M5_htm Computer Inspired by Hawkins Theories

Hmmmm... what engrams did TCL put in it?!!?

Why does it keep asking to predict my Social Security Number?! And why does it keep searching for a WiFi hotspot?

Ha!

I'm glad you find it funny. Most of us died after he shut off the computer that fed us...

- Keeper of Vaal

M5htm predicted you'd do that!

If M5_htm is a real indicator of Hawkins' theories, it's not a good augur. However, it does explain, in terms of neurological processing, how it is possible for something to "hide in plain sight." The brain expects what it has seen, not what it hasn't; its prediction -- expectation -- of reality overrides actual reality at times. Novelty is its downfall.

Still, I think Hawkins has something. I just don't know exactly what.

Since I'm not interested in those two examples, I'll refrain from otherwise commenting.

your hero resigned

http://grouchygeek.blogs.fortune.com/2007/04/27/ken-kutaragis-wild-ride/#comments

Lol!

A long long time ago in a different lifetime I had a brother in law, in Taiwan of all places, who was Big Time into playing the (Taiwan) lottery - he would stay up quite late every night STARTING at 2 AM (after closing his restaurants) to take the daily lottery numbers and attempt to find patterns between them and prior numbers. He also, not surprisingly, was Big Time into chewing betel nuts:

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut

One time while I was on vacation there he asked me to go with him to a computer show and help him buy a PC - I thought that was cool since this certainly would be the first computer in the entire family. The computer show was sorta like those held by Marketpro:

-- http://www.marketpro.com/

essentially displaying the wares of local and traveling PC stores, etc. He arranged with one of the displaying guys to go to the store after the show and buy a 286-based (I think) PC et al (for a couple thousand bucks, I think).

As we're leaving the show he asks me to write him a program to show frequency of occurrence of sets of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 numbers from the lottery drawings.

Before I left Taiwan for home.

In something like 2 days.

On a PC - something I'd never used before (I was a CP/M guy then moved on to an Amiga - never had used a MSFT PC at that time).

Gack.

We go to the store to pick up the computer - I'm wondering what I'm going to do - write in Basic? - when I see a Turbo Pascal book on the shelf! Whoa! I've used Turbo Pascal on CP/M! (I think it was $25 when I used it - the reason I had it for CP/M - thanks, Borland!). I ask about it and THEN find out that the store will load any 5.25" floppy disks we buy with whatever software they have! I buy the book (in Chinese!) and a couple boxes of blank floppies and get a copy of PC-Turbo Pascal loaded for free.

Well, to make a long story longer, the Pascal environment on the PC was essentially the same as under CP/M (as was MS/DOS - no Windows then) so, using the illustrations in the book and my memory, on a PC with 64Kbytes of memory and a 5.25" floppy disk drive (only), I hacked out a simple sorting/counting algorithm with a user-friendly arrow-key-driven "curses"-like:

-- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/curses/

interface.

Due to memory limitations, of course, "simple" wasn't really simple given the need to sort/count/display sets of as many as 6 numbers requiring more "bins" than integers on the computer!

He loved it.

I left Taiwan with a large chunk of cash - my very first "contract" job - and a happy in-law who, a few months later, credited the program with helping him select numbers for a fairly large win in the lottery! (No, it was purely random, of course, but HE thought so! Lol!)

So, good luck, Mike! It's doable!

Giggle.

That was a great tale, complete with betel nuts and computer market. It transported me to another time and place and the punchline was fantastic. Did you miss your calling in life?

At the time (early 80s?) in Taiwan, the MAJOR money was in publishing those types of rags.

There even were pseudo-buddhist temples set up to help you with your number picking.

And, of course, said bro-in-law spent HOURS every night reading some of those rags and hand-computing scads of useless numbers to try to pick the winners. His "notes" were an amazing thing to behold - truly amazing - numerology at its finest!

[and folks sometimes wonder why I am SO against TA with stocks...giggle]

Giggle.

http://www.numberspiral.com/index.html

Ha!

It was interesting - a few hours after writing that I clickety-clicked on some of the sub-links at some of the pages I linked to in the original telling.

In particular, the Betel Nut Girl links! E.g.:

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut_beauty

-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJo7ZkLwkng&mode=related&search=

Talk about flashbacks! These sites are just totally right-on w.r.t. How It Was in Taiwan in the 80s (minimally). (the "barber shop pole" parlors were equally interesting...we won't get into that, however).

BTW - I tried a betel nut JUST once in many visits to Taiwan - bit hard onto it and had an AMAZING searing-flame pain crash against the back of my throat. I ended up chewing it down to the fibrous mass state but it was NOT a pleasant experience. To this day I do not know what that particular Betel Nut Beauty had put into that betel nut but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was a Thai Pepper:

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_pepper

or something - rumors (and probably truths) suggested illegal amphetamines were often added to the nuts (cut a slit, insert goop) to generate extra kick (and addiction).

we can only hope that they target canada first...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc-BLJRh1pE

Explain? Have you read 'On Intelligence'? I am not nesesarily disagreeing with you, but as Hawkins book is highly regarded by some heavy hitters in the AI field - and as he spends a considerable part of the book recapping the history of and thinking behind the field of AI - I assume that you have a detailed response. Whats your beef?

Seriously - let's hear it dude.