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Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

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Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#81

Post by matt4077 »

nraynaud wrote: post #39
agar wrote: post #20

Considering the over-the-top language ("a game changer for the computing industry") and questionable or imprecise comments like, "[it] allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" (um, who reads that without thinking of irrational numbers?) it sounds too much like a sales pitch and not like serious research. I could be wrong, but based on the similarities to interval arithmetic everyone has alrea…

it's a journalist writing the article, they want clickbait.

How can it be "clickbait" if it's in the article? What am I supposed to click on?

Moreover, these are clearly marked quotes from the press release and the patent. Maybe this technology doesn't merit an article. But if it does, quoting the inventor is exactly what one expect from coverage. Note that it does invite scepticism, starting with "claims" in the headline.

This gratuitous hatred of journalism is seriously getting out of hands.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#82

Post by Spivak »

dboreham wrote: post #12
turc1656 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I'm genuinely curious why you blame him for patenting his work.

Because it would be nice if someone, somewhere would do the right thing rather than whatever stupid nonsense benefits them personally the most.

Why is the right thing to do work for no compensation?

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#85

Post by Spivak »

JackFr wrote: post #68
kbenson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it. The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the…

> The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation And if it seems like the patent system is being gamed to hinder innovation (not really in this case, but yes absolutely in the case of pharma) it should be revisited. Intellectual property laws are based in pragmatism, not natural law. If the costs begin to outweigh the benefits, they should be changed.

You can hate the patent system all you want but this specific case, assuming that his invention works, is a case where patents are being used correctly.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#86

Post by indubitable »

Tenobrus wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?

Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. There's a reason Linux and GNU utilities are so massively widely used, and overall they've probably provided billions in economic value. They do that freely, for any human to use, and in fact that's part of their main value proposition. Both were born out of the legal nightmare that was UNIX at t…

A few things in no particular order.

1 - It's not holding back anything. If this invention has any merit, it will be licensed and society at large will benefit from it.

2 - Incentive. If this inventor could not make a guaranteed profit from this idea, I imagine he could have found more interesting ways to spend his time than playing with floating point numeric representations. It's not like he stumbled upon this on the road and then hid it from society. He set out to create things like this as a means of sustaining himself and improving the world at the same time.

3 - The reason markets are useful is because they work phenomenally well at determining value. As we swapped to currency operated markets over barter, nobody ruled a chicken was worth 3 coins, a pig 10, and a cow 25. Instead market forces decided, and tend to do better than any other means of measuring value. Donations, let alone bureaucracy, are extremely poor substitutes in determining the value of anything. Their ideal would be to approach market force level efficiency. This isn't to say markets are flawless, but rather they're a whole let less flawed than any alternative.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#87

Post by dekhn »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #47
dmm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least patents expire someday.

So far. That statement used to be true of U.S. copyrights as well.

I don't think this is going to change any time soon. the last time patent lifetime was changed, it was to make it consistent with the rest of the world (20 years). It's unlikely we (US) would change that; it would be a huge international battle for something that people have more or less accepted.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#88

Post by [deleted] »

leetcrew wrote: post #21
ktpsns wrote: post #17

Even worse, a patent for a "processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" is obviously nonsense. Pi (=3.141...) is a real number where there is no "last digit".

I assume it means accurate to the last digit of the representation, not the number being represented. obviously the latter would be absurd to suggest.

[deleted]

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#89

Post by TallGuyShort »

tombert wrote: post #67
agar wrote: post #20

Considering the over-the-top language ("a game changer for the computing industry") and questionable or imprecise comments like, "[it] allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" (um, who reads that without thinking of irrational numbers?) it sounds too much like a sales pitch and not like serious research. I could be wrong, but based on the similarities to interval arithmetic everyone has alrea…

That's what I was thinking too; If I do 1 / 3, then of course it will have to truncate, and integration errors would still be inevitable.

There is inaccuracy, but the point is that it tracks how much inaccuracy there might be. I picture this as being similar to how computers can't trust time for all sorts of reasons, so Google's Spanner uses time ranges and estimates of potential inaccuracy to make it possible to work with that. It will truncate, so you won't really have 1/3, but you'll know it's approximately 0.333, definitely more than 6/20 but definitely less than 7/20, for instance, and if you ever exceed certain bounds of certainty the calculation and all resulting calculations are flagged as not being that trustable. As is my understanding from the article, anyway.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#90

Post by Spivak »

casiotone wrote: post #51
kbenson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it. The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the…

> Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. Thanks. I was worried I would go the whole day without spitting out my drink.

Ignoring the weird comparison, he's right. Patents, as bad as the system is, are an improvement on no patents.
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