Nobel Prize - Chemistry
The Nobel Prize of the Chemistry for the anicent times should be award to:
Stone Age Dude for "the discovery of fire"
...Do I really need to explain any further? I don't think I really need to justify this guy for winning this award. He hasn't even graduated from kindergarten, he could hardly speak, and in fact, he wasn't aware of what discoveries are all about. It wasn't for the money, it wasn't for fame or social status. It was all about survival and that's it.
Where did he get this idea from? What was he thinking??? Was he in a bad mood and was looking for methods of destruction? Obviously, we will never quite find out what actually happened on that particular day. I am assuming that it would be this caveman really getting into two big rocks, rubbing them together until sparks appeared. We can never imagine what life would be like if this caveman never rubbed the two big rocks together like this. I mean, cool people will not be able to light up their cigarettes, dodgy shop owners will need to resort to an alternative method to destroy their shop in order to claim insurance, Crown casino will need to design another way to waste their money instead of setting off balls of flames on an hourly basis etc.
On a more sensible note, fire is definitely something we can't live without. The caveman that made this achievement would have never realised how much of an influence he has on our world 750,000 years later . So next time you are spending time admiring the intelligence of Einstein, Newton or Pythagoras, spend a few seconds admiring this Stone Age guy as well. Put it this way, would Einstein be able to make this discovery? Or would Newton be able to make similar discoveries via rubbing two apples together viciously? This Stone Age guy might be primitive, but his intelligence should not be underestimated.
Once again, congratuations to the Stone Age guy for :the discovery of fire".
Nobel Prizes for Cavemen
Everyone (well, most people) knows that the Nobel prizes are awarded annually to the super high achievers for the past year, categorised in the areas of Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Economics, Literature and Peace. This sounds relativity straight-forward, until you look into the finer details on why the people won the awards.
Take a look at the 2008 winner of the Physics Nobel Prize. Three Japanese, Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa were awarded "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature". What does it all mean? More importantly, what significance do these things have on us, the normal human beings who don't have a PhD in Physics?
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to imply that these people don't deserve to win. I am sure they have put in 110% efforts into discovering whatever they have discovered. But have you ever thought, who would be the winners, had the Nobel prizes been around back when the cavemen were still around? There are just so many things that I can't imagine what we can do without. Therefore, I am going to award (on behalf of the human race) to the major achievers who were never recognised.
Over the next few blogs, I will be suggesting who the awards should go to.
Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Science fiction movies have always been fascinated by the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In a typical science fiction film, AI robots tend to get carried away with their intelligence and ruin the world. But in the real world, is this likely to happen???
Fair enough, AI today is quite advanced. It is capable to beating the world's best chess player. But it really depends on how you define intelligence. The computer was able to win against the best chess player because they calculate at astronomically quick speed; they can determine 100 moves in advance, the possibilities that could occur and mathematically determine which move to take to maximise the chance of winning. In another words, their intelligence is actually pre-programmed.
When AI tries to solve the non-mathematical problems, they tend to become somewhat unreliable. AI have been developed to do things such as recognising attractiveness in women, determining the emotional state of a person and carrying out a sensible conversation with a human being. But even if they are 90% reliable, what benefits do these AIs serve? Fair enough, it is 'exciting' to see these AIs in action, but I can't see these AIs being put into any practical use.
AI will only be as intelligent as the programmer who built it. If there is something that the programmer was not aware of, the AI will not be aware of it either. Just think about how complicated the human brains are. On the day you were born, you know nothing about the world. Gradually, by using your senses (look, hear, smell etc), you begin to interact with the world and learn how the world works. The most amazing thing is you learn to speak. How did we manage to learn to speak without knowing the language in the first place??? Just pick up an Egyptian book and try to read it, or listen to an Egyptian speak and try and understand what they mean. Humans learn how to learn, and this will be the biggest obstacles when building AI. How do we put this into a computer program, to learn without knowing anything in the first place? I am reluctant to say this is impossble, because you can't prove that this is impossible. But I am confident that this will not be possible for many generations to come.
Windows XP vs Vista
It has taken Microsoft 5 years to release a new version of Windows Operating System. Is it worth the wait?
At a glance, Vista looks visually appealing. With all settings turned on, it looks very Apple-like, with all those semi-transparent looks. When you start pressing buttons, that is when you realise that there are a lot of changes. You will find that Microsoft has decided to rearrange everything, making it difficult to find the common features that we have all been so used to.
If you are using an ageing computer with old hardware, you might be in strive, as the drivers may not be compatible with Vista. Speed could also be a problem, but yes, you can turn off all the fancy settings.
If you are purchasing a new computer, Vista is most likely to be the pre-installed operating system. If you have an existing computer and not very computer literate, then it would be best to wait for a little longer before making the upgrade, otherwise you could potentially be spending time re-learning how things work and investigating why certain hardware is not working.
