Go go gallimaufry

(markus) ~/projects/osbridge/gallimaufry > dict gallimaufry |
>                                          grep -vE '1913|[ ]{13}'
2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Gallimaufry \Gal`li*mau"fry\, n.; pl. {Gallimaufries}. [F.
     galimafr['e]e a sort of ragout or mixed hash of different
     meats.]

     1. A hash of various kinds of meats, a ragout.
     2. Any absurd medley; a hotchpotch.

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:

  gallimaufry
      n 1: a motley assortment of things [syn: {odds and ends},
           {oddments}, {melange}, {farrago}, {ragbag}, {mishmash},
           {mingle-mangle}, {hodgepodge}, {hotchpotch}, {gallimaufry},
           {omnium-gatherum}]

http://www.rokits.org/gallery/x-prize

This is going to get a little confusing

…so let’s warm up a bit first

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Is everyone confused?

Then let’s dive in.

Act I

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Peace on Earth, doing it wrong

  • People set out to do something
  • They see a way to accomplish it
  • They face obsticles and work to overcome them
  • All their focus gets tied up in the means
  • Along the way, they forget to ask themselves “why?”

Is it that the task is worth doing, or that the secret is worth knowing, that the game is worth playing or the preserves worth preserving, or…what, exactly?

  • So instead of “Profit!”, “Fail!”

Of course, we would never be that stupid

Act II

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Project Euler problem #1

An Allegory in n Algorithms

The problem description

If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.

Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.

http://projecteuler.net/problem=1

Algorithm 1

for ((t=23,t<1000000,t++)); do
    curl --data="guess=$t" \
        http://projecteuler.net/problem=1
    done

Algorithm 1b

for ((t=23,t<1000000,t++)); do
    for ((c=10000,t<=99999,c++)); do
        curl --data="guess=$t&confirm=$c" \
            http://projecteuler.net/problem=1
        end
    done

But they also do rate limiting…

Algorithm 1c

for ((t=23,t<1000000,t++)); do
    for ((c=10000,t<=99999,c++)); do
        curl --data="guess=$t&confirm=$c" \
            http://projecteuler.net/problem=1
        sleep 5
        end
    done

Algorithm 2

1 to 999 filter { x => x % 3 == 0 || x % 5 == 0 } sum

Algorithm 3

a = 3
b = 5
t = 0
while a < 1000 or b < 1000:
    if a < b:
        t = t+a
        a = a + 3
    elif b < a:
        t = t+b
        b = b + 5
    else:
        t = t+a
        a = a + 3
        b = b + 5
print t

Algorithm 4

You meet a person who can do it in their head…

given 1 to n sum = n(n+1)/2

the answer is 3*(1 to 333 sum) + 5*(1 to 199 sum) – 15*(1 to 66 sum)

or 3*333*334/2 + 5*199*200/2 – 15*66*67/2

or (999*334 + 199000 – 66*1005)/2

or (333666 + 199000 – 66330) /2

or 466336/2 = 233168

Algorithm 5

  • = 23+12+10+15
  • = 25+10+10+15 = 60
  • We also know that there are 4 in the first list & 7 in the second
  • 1000 = 15 * 66 + 10
  • so breaking it in to repetitions of the 15-pattern plus to 10 at the end we have:
66*60 + 15*7*65*66/2 + 4*990 + 23

So where does that leave us?

15

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

The rules of Go

(with possible minor errors or oversimplifications)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kallerna

  • Golf balls have a radius of about 2.5cm,
  • or 10/4cm,
  • so a volume of 4/3 π (10/4)3 cm3
  • or π/3 1000/16 cm3
  • At a packing density of 3/4 that’s π/9 1000/4 cm3,
  • or 36/π (about 12) golf balls per liter.
  • Thus a cubic meter holds about 12,000 golf balls

The language “Brainfuck”

(with possible minor errors or oversimplifications)

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]
>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.
 
+++++ +++++             initialize counter (cell #0) to 10
[                       use loop to set the next four cells to 70/100/30/10
    > +++++ ++              add  7 to cell #1
    > +++++ +++++           add 10 to cell #2 
    > +++                   add  3 to cell #3
    > +                     add  1 to cell #4
    <<<< -                  decrement counter (cell #0)
]                   
> ++ .                  print 'H'
> + .                   print 'e'
+++++ ++ .              print 'l'
.                       print 'l'
+++ .                   print 'o'
> ++ .                  print ' '
<< +++++ +++++ +++++ .  print 'W'
> .                     print 'o'
+++ .                   print 'r'
----- - .               print 'l'
----- --- .             print 'd'
> + .                   print '!'
> .                     print '\n'

(Source: http://xkcd.com/365 )

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Digression Concerning the Two Brief Formal Systems

Go

Brainfuck

Hard for computers Hard for humans
Easier for humans Easier for computers
– - – roughly equal complexity – - –
2d 1d
Adversarial Impersonal
Requires foresight Timeless
Lots of choices Few/no choices
Partial information Full information
…? …?

Prepared with Structure Synth

  • With room left for a respectable amount of TNT

So you put your cube o’ balls at the tee, and set the charge off.

Assuming the charge is symmetrical and calibrated for a par-5 hole, the 100 million balls will be scattered over a 500m radius circle, with an area of π r2 = about one million square meters, so there will be about 100 per square meter.

  • Since the cup has a diameter of about 10cm, there’s about a 75% chance that at least one of the balls will land in the cup — more, if you take into account that they’ll bounce around a bit on arrival.
  • Even none land in the hole, many will land much closer to the cup than the tee, and you can of course iterate — after all, that’s what golfers do.

Suppose you were silly enough to actually do this.

Would any reasonable person contend that in doing so you had built a machine that played golf?

…but it gets worse.

The golf analogy is way too flattering.

  • Suppose there are 150 moves left.
  • 150! ≈ 5.7 ˙ 10262
  • 150!/10140 ≈ 10122

The golf analogy is way too flattering.

  • Suppose there are 150 moves left.
  • 150! ≈ 5.7 ˙ 10262
  • 150!/10140 ≈ 10122
  • 1080 H2
  • 1.3 1010 years x 365 days/year x 24 hours/day x 60 × 60 × 109 ≈ 4 × 1026
  • Assuming atomic graffiti isn’t a widespread but heretofore unrecognized (by humans) blight, my odds of finding your atom on the first shot are roughly 1042 better than the Monte Carlo playout’s odds of hitting a decent game.

…but it gets still worse.

We’re that stupid

  • What was the point again?
    • Will there be peace in the middle east once computers can beat humans at go?
    • Is there a plausible business plan that hinges on having computers beat humans at go?
    • Are there people who are being forced by circumstance to play go against their will, who’s missery could be releaved by automating the task?
  • Or is it just an exercise in “Artificial Intelegence” in which case the question just moves down the road a bit.

The real goal of AI

“AI is what computers can’t do yet”

  • That’s because “AI is the study of things we know are possible (because people can do them) but we don’t know how to write code for yet.”
  • It’s important because the skills are useful and we don’t have good algorithms/hardware solutions for them.

AI is about reverse enginering the human mind to learn its secrets

It’s not about beating humans at stuff

Act III

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The ornithopter objection

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. — Edsger Dijkstra

AKA the ornithopter objection

© Earthen Exposure 2011

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Are we likely to fall into the same trap?

Computers will never be able to think. Everything we know that is capable of thought is mostly water, and water destroys computers.

— A tenured professor of philosophy dives into the feather trap

More than birds & feathers

  • Other things can fly
  • Ornothopters are just one attempt in a long, long history

More a trove of hints than an objection

“Bumble bees can’t fly” — Scientists, according to legend

“A fixed wing aircraft with the parameters (surface area, mass, etc.) of a bumble bee could not fly” — Ludwig Prandtl, paraphrased, circa 1930

The wings […] are moved almost horizontally during hovering […] and there are three unusual phases in the wing stroke: the clap, the fling and the flip. In the clap the wings are brought together at the top of the morphological upstroke. In the fling […] the opposed wings are flung open like a book, hinging about their posterior margins. In the flip […] the wings are rapidly twisted through about 180°. — Torkel Weis-Fogh, 1973

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/59/1/169.short

Resolved computation of two dimensional insect hovering shows for the first time that a two dimensional hovering motion can generate enough lift to support a typical insect weight. The computation reveals a two dimensional mechanism of creating a downward dipole jet of counterrotating vortices, which are formed from leading and trailing edge vortices. — Z. Jane Wang, 2000

http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v85/i10/p2216_1

So are we committing “the ornithopter error”?

© Susan Borgas

So are we committing “the ornithopter error”?

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The kludge objection

tl;dr: Our brains suck.

  • Our memories are faulty
  • We’re irrational

Why would anyone want to steal design ideas from the brain?

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Progress in the computer industry is driven by

feature size

We can now fit ~10,000 transistors in the space occupied by one in 1970.

Progress in the computer industry is driven by

feature size
speed

http://www.singularity.com

Data from 1976–1999: E. R. Berndt, E. R. Dulberger, and N. J. Rappaport, “Price and Quality of Desktop and Mobile Personal Computers: A Quarter Century of History,” July 17, 2000,

http://www.nber.org/~confer/2000/si2000/berndt.pdf

Data from 2001–2016: ITRS, 2002 Update, On-Chip Local Clock in Table 4c: Performance and Package Chips: Frequency On-Chip Wiring Levels—Near-Term Years, p. 167.

Progress in the computer industry is driven by

feature size

speed

throughput

http://csgillespie.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/cpu-and-gpu-trends-over-time/

Progress in the computer industry is driven by

feature size
speed
throughput
power/heat disipation

…the cooling bill alone at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is $6M/year and given that for every watt (W) of power consumed by an HPC system at LLNL, 0.7 W of cooling is needed to dissipate the power; the annual cost to both power and cool HPC systems at LLNL amounts to a total of $14.6M per year…

— Wu-chun Feng, Los Alamos National Laboratory

What is wrong with this picture:

  • A low-power CPU (Atom): ~10 Watts (excluding memory, I/O, etc.)
  • A modern server CPU: ~100 Watts (excluding memory, I/O, etc.)
  • A server: ~400 Watts
  • A Monte Carlo cluster: ~40,000 Watts
  • A human brain: ~10 Watts

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Act VII

Yes, 7. What I called Act I was actually Act IV: A New Doh!, the two acts following it are similarly offset and the stuff right before it with the cheering and the crayons is really a christmas special that, many years from now, inebriated smart people will dare each other to watch.

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Commonplace assertion: “AI programs can beat humans at chess, and are close to beating them at go.”

My claim: "Good humans can still beat the best AIs, but golf ball bombs can “beat” them both."

© UC Regents Davis

© 2012 Tangient LLC

For the brain, or in creatures without a brain that which corresponds to it, is of all parts of the body the coolest. Therefore, as moisture turned into vapour by the sun’s heat is, when it has ascended to the upper regions, cooled by the coldness of the latter, and becoming condensed, is carried downwards, and turned into water once more; just so the excrementitious evaporation, when carried up by the heat to the region of the brain, is condensed into a ’phlegm’ (which explains why catarrhs are seen to proceed from the head); while that evaporation which is nutrient and not unwholesome, becoming condensed, descends and cools the hot. The tenuity or narrowness of the veins about the brain itself contributes to its being kept cool, and to its not readily admitting the evaporation. This, then, is a sufficient explanation of the cooling which takes place, despite the fact that the evaporation is exceedingly hot.

Aristotle, On Sleep and Sleeplessness, Part Three, trans. J. I. Beare.

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  • All formal systems are either incapable of proving some truths or mistakenly accept some false propositions as true (Godel).
  • Computers are formal systems, and thus have the same limitation (Turing).
  • I, Roger Penrose, am a mathematician and do not; given sufficient time & paper I can comprehend the truth of any true proposition and am never wrong (Penrose).
  • Therefore, I am not a computer (Penrose)
  • By Occam, you probably aren’t either (Penrose)
  • Quantum systems do some funky stuff that defies logic if you look at the small scale (Schrodinger)
  • Micro-tubules are really small (De Robertis and Franchi)
  • Ergo, quantum effects in the micro-tubules give us the power to transcend Godel’s limitation (Penrose)

It is worth noting that Stephen Wolfram has produced a similar theory, but with

s/Roger Penrose/Stephen Wolfram/

and a few minor consequential adjustments.

© Idaho Public Television

© 2008 Brain Injury Association of Peel and Halton

© 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences

“XML is like violence; if it doesn’t solve your problem you aren’t using enough of it.”

As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts, all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee?

“Functional analysis is like math; if it doesn’t solve your problem you aren’t using enough of it.”

So what modules might there be?

— Mithen 1996

Can we probe for the existence of such modules?

Wason selection task

You are shown a set of four cards placed on a table, each of which has a number on one side and a solid color on the other. The visible faces of the cards show 3, 8, red and blue. Which card(s) must you turn over in order to test the truth of the proposition that cards with an even number on one face are red on the other side?

3

8

.

.

Wason selection task

You are a chaperon at a student social and see four students. Two are holding glasses and you know that one of them is 19, and the other is 25; the third student has a can of beer and the fourth a can of coke. Which student(s) do you need to check to enforce the rule that no one under 25 may drink alcohol?

What is the smallest integer I such that

3*sin(I)+1.5^I > 0 > 4*cos(I)-I

for all x = I + R, R >= 0, we have

3*sin(x)+1.5^x > 4*cos(x)-x

What’s the left-most berry that you can get at?

(Produced with sage)

Add to 15, reprise

( 0, 0)( 1, 0)( 2, 0)
( 0, 1)( 1, 1)( 2, 1)
( 0, 2)( 1, 2)( 2, 2)

(Ax-Bx) (By-Cy) = (Ay-By) (Bx-Cx)

Digression Concerning the Two Small Games

Tic-tac-toe

Add to 15

Harder to code Harder for humans
Easier for humans Easier to code
– - – identical complexity – - –
2d 1d
Adversarial Adversarial
Few choices Few choices
Full information Full information
…? …?

What we got from chess & related games

Why these fail for go

Interestingly, these are all aspects of important real world problems as well. (The real world cases have the additional complication that we can’t do the detailed, full world simulations that the Monte Carlo solutions rely on, so we really do need a solution).

Avenues to explore

Procedural Learning with GAs (digression)

Stop, stop gallimaufry!

Thanks for coming, & I hope you enjoyed the show

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