This is quite controversial, mavericky science because it's very hard to test -

If it's not testable, then by definition it is not science.

hard to test != untestable

I oppose the death penalty in practice. I also support the idea of the death penalty, in theory.

Hmmm. Given your nickname I thought you'd be more willing to smite the dragons.

There isn't. Our bodies are machines, no more no less, and ultimately science will solve every riddle they pose.

Great. And how many complex machines do you know of that are able to run indefinitely without breaking down?

Also, I love how you present your wild speculations as obvious inevitabilities.

Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.

Let's say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don't worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you're the one who shot him.

He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs - you know the type. And you're chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you're pretty sure he's about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face.

On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax.

The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade.

Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He's also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it's wearing that unique expression of "you're the man who killed me last winter" resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.

You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, "That's the same ax that beheaded me!"

IS HE RIGHT?

-John Dies At The End

Having technical skills doesn't necessarily mean that someone is smart, especially when it comes naturally to them.

Sure it does. If someone's a natural mathematician (like Euler or Ramanujan for instance) or physicist or (to a lesser extent) programmer then they are naturally smart. These topics engage the intellect. Being a natural people-person is an innate skill that does not require any proper definition of intelligence, and they don't need to appeal to the intellect much at all to be successful at it.

That isn't to say that being good with people isn't an important skill; it is vitally important. But being good at it does not always require or engage smarts.

Meh. Having people-person skills doesn't necessarily mean that someone is smart, especially when it comes naturally to them. Someone without natural people skills and are able to apply their intellect to gain them are very intelligent, however. But a lot of people out there don't have to think about it much. Must be nice.

- "cool and what made the universe forcibly logical? all you did so far is to prove the universe can't help but follow the same logic that you derived from the behavior of the universe itself."

Well logic is a property of the universe only insofar as there are parts of the universe (like us) who use logic to try and understand the thing. Logic is something you have to obey in order to describe the universe because saying something illogical is equivalent to making a meaningless statement.

You seem upset. You should eat some pie.

Yeah, not so much a "hope" for me though. When I read the title I just really doubted they meant to say what it sounded like they were saying. And sure enough, they didn't.

There very likely isn't any computational model that can solve any problems that some TM equivalent method can't. It's just a matter of doing them faster.

In your first reply you mentioned that computers are based on binary logic - on or off. I thought you were getting at quantum computing where you can have a combination of the two.

From the article - "One is the discovery of a material that allows electrons to switch states really quickly that could improve magnetic random access memory speeds by a factor of thousand." So, yeah, that's essentially what I said.

If the difference is that a single electron can store on or more bits then this is definitely equivalent to a Turing Machine.The only thing a Turing Machine specifies for storage is a sequence of symbols. How you create the symbols, whether by on/off bits or an electron that can represent multiple bits, is completely irrelevant as to whether or not is is the equivalent of a TM.

Ack! Should have read more carefully before posting. Not "pointless drudgery" - there's definitely a point to it. More like tedious drudgery to support the interesting bits.

They're not. But there seem to be a whole bunch of people who like to turn to science or technology for some type of transcendent experience or something.

"Oh almighty computer, how powerful you are! Surely your intellect will excel beyond us puny humans soon. I am so unworthy. *Grovel*"

It's just a desire to have something to take the place of what the faithful crowd use some omnipotent god for. All over a tool that can do pointless drudgery work quickly and efficiently so that us humans can spend our time working on interesting stuff. Meh.

Hmmm, I'm not so sure. Unless I'm missing something in the article the proposal does not offer anything new toward quantum computing. The advantages listed are the ability to switch electron states very quickly to improve RAM speeds and being able to read the spin of electrons - both without requiring excessive power to drive it.

I'm not sure how quantum computers compare to TMs. After some quick browsing it looks like they don't have the computational speed potential of the (only theoretical) non-deterministic Turing Machine.

I admit you got me at first. I guess I was never a fan of people determined to turn science and technology into religions. Those topics are already cool enough as they are. Plus there are enough faith-based alternatives for that kind of thing if it feels like it's something you need in your life.

When I first read the headline I thought the physicist was offering a computational model alternative to the Turing Machine. It sounds like he's offering a new type of computer, not computing.