The Real Infinity, For Reals

This is the third article in a series called Before I Forget, an exposition for the semi-layman of freaky high-level mathematics. Last time we talked about cardinal numbers: numbers which are used for counting the elements in very large sets. This time I’ll use the compactness theorem to introduce an infinity that you [...]

Locally Optimal Nanopond Solution

Here is a lifeform which has “solved” nanopond, which evolved after running the simulation for 14 hours; I find it unlikely that any new lifeforms can beat this one:

15e83eb5e46b5e91ed58ac0f

Translated, that is:

1
READG
SHARE
WRITEB
INC
SHARE
TURN
READG
SHARE
DEC
WRITEG
[...]

Darn

Well, you know what they say, some sessions are better than others. This session was definitely one of the others. I don’t really know what went wrong. One of my guesses is that I couldn’t hear Evan well enough (or I could hear him too well—sometimes the bass is so booming that [...]

No Shame

Nanopond

Ben Burdette showed Namaste and me a remarkable lifesim program called Nanopond. This program, in relatively few lines of C, gets closer than I ever have to something that I have been trying to do for some time. It is behavioral evolution, by evolving not a neural network on a continuous plane (as [...]

The Lesser of Infinitely Many Evils

This is the second post in a series called Before I Forget, which is an exposition for the semi-layman of some freaky high-level mathematics (mostly set theory). This episode is still about infinity, but covers the Cardinal numbers.
Last Time
Last time I introduced the ordinal numbers, specifically the ordinal ω—the least number greater than all [...]

An Infinitely Unbounded Stack of Innumerable Infinities

This is the first post in a new series of mine, “Before I Forget”. This series is an exposition of all the awesome (in the British sense), marvelous, haunting mathematics I learned while in college. I’m not sure how often I’ll add to it or when it will end, but I know that [...]

Sunbathing in a Boat

Today’s improvisation. I need to start doing these regularly again so they can the quality that they were back in December when I stopped.

Werepoker bidding

All week I have been trying to program Werepoker and giving up after the first 20 minutes or so. I think that’s partially because it’s needlessly tough networking and threading, and partially because I know there is a high probability that the program would never be used. Well, I want to play werepoker [...]

Pale Panic

Two improvisations today:

Pale
Panic