Well, there's a problem with being able to describe anything "perfectly" because at a certain point, things don't get any smaller. Also, at that point, there are fundamental limits on what can be known about a given system. There's a slashdotter around here with a sig that says "I have calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision I have no idea where I am." It's a reference to the uncertainty principle, which states that certain pairs of properties of a particle cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. There's also something called quantum indeterminacy, which I don't understand well enough to explain. The short version is knowing everything 'perfectly' is reserved for a higher power, and that there are some things (e.g. all of quantum physics) that you are only going to be able to express as probabilities.
The idea of the Big Bang is almost ridiculous at a first glance. It's only that it is so logical and well-supported that we hardly think about it. But if you consider all the incredible vastness of the universe, of which the actual visual universe is only a small part(!) and then try to comprehend how everything in it was once contained within an area the size of an electron. At that point (10^-24 seconds after the big bang, if my calculations are correct) it had already increased in size by at least a factor of ~10^20. The mind really cannot comprehend such a thing.
What is "proper" competition? There's a huge barrier to entry in the telecoms world and it changes the economics. What, specifically, do you see as being a remedy to this issue?
Context. Hmm. Oh, right, the guy that I replied to was talking about physics.
You are never going to be able to describe everything You mention that there are certain values of "everything" for which this statement does not hold, but "never" can be variously defined, as well.
We have theories for describing complex systems, too. You may be confusing being able to describe something with being able to predict its behavior. There are a lot of things that are not predictable even when all the initial factors have been determined and the process is known. There are fundamental limits on what we can know about any given system. That doesn't mean we can't say anything useful about them, though.
As to how the universe exists, I assume you're asking how everything got started? What came before the big bang, and all that? We don't know anything about that right now, but we're talking about an arbitrarily long distance in the future, so we can probably say that either (1 the information about that event is not contained within the physical universe and therefore nothing about it can be proven (2 the information about that event exists within the universe or can be inferred from its structure, so that it will likely be described by someone at some point, assuming that we continue to exist and study the universe and keep expanding what we know about it.
So if they're losing mass into some other universe, how come they aren't losing mass? Follow it along a little. You have a small black hole, losing mass at a slow rate (by means other than Hawking radiation). Does it lose mass at a fixed rate no matter what? That seems like an error related to what the article is talking about. So assume that the rate of loss is variant with the mass of the black hole. Probably that would place an upper limit on the size of a black hole. Given that the current record holder is some 18 billion solar masses, that suggests that any such 'draining' effect is small enough to have no real effect. So having a theory that says that "x happens, but is not detectable," it makes sense to exclude it from your calculations until there's some clear supporting evidence.
Not "drop the laws of physics" in reference to the big bang. Just consider it a known unknown. We can theorize to a point, and beyond that we are limited at what we can discover. There's no way to recreate those conditions, you understand. But if you're using that to cast doubt on the Big Bang theory, well...let me put it this way: your radical ideas have already occurred to others. The Big Bang theory is still the best model that fits our observations.
No, you really have no idea what you're talking about. Zero. Zilch. You didn't make up the stuff about the Devil's Triangle, big fucking deal. Just because some crackpot says crackpot things on a History Channel documentary, does not mean that the hypothesis is credible or that it deserves any sort of serious discussion. Yes, I saw that show too. The only "scientist" they had was one John Hutchison; for some reason they thought he had a doctorate. Mr. Hutchison is chiefly noted for his claims to have violated the laws of physics to produce perpetual motion and antigravity. I've never been more irate about a television show than when I saw that steaming pile of tripe presented as a documentary.
Black holes and white ones look the same to an outside observer. You don't get something that spews out matter randomly--violation of thermodynamics. Wormholes (required for white holes to exist) aren't stable, they're just a solution to an equation and for all practical purpose don't exist. There are size limitations on black holes. If there was a black or white hole on Earth we would not be having this discussion right now.
Now, when someone tells you your ideas are not worth talking about, before you start repeating yourself, perhaps you should double-check your sources. I'm going to keep my clue-by-four here just in case.
There may be more to life, but there's not a whole lot more to science. And, if science describes the physical universe, any subsequent mysteries after the end of science would be about---what, exactly? I had engineering challenges in mind when I said that the end of science would be boring. Finding the equation to solve a problem is to me far more interesting than using that equation to e.g. build a house.
Boring my left buttock. The brilliant minds who had devoted their lives to science would likely devote their lives to engineering. That's it! Exactly! How did you know that I was thinking about engineering when I wrote my post?:)
Great, except what apparent difference would there be between a black hole and a white one? I'm not touching the devil's triangle stuff. Honestly, the reality of the universe is more interesting than the crap that you can make up, even if you don't seem to think it's understandable. Really. You can go read about it and everything, and look at pictures, and it's real. And I may be an asshole by responding to your post in this patronizing manner, but what you're doing is blathering about things you don't have the faintest idea about, and that behavior precludes intellectual interaction. So take it somewhere else, please.
Singularities != black holes. Apparently. Black holes are those big non-radiating things that we've observed in a roundabout way for quite some time now. The idea that an object can be massive enough for light to not be able to escape it has not been undermined. This is just discussing what happens after the matter falls in to the large, tremendously massive, mostly-nonradiating object.
Time travel I'll give you, and the related concept of superluminal speeds, but the black holes stay.
That doesn't make sense. If eventually the universe was completely described, what use would there be for science? It would be good for one person's place in the history books to discover the Ultimate Final Secret of the Entire Universe, but boring as hell thereafter.
Probably anyone would like to make a discovery on that scale, but which world would you rather live in?
Transmission from Comcast/RIAA begins: Copyvio! Guards, seize this rogue! This is exactly the kind of thing the system was designed to prevent! You'll never get away with this, this fiendish rapid transmission of data! Soon, our dark forces will triumph ov***** CARRIER LOST *****
"Good evening, this is your local nightly news. Today, the headquarters of the major internet and cable provider, Comcast, as well as the offices of the RIAA, were crushed by a massive wall of ice. Local rescue workers, arriving at the scene, reported a strange sensation of joy at the sight. To date, no explanation has been offered for this bizarre event..."
Beside the point. The tools have changed. The profession (sign-making) still exists. Most other occupations change when technology changes. Rarely, specific tool-users find themselves to be obsolete. The profession of "artist" isn't likely to go away anytime soon. If you are sufficiently dependent on the tools you're using that you can't create art without them, you're not much of an artist. Why should that be lamented?
Don't forget loading it up with all of the antivirus and antispyware software. AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot, firewall, firefox+noscript, all before you can feel safe connecting the thing to the internet. Then creating an image of the system so you can revert back to it when the system gets pwned by the virus of the week.
Sign painter? You mean screen printing? That was alive and well, last I heard. But are you implying that an artist who picks up a different set of (possibly computer-aided) tools is no longer an artist? Honestly, what you're describing sounds like a tool becoming obsolete, and some people failing to switch to a newer set of tools. Should we lament the old tools? The ones that failed to adapt? Maybe. But I'd rather learn a new set of tools so I can get on with creating art...
Well, apathy in this case means leaving you to starve and/or get raped by the Japanese. Ineptitude in the defense of the country is a little less forgivable.
Actually, it's a lot better than what they had through the first half of the 20th Century. After the overthrow of the Empire in 1910-ish, the country was basically ruled by regional warlords up until the second world war. With the invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese, what passed for a central government just basically gave up the citizens to save itself, over a period of fifteen-twenty years. Say what you will about the current Chinese government, it's far better than the inept totalitarian regime it replaced.
FTA:
Specifically, Microsoft is slowly shifting toward a more open standards based approach to its file formats. The ISO standard Office Open XML is an example of the direction we are moving towards. That pretty much says it all, here.
Everything is an arms race. Or a Red Queens' race, either way. Probably it could be considered part of the definition of competition. Which would make this--inevitable. Pointing out that this system exhibits this behavior is kind of obvious, really. The question is whether or not the "BFG" exists---whether there is an element that will end the competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there's a problem with being able to describe anything "perfectly" because at a certain point, things don't get any smaller. Also, at that point, there are fundamental limits on what can be known about a given system. There's a slashdotter around here with a sig that says "I have calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision I have no idea where I am." It's a reference to the uncertainty principle, which states that certain pairs of properties of a particle cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. There's also something called quantum indeterminacy, which I don't understand well enough to explain. The short version is knowing everything 'perfectly' is reserved for a higher power, and that there are some things (e.g. all of quantum physics) that you are only going to be able to express as probabilities.
The idea of the Big Bang is almost ridiculous at a first glance. It's only that it is so logical and well-supported that we hardly think about it. But if you consider all the incredible vastness of the universe, of which the actual visual universe is only a small part(!) and then try to comprehend how everything in it was once contained within an area the size of an electron. At that point (10^-24 seconds after the big bang, if my calculations are correct) it had already increased in size by at least a factor of ~10^20. The mind really cannot comprehend such a thing.
What is "proper" competition? There's a huge barrier to entry in the telecoms world and it changes the economics. What, specifically, do you see as being a remedy to this issue?
We have theories for describing complex systems, too. You may be confusing being able to describe something with being able to predict its behavior. There are a lot of things that are not predictable even when all the initial factors have been determined and the process is known. There are fundamental limits on what we can know about any given system. That doesn't mean we can't say anything useful about them, though.
As to how the universe exists, I assume you're asking how everything got started? What came before the big bang, and all that? We don't know anything about that right now, but we're talking about an arbitrarily long distance in the future, so we can probably say that either (1 the information about that event is not contained within the physical universe and therefore nothing about it can be proven (2 the information about that event exists within the universe or can be inferred from its structure, so that it will likely be described by someone at some point, assuming that we continue to exist and study the universe and keep expanding what we know about it.
Who the hell mentioned physics?
So if they're losing mass into some other universe, how come they aren't losing mass? Follow it along a little. You have a small black hole, losing mass at a slow rate (by means other than Hawking radiation). Does it lose mass at a fixed rate no matter what? That seems like an error related to what the article is talking about. So assume that the rate of loss is variant with the mass of the black hole. Probably that would place an upper limit on the size of a black hole. Given that the current record holder is some 18 billion solar masses, that suggests that any such 'draining' effect is small enough to have no real effect. So having a theory that says that "x happens, but is not detectable," it makes sense to exclude it from your calculations until there's some clear supporting evidence.
Not "drop the laws of physics" in reference to the big bang. Just consider it a known unknown. We can theorize to a point, and beyond that we are limited at what we can discover. There's no way to recreate those conditions, you understand. But if you're using that to cast doubt on the Big Bang theory, well...let me put it this way: your radical ideas have already occurred to others. The Big Bang theory is still the best model that fits our observations.
No, you really have no idea what you're talking about. Zero. Zilch. You didn't make up the stuff about the Devil's Triangle, big fucking deal. Just because some crackpot says crackpot things on a History Channel documentary, does not mean that the hypothesis is credible or that it deserves any sort of serious discussion. Yes, I saw that show too. The only "scientist" they had was one John Hutchison; for some reason they thought he had a doctorate. Mr. Hutchison is chiefly noted for his claims to have violated the laws of physics to produce perpetual motion and antigravity. I've never been more irate about a television show than when I saw that steaming pile of tripe presented as a documentary.
Black holes and white ones look the same to an outside observer. You don't get something that spews out matter randomly--violation of thermodynamics. Wormholes (required for white holes to exist) aren't stable, they're just a solution to an equation and for all practical purpose don't exist. There are size limitations on black holes. If there was a black or white hole on Earth we would not be having this discussion right now.
Now, when someone tells you your ideas are not worth talking about, before you start repeating yourself, perhaps you should double-check your sources. I'm going to keep my clue-by-four here just in case.
There may be more to life, but there's not a whole lot more to science. And, if science describes the physical universe, any subsequent mysteries after the end of science would be about---what, exactly? I had engineering challenges in mind when I said that the end of science would be boring. Finding the equation to solve a problem is to me far more interesting than using that equation to e.g. build a house.
Great, except what apparent difference would there be between a black hole and a white one? I'm not touching the devil's triangle stuff. Honestly, the reality of the universe is more interesting than the crap that you can make up, even if you don't seem to think it's understandable. Really. You can go read about it and everything, and look at pictures, and it's real. And I may be an asshole by responding to your post in this patronizing manner, but what you're doing is blathering about things you don't have the faintest idea about, and that behavior precludes intellectual interaction. So take it somewhere else, please.
Singularities != black holes. Apparently. Black holes are those big non-radiating things that we've observed in a roundabout way for quite some time now. The idea that an object can be massive enough for light to not be able to escape it has not been undermined. This is just discussing what happens after the matter falls in to the large, tremendously massive, mostly-nonradiating object.
Time travel I'll give you, and the related concept of superluminal speeds, but the black holes stay.
That's sarcasm, dammit! Or humor. Irony is someone being pedantic and critical on slashdot in response to a minor misuse of language.
Wait...nevermind...
That doesn't make sense. If eventually the universe was completely described, what use would there be for science? It would be good for one person's place in the history books to discover the Ultimate Final Secret of the Entire Universe, but boring as hell thereafter.
Probably anyone would like to make a discovery on that scale, but which world would you rather live in?
Transmission from Comcast/RIAA begins: Copyvio! Guards, seize this rogue! This is exactly the kind of thing the system was designed to prevent! You'll never get away with this, this fiendish rapid transmission of data! Soon, our dark forces will triumph ov***** CARRIER LOST *****
"Good evening, this is your local nightly news. Today, the headquarters of the major internet and cable provider, Comcast, as well as the offices of the RIAA, were crushed by a massive wall of ice. Local rescue workers, arriving at the scene, reported a strange sensation of joy at the sight. To date, no explanation has been offered for this bizarre event..."
No, they're not demanding that you thank them for anything, just keep the money flowing :)
Beside the point. The tools have changed. The profession (sign-making) still exists. Most other occupations change when technology changes. Rarely, specific tool-users find themselves to be obsolete. The profession of "artist" isn't likely to go away anytime soon. If you are sufficiently dependent on the tools you're using that you can't create art without them, you're not much of an artist. Why should that be lamented?
That sound you heard was 1500 students going to another university this fall.
Don't forget loading it up with all of the antivirus and antispyware software. AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot, firewall, firefox+noscript, all before you can feel safe connecting the thing to the internet. Then creating an image of the system so you can revert back to it when the system gets pwned by the virus of the week.
Sign painter? You mean screen printing? That was alive and well, last I heard. But are you implying that an artist who picks up a different set of (possibly computer-aided) tools is no longer an artist? Honestly, what you're describing sounds like a tool becoming obsolete, and some people failing to switch to a newer set of tools. Should we lament the old tools? The ones that failed to adapt? Maybe. But I'd rather learn a new set of tools so I can get on with creating art...
Well, apathy in this case means leaving you to starve and/or get raped by the Japanese. Ineptitude in the defense of the country is a little less forgivable.
Actually, it's a lot better than what they had through the first half of the 20th Century. After the overthrow of the Empire in 1910-ish, the country was basically ruled by regional warlords up until the second world war. With the invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese, what passed for a central government just basically gave up the citizens to save itself, over a period of fifteen-twenty years. Say what you will about the current Chinese government, it's far better than the inept totalitarian regime it replaced.
But then what would we do with all of these suddenly-identified flying objects? It'd put a huge dent in our UFO economy!
If it had been censored, how would we be able to see it?
If this is legit, it may still be selection bias: probably a survey showing the opposite results would not be as newsworthy.
Everything is an arms race. Or a Red Queens' race, either way. Probably it could be considered part of the definition of competition. Which would make this--inevitable. Pointing out that this system exhibits this behavior is kind of obvious, really. The question is whether or not the "BFG" exists---whether there is an element that will end the competition.