[somat]

"The second approach was to use a digital computer to determine the solution. This solution was rejected because in 1963, a digital computer was expensive, slow, and less reliable."

This inflection point between analog and digital computer is a fascinating one. At one point in time a analog computer made sense and some later point in time you would be foolish to specify anything other than a digital computer. But that time between when it could go either way is interesting. There is a good autobiography by the person responsible for introducing the first digital computer to the navy that provides an interesting view into this era. https://ethw.org/First-Hand:No_Damned_Computer_is_Going_to_T...

Now I am vaguely searching for a guide on gear train schematic diagrams, I am sure they had them, you don't reason out something this complicated without one. I know hydraulics has it's own flavor of schematic diagram, which are fascinating if all you have seen are electronic circuits. https://www.hidraoil.com/technical-resources/hydraulic-symbo...

[mohamedkoubaa]

They're making a comeback now, quantum computers are analog

[somat]

That is why I have doubts about their scalability. There are fundamental physics reasons we were able to scale digital computers and were unable to do the same to analog ones.

[mohamedkoubaa]

That's certainly true. But - the fastest possible machine to compute the sound of a guitar string reverberating in a concert hall is a guitar in a concert hall. The world itself does a tremendous amount of compute - the question is whether it is useful compute. I don't think this has been explored nearly enough.

[bzbz]

Why is it the fastest possible?

Wouldn’t you be able to run a higher clock-speed simulation, and therefore compute the sound ahead-of-time, on a digital device?

[mohamedkoubaa]

Nonlin ar partial differential equations through a large continuum are expensive. Even if you can scale this particular example, it doesn't refute the point, the universe does a tremendous amount of compute that we don't know how to exploit.

[qsera]

This assumes that the universe is computing.

But there is some hypothesis like MUH that sees reality as a sort of "recording" that we just experience.

[qsera]

>Why is it the fastest possible?

Why? because the "universe" takes zero time to compute it. In fact all of reality is computed in zero time. How can you beat it?

[qsera]

TO continue the above comment..

I think it is totally possible for the computing to take non-zero time, but we observe it in zero-time as our consciousness only steps forward only with each iteration of computing the world state. So we observe zero time reality computations.

[lioeters]

> No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to DO

That is the best title for a story about replacing analog and mechanical instruments with digital computers. A similar process is happening now with natural intelligence, replacing or augmenting the human intellect.

An interesting resource I just found:

The analog computer museum - https://www.analogmuseum.org/english/

It has a Library section with lots of downloadable articles in German and English.

[qsera]

> A similar process is happening now with natural intelligence

LLMs are not AI.

[lioeters]

Correct. Neither are computers, analog machines, or mathematics.

I'm on your side, human comrade. No damn computer is going to tell me what to do!

[qsera]

I said it because, the behavior of LLMs only appear to mimic intelligence only very superficially. Even without going "behind the curtain", and by only examining the behavior of LLMs slightly deeply, the illusion of this intelligent behavior break down.

Intelligent behavior need to be consistent. You need only a single instance of non-intelligent behavior to prove that an entity is not intelligent.