Here are two facets that I have tons of experience with that will make this test inaccurate unless both are handled somehow. 1. Our physical thinking on a physical level may consist in more than what occurs on the cranial level. The connections in our arms, down our spine, and across our body may play key roles, and the brain may not consistently always run the same, it may go through cycles. By focusing on the brain too much instead of the entire body and diet, incorrect results are likely. 2. In my experience when I use various supplemental methods, I can increase my brain power by orders of magnitude for varying periods of time. A normal scan would likley not pick these up if I just turn them off during the scan resulting in false readings. I believe anyone is capable of this, but most people do not do this (or know how).
As a summary a test like this may mis-gauge one's cranial or intelligence capacity by missing out on some key factors. I can list more, but I have other pressing matters to attend to at present.
IMHO, it goes back to the old discovery of Muons and then Pions and when some physicists were convinced these two particles (one and then the other) were carrier bosons of the Strong Force. (Look up Yukawa particle) Muons turned out to be just another flavor of lepton and Pions were something entirely two (quark- anti-quark pairs) which were totally unexpected but fit the math perfectly as a Strong Force mediator particle at the time. (if I recall). This and other debacles of the past led physicists to be more cautious when detecting a particle to make sure it has all the right properties (aka spin and decays) before being sure they found what they think. Now this doesn't meant we aren't in a for surprises later, but at least they covered their bases here and checked as many decays and properties as they can. IE: http://puhep1.princeton.edu/~m... This are just two of those epic epic stories of running down the wrong path, but finding out some really great things.
Smart move by the KGB to protect their interests! Good idea. I'd love to make my own CPU chip as well, then I could spy on everyone that uses it... well I can't because its illegal and dangerous for me to do so, but in theory...
In any case, good move. Knight to check queen.
If we limit ourselves to present technology yes its impossible. To say "even if we go at c" is silly too... because if we travel at c, we essentially will die from relativistic effects. But using simple general relativity, FTL travel and time travel seem very likely if not certain to a future civilization and I am sure more technologies will be discovered that will let us travel instantly to other galaxies in new and innovative ways. To say they are out of reach, is good in a way, as it will force thinkers to develop these essential technologies.
We already have the equations and physical laws for wormholes... they are far from imaginary for any serious student of relatvistic fluid mechanics. What interests me is what happens when we time travel not if it is possible.
Bose-Einstein Condensate!
In more detail, fermions cannot be crammed together but in certain conditions, Bosons can. Photons are a type of Boson but not the only one. The Pauli exclusion principle does not apply to Bosons! Looks like a non-specialist needs to read some books on this concept. I won't even go into deeper details without this point being crystal clear!
The comment about Global Cooling is another effect that will occur shortly after we experience the global warming effect. It is REAL, not made up. Global Warming as it is called is due to greenhouse gas release. Global Cooling is actually an effect that will mainly affect the Northern Hemisphere due to variation in the axial tilt of the Earth. Now to put this in perspective, at present Greenhouse gases of global warming is in fact an intentional effect we humans put in place to dampen the effect of global cooling. The issue is recent data shows there are many unintended consequences to greenhouse gas release that could literally change the Earth into a Venus like planet before Global Cooling occurs, so we need to stop the excess release of greenhouse gases while we determine the best course of action. Already human induced global warming is playing havoc on the normal water and air circulation patterns around the earth and altering climates warming and colder in unexpected ways (longterm). Even after global cooling comes into effect the human induced "global warming" may have disastrous consequences to the ph of the oceans and such. My issue is most people who even claim they know science do not understand this very very basic effect I am describing as the news just reports sound bytes instead of the real issues.
Um. We need Economists, Scientists, Marketers, School Guards.... aka all sorts of professions. Only a small subset of professions need coders (I am one of them). People who become coders easily learn it from a toddler on their OWN like the professor in the article and me, (and many others). Its not a key skill for everyone to have, its a skill you are born with. And many coders "so-called" cannot code. Coding is not something we need to teach everyone as a basic skill, its like... lets tech everyone to be an oil well driller from a young age because everyone needs to drill oil wells! We need maybe 200 people on the planet to drill oil wells at most. For coders maybe we need 10 million or so at most (maybe 10,000 would be enough) to cover all the worlds needs, but you get my point here. On the other hand we need probably on the order of 500 million teachers to cover all the teaching. The art of coding had changed so much in the last 20 years. If we teach them what is popular today, it may be archaic in 20 years by time they start coding. I started on Apple II's BASIC, moved to Commodores BASIC, then to TI Logo, C, Pacal, Machine Code, LabVIEW, JavaScript and so on and so forth. Now I am "publicly" in Python and Java, and each realm though building on the last is completely different from the one before. What would we teach? Bits? Object Oriented? DBs? HTML? 2-D Graphics? 3-D Graphics? Integration? There is no "key" concept here. What everyone needs is reading, social skills, morals, history, politics, and so forth; not coding.
Slashdot Mirror
And an error in some of slashdots code can push this comment from one article to another. rofl! Sorry bout that, someone check for errors serverside!
Here are two facets that I have tons of experience with that will make this test inaccurate unless both are handled somehow. 1. Our physical thinking on a physical level may consist in more than what occurs on the cranial level. The connections in our arms, down our spine, and across our body may play key roles, and the brain may not consistently always run the same, it may go through cycles. By focusing on the brain too much instead of the entire body and diet, incorrect results are likely. 2. In my experience when I use various supplemental methods, I can increase my brain power by orders of magnitude for varying periods of time. A normal scan would likley not pick these up if I just turn them off during the scan resulting in false readings. I believe anyone is capable of this, but most people do not do this (or know how). As a summary a test like this may mis-gauge one's cranial or intelligence capacity by missing out on some key factors. I can list more, but I have other pressing matters to attend to at present.
IMHO, it goes back to the old discovery of Muons and then Pions and when some physicists were convinced these two particles (one and then the other) were carrier bosons of the Strong Force. (Look up Yukawa particle) Muons turned out to be just another flavor of lepton and Pions were something entirely two (quark- anti-quark pairs) which were totally unexpected but fit the math perfectly as a Strong Force mediator particle at the time. (if I recall). This and other debacles of the past led physicists to be more cautious when detecting a particle to make sure it has all the right properties (aka spin and decays) before being sure they found what they think. Now this doesn't meant we aren't in a for surprises later, but at least they covered their bases here and checked as many decays and properties as they can. IE: http://puhep1.princeton.edu/~m... This are just two of those epic epic stories of running down the wrong path, but finding out some really great things.
Smart move by the KGB to protect their interests! Good idea. I'd love to make my own CPU chip as well, then I could spy on everyone that uses it... well I can't because its illegal and dangerous for me to do so, but in theory... In any case, good move. Knight to check queen.
If we limit ourselves to present technology yes its impossible. To say "even if we go at c" is silly too... because if we travel at c, we essentially will die from relativistic effects. But using simple general relativity, FTL travel and time travel seem very likely if not certain to a future civilization and I am sure more technologies will be discovered that will let us travel instantly to other galaxies in new and innovative ways. To say they are out of reach, is good in a way, as it will force thinkers to develop these essential technologies. We already have the equations and physical laws for wormholes... they are far from imaginary for any serious student of relatvistic fluid mechanics. What interests me is what happens when we time travel not if it is possible.
Nice!
Bose-Einstein Condensate! In more detail, fermions cannot be crammed together but in certain conditions, Bosons can. Photons are a type of Boson but not the only one. The Pauli exclusion principle does not apply to Bosons! Looks like a non-specialist needs to read some books on this concept. I won't even go into deeper details without this point being crystal clear!
The comment about Global Cooling is another effect that will occur shortly after we experience the global warming effect. It is REAL, not made up. Global Warming as it is called is due to greenhouse gas release. Global Cooling is actually an effect that will mainly affect the Northern Hemisphere due to variation in the axial tilt of the Earth. Now to put this in perspective, at present Greenhouse gases of global warming is in fact an intentional effect we humans put in place to dampen the effect of global cooling. The issue is recent data shows there are many unintended consequences to greenhouse gas release that could literally change the Earth into a Venus like planet before Global Cooling occurs, so we need to stop the excess release of greenhouse gases while we determine the best course of action. Already human induced global warming is playing havoc on the normal water and air circulation patterns around the earth and altering climates warming and colder in unexpected ways (longterm). Even after global cooling comes into effect the human induced "global warming" may have disastrous consequences to the ph of the oceans and such. My issue is most people who even claim they know science do not understand this very very basic effect I am describing as the news just reports sound bytes instead of the real issues.
Um. We need Economists, Scientists, Marketers, School Guards.... aka all sorts of professions. Only a small subset of professions need coders (I am one of them). People who become coders easily learn it from a toddler on their OWN like the professor in the article and me, (and many others). Its not a key skill for everyone to have, its a skill you are born with. And many coders "so-called" cannot code. Coding is not something we need to teach everyone as a basic skill, its like... lets tech everyone to be an oil well driller from a young age because everyone needs to drill oil wells! We need maybe 200 people on the planet to drill oil wells at most. For coders maybe we need 10 million or so at most (maybe 10,000 would be enough) to cover all the worlds needs, but you get my point here. On the other hand we need probably on the order of 500 million teachers to cover all the teaching. The art of coding had changed so much in the last 20 years. If we teach them what is popular today, it may be archaic in 20 years by time they start coding. I started on Apple II's BASIC, moved to Commodores BASIC, then to TI Logo, C, Pacal, Machine Code, LabVIEW, JavaScript and so on and so forth. Now I am "publicly" in Python and Java, and each realm though building on the last is completely different from the one before. What would we teach? Bits? Object Oriented? DBs? HTML? 2-D Graphics? 3-D Graphics? Integration? There is no "key" concept here. What everyone needs is reading, social skills, morals, history, politics, and so forth; not coding.