all with a grain of salt.

            • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
              1·
              2 days ago

              Thanks for the thorough reply!

              What I’m gathering is that “wave” can refer to a behavioral pattern that is substrate independent — it refers to a logical function more than it does an ontological presence. That said, quantum waves are a substrate that exists beneath the material manifestations you and I experience (called a “wave” more-or-less for its mathematical properties)?

              If that’s fair, would it be correct to call the quantum wave a “substrate” as I did?

              and you know another thing about quantum field theory I don’t quite understand… I think it still depends on a four dimensional backdrop universe, for these fields to pervade. That fourth dimension is time, which is function of entropy. If time exists, that means the backdrop isn’t static — it evolves. That means it needs a fundamental explanation as well, something more than being just a background. No?

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    1·
    3 days ago

    Now I want to see this for the other compression algorithms. If I had to pick just one: bzip2.