by Dennis Crouch
In a short opinion, Judge Taranto has affirmed the lower court ruling that Electric Power Group’s asserted claims lacked subject matter eligibility. U.S. Patent Nos. 7,233,843; 8,060,259; and 8,401,710. The court writes:
Though lengthy and numerous, the claims do not go beyond requiring the collection, analysis, and display of available information in a particular field, stating those functions in general terms, without limiting them to technical means for performing the functions that are arguably an advance over conventional computer and network technology. The claims, defining a desirable information-based result and not limited to inventive means of achieving the result, fail under § 101.
Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A. (Fed. Cir. August 1, 2016) [EPGvsAlstom] (Judges Taranto, Bryson, and Stoll).
The claims at issue require the reception of real-time data coming in from a wide geographical distribution; analyzing the data for instability that may be indicative of grid stress; displaying visualizations of the stability metrics; storing the data; and deriving a composite indicator of power grid reliability. According to the court, this sequence – even when taken as a whole – is an abstract idea. Thus, a collection of abstract ideas is itself likely to be an abstract idea.
In distinguishing Enfish, the court explained that the claims here merely used “existing computers as tools in aid of processes focused on abstract ideas” while Enfish claimed “computer-functionality improvements . . . a particular database technique—in how computers could carry out one of their basic functions of storage and retrieval of data.” Although line drawing may be admittedly difficult at times it was not difficult for the court here.
In Step-Two of a Alice/Mayo, the courts asks whether the claims require “something more” than the abstract idea that is sufficient to serve as a foundation for the invention. Although not entirely clear, this “something more” is generally thought to require an inventive concept – a point of novelty sufficient to transform the idea into a patent eligible invention. Here, the court found that none of the sources of information, analysis & display techniques, or measures were new or inventive.
The claims in this case . . . do not include any requirement for performing the claimed functions of gathering, analyzing, and displaying in real time by use of anything but entirely conventional, generic technology. The claims therefore do not state an arguably inventive concept in the realm of application of the information-based abstract ideas.
According to the patentee, the benefit of the invention was to provide “humanly comprehensible” information regarding an extremely complex system. The court rejected that result as offering a patent eligible concept:
Merely requiring the selection and manipulation of information—to provide a “humanly comprehensible” amount of information useful for users, by itself does not transform the otherwise-abstract processes of information collection and analysis.
Common Sense Distinction: Perhaps the most important added element of the opinion is the appellate court’s approval of the lower court’s “important common-sense distinction between ends sought and particular means of achieving them, between desired results (functions) and particular ways of achieving (performing) them.” Here, the court found that the claims were effectively directed to the problem-to-be-solved rather than the actual and concretely defined solution to the problem. Although the appellate panel acknowledged that this distinction is not the Alice/Mayo test, but rather as “one helpful way of double-checking the application of the Supreme Court’s framework to particular claims.”
Indeed, the essentially result-focused, functional character of claim language has been a frequent feature of claims held ineligible under § 101, especially in the area of using generic computer and network technology to carry out economic transactions. In this case, the district court’s wrap-up description confirms its, and our, conclusion that the claims at issue fail to meet the standard for patent eligibility under § 101.
This statement of the appellate court is designed to further free district courts to apply common sense in their Section 101 analysis.
All of MM’s, Martin’s, and Ned’s arguments can be summed up as:
Prove you are not a witch.
Night, I think you continue to demonstrate beyond peradventure that you do not know what you are talking about, but instead insist on babbling nonsense and making utterly banal comments on the more informed and articulate commentators here.
Ned, you are NOT one of the more informed and articulate commentators here.
Not by a long shot.
Never said I was anon. But Martin and MM certainly are.
Neither of those two are.
Each missing by more than you.
Ned, we all know that you are on here just to try and pick up business.
Sure I don’t know what I am talking about. That is why I beat you to a pulp every time we predict the outcome of cases.
Night, beat to a pulp on predictions? The only people I bet with are MM and Greg A.
Whatever Ned. You have become a sad figure. Unable to grasp the modern era. Pandering for your alms. Shouting in the town square about witches and how you will help burn them for a fee.
Night, I have always had a strong interest in patent law. I was, after all, the AIPLA patent law committee chair while patent counsel of a major company.
That was before you became old and desperate for work. Now you peddle your witch law nonsense to pander to the infringing class of clients.
Wasn’t that back when Ned “helped put the PUR into the law”…?
😉
Night, you must live in a land of mist and fog because I am decidedly on the side of the patent owner these days. For much of my career, I did work for big corp whose views of the world did not include patents except either as a nuisance, or as a vehicle to honor a company’s engineer inventors.
It is almost as if you do not bother to read what I right generally, and only focus on business methods patents, which I do oppose.
No mist or fog, Ned, as it is not just business methods that concerns your Windmill chases, but software as well.
But even worse than that is your alignment with Malcolm and your (extremely) undue adulation of THE worst blight in these boards (just enjoy his swagger indeed) that stems from your affiliction of “6-is-a-genius-because-he-agrees-with-me.”
It is also because you do NOT finish conversations the moment that a point is presented that thre@tens your desired views. Instead, you move on to the next thread and merely repeat your same windmill chase as if the counter point was never raised.
No one can be for patents and back Benson and Alice. Not possible.
And, Ned, you cannot possible be for patents. You are a judicial activists that is very much against patents. You are unethical as well.
Let’s see. You say you back MM. MM consistently characterizes patent applicants as grifters. And, yet, anyone that knows anything about patents knows that patents are integrated into every technology company in the country. That every large company (CAT, Intel, etc.) uses the patents to help promote innovation within their companies. That almost all engineers work to a standard of inventing something that is patent worthy.
That is realty. The fact that you don’t challenge MM, but support his grafter narrative makes you unethicial f1lth.
It’s almost as if Ned’s “pro-patent” efforts are a “false flag” operation.
He does seem to support some aspects of being “pro-patent,” but do you ever notice that there appears to be a “peace-treaty” on those points? Malcolm spouts endlessly against anyone else, but there is no “challenge” (except perhaps a weak facile one) when Ned posts.
And – as you mention, Ned does not EVER challenge the ridiculous and asinine comments from Malcolm that are ever present on almost every thread (no matter what the actual topic of the thread).
It’s like his “criticism” of Benson is tepid at best – and certainly NOT to any meaningful degree as to why that was one of the worst ever patent decisions (and yes, the “company he keeps” bites him on that as well with his “Stern” link; another of those “just enjoy the swagger moments”)
Night, there is no doubt that there is a major gulf between your positions and mine. I am for keeping the cost of obtaining and enforcing patents low. But I am not for bad patents, patents that claim nonstatutory subject matter, patents that have vague and indefinite claims, patents that claim inventions at the level of abstractions.
But, trust me, Night, there is not an abuse that I oppose that you do not support. You advocate and promote illegality, unethical practice, abuse of the patent system. You do that in spades, sir. It is not me who is undermining the patent system and making it harder on the rest of us who are truly trying to protect the system from the likes of Google. It is your crassness and banality, as well as your support of abuses and unethical behavior, that is the problem.
“ You advocate and promote illegality, unethical practice, abuse of the patent system. You do that in spades, sir.”
Pure B$.
Ned, your Windmill chases simply are NOT pure and chaste as you would like the world to believe.
Martin: I’m waiting on MM to discuss MPEG patents. [1]How are they possible and [2] why is there apparent consensus that they are OK?
[1] They’re only “possible” because the courts have created a flimsy legal fiction that allows otherwise ineligible logic to be carried out on data if that logic is performed “on a computer”, and thus far nobody’s mounted a well-argued challenge to that legal fiction (even as reams of similar examples of logic “on a computer” have been tanked with the Supreme Court’s approval).
[2] I have no idea whether there is “apparent consensus” or not. I’ve never consented to “MPEG patents” or any other patent on methods of applying logic to data to minimize the space required to store the data or the time required to transmit the data. Did someone take a poll?
“because the courts have created a flimsy legal fiction”
Sounds like you need to read (and understand) the simple set theory explication of the exceptions to the judicial doctrine of printed matter, as you are (once again) confused about what the judicial branch has actually done to the actual words used by Congress (your blaming the wrong people again – even though you are on record as volunteering an admission against your interests in knowing and understanding that controlling law…)
“Put a shirt on” – classic mansplaining maneuver- yes, clearly I’m too hysterical to have thought through what I’m saying.
“what you have done is take some strange abstraction in your head and said that the information processing is that abstraction and therefore ineligible. Makes no sense”.
Yes, some strange judicial exception to abstraction exists in my head, not in the avalanche of Mayo/Alice cases that you and anon like to pretend don’t exist.
“The reality is that information processing takes time, space, and energy”.
Of course it does. Anything that happens in our universe takes time, space, and energy. Does it follow that anything that takes time space and energy is or should be patent-eligible? Of course not.
“represented information is necessarily tangible”
Information is intangible and no reasonable jurist, lawyer, legislator, or inventor could say otherwise. Your position is unreasonable and unsustainable.
“Everything else is people’s brains being bothered by these machines for one reason or another”
Neat little switch there from “information” to “machines”. Nobody is bothered by patents on computers or computing equipment of any kind. Nobody.
Just in time to switch back to information from machines:
“Think about it. What is really going on here is that many people don’t understand information processing and what it really is conflicts with a lot of their beliefs”.
Yes, patents on information consumed by people conflicts with my beliefs in freedom of thought, pursuit of happiness, freedom of association, and freedom of speech, among others, along with the utter injustice of applying patent law to abstractions because they can never be reliably adjudicated or economically apportioned.
There is a huge problem with patents on inventions whose economic effects (i.e. the value of infringement) arises from the quality of information generated by the invention when that information is used by people.
That problem is dramatically smaller when the information is used by non-humans, because there is no abstraction in that use, because only humans are capable of abstraction.
I’ve asked MM two times on this thread already to explain how MPEG patents are supportable – since they are entirely intangible and have no novel physical structure.
Every court and judge is struggling with the same question: is it a technical effect? A technical solution to a technical problem? Something that improves the use of a computer or is limited to a computing environment?
My solution is reasonable and makes obvious sense when you don’t have a vested interest in patents on everything that people do.
Your position(s) are rather less supportable than mine. anon too is reduced to spouting word salad about sets and printed matter and legal terrain, while denying Mayo/Alice even exists.
I’m waiting on MM to discuss MPEG patents. How are they possible and why is there apparent consensus that they are OK?
Someone spouting a communication theory and “philosophy” as if it were a substitute for patent law is accusing anyone of “word salad” is just way too funny.
Mr. Snyder, you have a vested interest in your own “world view” and have not bothered to understand patent law or any of the numerous constructive comments that I have provided on this thread alone.
No one is denying the Supreme Court cases – the issue quite in fact is that those cases have mucked up what Congress set forth as the law under section 101.
You don’t even get what the issues are. Your picture is apropos: you are way over your head in the deep end.
You wish it were the deep end. The intentional obfuscation and “mystery” of patent law serves certain stakeholders very well, but a few years of study here on the Internet’s number 1 patent info source clears things right up for anyone who cares to enter the swamp.
Good luck disentangling communication theory and philosophy from patent law- or any law- anon. Only a zealot would even consider that a possibility.
In a way, your posts are like so many Alice patents; they don’t actually carry much in the way of anything new or interesting, but rather ideas about ideas, usually known only to you, repeated ritualistically, and never actually saying anything.
It’s not a matter of “disentangling” as much as it is a matter of knowing what you are talking about.
You simply don’t.
Not about the communication theory/”philosophy” and certainly not about the law.
You mistake your not understanding the substance with the view that there is not substance.
That’s a “you” problem.
More doubletalk. Which aspects of the law or the philosophy of semiotics or the plain meaning of the English language don’t comport with my prescription?
Allow me; ‘asked and answered’ ‘do your own legwork’ ‘you are so far in left field (deep end) that its pointless to identify…etc. and onward.
Still waiting for the 20 legal errors in my abstract, any month now.
Your “prescription” does not fit what you are trying to make it fit.
Square peg
Round hole
That you keep on trying to force fit says you just don’t understand either.
Martin, information processing machines. I think the reaction to them is about the same as the reaction to the machines that took over our physical labor.
A machine is sitting there performing useful work that many people pay, and yet it cannot be patented. Why again? Because of some abstraction in your head.
Put a shirt on.
Night, a machine that only calculates numbers from numbers performs the useful work of generating heat.
It can also be used as a boat anchor.
You really don’t know what you are talking about Ned.
Let’s talk about encryption….
Let’s contrast this apparent desire to disregard what happens “in the body” with patents for Pharma.
These patents – and here let’s talk compositions – are useless (lack utility) until they are internalized. Their only utility occurs once taken INTO the body (and the “laws of nature – that is, natural metabolism; take over).
Would this “no patent for what happens in the body” extend to remove patents for Pharma? On what “objective physical” basis would one rest for the difference between mind and body?**
**yes, there is a basis, but as I posted at 26.1.1, a first step necessary in any inte11ectually honest discussion is recognizing that is is NOT “magic” or even “soul” that separates out the basis of what is being attempted – and – the abject failure of the Zombie of the re-animated Mental Steps doctrine needs to be beheaded.
A physical change to a human body as a result of the use of a composition of matter will always be patent eligible.
The zombie of “mental steps” or not, what happens within people’s minds is also utterly protected by the Constitution, and beyond the reach of any legitimate government authority.
Good luck with any notion that there is no legal difference between body and mind- in support of patents(!) of all things….
You are quite missing the point with your rather bland and conclusory “of course that will always be patent eligible.”
Try some critical thinking.
(Start with 26.1.1)
Or a component for another machine….it pours out your ears Ned.
Night just stop conflating the means of data processing, which to me should be clearly patent eligible, tangible or not tangible, with the results of data-processing.
Its as if the machines that took over physical labor were also taking over all the various products they produced. Ain’t right. Can’t be. An improved farm plow cannot create exclusive rights in tomatoes and cucumbers.
Stuff that people consume, if protectable at all, should be handled under the copyright laws.
Stuff that machines consume are machine parts.
I’m on the right side of history, logic, and the actual discourse occurring among non-extreme stakeholders.
Lol – that’s too funny.
You are an extreme stakeholder, and you actively seek out those things that fit your “world view” even if they don’t fit the actual law, history, or facts.
Martin; I’m waiting on MM to discuss MPEG patents. [1]How are they possible and [2] why is there apparent consensus that they are OK?
[1] They’re only “possible” because the courts have created a flimsy legal fiction that allows otherwise ineligible logic to be carried out on data if that logic is performed “on a computer”, and thus far nobody’s mounted a well-argued challenge to that legal fiction (even as reams of similar examples of logic “on a computer” have been tanked with the Supreme Court’s approval).
[2] I have no idea whether there is “apparent consensus” or not. I’ve never consented to “MPEG patents” or any other patent on methods of applying logic to data to minimize the space required to store the data or the time required to transmit the data. Did someone take a poll?
That’s a fair response. The pertinent polling would be among the (currently) 19 people who matter; the 11 of the CAFC and 8 of the USSC.
Among that polling set, there is no plurality to tank MPEG, encryption, or similar patents. What makes them “similar” is the crux of the problem, and has been the problem, and will be the problem.
“Technical solutions to technical problems” or “improving the function of computers” or “problems limited to the Internet (or insert technical environment) are no more possible to fairly litigate than the Mayo/Alice test for abstraction.
To be sure, Mayo/Alice is a vital development to combat a mountain of non-inventions made possible by the ordinary use of data processing technology and the ladder of abstraction available to claim drafters because of the open definition of “process” allowable by the patent act.
As vital as Mayo/Alice is, procedurally it happens at the wrong point in cases, and without a solution to the lack of bounds of “abstract ideas”, it also inevitably becomes a” know it when they see it” judgement.
MPEG patents look like “it” to enough people that they are never challenged, even though we all know they are 100% abstract. You know this is happening but you don’t have an answer either.
I will keep pushing my answer until someone explains why it’s more arbitrary, or less conforming in spirit and letter of the patent law than what is happening now.
“I will keep pushing”
Don’t forget to breath (above water).
😉
(Just because you don’t like the answers that you have been given, does not mean that you have not been given the answers. Hint: your square peg does not fit the round hole)
Simple question:
Does it require a physical process to go from unsort ( list of numbers) –> sorted (list of numbers)?
Notice that the anti-patent judicial activists will not answer this question. I hope the readers realize that this question is like asking, do you agree the earth is not the center of the universe. It seems that the justices seem to think the answer is no. Certainly, Soot-in-my-ear, Stevens, and Ginsburg incredibly believe the answer is no.
I think this is a very good question that illustrates that many of the judges and justices are operating on models of physics from the 1800’s.
And, of course, the answer is yes and it is a direct result of the most important law of physics–The Conservation of Information.
(I think that Stevens and his ilk believe that they have minds that exist outside their bodies where all the non-physical thinking goes on. It really is a spiritual issue for some and one of the reason we see such bizarre opinions from the SCOTUS.)
Perhaps it is a spiritual issue at some level.
But it is also an issue easily twisted by noting the other points of conversation here. Specifically, with the “sentience” angle and the fact of the matter that even if one recognizes the physical aspect of “information processing,” there exists an overlap of “information processing” and the (true meaning) of the mental steps doctrine that needs to be addressed.
Getting people to realize that even human cognition is a physical act is just not enough.
Without addressing this overlap, the re-animation of the Zombie mental steps doctrine is allowed to run amuck as we all see that THAT re-animated Zombie is used (abused) to broaden the “keep out” zone to any and all things “deemed as proxies,” when such proxies are fully embraced as patent eligible if they meet the actual requirements of 101 as Congress as written that statute (the requirements of utility and belonging to at least one of the broad statutory categories).
Without addressing this overlap, the philosophy (and this philosophy is really only geared to communication theory) of semiotics is attempted to have its square peg pounded into the round circle of patent law.
The trap can be seen in the entirely inconsistent Supreme Court treatment of claims that may have portions of the claim that be use mental steps.
Inventions – under 101 – MUST use the claim as a whole paradigm. This is because it has long been understood that a portion of a claim may very well use a mental step – just so long as the claim as a whole is MORE THAN just a mental step. No one better exemplifies this point of dissembling than Ned and his attempted use of “Point of Novelty” for 101 purposes. I would be remiss at this point that the term coined by Prof. Crouch: the Vast Middle Ground, is the proper patent term to recognize in the discussion.
ANY discussion point advanced that does not recognize and integrate these things is an attempt at obfuscation.
When a claim – as chosen to be written by the applicant – the person set out by Congress within the law to be the one defining the invention – read as a whole – and allowed to use mental steps within the claim – is properly taken (per the law as written by Congress), and that claim is taken as a whole (without the attempted parsing by those legislating from the bench and their “directed to” or “gisting” or other ultra vires contrivances because they feel that applicants are “really after something else” and thus a claim is purposefully mangled, THEN the “magic show” and “witch hunt” has begun. This is exactly what preceded the Act of 1952 and is what prompted Congress TO act. It is clear that those “friends of the Court” want the Court to take actions as if the Act of 1952 never happened, that the Court’s pre-1952 common law power to set the meaning of the term “invention” was not taken away and replaced with the concept of obviousness.
ALL of that is avoided if the legislating from the bench was properly stopped.
This is entirely a problem of the Court’s making.
The best Supreme Court decision that comes closest to recognizing this was Chakrabarty.
It is no accident that Bergy was subsumed into Chakrabarty and the quote I provided below, which properly places the “new” aspect outside of what the legislators wanted to do with 101 – which was reflected in Bergy is thus reflected in the Chakrabarty decision.
anon, I agree with you. There are two varieties. First, because the computer is doing what a mind could do t try and treat this like a mental step. Absurd. Second, say that the machine is merely doing what the mind is doing so it per se ineligible. Outrageously ridiculous. Half of cognitive science ph.d.’s are about trying to simulate human cognition.
Both, are just outrageous. I really think that Taranto is little better than a felon. He intentionally misrepresents science and law to further his ends, which is essentially breaking the law with his side-kick Stoll.
So communication is excised from information just because you say it is?
So the study of symbols (semiotics), is excised from information because you say so, despite computational results often being models or simulations (i.e. symbols/synecdotes ) of real-world objects?
So all utility is socially constructed ?(so easily disproved hardly even worth an example)
Why even have a section 101? Why list “inventions patentable” at all when clearly everything that happens in the world is a process, so therefore anything “useful” in the world is subject to a patent?
And of course, “useful” is what you say it is too. It’s not a training video, but it is a video game, but it’s not a player piano scroll, but of course it’s a player piano.
The fact is that the judges of the USSC, CAFC, and district courts, and people in industry, and legislators, and other patent systems have demonstrably widely different philosophies around the relationship between information and patents is completely lost, as it must be, because they have not the vision or education of anon, who sees it all so clearly, or Night, who just knows that information is tangible and physical because a physical process is required to manipulate it.
Of course, that being the case, nothing is intangible or abstract because brains are physical machines and without brains, what have we?
I forgot the coup de grace:
“ONLY those things entirely in the mind that are off limits to the patent world”
Just what the founders intended, no doubt.
There is NO “coup de grace” from you, because you still do not recognize the terrain of patent law.
Your rambling here just shows how lost you really are.
Take some time (instead of being reactive). THINK about each of the different facets presented to you, and stop trying to jam the square peg into the round hole because you may have thought you have found something that fits your pre-conceived notions.
Get your head above water first, THEN breath.
It is NOT a matter of “excising communication from information” – it is a matter of you trying to force fit a communication theory or “philosophy” to encompass more than what that theory or “philosophy” is even meant to encompass.
As I have said, your handle on the “philosophy” is not impressive. It is just no substitute for understanding the actual legal terrain. Your attempts here make the negative connotations of “sophistry” look angelic in comparison (and that’s not a good thing for you).
Put a shirt on. Martin, what you have done is take some strange abstraction in your head and said that the information processing is that abstraction and therefore ineligible. Makes no sense.
The reality is that information processing takes time, space, and energy. That the laws of physics tells us that it is a physical process and that represented information is necessarily tangible.
Everything else is people’s brains being bothered by these machines for one reason or another, e.g., economics (Google wants to make sure they can take anything they want), spiritual (Stevens thinks that computers are trying to steal his spirit), abstraction conflict (you, worried that somehow this doesn’t fit your mental models of some abstraction you have in your head, etc.
Think about it. What is really going on here is that many people don’t understand information processing and what it really is conflicts with a lot of their beliefs.
Ned and his attempted use of “Point of Novelty” for 101 purposes….
It is almost as if anon has never read 103.
But anon, truthfully, “point of novelty” has to do with Halliburton. Halliburton has to do with indefiniteness. That is a 112 issue, not 103.
103…?
112…?
Ned, are you simply not paying attention? I am criticizing your attempted uses of “Point of Novelty” in the 101 sense.
Clearly, your lack of respect for controlling law and the changes that occurred in 1952 continues to taint your comments.
anon, PON is a 112 concept and always has been.
Now, 103 speaks of “differences.” To some degree, this is the same as PON. Graham said so.
101? WTF are you talking about? I do not have a clue.
Of course not – but yet you will persist in 101 discussions to invoke a “Point of Novelty” argument…
Maybe you want to bookmark this thread so that the next time you advance your “Point of Novelty” in a 101 discussion you can eat your words here…
anon, I do not.
Novel subject matter is not the same as PON.
PON is specific to the Perkins Glue-> Halliburton line of cases. It has to do with and only with indefiniteness.
Then why do you keep on bringing it up in 101 discussions? Please bookmark this page for easy reference the next time you try to use “Point of Novelty” in a 101 discussion.
Thanks.
Night, for the conservation of information to apply here, the sort must be reversible.
Ned,
You continue to show your two dimensional understanding and still cannot step over the circle.
Ned, if you cannot even handle the rather simple and straight forward set theory explication, you just don’t have the chops and Night Writer would just be wasting his time
anon, explain just how the thermodynamics law of conservation of information applies to a data sort? Some of us mere mortals do not see the connection especially since the requirement that the process be reversible is not preserved with a data sort.
Who says that it is not reversible and who says that you need it to be reversible?
As I have pointed out, you just don’t have the chops to understand this and I won’t waste my time trying to explain this to you. Heck, you won’t even engage on the far far simpler set theory explication of the exceptions to the judicial doctrine of printed matter.
Pearls before swine, Ned.
anon, a sort is reversible only if any sort state conserves information about a previous state.
No sort that I know of does. Night did not condition is argument on the conservation of information. He simply stated that a sort somehow conserved information when clearly it does not in the ordinary case.
It’s his argument – and you just are not grasping the meaning of it.
I am not going to try to teach you that subject. As I mentioned to him, that’s like throwing pearls before swine.
NW,
Are all physical processes patent eligible?
Ben,
Which ones are not – and perhaps more importantly, where in the statute do you find this distinction?
Non-useful processes. Section 101.
Excellent answer – now what do you mean by “non-useful?”
I think the fact that they are physical processes is very important. I do not think the SCOTUS understands this.
Does it require a physical process to go from unsort ( list of numbers) –> sorted (list of numbers)?
So, Ned, finally, has said that the answer is yes. We are going to get into the implications of this soon.
MM: please also tell us your answer.
Does it require a physical process to go from unsort ( list of numbers) –> sorted (list of numbers)?
Depends.
What do you mean by “physical process”?
What does the term “go from” mean in this context?
Here’s two numbers: 0 1
Are they sorted or unsorted? Tell everybody.
Let’s assume they’re sorted, just for sake of argument.
Now let’s assume they’re not sorted.
Has a “physical process” just taken place?
You’re a very serious person, NW! You’ve surely thought about this a lot. Let’s hear your super deep answers.
“What does the term “go from” mean in this context?”
It’s pretty self-evident that it means that you have a change in order.
Your rather crappy strawman falls apart immediately when you actually try to be inte11ectually honest about having a conversation on the matter.
(no one is shocked)