The difference between a large system and a (small) system is that you cannot measure the large system, except by redefining the large system as a single unit or smaller system. If you scoop up a handful of sand you can measure that system as a “single handful of sand” or as the sum of the grains of sand in your hand.…
Some of the responses to my post about the need for something other than a set in large systems theory led me to think about how unmathematical the theory tends to be. It might seem to be logical to say that if math struggles so much to explain large systems theory then it’s not really a mathematical concept. But I think most mathematicians would disagree with such a conclusion.…
Set Theory is the study of collections of things. More properly, set theory is the set of rules mathematics has adopted for organizing and analyzing collections of things. Systems theory is another, less precise way of looking at collections of things. It’s defined as an interdisciplinary approach to studying collections of things that work together or are in some way dependent upon each other.…
Time travel is a fascinating subject that is, unfortunately, dominated by silly ideas about grandfather paradoxes and black holes. We can blame the movies and science fiction TV shows for many of these ridiculous ideas but not all of them. Good science is also responsible for nonsense (like the mislabled “Fermi Paradox”, which isn’t a paradox at all and – when you look at it skeptically – is a rather naive and stupid question).…
It’s only been a few days since Google revealed they have been using a neural matching algorithm to modify their search results. While I wrote about neural matching for the SEO Theory Premium Newsletter this week, I haven’t said much about it openly. Although my education in computer science introduced me to artificial intelligence many years ago, my professional work has only occasionally wandered close to the topic. …
The legendary prize money for solving Fermat’s Last Theorem has already been handed over to Andrew Wiles, who used esoteric mathematics that had not been developed in Pierre de Fermat’s time to prove that the old French man really was on to something when he made a little margin note in his copy of a book on Diophantine Equations.
A Diophantine Equation is anything in the format of Xn + Yn = Zn. …
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies reportedly invest a lot of man-hours in pouring over shredded documents, piecing them together. If I were shredding documents I didn’t want anyone to read I would take a few extra steps to make it harder for them to match up the pieces but you can’t assume that you would be able to prevent full capture of all the pieces.…
