Photon counting for the masses

Well, I think the jury's still out on that. I agree that as far as we

*know*, the benefits outweigh the costs; but I wonder whether we know the full cost. I don't have anything in mind - just extrapolating from past experiences where we wound up getting hurt by things we didn't understand well enough.

I guess I'm confident that *science* could fix things if we discovered they went wrong somehow. What concerns me is that so many scientific decisions are made by people who have no understanding of science. Politics and money seem to take precedence over reality sometimes, occasionally with deplorable results.

Anyway, I hope you're right about the benefits outweighing the problems...

--
[Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine
women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
		-- Wernher von Braun

I have never heard of it happening here in the UK.

--

John Devereux

I don't believe you can tell by any practical experiment so it would just be arguing over semantics. The birefringent crystal lattice phonons and idler frequency clearly play a part in mediating the down conversion. Arguably in the photon model whenever a photon is passing through a refractive medium it is absorbed and re-emitted many times.

You could make the same case for a photon propagating in a vacuum too. It is one way to visualise the photon exploring all possible paths. The final path(s) that affect the outcome are those that take the least time to travel which reduces to classical geometrical optics solutions.

Since the smallest particles also behave as waves and electromagnetic waves behave as particles it usually makes good sense to use the mathematical formalism to describe them which is easiest to manipulate.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

He is a very clever guy but I don't go for proof by dynamic assertion.

Only if you can build models to test our ideas. Modern computers are getting to the right scale to do exactly that fairly soon now.

We may have to be content with having systems that work without fully understanding how for a while. Machine translation has come on a long way in the past couple of decades. The day is not far off when universal translators could be a reality. Even realtime subtitling for TV news is getting close (though the mist aches are hilarious).

Not sure it will make all that much difference.

The philosophers might be a bit put out by being out thought and out reasoned by a mere machine, but clueless Joe Six Pack will still be happy provided Oprah and X-Factor are on brain numbing TV.

We are already in a era where parts of modern chips are designed by complex tools which were constructed by earlier tools. Certain tasks are more easily done by writing programs to write programs to do them!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[snip]

But it is the complexity that requires intelligence to understand. How a computer plays chess is very different to how a top grand master plays chess but the end result is similar. The main difference is that modern chess engines will never make a tactical blunder and can now play absolutely perfect 6 man endgames (a double edged sword).

Freestyle chess where man and machine are combined still produces a stronger game play than either on its own. Certain of the latest engines are now powerful enough to find opening novelties as well.

Trouble is that the Turing test has now been passed by some computers and failed by quite a few humans!

That seems to be the way the game is being played. Each time AI researchers conquer another thing that defines human intelligence the result is discounted as not really true intelligence at all.

Go seems to be a better approximation to the intelligence challenge.

Yes. The humble cell phone is now powerful enough to run a chess engine like Shredder that will trounce all but top international GMs.

These days they work on simulating human like mistakes to give weaker club level players a sporting chance.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Your claims are wild distortions of the true cases, exactly the sort of hair-on-fire hysterical responses we've come to expect when Christians are asked to play on a level field. I find it hard to believe that you can even make these claims with a straight face, unless you are getting all your news from Religious Right fundraising appeals.

Best regards,

Bob Masta DAQARTA v6.02 Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI Science with your sound card!

Right. That's what I was talking about. It turned out that chess did not *require* AI (or any intelligence) to be done right. True, humans play chess using their intelligence. They don't have the processing power to look so many moves ahead; they have to prune their options. A machine doesn't. It *can* use brute force.

But my point was that we often think some activity of ours requires intelligence, when (for a machine, at least) it would not. When we then find a machine doing it, we have to revise our definition of AI.

No surprises there. Go is a very subtle game. I don't know whether there is a way to brute force it. I only vaguely remember the rules, but I recall that they were such that you had to consider each move very carefully, or you'd regret it. Actually, I usually regretted it anyway, which is why I don't play it. I suck at it.

Perhaps it requires intelligence to understand, but understanding is not required to beat a grandmaster. Brute force can do it, these days.

Well, I'll grant that for a human to play chess well requires intelligence.

Yes. I'm thinking of the Eliza "therapist" program that could sometimes keep a person going for quite some time.

The Turing test isn't particularly good, but I haven't seen anything that's any better. We just don't seem to have a good idea of what we mean when we talk about intelligence.

That's very interesting. On the surface you'd think go would be very simple (actually, the rules *are* very simple). It's almost binary... but it is subtle and elusive. I don't know whether it would even be possible to use brute force on it - though I guess it would be theoretically possible if you had enough processor power. But there's a lot more to the game than first meets the eye. I'm not surprised it's giving computers a run for their money...

chess_korz.html

I had a $10 chess game that let me adjust its difficulty level, and give myself any number of men of any type. Even when I had eight queens that thing could beat me at the simpler settings. But this isn't such a testimonial for the power of computers, as it is for how badly I suck at chess (and go, and most games). I tend to limit myself to solitaire, as it is less embarrassing when I lose.

--
Saint:  A dead sinner revised and edited.
		-- Ambrose Bierce

You must not have access to Google:

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Heh. Yep. I was dissapoint. the same ideas could have been presented in a much less dissonant fashion.

yeah, I get to pick on Roger Penrose. Hoo boy! Hubris much? :)

We'll see.

We always have...

Always are - that's where humor comes from, IMO. It's *all* puns...

It may well not matter. We seem to be experiencing quite a bit of gnashing of teeth over higher than loveable levels of unemployment, right now. If the Singularity hits in earnest, boy those beaches will be crowded...

It's hard for us to separate status issues from production issues. If d(production)/dt slopes up as fast as ems could cause, we will have to get used to it very fast.

To the extent that I are a philostopher, I would squeal with glee and start a band...

Joe's been kinda grumpy lately...

Words to live by! I gottta go back to work and do some of that meta-programming myself...

-- Les Cargill

It is true that I was not aware of it as a phenomenon, the article indicates 586 "anti-Semitic" crimes in 2011. Nevertheless I do not think the UK deserves the label "Antisemitic". Wikipedia gives the equivalent figure for the USA as 1821 in 2004. Somewhat better given the greater population although it is hard to tell given the likely differences in reporting and classification.

--

John Devereux

I have -- they're certainly out there. It's sometimes quite an odd juxtaposition, though -- I knew one guy who had a successful business and was quite generous with bonuses, donations to charity, etc... but also would not hire a gay engineer regardless of how talented the lady or guy was. (His religious belief was that active gay folks are constantly sinning and he was unwilling to support that.)

Pretty much my view.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

My view precisely.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

That's precisely the kind of argument that I've always found incomprehensible. It appears to me, at best, to lead in a circle, at worst, nowhere.

I guess we are of fundamentally different mindsets. Fortunately, I've always been happy with what is, or may be, knowable. Mysticism is just beyond my comprehension.

I respect (with certain reservations), deeply held beliefs, even though I may not share them.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

You must agree that many people who profess beliefs of one kind or another appear to feel constrained to proselytize them.

(AKA "Good News")

I would not be so presumptuous. My views are mine alone. Others are welcome to theirs. I will protect their right to express them, provided that they do not try to impose them on me, or try to dictate the way that I should live.

I believe myself to be a moral person. My behavior is governed by what is socially acceptable to the people with whom I have to live.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

For me, this is hard to understand. I try to hire people based on their abilities. I do not ask if they are gay. I do not ask if they are christian. I do not ask their gender (which is usually obvious). I just want to know if there is a reasonable expectation that this person can handle the assigned task.

One of the things that annoy me is the people who knock on my door and want me to accept their pamphlets explaining why I should experience their religion.

I just want to be left alone to work out my own beliefs. I am capable of researching other paths to my convictions, if necessary.

If I am comfortable with my convictions when I am dying, then I will have achieved my objective.

--
No, but then its acuity for separating goats - and humans - from
noise, at night, is considerably greater than our ability to separate
tigers from noise at night. 

You apparently missed the point, which was that if you can't discern
tigers from noise and you're, somehow, wandering around in tiger
country at night, even dark-adapted, you'll eventually wind up in the
tiger's tank.

Do you run background checks for a criminal record?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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