Thread by @accretionist

1. Let's talk about trinary ( #ternary ) and #IOTA . (Long rant, maybe better suited for a blog entry. Oh well, whatever.)

2. In my many discussions with many different people about #IOTA , ternary is I think the most controversial aspect of the tech. Many people consider it genuine lunacy, a sign that #IOTA is just a scam cryptocurrency.

3. And I'll be honest with you: when I first encountered ternary in #IOTA , I went "What the f*** is this sh**? Numerology?"

4. Let's talk about the history of computers. After WWII, the Soviet Union had its technological golden age in the 1950s: first satellite, Sputnik, first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, etc.

5. The Soviet Union was a hot spot of technological innovation (and it scared the hell out of the West before the West caught up and the East lost its edge). Out of @msu_ru Moscow State University came Setun: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun . A ternary Soviet technological masterpiece.

6. In the West #IBM was shipping hard drives the size of dinner tables and in the East Soviet geniuses like Sergei Sobolev en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_So… and Nikolay Brusentsov en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_B… were saying ternary was the best basis for computer technological development. Why?

7. To answer why, we need to consider the phrase "radix economy." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_eco… What is that? Simply put: which number system best accomplishes the goal of representing numbers and manipulating them with the most ease, the most economically. And the answer is... base e.

8. e? e is the natural logarithm. Without turning this tweet storm into a math lesson about why, e is 2.718 (...) . If you are able to write computer circuitry based on the natural log as a number system, go claim your @FieldsMedalSymp in Math and @NobelPrize in Physics.

9. For the rest of us mortals, we can note that binary, base 2, is pretty close to the ideal number system based on e, but ternary, base 3 is closer. Meaning what? Meaning, given an equal input of energy, a ternary computer will be faster than a binary computer at the same task.

10. Or, a ternary computer will perform a task in the same time as a binary computer but use less energy. That archaic Soviet tech was not nonsense! However, ternary is more costly to design and to think about. Binary is just simpler. Thus ternary faded and Setun is in a museum.

11. There are a lot of side topics here. Like balanced ternary. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_… . "Perhaps the prettiest number system of all," writes Donald E. Knuth in The Art of Computer Programming, "is the balanced ternary notation.":

12. web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sj… (Balanced ternary is #IOTA btw.) And you might say "the gain over binary is too tiny to warrant a completely new tech." Except the gains *compound* in some designs ( #NeuralNetworks ):

13. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/79661…

#Ternary is very important for #AI , #NeuralNetworks .

And so: it is 2018.

Technological evolution marches on.

There is no magic rule that says once we chose binary we can never go to ternary:

Sunk cost fallacy.

14. As we think about technological evolution, or even natural evolution, we note it is never a straight line. It is always a convoluted mess. What was once discarded can come to the fore again. Two steps forward, one step back.

15. The West eclipsed the Soviets in tech as the Cold War progressed, but the Soviets still had some surprises. It is a fool who believes his adversary has no tricks up their sleeves and the West was scared and put into cold sweats many times by exotic Soviet tech advances.

16. Such as with supercavitating torpedoes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Sh… . The Russian empire was always historically landlocked and always had difficulty gaining ports, but here the Soviets made a massive leap in naval military technology that took the West totally by surprise.

17. For those of us who marvel at the history of technology, the Soviet Union is a treasure trove of exotic alternative realities. Like... Star Wars Hoth Walker-style mining equipment! : reddit.com/r/gifs/comment…

18. Again, only a fool concludes that certain realities of technology are fixed and never changing. Technological evolution has no rules. #Ternary in #IOTA is indeed a huge, mindblowing stab at up-ending decades of assumptions. It either turns you off on #IOTA ...or seduces you.

19. That's what happened to me: ternary in #IOTA seduced me. I genuinely believe ternary is going to gain a head of steam as people realize the efficiency gains, especially in #AI research, making the best #NeuralNetworks . #IOTA is only a first glimmer I think in that regard.

20. Nikolay Brusentsov, original pioneer of ternary computing, died in 2014, age 99.

I can only hope some whisper of rumors of what became #Jinn and #IOTA reached his ears before he passed.

21. And that was only 4 years ago.

And I think in another short 4 years, everyone is going to be talking about #ternary and #IOTA , big impact in #AI and #IoT .

#IOTAStrong

/end