A Mind is Born

#1

Post by fredley » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 12:31 PM UTC

Re: A Mind is Born

#2

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

I find there's something fundamental about small sized demos. Trying to craft something as diverse as possible with as few symbols as possible means you have to encode chaos and order at the same time.

Re: A Mind is Born

#3

Post by rcarmo » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

I'd hazard the statement that this is the best code sample I've seen on HN in a year.

Fascinating to see it alongside Netflix's description of their gargantuan take on container scheduling :)

Re: A Mind is Born

#4

Post by EvanAnderson » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #2

I find there's something fundamental about small sized demos. Trying to craft something as diverse as possible with as few symbols as possible means you have to encode chaos and order at the same time.

Procedural generation of interesting output being created by very small bits of code makes me think very profound thoughts about how life "works". Physics provides the virtual machine that life executes within, and tiny machines interpreting the "instruction set" of a genetic code are just generating procedural output.

Re: A Mind is Born

#5

Post by 100ideas » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

+1 - would love to see more posts celebrating the demoscene too! thanks for sharing

Re: A Mind is Born

#6

Post by strainer » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 5:11 PM UTC

This triggers multiple levels of wonder. That the tune alone is compose-able from 256 bytes is uncanny. What would this have been like to witness in the 1980s ? -being as it could have been published as a relatively easy to type magazine listing.

The name "A Mind is Born" has special resonance at this time as there has never been more popular anticipation that artificial minds will soon be able to coalesce from the same kind of bitwise operations made visible and audible in this demo.

Re: A Mind is Born

#7

Post by baby » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

> The melody is generated by a linear-feedback shift register (LFSR). Thus, in one sense, the melody is randomly generated. But I spent a considerable amount of time tweaking the random process until I found something that was musically satisfactory.

This is just mind blowing to me. The music is actually really good, I've been playing it on repeat and I just wish it could be longer.

Re: A Mind is Born

#8

Post by jmcphers » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #4

agumonkey wrote: post #2

I find there's something fundamental about small sized demos. Trying to craft something as diverse as possible with as few symbols as possible means you have to encode chaos and order at the same time.

Procedural generation of interesting output being created by very small bits of code makes me think very profound thoughts about how life "works". Physics provides the virtual machine that life executes within, and tiny machines interpreting the "instruction set" of a genetic code are just generating procedural output.

If you're interested in the implications of this view, Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) has a book called A New Kind of Science[0] that explores how the complexity of the universe can arise from simple machines following simple rules.

[0] https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html