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There is much to learn from what Turing hastily dismissed as Lady Lovelace s objection. Digital computers can indeed surprise us. Just like a piece of art, algorithms can be designed in such a way as to lead us to question our understanding…
Human societies continuously transform scattered information into collective judgments and coordinated action, whether through markets discovering prices, governments allocating resources, communities enforcing norms, or science converging…
We explore in the framework of Quantum Computation the notion of computability, which holds a central position in Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. A quantum algorithm that exploits the quantum adiabatic processes is considered…
One of the greatest research challenges of this century is to understand the neural basis for how behavior emerges in brain-body-environment systems. To this end, research has flourished along several directions but have predominantly…
Benchmarking is how the performance of a computing system is determined. Surprisingly, even for classical computers this is not a straightforward process. One must choose the appropriate benchmark and metrics to extract meaningful results.…
Measurements are shown to be processes designed to return figures: they are effective. This effectivity allows for a formalization as Turing machines, which can be described employing computation theory. Inspired in the halting problem we…
In the manuscript titled "Computation environment (1)", we introduced a notion called computation environment as an interactive model for computation and complexity theory. In this model, Turing machines are not autonomous entities and find…
The most enigmatic aspect of consciousness is the fact that it is felt, as a subjective sensation. The theory proposed here aims to explain this particular aspect. The theory encompasses both the computation that is presumably involved and…
Eudaemonics is the study of the nature, causes, and conditions of human well-being. According to the ethical theory of eudaemonia, reaping satisfaction and fulfillment from life is not only a desirable end, but a moral responsibility.…
What is the nature of curiosity? Is there any scientific way to understand the origin of this mysterious force that drives the behavior of even the stupidest naturally intelligent systems and is completely absent in their smartest…
The applicability of computational and dynamical systems models to organisms is scrutinized, using examples from developmental biology and cognition. Developmental morphogenesis is dependent on the inherent material properties of developing…
Matter, especially DNA, is now programmed to carry out useful processes at the nanoscale. As these programs and processes become more complex and their envisioned safety-critical applications approach deployment, it is essential to develop…
We explore the following question: Is a decision-making program fair, for some useful definition of fairness? First, we describe how several algorithmic fairness questions can be phrased as program verification problems. Second, we discuss…
Recently, the National Research Council's framework for next generation science standards highlighted "computational thinking" as one of its "fundamental practices". 9th Grade students taking a physics course that employed the Modeling…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
In psychiatry, we often speak of constructing "models." Here we try to make sense of what such a claim might mean, starting with the most fundamental question: "What is (and isn't) a model?". We then discuss, in a concrete measurable sense,…
Computational complexity is examined using the principle of increasing entropy. To consider computation as a physical process from an initial instance to the final acceptance is motivated because many natural processes have been recognized…
Natural code is known to be very repetitive (much more so than natural language corpora); furthermore, this repetitiveness persists, even after accounting for the simpler syntax of code. However, programming languages are very expressive,…
Making sense of the world and acting in it relies on building simplified mental representations that abstract away aspects of reality. This principle of cognitive mapping is universal to agents with limited resources. Living organisms,…
We present an approach to program reasoning which inserts between a program and its verification conditions an additional layer, the denotation of the program expressed in a declarative form. The program is first translated into its…