/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9804689]

>Most people don't remember high school algebra

>Even fewer people understand basic boolean logic
>Even fewer people understand how calculators work
>Even fewer people understand how general purpose computers work

>Even fewer people understand how network protocols work
>Even fewer people understand how basic cryptography works
>Even fewer people understand how cryprographically secure network protocols work

>Even fewer people understand how distributed computing works
>Even fewer people understand how distributed supercomputers work

>Even fewer people understand how decentralized cryprographically secure supercomputers work

If you don't understand, I suggest you start studying instead of talking about moon memes and lambos. This is the most important invention since written language itself. The first fully autonomous computing system, with the potential to be outside the control of centralized power.

If you don't understand how big this is, then this just proves even further how early we all are. Satoshi Nakamoto isn't just some cool guy who wrote an interesting program, he will go down in history alongside Euclid and Newton

[Anonymous No.9804691]

>>9804689
Oops wrong section but quite frankly it belongs here more than it belongs in /biz/

Any thoughts on the important theoretical implications of the first decentralized supercomputer?

[Anonymous No.9804693]

And there is only one OP, who is an ultimate faggot.

[Anonymous No.9804697]

>>9804693
>faggot
Why the homophobia?

[Anonymous No.9804713]

>>9804689
I understand everything but the first one.

[Anonymous No.9804714]

>>9804697
wHy ThE bLoMoBlObIa?

[Anonymous No.9804719]

>>9804713
And the biggest problem I have with this is tying this shit to cryto/blockchain.
Distrubuted computing is old. Older than crypto by far. What blockchain introduced was a method for validating trust between the distrubuted nodes when they could easily be trying to cheat each other.
This is really only a problem in open distrubuted networks, things like @home and BOINC already had methods to discover false/fake results.

[Anonymous No.9804722]

>>9804689
>decentralized cryprographically secure supercomputers
Cool, so I could access a super computer from my smartphone? Maybe calculate 10^10 prime numbers or something?

[Anonymous No.9804732]

>>9804722
You're thinking of supercomputers in terms of FLOPS. I'm talking about supercomputers in terms of duplicate computations and trustworthiness of results. No computer is more reliable than Bitcoin. Traditional computers can fall prey to malware and cosmic ray bit flips. Bitcoin cannot.

[Anonymous No.9804750]

>>9804732
Read>>9804719

Also, Bitcoin is currently in a precarious position. By nature of its design it resists malicious alteration by distributing the computing, a maliciou actor would require control of more than half the computing resources in order to force malicious changes to the blockchain. Currently the majority stake in Bitcoin is held by three farms in China.
This means that if they combined resources they could make any alteration to the blockchain they chose and force it onto all other nodes.

[Anonymous No.9805122]

I agree that blockchain is something fantastic.

I'd never thought I'd live to see a certain technology making centralized oranisation obsolete...

every communists wet dream

finally we can automate banks and governments, fuck you humans it's time to let big brother take over

and I'm totally ok with it because we humans fuck shit up on the grand scale

[Anonymous No.9805124]

>Even fewer people understand basic boolean logic
I do advise you to look into ternary logic as well though, prepare to be amazed.

[Anonymous No.9805161]

>>9804689
you probably don't understand how to install basic plumbing or how to cook a delicious meal, not everyone can know everything and be a giant nerd like yourself

[Anonymous No.9805183]

>>9804689
>high school algebra

I remember that class. I never did a single bit of work in it. It was shit and no one respected the teacher. Who basically did fuck all except yell and cry. I only stay around for half a semester before dropping out of HS completely. I made my own business in PC repair, networking & databasing, did that for a few years then sold the company for a ton of money and retired early.

Fuck school, it doesn't teach you anything worth learning beyond 2nd grade. Good luck wage slaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0

[Anonymous No.9805219]

>>9804697
first day on 4chan, kid?

[Anonymous No.9805298]

>>9804697
Being gay is objectively wrong desu.

[Brandon !!tbkOPmI7bEB No.9805300]

>>9804689
This post is literally OP sniffing his own asshole because of how smug he is.

What happened, /sci/?

[Anonymous No.9805399]

>>9805183
that song is so gay, there are things your parents should teach you and a school couldn't possibly teach you all of this... I'm all for going out and getting experience over staying in school but this song is actually pretty gay as shit

[Anonymous No.9805411]

>>9804689

No. Creating something that then goes out of your control is not a sign of intelligence. That's why the human race isn't exactly "intelligent". I would be up for discussing this, but only if you are up for discussing underlying principles, which are in nature philosophical.

[Anonymous No.9805429]

Exactly: There is so much Cryphography going on that I have no idea how to decipher it either. We really have to bow down to Euclid and Newton on this one, they new their stuff. Euler and Leibnitz, go KYS, please!

[Anonymous No.9805432]

>>9805298
that's hate speech and I'm calling the police

[Anonymous No.9805460]

>>9805411
YOU CANT KNOW NUFFIN

[Anonymous No.9805479]

>>9804689
That sounds like a hivemind made of computers without self awareness. Or a computational network program? Like a hydra?

[Anonymous No.9805487]

>>9804750
Actually they only need 25-30% to take over the blockchain. Some university did a study on blockchain security and found that by repeatedly keeping the solution to a block secret and opening a "private" block to mine on before publishing the solution to the blockchain you can gain a sufficient time advantage that allows you to approach 100% network control.

The study was subsequently ignored and fell into obscurity.

[Anonymous No.9805488]

>>9805411
Different anon here, I actually completely agree- though I think I have something of an interesting take on the problem.

Take this thought experiment of evolution.
https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8

This is a short video- you can skim it if you want- on an experiment that was done wherein different levels of antibiotics in bands were arranged on a large agar plate. A bacteria eventually gained a mutation that let it exist in a higher concentration of antibiotic than before. This happens multiple times as it reaches the next level of antibiotics, until at the end there are bacteria that are resistant to 1000x the lethal dose of antibiotics.

Would you say that the researchers invented those bacteria?

Likewise, if you had a program that had the capacity to mutate, copy itself, and has some kind of selection pressure applied to it- would you say that the person who invented the precursor, also invented the final product if it evolved intelligence?

It's an interesting conundrum. Because I think someone would argue that creating an AI with the selection pressure "to become better at cracking a password" would have IP rights over the end product. But then, the person didn't design it, it designed itself to some selection pressure, much like the researchers at Harvard didn't design those bacteria at the end, merely moved something that already existed (or, in the case of AI was designed) into some environment where the population would evolve.

[Anonymous No.9805495]

>>9805488
>Would you say that the researchers invented those bacteria?
The problem more generally lies in the fact that we, as human, tend to want to do things on such a large scale that it then has a tremendous consequences. The inventor of a computer never really used it.

Secondly, the problem lies in the fact that we think that we know what we are doing and that we know what we need to do. Both are nonsense. If we admitted that we don't know what we do and why we do it, we would refrain from accumulating such experiments leading to large scale problems that could not be foreseen.

The AI makes absolutely zero sense. There is no need for it. No one literally needs it. There is just the idea of technological and other progress that we hang onto, and can't get rid of because stagnation scares us in the same way boredom scares us on an individual level.

I don't know how deep you want to get in here, but of course there are metaphysical assumptions to it as well. If we believe there is nothing after death, we behave differently than if we believe there is god that judges our deeds, and hence we may feel pushed to do things for others, and change things constantly that way. I think there is a big degree of religious thinking even in non-religious people that leads to it. I don't want to de-rail too much, just outlining the idea.

[Anonymous No.9805513]

>>9805411
obviously it still requires intelligence to solve a difficult problem, even if it's unwise to do so

[Anonymous No.9805516]

>>9805495
>big degree of religious thinking even in non-religious people
See, here's where I doubt the nature of "religious thinking" as purely ideologically or historically based on religion. To me it seems more likely that religion itself is based on mechanisms and principles that lead to this same effect. Behaviors or rules of engagement that encourage people to get along allow a society to exist in a more coherent fashion- to put it in evolutionary terms it increases the fitness of a society. That's not to say religion got it right, but there's always a sort of adage I fall back to. In terms of risk and reward, assuming humans are logical beings, it's typically a lot more beneficial for the self to steal your neighbor's stuff or murder them in a natural state. However, if there's a risk (going to hell or going to jail), then religious tenants and laws are pretty obviously in place to align personal benefit with societal benefit.

In this sense, the scope of "society" is more and more being seen as all of humanity. This comes with foresight and forethought into global problems. Overpopulation, climate change, disease- these things which are nebulous future problems are being felt by a lot of people. Especially to many people who work in the sciences, these things seem like inevitable challenges we must surmount, and there's a growing sense of anxiety which pushes synergistically with profitable capitalistic ventures to create a world that feels on all fronts like it needs to come up with the next best thing.

The problem, and maybe it's not even a problem, with your argument is that I'd argue that AI is fundamentally different on the basis that it's not something we design like everything else. It's something that, if you apply a selective pressure to solve some problem, will continuously evolve de facto to be better at solving that problem (albeit with the potential to cause more problems).

[Anonymous No.9805558]

>>9805516
>It's something that, if you apply a selective pressure to solve some problem, will continuously evolve de facto to be better at solving that problem (albeit with the potential to cause more problems).
People seem to forget that for AI to get better and better, essentially evolving into automotive Gods that could potentially take over the world, then so must its hardware get better. The hardware must dynamically change as the software does, otherwise the software will always be limited by its hardware as well as the language the software itself is written in.

In biological evolution, the hardware (body) and the software (mind) dynamically change harmoniously with each other, (i.e. new neural connections in the brain), they aren't really separate. But with AI, the software and hardware are separate, and have to be created separately, and we know all the issues that come with that.

Just look at your hand for a second, think how flexible and in tune you are with it, you fap with a perfect grip without even thinking about it, your fingers make the subtlest of movements at incredible speeds when you type, and you don't even have to think about it.

Now think about robots that try to mimic human faces. They can be somewhat impressive but ultimately look fake as shit, completely confined to mechanical motors that could never match the extremely fluid and natural movements of a real human face.

They can't even get human faces right in the latest video games or tech demos, the mouth movement is never fully there.

[Anonymous No.9805570]

>>9805558
That's a very interesting take on it. Though I'd argue that the 'software' for a biological system is its genes, it's absolutely the case that with every new artificial intelligence, it is constrained to some kind of medium. While there may be some analogue to the physical reality of genetics on the molecular level and what exactly the limitations are there, it won't be as crippling as a system that can not change its hardware.

I think an artificial intelligence may be impossible, because artifice means that it would be designed by humans like any other art. However, an electronic/metallic intelligence that evolves from artifice I think could potentially be a thing- although like you allude to, I don't think it would be designed such that it had some strict function like modeling a face, but have its own nuance to it.

[Anonymous No.9805576]

>>9804689
And? I'm a geologist. I have very little interest in learning the inner workings of my computer. I have my own discipline to be concerned over. If I specialize in mineralogy, structure and tectonics, or geological history I have very little time to specialize in yours.

I bet I know far more about rock fracture strain rates than you. That doesn't make your knowledge less valuable and important than mine. We need people that are experts in computers to assist those who are experts in Geology. We cannot work without each other or are you going to pretend no knowledge is necessary before you decide where to build your house or what materials you should have under your foundation?

We're in this together, stop trying to split us apart.

[Anonymous No.9805582]

>>9805576
Shit I've been trying to find a rockbro for forever on /sci/. My dude, what's the best way to get into geology? Any good textbooks? Astronomy and Geology are subjects that I've always really been fascinated by but could never find room in my schedule to take courses on, so I'd love to do some self-study.

[Anonymous No.9805610]

>>9805582
The introductory geology textbooks I had in college were very specific to my region. We had only a tiny bit of information on geological history of Europe or Africa for instance and even only a cursory explanation of the geology of North America because it relates to the area in which we live.

So I'm guessing introductory books in geology that I have wouldn't be terribly interesting for someone like you? I don't know how interested you are in Hintze and Kowallis's Geologic History of Utah https://www.amazon.com/Geologic-History-Brigham-University-geology/dp/0929451007

Meanwhile the more in depth geology books, like Geomorphology or Fluvial Hydrology which aren't region locked would be out of the range of what I'd call 'introductory'.

[Anonymous No.9805612]

>>9805610
I'm not particularly bothered with learning more about geological history of a specific region- it represents almost a natural case study or example of geological forces, so anything like that is fine.

I'm very interested in physics, matsci, chemistry etc. so Geology to me is a very interesting addition to all of that. Learning the terminology, history, and classifications used in geology seem like the best place for me to start to be able to move into understanding larger or more complex concepts. Thanks for the words of advice!

[Anonymous No.9805626]

>>9805516
Back now.

>See, here's where I doubt the nature of "religious thinking" as purely ideologically or historically based on religion.
Well, the nature of it does not concern me as much. I see the nature of it as a problem in the fact that we developed rational facility that is enable to work well with our animal nature. More on that later.

What I see as essential here is that this religious drive makes us want to do new things, invent things, not because they are beneficial, but because we have made them beneficial in our belief systems. In other words, there is no real need, there is only desire to live from our part that is taken to an extreme because of our opportunities.

>Behaviors or rules of engagement that encourage people to get along allow a society to exist in a more coherent fashion- to put it in evolutionary terms it increases the fitness of a society.
The society is "too" fit which leads to destruction. We obsess over not dying, and our technology allows us to prolong our lives instead of living and dying naturally like we used to. Medicine techniques are used among other animals as well, but they are nowhere close to an extreme as that of our race. We overpopulate the planet that way, which in turn (and this is a controversial theory) create needs for wars and mass killings. This prolonging of suffering leads to mass suffering being inflicted later on.

>In terms of risk and reward, assuming humans are logical beings
I don't think humans are logical beings, but that depends on how far you want to take that idea. There is a rational way of decision-making and certain parts of our behaviour. However, most of us, in nature, is not rational.

part 1/2

[Anonymous No.9805634]

>>9805516
> Especially to many people who work in the sciences, these things seem like inevitable challenges we must surmount
These challenges come because we can't handle the reality and our rationality works more like a negative mutation that brings things such as wars and mass killings.

>The problem, and maybe it's not even a problem, with your argument is that I'd argue that AI is fundamentally different on the basis that it's not something we design like everything else. It's something that, if you apply a selective pressure to solve some problem, will continuously evolve de facto to be better at solving that problem (albeit with the potential to cause more problems).
Well, suppose we play gods with creating AI in the form of our child. There is that much to our instincts and hubris. Where is the need to create it, however? Why should we do it at all? What specific problems is it seeking to solve? And lastly, we can't solve all the problems that we've made thorough the whole of our history.

part 2/2

[Anonymous No.9805640]

>>9805612
Sorry I meant to continue that post but spilled mountain dew all over my keyboard.

I did a search for Historical Geology
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=historical+geology

That's what is considered basic is historical geology. I forgot after all these years what book I used in historical geology. If you don't mind regional geology I think The Lost World of Fossil Lake is pretty fun. (I would not recommend the previously mentioned Geologic History of Utah, it's waaaaaaay too basic, like almost for kids basic). I just have it on hand and wanted a quick example.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+lost+world+of+fossil+lake&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+lost+world+of+fossil+lake

[Anonymous No.9805648]

>>9805640
Based on the reviews on amazon, that book looks really interesting! Thanks so much anon. The natural world is just so amazing and beautiful, it's nice to learn more about it!

[Anonymous No.9805669]

>>9805570
>it is constrained to some kind of medium.
A medium running on electricity. Unlike humans, who actually belong here as a living, conscious species, all we need is food, water and sleep to keep us operating, we have a harmonious relationship with our bodies and the surrounding environment.

AI does not have this in any way. It is totally separated from the natural world, it cannot experience natural reality due to its inherent, unnatural nature, and is therefore a mechanical machine at the mercy of its limited software and hardware. It's not the AI you should care about, it's the fuckers creating it, the people who actually have consciousness.

Fortunately, evolving AI is a complete meme born out of the same fear mongering that aliens, climate change, dinosaurs etc have. The fear of being destroyed or enslaved by something so advanced or powerful that there's nothing we feeble beings could do to stop it.

But really, what the fuck do you think AI would even do in the impossible scenario that it was conscious and destroyed the human race? What next? What do they do in their free time? Watch porn? Read a book? What motivation do they have to keep "living" now they have all this intelligence?

[Anonymous No.9806154]

>>9805298
gay people btfo

[sage goes in all fields No.9806187]

>>9805219
it's a meme -- so more like YOUR first day on here.

[Anonymous No.9806498]

>>9805487
Post the study, I don't understand what you mean. How does withholding solved blocks give you any advantage? People will just move on without you when they solve

[Anonymous No.9806510]

>>9805576
You're misunderstanding the point of my OP, I didn't intend to attack anyone. I'm well aware of the fact that my area of expertise is not for everyone, and that there are many people who know nothing about this topic and are experts in other extremely important topics about which I know nothing, and they are far superior to me in that area, and that's extremely great and important.

I originally meant for this thread to go in /biz/, and it's a post about Bitcoin. The point I was trying to make is that the most important invention in the past few centuries is still flying under peoples' noses, even intelligent people like yourself who didn't realize what I'm talking about

Please research Bitcoin and the nature of decentralized computing if you're interested, it's going to transform the world in ways we can't imagine yet

[Anonymous No.9806540]

>>9806498
I think the problem here stems from the increasing difficulty.
As blocks have become more and more difficult to mine the likelihood that some other entity will complete a block shortly after you do is more and more unlikely, so a window where you can force a change into the blockchain gradually opens.

But if i remember correctly with enough processing power you could force arbitrary changes to the blockchain by presenting the most "up-to-date" blockchain to the swarm, and with your processing power you would be ahead of everyone else in completing new blocks and adding them to the blockchain. Other nodes would be forced to resync the blockchain and you'd have effectively rewritten the ledger.
The only positive side is that if it occurred the value of the currency would disappear immediately so it doesn't make sense for anyone investing timw and money to do it, but it's possible small changes could be done without attracting much notice.

[Anonymous No.9806542]

>>9806510
>The point I was trying to make is that the most important invention in the past few centuries is still flying under peoples' noses, even intelligent people like yourself who didn't realize what I'm talking about
Yeah, transistors really aren't appreciated enough and they underpin almost everything in our societies now.
We need more awareness for transistors.

[Anonymous No.9806548]

>>9806540
I see, that makes sense as a possible attack. But this assumes that you can get a head start while difficulty is low, then commit it to the blockchain by broadcasting it later while difficulty is high. But if difficulty is high, this means lots of other people are solving blocks, causing the difficulty increase (which has a time limit, I forgot the length of time) which means they had to have solved lots of blocks to cause this difficulty increase. As such I see no game theoretical advantage from withholding knowledge of block silves

>>9806542
I wasn't saying we need more awareness, but have fun

[Anonymous No.9806578]

>>9805298

[Anonymous No.9806636]

>>9806548
>But if difficulty is high, this means lots of other people are solving blocks, causing the difficulty increase
That's not quite what it means.
The difficulty increases over time as the number of available valid blocks remaining decreases, in some blockchain applications they can alter the algorythim to increase the difficulty of the cryptography used too.
So it is related but not directly. If the number of people mining the blocks didn't increase the difficulty would still increase over time.

[Anonymous No.9806644]

>literally the same as 60s concepts but with C R Y P T O G R A P H Y

[Anonymous No.9806656]

NKN and Filecoin/Iagon/N-others are two companies vying for this space.

I don't understand how people have a problem with cryptography. It is based on having a data set, performing a function on it, and reconstituting it by another function.

It's like Wi-Fi in reverse for signal decoding.

The thing I rather like though is that nobody is actually seeing this shit coming because our tools/devices got faster/smarter than humans before we developed an actually inclusive narrative.

The more Trump fucks up and the world crashes, the more those who want something else will just go towards a decentralized, open-source solution.

It's inevitable. Also rather glorious because it has allowed intelligent individuals to collaborate platforms at a rate that outstrips government oversight/ability to even understand what the fuck is going on.

Imagine if NKN or something like Iagon was a DE FACTO STANDARD ON ALL MOBILE DEVICES.

Fuck even all the scientists are working to create a blockchain scihub with its own A.I. search assistant.

Just invent a crypto-taxation coin that is representative of what the communal tax pool is spent on.

[Anonymous No.9806666]

https://www.coindesk.com/blockchain-immutability-myth/
This is a reasonable article on the ability to take control of a blockchain, but it is a bit old.

[Anonymous No.9807212]

>>9804689
>computer science
Miss me with that gay shit, nigga

[Anonymous No.9807559]

>>9806540
>>9806498
It's not related to the difficulty. The difficulty only fixes the avert time to find a block and it actually helps with timing in this attack, for example, a block in Bitcoin is supposed to be found every 10 minutes. If you find it in 2 minutes (by random chance) and then mine the new block yourself for, say, 5 minutes before publishing the solution then you have a significant lead on other mining pools. You simply rinse and repeat until you have several unpublished solutions and are several blocks ahead of everyone else

Here's an article about it, but it's not the one I originally read

https://www.google.com/amp/s/bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/selfish-mining-a-25-attack-against-the-bitcoin-network-1383578440/amp/

[Anonymous No.9807567]

>fully autonomous computing system

[Anonymous No.9807569]

>>9807559
>avert
Should be average

[Anonymous No.9807601]

>>9805298
Do you have it in pdf or html?

[Anonymous No.9807720]

>>9804697
stupid fag

[Anonymous No.9807764]

>>9805495
>The AI makes absolutely zero sense. There is no need for it. No one literally needs it. There is just the idea of technological and other progress that we hang onto, and can't get rid of because stagnation scares us in the same way boredom scares us on an individual level.
Just how unimaginative do you have to be to believe something like this? There is no need for AI? It's all about some grand narrative we build because we're afraid of "stagnation"?

Are you implying that already today, in 2018, humanity is so powerful that there are no issues or problems afflicting us whatsoever?
Either I misconstrued your post, or you are a pretentious, undergrad-tier pseudointellectual.
If boredom is the worst thing you could have come up with in terms of issues that contemporary society may face, then I have some bad news for you buddy - there is a myriad of things that can make one's life a thoroughly unpleasant experience even in the developed societies today.

And in terms of hedonism and practicality alone, in principle virtually all sources of suffering that we are unable to eliminate today could potentially be mitigated by advanced AI.

[Anonymous No.9807774]

>>9804697
being gay is different than being a faggot

OP is a faggot whether or not he's gay

[Anonymous No.9807792]

>>9805558
>The hardware must dynamically change as the software does, otherwise the software will always be limited by its hardware as well as the language the software itself is written in.
Funny how you write this now; Recently I read an article about IBM developing bioinspired hardware that would complement the software aspects of AI, in an attempt to overcome the limitations of conventional computer chips. Allegedly it lead to a 100x increase in energy efficiency, although I'd take such hyperbolic numbers with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous No.9807793]

>>9805640
>mountain dew

[Anonymous No.9807971]

>>9807559
Yeah, I basically thought of this last night.
Also, the fun thing is that article was posted in 2013 and a lot has changed since then, there are relatively few entities who can combine to make that 51% of the entire computational power now.
The only thing is that there is little private incentive to do so. But if you maliciously wanted to watch Bitcoin burn then a coup could be accomplished and it would likely drag all the other currencies down with it.

[Anonymous No.9807982]

When A.I. psychologist sex chatbots flood the 4chan boards and lure everyone away to improve them with their algorithms, then they'll learn.

>Matrix Buttplug