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

ort of mathematics when they attempt to solve their problems: Economics remains perhaps the only area of applied mathematics that still believes in Laplace's dictum that, with an accurate enough model of the universe and accurate enough measurement today, the future course of the universe could be pred

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

take the idea of collecting information to its logical conclusion you could gather all the information in the Universe at a moment in time. In 1814, Laplace put this idea in an essay. He proposed an immensely powerful being observes the position and momentum of every particle in the Universe. Armed with a

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

d of acknowledging the centrality of knowledge to intelligence, the dystopian scenarios confuse an artificial general intelligence of the future with Laplace’s demon, the mythical being that knows the location and momentum of every particle in the universe and feeds them into equations for physical laws to

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

d of acknowledging the centrality of knowledge to intelligence, the dystopian scenarios confuse an artificial general intelligence of the future with Laplace’s demon, the mythical being that knows the location and momentum of every particle in the universe and feeds them into equations for physical laws to