Add a couple more iron bars and you may recreate the 1938 Zuse Z1 [1]. Not sure what's the news here.
Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
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Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of 'decision-making', they could have said 'computation'. Does that make it less ridiculous? I think it's a little interesting.
It's interesting, but I'm at a loss as to what's even remotely new about it. Unless the computer that you typed this on is very, very different from mine that I'm typing this on, there isn't any living components in it, yet it is "computing" and "deciding" quite a bit. There's a ton of natural processes that incorporate some feedback element and can be said without much stretching to be doing a computation. We're bey…
Science is composition.
We build a bit, we test, if it's solid, we build a bit more. We don't need to come up with hypothetical black hole computers.
The paper and the concept of TOW dynamics has been referenced in http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13253 which shares one of the authors and is interesting in a different way.
I get tired of people saying things that aren't exciting enough shouldn't be published. It's not the exciting things that make the breakthroughs, it's understanding a bit more about the things we've always figured are obvious. To me this is more interesting than some hypothetical black hole computer. Sure it's not blowing me away.
It's just a block. A little block. Other ideas can choose to use that block or not. I haven't seen that system of tug-of-war dynamics described before. It seems solid, so why not describe it?
Or does it need to be antimatter hoverboards to be worth publishing?
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#23This feels structurally similar to Searle's "Chinese room" argument.
True, but simpler in scope. Searle's Chinese Room is paradoxical because it involves trying to combine mechanical processes (of rote symbol-copying) with supposedly higher-order thinking (speech/understanding).
But the "decision-making" here is dubious. If Searle had written an "Iron Bar Gambling Room" argument, I bet most people would have rejected the notion that the room was "deciding" anything. This is little different from light-sensitive cells in primitive eyespots accumulating energy from photons to "decide" the direction of the sun.
In short, this paper is what happens when people chase the Minimum Publishable Unit for their career.
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#24Reading the article, it appears to me the researchers are talking about harnessing physical fluctuations in a process to achieve an outcome similar to some sort of computational modeling of the same process.
I don't think they're literally saying the iron bar is making a decision, and I'm a little surprised that would have flown over the heads of most of the readers here.
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#25so, side channel analysis? Or am I missing the point?
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#26The decision is still made by the human evaluator(s). (Presumably, to declare one slot machine the "easiest".)
Terrible headline.
Are they even suggesting that the bar is somehow affected by the output of (perhaps) coins from the slot machine... electromagnetic interactions? Or is the slot machine example simply a thought experiment? I suspect we may be attempting to process bad input here...
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#27Reading the article, it appears to me the researchers are talking about harnessing physical fluctuations in a process to achieve an outcome similar to some sort of computational modeling of the same process. I don't think they're literally saying the iron bar is making a decision, and I'm a little surprised that would have flown over the heads of most of the readers here.
Yeah, but that is what the title says (that the iron bar is making a decision). It seems like the title is completely out of whack with the contents of the article.
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#28The decision is still made by the human evaluator(s). (Presumably, to declare one slot machine the "easiest".) Terrible headline. Are they even suggesting that the bar is somehow affected by the output of (perhaps) coins from the slot machine... electromagnetic interactions? Or is the slot machine example simply a thought experiment? I suspect we may be attempting to process bad input here...
I read the article again. The researchers simply seem to be saying that what seem like complex decisions can be made in simple organisms as long as the ability to increment a "counter" when a certain condition occurs is possible. The slot machine example actually requires a "counter" that can increase and decrease when opposing conditions occur. This seems very obvious...
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#29This is just called Trend Following.
Re: Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
#30The decision is still made by the human evaluator(s). (Presumably, to declare one slot machine the "easiest".) Terrible headline. Are they even suggesting that the bar is somehow affected by the output of (perhaps) coins from the slot machine... electromagnetic interactions? Or is the slot machine example simply a thought experiment? I suspect we may be attempting to process bad input here...
I read the article again. The researchers simply seem to be saying that what seem like complex decisions can be made in simple organisms as long as the ability to increment a "counter" when a certain condition occurs is possible. The slot machine example actually requires a "counter" that can increase and decrease when opposing conditions occur. This seems very obvious...
It is obvious. We call them machines.