The following is an excerpt from a text I am currently in the process of writing, which may or may not be published in this form. The text is concerned with the role of software in the scientific research process, and what happens when researchers must interact with software instead of hardware equipment, and finally […]
Recently, I’ve become more and more aware of the limitations of conscious thought and formal models of entities and systems. We don’t understand how political systems make decisions, how world events occur, or even how we choose what to wear on any particular day. Cause and effect doesn’t exist in the form it is commonly […]
I’ve just come back from Biohackathon 2012 in Toyama, an annual event, traditionally hosted in Japan, where users of semantic web technologies (such as RDF and SPARQL) in biology and bioinformatics come together to work on projects. This was a nice event with an open and productive atmosphere, and I got a lot out of […]
This year I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to read Martin Heidegger‘s great work Being and Time, using Hubert Dreyfus’ Berkeley lectures on the book as supporting material. By now I’ve almost finished division 1. I’m learning a lot, but it’s fair to say that this is one of the most difficult books […]
Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of the complexity of data. It is simple to define but appears to have deep implications. The K. complexity of a string is defined as the size of the simplest possible program, with respect to a given underlying computer, that can generate the data. For example, the string “AAAAAA” has lower […]