Sorry, but this is not the way the quantum mechanics is currently understood (you might disagree with all of modern physics, but you'd probably be wrong).
Take the particle in a box problem (where you have a 1-D box and place a particle in it). The position of the particle is uncertain, but that's not just because we don't know exactly where it is, it's that the particle itself does not know where it is because it simply does not have an exact location. The electron is kind of smeared over the place. When you measure something about a system, you naturally perturb it and thus force the particle to "take a stand" (the is also called collapsing the wavefunction). The problem is, once you have determined the position of the particle, you have lost all information about its momentum (i.e. by measuring the position, you imparted upon it momentum).
With the jelly beans, it is true that the jelly beans color is indeterminate before someone makes a measurement. Measurement is a really weird thing.
Quantum entanglement does not violoate any laws of special relativity. In the jelly bean experiment, there is no information being carried faster than the speed of light. This is because the person on the airplane has no way to force his jelly bean to turn one color or the other. If the probability of getting a green jelly bean was 50%, then repeating the experiment over and over would reveal that the person on the airplane would always measure a 50% probability for finding a green jellybean even if the person on the ground knew that his was red before the person on the airplane. Therefore, to either individual, it is as if there was no entanglement at all.
The only thing which travels faster than the speed of light is the so-called collapse of the wavefunction. But since it doesn't carry any information with it, it does not violate special relativity.
It shouldn't be. Light does have momentum (part of the idea behind solar sails). However, light does not have mass (but you might be able to argue that since it has momentum it behaves like it has mass, whatever that means). Most people think that this cannot be since p=m*v and if it has no m, it can't have any p. Well, relativity shows that E=p*c for light so if the light has energy, it can have momentum. In this way, momentum is more of a fundamental quantity than mass or velocity and cannot, in general, be separated into a product of the two.
Uh, life is happening now, and according to your take on the 2nd law, it's defying physics. In reality, it's acting completely in accordance with physics: chemical reactions increase order, but at the cost of tons and tons of wasted energy.
You're confusing the system with its surroundings. I'm talking about the system being the universe and since the universe has no surroundings, it's entropy must always increase for any process.
The second law states that the entropy of the universe MUST increase for any process (the entropy of a system may decrease, but any decrease in the entropy of a system must be accompanied by an increase in the entropy of the surroundings).
A spontaneous process is something that happens without external influence, (i.e. the surroundings cannot be affected in any way). In an isolated system the only processes which can occur are those that increase entropy. Therefore, spontaneous processes are those that, when isolated, increase entropy.
Life happened (somewhere at some time),so it must have happened spontaneously or else the entropy of the universe would have decreased and thus violated the second law.
Scientists have proven... that life can spontaneously start.
And a long time ago, too! It's called the second law of thermodynamics which states that anything that happens, happens spontaneously (since all spontaneous processes increase entropy and entropy always increases). Life happened, so it must have happened spontaneously.
Are you trying to convince me that shit doesn't carry disease? Because you'd lose. That's all I'm saying. I know that plants are grown in shit (well, mostly after it's been chemically converted into shit that isn't shit anymore), but bacteria proliferate much faster in meat that in veggies (simple experiment: leave an apple and a quarter-pound of ground beef on your kitchen counter and tell me which one you'd eat a week later). It's not the shit that bothers me, it's the bacteria.
You should read Fast Food Nation. As the title suggests, it talks all about the fast food industry. One of the most convincing arguments I found about not eating at McDonald's were the way the cows were slaughtered. Over 80% of ground beef has tested positive for fecal matter (which can lead to disease). People who work in slaughterhouses have probably the shittiest jobs around. To keep production up, the slaughter lines are sped through so fast that even experienced people often cut themselves, or can't remove the intestines very fast without spilling shit (and thus contributing to the shit in the ground beef). Anyway, I can't describe it in as much gory detail as the book. So if you're interested, read it.
I had him trying to get it to work on my linux box and he told me that he wasn't supposed to even touch linux. Needless to say, he didn't install any software.
How the fuck can anyone afford $1400 a month? Is minimum wage $20/hour? I rent a three bedroom house with two other people and our rent is only $1200/month. I make about $1200/month (graduate stipend) and live fairly well middleclass. There's no way in hell that I could afford $1400. When I was looking at grad school in Berkeley, average rent per person was $800/month but they only offered about $100/mo. more than here. I would be starving or bored.
My point is yours. Everything is meaningless until we attach meaning to them. Problems arise when one person attaches a different meaning to an event than another person would.
So how can it be just that someone who commits rape will spend less time in prison that someone who simply re-arranged (not murdered) some atoms!
If I stab you in the face and rip out your beating heart, I'm not doing much more than rearranging some atoms, am I? Nearly all processes that occur in the world involve the rearrangement of atoms. It's all that life is.
We could prevent all murders and acts of terrorism by locking people up in their houses and having robots deliver food and do work. Hey, that'd be great, I could just sit on my ass all day and read slashdot!
It's commonly believed that the information that is you is defined by the connections between your neurons. If you're neurons are destroyed, those connections are destroyed and thus you are destroyed.
However, I think there's more to you than just neuron connections. I think that if the brain were to be rebooted, it would be a different brain. Same as with a computer, right? When a computer is rebooted, the hardware is all the same, but some of the software that is running has changed (or, minimally, the memory that used to be there is lost). Not sure where I'm going with this.....
I always wondered about this. The mormons believe that it's morally wrong to watch R rated movies. But somebody has to watch them in order to edit them. So by watching an edited movie, they're supporting the editors; i.e. they're supporting someone watching an R rated movie. Isn't that morally wrong as well?
I agree with you in many respects. But should those rights (burning, shredding, editing) extend to selling? If I buy a brand new bike, I have the right to change the wheels, give it a new coat of paint, perhaps change the frame a bit and I doubt the bike manufacturers would complain if I sold it someone else. But if I buy a tape and modify it, should I still be able to sell it? I own it, right? I should be able to do any damn thing I want with something that I own, but selling modified art (such as replacing the credits as my own) seems wrong to me.
Also, what if the bike manufacturer claimed that his bike was art and any modifications were illegal. That seems rediculous, right? But not so rediculous when it comes to tapes.
It would be bad if you distributed it. But what if you did it just for the kicks of it and only played it in your own living room? That's one of the main points of the article. There is a company which supplies a service for people who are technically challanged that edits videos they bought for their own viewing and edits them in the way that the viewer desires. I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
What next? Will hollywood try to stop people from burning videos or cutting up the tape to use as some sort of new age decoration?
Can anyone find me a good and complete introductory chemistry or physics online texbook? They probably exist, but what about online quantum physics, statistical mechanics, molecular biology, complex analysis or more of the advances science books. Most of the good information on the internet is related to computing or focuses on a very specific research topic (such as research group pages that can be found at every large institution's webpage). Until I'm able to easily (and as costless as using a library) find these types of textbooks, I will fear any campus that doesn't have a library.
Slashdot Mirror
Take the particle in a box problem (where you have a 1-D box and place a particle in it). The position of the particle is uncertain, but that's not just because we don't know exactly where it is, it's that the particle itself does not know where it is because it simply does not have an exact location. The electron is kind of smeared over the place. When you measure something about a system, you naturally perturb it and thus force the particle to "take a stand" (the is also called collapsing the wavefunction). The problem is, once you have determined the position of the particle, you have lost all information about its momentum (i.e. by measuring the position, you imparted upon it momentum).
With the jelly beans, it is true that the jelly beans color is indeterminate before someone makes a measurement. Measurement is a really weird thing.
The only thing which travels faster than the speed of light is the so-called collapse of the wavefunction. But since it doesn't carry any information with it, it does not violate special relativity.
It shouldn't be. Light does have momentum (part of the idea behind solar sails). However, light does not have mass (but you might be able to argue that since it has momentum it behaves like it has mass, whatever that means). Most people think that this cannot be since p=m*v and if it has no m, it can't have any p. Well, relativity shows that E=p*c for light so if the light has energy, it can have momentum. In this way, momentum is more of a fundamental quantity than mass or velocity and cannot, in general, be separated into a product of the two.
You're confusing the system with its surroundings. I'm talking about the system being the universe and since the universe has no surroundings, it's entropy must always increase for any process.
The second law states that the entropy of the universe MUST increase for any process (the entropy of a system may decrease, but any decrease in the entropy of a system must be accompanied by an increase in the entropy of the surroundings).
A spontaneous process is something that happens without external influence, (i.e. the surroundings cannot be affected in any way). In an isolated system the only processes which can occur are those that increase entropy. Therefore, spontaneous processes are those that, when isolated, increase entropy.
Didn't life arise in the universe?
Isn't life a chemical process?
How does thermodynamics not apply to life?
Life happened (somewhere at some time),so it must have happened spontaneously or else the entropy of the universe would have decreased and thus violated the second law.
And a long time ago, too! It's called the second law of thermodynamics which states that anything that happens, happens spontaneously (since all spontaneous processes increase entropy and entropy always increases). Life happened, so it must have happened spontaneously.
Debroglie: p=h/lambda (where lambda is the wavelength of light).
Are you trying to convince me that shit doesn't carry disease? Because you'd lose. That's all I'm saying. I know that plants are grown in shit (well, mostly after it's been chemically converted into shit that isn't shit anymore), but bacteria proliferate much faster in meat that in veggies (simple experiment: leave an apple and a quarter-pound of ground beef on your kitchen counter and tell me which one you'd eat a week later). It's not the shit that bothers me, it's the bacteria.
The book had sources for its statistics.
You should read Fast Food Nation. As the title suggests, it talks all about the fast food industry. One of the most convincing arguments I found about not eating at McDonald's were the way the cows were slaughtered. Over 80% of ground beef has tested positive for fecal matter (which can lead to disease). People who work in slaughterhouses have probably the shittiest jobs around. To keep production up, the slaughter lines are sped through so fast that even experienced people often cut themselves, or can't remove the intestines very fast without spilling shit (and thus contributing to the shit in the ground beef). Anyway, I can't describe it in as much gory detail as the book. So if you're interested, read it.
I had him trying to get it to work on my linux box and he told me that he wasn't supposed to even touch linux. Needless to say, he didn't install any software.
Probably both.
Does anybody else find it strange that there is so much devopement of GNU/Linux software/mods for the Microsoft X-box?
My point is yours. Everything is meaningless until we attach meaning to them. Problems arise when one person attaches a different meaning to an event than another person would.
If I stab you in the face and rip out your beating heart, I'm not doing much more than rearranging some atoms, am I? Nearly all processes that occur in the world involve the rearrangement of atoms. It's all that life is.
Does anyone know if the illuminati myth can be found anywhere outside (and predating) the Illuminatus and Schrodinger's cat trilogy's?
We could prevent all murders and acts of terrorism by locking people up in their houses and having robots deliver food and do work. Hey, that'd be great, I could just sit on my ass all day and read slashdot!
It's too bad. RC cola is vastly superior to coke or pepsi.
However, I think there's more to you than just neuron connections. I think that if the brain were to be rebooted, it would be a different brain. Same as with a computer, right? When a computer is rebooted, the hardware is all the same, but some of the software that is running has changed (or, minimally, the memory that used to be there is lost). Not sure where I'm going with this.....
I always wondered about this. The mormons believe that it's morally wrong to watch R rated movies. But somebody has to watch them in order to edit them. So by watching an edited movie, they're supporting the editors; i.e. they're supporting someone watching an R rated movie. Isn't that morally wrong as well?
(x^2)^(1/2) != x
(x^2)^(1/2) = |x|
Also, what if the bike manufacturer claimed that his bike was art and any modifications were illegal. That seems rediculous, right? But not so rediculous when it comes to tapes.
Any
What next? Will hollywood try to stop people from burning videos or cutting up the tape to use as some sort of new age decoration?
Holy shit! I'm a fucking nerd!
Can anyone find me a good and complete introductory chemistry or physics online texbook? They probably exist, but what about online quantum physics, statistical mechanics, molecular biology, complex analysis or more of the advances science books. Most of the good information on the internet is related to computing or focuses on a very specific research topic (such as research group pages that can be found at every large institution's webpage). Until I'm able to easily (and as costless as using a library) find these types of textbooks, I will fear any campus that doesn't have a library.