2016.04.12
What makes human beings unique? Some say it's language or tools. Others say it's logical reasoning. They obviously haven't met many humans.
Three pennies keep a large electric light bulb burning all night, and they buy about thirty thousand additions or subtractions or other elementary computations at current large-computer rates (omitting overhead, communication, and programming expense). This is enough computation to balance a large number of monthly bank statements, and at face value seems to compare very favorably with the equivalent amount of electricity. Furthermore, the cost of computation has been decreasing steadily, whereas electric rates have been stable for over twenty years now.The modeling of computation as a commodity or utility is intriguing; it didn't focus enough on the personal computer (or specialized devices we now enjoy) but comparing it to "The Cloud" and the rent-a-server style services of today is a fun exercise.
The harsh truth about speed reading... I'm no "speed-reader", but I've always read quickly, and attribute a big chunk of my academic success to that - especially for standardized tests. But I've come to admit, there's a big aspect of it that's just a gift for skimming, and bouncing back to the tough bits. (When I loose that go back "what was that part in the middle again?" capability, like when someone is spelling a name or password for me out loud, I am comically hopeless and inept.)
And I don't know what's the cart and what's the horse, but that kind of "get the gist" living permeates so many parts of my life, from how I learn technical things to how I appreciate music. I'm kind of anti-nuance; the world is so full of things that are "interesting" in and of their own right, things that are novel and creative and show or make some unique aspect of the universe (or rather, show that aspect in a usefully unique way) that I'm impatient with forms that require long-form close attention, and/or keeping lots of things sorted in my head. My buddy Tom Kermode coined the neologism "cruxian", a term I love- I want to optimize for the crux of the issue and the subtleties have to watch out for themselves.
Often time that "crux" is "how things interact". I don't care so much about the interior lives of things; people and computer objects alike should be judged on what they do, not what you think they "are". (Conversely, from a Bayesian analysis point of view, what they "are" will influence what they are likely to "do", so getting a handle on what they "are" is better than relying on individual observations of their action.)
Unfortunately too often faces and names fall into that bucket of "less important" nuance, and I think it's the main factor in my face- blindess (or at least face-myopia).
Get the gist?