47,698 research outputs found
What Makes a Computation Unconventional?
A coherent mathematical overview of computation and its generalisations is
described. This conceptual framework is sufficient to comfortably host a wide
range of contemporary thinking on embodied computation and its models.Comment: Based on an invited lecture for the 'Symposium on
Natural/Unconventional Computing and Its Philosophical Significance' at the
AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012, University of Birmingham, July 2-6, 201
Distributed Processes, Distributed Cognizers and Collaborative Cognition
Cognition is thinking; it feels like something to think, and only those who can feel can think. There are also things that thinkers can do. We know neither how thinkers can think nor how they are able do what they can do. We are waiting for cognitive science to discover how. Cognitive science does this by testing hypotheses about what processes can generate what doing (“know-how”) This is called the Turing Test. It cannot test whether a process can generate feeling, hence thinking -- only whether it can generate doing. The processes that generate thinking and know-how are “distributed” within the heads of thinkers, but not across thinkers’ heads. Hence there is no such thing as distributed cognition, only collaborative cognition. Email and the Web have spawned a new form of collaborative cognition that draws upon individual brains’ real-time interactive potential in ways that were not possible in oral, written or print interactions
Robust ecological pattern formation induced by demographic noise
We demonstrate that demographic noise can induce persistent spatial pattern
formation and temporal oscillations in the Levin-Segel predator-prey model for
plankton-herbivore population dynamics. Although the model exhibits a Turing
instability in mean field theory, demographic noise greatly enlarges the region
of parameter space where pattern formation occurs. To distinguish between
patterns generated by fluctuations and those present at the mean field level in
real ecosystems, we calculate the power spectrum in the noise-driven case and
predict the presence of fat tails not present in the mean field case. These
results may account for the prevalence of large-scale ecological patterns,
beyond that expected from traditional non-stochastic approaches.Comment: Revised version. Supporting simulation at:
http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~tom/Netlogo
Cinnamons: A Computation Model Underlying Control Network Programming
We give the easily recognizable name "cinnamon" and "cinnamon programming" to
a new computation model intended to form a theoretical foundation for Control
Network Programming (CNP). CNP has established itself as a programming paradigm
combining declarative and imperative features, built-in search engine, powerful
tools for search control that allow easy, intuitive, visual development of
heuristic, nondeterministic, and randomized solutions. We define rigorously the
syntax and semantics of the new model of computation, at the same time trying
to keep clear the intuition behind and to include enough examples. The
purposely simplified theoretical model is then compared to both WHILE-programs
(thus demonstrating its Turing-completeness), and the "real" CNP. Finally,
future research possibilities are mentioned that would eventually extend the
cinnamon programming into the directions of nondeterminism, randomness, and
fuzziness.Comment: 7th Intl Conf. on Computer Science, Engineering & Applications
(ICCSEA 2017) September 23~24, 2017, Copenhagen, Denmar
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