Fluid dynamic probability and informative emergent behavior

Guitar improvisation from May 23, 2025

Time, partitioning, and synchronization

Any time measuring method inevitably runs into the issues of partitioning and synchronization. Partitioning deals with the issue of dividing a larger measure into smaller measures, and combining smaller measures into a larger measure. Synchronization deals with the problem of how a set of devices can self-correct if some of them are corrupted. The two are fundamentally related because often a choice in one determines a choice in the other. A measure is often defined by a set of synchronization points, such as the radioactive decay of an element or the frequency of a crystal oscillator. Synchronization points can often be defined as a measure of a change in space, such as the revolution of a planet around a star, or the change in energy state of an oscillating structure. Fundamental to both is the notion of change. A synchronization event can only be defined if there is a unit of space in which a change is observed. And either the magnitude of the space is large (such as the movement of...

Context, reconciliation, and performance

I believe the software industry needs a word to differentiate the design of performant software from the inside (or bottom up) versus the outside (or top down). There is a heavy focus on algorithms and data structures in the software engineering world, which is great if you are designing performant software from the inside out (bottom up). But this will only be performant so long as there is one monolithic structure. As soon as there are competing components (or silos of functionality) that need to integrate together, the integration of the components often becomes a performance bottleneck. And this phenomenon is unavoidable because there is a limit to any human's working memory. Large problems are broken down to smaller problems so that they can be more easily grappled with. But the choice of how things are isolated often can incur a performance gain or loss that is just as significant in magnitude as choosing the right data structures and algorithms. And it is this way because da...

Ideas by Alex Ahn

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