[ExI] Weird new way to do physics

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl>
> To: The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Saturday, November 5, 2011 11:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Weird new way to do physics
> 
> On Sat, 5 Nov 2011, The Avantguardian wrote:
> 
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl>
>> > To: The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>; ExI chat 
> list 
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl>
>> > Cc: 
>> > Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2011 10:21 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [ExI] Weird new way to do physics
> 
> Aha! Do you use floats up there, in those number lists?
> 
> Opss. Floats are tricky because they can't be implemented to be exact. I 
> mean, they can if you can have infinite memory in a computer. AFAIK the 
> current standard allows for exact representation of 0.5 (or other negative 
> power of 2) but not 0.1. There are infinite number of reals that cannot be 
> represented _exactly_ by computer float. I really mean it when I say 
> "infinite", this is not a metaphore.
> This means, your computation may come to zero simply because there will be 
> no better float to represent a result, but not necesarilly because it 
> really comes to zero.

Yes I use floats but most of the problems I have been having have been because values that should be zero are not. Like cos (90 degs) and stuff. That's why I am going for the minimum rather than exactly zero pe rse.

> At the same time, I admit that I sucked pathetically (yea, try to imagine 
> this) at numerical methods.
> 
>> First natural law 
>> discovered by a computer. Heh. Maybe I'll get some credit too. ;-)
> 
> Man, you are racing against the robots:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_(robot)
> 
> What is worse, on this list there are folks who will root for them rather 
> than for you.

>From what I gather, those folks you linked to have built a robot that is an experimentalist. I have programmed a computer to become a theoretician. Quite different things. Besides, in my case it is clever math implemented too hastily in computer code. The math is doing all the heavy lifting.