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Shannon stated that the amount of information, H, transmitted by a series of n characters is given by: where W is the size of the alphabet. Hence, for the previous ASCII example, the amount of information contained in a single ASCII
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“in experimental quantum mechanics we have run right up against what was previously perceived to be a purely philosophical barrier. The experiments are telling us that we can know nothing of reality-in-itself. We have to accept that the properties we ascribe to quantum particles like photons, such as energy, frequency, spin, polarization, position (‘here’ or ‘there’), are properties that have no meaning except in relation to a measuring device that allows them to be projected into our empirical reality of experience. We can no longer assume that the properties we measure necessarily reflect or represent the properties of the particles as they really are.”
― Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth
― Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Albert Einstein”
― Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth
― Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth
“In the early part of the ninth century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician working in Baghdad, wrote a seminal textbook in which he highlighted the usefulness of restoring a quantity being subtracted (like 2, above) by adding it to the other side of an equation. He called this process al-jabr (Arabic for “restoring”), which later morphed into “algebra.” Then, long after his death, he hit the etymological jackpot again. His own name, al-Khwarizmi, lives on today in the word “algorithm.”
― The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
― The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
“The current leading candidates for dark matter are particles predicted to exist from supersymmetric theories, extensions of current particle physics that include a new symmetry of Nature. The reader may recognize the “super” in supersymmetry from superstring theory, a candidate theory for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. As of the winter of 2014, no evidence for supersymmetry had been found, despite decades of intense search and the enthusiastic support of many physicists. At this point, it is unclear and somewhat doubtful that supersymmetry is realized in Nature.”
― The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning
― The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning
“objects are only a set of statistical likelihoods – a cloud of qualities-in-potential, yet to be distilled into any specific form. We can never simply find out what they are, because their attributes are unfixed until we observe them. They’re nothing without us. ”
― Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen
― Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen
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