But in the fictional world of that SMBC comic, it seems to me that (miserable Superman + billions of people living in peace and prosperity) is plausibly an outcome that even Superman might prefer to (happy Superman + billions of people suffering war, poverty, disease, etc.).
Happy Superman + billions of people living in peace and prosperity is better than both. Some hypotheticals should be fought.
In the hypothetical world, Superman brings the whole planet to properity and then… he has a problem to find a job, and then he ends up working at the museum.
Why exactly is the person who saved the whole planet required to work? Did the humanity meanwhile evolve beyond the use of “thank you”? How about just asking some volunteers to donate 0.1% of their monthly income to Superman? If just one person in a few thousands agrees, Superman can retire happily.
The problem with the comix story is not just the extreme altruism, but that humanity appears unable to cooperate on Prisonners’ Dilemma with the Superman. (I am not saying that’s necessarily an incorrect description of the humanity. Just a sad one.)
I agree that some hypotheticals should be fought. But it seems to me that you’re objecting to the basic premise of the strip and also trying to use it as fictional evidence.
In the fictional world depicted there, how do you get to happy Superman + happy billions?
In our actual world, how do you get to (if I’m understanding correctly the analogy you want to draw) comfortable first-worlders not needing to sacrifice anything + less malaria, starvation, etc., in the poorer parts of the world?
(From the other things you’ve said in this thread it seems like you’re actually happy to get to comfortable first-worlders not needing to sacrifice anything + starvation and misery in the developing world. Fair enough; your values are what they are and I’m not going to try to change them. But then what does the hypothetical outcome (happy Superman + happy billions) have to do with anything?)
But it seems to me that you’re objecting to the basic premise of the strip and also trying to use it as fictional evidence.
I am not using the strip as evidence of anything. The strip is just an illustration of a certain imaginary situation, and implicitly poses the question, is it a good one, or a bad one? An answer to which must consider what alternatives are on offer. The strip itself presents Superman’s original behaviour, and his revised mission. But while reality has limits, hard choices, and problems without attainable solutions, fiction does not.
If Superman can fight crime retail, and then fight poverty wholesale, why should he not instead create the means of fighting poverty wholesale? Well, in canon, because he is not known for his brains. All he can really do is hit things very hard. No matter, after the “This began to wear on the hero” frame, introduce some genius superhero to point this out to Superman. The genius can do the inventing while Superman helps with the grunt work of building it, and humanity gets muon fusion engines decades earlier. My first fanfic.
In the fictional world depicted there, how do you get to happy Superman + happy billions?
In the same way as the author: by imagining it. The question is, why do you choose to imagine only the two scenarios in the strip, and reject the legitimacy of imagining the third?
From the other things you’ve said in this thread it seems like you’re actually happy to get to comfortable first-worlders not needing to sacrifice anything + starvation and misery in the developing world.
Not happy, but I’m not willing to level the peaks of civilisation to fill in the troughs.
But then what does the hypothetical outcome (happy Superman + happy billions) have to do with anything?
It’s a result I think we would prefer to either of the others. In the real world, the question is how to get there. Distributing anti-malarial nets is all very well, but as SaidAchmiz has been saying, there needs to also be a larger strategy.
If you’re just pointing to the strip as an illustration of something bad, then I disagree about its badness (even from hypothetical-Superman’s vantage point): the strip shows Superman putting up with something pretty bad, but achieving something good for it, and I think even hypothetical-Superman would agree that the overall outcome is a good one.
Once you start arguing about what alternatives there might have been within the fiction, and saying “while reality has limits … fiction does not”, well, it seems like you’re saying “It’s bad to ask the fortunate few to sacrifice their interests for the sake of the miserable many, and we can see that because in my reimagining of the fictional world of this comic Superman does this but—so I decree—doesn’t need to”, and I don’t see what you’re gaining by appealing to the comic.
why do you [...] reject the legitimacy of imagining the third?
You’re welcome to imagine anything you like. I just don’t see the point of saying “So-and-so is bad; see, here’s an imaginary situation a bit like so-and-so, in which I’ve decided what’s possible and what isn’t, and it turns out to be a bad situation”.
there needs to also be a larger strategy.
Well, supposedly AMF thinks the nets are part of a larger strategy, and IIRC the Gates Foundation is trying to wipe out malaria. But, in any case, I don’t see how to get from “there should be a larger strategy” to “it’s OK for me not to do anything concrete”. Of course it might be OK for you not to do anything concrete, but what I don’t see is why the fact that there ought to be a larger strategy is any support for not doing anything concrete.
In the same way as the author: by imagining it. The question is, why do you choose to imagine only the two scenarios in the strip, and reject the legitimacy of imagining the third?
If I can imagine being at a switch deciding whether a train will kill five people or one, I can also imagine everyone getting off the train and the train derailing where it doesn’t kill anybody. But that would defeat the whole point of imagining the train in the first place.
Well, in canon, because he is not known for his brains.
In the original comics, Superman invented things that were far ahead of even modern technology; including a series of robot duplicates that were visually indistinguishable from himself (not as powerful, of course, but he occasionally dressed one of them up as Clark Kent in order to maintain his disguise). In fact, super-intelligence was supposed to be one of his powers.
Exactly why he never produced a range of android butlers, or otherwise advanced technology, is a mystery to me. The only possible reason that I can think of is that the authors wanted to keep the world’s visible technology levels more-or-less familiar to their readers.
In fact, super-intelligence was supposed to be one of his powers.
He is certainly always able to think at the same speed he can do everything else. eg. Clark can write a Daily Prophet article in seconds, leaving the keyboard smoking. Even with only an IQ of, say 130 he should be comfortably ahead of any mere human for the purpose of achieving any particular intellectual task. Spending 10,000 subjective hours on something does wonders for achieving expert performance.
IIRC the ten thousand hours thing was ten thousand hours of tutored practice at a level appropriate to the learner. I can see Clark running into the limitations of other people’s performance rather than his own as a bottleneck.
IIRC the ten thousand hours thing was ten thousand hours of tutored practice at a level appropriate to the learner
The important factor is that it is deliberate practice. Tutors are useful but not as necessary during the practice (this obviously varies depending on the degree and kind of feedback required).
I can see Clark running into the limitations of other people’s performance rather than his own as a bottleneck.
In particular where the information is not yet contained in all the textbooks and internet resources currently in existence his learning will be much slower. He’ll have to invent the science (or engineering) himself as he goes.
Daily Planet. Not perhaps the best name for a newspaper, as it appears to hint at Clark’s otherworldly origins...
Anyhow, there is a limit to the speed at which even Superman can type; that limit being the keyboard. Your average keyboard is more than fast enough to keep up with a human typist, but not infinitely fast...
Assuming that the limit is in the PS/2 protocol (and not in the keyboard hardware—Clark may have quietly replaced the keyboard on his desktop with a high-speed variant that he’d built himself, but it still needs to talk to the computer using a known protocol); assuming that the keyboard’s clock signal runs at 16.7kHz (at the top end of what the protocol allows) and continually outputs keypresses at 33 bits per key (11 bits per scancode; each key transmits one scancode when pressed, and two scancodes when released), Clark can type at a maximum of 506 characters per second; assuming an average of five characters plus a space per word, that works out to 84 words per second at most. A thousand-word article would therefore take close to 12 seconds to type up. Note that this is before dealing with punctuation or capital letters (the shift key also sends keycodes); moreover, double letters (like the cc in ‘accept’) will slow things down further; it’ll take some slight time for the keyboard to register that the key is no longer being pressed, and Clark has to wait that long before hitting it again. (That actually suggests a test for a superpowered reporter; keep an eye open for a reporter whose articles avoid double letters).
Clark could certainly work faster than that if he were, say, engraving on a stone tablet, or using pencil and paper (I’m not sure about pens, the ink needs a little time to flow to the nib). Pencil and paper would be limited by how fast the pencil can move across the paper without igniting the paper...
Assuming that the limit is in the PS/2 protocol (and not in the keyboard hardware—Clark may have quietly replaced the keyboard on his desktop with a high-speed variant that he’d built himself, but it still needs to talk to the computer using a known protocol);
My recently primed munchkin instinct can’t help but notice that the analysis given doesn’t remotely approach the limits specified here. Specifically, it tacitly assumes that Clark uses only the stock standard software that everyone else uses. In fact, it even assumes that Clark doesn’t use even the most rudimentary macro or autocomplete features built in to standard wordpressors!
Assuming that at some point in his life Clark spent several minutes coding (at the limits you calculate) in anticipation of at some point in the future wishing to type fast all subsequent text input via the PS/2 protocol could occur a couple of orders of magnitude faster. Optimisations would include:
Abandon the preconception that pressing the key with the “A” painted on it puts the letter ‘a’ in the text, or any of the other keys for that matter—especially the ones that aren’t so common! Every key press is log2(number of keys) bits of information. Use all of it.
A key_press uses 33 bits of bandwidth total but key_press isn’t a discrete operation. 11 bits are used for key_down and 22 for key_up but these don’t need to follow each other directly (for example see conventional usage of shift, control and alt). As far as the PS/2 protocol is concerned key_up supplies another log2(number of keys) bits of information (for the cost of 22 bits of bandwidth).
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a key_down on the first keypress and a key_up on the second keypress (alternating).
If Clark is using a standard keyboard then he can still send more information via key_up but is now limited by fingers. Since he has only 10 fingers, before every keydown (after the first 10) he can send one or more key_ups. Which finger(s) he choses to lift up is influenced by the proximity of the keys to each other. Optimal use of this additional information would use a custom weighted “twister) protocol” that extracts every bit of information available in the choice “left index finger T” instead of “right pointer T” when both were bio-mechanically plausible options. For this reason, if Clark is using a standard keyboard I recommend he use the smallest layout possible. A laptop’s keys being cramped is a feature!
Human languages (like English) are grossly inefficient in terms of symbol use. Shannon (of shannon entropy) fame) measured the entropy of English text at between 1 and 1.5 bits per letter even when using mere human subjects guessing what the next letter would be. Some letters are used way too much, simple combinations of letters like “atbyl” have no meaning, some words combinations are more likely than others andIcanreadthiswithoutdifficulty. If bandwidth rather than processing power is the limit compression is called for. I estimate that Clark’s Text Over PS/2 Protocol ought to be at least as efficient as Shannon’s “subjects can guess what is coming next” findings for typical text while remaining lossless (albeit less efficient) even under unusual input.
Since Clark wants to maintain a secret identity his keyboard must be required to operate normally except when he is typing fast. This is easy enough to accomplish via any one of:
An unmarked button that requires superhuman strength to press.
A keyboard combination (F12 D u _ @ F3 W * & etc) that will not occur randomly but still takes negligible time to enter.
The software just starts interpreting the input differently once a sufficient number of keys have been input in rapid succession. (This seems preferable.)
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a key_down on the first keypress and a key_up on the second keypress (alternating).
That wouldn’t help; he can’t then choose to send “key_up (a)” followed by “key_up (a)”, there has to be a “key_down (a)” inbetween.
He could, of course, simply elect to have his personal keyboard ignore key_ups and send only the shorter key_down codes, meaning that he has only 11 bits per character. Aside from that minor quibble, though, you make several excellent points.
If he’s writing his own keyboard driver, he can take this even further, and have his keyboard (when in speed mode) deliver a different set of scancodes; he can pick out 32 keys and have each of them deliver a different 5-byte code (hitting any key outside of those 32 automatically turns off speed mode). In this manner, his encoding efficiency is limited only by processing power (his system will have to decrypt the input stream pretty quickly) and clock rate (assuming he doesn’t mess with the desktop hardware, he’d probably still have to stick to 16.7kHz). Since modern processors run in the GHz range, I expect that the keyboard clock rate will be the limiting factor.
Unless he starts messing with his desktop’s hardware, of course.
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a key_down on the first keypress and a key_up on the second keypress (alternating).
That wouldn’t help; he can’t then choose to send “keyup (a)” followed by “keyup (a)”, there has to be a “key_down (a)” inbetween.
You seem to have read the text incorrectly. The passage you quote explicitly mentions sending both key_down and key_up and even uses the word ‘alternating’. ie. All that is changing is a relatively minor mechanical detail of what kind of button each key behaves as. If necessary, imagine that each key behaves something like the button on a retractable ball point pen. First press down. Second press up. All that is done is removing the need to actually hold each key down with a finger while they are in the down state.
I notice that I am confused. You say that I have read the original text incorrectly, and then you post a clarification that exactly matches my original interpretation of the text.
I see two possible causes for this. Either I have misunderstood you (as you state) and, moreover, continue to misunderstand you in the same way; or you have misunderstood me.
Therefore, I shall re-state my point in more detail, in the hope of clearing this up.
Consider the ‘a’ key. This point applies to all keys equally, of course, but for simplicity let us consider a single arbitrary key.
Under your proposed keyboard, the following is true.
The first time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_down (a). This is 11 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The second time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_up (a). This is 22 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The third time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_down (a). This is 11 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The fourth time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_up (a). This is 22 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
I therefore note that replacing every key_up with a key_down saves a further 11 bits per 2 keystrokes, on average, for no loss of information.
I see two possible causes for this. Either I have misunderstood you (as you state) and, moreover, continue to misunderstand you in the same way; or you have misunderstood me.
Both is also a possibility (and from my re-analysis seems to be the most likely.)
Allow me to abandon inferences about interpretations and just respond to some words.
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a keydown on the first keypress and a keyup on the second keypress (alternating).
That wouldn’t help;
This claim is false. It would help a lot! It improves bandwidth by a factor of a little under two over not the alternative making optimal use of the key_up signal as well as the key_downs. As for how much improvement the keyboard change is over merely using all 10 fingers optimally… the math gets complicated and is dependent on things like finger length.
I therefore note that replacing every keyup with a keydown saves a further 11 bits per 2 keystrokes, on average, for no loss of information.
I agree. If just abandoning key_up scancodes altogether is permitted then obviously do so! I used them because from what little I understand of the PS/2-keyboard protocol from reading CCC’s introduction then a little additional research the key_ups are not optional and decided that leaving them out would violate CCC’s assumptions. I was incidentally rather shocked at the way the protocol worked. 22 bits for a key_up? Why? That’s a terrible way to do it! (Charity suggests to me that bandwidth must not have been an efficient target of optimisation resources at the design time.)
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a keydown on the first keypress and a keyup on the second keypress (alternating).
That wouldn’t help;
This claim is false.
Yes, you are right. On re-reading and looking over this again, I see that misread you there; for some reason (even after I knew that misreading was likely) I read that as 2log2(number of keys) bits of information per keypress* instead of per 33 bits of information.
I agree. If just abandoning key_up scancodes altogether is permitted then obviously do so! I used them because from what little I understand of the PS/2-keyboard protocol from reading CCC’s introduction then a little additional research the key_ups are not optional and decided that leaving them out would violate CCC’s assumptions.
Ah, right. My apologies; I’d though that the idea of drawing log2(number of keys) bits of information per keypress already implied a rejection of the assumption that the PS/2 protocol would be used.
I was incidentally rather shocked at the way the protocol worked. 22 bits for a key_up? Why? That’s a terrible way to do it! (Charity suggests to me that bandwidth must not have been an efficient target of optimisation resources at the design time.)
Well, to be fair, the PS/2 protocol is only intended to be able to keep up with normal human typing speed. The bandwidth limit sits at over 80 characters per second, and I don’t think that anyone outside the realm of fiction is likely to ever type at that speed, even just mashing keys randomly.
Anyhow, there is a limit to the speed at which even Superman can type; that limit being the keyboard. Your average keyboard is more than fast enough to keep up with a human typist, but not infinitely fast...
Samantha Carter used an entire computer lab when she was supercharged. Her limit was the key buffer if I recall. Depending on how computers have evolved the limiting factor could be the mechanics these days. If so, then it may be efficient to use several keyboards simultaneously.
Clark could certainly work faster than that if he were, say, engraving on a stone tablet
Especially if he uses his (laser) eyes. Depending on his power level he could possibly write faster than the speed of light. If my past research is correct superman is the most powerful when inside a sun (a blue star is best but ours would be fine). So he could perhaps write the most quickly by positioning himself at the surface and the sun and engraving on the surface of say, Mars, or perhaps a moon of Jupiter. The limit of is output then be either the precision of his eyesight, how fast he can control the muscles that move said eyes or, if those capabilities are sufficiently excessive, how fast he can think.
Or he could simply bring a stone tablet with him, and make sure to remain far enough from the Sun so as not to melt his writing materials.
Using a distant tablet allows him to write faster than the speed of light without abandoning special relativity just by wiggling his eyes a little. If we assume he is one of the later incarnations who in fact can fly faster than the speed of light (and so has superluminal text output even while close to the writing material) then the advantage that remains for positioning himself at the surface of the sun is that his writing speed is limited by his laser energy output. His eyes are reputedly the most energy draining of his powers and so the amount of rock that he can burn away with his eyes is limited by his power input. Positioning himself at the surface of the sun gives him a couple of orders of magnitude more rock burning potential per second.
Yyyyyes. I was thinking that at that distance, Mars subtends such a small angle that very large letters are extremely likely, and space is therefore limited; but he could easily take a tablet and leave it in a near-solar orbit on his way to the Sun.
Of course, it’ll take him a bit of time to get to the Sun; he’ll probably need to have rather a lot to write to make up for the travel time.
I dunno, how fast can a chisel carve stone before getting blunt, shattering the tablet, or something?
That’s an interesting question. Assuming he doesn’t use his own fingernails or his eyes and doesn’t have access to materials from his own fictional universe what sort of chisel would he use? The best I know of is Tungsten Carbide. Fortunately if extensive use blunts the chisel he can just sharpen it again with his fingers or eyes. He would of course also cool it down after every sentence or two by breathing on it so that friction doesn’t raise the temperature above 500°C where oxidisation starts. Or he could do his writing in a vacuum where he would only have to be concerned about the 2870°C melting point.
I’m not sure about limits when it comes to shattering the tablet (where the tablet could be, say, uluru). With a little practice, unbounded dexterity to rely on and no need to use something so crude as a hammer to apply force superman could get very close to the limits of the amount of shock the ‘tablet’ could absorb. While I have no formal training in superhuman engraving best practice I suspect the optimal technique would more closely resemble “extremely fast scratching” than “chiselling” per se. It seems highly probable that the limit that the rock could handle would be far faster than that of the PS/2 protocol. If it is necessary to reduce the concentrated stress on the rock superman can even fly back and forth like a dot matrix printer scratching a small parts of letters each time in the least damaging configuration.
I love his “What If?” even more than his cartoons. Yesterday I was wondering if he could tell me what would happen if all of the electrons in my body instantly vanished. Specifically how big the explosion would be but also whether a bunch of free protons and nuclei at that energy level would do anything exciting.
In your body there are about 0.55 electrons for each nucleon (from this and approximating Z/A as 1 for hydrogen and 0.5 for anything else); i.e., about 3.3e26 electrons per kilogram of matter; that is, their electric charge is about −5.3e7 coulombs per kilogram, and the electric charge of your body if the electrons vanished would be 5.3e7 C/kg. The electrostatic energy is then kQ^2/(4*pi*ε0*r), where r is your “size” and k is some factor roughly of order 1 depending on your “shape” (e.g. 3⁄5 for an uniform ball of radius r). That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
So from the sounds of it extinction of complex life on earth but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet.
After estimating the total energy and thence the energy per particle, it looks like the average particle would have UHECR-like energy, so they would each generate an extensive air shower, “spreading” the energy over larger volumes than it otherwise would. (But when you have so many showers superimposed to each other, I’m not sure the total effect would be much different from each particle interacting locally.)
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
The guy who has laser eyes is going to use a laser pen built especially to accommodate his super-special needs? I suppose he could do that. Then he could choose not to use his flight power but use his super strength to power an awesome bike-helicopter.
Happy Superman + billions of people living in peace and prosperity is better than both. Some hypotheticals should be fought.
In the hypothetical world, Superman brings the whole planet to properity and then… he has a problem to find a job, and then he ends up working at the museum.
Why exactly is the person who saved the whole planet required to work? Did the humanity meanwhile evolve beyond the use of “thank you”? How about just asking some volunteers to donate 0.1% of their monthly income to Superman? If just one person in a few thousands agrees, Superman can retire happily.
The problem with the comix story is not just the extreme altruism, but that humanity appears unable to cooperate on Prisonners’ Dilemma with the Superman. (I am not saying that’s necessarily an incorrect description of the humanity. Just a sad one.)
I agree that some hypotheticals should be fought. But it seems to me that you’re objecting to the basic premise of the strip and also trying to use it as fictional evidence.
In the fictional world depicted there, how do you get to happy Superman + happy billions?
In our actual world, how do you get to (if I’m understanding correctly the analogy you want to draw) comfortable first-worlders not needing to sacrifice anything + less malaria, starvation, etc., in the poorer parts of the world?
(From the other things you’ve said in this thread it seems like you’re actually happy to get to comfortable first-worlders not needing to sacrifice anything + starvation and misery in the developing world. Fair enough; your values are what they are and I’m not going to try to change them. But then what does the hypothetical outcome (happy Superman + happy billions) have to do with anything?)
I am not using the strip as evidence of anything. The strip is just an illustration of a certain imaginary situation, and implicitly poses the question, is it a good one, or a bad one? An answer to which must consider what alternatives are on offer. The strip itself presents Superman’s original behaviour, and his revised mission. But while reality has limits, hard choices, and problems without attainable solutions, fiction does not.
If Superman can fight crime retail, and then fight poverty wholesale, why should he not instead create the means of fighting poverty wholesale? Well, in canon, because he is not known for his brains. All he can really do is hit things very hard. No matter, after the “This began to wear on the hero” frame, introduce some genius superhero to point this out to Superman. The genius can do the inventing while Superman helps with the grunt work of building it, and humanity gets muon fusion engines decades earlier. My first fanfic.
In the same way as the author: by imagining it. The question is, why do you choose to imagine only the two scenarios in the strip, and reject the legitimacy of imagining the third?
Not happy, but I’m not willing to level the peaks of civilisation to fill in the troughs.
It’s a result I think we would prefer to either of the others. In the real world, the question is how to get there. Distributing anti-malarial nets is all very well, but as SaidAchmiz has been saying, there needs to also be a larger strategy.
Then at least one of us is confused.
If you’re just pointing to the strip as an illustration of something bad, then I disagree about its badness (even from hypothetical-Superman’s vantage point): the strip shows Superman putting up with something pretty bad, but achieving something good for it, and I think even hypothetical-Superman would agree that the overall outcome is a good one.
Once you start arguing about what alternatives there might have been within the fiction, and saying “while reality has limits … fiction does not”, well, it seems like you’re saying “It’s bad to ask the fortunate few to sacrifice their interests for the sake of the miserable many, and we can see that because in my reimagining of the fictional world of this comic Superman does this but—so I decree—doesn’t need to”, and I don’t see what you’re gaining by appealing to the comic.
You’re welcome to imagine anything you like. I just don’t see the point of saying “So-and-so is bad; see, here’s an imaginary situation a bit like so-and-so, in which I’ve decided what’s possible and what isn’t, and it turns out to be a bad situation”.
Well, supposedly AMF thinks the nets are part of a larger strategy, and IIRC the Gates Foundation is trying to wipe out malaria. But, in any case, I don’t see how to get from “there should be a larger strategy” to “it’s OK for me not to do anything concrete”. Of course it might be OK for you not to do anything concrete, but what I don’t see is why the fact that there ought to be a larger strategy is any support for not doing anything concrete.
If I can imagine being at a switch deciding whether a train will kill five people or one, I can also imagine everyone getting off the train and the train derailing where it doesn’t kill anybody. But that would defeat the whole point of imagining the train in the first place.
In the original comics, Superman invented things that were far ahead of even modern technology; including a series of robot duplicates that were visually indistinguishable from himself (not as powerful, of course, but he occasionally dressed one of them up as Clark Kent in order to maintain his disguise). In fact, super-intelligence was supposed to be one of his powers.
Exactly why he never produced a range of android butlers, or otherwise advanced technology, is a mystery to me. The only possible reason that I can think of is that the authors wanted to keep the world’s visible technology levels more-or-less familiar to their readers.
He is certainly always able to think at the same speed he can do everything else. eg. Clark can write a Daily Prophet article in seconds, leaving the keyboard smoking. Even with only an IQ of, say 130 he should be comfortably ahead of any mere human for the purpose of achieving any particular intellectual task. Spending 10,000 subjective hours on something does wonders for achieving expert performance.
IIRC the ten thousand hours thing was ten thousand hours of tutored practice at a level appropriate to the learner. I can see Clark running into the limitations of other people’s performance rather than his own as a bottleneck.
The important factor is that it is deliberate practice. Tutors are useful but not as necessary during the practice (this obviously varies depending on the degree and kind of feedback required).
In particular where the information is not yet contained in all the textbooks and internet resources currently in existence his learning will be much slower. He’ll have to invent the science (or engineering) himself as he goes.
Daily Planet. Not perhaps the best name for a newspaper, as it appears to hint at Clark’s otherworldly origins...
Anyhow, there is a limit to the speed at which even Superman can type; that limit being the keyboard. Your average keyboard is more than fast enough to keep up with a human typist, but not infinitely fast...
Assuming that the limit is in the PS/2 protocol (and not in the keyboard hardware—Clark may have quietly replaced the keyboard on his desktop with a high-speed variant that he’d built himself, but it still needs to talk to the computer using a known protocol); assuming that the keyboard’s clock signal runs at 16.7kHz (at the top end of what the protocol allows) and continually outputs keypresses at 33 bits per key (11 bits per scancode; each key transmits one scancode when pressed, and two scancodes when released), Clark can type at a maximum of 506 characters per second; assuming an average of five characters plus a space per word, that works out to 84 words per second at most. A thousand-word article would therefore take close to 12 seconds to type up. Note that this is before dealing with punctuation or capital letters (the shift key also sends keycodes); moreover, double letters (like the cc in ‘accept’) will slow things down further; it’ll take some slight time for the keyboard to register that the key is no longer being pressed, and Clark has to wait that long before hitting it again. (That actually suggests a test for a superpowered reporter; keep an eye open for a reporter whose articles avoid double letters).
Clark could certainly work faster than that if he were, say, engraving on a stone tablet, or using pencil and paper (I’m not sure about pens, the ink needs a little time to flow to the nib). Pencil and paper would be limited by how fast the pencil can move across the paper without igniting the paper...
My recently primed munchkin instinct can’t help but notice that the analysis given doesn’t remotely approach the limits specified here. Specifically, it tacitly assumes that Clark uses only the stock standard software that everyone else uses. In fact, it even assumes that Clark doesn’t use even the most rudimentary macro or autocomplete features built in to standard wordpressors!
Assuming that at some point in his life Clark spent several minutes coding (at the limits you calculate) in anticipation of at some point in the future wishing to type fast all subsequent text input via the PS/2 protocol could occur a couple of orders of magnitude faster. Optimisations would include:
Abandon the preconception that pressing the key with the “A” painted on it puts the letter ‘a’ in the text, or any of the other keys for that matter—especially the ones that aren’t so common! Every key press is log2(number of keys) bits of information. Use all of it.
A key_press uses 33 bits of bandwidth total but key_press isn’t a discrete operation. 11 bits are used for key_down and 22 for key_up but these don’t need to follow each other directly (for example see conventional usage of shift, control and alt). As far as the PS/2 protocol is concerned key_up supplies another log2(number of keys) bits of information (for the cost of 22 bits of bandwidth).
Given that Clark constructed his own hardware he could easily make use of the full 2*log2(number of keys) bits of information per 33 bits of information by making his keyboard send only a key_down on the first keypress and a key_up on the second keypress (alternating).
If Clark is using a standard keyboard then he can still send more information via key_up but is now limited by fingers. Since he has only 10 fingers, before every keydown (after the first 10) he can send one or more key_ups. Which finger(s) he choses to lift up is influenced by the proximity of the keys to each other. Optimal use of this additional information would use a custom weighted “twister) protocol” that extracts every bit of information available in the choice “left index finger T” instead of “right pointer T” when both were bio-mechanically plausible options. For this reason, if Clark is using a standard keyboard I recommend he use the smallest layout possible. A laptop’s keys being cramped is a feature!
Human languages (like English) are grossly inefficient in terms of symbol use. Shannon (of shannon entropy) fame) measured the entropy of English text at between 1 and 1.5 bits per letter even when using mere human subjects guessing what the next letter would be. Some letters are used way too much, simple combinations of letters like “atbyl” have no meaning, some words combinations are more likely than others andIcanreadthiswithoutdifficulty. If bandwidth rather than processing power is the limit compression is called for. I estimate that Clark’s Text Over PS/2 Protocol ought to be at least as efficient as Shannon’s “subjects can guess what is coming next” findings for typical text while remaining lossless (albeit less efficient) even under unusual input.
Since Clark wants to maintain a secret identity his keyboard must be required to operate normally except when he is typing fast. This is easy enough to accomplish via any one of:
An unmarked button that requires superhuman strength to press.
A keyboard combination (F12 D u _ @ F3 W * & etc) that will not occur randomly but still takes negligible time to enter.
The software just starts interpreting the input differently once a sufficient number of keys have been input in rapid succession. (This seems preferable.)
That wouldn’t help; he can’t then choose to send “key_up (a)” followed by “key_up (a)”, there has to be a “key_down (a)” inbetween.
He could, of course, simply elect to have his personal keyboard ignore key_ups and send only the shorter key_down codes, meaning that he has only 11 bits per character. Aside from that minor quibble, though, you make several excellent points.
If he’s writing his own keyboard driver, he can take this even further, and have his keyboard (when in speed mode) deliver a different set of scancodes; he can pick out 32 keys and have each of them deliver a different 5-byte code (hitting any key outside of those 32 automatically turns off speed mode). In this manner, his encoding efficiency is limited only by processing power (his system will have to decrypt the input stream pretty quickly) and clock rate (assuming he doesn’t mess with the desktop hardware, he’d probably still have to stick to 16.7kHz). Since modern processors run in the GHz range, I expect that the keyboard clock rate will be the limiting factor.
Unless he starts messing with his desktop’s hardware, of course.
You seem to have read the text incorrectly. The passage you quote explicitly mentions sending both key_down and key_up and even uses the word ‘alternating’. ie. All that is changing is a relatively minor mechanical detail of what kind of button each key behaves as. If necessary, imagine that each key behaves something like the button on a retractable ball point pen. First press down. Second press up. All that is done is removing the need to actually hold each key down with a finger while they are in the down state.
I notice that I am confused. You say that I have read the original text incorrectly, and then you post a clarification that exactly matches my original interpretation of the text.
I see two possible causes for this. Either I have misunderstood you (as you state) and, moreover, continue to misunderstand you in the same way; or you have misunderstood me.
Therefore, I shall re-state my point in more detail, in the hope of clearing this up.
Consider the ‘a’ key. This point applies to all keys equally, of course, but for simplicity let us consider a single arbitrary key.
Under your proposed keyboard, the following is true.
The first time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_down (a). This is 11 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The second time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_up (a). This is 22 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The third time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_down (a). This is 11 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
The fourth time Clark presses ‘a’, the keyboard sends key_up (a). This is 22 bits, encoding the message ‘key “a” has been pressed’
I therefore note that replacing every key_up with a key_down saves a further 11 bits per 2 keystrokes, on average, for no loss of information.
Both is also a possibility (and from my re-analysis seems to be the most likely.)
Allow me to abandon inferences about interpretations and just respond to some words.
This claim is false. It would help a lot! It improves bandwidth by a factor of a little under two over not the alternative making optimal use of the key_up signal as well as the key_downs. As for how much improvement the keyboard change is over merely using all 10 fingers optimally… the math gets complicated and is dependent on things like finger length.
I agree. If just abandoning key_up scancodes altogether is permitted then obviously do so! I used them because from what little I understand of the PS/2-keyboard protocol from reading CCC’s introduction then a little additional research the key_ups are not optional and decided that leaving them out would violate CCC’s assumptions. I was incidentally rather shocked at the way the protocol worked. 22 bits for a key_up? Why? That’s a terrible way to do it! (Charity suggests to me that bandwidth must not have been an efficient target of optimisation resources at the design time.)
Yes, you are right. On re-reading and looking over this again, I see that misread you there; for some reason (even after I knew that misreading was likely) I read that as 2log2(number of keys) bits of information per keypress* instead of per 33 bits of information.
Ah, right. My apologies; I’d though that the idea of drawing log2(number of keys) bits of information per keypress already implied a rejection of the assumption that the PS/2 protocol would be used.
Well, to be fair, the PS/2 protocol is only intended to be able to keep up with normal human typing speed. The bandwidth limit sits at over 80 characters per second, and I don’t think that anyone outside the realm of fiction is likely to ever type at that speed, even just mashing keys randomly.
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Characters per second and words per minute don’t match; wpm is typically calculated with 5 characters per word, so 80 cps would correspond to 960 wpm.
Samantha Carter used an entire computer lab when she was supercharged. Her limit was the key buffer if I recall. Depending on how computers have evolved the limiting factor could be the mechanics these days. If so, then it may be efficient to use several keyboards simultaneously.
Especially if he uses his (laser) eyes. Depending on his power level he could possibly write faster than the speed of light. If my past research is correct superman is the most powerful when inside a sun (a blue star is best but ours would be fine). So he could perhaps write the most quickly by positioning himself at the surface and the sun and engraving on the surface of say, Mars, or perhaps a moon of Jupiter. The limit of is output then be either the precision of his eyesight, how fast he can control the muscles that move said eyes or, if those capabilities are sufficiently excessive, how fast he can think.
Or he could simply bring a stone tablet with him, and make sure to remain far enough from the Sun so as not to melt his writing materials.
Using a distant tablet allows him to write faster than the speed of light without abandoning special relativity just by wiggling his eyes a little. If we assume he is one of the later incarnations who in fact can fly faster than the speed of light (and so has superluminal text output even while close to the writing material) then the advantage that remains for positioning himself at the surface of the sun is that his writing speed is limited by his laser energy output. His eyes are reputedly the most energy draining of his powers and so the amount of rock that he can burn away with his eyes is limited by his power input. Positioning himself at the surface of the sun gives him a couple of orders of magnitude more rock burning potential per second.
Yyyyyes. I was thinking that at that distance, Mars subtends such a small angle that very large letters are extremely likely, and space is therefore limited; but he could easily take a tablet and leave it in a near-solar orbit on his way to the Sun.
Of course, it’ll take him a bit of time to get to the Sun; he’ll probably need to have rather a lot to write to make up for the travel time.
… and that’s what happens when you f* around with “key_down”.
I dunno, how fast can a chisel carve stone before getting blunt, shattering the tablet, or something?
That’s an interesting question. Assuming he doesn’t use his own fingernails or his eyes and doesn’t have access to materials from his own fictional universe what sort of chisel would he use? The best I know of is Tungsten Carbide. Fortunately if extensive use blunts the chisel he can just sharpen it again with his fingers or eyes. He would of course also cool it down after every sentence or two by breathing on it so that friction doesn’t raise the temperature above 500°C where oxidisation starts. Or he could do his writing in a vacuum where he would only have to be concerned about the 2870°C melting point.
I’m not sure about limits when it comes to shattering the tablet (where the tablet could be, say, uluru). With a little practice, unbounded dexterity to rely on and no need to use something so crude as a hammer to apply force superman could get very close to the limits of the amount of shock the ‘tablet’ could absorb. While I have no formal training in superhuman engraving best practice I suspect the optimal technique would more closely resemble “extremely fast scratching” than “chiselling” per se. It seems highly probable that the limit that the rock could handle would be far faster than that of the PS/2 protocol. If it is necessary to reduce the concentrated stress on the rock superman can even fly back and forth like a dot matrix printer scratching a small parts of letters each time in the least damaging configuration.
This looks like a job for Randall!
I love his “What If?” even more than his cartoons. Yesterday I was wondering if he could tell me what would happen if all of the electrons in my body instantly vanished. Specifically how big the explosion would be but also whether a bunch of free protons and nuclei at that energy level would do anything exciting.
In your body there are about 0.55 electrons for each nucleon (from this and approximating Z/A as 1 for hydrogen and 0.5 for anything else); i.e., about 3.3e26 electrons per kilogram of matter; that is, their electric charge is about −5.3e7 coulombs per kilogram, and the electric charge of your body if the electrons vanished would be 5.3e7 C/kg. The electrostatic energy is then kQ^2/(4*pi*ε0*r), where r is your “size” and k is some factor roughly of order 1 depending on your “shape” (e.g. 3⁄5 for an uniform ball of radius r). That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
So from the sounds of it extinction of complex life on earth but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet.
Prob’ly something like this.
Ahh, good point. That seems about right.
After estimating the total energy and thence the energy per particle, it looks like the average particle would have UHECR-like energy, so they would each generate an extensive air shower, “spreading” the energy over larger volumes than it otherwise would. (But when you have so many showers superimposed to each other, I’m not sure the total effect would be much different from each particle interacting locally.)
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
The guy who has laser eyes is going to use a laser pen built especially to accommodate his super-special needs? I suppose he could do that. Then he could choose not to use his flight power but use his super strength to power an awesome bike-helicopter.
Like this one?