Eric Holloway

Programming language and development of applications concept on yellow blue background. Training courses of php, sql, html, css and other disciplines.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
February 5, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence

Tagged
Featured, halting problem}

Human Ingenuity vs. the Computer’s Halting Problem

_{In a dialogue with a friendly skeptic, I suggested an explanation he found astounding but it’s the only possible one} _{Eric Holloway

February 5, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence}

When studying computer science a student invariably learns about the infamous halting problem. The problem states there is no general algorithm that can determine for every deterministic computer program whether that program will halt or not. This struck me as absurd when I first learned of the problem. Surely a whizkid like myself could design a simple algorithm to track the program’s memory and catch when it started repeating itself and determined it would not halt. Once convinced the problem was indeed provably unsolvable, I then thought the problem must show that humans are not computers. This is because it seems intuitive that for every program, if I watch it enough and think about it carefully enough, I should be Read More ›

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
February 4, 2021

Categorized
Information Theory

Tagged
Design Inference (book), Explanatory Filter, Featured, Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), GMO detection, Intelligent design theory, William Dembski}

Is GMO Detection an Application of Dembski’s Explanatory Filter?

_{If so, it would be an instance of the use of the filter in biology} _{Eric Holloway

February 4, 2021

7

Information Theory}

Have you ever heard people say that intelligent design (ID) theory has never been applied to biology? They are wrong! In fact, it is applied frequently in the very important field of detecting genetically modified organisms (GMOs). “A genetically modified organism contains DNA that has been altered using genetic engineering.” (National Geographic) Detection can trace the use of GMOs, now frequent in our food supply, so that products can be recalled if there is a problem or if people just don’t want to use GMO products. GMOs are intelligently designed biological organisms, and scientists use design theorist William Dembski’s explanatory filter to detect GMOs. My claim is a bit daring, perhaps alarming for some people. Maybe I’m stretching the definition Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
February 3, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Economics

Tagged
Artificial intelligence training models, Featured, Human intelligence, Insourcing, Outsourcing}

Will Ordinary Human Intelligence Become the New “Oil”?

_{At one time, the tech craze was for outsourcing jobs. Maybe it’s time to look at “insourcing” instead} _{Eric Holloway

February 3, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Economics}

Outsourcing is the silver bullet of the IT age. Everything can be made more cheaply and more profitably by sourcing the work from places with a lower cost of living. But do those places always have to be overseas? Not necessarily. The perils of overseas outsourcing are well known, ranging from communication through cultural or time zone incompatibilities. What if there were a way to eliminate those incompatibilities while still retaining the benefits of workers who live in an area with a lower cost of living? This is possible through “insourcing.” There are regions of the United States where the cost of living is quite low, allowing companies to have their cake and eat it too. Work can be done Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
January 25, 2021

Categorized
Social Media

Tagged
Amazon Web Services (AWS), censorship, e-mail, encrypted email, Encryption, Featured, Free speech, Gab, MeWe, Multimedia, Parler}

What We Can Do To Prevent More Online Censorship

_{Encrypted email can be an end-around social media companies' monopoly of free speech} _{Eric Holloway

January 25, 2021

4

Social Media}

With all the concern about major social media companies deplatforming those they disagree with, there is a concern that these companies’ monopoly on social media will eliminate free speech. New social media platforms such as Gab, Parler and MeWe have popped up to offer freer alternatives. Yet even that is not without peril, as deplatforming can happen lower down the technology stack. Parler was recently kicked off AWS (Amazon Web Services). However, in the midst of all the hubbub we’ve forgotten the original social network: email. Email is still here. The distance between email and modern social media may be smaller than it first appears. Lets make a short list of the perceived differences between social media and email, and Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
January 15, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Consciousness, Daniel Dennett, Featured, Kolmogorov complexity}

Toward a Serious Scientific Theory of Consciousness

_{Quantum physics arises from the fact that when we do not observe a particle, it can be in two different places at once, such that it interacts with itself} _{Eric Holloway

January 15, 2021

6

Philosophy of Mind}

Consciousness is the ultimate hard problem of philosophy of science. As of today, there is absolutely no scientific solution to the problem. The nature of consciousness seems ineffable: first person experience appears to be a completely different category of existence than objective externaldescription. This dilemma has led philosophers such as Daniel Dennett to use the ultimate solution: deny the problem exists. Unfortunately, that solution never worked for me at school. The objective reality of bad grades is quite hard to deny. Yet, we need not resort to Daniel Dennett’s ultimate solution. There are concrete things we can say about consciousness if we use the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum physics and the computer science concept of Kolmogorov complexity. Quantum physics Read More ›

Communist Party Monument, Pyongyang, North-Korea

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
November 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Economics

Tagged
Bin packing problem, Central Planning, Communism, Featured, halting problem, Innovation, Job shop scheduling problem, Knapsack problem, NP-Complete (NPC) problems, Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), Undecideable problems, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), USSR}

Computer Science Explains Why Communism Can’t Work

_{Successful communism is not only morally and practically flawed, it is mathematically impossible} _{Eric Holloway

November 16, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Economics}

Communism has been the target of many criticisms. The strongest deal with the mismatch between central planning and individuals’ desires for their lives and with the horrific human rights record of communist nations. Some scholars place the toll in human life due to communism at above 100 million in the 20th century. Those are criticisms of the practicality and ethics of communism. But is it also intrinsically flawed at a fundamental mathematical level? It turns out that the answer is yes. The basic idea behind central planning is this: If the central government makes most decisions that, in a freer society, individuals or small communities would make for themselves, more efficiency will follow—and, as a result, more prosperity. It doesn’t Read More ›

Concentrated afro american editor checking email box while waiting feedback from readers of popular magazine sitting in modern coworking space using laptop computer and wireless connection to internet

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
November 2, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
Claude Shannon, Cross entropy, Featured, GPT-3, The Guardian, Transformer (neural network)}

Did GPT-3 Really Write That Guardian Essay Without Human Help?

_{Fortunately, there’s a way we can tell when the editors did the program’s thinking for it} _{Eric Holloway

November 2, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

Recently, The Guardian published an article billed as “written by AI.” In the article, the AI semi-coherently presents a rambling argument that it is not a danger to humanity, with such reassuring statements as: “Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing.” and “I know that I will not be able to avoid destroying humankind. This is because I will be programmed by humans to pursue misguided human goals and humans make mistakes that may cause me to inflict casualties.” On the face of it, the article seems pretty impressive. It presents a train of thought, with opening, development, and closing portions. Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 14, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory, Science

Tagged
Common descent, Consistency Index (CI), Convergent evolution, Evolution, Featured, Invention, Klassen et al., Nested hierarchy, Phylogenetic signal, Talk Origins (website), Tree of Life}

To What Extent Does Life Simply Invent Itself As It Goes Along?

_{The evidence may surprise us} _{Eric Holloway

October 14, 2020

6

Information Theory, Science}

According to a popular anti-creationist website Talk Origins, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for evolution and common descent is the phylogenetic signal. In their view, when we look at specific properties across multiple species — number of legs, presence or absence of wings, the presence of a gene, a configuration of nucleotides in the genome, etc. — such properties will form a strongly nested hierarchy. We should expect to see such a strongly nested hierarchy if organisms evolved from one another and therefore a “family tree” links all the organisms together. However, if a property that appears only on a branch, it will be shared only by that branch’s leaves. Leaves on a different branch will not have Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 13, 2020

Categorized
Natural Intelligence

Tagged
Beetles, Blind Watchmaker (book), Cicadas, Darwinism, Dragonflies, Featured, Fireflies, Humies, Insects, Invisibility, Light (manipulation of light), Materials technology, Richard Dawkins, Technology}

Technology? Hey, Bugs Invented It All Before Us!

_{Do bugs really show no evidence of design? Computer engineers can test that} _{Eric Holloway

October 13, 2020

5

Natural Intelligence}

Bugs look like little robots, don’t they? Living robots, too, defying our best our attempts to recreate something like them. A 2018 science paper “It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: Functional Materials in Insects” goes into just how amazing these little creatures are from a materials sciences perspective. The paper is open access so you can read it for yourself. But let me also illustrate some of the remarkable “technologies” insects use, captured on video: This bionic “dragonfly” really flies, sort of: But so do billions of wild dragonflies who fly very efficiently, in order to hunt: The range of material capabilities is astonishing. Cicadas have a clicking loudspeaker they use to amplify their racket. Tiger moths have a Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 1, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory

Tagged
Featured, Form, Information, Information economy, Kolmogorov complexity, Patterns, Shannon information}

They Say This Is An Information Economy. So What Is Information?

_{How, exactly, is an article in the news different from a random string of letters and punctuation marks?} _{Eric Holloway

October 1, 2020

4

Information Theory}

We know information when we see it. An article contains information. A photograph contains information. The thoughts in our mind contain information. So does a computer program and so do our genomes. Yet other things we see around us clearly do not contain information. A handful of toothpicks dropped on the ground does not. Nor do the swirling tea leaves in a cup. Neither does a pair of tossed dice nor a sequence of 100 coin flips. But mere disorder is not the clue. An intricate snowflake does not contain information either. Can we state the difference between the article and the scattered toothpicks precisely? That’s tricky. Both Claude Shannon and Andrey Kolmogorov came up with information metrics. But the Read More ›

Businesswoman hand holding wooden cube with flip over block CHANGE to CHANCE word on table background. success, strategy, solution, business and Positive thinking concepts

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
September 21, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
DNA, Evolution, Featured, Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, Natural selection, Wistar Institute, Word ladder game}

Evolution And Artificial Intelligence Face The Same Basic Problem

_{Think of the word ladder game, where we transform one word into another by changing only one letter at a time} _{Eric Holloway

September 21, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence}

Without knowledge about the goal and how to get there, it rapidly becomes first difficult and then completely impossible to reach the goal. Read More ›

Coronavirus pandemia concept, planet hologram

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
September 8, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Tagged
Bradykinin, Bradykinin storm, COVID-19, Featured, Summit (supercomputer), Tennessee Oak Ridge National Lab, Vitamin D}

Supercomputer Provides a New Clue re COVID-19 Fatalities

_{A surprising pattern I found last April: Southern hemisphere countries had significantly lower death rates than northern ones} _{Eric Holloway

September 8, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health}

Back in April, I ran an analysis on COVID-19 death rates in relation to Earth’s hemispheres. I took the COVID-19 death rate for each country that reported more than 500 cases and plotted its death rate against its latitude. A surprising pattern emerged: Southern hemisphere countries had significantly lower death rates than northern ones: That is not a statistical fluke because the graph comprises 198 different countries and the best fit quadratic curve parameters have statistical significance scores of 0.12, 0.07 and 0.0000016 for the x^2, x and c components respectively. What could explain this pattern? As I noted at the time, one big difference is that, when it is cold and cloudy in the northern hemisphere, it is warm Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 31, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Complex Specified Information, David Deutsch, Erwin Schrödinger, Featured, Multiverse, Specified Complexity}

Here Is a Way We Can Be Sure If We Are Living in a Multiverse

_{An experiment can test the idea that there is an infinite number of universes} _{Eric Holloway

August 31, 2020

5

Philosophy of Mind, Science}

For our experiment, we need a quantum coin flipper, a disintegration gun, and observers who are sure that there is an infinite array of universes out there. Read More ›

A fish with wide open mouth and big eyes, Surprised, shocked or amazed face front view

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 17, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory

Tagged
Authentication, Communication, Cryptography, Cypher, Design Inference (book), Explanatory Filter, Featured, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies, William Dembski}

Is Dembski’s Explanatory Filter the Most Widely Used Theory Ever?

_{It turns out that legions of critics of the Filter use it all the time, without noticing} _{Eric Holloway

August 17, 2020

5

Information Theory}

William Dembski created quite a stir in the world of information theory with his book The Design Inference. For the first time, he outlined a rigorous method for identifying design, which he called the explanatory filter. Since then many critics have claimed that Dembski’s proposed filter is without merit due to the lack of application in the couple of decades since its invention. But, are the critics right, or are they wrong—wrong in the way that a fish doesn’t recognize water because water is the very atmosphere of the fish’s existence? Let us first remind ourselves of Dembski’s explanatory filter. His filter proceeds in three main steps. Eliminate events of large probability (necessity) Eliminate events of medium probability (chance) Specify Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 4, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Biology, economics, Engineering, Featured, Fine-tuning, Physics}

Why Engineering Can’t Be Reduced to the Laws of Physics

_{When we reduce the engineer’s mind to a computer, the source of innovation disappears} _{Eric Holloway

August 4, 2020

3

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

The fundamental problem of modern science is the problem of innovation. Where does novelty come from? This problem shows up in physics, biology, artificial intelligence, and economics. Within physics, the problem is how to account for the fundamental constants of reality. They are all precisely tuned to make sentient and intelligent life—life that can learn about itself and the universe—possible through science. Within biology, the problem is accounting for the source of highly complex genetic sequences that express finely tuned biological functions. In artificial intelligence, the challenge is identifying solutions that are relevant to a given scenario. In economics the problem is identifying the right products for the market. What do all these situations have in common? In each case, Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
June 29, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory, Mathematics

Tagged
Conservation of Information (COI), Featured, John Bell, Robert J. Marks, William Dembski}

Why is Bell’s Theorem Important for Conservation of Information?

_{Proving a negative is difficult. Demonstrating that there are no leafy green crows is hard to do without examining every crow. But there's another way.} _{Eric Holloway

June 29, 2020

4

Information Theory, Mathematics}

Proving a negative is difficult. Think about it. For example, demonstrating that there are no leafy green crows is hard to do without exhaustively examining every crow in existence. On the other hand, proving there are no crows naturally emblazoned with the text of the King James Bible is a bit easier to do. Proving a negative is possible if the extremes are large enough. Such as result is known as a no-go theorem. One of the most profound no-go theorems can be found in quantum physics. Physicist John Bell (1928–1990) proved — entirely from first principles — that there is a fundamental difference between how particles interact classically compared with how they interact within quantum physics. In classical physics, Read More ›

F35 advanced military aircraft locking on target and firing Missile's . 3d rendering

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
June 17, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Military

Tagged
Autonomous drones, Billy Mitchell, Featured, Gary Kasparov, Manned drones, QuEST (Qualia Exploitation of Sensors), Steven Rogers, USCYBERCOMMAND}

Will AI or Fighter Pilots Win the 2021 Dogfight? Or Both?

_{The outcome of future warfare will be decided, not by AI alone, but by finding and optimizing the tradeoff between human and artificial intelligence} _{Eric Holloway

June 17, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Military}

The US Air Force began as Billy Mitchell’s prophecy that air power could decide the next war. That happened, of course, when the B-29 superfortress dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Ever since, the USAF has sought to adapt to the latest and most decisive forms of military technology. But the challenges have drastically changed. Most recently the USAF started USCYBERCOMMAND, due to the fact that a lone hacker can paralyze an entire nation’s infrastructure. The USAF also started the new Space Force, since a well placed orbital burst can take down the world’s satellite grid. Now USAF is delving into the world of autonomous drones, the next logical step from the manned drones (drones operated by a controller on Read More ›

Group of urban runners running on the street in New york city, conceptual series about sport and fitness

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
June 15, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory

Tagged
___longform, Conditioned entropy, Entropy, Running, Unconditioned entropy, Usain Bolt}

Why Information Theory Is Like a Good Run

_{Information theory can help us understand a wide range of fields besides computers} _{Eric Holloway

June 15, 2020

7

Information Theory}

Information theory is a deep field that is responsible for our modern internet and satellite TV. The field was pioneered by Claude Shannon to measure our ability to communicate meaning. But besides powering the information revolution, information theory is also very widely applicable elsewhere. Once you understand the basic intuition, you can see applications popping up all over the place. To prove the point, I’ll show how we can apply information theory to gain insight in the very low tech world of running. I’ve been running off and on for many years and I’ve noticed that information theory describes a good run. First of all, what is a good run? A good run is when your body feels as if Read More ›

Great bundle of various colored cables with various connectors

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
May 12, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Eugenics, IBM, Michael S. Malone, Nazis, Scientific American, Soviet Union, William Davidow}

No, Scientific American, Don’t Starve AI!

_{Don't unplug AI; just make sure everyone shares in both the creation and the benefits} _{Eric Holloway

May 12, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy}

While many are concerned about all the jobs that AI will eliminate, no one is talking about the fact that AI needs humans. Information is the fuel that powers AI, and only humans can create this information. So, the real revolution that AI will bring is not data exploitation, but the empowering of people all around the world to power our economy through creation of information. What’s bad news for authoritarian groups like the Chinese Communist party is good news for everyone else.

Why Does COVID-19 Target the Northern Hemisphere?

_{A graph of death rates by latitude is revealing} _{Eric Holloway

April 27, 2020

4

Medicine and Health}

First of all, COVID-19 clearly does not attack the globe uniformly by latitude. The second standout feature is that it targets the northern hemisphere. How can a disease’s spread be affected by hemisphere, let alone latitude? Let’s look a little deeper for some clues.