magicdragon2: Launching *right now* via LiveJournal

magicdragon2 (

magicdragon2) wrote,
@ 2004-05-30 22:08:00

Launching *right now* via LiveJournal
MAGICDRAGON2 rolls out the red carpet, and welcomes you on our first day on LiveJournal. We have been getting 15,000,000 hits per year on our almost 9-year-old old-fashioned web domain, Magic Dragon

But now it's time to enter the 21st century, by offering a chance to air YOUR thoughts, YOUR feelings, and YOUR views on subjects of mutual interest to an emergent community.

I'd like to thank Teresa Nielsen Hayden and her wonderful friends at
Making Light
for persuading me to stop hogging their bandwidth and going directly on LiveJournal.

Today's starting topic is: can understanding social networks, such as the ones centering on Kevin Bacon (movies), Isaac Asimov (science and Science Fiction), and Paul Erdos (Mathematics) help to save civilization as we know it?

In 1950, John von Neumann said that "science and technology will shift from a past emphasis on motion, force, and energy to communication, organization, programming, and control."

That was half a century ago. Do you think he was right? And do you wonder why Kevin Bacon, Isaac Asimov, and Paul Erdos all have reasonable claims to be The Center of the Universe?

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(229 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Math is "a young man's game"?
(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 01:10 am UTC (link)

G. H. Hardy wrote: "No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game".

I don't believe that for a minute. Paul Erdos was doing some of his best work when he was 80 years old.

Born: 26 March 1913 in Budapest, Hungary Died: 20 Sept 1996

Picasso, Segovia, Stravinski -- all did great work in their 90s.

How old are you, to be strating such a project?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Math is "a young man's game"?

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 01:26 am UTC (link)

I'm over 50. Not too late to be starting anything!

Kevin Bacon was born 8 July 1958
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

He first appeared in movies as Chip Diller
in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). So he was just 20 years old.

Isaac Asimov was born in 1920, and so was about 72 when he died in 1992... and would have gone on for decades more, is not for a contaminated blood transfusion.

According to the official Asimov website:

After John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, rejected his short stories "Cosmic Corkscrew", "Stowaway" and "This Irrational Planet" in June, July, and September of 1938, "Marooned Off Vesta" was accepted for publication by Amazing Stories in October and was published in the March 1939 edition on January 10, 1939.

Hence he was 18 when he started submitting stories to magazines, and 19 when he first had a story accepted -- by no means a record low age for this.

Paul Erdos was awarded a doctorate in 1934, at age 21. He never stopped doing Math.

So it doesn't matter when you start -- what matters is, is if it good, to keep on going! Thanks for asking.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Math is "a young man's game"? -

magicdragon2, 2004-05-31 01:35 am UTC

Re: Math is "a young man's game"? - (Anonymous), 2004-05-31 01:39 am UTC

Re: Math is "a young man's game"? -

magicdragon2, 2004-05-31 01:46 am UTC

Science Fiction Prodigies, Part 1 -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:31 pm UTC

Science Fiction Prodigies, Part 2 -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:36 pm UTC

Science Fiction Prodigies, Part 3 -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:38 pm UTC

(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 06:16 am UTC (link)

(Commenters should make an effort to leave names, at the bottom of the post, or perhaps in the subject line. It's one of LJ's more annoying features that other non-LJ users can't automatically identify themselves, and don't even get a box as a reminder to do so. But conservations with no names are very difficult to follow. You can't tell when the same person is talking again.)

You should also check out some of the recent blogging elsewhere on this topic. It was prompted by William Tozier's attempt to sell an Erdos number (http://williamtozier.com/slurry/index.html?find=auction&plugin=find) E-bay auction. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3189039958)

He links to a lot of other discussion of his idea, but I first discovered it through Michael Nielsen (http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/archive/000074.html) and discussed it a little at the blog of Chad Orzel. (http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2004_04_18_principlearchive.php?show_id=108255177415280032#bk_108255177415280032)

Seems to me that I found people discussing it all over the blogosphere, and the larger context of scientific communities too... But I haven't got the time to hunt through and try to find what I was reading at the time, so I'll trust that Tozier probably eventually linked to all of them, or linked to people who linked to the rest...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

C-Author for Sale: includes Erdos Number

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 09:53 am UTC (link)

Thumbing His Nose at Academe, a Scholar Tries to Auction His Services

CO-AUTHOR FOR SALE: In a society devoted to "reality shows" and rampant commodification, it had to happen some time. Late last month an independent scientist auctioned off his services as a co-author on eBay, with the promise of helping the highest bidder write a scientific paper for publication. The offer even had the added allure of a linkage with the legendary mathematician Paul Erdos.

But a few researchers saw the online auction as a net negative. Jose Burillo, an associate professor of mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, in Spain, entered a fake, inflated bid of more than $1,000 in hopes of stopping the auction. "Nobody should pay anybody for writing or collaborating on a scientific project," he says. "This could open the door to many unethical problems."

The auction began as a bit of fun, admits William A. Tozier, a consultant in Ann Arbor, Mich., who specializes in machine learning and artificial-intelligence research. "I undertook it as a combination of a joke and conceptual art and a bit of an experiment in social networks," he says. The idea builds on the reputation of Erdos, a Hungarian mathematician who died in 1996. A prolific researcher, with more than 1,400 published papers, he spent the last several decades of his life moving from one colleague's house to another's, staying for extended periods at each place and collaborating on solving problems.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

remotesensing
2004-05-31 06:50 am UTC (link)

Today's starting topic is: can understanding social networks, such as the ones centering on Kevin Bacon (movies), Isaac Asimov (science and Science Fiction), and Paul Erdos (Mathematics) help to save civilization as we know it?

If that's the way you're going to state it, then the answer is an emphatic No.

Social networks, in this sense, only offer a glimpse of how interconnected the people in a particular field may be, and not the relative importance (or lack thereof) of the stuff they work on as a group.

All this focus on Kevin Bacon is great, but where's the analysis of the social network among the stars in adult films? (Given the recent AIDS outbreak, this sort of thing would have been rather useful, actually.)

I'd worry less about who people work with, and more about what they work on.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Epidemics and Small-World Networks

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 09:20 am UTC (link)

remotesensing:

You're exactly correct!

Hub caps could cut vaccine costs:
Random immunization could halt diseases and computer viruses
17 December 2003
PHILIP BALL

"A new immunization strategy could help to prevent disease epidemics without blanket vaccination, suppress computer viruses, and even break up terrorist networks. At least, so say its designers."

"All you need do is choose people at random and treat some of their friends, suggest Reuven Cohen, of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, and his colleagues."

"'Friends just aren't normal,' agrees Mark Newman, a networks specialist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. 'Friends are, by definition, friendly people, and your circle will be a biased sample of the population because of it.' ..."

"... Cohen and colleagues looked for a strategy that could immunize just a few individuals without mapping the network exhaustively. They conclude that, rather than simply immunizing random individuals, it might be more effective to treat a random selection of the acquaintances of individuals picked at random."

"This sounds as if it leaves just as much to chance. But it doesn't. In a scale-free social network - a web of friendships, say - anyone connected to another person by a friendship tie is not representative of the average. Most nodes have very few connections. So if you know for sure that someone is part of a friendship circle, they are more likely to be a hub than is another person selected at random."

Full details in:
Cohen, R., Havlin, S. & ben-Abraham, D. "Efficient immunization strategies for computer networks and populations". Physical Review Letters, 91, 247901, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.247901 (2003).

Here's a hotlink to [gzipped postscript], [postscript],
and [pdf] of:

"Epidemics and Percolation in Small-World Networks"
by Cristopher Moore and M. E. J. Newman
Paper #: 00-01-002 [2000]

Abstract:
"We study some simple models of disease transmission on small-world networks, in which either the probability of infection by a disease or the probability of its transmission is varied, or both. The resulting models display epidemic behavior when the infection or transmission probability rises above the threshold for site or bond percolation on the network, and we give exact solutions for the position of this threshold in a variety of cases. We confirm our analytic results by numerical simulation."

The sante Fe Institute (with which I have no formal connection, other than presenting a paper at one of their Artificial Life conferences) also has studied:

99-05-036 "Modeling Plasma Virus Concentration and CD4+ T Cell Kinetics during Primary HIV Infection"

I agree that we should be analyzing the social network of adult films. I live a short drive from the San Fernando Valley, the world capital of adult film shooting. I have watched people die from AIDS. This is a very good, and urgent, use of a mathematical method.

Thank you for your clarity of communication on an important human concern.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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Re: Epidemics and Small-World Networks -

magicdragon2, 2004-05-31 10:37 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 07:13 am UTC (link)

You should also check out some of the recent blogging elsewhere on this topic. It was prompted by William Tozier's attempt to sell an Erdos number (http://williamtozier.com/slurry/index.html?find=auction&plugin=find) E-bay auction. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3189039958)

He links to a lot of other discussion of his idea, but I first discovered it through Michael Nielsen (http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/archive/000074.html) and discussed it a little at the blog of Chad Orzel. (http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2004_04_18_principlearchive.php?show_id=108255177415280032#bk_108255177415280032)

Seems to me that I found people discussing it all over the blogosphere, and the larger context of scientific communities too... But I haven't got the time to hunt through and try to find what I was reading at the time, so I'll trust that Tozier probably eventually linked to all of them, or linked to people who linked to the rest...

-Mary

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Buying an Erdos Number? magicdragon2 2004-05-31 09:30 am UTC (link)
	Dear Mary, His idea has merit, and some hidden costs. He was not, as first thought, selling the right to be listed as a coauthor with doing no work. He was genuinely offering to collaborate. I think that is in the spirit of Open Source, without violating the Scientific Method. Do you, or the blogs you mention, agree? (Reply to this) (Parent)

Centres of Universe
(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 08:23 am UTC (link)

Ah, young grasshoppers (or cicadas), was it not a wise man who said once that we are all the centres of our own universe? And can anyone prove that is false?

Hhfff.

Dear JvP,
wishing you well in this New Endeavour - especially since the Transit of Venus is approaching, so important in the voyage of the old Endeavour - and hoping that wunnadeezdayz I'll get the hang of this LiveJournal interface/zeitgeist/protocol/thingie
Epacris

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Centres of Universe

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 09:34 am UTC (link)

Dear Epiacris,

Thank you for your prompt reply. If a paranoid sees conspiracies everywhere, from believing him/herself at the center of other people' universes ("A Beautiful Mind" shows this well), is there such a thing as an anti-paranoid who incorrectly refuses to believe that he/she IS crucial to a large group of people with a common goal?

The next Transit of venus is mere months after the upcoming on. May the one after that be seen by people in orbit around Venus!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Neumann comment
(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 08:43 am UTC (link)

In 1950, John von Neumann said that "science and technology will shift from a past emphasis on motion, force, and energy to communication, organization, programming, and control."

Speaking as a mechanical engineer, I hope not! We still have serious long-term problems obtaining the energy required for the "communication, organization, programming, and control." There's also the issue of reliability. The blackouts last summer illustrate both points in the most succinct and terrifying manner imaginable.

All of the above is not to minimize the importance of communication, organization, etc.-- developments in those areas may well help with the other problems. But there is danger in concentrating on the sexy bits and ignoring the nuts and bolts that make modern civilization possible.

--Andy Perrin

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Neumann comment

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 09:41 am UTC (link)

Dear Andy Perrin,

My personal perception is that there are ever-growing numbers of breakdown in the physical infrastructure. I was in New York City in the first great blackout of 1965.

I saw Mount Saint Helens blow up in Washington state, while I worked for Boeing Aerospace, and I went around covering floppy disk drives to save them from volcanic dust.

I drove THROUGH the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.

My home has suffered from major earthquakes, from floods, and from a multi-billion-dollar forest fire.

My car won't start without an expensive replacement of the starter, after I've had major repairs before.

I am all too aware of the need for nuts and bolts. I hope that YOU will help to save civilization!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Screened Post)

	Can you hear me now? magicdragon2 2004-05-31 09:55 am UTC (link)
	Dear Andy Perrin, I'm a newbie here myself. But I thought that once I replied to an anonymous posting, it was automatically unscreened and public. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Screened Post)

Re: Can you hear me now? -

magicdragon2, 2004-05-31 10:20 am UTC

Re: Can you hear me now? -

remotesensing, 2004-05-31 10:24 am UTC

Re: Can you hear me now? -

magicdragon2, 2004-05-31 10:27 am UTC

Mine; and Kevin Bacon's Erdos Number

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 09:53 am UTC (link)

I know the guy, Bruce Resnick, who has the lowest known total of Erdos Number + Kevin Bacon Number. He has an Erdos Number of 1 (coauthored with Erdos) and a Kevin Bacon number of 2 (appeared in "Goodwill Hunting" with someone who was in some other movie with Kevin Bacon). Unless Kevin Bacon writes a math paper...

My own Erdos Number is 5, due to this path [Post, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Glashow, Kleitman, Erdos]. Specifically identifying each link:

(5) Post to Feynman [Nobel Prize, Physics, 1965]:

"Footnote to Feynman", Jonathan V. Post and Richard Feynman,
[Engineering & Science, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, Vol.XLVI, No.5, p.28,
ISSN: 0013-7812, May 1983; reprinted in Songs from Unsung Worlds,
ed. Bonnie Bilyeu Gordon, intro by Alan Lightman (award winning author
of Einstein's Dreams), Birkhauser Boston/AAAS,
hardcover ISBN: 0-8176-3296-4, paperback ISBN: 3-7643-3296-4, 1985

(4) Feynman to Gell-Mann [Nobel Prize, Physics, 1969]:

R. P. Feynman, M. Gell-Mann & G. Zweig, Group U(6) \Omega U (6) generated by current
components, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13 (1964), 678-680

(3) Gell-Mann to Sheldon Lee Glashow [Nobel Prize, Physics, 1965]:

Sheldon L. Glashow & Murray Gell-Mann, Gauge theories of vector particles, Ann. Physics 15 (1961), 437-460

(2) Glashow to [his brother-in-law, the combinatorist] Daniel J. Kleitman:

S. L. Glashow & D. J. Kleitman, Baryon resonances in W 3 symmetry, Phys. Lett. 11 (1964), 84-86

[Because of the above, Glashow shares with Einstein the distinction of being, up until now, the only Nobel-winning physicists with Erdos number = 2]

Kleitman to God-Emperor Paul Erdos:

[7 papers by this pair, the earliest being in 1968]

I'll also comment that both Gell-Mann and Erdos were among the roughly 1,500 scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity", 18 November 1992

So far my Kevin Bacon number is infinity. I have not appeared in any movies, although I have a number of credits as Consultant, and Technical Advisor, and have written/produced/directed several industrial videos with budgets in the $1,000,000 range.

(Reply to this)

Asimov in Movies and TV

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 10:02 am UTC (link)

Isaac Asimov as the center of the world of film and television? Not as silly as it sounds. Excerpting from a recent draft of a research paper of mine:

AsimovTV: List of all coauthors, TV Writers, and Screenwriters who Adapted Asimov works

We first give a Filmography, fact-checked against the Internet Movie Database; and then an alphabetical listing of collaborator-writers. This section gives us 28 with Asimov Number = 1, only one of which (Robert Silverberg) is on the list for print collaboration as such. It also immediately adds 10 more with Asimov Number = 2, without following “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” links. Directors are not listed, unless credited as Writer-Director. Actors, Producers, Crew not listed.

Filmography

 I, Robot (2004) (book and suggestion)
 Nightfall (2000) (Video) (story)
Also known as “Isaac Asimov's Nightfall” (2000) (V) (USA: complete title)
 Bicentennial Man (1999)(novel The Positronic Man) (short story The Bicentennial Man)
Also known as “Der 200 Jahre Mann” (2000) (Germany)
 Android Affair, The (1995) (TV) (story)
 Teach 109 (1990) (TV) (story)
 Feeling 109 (1988) (story)
 Nightfall (1988) (story)
 Robots (1988) (Video) (novels I, Robot et al)
 Probe! (1988) (TV Series) (creator)
 Gandahar (1988) (adaptation) (English version) ... aka Light Years (1988) (USA)
 Konets vechnosti (1987) (novel The End of Eternity)
 Ugly Little Boy, The (1979) (TV) (story) [no other writer credited]
 Naked Sun, The (1969) (TV) (novel) .. aka Out of the Unknown: The Naked Sun (1969) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Liar! (1969) (TV) (story) ... aka Out of the Unknown: Liar! (1969) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Prophet, The (1967) (TV) (story Reason) ... aka Out of the Unknown: The Prophet (1967) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Robot embustero, El (1966) (novel)
 Satisfaction Guaranteed (1966) (TV) (story) .. aka Out of the Unknown: Satisfaction Guaranteed (1966) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Sucker Bait (1965) (TV) (story) ... aka Out of the Unknown: Sucker Bait (1965) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Dead Past, The (1965) (TV) (story) ... aka Out of the Unknown: The Dead Past (1965) (TV) (UK: series title)
 Caves of Steel, The (1964) (TV) (novel)

If anyone asks, I can post the alphabetical listing of Asimov's TV/film collaborator-writers.

(Reply to this)

(Anonymous)
2004-05-31 12:17 pm UTC (link)

I think that these networks are going to result in unexpected connections of people and ideas. In the old days, scientists would meet at a conference and discover that each one had a clue to the solution of a problem that, together, they were able to solve. Being connected through cyberspace dramatically increases the probability of new solutions being found.

But there also arises the problem of info overload, with too many emails and too many websites. Plus, there are far more idiots than geniuses to connect to, and a difficulty in filtering out the idiots. Smarter search engines with AI will help.

On the whole, smart people will be clever about using these tools and will, I think, solve problems faster than they are created.

Good luck with your new blog. I hope it attracts more geniuses than idiots.

TomSpace

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Collaborationware; conferences; idiots; optimism

magicdragon2
2004-05-31 12:57 pm UTC (link)

Dear TomSpace,

Good analysis! I was excited at the recent ICCS2004 (5th International Conference on Complex Systems, Boston, May 2004) to see people discovering that they were working on closely related topics, and planning to collaborate. I suggested to the Con chairman that he encourage these meetings to take place before the con, web-based. "Oh no," he said. "That's why people should physically come to the convference."

I agree with you that "collaborationware" will dramatically expand human power to solve significant problems.

I also agree with the density of idiots, and that's what the Scientific method helps to mitigate, and the web may help more... unless we are deluged with data and can't filter through to the knowledge.

As a techno-optimist, I also agree with you that we are more likely than not be able to solve the meta-problems faster than they prolifierate.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

We don't know what we don't know

magicdragon2
2004-06-01 12:11 am UTC (link)

"Remember in Diner," she said, "when Mickey Rourke says to Kevin Bacon, 'You get the feeling there's something going on we don't know about?'"

I held up an empty hand, imitating Kevin Bacon.

"And that doesn't even count the stuff we don't know we don't know yet."

--Discover, October 1998

This reminds me of the special issue of "Nature" on the subject: "The Frontiers of Ignorance." That is, can we know something about the size or shape of what it is that we don't know? What if what we don't know is more than we think it is? What then, indeed?

It also reminds me of the "six degrees of kevin Bacon" and what we have yet to learn about social networks.

(Reply to this)

Asimov Numbers: a smaller list

magicdragon2
2004-06-01 08:22 am UTC (link)

I got your latest draft of the Asimov number paper. Very fun.

However, I continue to disagree with this statement:

"For Erdos numbers, the following restrictions are imposed... not normally included are joint editorships, intorductions to books written by others... for Asimov number, however, it is essential in include joint editorships, [and] introductions to books written by others ..."

Joint editorship is not allowable for an Erdos number, and shouldn't be for an Asimov number either, since coediting is not a real collaboration in any meaningful sense.

This is especially true since "collaboration" with Martin H. Greenberg
at the moment merely means that one is editing a book that is published through Greenberg's Tekno Books factory-- I'm not sure how many thousand books Greenberg has "edited", but it is a very large number.

[http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Martin_H_Greenberg.htm says
"over a thousand anthologies". The ISFDB bibliography for Greenberg includes the word "with" 343 times and the word and" 258 times, while the bibliography for Martin Harry Greenberg another 54 and 55, but it's not terribly up to date, and only includes SF anthologies-- 2/3 of his collaborative anthologies are not SF].

Likewise, an introduction to books written by somebody else is not
collaborating.

Further, in some places you seem to imply that appearing in a book
edited (or coedited) by Asimov makes a link. No, that's silly. Among other things, if you make that a link criterion, then pretty much everybody in the science fiction world has an Asimov number of no less than two, since every time he published stories in magazines and anthologies, everybody else in that issue is linked to
him by the editor. Heck, I've been reprinted in anthologies that
Asimov wrote the introduction to.

Third, I think I wouldn't include posthumous "collaboration" that
consists of writing stories set in Asimov's universe. I can't call that collaboration. I would also exclude, for example, "Isaac Asimov's Robot City" novels, written by e.g., William F. Wu, unless Asimov is listed as a co-author, and not just abrand name. Likewise, the brand "Isaac Asimov presents" doesn't mean Asimov collaborated on it. It merely means Asimov's name sells books.

In short, I'm accusing you of working too hard to invent ways of giving people Asimov numbers of one. The interesting part about networks isn't the links of order one, it's the links that travel through many paths. Stretching the definitions to give many people Asimov numbers of one primarily seves to make the job easier on you, since you have just one search term (Asimov), and don'thave to track down many search terms. But it means you're focussing on the
least importent aspect of the network.

(Reply to this)

Asimov Numbers: a smaller list, part 2

magicdragon2
2004-06-01 08:23 am UTC (link)

... [contiued from previous posting. Seems to be a 4200 word limit per post, or something like that] ...

Finally, a comment, you never explicitly state how Asimov numbers are
defined.

I presume it's this way:

Asimov number = 0: you are Isaac Asimov
Asimov number = 1: you're collaborated with Isaac Asimov
Asimov number = 2: you're collaborated with a collaborator of Isaac
Asimov.

However, that doesn't square with your "Asimov0" "Asimov1" listings.

By my counting, leaving out co-editing, within the science fiction
field there are 10 people with "Asimov number" = 1 (i.e., collaborated directly with Asimov):

Robert Silverberg
Janet Asimov aka J. O. Jepson
Frederik Pohl, aka James MacCreigh
Robert Sheckley
Murray Leinster
Poul Anderson
Jeffrey S. Hudson
Larry Niven
Harrison Roth
Harlan Ellison

(Nonfiction and movie/TV scripts will expand this a bit.)

That's a reasonable number-- some of these collaborated a lot, but if
the average also collaborated with ten people, and if there's not much
overlap, then this will make Asimov number=2 something like a hundred people, probably small enough to find them all, but too many to search out another level of the network exhaustively.

For example, in addition to Asimov, according to isfdb Pohl collaborated with:

Jack Williamson,
C. M. Kornbluth,
Lester del Rey,
Louise O'Flaherty,
Thomas T. Thomas,
Henry Dockweiller,
Robert A. W. Lowndes,
Judith Merril,
William Morrison,
Elizabeth Ann Hull,
Col. Walter Lasly,
Donald Stacy, and
Carol Pohl

(again, I don't count co-editorship as a collaboration). That's 13
collaborators, with no overlap with Asimov number = 1 people.

Might be amusing to track down a few links in more detail, for example, finding a connection to somebody with a known finite Erdos number. (I moused around a little trying to find one, but didn't find an obvious route). (the ISFDB database tends to be a little misleading; it sometimes lists a book by X with an introduction by Y as "with".)

The sf collaborators list

See http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Isaac_Asimov

information on stories at:

www.cs.colorado.edu/~main/asimov2.html

* Nightfall (1990) with Robert Silverberg
* Child of Time (1991), aka The Ugly Little Boy, with Robert
Silverberg
* Norby (series, 1983ff) with Janet Asimov
* How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort (1987) with Janet
* Our Angry Earth (1991) with Frederik Pohl
* The Little Man on the Subway (1950) [with Frederik Pohl writing as
James MacCreigh]
* Legal Rites (1950) [as James MacCreigh] with Frederik Pohl
* The Covenant - Part One through 4 (Fantastic Science fiction, 1960) with Robert Sheckley and Murray Leinster and Robert Bloch and Poul Anderson
* Half-Baked Publisher's Delight (1974) with Jeffrey S. Hudson
*On the Marching Morons (1981) with Larry Niven
*Left to Right, and Beyond (1987) with Harrison Roth
*I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay (1995) with Harlan Ellison

One credit that's listed which I'm not sure about:
Essays/Articles "Replies" Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson and Mack
Reynolds and Ray Bradbury, in F&SF 1965 (I think that this is replies to letters, and not a collaboration).

--
Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Asimov Numbers... list

magicdragon2
2004-06-01 10:45 am UTC (link)

[posted by magicdragon2 from email to blogger]

Hi Geoff and Jonathan,

I agree with Geoff that the interesting thing is the connectivity, and for that it's important to not define the connections to broadly. The reason Paul Erdos was chosen as person 0 was because, of the active graph theorists in 1967, he was by far the one with the largest number of collaborators. It turned out he was also close to the center of the collaboration graph, so this really didn't matter. (Remember Erdos has eccentricity 15, and the smallest eccentricity is 14. This behavior doesn't really change much as one adds other sorts of fields to the graph).

My guess is the smallest eccentricity for the English-Language SF writers collaboration graph, defined strictly by "collaboration with another person on a work of science fiction," is probably less than 10, but there may be as many as 40% isolated nodes. The connected part of the graph has, probably, two or three thousand nodes. Restricting to cut out screenplays probably doesn't change much.

Isaac Asimov has a low eccentricity but probably not the lowest. He's reasonable for the first cut, though.

Two questions:

How do things change if Pseudonyms are counted as separate
vertices? This is not too much of an issue for the Erdos graph
although many people use the same name recorded slightly different ways.

And how *do* we deal with Kilgore Trout?

-- George H., Ph.D.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

you're a mathematician when...

magicdragon2
2004-06-01 11:51 am UTC (link)

You may have seen these already on the 'net, but for the sake of humor:

You know you're a mathematician when...

- you tear out the answers in the back of the book
- you wonder how Descartes would have solved it
- before finding the answer, you first wonder whether the problem HAS a solution
- caught in a traffic gridlock, you work out how much this is costing per minute
- your favorite TV program begins to have a pattern
- you pay those bills with prime dates first
- politicians and economists seem partly right
- shapes stretch
- a car breakdown is "just the old chaotic attractor at work"
- the word "polar" triggers the thought "angle" rather than "cold"
- you dry the dishes before washing them to investigate reflexivity
- sometimes you back the car into the garage to see what it looks like
- other cultures appear to be parametric expressions for your own
- you correctly guess the gender of other people's unborn babies

(Reply to this)

"Small World" summary/links on Wikipedia
(Anonymous)
2004-06-01 01:52 pm UTC (link)

There's a good summary of the "Small World" phenomenon, with hotlinks, on Wikipedia:

Small World phenomenon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_phenomenon)

This also connects your inquiry with "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, as well as Erdos, Bacon, and stuff.

Also, the website at Cornell of

Professor Steven H. Strogatz (http://tam.cornell.edu/Strogatz.html)

is a good place to look, as he is one of the big names in small worlds. In that better than being a small name in big worlds?

-- mystery dude at Cornell

(Reply to this)

Bertrand Russell on abstract math
(Anonymous)
2004-06-01 06:43 pm UTC (link)

"Beyond the manipulation of symbols, there is a deeper difficulty of math: its essentially abstract nature."

"As Bertrand Russell said many decades ago, in a very abstract study, 'The subject matter that you are supposed to be thinking of is so exceedingly difficult and elusive that any person who has ever tried to think about it knows you do not think about it except perhaps once in six months for half a minute.' "

"'The rest of the time,' he said, 'you think about the symbols, because they are tangible.'"

Marc M. Groz
Stamford, Connecticut
The New York Times
Tuesday June 1, 2004
p.D3

(Reply to this)

(Anonymous)
2004-06-01 10:54 pm UTC (link)

The Proxmire story is The Return of William Proxmire by Larry Niven in the tribute collection - Requiem : and Tributes to the Grand Master (TOR) - The story goes Proxmire resents Mr. Heinlein's influence as writer.That is Proxmire gave Golden Fleece Awards to projects inspired by Mr. Heinlein's writing. Proxmire gets a time machine and goes back to inject Mr. Heinlein with antibiotics at the critical moment. This action is intended to keep Mr. Heinlein in the Navy and too busy to write. On return to the our day with a changed timeline Proxmire finds Mr. Heinlein to be Admiral Heinlein of the high navy - having even more influence as healthy Navy than as an invalid writer.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Robert A. Heinlein might have been Admiral...

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 08:06 am UTC (link)

This answers a question that I had asked on the Making Light blog:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Robert A. Heinlein's brother actually an Admiral? If so, would not RAH have risen to that rank as well, but for his medical situation? I'd like to imagine an alternate world where the two Admirals Heinlein fought for and won the U. S. Navy sending a man in space by, oh, let's say 1955 or so?

Was it not a fact that such an effort was killed in Roosevelt's or Truman's cabinet? Didn't we have a discussion touching on this some months back?

Relating this to Asimov Numbers:

"science fiction authors (including Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Robert Heinlein, Greg Benford, Dean Ing, Steve Barnes" attended the The Citizen's Advisory Council on National Space Policy was formed in 1980, met at the home of Larry Niven, "and prepared much of the Reagan Administration Transition Team policy papers on space." according to

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] ph.d.,>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: corrected link for above post... -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:28 am UTC

Visualizing the 4th Dimension

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 08:35 am UTC (link)

[this comment modified from one I'd put on the Making Light blog]

after the recent TV airing of well-loved classic and 1963 Newbery Medal winner, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, where characters visualize a Tessearct in order to "tesser", a reader asked about Tesseracts. My answer:

Tesseract: synonym for Hypercube. See:

Eric W. Weisstein. "Hypercube." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource.

Read, see pretty pictures, AND maneuver and rotate a simulated tesseract with the mouse. Watch the perspective shange it in fascinating way. Might give you an aesthetic/kinesthetic appreciation of hypercube/tesseract geometry!

Then click from there to:

Cross Polytope, Cube, Cube-Connected Cycle, Glome, Hamiltonian Graph, Hypercube Line Picking, Hypersphere, Orthotope, Parallelepiped, Polytope, Simplex, Tesseract and other pages at Eric W. Weisstein's MathWorld... IMHO the best Math Pages on the web.

"Polytope" is the multimdimensional generalization of polygon and polyhedron. It includes Tesseracts and other things.

If you google "Polytope Number" you'll find a page of mine that Google ranks #4 in the world, namely "Table of Polytope Numbers, Sorted, Through 1,000,000." This was inspired by Making Light's link to Erich Friedman's "What's Special About This Number?" Mine is longer, less colorful, and was darned hard work. I'm so happy to have met Erich through the Making Light blog!

See also:
Jonathan Vos Post's Math Page

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Visualizing the 4th Dimension

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 08:38 am UTC (link)

A reader on Making Light asked me how Visualizing the 4th Dimension was possible. I answered as follows:

Visualization of 4-dimensional objects is possible for some people. It is extraordinarily rare to be "born with it," if possible at all. It can be learned with varying degrees of difficulty depending on the age that you start, how good you are at 3-D to begin with, and how good you are at geometry and math in general.

One well-documented case is Alicia Boole Stott, niece of THAT Boole, who invented Boolean Logic. He gave her a set of colored blocks with instructions on what colors could go next to what others. It was a toy designed to get her visualizing 4-dimensional shapes. She proved to be VERY good at doing so, into adulthood. She could also go 5-D and 6-D to some extent.

There was a burst of approximately 1,000 publications about the 4th dimension in the late 1800s. This forever influenced all nonfiction AND science fiction.

One Swiss gentleman who could visualkize 4-D was Ludwig Schläfli [umlaut over the a]

Born: 15 Jan 1814 in Grasswil, Bern, Switzerland
Died: 20 March 1895 in Bern, Switzerland

See:

Schlafli page by St.Andrew's University Math History

"Ludwig Schläfli first studied theology, then turned to science. He worked for ten years as a school teacher in Thun. During this period he studied advanced mathematics in his spare time..."

He discovered something profoundly important. Let me summarize:

* there are an infinite number of regular polygons, like an equilateral triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon... where all edges are the same length and all angles identical.

* there are exactly 5 regular polyhedra, with all faces the same and all angles the same: Tetrahedraon (triangular pyramid), Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron. Everyone who plays Role Playing Games knows these now as dice shapes. They are called Platonic Solids.

* Schläfli, home, alone, over a decade, discovered that there are exactly SIX 4-D equivalents to Platonic Solids, namely the Pentatope (4-D Simplex), TESSERACT (a.k.a. hypercube, a.k.a. 4-D measure polytope), hyperoctahedron, hyperdeodecahedron, hypericosahedron, and one with no equivalent in any other dimension, the 24-cell.

* in all higher dimension, there are only 3: the equivalent of terahedron, cube, and octahedron.

His work was published, but ignored, in part, because so few could visualize. Alicia Boole Stott confirmed his work: she could "see" it was true.

When I was a child, I learned to visualize 4-D objects, in a hazy way. Later I became a mathematician, and now a part-time professor of math. Strangely, the visualization partially returned to me this year (age 53). So I have written 24 math papers for scholarly publication in the past 5 months, about half devoted to 4-D and higher dimension shapes.

My son is mad at me for never being able to find out the details of the colored blocks, and wishes he could visualize 4-D. There's a famous science fiction story about a toy that teaches children to visualize 4-D, and they use to to sort of Tesser away. Somebody else on this blog will tell you more, I bet.

One of the papers I co-presented 2 days ago in Quincy, Massachusetts, was on some multidimensional stuff by John Forbes Nash. You know, the subject of "A Beautiful Mind." His dissertation was sonlyt 28 pages long. It was about mult-D gemonetry, but changed Economics forever.

"The King of geometers" H.S.M. Coxeter just dies early this year. His book "Regular Polytopes" [a Dover paperback] helped me enormnously as a child. The photos and illustrations were beautiful. Now, much of those 2-D images of 3-D projections of 4-D objects are available on the web. I'd start at mathworld.com, if I were you. In theor search box, type "pentatope" or "hypercube" and manipulate 4-D objects with your mouse.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Visualizing the 4th Dimension -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:39 am UTC

Re: Visualizing the 4th Dimension -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 09:26 am UTC

Re: Visualizing the 4th Dimension -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 09:31 am UTC

Re: Visualizing the 4th Dimension -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 09:39 am UTC

Beyond Visualization

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 09:36 am UTC (link)

BEYOND VISUALIZATION.... Below, per our thread on visualizing the 4th dimension, is an excerpt from

When Even Mathematicians Don't Understand the Math
By SUSAN KRUGLINSKI
May 25, 2004
The New York Times

To most of us, smudgy white mathematical scrawls covering a blackboard epitomize incomprehensibility.

The odd symbols and scattered numerals look like a strange language, and yet to read them, neurologists tell us, we would have to use parts of our brains that have nothing to do with what we normally think of as reading and writing.

...

"It is a bit like trying to explain football to people who not only have no understanding of the word 'ball,' but are also rather hazy about the concept of the game, let alone the prestige attached to winning the Super Bowl," wrote Dr. Ian Stewart, professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick in England, in an email message.

Asked if there exist mathematical concepts that defy explanation to a popular audience, Dr. Stewart, author of "Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So" replied: "Oh, yes - possibly most of them. I have never even dared to try to explain noncommutative geometry or the cohomology of sheaves, even though both are at least as important as, say, chaos theory or fractals." ...

The Hodge conjecture deals not only with cohomology classes, a complicated group construct, but involves algebraic varieties, which Dr. Devlin describes as generalizations of geometric figures that really do not have any shape at all. "Those equations represent things that not only can we not visualize, we can't even imagine being able to visualize them," he said. "They are beyond visualization." This difficulty points to a math truism that ultimately framed his entire project.

...

In fact, it is difficult to explain what math is, let alone what it says. Math may be seen as the vigorous structure supporting the physical world or as a human idea in development. Some mathematicians say it is not in the same category as biology, astronomy or geology. While those fields have empirical systems of experimentation and discovery, some might say mathematicians rely on something more intuitive.

"It isn't science," said Dr. John L. Casti, the author of "Five Golden Rules: Great Theories of 20th-Century Mathematics and Why They Matter." "Mathematics is an intellectual activity - at a linguistic level, you might say - whose output is very useful in the natural sciences. I think the criteria that mathematicians use for what constitutes good versus bad mathematics is much more close to that of a poet or a sculptor or a musician than it is to a chemist."

...

"Our brains evolved so that we could survive out there in the jungle," he said. "Why in the world should a brain develop for the purpose of being at all good at grasping the true underlying nature of reality?"

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Beyond Visualization
(Anonymous)
2004-06-02 06:00 pm UTC (link)

Mathematics is a discipline that has an essential niche in modern society. From the early days of civilization where the plotting of fields for taxation required geometry to the modern international interconnection of computers, mathematics has been essential.

People also constantly bet their lives on the accuracy of mathematical models. When we climb into an airplane, we are entrusting our lives to the accuracy of the mathematical models used to design that plane. And yet hardly a day goes by in the life of this reviewer without someone commenting in some way on the limited worth of mathematics.

A combination of fear, insecurity and uncertainly lead to common misconceptions concerning the value of mathematics. All mathematicians have a professional duty to counter these problems any way they can. In doing this, we are not just engaging in activities to boost our job security, but in every real sense helping to insure the survival of civilization as we know it.

In this book, Casti chooses five of the most significant modern developments in mathematics and gives detailed explanations as to why they make a difference in our lives. The topics are:

1. The Maximum Theorem of Game Theory.
2. The Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem of Topology.
3. Morse's Theorem of Singularity Theory.
4. The Halting Problem of Computer Science.
5. The Simplex Method of Optimization Theory.

Targeted at the general reader, formulas and theorems are kept to a minimum. Applications, some literally life and death, are used to emphasize the value of these concepts. As someone who experienced the apparent irrationality of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, it is comforting to see it reduced to a simple "game" matrix.
With this volume, Casti has done more than his share of the professional duty of mathematicians. It is one more brick to be used in the construction of a mathematics that is cherished by all people.

Reviewer: Charles Ashbacher (see more about me) from Hiawatha, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com)

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted on Amazon.com with permission.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Erdos, football, Inuit, "4-D community"

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 09:44 am UTC (link)

Bringing this back around to Erdos Numbers and Asimov Numbers...

Paula Helm Murray asked me how it felt to reach the limits of one's math ability in school, and gave an example from her past. She suggested that the last class made sense at first, but soon became as hard to understand as if the teacher were speaking in Inuit, or in football jargon if you don't know the rules of football.

My reply:

Your friends might know (I don't remember) but there was once a professional American football player with a PhD in mathematics. And now there is an MIT graduate in Major League Baseball. Neither (so far as I know) Inuit.

John Forbes Nash tackled one unsolved math and physics problem after another, wrote a 28 page dissertation that changed Economics forever, and then went nuts. Or was it the other way around?

I thought I'd hit the wall when I was taking entirely graduate courses, while an undergraduate, and nearly helpless in Algebraic Number Theory. But I did go on to Category Theory in grad school, and there were certain concepts that the professor could not, in an entire semester, get me to comprehend. That's why I'm so surprised to suddenly be learning math now that scared me back then.

I'm still thinking about the story idea that the "4-D community" is hiding something from the rest of the world. But what? and Why?

I think it should end with a sentence such as:

"Who wants to keep it a secret?" he asked, his blue-gray eyes narrowing. "Not whom ... WHAT!"

At this Complex Systems conference [5th International Conference on Complex Systems, Boston, May 2004], some were initially dubious about my credentials.

"You say that you're a part time adjunct professor of math at some funny little private college in Burbank that I never heard of, eh? SO, if you're a Mathematician, What is your Erdos Number?

"Five," I said. "I coauthored with Richard Feynman, and he coauthored with Murray Gell-Mann, and he..."

"Okay," he said, "You win. You're a mathematician."

Okay, class, everybody know what an Erdos Number is? That's how we started this blog!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Erdos, football, Inuit, "4-D community" remotesensing 2004-06-02 07:34 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, class, everybody know what an Erdos Number is? That's how we started this blog! Mine's currently 16.... but I may have a chance to get involved in a research project that could lower it to 2. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Erdos, football, Inuit, "4-D community" -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 08:55 pm UTC

How do you end up in Math? Also: George Bush, MBA

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 09:49 am UTC (link)

Someone asked me: "Okay, so you're arguably a Mathematician. How did you end up that way?"

I started as a Physics major at Caltech, switched to Astronomy, dropped out when my mother was dying, came back and restarted my Sophomore year, asking "which degree has the fewest required courses?"

That was Math, so I converged asymptotically towards a B.S. in Math. But someone noticed that so many of my electives were English Lit (and you all like to read, too!) that if I took a few more English courses, I could get a degree in that, too. So I got a double B.S. from Caltech in Math and English Lit. Then M.S. at UMass/Amherst in Computer and Information Science. BUT -- technically, I went to UMass because I was offered a joint fellowship in Computers and Linguistics. But when I got there, it turned out that Linguistics never knew that Computers had made me that offer. I'd taken Psycholinguistics at Caltech, and Computational Linguistics, and Chomskian Syntax, and stuff. So my M.S. was Cybernetics and A.I., and I was closing in on an MFA in Poetry, too, before my Ph.D. (ABD) bizarre situation shoved me out of the academic world until a random recent reentry at the professorial level, starting in Astronomy, of all things. Not counting the two MBA dissertations I wrote for Fortune 100 executives, for cash under the table. Got them both MBAs with Honors from top schools...

And you can see how useful an MBA is by examining the economic performance of the United States of America after George W. Bush, MBA, became President...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: How do you end up in Math? Also: George Bush, MBA shadowyfigure 2004-07-08 12:49 am UTC (link)
	I think that econimics is something that comes natural like all subjects and a degree is meaningless as to understanding and talent. I understand economics better than math. I don't really think a good economy or good economy is something to be claimed either. At least not by one person. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: How do you end up in Math? Also: George Bush, MBA -

magicdragon2, 2004-07-08 08:15 am UTC

shivedheart
2004-06-02 12:13 pm UTC (link)

How wonderful to see an intelligent mind come to LJ, but sadly, it will attract just as many "dolts" with narrow mind and even narrower opinions. They will fill up your space with stupid remarks and generally be a hassle, but there are many wonderful people!

I for one look forward to seeing more posts from you in the future, which is why I am adding you to my list!

Kelly

(Reply to this) (Thread)

dolts versus intelligents

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 03:46 pm UTC (link)

Most people are wonderful. Some people are dolts. Some people are intelligent. The problem with telling who's who is that there are many different kinds of intelligence (i.e. abstract, visual, kinesthetic, emotional, verbal, numerical...) and many different kinds of doltishness (styles of stupidity and of ignorance, one class of which is curable, and one is not).

I hold that it is best to give others the benefit of the doubt, and turn the other cheek at least once.

I've been wrong -- even very wrong -- in the past about this. Albert Einstein looked rather dim at first, they say.

My mother used to say of the apparently dim: "for all you know, they lead rich interior lives."

She was so right!

Thank you for making me feel at home.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: dolts versus intelligents -

magicdragon2, 2004-06-02 04:18 pm UTC

Re: dolts versus intelligents - (Anonymous), 2004-06-02 04:20 pm UTC

Re: dolts versus intelligents -

shadowyfigure, 2004-07-08 12:52 am UTC

Re: dolts versus intelligents -

magicdragon2, 2004-07-08 08:31 am UTC

Re: dolts versus intelligents -

shadowyfigure, 2004-08-03 11:32 am UTC

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 06:25 pm UTC (link)

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" may have started as a literary concept, but are actually very important to the future relationships between people and computers.

I've recently re-read, and highly recommend:

Asimov's Laws of Robotics
Implications for Information Technology
by
Roger Clarke

Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Professor, Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, University of N.S.W.

Visiting Professor, E-Commerce Programme, University of Hong Kong

Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University

Version of September 1994

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 1997

Published in two parts, in IEEE Computer 26,12 (December 1993) pp.53-61 and 27,1 (January 1994), pp.57-66

(Reply to this)

"Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenue"

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 06:30 pm UTC (link)

Does the following give Sir Arthur C. Clarke an Asimov Number of 1? What do YOU think?

The "Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenue", co-created while Asimov and Clarke were traveling down Park Avenue in New York City while sharing a taxi cab, states that Isaac Asimov was required to insist that Arthur C. Clarke was the "best science fiction writer in the world" (reserving second best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Isaac Asimov was the "best science writer in the world" (reserving second best for himself).

This is supported by statements from both writers, such as the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three, which reads:

"In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer".

(Reply to this)

Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's Law

magicdragon2
2004-06-02 06:36 pm UTC (link)

Another possible Asimov-Clarke link:

Clarke's Three Laws

1) "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

[Arthur C. Clarke. "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination". Profiles of the Future, 1962;
restated in: "Technology and the Future". Report on Planet Three. 1972

Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's Law:

"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right."

[Isaac Asimov, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Feb 1977]

2) "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

[Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future", Report on Planet Three, 1972]

3) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future". Report on Planet Three, 1972]

Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law:

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."

[Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear, 1997]

"Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature."

[Rich Kulawiec]

(Reply to this)

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