Michael Will

@scidata
8 Followers
19 Following
39 Posts

FORTH PROLOG GOFAI RISC-V Spaceflight Astronomy
Zebrafish Sci-Fi CitizenScience History Anthropology Psychohistory

(time to fill in some activity after being Mastodon-dormant for a year)

Websitehttps://scidata.ca
Discussionhttps://worthdefending.blogspot.com
GOFAI Forumhttps://gofai.discourse.group
LocationToronto
Michael WillMar 7
Tim BrayMar 7
“Recently I read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch and Algospeak by Adam Aleksic. The language we speak (and text) to each other is at the core of who and what we are, and the Internet is the strongest among the forces that channel and fertilize its growth. So there’s scope for plenty of books on the subject. Both books educated and entertained, one made me angry.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/03/05/Because-Algospeak
Michael WillFeb 15

A purely abstract representation of the #LEGO philosophy has been available as a programming language since 1970. It's called #FORTH.

#SeriousPlay #Psychology #ComputationalThinking

Michael WillFeb 12

RIP Robert Tinney, who fired the imagination of the personal computing world.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/

#GOFAI #ComputationalThinking

Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78

He became one of the first to visualize personal computing by painting vivid cover art.

Ars Technica
Michael WillDec 9
Show threadTim BrayDec 9
2/2 “I was going to post a link to Paul Krugman’s “Talking With Paul Kedrosky”. It’s great, but while I was reading it I thought “This is going to be Greek to people who haven’t been watching the bubble details.” So consider this a preface to the Krugman-Kedrosky piece. If you already know about the GPU-fragility and SPV-voodoo issues, just skip this and go read that. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-paul-kedrosky
Talking With Paul Kedrosky

So, about this AI thing ...

Paul Krugman
Michael WillNov 28

Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the PalmPilot (tm), once carried a small wooden block around in his pocket. It helped him to imagine how he'd use a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) in daily life. I do the same today, only I use my old Palm III PDA to imagine how I'd use a pocket Intelligence Amplifier.

"One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him"
-Thomas Schelling

#ComputationalThinking

Michael WillNov 26

Always remember, the human brain models the universe in real time, with advanced communication and sensors, almost unlimited learning capacity, and true intelligence
- and uses 25W.

Oh, and can program in #Forth, which I predict will become the lingua franca of machine-machine.

Michael WillNov 10
Tim BrayNov 10

Went for a weekend walk in QE park; the colors of autumn are fading, but there are still treats for the eye.

#Photography #Vancouver

Michael WillOct 29
Show threadAaronOct 29
@scidata I've actually done some work combining the two!
Michael WillOct 26
AaronOct 26

@scidata

I don't see many folks embracing GOFAI anymore. It's a shame!

Have you read about Winograd's SHRDLU? Pretty sure it was before I was born, and the thing already understood natural language well enough to follow directions and answer questions, *without* "hallucinating". It's a shame they decided it couldn't be scaled and just gave up on it, instead of trying to rectify the problem.

Michael WillOct 25
AaronOct 21

I wonder why genetic programming so often uses a Lisp-inspired paradigm instead of a Forth-inspired one. They are both extremely simple to implement, but Forth has the advantage of being expressible as a linear sequence, so standard genetic algorithm operators can be used on it. If you find Lisp syntax more readable, it would be easy to translate, since they are both inherently nested.

#GeneticProgramming
#GeneticAlgorithm
#Lisp
#Forth