http://www.metafilter.com/tags/computability Posts tagged with 'computability' at MetaFilter. Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:38:48 -0800 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:38:48 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://www.metafilter.com/76702/Think%2Dbig What would you do with <a href="http://xkcd.com/505/" title="xkcd">eternity and a bunch of rocks</a>? Now you're done, why not go for a stroll to the land of <a href="http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=story&id=6644" title="Rudy Rucker">transfinite ordinals</a>, then doze off at the <a href="http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html" title="Jorge Luis Borges">the Babel library</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2008:site.76702 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:38:48 -0800 big computability eternity Tobu http://www.metafilter.com/28281/Nancy%2DWillard%2DMeets%2DDouglas%2DHofstadter <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/9/224310/1822">"At the center of the universe is a horribly wounded angel.</a> It is nothing anyone would call conscious, and is only in the barest, barest sense of the word still alive. If anything resembling awareness remains, that awareness consists of nothing but an infinite field of gridded black and white squares, a test pattern scattered with dancing dots that shift and jump and blur into one another. This test pattern is useful. " This piece of fiction, which appears on <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org">kuro5hin</a>, evokes echoes of <a href="http://www.psych.indiana.edu/people/homepages/hofstadter.html">Douglas Hoftsadter</a> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465026567/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/">Godel, Escher, Bach</a>) and Nancy Willard (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595138802/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/">Things Invisible To See</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804108765/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/">Sister Water</a> , and <a href="http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?kw=Nancy+Willard&pokey=skeptopotamus">lots of children's books</a>) simultaneously. [more inside] tag:metafilter.com,2003:site.28281 Sat, 13 Sep 2003 19:51:18 -0800 computability scifi story weston