This article examines the cultural ways in which traditional Judaism understands the relationship between an individual and Divinity. The article shows that this understanding has deep gendered dimensions. Grounded in feminist critiques of theology, as well as in Jewish studies and cultural studies, the article shows that the conceptualization of God-person relationship, in both Orthodox and Kaballic Jewish streams, is based on a hierarchical division to three different spaces. These spaces are: Mitzvah, Grace, and Desire or Will. The Mitzvah is (...) perceived to be the highest space and is represented as 'manly'. The intermediate space-Grace-is represented as a 'good woman' or as 'mother'. This space is characterized by a sacred yearning, as well as by lack of stability and continuity, paralysis, and even death. The lowest space is the space of Desire and personal will, which is culturally represented by a child or a whore-woman. This space is characterized by an attitude of disregard, resistance and fear. The article demonstrates how this cultural division of Divinity in to three, contradicts the declared Jewish position that God/divinity is 'One, Sole and Unique', and points at the inherent need of genderless conceptualization of Divinity in Judaism. (shrink)

One defining feature of the Hindu religious worldviews is a belief in the impermanence of the body and its perception as a source of suffering due to a misguided attachment of the self to its corporeal manifestation. This view is expressed in several important traditions, including classical yoga, which perceives the physical body as an impediment to attaining liberation and irrelevant in the state of liberation.However, the perception of the physical body in liberation is going through ontological changes in early (...) medieval Haṭhayoga texts. The dichotomy between embodied and disembodied states of the body when one is liberated is the focus of this article. In several medieval yoga texts dating between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, the ontological immortal state of living liberation is more similar to physical death. Often the exact text holds both views of embodied and disembodied states simultaneously with no overt inconsistency. I argue that these tensions and contradictions can be explained in two ways: by looking at the assessed timeline of the texts and by reflecting on their sectarian and social origin. (shrink)

Drawing on feminist and queer critiques that see violence as constitutive of identities, this essay points to subject-positions whose construction is necessarily conditioned by exercising violence. Focusing on settler colonialism, I reverse the optics of the first set of critiques: rather than seeing the self as taking form through the injuries she suffers, I try to understand selves that are structurally constituted by causing injury to others. This analysis refuses the assumption that violence is in conflict with identity, and that, (...) therefore, the endurance of violence of liberal states/societies is dependent upon mechanisms of active blindness. I argue that this assumption, which is shared by many critiques of violence, fails to perceive that people can desire the violent arrangements supporting their communities. They therefore fail to address political settings wherein violence is an affirmative element of political identities. (shrink)

We argue that current constructive approaches to the special theory of relativity do not derive the geometrical Minkowski structure from the dynamics but rather assume it. We further argue that in current physics there can be no dynamical derivation of primitive geometrical notions such as length. By this we believe we continue an argument initiated by Einstein.

Looking at one site, the Israeli checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territory, this article seeks to understand the mechanisms by which violence can present itself as justifiable, even when it materializes within frames presumably set to annul it. We look at the checkpoints as a condensed microcosmos operating within two such frames. One is the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’, and the other is regulatory power, which in the Foucauldian framework presumably sidelines the violent form which sovereign power takes. We argue (...) that the checkpoints, which dissect the Palestinian occupied territories into dozens of enclaves and which are one of the most effective and destructive means of control within the current stage of occupation, can be seen as more than obstacles in the way of Palestinian movement; we suggest that they also function as corrective technologies that are meant to fail. It is with this failure that violence can appear as justified. In order to show the operation of this embedded failure, we examine one mechanism operating within the checkpoints: ‘the imaginary line’. The imaginary line is both a component within, and an emblem of a mode of control that constantly undoes itself in order to summon violence. Since it is never visibly marked in the physical space, the imaginary line is bound to be unintentionally crossed, thereby randomly rendering Palestinians as ‘transgressors’ of the rule and thus facilitating eruptions of violence by the soldiers stationed at the checkpoints. This article proposes an analysis of this hidden demarcation of space in order to question the different relations between subjects and power which it both assumes and constitutes. (shrink)

This essay traces the evocations of the Chinese practice of foot-binding in Western political thought. I examine the changing deployments of the image: as a contrast to European freedom or as a mirror reflecting its own limitations. The bound feet not merely illustrate a lack of freedom through an image of disabled mobility. They also situate freedom within global and gendered frameworks. Via a reading of the image and its contexts, we see that European freedom-as-movement emerged on the backdrop of (...) two imperial contrasts: images of nomadism, which are only marginally considered in this paper, and an assumed stagnation, that presumably prevailed in the East. Yet surprisingly, the image was often evoked to say something about Europe itself, rather than about its “others.” Therefore, it also reveals the corporeal dimensions of a concept of freedom that has underlaid a long liberal tradition. The crushed and squeezed feet of girls in China thus marked both a gendered and an imperial divide between those who can move freely, and therefore rule, and those who cannot rule because of their lack of mobility; yet at the same time, it undid this division by allowing the East and its stationariness to permeate Europe through a multiply foreign body: feminized, racially alien, and geographically distanced. (shrink)

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In _Movement and the Ordering of Freedom_, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the (...) lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions. (shrink)

A book on the notion of fundamental length, covering issues in the philosophy of math, metaphysics, and the history and the philosophy of modern physics, from classical electrodynamics to current theories of quantum gravity. Published (2014) in Cambridge University Press.

Combining physics, mathematics and computer science, quantum computing and its sister discipline of quantum information have developed in the past few decades from visionary ideas to two of the most fascinating areas of quantum theory. General interest and excitement in quantum computing was initially triggered by Peter Shor (1994) who showed how a quantum algorithm could exponentially “speed-up” classical computation and factor large numbers into primes far more efficiently than any (known) classical algorithm. Shor’s algorithm was soon followed by several (...) other algorithms that aimed to solve combinatorial and algebraic problems, and in the years since theoretical study of quantum systems serving as computational devices has achieved tremendous progress. Common belief has it that the implementation of Shor’s algorithm on a large scale quantum computer would have devastating consequences for current cryptography protocols which rely on the premise that all known classical worst-case algorithms for factoring take time exponential in the length of their input (see, e.g., Preskill 2005). Consequently, experimentalists around the world are engaged in attempts to tackle the technological difficulties that prevent the realisation of a large scale quantum computer. But regardless whether these technological problems can be overcome (Unruh 1995; Ekert and Jozsa 1996; Haroche and Raimond 1996), it is noteworthy that no proof exists yet for the general superiority of quantum computers over their classical counterparts. -/- The philosophical interest in quantum computing is manifold. From a social-historical perspective, quantum computing is a domain where experimentalists find themselves ahead of their fellow theorists. Indeed, quantum mysteries such as entanglement and nonlocality were historically considered a philosophical quibble, until physicists discovered that these mysteries might be harnessed to devise new efficient algorithms. But while the technology for harnessing the power of 50–100 qubits (the basic unit of information in the quantum computer) is now within reach (Preskill 2018), only a handful of quantum algorithms exist, and the question of whether these can truly outperform any conceivable classical alternative is still open. From a more philosophical perspective, advances in quantum computing may yield foundational benefits. For example, it may turn out that the technological capabilities that allow us to isolate quantum systems by shielding them from the effects of decoherence for a period of time long enough to manipulate them will also allow us to make progress in some fundamental problems in the foundations of quantum theory itself. Indeed, the development and the implementation of efficient quantum algorithms may help us understand better the border between classical and quantum physics (Cuffaro 2017, 2018a; cf. Pitowsky 1994, 100), and perhaps even illuminate fundamental concepts such as measurement and causality. Finally, the idea that abstract mathematical concepts such as computability and complexity may not only be translated into physics, but also re-written by physics bears directly on the autonomous character of computer science and the status of its theoretical entities—the so-called “computational kinds”. As such it is also relevant to the long-standing philosophical debate on the relationship between mathematics and the physical world. (shrink)

Recent suggestions to supply quantum mechanics (QM) with realistic foundations by reformulating it in light of quantum information theory (QIT) are examined and are found wanting by pointing to a basic conceptual problem that QIT itself ignores, namely, the measurement problem. Since one cannot ignore the measurement problem and at the same time pretend to be a realist, as they stand, the suggestions to reformulate QM in light of QIT are nothing but instrumentalism in disguise.

I discuss the philosophical implications that the rising new science of quantum computing may have on the philosophy of computer science. While quantum algorithms leave the notion of Turing-Computability intact, they may re-describe the abstract space of computational complexity theory hence militate against the autonomous character of some of the concepts and categories of computer science.

A remarkable theorem by Clifton, Bub and Halvorson (2003) (CBH) characterizes quantum theory in terms of information--theoretic principles. According to Bub (2004, 2005) the philosophical significance of the theorem is that quantum theory should be regarded as a ``principle'' theory about (quantum) information rather than a ``constructive'' theory about the dynamics of quantum systems. Here we criticize Bub's principle approach arguing that if the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics remains intact then there is no escape route from solving the measurement (...) problem by constructive theories. We further propose a (Wigner--type) thought experiment that we argue demonstrates that quantum mechanics on the information--theoretic approach is incomplete. (shrink)

Loop quantum gravity predicts that spatial geometry is fundamentally discrete. Whether this discreteness entails a departure from exact Lorentz symmetry is a matter of dispute that has generated an interesting methodological dilemma. On one hand one would like the theory to agree with current experiments, but, so far, tests in the highest energies we can manage show no such sign of departure. On the other hand one would like the theory to yield testable predictions, and deformations of exact Lorentz symmetry (...) in certain yet– to–be–tested regimes may have phenomenological consequences. Exposing their shortcomings, here I discuss two arguments that exemplify this dilemma, and compare them to other cases from the history of physics that share their symptoms. (shrink)

A recent attempt to compute a (recursion‐theoretic) noncomputable function using the quantum adiabatic algorithm is criticized and found wanting. Quantum algorithms may outperform classical algorithms in some cases, but so far they retain the classical (recursion‐theoretic) notion of computability. A speculation is then offered as to where the putative power of quantum computers may come from.

I discuss a rarely mentioned correspondence between Einstein and Swann on the constructive approach to the special theory of relativity, in which Einstein points out that the attempts to construct a dynamical explanation of relativistic kinematical effects require postulating a fundamental length scale in the level of the dynamics. I use this correspondence to shed light on several issues under dispute in current philosophy of spacetime that were highlighted recently in Harvey Brown’s monograph Physical Relativity, namely, Einstein’s view on the (...) distinction between principle and constructive theories, and the consequences of pursuing the constructive approach in the context of spacetime theories. r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

A recent proposal to solve the halting problem with the quantum adiabatic algorithm is criticized and found wanting. Contrary to other physical hypercomputers, where one believes that a physical process “computes” a (recursive-theoretic) non-computable function simply because one believes the physical theory that presumably governs or describes such process, believing the theory (i.e., quantum mechanics) in the case of the quantum adiabatic “hypercomputer” is tantamount to acknowledging that the hypercomputer cannot perform its task.

Huw Price (1996, 2002, 2003) argues that causal-dynamical theories that aim to explain thermodynamic asymmetry in time are misguided. He points out that in seeking a dynamical factor responsible for the general tendency of entropy to increase, these approaches fail to appreciate the true nature of the problem in the foundations of statistical mechanics (SM). I argue that it is Price who is guilty of misapprehension of the issue at stake. When properly understood, causal-dynamical approaches in the foundations of SM (...) offer a solution for a different problem; a problem that unfortunately receives no attention in Price’s celebrated work. (shrink)

Among the alternatives of non-relativistic quantum mechanics (NRQM) there are those that give different predictions than quantum mechanics in yet-untested circumstances, while remaining compatible with current empirical findings. In order to test these predictions, one must isolate one’s system from environmental induced decoherence, which, on the standard view of NRQM, is the dynamical mechanism that is responsible for the ‘apparent’ collapse in open quantum systems. But while recent advances in condensed-matter physics may lead in the near future to experimental setups (...) that will allow one to test the two hypotheses, namely genuine collapse vs. decoherence, hence make progress toward a solution to the quantum measurement problem, those philosophers and physicists who are advocating an information-theoretic approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics are still unwilling to acknowledge the empirical character of the issue at stake. Here I argue that in doing so they are displaying an unwarranted double standard. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

It is occasionally claimed that the important work of philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians in the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries made Kant’s critical philosophy of geometry look somewhat unattractive. Indeed, from the wider perspective of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, the replacement of Newtonian physics with Einstein’s theories of relativity, and the rise of quantificational logic, Kant’s philosophy seems “quaint at best and silly at worst”.1 While there is no doubt that Kant’s transcendental project involves his own conceptions (...) of Newtonian physics, Euclidean geometry and Aristotelian logic, the issue at stake is whether the replacement of these conceptions collapses Kant’s philosophy into an unfortunate embarrassment.2 Thus, in evaluating the debate over the contemporary relevance of Kant’s philosophical project one is faced with the following two questions: (1) Are there any contradictions between the scientific developments of our era and Kant’s philosophy? (2) What is left from the Kantian legacy in light of our modern conceptions of logic, geometry and physics? Within this broad context, this paper aims to evaluate the Kantian project vis à vis the discovery and application of non-Euclidean geometries. Many important philosophers have evaluated Kant’s philosophy of geometry throughout the last century,3 but opinions with regard to the impact of non-Euclidean geometries on it diverge. In the beginning of the century there was a consensus that the Euclidean character of space should be considered as a consequence of the Kantian project, i.e., of the metaphysical view of space and of the synthetic a priori character of geometry. The impact of non-Euclidean geometries was then thought as undermining the Kantian project since it implied, according to positivists such.. (shrink)

This paper discusses the dynamic interplay in the post-revolution era between external phenomena in organizations’ wider socio-cultural environment includingmaterialism, consumerism and ethics along with organizational practices (i.e. corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing).

The early history of the attempts to unify quantum theory with the general theory of relativity is depicted through the work of the under--appreciated Italo-Brazilian physicist Gleb Wataghin, who is responsible for many of the ideas that the quantum gravity community is entertaining today.

Relying on the universality of quantum mechanics and on recent results known as the “threshold theorems,” quantum information scientists deem the question of the feasibility of large‐scale, fault‐tolerant, and computationally superior quantum computers as purely technological. Reconstructing this question in statistical mechanical terms, this article suggests otherwise by questioning the physical significance of the threshold theorems. The skepticism it advances is neither too strong (hence is consistent with the universality of quantum mechanics) nor too weak (hence is independent of technological (...) contingencies). *Received June 2009; revised August 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In the chapter “The Geometry of Visibles” in his ‘Inquiry into the Human Mind’, Thomas Reid constructs a special space, develops a special geometry for that space, and offers a natural model for this geometry. In doing so, Reid “discovers” non-Euclidean Geometry sixty years before the mathematicians. This paper examines this “discovery” and the philosophical motivations underlying it. By reviewing Reid’s ideas on visible space and confronting him with Kant and Berkeley, I hope, moreover, to resolve an alleged impasse in (...) Reid’s philosophy concerning the contradictory characteristics of Reid’s tangible and visible space. (shrink)

This article tells the story of Ed Fredkin, a pilot, programmer, engineer, hardware designer and entrepreneur, whose work inside and outside academia has influenced major developments in computer science and in the foundations of theoretical physics for the past fifty years.

The transition to parenthood is both a joyous and a challenging event in a relationship. Studies to date have found mostly negative effects of the birth of the first child on the parental relationship. We propose that partners' pre-pregnancy individual happiness may serve as a buffer against these negative effects. We predicted that parents who are happy prior to pregnancy fare better in terms of relationship commitment after childbirth than unhappy parents. To test our prediction, we used data of a (...) 5-wave longitudinal study among 109 Dutch newlywed couples who had their first child during the study and a comparison group of 55 couples who remained childless. We found that the relationship commitment of fathers with higher pre-pregnancy happiness and fathers with a partner with higher pre-pregnancy happiness increased slightly in the years after childbirth, whereas the relationship commitment of fathers with lower pre-pregnancy happiness and fathers with a partner with lower pre-pregnancy happiness decreased. In addition, the relationship commitment of mothers with a happier partner prior to pregnancy decreased only slightly across the transition to parenthood but showed a steeper decline for mothers with a partner with average or lower pre-pregnancy happiness. In line with the idea that happiness acts as a resource when partners have to deal with relationship challenges, individual happiness predicted changes in relationship commitment for parents, but not for partners who remained childless. (shrink)

We present a brief history of decoherence, from its roots in the foundations of classical statistical mechanics, to the current spin bath models in condensed matter physics. We analyze the philosophical import of the subject matter in three different foundational problems, and find that, contrary to the received view, decoherence is less instrumental to their solutions than it is commonly believed. What makes decoherence more philosophically interesting, we argue, are the methodological issues it draws attention to, and the question of (...) the universality of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

For many among the scientifically informed public, and even among physicists, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle epitomizes quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, more than 86 years after its inception, there is no consensus over the interpretation, scope, and validity of this principle. The aim of this chapter is to offer one such interpretation, the traces of which may be found already in Heisenberg's letters to Pauli from 1926, and in Dirac's anticipation of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations from 1927, that stems form the hypothesis of finite (...) nature. Instead of a mere mathematical theorem of quantum theory, or a manifestation of "wave-particle duality", the uncertainty relations turn out to be a result of a more fundamental premise, namely, the inherent limitation on spatial resolution that follows from the bound on physical resources. The implication of this view are far reaching: it depicts the Hilbert space formalism as a phenomenological, "effective", formalism that approximates an underlying discrete structure; it supports a novel interpretation of probability in statistical physics that sees probabilities as deterministic, dynamical transition probabilities which arise from objective and inherent measurement errors; and it helps to clarify several puzzles in the foundations of statistical physics, such as the status of the "disturbance" view of measurement in quantum theory, or the tension between ontology and epistemology in the attempts to describe nature with physical theories whose formalisms include subjective probabilities. Finally, this view also renders obsolete the entire class of interpretations of quantum theory that adhere to "the reality of the wave function". (shrink)

We propose a new interpretation of objective deterministic chances in statistical physics based on physical computational complexity. This notion applies to a single physical system (be it an experimental set--up in the lab, or a subsystem of the universe), and quantifies (1) the difficulty to realize a physical state given another, (2) the 'distance' (in terms of physical resources) from a physical state to another, and (3) the size of the set of time--complexity functions that are compatible with the physical (...) resources required to reach a physical state from another. (shrink)

Quantum computers are hypothetical quantum information processing (QIP) devices that allow one to store, manipulate, and extract information while harnessing quantum physics to solve various computational problems and do so putatively more efficiently than any known classical counterpart. Despite many ‘proofs of concept’ (Aharonov and Ben–Or 1996; Knill and Laflamme 1996; Knill et al. 1996; Knill et al. 1998) the key obstacle in realizing these powerful machines remains their scalability and susceptibility to noise: almost three decades after their conceptions, experimentalists (...) still struggle to maintain useful quantum coherence in QIP devices with more than a pair of qubits (e.g., Blatt and Wineland 2008). This slow progress has prompted debates on the feasibility of quantum computers, yet the quantum information community has dismissed the skepticism as “ideology” (Aaronson 2004), claiming that the obstacles are merely technological (Kaye et al. 2007, 240). In a recent paper (Hagar 2009) I’ve argued that such a skepticism with respect to the feasibility of quantum computers need not be deemed ideological at all, and that the aforementioned ‘proofs of concept’ are physically suspect. Using analogies from the foundations of classical statistical mechanics (SM), I’ve also argued that instead of active error correction, the appropriate framework for debating the feasibility of large–scale, fault–tolerant and computationally superior quantum computers should be the project of error avoidance: rather than trying to constantly ‘cool down’ the QIP device and prevent its thermalization, one should try to locate those regions in the device’s state space which are thermodynamically ‘abnormal’, i.e., those regions in the device’s state space which resist thermalization regardless of external noise. This paper is intended as a further contribution to the debate on the feasibility of large–scale, fault–tolerant and computationally superior quantum computers. Relying again on analogies from the foundations of classical SM, it suggests a skeptical conjecture and frames it in the ‘passive’, error avoidance, context.. (shrink)

An analysis of the two routes through which one may disentangle a quantum system from a measuring apparatus, hence protect the state vector of a single quantum system from being disturbed by the measurement, reveals several loopholes in the argument from protective measurement to the reality of the state vector of a single quantum system.

One of the recurrent problems in the foundations of physics is to explain why we rarely observe certain phenomena that are allowed by our theories and laws. In thermodynamics, for example, the spontaneous approach towards equilibrium is ubiquitous yet the time-reversal-invariant laws that presumably govern thermal behaviour in the microscopic level equally allow spontaneous departure from equilibrium to occur. Why are the former processes frequently observed while the latter are almost never reported? Another example comes from quantum mechanics where the (...) formalism, if considered complete and universally applicable, predicts the existence of macroscopic superpositions—monstrous Schr¨odinger cats—and these are never observed: while electrons and atoms enjoy the cloudiness of waves, macroscopic objects are always localized to definite positions. (shrink)

Scientific realism is dead, or so many philosophers believe. Its death was announced when philosophers became convinced that one can accept all scientific results without committing oneself to metaphysical existence claims about theoretical entities (Fine 1986, 112). In addition, the inability of self–proclaimed scientific realists, despite recurrent demands, to distinguish themselves from their rival anti–realists (Stein 1989) didn’t exactly help their cause. If realists cannot identify the key feature or features that set them apart from their opponents, then there is (...) really no need to conduct a debate on scientific realism, is there? (shrink)

Recent suggestions to supply quantum mechanics (QM) with realistic foundations by reformulating it in light of quantum information theory (QIT) are examined and are found wanting by pointing to a basic conceptual problem that QIT itself ignores, namely, the measurement problem. Since one cannot ignore the measurement problem and at the same time pretend to be a realist, as they stand, the suggestions to reformulate QM in light of QIT are nothing but instrumentalism in disguise.

In quantum computing, where algorithms exist that can solve computational problems more efficiently than any known classical algorithms, the elimination of errors that result from external disturbances or from imperfect gates has become the ...

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 3-18, March 2022.

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 3-18, March 2022.

Artificial neural networks and supervised learning have become an essential part of science. Beyond using them for accurate input-output mapping, there is growing attention to a new feature-oriented approach. Under the assumption that networks optimised for a task may have learned to represent and utilise important features of the target system for that task, scientists examine how those networks manipulate inputs and employ the features networks capture for scientific discovery. We analyse this approach, show its hidden caveats, and suggest its (...) legitimate use. We distinguish three things that scientists call a ‘feature’: parametric, diagnostic, and real-world features. The feature-oriented approach aims for real-world features by interpreting the former two, which also partially rely on the network. We argue that this approach faces a problem of non-uniqueness: there are numerous discordant parametric and diagnostic features and ways to interpret them. When the approach aims at novel discovery, scientists often need to choose between those options, but they lack the background knowledge to justify their choices. Consequentially, features thus identified are not promised to be real. We argue that they should not be used as evidence but only used instrumentally. We also suggest transparency in feature selection and the plurality of choices. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to propose ten efficient scaling techniques for the Wisconsin Diagnosis Breast Cancer dataset using the support vector machine. These scaling techniques are efficient for the linear programming approach. SVM with proposed scaling techniques was applied on the WDBC dataset. The scaling techniques are, namely, arithmetic mean, de Buchet for three cases p = 1,2, and ∞, equilibration, geometric mean, IBM MPSX, and Lp-norm for three cases p = 1,2, and ∞. The experimental results show (...) that the equilibration scaling technique overcomes the benchmark normalization scaling technique used in many commercial solvers. Finally, the experimental results also show the effectiveness of the grid search technique which gets the optimal parameters for the SVM classifier. (shrink)

In their book The Road to Maxwell's Demon Hemmo & Shenker re-describe the foundations of statistical mechanics from a purely empiricist perspective. The result is refreshing, as well as intriguing, and it goes against much of the literature on the demon. Their conclusion, however, that Maxwell's demon is consistent with statistical mechanics, still leaves open the question of why such a demon hasn't yet been observed on a macroscopic scale. This essay offers a sketch of what a possible answer could (...) look like. (shrink)