So if time were moving backwards, how would you know?
I've got a story idea, inspired by this comic. First I was thinking, imagine that there were time travelers, and they did kill Hitler-like figures, but every time they kill one, they fast forward back to the future they came from, and history appears even worse. Eventually they gave up, out of concern of making things worse. What a great explanation for Hitler! But that gave me a better idea. Imagine they kept coming back and trying to improve the world, but there was always one more big problem. And eventually, out of shear luck, the problem became so big, and influential, that finally, it influenced the likelihood of time travel existing in it's future so much that it finally didn't!
Wait, could seemingly defective, recessive genes, be more beneficial than we suspect, adding to the reason that genetics continues to keep them around? Like, is there a benefit to weak genes in certain environmental changes? I think so.
Is the idea of 'guided' or 'forced' evolution viable? My idea is, select a species that is similar to what you would like to combat/create/whatever. The greater the species' rate of variation, the better, so bacteria would usually be decent candidates. (Rate of variation that is dependent on at least rate of reproduction, mutation rate, hermaphroditic sexual characteristics, and similar.) By increasing the aspect you want to develop (say, resistance to, or dependence on some environmental character), you can kill off the weaker individuals and promote evolution towards your goal. I believe this could really benefit the drug industry enormously. I imagine combating the drug resistant drugs by developing drugs in bugs that we force to do something detrimental to the bug that is now resistant.
Circumvented intellect.
Reading the negative reviews of Religulous makes me want to create a sequel, or followup, where we collect together all the criticism pertaining to cheap tricks, and poor interviews and poor interviewees, and we methodically follow them to conclusion. I so confidently think that they will still look stupid, that there are no good answers to Bill's questions, that the whole of the religious industry is very transparent bologna.
1·10·09
Chemical constraints
"I am insane, and you are my insanity."
"Is this real or is this just one of my delusions?" "This is definitely real."
I just realized, the paradox of the heap is really about emergent phenomena that are found in the limit of great numbers. At what point is it a pile is the same as at what point does it behave classically.
Also, it seems that consciousness as an emergent phenomena fits well with the paradox of the heap, and also those paradoxes involving the greek ship and the rich man paying the poor man.
1·11·09
"Either can't leave or can't stay."
Bee, at Backre(action) said "And that brings me to why, in its current form, religion will continue to dominate over science. Because scientists don’t have traditions, because science is all about competition and not about belonging, because you are not accepted simply by declaring your willingness of being part, because we don’t take care of our group members, because we offer no advice in hard times and no guidance for those in trouble. Because the scientific enterprise as it is today does not take care of these most human needs. And as long as we don’t make the scientific enterprise a more welcoming place, people will continue instead to turn to religion for comfort and a place of belonging."
"It's all gravy in the navy"
Isn't it strange that on a macroscopic level, perpetual motion is (rationally) impossible, but on an atomic scale, matter and energy are required to move perpetually? Nothing can stand still, and even the concept of 'standing still' will dissolve when relativity is accounted.
Can I weave this into research exploring the fine line between the simple and the complex? (Entropy, phase transitions CS problem instances, one way functions, arrow of time.) Am I just going nuts?
Physics can answer the how, and the when, and the what, but scientific methods fail at any true why, because why doesn't appear to have any objective application.
I've read this before, and maybe even said this comment before:
Steven Weinberg: "I have to admit that, even when physicists will have gone as far as they can go, when we have a final theory, we will not have a completely satisfying picture of the world, because we will still be left with the question 'why?' Why this theory, rather than some other theory?"
Would he feel the same way if the 'final theory' seemed to emerge from say elementary number theory?
1·12·09
On the flow of "what" clocks measure.
Let's start by thinking about the spacetime interval. The interval is basically the "true distance" between things, and the role time plays is to "restrict causality". Time provides the defining line between causality and coincidence. Everything slower than light is causal, everything faster is coincidence.
How would you even recognize is there were causal events occurring backwards in time to you?
Holy shit, the interval couldn't explain the Dirac sea could it? Like, the way the interval places causal bubbles around everything that grow at the speed of light. Dammit, it's all hazy but there. The probabilistic nature of QM, couldn't that be interpreted the same? As bubbles of causality expanding until they interfere with one another?
In that case, what exactly is entanglement?
You were right.
1·13·09
Maybe smart could be defined as: good at collecting, storing, organizing, and recalling information". Then I guarantee computers will soon surpass us. They are already far beyond us at storing and recalling, and they are now collecting information in many similar ways that humans do, but they are not yet good at organizing and collecting as we are, because they only organize the way we tell them to, and they only collect what we set them up to collect. Humans however collect everything within reach of their senses, though not reliably.
The ratio of discomfort around other people to desire to be around other people is not unity. The two forces are not balanced, and I accelerated in the direction away from people, as the discomfort pushed greater than the desire pulled.
NO! Science does not have a dogma, it does not require faith, in it's purest form, it has no tradition, no culture and no loyalty. In it's purest form, science is a method for distilling probabilistically correct encodings of what is commonly referred to as reality. The 'method of science' is nothing more than, double check everything. EVERYTHING. Evidence, results, setup, hypothesis, 'facts', experimental methods, equipment, etc. Leave no stone unturned. Nothing is exempt from criticism. Nothing is above refinement, replacement, or removal. Nothing is sacred. Avoid having faith of any sort, it will only make you feel stupid when it inevitably fails you.
Turning now to the question eluded to in the video, "do you think science can understand everything?" As to whether or not science can understand everything, my opinion would be that yes, it can, and furthermore, it is the only thing that can, because it is the only method of validating (double checking) information (understanding). Whether or not it ever will understand everything is a different question, and much more debatable in my opinion. Feynman had a good description, could it be that nature is layered, and no matter how many layers we uncover, all we ever find is more layers? Alternatively, could we construct an understanding of the universe that encapsulates every aspect of it (understand everything)? The bit about having faith that nature is consistent, in the past I would have supported that stance, but I wouldn't any longer. At some point I had concluded that the two assumptions needed for science were, first, that there was some aspect of existence that was 'real' or 'true' or 'consistent', and second, that humans are able to perceive at least some part of that truth (i.e., reality). Shortly thereafter I stumbled upon this statement:
Asimov: "Yes, as an article of faith. I have articles of faith, too. I have an article of faith that says the universe makes sense. Now there's no way you can prove that the universe makes sense..."I felt like he had said pretty much exactly what I had (albeit it much more eloquently). Since then however, I have tried very hard to imagine how something could possibly not follow make sense, and after much effort, and complete failure to make any progress, I have grown confident that things must fall in one of three categories: deterministic, probabilistic, and random. Now, can I imagine a universe in which everything was any one three of those things? Yes. Random is very boring, deterministic is the simplistic view we naturally develop, and probabilistic is the bizarre world that revealed itself in our investigations into the atomic world. What role do these three categories play in our own world? We seem to exist in a reality that is probabilistic in nature on the very small scale (perhaps even truly random in certain places? E.g. Dirac sea?), and very close to deterministic on the large scale. We still haven't worked out exactly how the transition occurs though... Sorry, I'm sick of writing about this now.
It's an old list, but still useful. I should try to expand it.
things that satisfy me:
untying knots
scraping dried paint off glass
stapling tyvek smoothly
writing the number four
wind strong enough to blow me over
fast moving clouds
people
complete silence (hard to come by)
looking up very tall objects nearby
feeling insignificant
looking at the trees
looking at most anything simple
looking at people
wide open sky
talking and thinking with people
taking off socks
new additions:
wrapping cords up neatly (following their natural curve)
music symbols
We are the people you were warned about.
We are the monsters in your closet.
I was thinking today that very intelligent people start to resemble robots. They become less concerned with the every day human activities.
Love is an invention of DNA to ensure successful reproduction.
Wishing never helps, wishing never solved a thing.
I am way too shy, and self-aware, to admit that I like someone without anything but the safest criteria about it being okay to admit. So if a girl 'tests my love', by giving me the silent treatment, I'll just assume she has made up her mind. Thats how good I am at thinking about things (or is it bad?). The behavior I have received from girls is to me unambiguously: leave me alone. It is even accompanied by such a strong ignoring of me that the message seems clear: leave her alone. But fuck you, okay? If there is one thing I really don't understand, it is people, and at this point, anyone who knows me knows that. I'm confident that humans make sense in terms of quantum field theory, as they are applied to systems with very large numbers of particles, in the limit. But I don't expect I will understand that any time soon.
Wait for my conscious to break.
