Kastalia Knowledge Management System · Glasperlenspiel template · knot 2663
Short History of the Learning Machine
Ancestors (3 superordinated paths)
Descendants (at least 60 branches originate here)
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Short History of the Learning Machine
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Between Archetypes & Myths: Machine as a Projection of the Human Self
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Between Archetypes & Myths
Machine as a projection of the human selfFaciamus machinam ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram.Let us make the machine in our image and likeness. -
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What Is a Machine?
Before machines became motors, engines and computers, the word already meant something broader:an ingenious means by which something becomes possible. -
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The Divine Workshop
Greek mythology gives us an extraordinary laboratory of artificial beings.Athena represents intelligent making.Hephaestus represents the workshop in which artif -
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Machines in Our Image
Artificial beings are not merely tools.They become surfaces onto which humans project desire, identity and self-understanding. -
is_parent Machines at the Threshold
Some artificial beings do not imitate us primarily as workers or companions.They stand between inside and outside.They decide who may approach, enter or survive -
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Machine as Oracle
A machine can do more than move.It can contain knowledge unavailable to its operators.The mythical Argo gives us an extraordinary example. -
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The Word Becomes Agent
The Golem introduces another extraordinary structure:matter + symbolic information → agent -
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A Mythological Bestiary of Machines
Human — Can we manufacture ourselves?Servant — Can we delegate labor?Prosthesis — Can we extend ourselves?Lover — Can we manufacture intimacy?Protector — Can we -
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In Our Image
We first imagined machines as versions of ourselves.Then we built machines that extended parts of ourselves.Eventually we built machines capable of modifying th
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Alles ist Zahl!
Pythagoras, Latin numerals, Invention of Zero, Leibniz, Decimal / Binary / Hexadecimal Codes, int8 / fp16 / bf16 &c.-
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Pythagoras's Claim
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“All is number.” (πάντα αριθμός) — attributed to Pythagoras, 6th century BCE.For Pytha -
is_parent Why It Mattered ·
Here is the thread we will follow: a number can be written down in many different ways — and the way you write it changes what you can do with it.That was -
is_parent Counting Before Zero ·
Rome counted like this: I, V, X, L, C, D, M.No zero. No place value — the position of a symbol barely matters, only which symbols appear and in what combi -
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An Older Theorem
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Centuries before Pythagoras, the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra (India, c. 800 BCE) already states the same relationship between the sides of a right triangle.The mathe -
is_parent The Missing Symbol ·
Every numeral system so far shares the same gap: no symbol for nothing.Without a zero, there is no clean way to write a number as a position-dependent code &mda -
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The Invention of Zero
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Zero emerges independently more than once: among the Maya of Mesoamerica, and in India, where the mathematician Brahmagupta (7th century CE) is the first to giv -
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Zero Reaches Europe
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In 1202, Leonardo of Pisa — better known as Fibonacci — publishes Liber Abaci, introducing Hindu-Arabic numerals (zero included) to European merchan -
is_parent Positional Notation ·
Here is the real leap: the same ten symbols, re-used, mean something different depending on where they sit.106 and 160 use identical digits. Position alone carr -
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Leibniz's Dream
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz takes positional notation somewhere further: in 1703, he formally describes arithmetic in base 2 — binary.He was reportedly deli↝ is_linked → G.W.Leibniz (*AD1646 - † AD1716) ↝ is_linked → The Man in the High Castle (1962) ↝ is_linked → Gottfried W. Leibniz (c. 1646 c. 1716) ↝ is_linked → ↝ is_linked → Stepped reckoner ↝ is_linked → Leibniz wheel ↝ is_linked → Baroquepunk, Steampunk & co. ↜ is_linked ← Interlude: Pascal, Leibniz, and the Baro -
is_parent Why Base Two? ·
Binary is just another positional system — base 2 instead of base 10. Only two symbols: 0 and 1.That turns out to be the whole point. Building a reliable -
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From Numbers to Logic
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George Boole (1854) notices that 0 and 1 can represent more than quantity — they can represent truth: false and true.Boolean algebra — AND, OR, NOT -
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Bits, Bytes, and Beyond
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One binary digit is a bit. Group eight of them and you get a byte — 256 possible values.Hexadecimal (base 16) exists purely as a convenience: one hex digi -
is_parent A New Question ·
So far: how a culture chooses to write a number. Now: how a machine chooses to store one — and why, in a modern AI system, that choice is no longer a hist -
is_parent Integers vs Floats ·
Integer formats store whole numbers exactly. int8: one byte, 256 distinct values — typically -128 to 127.Floating-point formats trade some of that exactne -
is_parent f16 vs bf16 ·
Both fp16 and bf16 use 16 bits total — half the size of ordinary fp32 — but split those bits differently.fp16 (IEEE half precision): 1 sign + 5 expo -
is_parent Why int8 for Inference ·
Models are usually trained in fp16, bf16, or fp32 — the precision that stability during training needs.Once trained, they are often quantized down to int8 -
is_parent Case Study: NVIDIA Jetson Orin ·
Take a real, current piece of edge-AI hardware: NVIDIA's Jetson AGX Orin (64GB module).NVIDIA's own published figure: up to 275 TOPS (trillion operations per se -
is_parent Closing: Same Question, New Stakes ·
Pythagoras claimed number was the hidden structure of reality.Three thousand years later, the question "what exactly is this number, and how many bits does it c
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is_parent Cogs, Steam, Algorithm 🔊
In which the reader is asked, quite simply, What is an Algorithm? — and finds the answer rather older, and rather stranger, than expected.Being an account-
is_parent Question of the Day ·
Question of the day: What is an algorithm?You already use the word casually — "the algorithm" recommends your videos, "the algorithm" decides your feed. B -
is_parent First Thoughts ·
Turn to the person next to you. Two minutes, no googling.Together, try to answer: what is an algorithm? Give one example each, if you can.Don't worry about bein -
is_parent Watch: Early Computing ·
Before the word, there were the machines. Crash Course Computer Science #1: Early Computing — from the abacus to Herman Hollerith's punch cards. -
is_parent What Did You Notice? ·
What surprised you?Notice how many of these — the abacus, Pascal's calculator, the Jacquard loom, Babbage's engines — are not computers in our sense -
is_parent From Cogs to Concept ·
Strip away the brass gears, the steam, the punch cards — what's left in each of those machines is the same abstract thing: a precise, repeatable sequence -
is_parent A Working Definition ·
An algorithm is a finite, well-defined sequence of steps that transforms a given input into a desired output.Finite — it has to actually end, eventually.W -
is_parent An Everyday Algorithm ·
You run algorithms all the time without a computer in sight.A recipe: fixed steps, specific ingredients (input), a finished dish (output).Long division, tying y -
is_parent Older Than Computers ·
Euclid described an algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers around 300 BCE — still taught today, still called Euclid's algorithm. -
is_parent Second Thoughts ·
Back to your partner. Compare: how close was your first guess to the definition we just built together?This time, try to name an algorithm from your own daily l -
is_parent Where Does the Word Come From? ·
"Algorithm" doesn't come from Greek, like most technical vocabulary in mathematics. It comes from a name.Whose? -
is_parent Watch: Why Algorithms Are Called Algorithms ·
A short answer, in under three minutes — BBC Ideas: Why algorithms are called algorithms. -
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Al-Khwarizmi and the Birth of a Word
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Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a 9th-century Persian scholar working in Baghdad's House of Wisdom, wrote a treatise on systematic methods for solving equations -
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Interlude: Pascal, Leibniz, and the Baroque
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Rewind two centuries. Long before Babbage, long before steam, the same ancient appetite for mechanizing the mind was already stirring — in the Baroque.In -
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Closing: What's Next
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Today: a definition, a history, a name.Next week: Alan and his Enigma — the story of Alan Turing, his machine(s), and his test(s).We'll meet the Turing ma -
is_parent Steam and the Jacquard Loom ·
By the early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution had already proven something remarkable: steam and gearwork could replace human muscle at scale.Joseph-Marie Jacqu -
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Charles Babbage's Engines
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Charles Babbage (1791–1871) — mathematician, philosopher, mechanical engineer, and by most accounts a thoroughly restless Victorian gentleman.His Di -
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Ada Lovelace, the First Programmer
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Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), daughter of Lord Byron, was trained rigorously in mathematics from childhood — and became Babbag -
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One More Name: George Boole
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One more figure worth knowing, even briefly: George Boole (1815–1864), who in 1854 published The Laws of Thought — reducing logical reasoning itself
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is_parent Unplugged #0 ·
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Alan and his Enigma
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The story of Alan Matthison Turing, his machine(s) and his test(s) -
is_parent Claude, Marvin, John &c. ·
From information theory to Darmouth conference -
is_parent Machine Learning #0 🔒 ·
Features, Classifiers, Decision Trees, Random Forests, Training & Testing, -
is_parent The Latent Space 🔒 ·
N-dimensional Spaces, Semantic Spaces, Feature Spaces, Embeddings -
is_parent Unplugged #1 🔒 ·
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is_parent The Omega Point 🔒 ·
The Chrismas talk on Noosphere, Datasphere, Infosphere, Singularity, Novacene &c. -
is_parent Language models 🔒 ·
Large & Small Language Models -
is_parent Artificial Agents 🔒 ·
Agentic AI -
is_parent Central Problem of AI ethics 🔒 ·
Central Problem of Roboethics, Alignment -
is_parent Human-Machine Peer Learning 🔒 ·
Humans and machines can learn togetherMachines and humans can learn with each other
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