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BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

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Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#21

Post by mcherm »

j2kun wrote: post #14
immibis wrote: post #9

Discord links! As citations for major results in foundational computer science!

Finding bigger busy beaver numbers is not exactly foundational. More like recreational. If it were foundational it would be peer reviewed in a journal article, not posted on a blog.

> If it were foundational it would be peer reviewed in a journal article, not posted on a blog.

What I think you are doing here is to DEFINE "foundational work" as something that gets published in a journal.

I don't mind if you use that definition, but if you do then the fact that all foundational work is published in journals is not insightful or informative, it is merely the definition.

If, on the other hand, you intended for the statement to say something meaningful about how important scientific and mathematical work is communicated, then you need a different definition of "foundational". And you would have to look to that definition to decide whether this work was foundational, because if it was then it disproves your hypothesis: it would be a counter example that illustrates that some foundational work is shared in places other than journals.

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#22

Post by TeMPOraL »

lisper wrote: post #15
immibis wrote: post #9

Discord links! As citations for major results in foundational computer science!

Why not? The idea that the only valid way to publish a scientific result is in a (so-called) peer-reviewed journal is a relic from 200 years ago when the scientific community was small enough to fit within the monkeysphere [1]. It is being clung to only because it is profitable for a small group of powerful academics and publishing houses, not because it has any actual merit in terms of the advancement of science. In…

Because Discord is a proprietary glorified IRC SaaS; its contents are, by nature, ephemeral and under control of the vendor. I'd expect such links to rot very quickly.

Collaborating on Discord is fine. Important results, including citations backing them, should really be published or at least replicated in more durable medium that's less susceptible to link rot, and easier to archive. Today, that's PDFs in paper repositories, or even regular blog posts.

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22
lisper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The idea that the only valid way to publish a scientific result is in a (so-called) peer-reviewed journal is a relic from 200 years ago when the scientific community was small enough to fit within the monkeysphere [1]. It is being clung to only because it is profitable for a small group of powerful academics and publishing houses, not because it has any actual merit in terms of the advancement of science. In…

Because Discord is a proprietary glorified IRC SaaS; its contents are, by nature, ephemeral and under control of the vendor. I'd expect such links to rot very quickly. Collaborating on Discord is fine. Important results, including citations backing them, should really be published or at least replicated in more durable medium that's less susceptible to link rot, and easier to archive. Today, that's PDFs in paper repo…

[deleted]

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#24

Post by calfuris »

UncombedCoconut wrote: post #18
immibis wrote: post #9

Discord links! As citations for major results in foundational computer science!

As a member of these chats: it's often like hitting on an idea on a break-room blackboard and working it out, except the interaction can be cited. That's a positive change, if we can follow through and add to the literature in due time. Here's hoping.

That's fine, but the citation shouldn't be in the form of a Discord link, or at least not exclusively in that form. Make a copy of the relevant messages, host them elsewhere, and include that copy in the citation. Discord has been pretty good so far but being a durable archive has never been their core selling point so I don't trust that to continue indefinitely.

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#25

Post by univerz »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #20
Analemma_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the complaint here, but a lot of recent impressive progress in mathematics has been by rapid collaboration + iteration (e.g. the project to improve Zhang's prime gap bound), and it may be the case that different communication tools are not easily fungible with Discord in this regard. You have to go where the people actually are.

But Discord isn't citable . Somebody needs to archive the Discord and make that available through the proper channels (e.g. a website, a book, the Internet Archive).

that post was just an (work in progress) update. Shawn's blog post is a proper announcement - much better than i would have written :)

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#26

Post by pollyturples »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22
lisper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The idea that the only valid way to publish a scientific result is in a (so-called) peer-reviewed journal is a relic from 200 years ago when the scientific community was small enough to fit within the monkeysphere [1]. It is being clung to only because it is profitable for a small group of powerful academics and publishing houses, not because it has any actual merit in terms of the advancement of science. In…

Because Discord is a proprietary glorified IRC SaaS; its contents are, by nature, ephemeral and under control of the vendor. I'd expect such links to rot very quickly. Collaborating on Discord is fine. Important results, including citations backing them, should really be published or at least replicated in more durable medium that's less susceptible to link rot, and easier to archive. Today, that's PDFs in paper repo…

MySpace: 16 years (2003–2019) Friendster: 12 years (2002–2013) Google+: 8 years (2011–2019) Vine: 4 years (2013–2017) Orkut: 10 years (2004–2014) Path: 8 years (2010–2018) Yik Yak: 4 years (2013–2017) Meerkat: 2 years (2015–2017) Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger): 15 years (1999–2014) AIM (AOL Instant Messenger): 20 years (1997–2017) ICQ: Ongoing (since 1996) but significantly declined after the early 2000s Yahoo Messenger: 20 years (1998–2018) Bebo: 14 years (2005–2019, relaunched in 2021) Google Wave: 2 years (2009–2011) Ping (Apple): 2 years (2010–2012) Discord: 8 years (2015-)

so clearly discord is inherently different and here to stay forever! /s

feels like time is a circle sometimes ha

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#27

Post by lambdaxyzw »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #20
Analemma_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the complaint here, but a lot of recent impressive progress in mathematics has been by rapid collaboration + iteration (e.g. the project to improve Zhang's prime gap bound), and it may be the case that different communication tools are not easily fungible with Discord in this regard. You have to go where the people actually are.

But Discord isn't citable . Somebody needs to archive the Discord and make that available through the proper channels (e.g. a website, a book, the Internet Archive).

Well it was cited so by definition it's citable.

I don't like discord but... The people doing research have chosen this method of collaboration. I like their research. Let's not be choosing beggars and tell them how to conduct their research.

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#28

Post by lisper »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22
lisper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The idea that the only valid way to publish a scientific result is in a (so-called) peer-reviewed journal is a relic from 200 years ago when the scientific community was small enough to fit within the monkeysphere [1]. It is being clung to only because it is profitable for a small group of powerful academics and publishing houses, not because it has any actual merit in terms of the advancement of science. In…

Because Discord is a proprietary glorified IRC SaaS; its contents are, by nature, ephemeral and under control of the vendor. I'd expect such links to rot very quickly. Collaborating on Discord is fine. Important results, including citations backing them, should really be published or at least replicated in more durable medium that's less susceptible to link rot, and easier to archive. Today, that's PDFs in paper repo…

I don't see any reason why the original publication venue has to end up being the canonical reference. That's not even true for traditional peer-reviewed papers. Have you ever seen an original physical copy of, say, Einstein's annus mirabilis papers? I haven't. I suspect that these are extremely rare and valuable collectors items and only trained archivists are even allowed to handle them.

The right way to reference scientific publications is by URN [1], not URL. That makes the location irrelevant, as it should be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Name

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#29

Post by nickdrozd »

It is sometimes thought that extremely long-running Turing machine programs must be deeply complicated, or "spaghetti code". This new reigning champion program is a counterexample. All things considered, it is relatively simple.

There are three states: A, B, C. (States are just like goto targets in C.) State B passes control to A and C, but states A and C don't "know about" each other; they only pass control back to B. This is a sort of modular construction, whereas in true spaghetti code each state would be able to pass to all the others.

This program has some other interesting features. It never prints a blank (that is, whenever it scans a 0, it prints 1, 2, or 3). Additionally, every instruction changes either the state or the color -- there are no "lazy instructions" like B1 -> 1LB that just move position without changing anything else.

Re: BB(3, 4) > Ack(14)

#30

Post by nickdrozd »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #4

Can someone point me to some resources as to how to interpret the table, which I assume is some sort of description for a Turing machine?

The "states" (A, B, C) correspond to goto targets. The "colors" (0, 1, 2, 3) are runtime data. At each state, the current color is read, and an instruction is executed (print some color, move left or right, goto some state) based on which color is there. Transliterated into C it looks like this:

  #include "machine.h"
  
  int main(void)
  {
   A:
    switch (SCAN) {
      case 0:
        WRITE(1); RIGHT; goto B;
  
      case 1:
        WRITE(3); LEFT; goto B;
  
      case 2:
        WRITE(1); RIGHT; goto H;
  
      case 3:
        WRITE(2); RIGHT; goto A;
    }
  
   B:
    switch (SCAN) {
      case 0:
        WRITE(2); LEFT; goto C;
  
      case 1:
        WRITE(3); RIGHT; goto B;
  
      case 2:
        WRITE(1); LEFT; goto C;
  
      case 3:
        WRITE(2); RIGHT; goto A;
    }
  
   C:
    switch (SCAN) {
      case 0:
        WRITE(3); RIGHT; goto B;
  
      case 1:
        WRITE(1); LEFT; goto B;
  
      case 2:
        WRITE(3); LEFT; goto C;
  
      case 3:
        WRITE(2); RIGHT; goto C;
    }
  
   H:
    HALT;
  }
Question: are there any opportunities to rewrite this logic in a more "structured" style, or to make any other optimizations?
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