MarkusRamikin comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: MarkusRamikin 05 April 2012 07:06:07AM 0 points [-]

infinite memory space

Curious, does "memory space" mean something more than just "memory"?

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 10:05:50AM *  7 points [-]

infinite memory space

Curious, does "memory space" mean something more than just "memory"?

Just a little more specific. Some people may hear "memory" and associate it with, say, the duration of their memory rather than how many can be physically held. For example when a human is said to have a 'really good memory' we don't tend to be trying to make a claim about the theoretical maximum amount of stuff they could remember.

Comment author: Nornagest 05 April 2012 07:11:42AM *  2 points [-]

No, although either or both might be a little misleading depending on what connotations you attach to it: an idealized Turing machine stores all its state on a rewritable tape (or several tapes, but that's equivalent to the one-tape version) of symbols that's infinite in both directions. You could think of that as analogous to both memory and disk, or to whatever the system you're actually working with uses for storage.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 05 April 2012 07:13:35AM *  0 points [-]

Right, I know that. Was just curious why the extra verbiage in a post meant to explain something.

Comment author: Nornagest 05 April 2012 07:15:02AM 1 point [-]

Because it's late and I'm long-winded. I'll delete it.