Epstein Secrets

have the advantage." Claude Shannon [Tribus & Mclrvine 1971]. I find the last quote very reassuring. In my own opinion, though less well known than Einstein, Von Neumann ranked close to Einstein in terms of genius. Like Einstein, he didn't merely bring in a single profound new idea; but seemed to change

st is in that of finance. The earliest work on random walks was that done by the mathematician Bachelier on stock prices. Bachelier's work predates Einstein's own random walk model of Brownian motion. For half a century Bachelier's work was largely forgotten. The use of random walks in finance was rekin

rapidly diminishing explanatory returns from increasingly explicit microfoundations. [Wright 2009] And a shorter one from Von Neumann, reported by Claude Shannon: "My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information', but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertaint

Newton was an extraordinary man. He discovered many of the physical principles we use today, and his view of the Universe reigned unchallenged until Einstein’s discovery of relativity. He was also, by many accounts, a nasty piece of work. Not only was he a famous academic, he also head of the Royal Mint. H

k. Who cares why? In 1964, John Bell, an Irish physicist working at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (“CERN’), devised a way to test Einstein’s hidden variable theory. He pointed out that if photons possess hidden variables and we randomly measure them with a detector set at three angles, w

tted is useless as it is, in effect, encrypted using a one-time pad. The only person in possession of a copy of this one-time pad is me: the sender. Claude Shannon proved a one-time pad is unbreakable during the Second World War. Yet the British succeeded in breaking it. How was this possible? The fatal weaknes

day” (as the title of a book by civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate puts it) and is in jeopardy of impris

is a science historian, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor and co- founder of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, and the author of Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré ’s Maps: Empires of Time. Neil Gershenfeld is a physicist and director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. He is the author of

series of dinners—an ongoing seminar about media, communications, art, music, and philosophy that focused on Cage’s interest in the ideas of Wiener, Claude Shannon, and Marshall McLuhan, all of whom had currency in the New York art circles in which I was then moving. In particular, Cage had picked up on McLuhan’

is a science historian, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor and co- founder of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, and the author of Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré ’s Maps: Empires of Time. Neil Gershenfeld is a physicist and director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. He is the author of

day” (as the title of a book by civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate puts it) and is in jeopardy of impris

series of dinners—an ongoing seminar about media, communications, art, music, and philosophy that focused on Cage’s interest in the ideas of Wiener, Claude Shannon, and Marshall McLuhan, all of whom had currency in the New York art circles in which I was then moving. In particular, Cage had picked up on McLuhan’

on to win Nobel Prizes for Physics in 1956 and 1968, respectively. There are many similar anecdotes: Apparently stupid people go on to great things. Einstein’s teacher famously stated he would never amount to anything and Sir John Gurdon’s school report said he was ‘too stupid’ for science. He went on to d

MIND OVER COMPUTER Computer versus Human “I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines.” Claude Shannon “The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.” Edgar Dijkstra HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015693 Kas

sed at the Institute of Advanced Mathematics in the USA on the Princeton University campus, next door to the Institute for Advanced Study that housed Einstein. Turing travelled to America in 1937 and completed his doctoral thesis at Princeton. He might have stayed, but Europe was heating up and war seemed i

t. Because each key is only used once you can't use any sort of statistical method to work out the message, making the one-time pad perfectly secure. Claude Shannon proved this in 1945 while working for Bell Corporation but, due to wartime secrecy, his proof was not published until 1948. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015906

d, refined, and learned by each of us. Like Napoleon looking at a battlfield and discovering how to spot the violent potential of industrial war. Or, Einstein reaching the deeper, invisible truths of physics as he left Newton behind: “There is no logical path to these laws,” he wrote later of the leaps that

But at the center it is dense, still, even quiet with the silently cranking algorithms of massively concentrated power. The computer science pioneer Claude Shannon saw information in 1949 as wild, uncertain, and pulsing with the instability of an entropic system. Yang. The machine architect Norbert Weiner, writi

is a science historian, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor and co- founder of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, and the author of Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time. In his second-best book, the great medieval mathematician al-Khwarizmi described the new place-based

arguments in Zhe Human Use of Human Beings seem closer to the 19th century than the 21st. In particular, although Wiener made reference throughout to Claude Shannon’s then-new work on information theory, he seems not to have fully embraced Shannon’s notion of information as consisting of irreducible, meaning-free

is a science historian, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor and co- founder of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, and the author of Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time. In his second-best book, the great medieval mathematician al-Khwarizmi described the new place-based

arguments in Zhe Human Use of Human Beings seem closer to the 19th century than the 21st. In particular, although Wiener made reference throughout to Claude Shannon’s then-new work on information theory, he seems not to have fully embraced Shannon’s notion of information as consisting of irreducible, meaning-free