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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 28, 2022 7:02:50 GMT
Unless you make a complete other universe in which to measure and tabulate from yeah you would need abstraction to keep track of every atom in the universe. |
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Post by basser on Mar 28, 2022 7:04:14 GMT
Stat mech intensifies.
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Post by bicarbonat on Mar 28, 2022 7:20:17 GMT
I hope you math-magicians are living your best life with these page discourses, because I'm truly having sense memories of when I was desperate enough to choose calc over stats in high school.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 28, 2022 7:31:42 GMT
I skated through undergrad by memorizing exactly one trig and two calc formulae which I immediately forgot after the relevant exam. Spent more hours in the last couple years of skool in SPSS than anything else though, even binge drinking/recovering from same.
[edit] ...by which I mean by senior year I was good enough at SPSS I could flip or scroll through a few pages of a data set and tell if the distribution was going to come out normal, bimodal or other and I am by NO means a math whiz so there's hope for all you other non-whizzers out there. [/edit]
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Post by Isildur on Mar 28, 2022 7:37:48 GMT
Cloud computing, apparently.
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Post by justcurious on Mar 28, 2022 8:14:04 GMT
It looks like the problem of the computer needing to be bigger than the Universe will be addressed. How will be interesting.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 28, 2022 8:19:47 GMT
Whatever method they wound up using I'm pretty sure they'd have to leapfrog each and every stage by studying etheric tech and then finding a mundane work-around to do the same task. The end product is probably blackboxception and if this took more than one generation of programmers god help them...
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Post by blahzor on Mar 28, 2022 9:38:27 GMT
It looks like the problem of the computer needing to be bigger than the Universe will be addressed. How will be interesting. I'm sensing now that Kat's computer might be getting processing power through timelines eventually |
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Post by justcurious on Mar 28, 2022 10:13:24 GMT
To what extent did Coyote and later Loup understand what humans were thinking about when they talked about atoms? Is what they understand what humans do when they want to illustrate atoms in a popular science book or program but not what a chemist or a physicist thinks when they consider atoms? And to what extent did they understand mathematics and its place in human understanding of the Universe?
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Post by ohthatone on Mar 28, 2022 13:28:32 GMT
if you science nerds are saying there needs to be another universe to fit the computer that can tabulate another universe...couldn't an alternate timeline be considered another universe? Was this brought up already because I'm having a hard time keeping up. I barely passed algebra.
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Post by ctso74 on Mar 28, 2022 13:38:28 GMT
I'm divide between two jokes explaining how Omega works.
1) Sweet Mercy! The Court is using blockchain. It all makes cents now!
2) Tony, waving hand at spreadsheet: "Macros."
Whichever way the Omega works, I'm thinking it will separate individuals from their Etheric parts. That would be why Tony is so adamant, that Annie is allowed in. From Tony's POV, it will separate her and the fire elemental, without killing them.
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Post by lonestarf1 on Mar 28, 2022 14:13:14 GMT
I feel like it should be a bit concerning that Loup appears to be putting effort into understanding how computers work. And appears to be picking it up pretty quick.
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Post by Gemini Jim on Mar 28, 2022 15:40:53 GMT
I'm starting to get the weird feeling that the Omega Device, for all of its Heisenberg uncertainty/ Calvinism predestination/ Hari Seldon psychohistory complications and contradictions, is really just a MacGuffin in a suitcase.
It doesn't really matter what's in the box, or if it makes sense; if the reader sees anything of it, it will be Annie/ Kat/ Loup/ the Court looking into the box (from the wrong camera angle) and saying, "yes, that was it" an then closing the box.
( * metaphorically speaking, I'm not expecting an actual Tarantino reference, although that would be awesome)
It only matters in that it pushes the plot forward, and at the moment it's pushing Loup into some dangerously introspective observations.
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Post by maxptc on Mar 28, 2022 15:52:46 GMT
Its some variation of the seer computer powered by a kidnapped orphan trope. Add whatever nerd details you want/need to justify it, but I'm pretty confident that's what it is.
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Mar 28, 2022 16:34:37 GMT
It looks like the problem of the computer needing to be bigger than the Universe will be addressed. How will be interesting. I'm sense now that Kat's computer might be getting processing power through timelines eventually Version control but literal time travel |
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Post by quinnr on Mar 28, 2022 16:46:09 GMT
And with that, Loup invented the discipline of computer science in four speech bubbles. I cannot help but think that this conversation is a setup for some greater conflict involving Kat! I'm sure she could fill Loup in on a few of the details he's missing.
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Post by pyradonis on Mar 28, 2022 16:52:06 GMT
It doesn't really matter what's in the box, or if it makes sense; if the reader sees anything of it, it will be Annie/ Kat/ Loup/ the Court looking into the box (from the wrong camera angle) and saying, "yes, that was it" an then closing the box. ( * metaphorically speaking, I'm not expecting an actual Tarantino reference, although that would be awesome) I'm expecting "...I understand." |
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Post by drmemory on Mar 28, 2022 18:28:58 GMT
Nice to see Loup dipping his paws into programming. Next he'll be talking about base classes and inheritance and design patterns.
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Post by basser on Mar 28, 2022 18:37:31 GMT
I dunno how I'm gonna feel if this magic dog monster takes all of five minutes to go from describing atoms as tiny rocks to realizing that discreet positional tracking can be discarded in favor of a probabilistic model by relying on the assumption of fundamentally non-distinguishable particles.
Kinda makes me think about that whole "mind is a plaything of the body" line of Renard's - like how much of this is making sense to him mainly on account of he's been method acting as a robot boy?
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Post by OrzBrain on Mar 28, 2022 18:56:17 GMT
Well, at least Loup is being exposed to new ideas and points of view. That's probably a good thing, right?
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Post by Gemminie on Mar 28, 2022 18:59:44 GMT
I have to catch up here. So apparently Tony explained to Annie that the Omega Device has something to do with determinism: knowing the current state of every atom in the universe, one could predict the future. A familiar pattern appeared. Loup is thinking that Coyote could have had knowledge of everything, if he'd wanted to, but he didn't want to. But Loup ... by digging through Coyote's knowledge, he knows of the atomic theory of matter, but sees it as just one story, one that humans appear to believe in.
Via Jerrek, Loup asks whether one could know the complete state of even one atom, let alone every atom in the universe. Now, the Uncertainty Principle states that you can't know that, not even about one single atom. The more you know about its location, the less you know about its momentum, and vice versa; this is just a consequence of quantum theory. But beyond that, even if you could fully know all of that, then there are the other bajillion atoms. And a computer, being made of some of those atoms, couldn't possibly keep track of all of them – wouldn't you need a computer made of more than one atom to keep track of a single atom? How many atoms would you need to build a computer capable of keeping track of all the atoms in that computer? And we're not even going into subatomic particles.
Loup digs through Coyote's knowledge again and realizes that a computer is merely a lot of switches. On or off. One or zero. Some sort of abstraction scheme would be needed to even approach this – some way to treat large groups of atoms as single entities. But what form of abstraction? All atoms of tungsten in the universe, as compared to all atoms of molybdenum? Bunches of atoms concentrated in one location? Groups of atoms with similar momentum, regardless of their location in space?
Was Tony finished explaining this to Annie, or did he say more?
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 28, 2022 19:00:47 GMT
I dunno how I'm gonna feel if this magic dog monster takes all of five minutes to go from describing atoms as tiny rocks to realizing that discreet positional tracking can be discarded in favor of a probabilistic model by relying on the assumption of fundamentally non-distinguishable particles. Kinda makes me think about that whole "mind is a plaything of the body" line of Renard's - like how much of this is making sense to him mainly on account of he's been method acting as a robot boy? "Loup" is directly plugged into the ether... that means he can *know* reality without any of the inconvenience of sense organs and brain and what he knows is Truth with a capital "T"... and the only thing that's holding him back is his own mind in the form of his preconceptions and mental flexibility. Being something (anything) other than a wolf would probably spark drastic changes but being a NP(C) probably means some mindbending realizations will keep coming. I'm starting to get the weird feeling that the Omega Device, for all of its Heisenberg uncertainty/ Calvinism predestination/ Hari Seldon psychohistory complications and contradictions, is really just a MacGuffin in a suitcase. It doesn't really matter what's in the box, or if it makes sense; if the reader sees anything of it, it will be Annie/ Kat/ Loup/ the Court looking into the box (from the wrong camera angle) and saying, "yes, that was it" an then closing the box. ( * metaphorically speaking, I'm not expecting an actual Tarantino reference, although that would be awesome) It only matters in that it pushes the plot forward, and at the moment it's pushing Loup into some dangerously introspective observations. Here follows Schrodinger's post wherein I agree and disagree at the same time. I will try not to do so in useless ways. I think you're right in that we'll probably see very little to nothing about how Omega actually works and how it works is not important in the grand scheme of things but I do suspect that it will be more of a middle finger than a McGuffin. I think the Court is creating something that humans can't comprehend, its prophecies will be self-fulfilling or otherwise no better than what came out of the ether anyway, and in the end humanity will be no better off. But I am hoping for a scene where they all bow and pray to the neon god they made. |
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Post by netherdan on Mar 28, 2022 20:31:43 GMT
I can't stop laughing at the sullen teenage experience Loup gets to enjoy. Maybe that's a manifestation of Coyote's power. Coyote doesn't just shapeshift into the thing, he completely transforms into it to the point of sometimes forgetting who he is. Loup is not used to that power so he might actually lose himself inside Jerrek for a while I can already smell the cookies in the oven. Loup's sounding like this understanding is changing his way of thinking... "you would need abstraction"? He's becoming Jerrek |
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Post by pyradonis on Mar 28, 2022 21:37:33 GMT
Maybe that's a manifestation of Coyote's power. Coyote doesn't just shapeshift into the thing, he completely transforms into it to the point of sometimes forgetting who he is. Loup is not used to that power so he might actually lose himself inside Jerrek for a while I can already smell the cookies in the oven. Loup's sounding like this understanding is changing his way of thinking... "you would need abstraction"? He's becoming Jerrek Is this something that Jerrek in particular would think, though? |
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Post by hp on Mar 28, 2022 22:30:22 GMT
I feel like it should be a bit concerning that Loup appears to be putting effort into understanding how computers work. And appears to be picking it up pretty quick. I think it's awesome, LAUGHING ON LINE. Dude will be building ethereal computers and golems like Diego's in 10 minutes and will blow Kat's mind
For all the time I've been reading this comic, and specially since Kat's started "leveling up", I always wondered what would come out of an encounter between her and Coyote. With time it started to look more and more like it would be a BF deal, since Tom has been carefully keeping those "sides" of his story completely apart. Kat never went to the woods and IIRC she didn't even attend C and Y's diplomatic visits to the Court like a lot of other studios.
Now I'm curious what it means, in Doylist and Watsonian terms, that when the encounter DID happened, it needed to be with Coyote's Loup version (let's face it, Coyote is in control and is the supreme puppet master of the whole story). The thoughts Annie's comments about science are raising in Loup seem promising, can't wait for him to have a denser chat with Kat
(Edit:) I'm also immensely curious about what will happen when that Psychopomp/RotD chekov gun finally fires
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Post by speedwell on Mar 28, 2022 22:46:53 GMT
Doctor Paracelsus, phone your IT department.
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Post by Nnelg on Mar 29, 2022 0:12:15 GMT
So just a point I want to make, you technically might not need an entire universe to keep track of everything in a universe, if you can infinitely subdivide reality somehow.
I say that because it's mathematically proven that you can map an infinitely large space to a finite one; in other words, there are just as many values between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and infinity.
Of course, that doesn't work IRL because (as far as we know) reality is quantized, that is to say it cannot be subdivided past a certain point. But the world of GKC might be different, what with Ether in the mix...
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Post by crater on Mar 29, 2022 3:14:26 GMT
Not fair Loup gets to have access to all knowledge while talking to girls instead of looking like a dumbass like the rest of us :/
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Post by drmemory on Mar 29, 2022 4:05:37 GMT
I can already smell the cookies in the oven. Loup's sounding like this understanding is changing his way of thinking... "you would need abstraction"? He's becoming Jerrek Is this something that Jerrek in particular would think, though? Well, if there were a real Jerrek, he may or may not know about atoms. I could easily believe he would know about computers, and perhaps enough about programming enough to come up with the abstraction comment. Where Loup cheated is in using Coyote's omniscience power to learn all of this stuff, without any prior background or experience. I could see an argument that Jerrek might have already known enough about the topics to react similarly - it seems plausible that a robot might know basic science stuff and basic computer stuff, even programming. So I'd say it's not that implausible that Jerrek might have the knowledge to react similarly. Whether he would have or not, given that knowledge? Dunno man.
We don't really know what baseline knowledge and/or baseline programming the robots are given. It might help to know how Arthur answered her questions, but then it might not as we already know Arthur is part of a different product line.
Totally different question - I wonder if there might not be a real Jerrek? We never saw what body and name the real pipe inspecting robot chose! Back at the start of all this, I asked if Jerrek was totally a creation of Loup, or if he hijacked a newborn NP. It's been strongly implied that he made up Jerrek but I think there's still wiggle room. I bring this up, because if Loup created Jerrek entirely, it's really darned impressive that he made something with so much nuance. Like, plausible personality, plausible emotional reactions to things, and good enough to convince Annie, Renard, Robot, and other NP. Also, to present a plausible crush! I can't believe Ysengrin could pull all of that off, and Loup is basically a newborn with severe anger management issues. He is being a much better teenage or young adult human than I would expect a wolf to be able to pull off.
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Post by drmemory on Mar 29, 2022 4:08:34 GMT
So just a point I want to make, you technically might not need an entire universe to keep track of everything in a universe, if you can infinitely subdivide reality somehow. I say that because it's mathematically proven that you can map an infinitely large space to a finite one; in other words, there are just as many values between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and infinity. Of course, that doesn't work IRL because (as far as we know) reality is quantized, that is to say it cannot be subdivided past a certain point. But the world of GKC might be different, what with Ether in the mix... When he said "abstraction" I immediately thought "object oriented programming". Instead of tracking each atom, build abstractions with aggregate behavior, like "Chair" or "Human". Horribly simplifying this, but it seemed like that might be where he was heading with that comment.
It wouldn't work, of course, at least in our reality, for the reasons others have stated. Heisenberg must be rolling over in his grave!
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