Comments on: Science of TRON

By: Supersized Starlinks

Supersized Starlinks — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:39:33 +0000

[...] The science of Tron. Really? [...]

By: Disney, la Ciencia y Tron - laisladelaastronomia.com

Disney, la Ciencia y Tron - laisladelaastronomia.com — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:27:45 +0000

[...] de los consultados fue el popular físico Sean Carrol, de Cosmic Variance, tal como lo cuenta él en su blog y en el de la página de Intercambio de Ciencia y Entretenimiento. Como cuenta Carrol, la consulta [...]

By: TRON: legacy, ovvero del Nerdvana « Oggi Scienza

TRON: legacy, ovvero del Nerdvana « Oggi Scienza — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:34:18 +0000

[...] Sul suo blog Sean Carroll ridimensiona un po’ l’entusiasmo di Kosinski (lamentandosi anche di essere stato convocato dopo la prima bozza di sceneggiatura…): non è un film di fantascienza “dura” e se si è insegnanti, ci si scordi di farlo vedere ai ragazzi per avvicinarli alla scienza, ma non è nemmeno del tutto fantasy. Un film come TRON non costringe di certo a pensare contro propria volontà: ci si può tranquillamente rilassare, spegnere il cervello e divertirsi. Ma se a pensare siamo già abituati, il piatto è ricco. [...]

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 19:07:40 +0000

Hmm.
I think they revoked my image posting ability

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 19:00:58 +0000

By: looking for science in all the wrong places » weird things

looking for science in all the wrong places » weird things — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:34:25 +0000

[...] ordinarily tedious process of writing code seem somehow exotic and exciting. But then I came across an odd post from Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance, saying that there was no real science in Tron, for which he was a science [...]

By: shiva

shiva — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:26:26 +0000

I am a fan of the original TRON and am looking forward to the new edition. Thanks for the hard work Sean!

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 07:40:22 +0000

@#15 psmith: Ah, I see. My presumption sort of being that a sufficiently perfect simulation of a brain will yield a mind, but of course we have no way of knowing this. Still, it seems reasonable (to me) to assume that consciousness is an emergent property of a working brain. The alternative sounds rather spiritual-ish to me, and while I have no problem with this in principle (in fact, that would be a wonderful discovery), it seems that we humans have a habit of relegating something we can’t understand or explain to the realm of the supernatural. Then we find out it has a natural explanation, but we go ahead and put the next thing we don’t understand in the supernatural box anyway (I’m thinking comets, lightning, and sleep paralysis, for example, in roughly that order).
I’m not saying that that’s what you’re doing, but the impulse is understandable. The whole idea of mind-uploading still gives me the heebie-jeebies, much as the geek part of me would love to see that

By: psmith

psmith — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:07:09 +0000

@14, “there’s some principle preventing the copying of a working brain?”
Er, no, there’s some principle preventing the copying of a working mind, remembering always the spirit of light hearted fantasy that characterises the post and comments.

But there is a serious intent behind my fantasy. People in the physical sciences find it difficult to accept that the mind can be more than the brain, understandably, because (so far) it cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory setting. But in the computer world we routinely take an abstract creation (the program we have created) and marry it to a physical thing (the computer) to create a unique working entity which is more than the computer. I know that is an extremely crude analogy but it is at least suggestive.

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:46:15 +0000

@#11 réalta fuar: Certainly it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, particularly the original one. My (2 year old) cell phone is several orders of magnitude more powerful then the computer that was used to create graphics for the film (a modified PDP-10 mainframe). Its several hundred kilobits of magnetic core memory took up enough space to house half a dozen refrigerators, at least

@#13 psmith: Fascinating. So you’re saying that there’s some principle preventing the copying of a working brain? That in order to be “uploaded” that your body would cease to be conscious?