The 10 Algorithms That Dominate Our World

io9.com ^ | 5/22/2014 | George Dvorsky

[Viking2002]

This one was a converted Seventh Day Adventist. Met her between white-knuckle relationships with an untame-able Puerto Rican and a nice Jewish girl. She lived with her hyper-possessive boyfriend and his parents. Not that there was much hanky-panky going on in that domestic scenario. She was quite older than me at 38 - looked like 25, you know how those ladies can retain their youth beyond their years with the right genetics -and had a daughter from a previous (arranged) marriage. She wanted to ditch her 'boyfriend', her ex-'husband' was threatening to take their daughter away; I did everything I could humanly do in my power to help her, but in the end she caved to the three-way pressure and took off for parts unknown.

As much of a callous lech as I could be back in those times - something I've asked God to forgive me for now - I honestly did love her and it was one of the few relationships from back then where I felt that there was some true unfinished business on a most personal level. I hope things turned out well for her. What a bad position to be in. And I really did want to help her, even if my motives were emotionally selfish.

I almost got caught up in the same situation with a lovely young Vietnamese lady the following year. Things went swimmingly for weeks until her boyfriend found my phone number in her purse. LOL Two years later I married a Turk from Istanbul. And divorced her for a half-Cherokee from Alabama. Such was the dating game in Washington, DC in the 80's and 90's. My late father wasn't racist by any real means, but he once asked me, "Are you ever going to bring home a white girl like you used to date in high school?" LOL!

[Former Proud Canadian]

Soon, citizen, soon.

[FlJoePa]

Google Adwords has always fascinated me. If you put the time and research in, it’s amazing what a budget as small as $50/day can do for a business.

[KosmicKitty]

Algorithm - a precise set of steps needed to solve a problem or preform a task. Cannot be infinite and must be written using an instruction that the computer will understand

(Definition I use in my Computer Logic class)

[ckilmer]

I sometimes tell people that that we have entered a golden age of math because of computers. That is, computers have provided mathematicians with power tools for the first time. So that crush depth calculations can be done at the speed of a thought. The result is that every 6 months or so you read online that some mathematical problem dating back centuries has been solved.

I argue that the solution to the the long knotty gnarly problem is then turned into an algorithm and hooked up to a computer which in turn enables mathematicians to solve still more complex problems

Here is my problem with this assertion. ,,,, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Nor have I heard anyone make the same assertion that I do. Nor am I a mathematician. This is just my wild ass guess.

umm can anyone say whether my assertion is definitively right or wrong or probably right or wrong. or meh, neither here nor there.

Now depending on the answer that you give —can you assert yeah or nope that the constant stream of solutions to old math problems leads to the acceleration of the rate at which more practical solutions to problems occur in every scientific field of endeavor from computers, communications materials,genetics, medical research and every other kind of R&D.

All of this leads to a third assertion... that I would like to hear yeah or nay on...

The rate of scientific and technological change is accelerating. On this there are other answer than the one proposed above. For example, you could say that yes scientific and technological change is accelerating but but for different reasons, in addition to yes or no or meh, not so much.

[ckilmer]

fyi. see my question at post 46.

[null and void]

Here is my problem with this assertion. ,,,, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

That's never stopped anyone from having a strong opinion!

Knowledge is increasing exponentially. Wisdom is increasing logarithmically.

[Bobalu]

Computers are not creative and they have no intelligence.
Thus they cannot discover solutions to the great mathematical problems like the Riemann hypothesis, the NP problem, Poincare’s conjecture, or the Navier-Stokes equations.

What a computer does is it amplifies the power of the mind of man. Because it can do billions of things every second it in effect slows down time to a crawl... it is as though you had a million years to do an advanced calculation by hand and when you are done somehow only a moment of time will have passed. It is like magic :-)

Computers are not merely mathematical machines. They can do an endless number of things besides mathematics.

The conception of the universal computing machine is the breakthrough that has set us on a fast path to immortality and ultimate control of the physical universe. It is the end game of evolution, it will change everything.

[PieterCasparzen]

public key encryption.

[ckilmer]

There is a related to another assertion that I will make from time to time. It goes like this.

In +-1808—not long after the return of Lewis and Clark from their explorations out west — Thomas Jefferson was asked how long it would take to colonize America. He said about 6000 years and 200 generations.

Instead it took 100 years and 5 generations.

Why was Jefferson so wrong?

Jefferson figured it took 200 years and 10 generations to get from the Atlantic coast to Charlottsville where his home was at Monticello. That’s a distance of roughly 100 miles. He knew that the distance from the east coast to the west coast of America was 3000 miles so he did the math.

Jefferson’s mistake was that the thought that the technology would stay the same. Instead there were two great technological revolutions in the 1830’s and a second technological revolution that started in roughly the 1880’s.

These technological revolutions brought steam powered trains and boats, telegraphs, and later planes cars telephones and what not. The effect of these traveling and communications revolutions was to collapse the traveling and communications distances between things.

I assert that computers are doing the same thing. That by increasing the speed of their calculations they are effectively collapsing time—and therefor space.

That the faster the computers go—the nearer the nearest planet becomes. The faster the computers go —the nearer the nearest star becomes.

Now I recognize that I’ve expressed this inexactly. If a computer goes faster—mars does not become closer. Rather what happens is that the means to solve all the problems related to getting to mars or the nearest stars and back —become easier to handle and solve more quickly as computers go faster.

Is this a correct assertion?

[Bobalu]

Yes, it’s correct.

There is the possibility in the near future of quantum computing and also some type of machine intelligence. I don’t take such possible developments into consideration though and even without them the future of computing is amazing.

[taxcontrol]

I would agree that generally with your assertion and provide an example that may be some what relative. Computers or more specifically rapid electronic calculations, have enabled the solving of a number of issues related to communications. Electricity and light have always traveled near the speed of light, but until the advent of computers, there has not been a way to “shorten the distance” of communications. The telegraph, telephone, simple radios, did enable a compression of time and distance. What took air mail a couple of days to deliver was shorten to minutes. Now the Internet allows for near instant communications across the glob.

To my mind, this is an example of compressing time and space.

[null and void]

Is this a correct assertion?

Yes.

It violates Known Laws of Physics, and is therefore in all probably correct.

[PeterPrinciple]

“What a computer does is it amplifies the power of the mind of man.”

Technology is NEVER a substitute for good management(decision making) It is appealing though to think so. It centralizes power and control. It gives the illusion of solving problems but creates many other problems. One of the tenants of conservatism is understanding the nature of man.

“......fast path to immortality and ultimate control of the physical universe. It is the end game of evolution, it will change everything.”

That reminds me that the Garden of Eden and it’s major decision still exists for us each and every day.

Philosophical issues do not go away with technology. Since the beginning man has wanted to be God. The liberals want to be in charge now. I would not care for conservatives to be in charge either. It is the centralization of power I fear.....................................

[ckilmer]

The conception of the universal computing machine is the breakthrough that has set us on a fast path to immortality and ultimate control of the physical universe.
.................
I think that null and void has the correct caveat here.

Knowledge is increasing exponentially. Wisdom is increasing logarithmically.

[Oratam]

Yes. It’s the correct assertion . . . and it terrifies me.

[P.O.E.]

We also need to adjust for socialism. Much of that entrepreneurship and invention was done under capitalism.

I still recall “Whitey on the Moon” and its Ludditism.

[PieterCasparzen]

I sometimes tell people that that we have entered a golden age of math because of computers.

Well, yes and no.

That is, computers have provided mathematicians with power tools for the first time.

Yes.

The result is that every 6 months or so you read online that some mathematical problem dating back centuries has been solved.

Not exactly. At this article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics, in the recently solved list, we find 24 recently solved problems. Of those, only 2 were postulated before the 19th century. Only 4 were postulated either during the 19th century up until WWII. The other 18 were all postulated after WWII.

So we see a lot of new problems being postulated during the current modern digital computer age. The question is, are we seeing more problems generated - per working mathematician - than is historically the case. Well, we know that there were various "golden ages" of math historically, so we have to bear in mind whether we want to compare to a single historical norm or to the various "golden ages".

Are we up against a learning "wall", where the rate of finding new math problems is outpacing our ability to solve math problems ? I'm no mathematician, and I haven't attempted to list all current outstanding unsolved math problems recogonized by mathematicians, but just from a quick review of that web page it seems that this would be the case.

We should also keep in mind that problems and solutions will sometimes have not much practical use or application.

I argue that the solution to the the long knotty gnarly problem is then turned into an algorithm and hooked up to a computer which in turn enables mathematicians to solve still more complex problems

Were it only that easy. The computer is a "dumb machine". While it offers the mathematician tools which can aid in large computations, the mathematician still has to understand the problems, be able to - in his mind - analyze and conjecture about solutions. IF his ideas present him with tasks that he can use software tools to solve, THEN he can endeavor to make good use of the computer to solve those parts of the overall problem he is working on.

Trouble is, in the course of doing this work - as well as in the course of other science and engineering work - new mathematical problems arise, which, if significant enough, are then formally postulated by mathematicians, thus adding to the list of unsolved math problems.

Now depending on the answer that you give —can you assert yeah or nope that the constant stream of solutions to old math problems leads to the acceleration of the rate at which more practical solutions to problems occur in every scientific field of endeavor from computers, communications materials,genetics, medical research and every other kind of R&D.

Most of what are touted as "advancements" are not novel at all. They're nothing significantly new. Most of the "marvels" we see are simply incremental improvements or even quite banal implementations of well-known technology and have nothing to do, per se, with higher math.

Most advancements in other fields are not directly resulting from advancements in mathmatics. In truth, very few computer applications are based on recent advancements in mathmatics. The design of most computer applications that "make the world go" at this point do not use higher math at all, but rely solely only relatively well-known and straightforward mathematics.

Some of the solutions that have been found to "higher math" problems have lead to profitable applications in other fields, frequently in applications very unforeseen that were not being worked on by the mathematician, and sometimes many years later. Far too often, IMHO, we sell short the capabilities of mathematicians of hundreds and even thousands of years ago.

We should keep in mind, however, that many higher math problems don't present much opportunity for application, many lead to even more questions, and many are simply steps along the way to solving other math problems.

As we solve complex problems, we move on to even more complex problems, which get progressively more difficult to solve.

The rate of scientific and technological change is accelerating.

Scientific and technological change can be for better, for worse, or simply change with no net effect.

I take it you mean scientific and technological advancement, that the rate of advancement is accelerating.

First, we have to weed out all the new things we see that are purported to be advancements but really have bad effects for people. Next, let's discard everything that's presented as an advancement, but it's really nothing technologically novel. Finally, we need to consider all the true advancements that we would be making - but we're not - because time and effort is being expended on changes which provide no real advancement in lieu of being expended on finding real solutions to real problems.

What we find is that scientific and technological change is a) higly concentrated and b) highly controlled. This consolidation and control could be described as big business in tandem with big government, under the control and direction of financial elites.

An example would be a cure for diabetes. On the one hand, we see the active promotion of things that produce diabetes, on the other hand, we see all the solutions that are developed strictly limited to "living with" diabetes as opposed to solving the problem once and for all. Just think of the trillions that have been spent by consumers related to diabetes over the years, and at the end of the day, the solution providers are making more than they ever did off the disease in what appears to be an EVER-EXPANDING market. The societal cost is actually continually and rather rapidly growing even in the face of all advancements made.

[PieterCasparzen]

These technological revolutions brought steam powered trains and boats, telegraphs, and later planes cars telephones and what not. The effect of these traveling and communications revolutions was to collapse the traveling and communications distances between things.

I assert that computers are doing the same thing. That by increasing the speed of their calculations they are effectively collapsing time—and therefor space.

The amount of work we can do per unit of time increases; the units of time are still the same. Space is certainly not affected.

Various things that were not practical then become practical.

That the faster the computers go—the nearer the nearest planet becomes. The faster the computers go —the nearer the nearest star becomes.

We had the computing capability required for space travel in the 1960s; it doesn't take much computing, relatively speaking.

Computing is not the major barrier to space travel.

Space travel is a romantic idea and has been heavily promoted to young men and boys as such for decades. Thus we have a scientific community today that assumes that space travel makes sense for society at this point in time, both economically and scientifically.