Alternative paradigms
Given that the target of kinocomputing is alternative paradigms of computing and intelligence, I thought it sensible to do a round-up of what those alternatives actually are.
Given that the target of kinocomputing is alternative paradigms of computing and intelligence, I thought it sensible to do a round-up of what those alternatives actually are.
The core claim of Michael Levin’s Ingressing Minds paper: mind relates to body as math relates to physics. Just as primes and constants shape physical outcomes without being physical themselves, Levin says minds are the same kind of thing, just further along a spectrum of agency. To simplify for myself, I imagined this as two spaces.
Everyone starts with the smell.
Numerical weather prediction’s (NWP) base paradigm is simple: weather is math, and math is sufficiently solvable. Just model phenomena on a grid using quantitative methods such as fluid mechanics and thermodynamics, then step forward in time from observed state. This observe-model-predict chain is the operative paradigm that powers everything else.
Cryptocurrencies go back to the digital-gold, sovereign-individual era of the nineties. People like Nick Szabo and subcultures like the cypherpunks asked a simple, heretical question: “What actually is money, and why can’t it be this?” That question didn’t need 2008 to exist. There was already a minority coalescing around it. But the financial crash of 2008 made it a mainstream concern.
Since I’m intending to do an experiment involving thermodynamic computing, I thought it sensible to simplistically summarise the paradigm itself. Here’s the compressed version: thermodynamic computing uses thermal noise to drive computation instead of spending resource to fight it, mitigating energy cost as a bottleneck for certain classes of computation at civilisation scale.
A few months back I read Stewart Brand’s Maintenance: Of Everything. It led to a fun conversation with Mike Travers, out of which came the idea of a “Brandian return”. Think of it as the complement to a Whitehead advance. Quoting in full:
Hi, I’m Matt. This is the place where I do independent research into alternative paradigms of computing and intelligence.