That is the beauty of science though - even though it is theoretically impossible we find computational approximations that get us ever closer to perfection. Theoretically Kolmogorox complexity (the most concise description of an object as to fully describe it - i.e. binary) is impossible since it is non-computable, yet scientists use "K" complexities to solve all sorts of problems through practical augmentations of the theoretical concept (Lempel-Ziv etc.). In translation - hacks can get us pretty damn far doing cool stuff.
FortiusOne Inc, 2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307 Arlington, VA 22201 cell - 202-321-3914 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Webb Sprague" <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 1:28:06 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Web 3.0 may be here > Whether Wolfram Alpa ends up being vaporware or real it is at least driving > innovation. Just as an aside on the topic of ontology in general -- we science types seem to take for granted the idea that there might be an "ontology of everything" somewhere "out there". However, there might be structural barriers to such an ontology: Godel proved that the fully knowing even the integers is impossible precisely because the integers can be used to describe themselves (and thus introduce true facts that can't be proven). Similarly, in a weird sort of way, Heidegger and Giddens argue that to fully know human behavior is impossible because humans know themselves explicitly thus are always "escaping" or negating or gaming their own self-ontologies. (All this plus the fact that a Platonic "out there" probably is a -- very productive -- illusion.) So... Wolfram is a damn smart guy, and I bet his product will tell us a lot about some concrete things on the planet, but it probably isn't the singularity we are all waiting for, because that perfect self knowledge is inherently beyond our grasp Sorry if that is ridiculously abstract and crazy. I am going back to graphing Portland traffic time series now.... we all agree about "vehicle miles traveled" and its place in a traffic theory ontology.... _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
