We Are the Robots

https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/we-are-the-robots

by jger15 • 2 years ago

15 17 2 years ago

contraptions.venkateshrao.com

the group was German, so I don’t know why the song is in Russian+English

Kraftwerk wrote and released both German and English versions of most of their music. For example, in Germany this song was released as "Die Roboter".

Occasionally they also mix other languages in their lyrics, another example on top of my head is the Numbers song. I assume that it makes them sound more international which helps a lot with the "futuristic" sound.

_19qg• 2 years ago

There is a idea of a robot (on the album "Die Mensch-Maschine", "The Man Machine") as the perfect worker (russian "rabotnik") and also the relationshop to russian suprematism as an art form (see the cover).

The robot as an ideal socialist worker.

Lyrics:

    Я твой слуга (Ja tvoi sluga) (I'm your slave)
    Я твой работник (Ja tvoi rabotnik) (I'm your worker)

djmips3• 2 years ago

Your translation seems much more apt than the one provided in the article. Side note I guess the villain in the Sonic series is 'the perfect worker' by name.

gsf_emergency5• 2 years ago

The word robota means literally 'corvée, serf labor', and figuratively 'drudgery, hard work' in Czech and also (more general) 'work, labor' in many Slavic languages

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/origin-word-robot-rur/

0823498723498725• 2 years ago

There's even a "hyperorganic" Rubik's Cube algorithm: the stereotypical organic algorithm solves the cube layer by layer, only pulling out the fanciest moves to get the last few cubies in place. The hyperorganic algorithm is intensely group theoretic, and starts by allowing any kind of movement, but then cuts it down: from any quarter turns to half turns only, etc. (apparently just at the time no legal moves are left according to the algo, the cube should be solved), and the distinguishing feature is that instead of having clear progress layer-by-layer, it still looks mostly, inscrutably, scrambled until almost the final steps, when it suddenly "crystallises" into a solved cube.

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-yTrFDHpbw

Thorrez• 2 years ago

I don't understand how this comment relates to the article, or how that video relates to the rest of the comment.

0823498723498725• 2 years ago

The "hyperorganic" algo behaves like hyperorganicity in TFA:

Things that are more structurally complex present as statically inscrutable ... Things that are more behaviorally complex present as chaotic even if they’re not.

The video relates to TFA independently of the rest of the comment*, specifically Kraftwerk's lyric « Я твой слуга » [and more distantly to Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)]

* a "lagniappe" is a freebie, a bonus item.

djmips3• 2 years ago

I'd mused about how we learn solve the cube in a structured approach and that there perhaps could be a better way and in my mind it would be exactly as you described. Have any humans mastered this approach despite it's hyper organic label?

0823498723498725• 2 years ago

Depends upon whether or not we count (table-assisted) mathematicians as humans.

The description I remembered comes from 5.6.A (p39) of https://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~burkej/cube/singmaster.pdf (ca.1980)

[Morwen B. Thistlethwaite's] current algorithm requires at most 52 moves, but ... it may be reducible to 45 with a lot of searching. The method involves working through the following sequence of groups:

    G_0 = <L,  R,  F,  B,  U,  D>
    G_1 = <L,  R,  F,  B,  U^2,D^2>
    G_2 = <L,  R,  F^2,B^2,U^2,D^2>
    G_3 = <L^2,R^2,F^2,B^2,U^2,D^2>
    G_4 = {I}

> Once in G_i, one only uses moves in G_i to get into G_i+1 ... The results for stages 3 and 4 require extensive tables comprising about 500 and 172 entries respectively as well as some preliminary reductions. However MBT has told me today that he has reorganized stage 3 and that it no longer requires such extensive tables.

                           S T A G E
    Max # of moves     1    2    3    4   Total
    --------------     -    -    -    -   -----
    Proven             7   13   15   17    52
    Anticipated        7   12   14?  17    50?
    Best possible      7   10?  13?  15?   45?

compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rkp29f7QTU&t=24s

EDIT: way more at https://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/thistle.htm

We Are the Robots

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