How dense can pixels get?
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
3y ago
Okay, let’s get the joke out of the way first: No, I’m not insulting pixels. I don’t have anything against them. In fact they need to be denser. Now, wait a minute you say, what about the Retina display? If you have more pixels than your eye can distinguish then what good are they? Yes and no. The assumption here is that all pixels are equal and evenly spaced on a flat surface, and that you are looking directly at them. True, in such cases a Retina display at a minimum distance away should be all you need. What happens if you are sitting at a table and it itself is a display? You’d be looking ..read more
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Chapter 1—Prodical Son: The Experiment
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
For the record, I don’t take pleasure in experimenting with my children. Okay, I’ll admit that I found the studies of B. F. Skinner, carried out on animals and his own infant daughter living in a box, intriguing, and maybe I thought about following his footsteps once or twice years ago—ten times tops—however I did not give in to such impulses. No, in my defense, the need for carrying out Operant Conditioning with live subjects did not even present itself as a remote possibility until I broke my vow of impartiality towards Child #3’s unmitigated fascination with Fortnite. Before I present m ..read more
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The Future of AI isn’t AI
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
One year, I went to an annual AI Conference at Carnegie Mellon University to give a talk about work I was doing for Honda’s Asimo project. I had the opportunity to talk with Jeff Hawkins at the time, not only about his work, but about his thoughts on the direction of AI. One of the first questions I asked right out of the box was, should we still be calling our work ‘Artificial Intelligence’? When he responded “No” I knew we were on the same page. Jeff then went on to explain that there was a long history with using the term and suggesting anything to the contrary would not be viewed kindly ..read more
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What are Mappers?
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
A mapper is an interstellar transportation vessel. Early versions are the size of a decent sized moon. With advances in technology, the size shrank, but its shape is still inspired by a topological study in mathematics known as spherical eversion. What does spherical eversion refer to? Taking the surface of a sphere and pulling it inside out without creating any kinks. Sounds easy, but as you can see in the diagram below, there are a number of steps involved to do it. There are also many ways (both right and wrong) to do spherical eversion. Take for example, the feature diagram at top ..read more
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Chapter 1—Prodical Son: The Experiment
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
For the record, I don’t take pleasure in experimenting with my children. Okay, I’ll admit that I found the studies of B. F. Skinner, carried out on animals and his own infant daughter living in a box, intriguing, and maybe I thought about following his footsteps once or twice years ago—ten times tops—however I did not give in to such impulses. No, in my defense, the need for carrying out Operant Conditioning with live subjects did not even present itself as a remote possibility until I broke my vow of impartiality towards Child #3’s unmitigated indulgences of Fortnite. Before I present my ..read more
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The Next Fire
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
Hands down, fire has ruled as the preeminent catalyst for technological innovation throughout the ages, but a new catalyst to replace it is starting to gell. I’m not talking about technology that will address global warming, unfortunately, or even AI on its own. Instead, this new catalyst has the potential to address all of the reasons the pace of change in our lives is being held back. This is a bold claim, so let me argue the point by first discussing what fire has fundamentally brought to humanity. As a protector against predators and the cold, fire empowered early humans to migrate towa ..read more
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Why I Blog
yanomamana
by Dr. K. A. Hanigan
4y ago
Photo Credit: Charlie Hamilton James –National Geographic. In college I once took an anthropology class and just as a million other students in the day, I became acquainted with the work of Napolean Chagnon. Though controversy surrounds his studies today, looking back, I can see why his books became so popular. It was pretty cool what he did. A dream of any anthropologist, really, to be able to gain the trust of an isolated people and not only live on their land, but be accepted as one of them and do as they do. Chagnon called the Yanomamö (Yanomami) fierce, due to frequent tribal confl ..read more
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