Anima Ex Machina

Turing’s Deep Field: Visualizing the Computational Universe

Hector Zenil — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:14 +0000

I generated this image in the course of an investigation of the distribution of runtimes of programs in relation to the lengths of mathematical proofs, the results of which are being published in my paper bearing the title “Computer Runtimes and the Length of Proofs with an Algorithmic Probabilistic Application to Optimal Waiting Times in [...]

Towards a Web of One…

Hector Zenil — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:13:19 +0000

The author is a little more critical of personalization than I’d be inclined to be, and he gives too much credit to human editors in my opinion (I think they can be as bad or worse than algorithmic editors. Witness the hacking scandals in the UK, a phenomenon not exclusive to Great Britain). Eli Pariser’s [...]

David Hilbert and Deutsch in den Wissenschaften

Hector Zenil — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:59:30 +0000

David Hilbert was probably one of the most, if not the most, prominent German mathematician. His interests ranged from quantum mechanics to topology, and notably from the foundations to the history of science and mathematics. Among his main interests there was geometry, at which he excelled by formalizing a two and a half centuries (Euclidian) [...]

A bit of cryptography, passwords strength, and sysadmins of savings banks

Hector Zenil — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:31:43 +0000

This recent webcomic from xkcd, Password Strength, relates to what I’ve been investigating lately–the question of whether there need be a tradeoff between password strength and ease of recall, using, as usual, my knowledge of finite algorithmic information theory. While my conclusions will be presented in a paper in the next few months/years, the webcomic [...]

An alternative method (to compression) for approximating the algorithmic complexity of strings

Hector Zenil — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:49:53 +0000

The method introduced in my doctoral dissertation was featured in the French version of Scientific American Pour La Science in its July 2011 issue No. 405 under the title Le défi des faibles complexités. Jean-Paul Delahaye points out that: Comme les très petites durées ou longueurs, les faibles complexités sont délicates à évaluer. Paradoxalement, les [...]