Can't sleep

It's 2:24am and I cannot sleep. What better to do then leave a few words on my eminent blog! :-) I sold my car today... my red thunder, my pride and joy! Eh, whatever... It's all for the sake of complexity!

Had an interesting conversation with Jaca about post-partum depression. It seems that anomalies of this type, that directly affect the well-being of the offspring when it is as most vulnerable should have been Darwinised away throughout the evolution... and apparently they haven't, so I'm thinking that it could have served as a positive mechanism in some occasions (ex: it's a really bad year, no food, you get a kid, it's better not to care about that kid and let it die if it means that you can survive until the next year and give birth to several more kids during the good years. Sort of leaving the local maximum in order to reach a larger (local or global) maximum).

And the whole discussion was prompted by the news story of a Texas women who ate its three month old baby's brain out (literally). Weird stuff, I tell ya!

Manimals - an universe created by numbers

I don't know if I heard it or read it somewhere and then forgot about it or if it is genuinly mine, but one sentence has been on my mind often lately. I've been reading about different branches of Artificial Intelligence, and it led me to say: We should not be in business of making intelligent machines or agents, we need to be making universes.

Here's an example of a simulated universe, (temporarily) called Manimals. Looks funny doesn't it? I didn't have seen any traces of intelligence in it... yet! ;-)

Gödel Escher Bach - Eternal Golden Braid

Last week I finished reading a book written by Douglas Hofstadter about 20 years ago. I picked it up by accident while scavenging around Borders and I was immediately charmed. The book is no easy reading, it took me over 6 months to chew my way through its 800 pages, but it is a warmly recommended reading for anybody who is interested in the mind, life, math, music and even art. There are several main themes "braided" through the book. One is Gödels incompleteness theorem, how it was reached, and its implications on the philosophy of mathematics and natural numbers. Hofstadter also talks about strange loops - phenomenons that appear when two separate but loosely interacting systems start affecting each other. He believes that our own consciousness and sense of "self" is based on such strange loops. Very exciting and fascinating thought that I feel is worth exploring further, and even trying to simulate (in one of my countless models).

And - same writer has another book out, written pretty recently (2007) called "I am a Strange loop". Guess if I'm eager to put my hands on it!

Three years later....

Yeah right. I left Sweden over 3 years ago, lived in California during that time, and how many blog posts have emerged? None! 0! Zilch! Zip!

So... predictable... and tireing. But do I give up? If I did I could hardly count my self as a proud member of Homo Sapiens species - we NEVER give up. So, here I come back again. This time the subject is somewhat changed. After all, I didn't throw away all that time I spent in US of A into nothing - I came to some very important philosophical conclusions. These conclusions have pushed me towards studying the complexity and chaos theories as a possible way to unify all those island of thought that I was harboring before. So, the contents of the blog from now on will be my thoughts and struggles with complexity, emergence, artificial life, artificial inteligence (although I really don't care to much for AA in its current form), some game theory, lot of evolutionary thought, all spiced and garnished with some personal thoughts, stories and anectodes.

And, to put you into the right perspective: I'm still in the States, but only for one month more. I've bougth the ticket to go home to Sweden. And... I've been accepted to GU/Chalmers master program in Complex Adaptive Systems. The future is uncertain and interesting. But isn't that what makes the life interesting? Funny, 3 years ago I was much more convinced that it was the truth! :-) I might be getting old too (31 in November).

So... let go, and give it another try. Who's with me? You get a cookie for every comment you make! Come on now! :-)