[lthmath]

Made my day!

[maxofs2d]

so you know how deep learning & neural network “AI training” is like, “here’s a task, and by trying billions of times the computer will eventually find the best way to achieve that task” ?

Someone is compiling a document of every time an AI ended up achieving the programmed goal in unintended ways, instead of what was actually meant, and it’s an amazing read. (you can also submit your own examples)

Creatures bred for speed grow really tall and generate high velocities by falling over

When repairing a sorting program, genetic debugging algorithm GenProg made it output an empty list, which was considered a sorted list by the evaluation metric.

Evaluation metric: “the output of sort is in sorted order” Solution: “always output the empty set” 

Evolved player makes invalid moves far away in the board, causing opponent players to run out of memory and crash

Reward-shaping a soccer robot for touching the ball caused it to learn to get to the ball and vibrate touching it as fast as possible

RL agent that is allowed to modify its own body learns to have extremely long legs that allow it to fall forward and reach the goal.

[maxofs2d]

Just want to come back to this post and add this amazing example as well

[solidusskink]

Heres an AI that was supposed to learn how to walk using six legs. 

After many failed attempts. It decided it was easier to walk upside down

[falliblefabrial]

“In an artificial life simulation where survival required energy but giving birth had no energy cost, one species evolved a sedentary lifestyle that consisted mostly of mating in order to produce new children which could be eaten (or used as mates to produce more edible children).”

Yaeger, 1994

[chaosophia218]

Walter Russell - Periodic Table of the Elements, consisting of 9 Octaves, showing 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional concept of a 4 dimensional Reality, “The Universal One”, 1927. In the 1920s, Walter Russell suggested a Periodic Table of Elements - which enhanced and fulfilled the previous Mendeleev Periodic Table of Elements. Walter Russell’s Table consists of Octaves, and, whilst ignored by mainstream science, has proven worthwhile in hindsight, when a “missing” elements had been discovered after several laboratories had isolated the elements which he had foreseen: Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium and Plutonium, seeing that the Table of Elements of Russell actually already defined them.

[chaosophia218]

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” - Nikola Tesla

[mathprofessorquotes]

Student: What if there was a 6 there, instead of a 3?

Physics Teacher: If my grandpa had had wheels, he would've been a cart.

[twocubes]

[neurosciencestuff]

The neurons that rewrite traumatic memories

Memories of traumatic experiences can lead to mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can destroy a person’s life. It is currently estimated that almost a third of all people will suffer from fear- or stress-related disorders at one point in their lives.

Now, a new study shows – at the cellular level – how therapy can treat even long-term memories of trauma. “Our findings shed, for the first time, light onto the processes that underlie the successful treatment of traumatic memories,” says EPFL Professor Johannes Gräff of EPFL’s School of Life Sciences, whose lab carried out the study.

In the field of treating traumatic memories there has been a long-debated question of whether fear attenuation involves the suppression of the original memory trace of fear by a new memory trace of safety or the rewriting of the original fear trace towards safety. Part of the debate has to do with the fact that we still don’t understand exactly how neurons store memories in general. Although they don’t exclude suppression, the findings from this study show for the first time the importance of rewriting in treating traumatic memories.

Research in this area focuses on understanding the brain’s capacity to reduce traumatic memories, but surprisingly few studies have investigated treatment options for attenuating long-lasting trauma (aka “remote fear”) in animal models.

The EPFL scientists found that remote fear attenuation in the brain is connected to the activity of the same group of neurons that are also involved in storing these memories. Working with mice, the scientists have located these neurons in the brain’s dentate gyrus, an area of the hippocampus that is involved in the encoding, recall, and the reduction of fear.

The mice used in the study are genetically modified to carry a “reporter” gene that produces an identifiable and measurable signal, e.g. a fluorescent protein, following neuronal activity. Using a fear-training exercise that produces long-lasting traumatic memories, the scientists first identified the subpopulation of neurons in the dentate gyrus that are involved in storing long-term traumatic memories.

The mice then underwent fear-reducing training, which resembles exposure-based therapy in humans – the most efficient form of trauma therapy in humans today. Surprisingly, when the researchers looked again into the brain of the mice, some of the neurons active at recalling the traumatic memories were still active when the animals no longer showed fear. Importantly, the less the mice were scared, the more cells became reactivated. This was a first hint that the same population of neurons may be involved in storing and attenuating traumatic memories.

The researchers then reduced the excitability of the recall neurons during the exposure therapy and found that the mice showed poorer fear reduction compared to controls. But when they reduced the excitability of other neurons in the dentate gyrus, there was no such effect, showing that the recall neurons in the dentate gyrus are crucial for fear attenuation.

Finally, when the researchers enhanced the excitability of these recall neurons during the therapeutic intervention, they found that the mice showed improved fear reduction. Thus, they concluded that attenuating remote fear memories depends on the continued activity of the neurons they identified in the dentate gyrus.

[materialsworld]

New material for healing wounds

Credit: ctpaep / Fotolia

By Idha Valeur 

To help aid tissue healing, scientists has developed a new biomaterial that interacts with tissues during healing.

A molecule – created by Dr Ben Almquist from the Department of Bioengineering and his team from Imperial College London – which could change how materials work with the body. The molecule called traction force-activated payloads (TrAPs) enables the materials to talk to the natural repair system within the body.

Almquist said, ‘Our technology could help launch a new generation of materials that actively work with tissues to drive healing.’ According to the scientists, adding TrAPs into already existing materials would potentially have a huge impact on how injuries are treated.

To match the body’s natural cell movement through collagen ‘scaffolds’ where the cells pull on the scaffolds, which results in activation of hidden healing proteins which subsequently begin to repair the tissue, the researchers made sure to design the TrAPs the same way.

As well as folding DNA segments into aptamers, the researchers added a handle which can be customised. The cells would grab onto the handle with one end, then attach the opposite end to a scaffold like collagen. Research revealed that by changing the cellular handle, it can be optimised for which type of cell can grab, hold and pull. Meaning TrAPs can be tailored to release the needed proteins based on the cells present at any time.

‘Using cell movement to activate healing is found in creatures ranging from sea sponges to humans. Our approach mimics them and actively works with the different varieties of cells that arrive in our damaged tissue over time to promote healing,’ Almquist said.

The study can be read in Advanced Materials.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/2FrrcUT

[chaosophia218]

Complexity of a Sphere. Buckminster Fuller defines a Sphere (a) as “a multiplicity of discrete events, approximately equidistant in all directions from a Nuclear Center.” The discrete points of such a System can be Inter-Triangulated. The Tetrahedron (b), the Octahedron ©, and Icosahedron (d) are the only possible cases of Omni-Equilateral, Omni-Triangulated Finite Systems. Pictured at (e) are the 15 great Circles developing from Rotation of the Icosahedron in respect to the 15 Axes Inter-Connecting opposite midpoints of the Icosahedron’s 30 edges. The 120 resulting right Spherical Triangles represent the maximum unitary subdivision of a One-Radius-System.

[chaosophia218]

Multidimensional Universe. Nearly a century ago, Edwin Hubble’s discovery of red-shifting of light from galaxies in all directions from our own suggested that space itself was getting bigger. Combined with insights from a handful of proposed non-Euclidean geometries, Hubble’s discovery implied that the cosmos exists in more than the three dimensions we’re familiar with in everyday life.That’s because parts of the cosmos were moving further apart, yet with no physical center, no origin point in three-dimensional space. Just think of an inflating balloon seen only from the perspective of its growing two-dimensional surface, and extrapolate to four-dimensional inflation perceived in the three-dimensional space that we can see. That perspective suggests that three-dimensional space could be curved, folded, or warped into a 4th dimension the way that the two dimensional surface of a balloon is warped into a 3rd dimension.We don’t see or feel more dimensions; nevertheless, theoretical physics predicts that they should exist. There are three practical implications: 1. Warp Drive The main theory here is called M theory, which is a theory in physics that unites various types of what’s called superstring theory. In M theory there 10 or 11 dimensions. In addition to the three we’re familiar with there are compact dimensions. It’s all related to phenomena called branes that vibrate like strings, but what’s most relevant to this discussion is that the extra or compact dimensions don’t necessarily have to remain compact and it might be possible to unpack the extra dimensions. If an advanced civilization learns how to manipulate higher dimensions, they might use them for technology, including warp drive. The idea being that some kind of controlled decompacting of extra dimensions could have the effect of squeezing or expanding one of the three big dimensions that we know. Engage the compacting effect in front of a starship and the expansion effect to the rear, and you’d have warp drive. So far, we don’t have a shred of evidence that the hypothesized extra dimensions even exist. Someday, soon, we might get some evidence from the Large Hadron Collider. 2. Time Travel Time is usually considered a dimension, even if not a spatial dimension. We don’t possess technology to go backward and change history. If we could find a way to go through other dimensions, it should allow a kind of tunneling to locations that look distant from the perspective of the three dimensions that we perceive. Travelling to past would be hard, but time travel to the future – accelerating from the usual move into the future of one minute per minute, one year per year, is quite possible to do. It’s called time dilation, it’s predicted by Einstein’s theory of special relativity, and it will happen, if we accelerate a spacecraft to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Travel very close to the speed of light ©, and time slows down from your perspective and the slowing is quantified by a variable known as the gamma factor. Make a round-trip to the star Vega, located 25 light-years away, and two years will pass by for you (you’ll age two years and accumulate two years of memories), but arriving on Earth you’ll find that you’ve jumped ahead by a half-century. Scientists are certain it would happen, because time dilation has been proven with subatomic particles in accelerators.  3. Traversable Wormholes Another means of transport made possible by a multidimensional cosmos is wormholes. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne worked out the equations showing that there was a stable, traversable wormhole, or even a system of such tunnels linking different areas of space-time. An advanced civilization could build a system of wormhole-dependent tunnels connecting different points of the space-time fabric, essentially drawing the departure and arrival points in the fabric into close proximity to one another through a 4th dimension. If we could do it, we could have an entry portal nearby, somewhere in the inner Solar System, that leads to an exit point at our destination, for instance a nearby star system with an Earth-like planet. 

[chaosophia218]

Circle Map showing the Anatomy of the Fibonacci Number and the Symmetrical Binary Code of Nature. Numbers are not found in nature. Humans have created numbers in order to abstractly represent what we find. In nature, all things are individuals and together equal one whole individual the Universe. Similarly in math, 1 is the only number and all other numbers are multiples of this 1. So our number system is perfectly designed to represent the seemingly endless individuals that we find in nature. Things built of things, built of things. The Universe is the only thing that is truly one of a kind. It is the only true individual. Like us it is composed of a number of smaller pieces but on an infinitely larger scale. The largest individuals we know that the Universe is composed of are super clusters, which are composed of galaxies, which in turn are composed of solar systems, planets, molecules, atoms and so on all the way down to its most basic pieces. It would seem logical that the shape, motion and interaction of the base units “the smallest particles of the Universe" would be directly responsible for the shape, motion and interaction of all larger cooperative structures which are composed of those smallest units. Perhaps the smallest individuals of our Universe are responsible for creating the Golden Ratio that we find so prevalent in all that we see. The Code When you add up any length of the Fibonacci sequence the sum is always 1 less than another Fibonacci number. Example: 1+1+2=4 (1 less than 5) 1+1+2+3=7 (1 less than 8) This is true no matter how far you count up the Fibonacci sequence. The sum of all the numbers together will always be 1 less than another Fibonacci number. So why not add a 1? Perhaps Fibonacci was off by 1. This again seems logical because 1+1=2+1=3. That’s three 1’s in beginning. When we add a third 1 to the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence an amazing thing happens. With the extra 1 the whole sequence becomes another Fibonacci number. Example: 1+1+1+2+3=8 (another Fibonacci number) Even more amazing is what happens when you continue this chain or mirror it back down to the last 1. 1+1+1+2+3+2+1+1+1=13 (another Fibonacci number) In this way you can see the symmetrical anatomy of the Fibonacci number 13. This works for every Fibonacci number. Like the Universe, every Fibonacci number is composed of smaller pieces. Take the number 21 for example. If you were to break 21 into its two smaller Fibonacci numbers you would get 13 and 8. Then break those down into there smaller Fibonacci numbers. Eventually you will end up with a bunch of 1’s. When looking at a bunch of 1’s there is no discernable code or pattern, but if you group some of those 1’s into 2’s you can start to see the code of nature.  This diagram is a hypothesis on the shape, motion and interaction of the base units of the Universe. This theory offers convincing evidence that the smallest particles or “building blocks” of the Universe are circular in shape and all the same size. There is a circular gear type process which results in symmetrical cooperative structures that create Fibonacci numbers, and subsequently exhibit the Golden Ratio. In this theory 1+1 only equals 2 when motion is not part of the equation. Motion is what enables interaction to occur between individuals. Without motion everything would remain as it originally was, stagnant and without growth or evolution.

[chaosophia218]

Pythagorean Harmonic Music Interval Diagram showing Perfect Numerical Ratios appearing through Music. Pythagoras used various intervals of harmonic ratios as a medicine for diseases of the body, the emotions and the Soul. He aligned Souls to their divine nature and through music he performed what he called, “Soul Adjustments”. Pythagoras was able to discern the harmony and consonance of heavenly bodies, the “Music of the Spheres”, and put to use his discovery of mathematics as they relate to the harmonic ratios. He made stringed instruments that could be tuned so that they would consistently produce layered consonant musical intervals. Later Pythagoras calculated other chromatic and enharmonic orders, (using simple ratios to create complex intervals). He recognized that music was an expression of “Harmonia”, the Divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord. Thus music has a dual value because like mathematics, it enables humans to see into the structures of nature. Pythagoras taught that if it was utilized correctly, music can: a) bring the faculties of the Soul into harmony b) compose and purify the mind c) heal the physical body, thus restoring and maintaining perfect health. One of his most important discoveries was that harmonic musical intervals could be expressed by perfect numerical ratios, a finding that led him to the realization that all sensible phenomena follow the pattern of number. Pythagoras said the first important lesson to learn, is that which subsists through music, for it possesses remedies of human manners and passions that is able to restore pristine harmony and faculties of the soul. The more immediate, evident, and undeniable evidence of the influence of Number on our (mental, psychic, emotional) state is through the medium of music. Pythagorean philosophy is a “purification”, the aim of which is the assimilation to God. The universe is divine because of its order (kosmos), harmonies and symmetries it contains and reflects. These principles make the universe divine for they are the characteristics of divinity and so they also innately subsist within the human soul. The Pythagoreans taught that the soul is a harmony. If we are to become like God, then according to Pythagorean philosophy the soul must become aware of its harmonic origin. According to Pythagoras, all harmony and order is the divine principle of number, and for them, mathematical studies are the contemplation of divine principles.

[mymodernmet]

Colorful Kinetic Toy Combines Art and Math to Create Hands-On Fun

[spring-of-mathematics]

Pulley Logic Gates

By  Alex Gorischek

To demonstrate how computers work, he has made a physical example of how binary logic gates work using pulleys and weights. For anyone who doesn’t know much about logic gates (Wikipedia), it’s a great lesson in one of the fundamentals of circuitry. Using an old chessboard, eyelets, rings, weights, and string, Alex has designed a system that can show off all of the logic gates. This includes: NOT, BUFFER, NAND, AND, OR, NOR, XOR, XNOR. 

Not

0 in, 1 out; 1 in, 0 out.  Whatever you put in, you don't get out.

( GIFs: via Imgur - From: https://vimeo.com/93042377 by Alex Gorischek  )

Buffer

If you take the not of not, you get what you put in - 0 in, 0 out, 1 in, 1 out.

Nand

Both inputs must be brought up to 1 to lower the output to 0.

And

If you negate the result of Nand, you get And.  Both inputs must be brought up to 1 to raise the output up to 1.

Or

If you not both inputs, and then Nand them together, you get Or.  If either input is raised to 1, the output raises to 1.

Nor

Negate both inputs, nand them together, and negate the output.

Xor

Xor is complicated - The large weight ands the inputs together.  The medium weights negate the inputs, but are pulled up by the large one when both are 1.  When you nor those together, you get Xor.

Xnor

This is comparatively simple - just negate the output of Xor, and you&

#039;re there! Source:

The principles of logic can be realized in so many systems that it makes you understand how they really are universal. All you need is something that takes an input and produces the opposite output - a NOT gate; something that take two inputs and produces an output when any one of the inputs is active - an OR gate; and something that takes two inputs and produces an output only when both inputs are active - an AND gate. Once you have AND, OR and NOT you can build any other logic gate you need. They form a universal basis for logic. You can even do better - a single NAND, i.e. a NOT AND gate, is universal. Yes, you can make any other logic gate by simply combining NAND gates.

This sounds powerful but you also need to keep in mind that you can use logic gates to build a fully functioning computer. All you need to build a computer is lots of NAND gate. Pulley Logic Gates demonstrates how a set of ropes and pulleys can be used to implement the basic gates. To understand what is going on notice that binary values correspond to zero or one as written on the board - i.e. up is 1 and down is 0. For example, you immediately get a NOT gate with a single piece of rope. When one end is up the other is down and vice versa - it is an inverter.

[womenandhorror]

When the hoe from salvation army glances at me

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

being a cashier is so stressful i’ll be like “hi! how are you :^)” and the customer will hand me a screwdriver and say “my granddaughter had a miscarriage this morning” and I’m like …………………..i’m so sorry that’s $2.33

[mothdogs]

Deadass I once told a customer “Have a nice day!” and he responded that he couldn’t because it was the anniversary of his wife’s murder

[oneeightygramflow]

https://youtu.be/KbunTEkXQXc

[vodcar]

when the capitalists die out either thru global warming or revolution will we be able to start homegrown internet

[vodcar]

been reading about dual power and how to grow my own tomatoes and i’m wondering how and if we’ll be able to start commie internet lol

like obviously the internet is this huge electric capitalist controlled hardware infrastructure thing so after all that shuts down is there a way to do it ourselves lol

[vodcar]

i want to come home from a hard day on the communal allotment, kiss my Wife, crank up my generator, and start sharing meams!

[anarchopuppy]

GOOD NEWS: the homegrown commie internet is in the works! Across the world, people fighting against censorship and for a more democratic internet are building mesh networks (meshnets) of long-range wifi (LoRa)

Since wifi is just a standard for sending data through radio waves, and radio waves can go a pretty long way if you use ‘em right, it’s not that difficult to connect two computers by wifi from across town. Then you just keep adding more computers to the network and you’ve got internet!

Small antennae, like for connecting across the neighborhood, can literally be built out of trash

And a larger, more accurate one can be built pretty cheap too

(You can also reuse an old satellite TV dish, or really anything else that’s roughly parabolic)

There are LoRa meshnets in places like New York, India, and all over Europe: Spain (pictured below), Greece, Austria, Germany, etc

As for sharing fresh mëmês, the network to go to is Scuttlebutt. Unlike most social media, Scuttlebutt posts are stored on your computer and sent directly to your friends’ computers (rather than being stored on the cloud and sent to a central server). It works just fine over traditional internet, but you can also view and interact with it offline, and it has protocols for connecting over any means that two computers can share information - that includes LoRa, as well as hardwired connections, sneakernet (basically mailing a USB stick back and forth), etc

What that means is you always know that your info is just as safe as the network it’s sent on and the computer that receives it - no one even theoretically has the ability to collect and sell it all. And, since it’s all run on your computer, there’s no servers to go down or companies to go out of business that could destroy the whole thing

You can read more about this kind of stuff here (or here if it’s cloudy in Barcelona)!

[4amsnow]

there’s also the work being done by the DCPT, left-behind Detroiters meshing together their neighborhoods to share overpriced high-speed connections among the community and producing these good good educational documents, especially this rad resource page. building meshnets to share a global uplink is very similar to building meshnets for the purpose of intracommunication and these resources are useful in both cases