What country do YOU live in?! Obviously it's not America. Prior art has been meaningless in the US for decades. And patents are validated or invalidated based solely on the amount of legal resources that the players in question have available to them.
The patent system is nothing more than a form of corporate arm-wrestling, with money-fuelled lawyers substituting for beer-fuelled muscles. The notion that inventiveness, originality, or creativity has anything to do with it is LAUGHABLE.
Except that the scientologists really DO infilitrate governments, and DO use their members in positions of power to persecute and torment their critics.
Science journalism has some... problems. It's unfortunate really, because their often ludicrous claims, contrasted with the steady, gradual, cumulative nature of real research, creates an impression in the public mind that scientists have no goddam idea what they're doing.
The funny thing is, Iran is totally shooting itself in the foot. The people who love messaging the most are the ones who will be pissed-off revolutionary college students in a few years. When kids can't send messages to each other about how much they hate going to the mosque and how hot the girl next door is when they see her taking off her veil through the curtains... well, they're going to turn on the theocracy. They'll turn on it like a cat turns on its master during bathtime -- VIOLENTLY.
Of course, the fact that the west is full of pissed off Iranians who HATE the theocracy, many of whom are now rather wealthy, will only exacerbate the situation. There are more than a few Persians in the USA who have enough money to arrange for a couple of satellites to hover over Iran in geosynchronous orbit, providing free routing for any encrypted data that dissidents care to send.
The best answer we can ever find to that question is simply a model of physics that we can't move past. Maybe we'll discover that the brane-world theory is valid, and then never be able to move beyond it. Maybe we'll find some elegant little system of equations that models all of the four forces all the way back to the planck epock, and then never be able to move beyond it.
It's anthropocentric hubris to assume that these questions are even valid ones to pose. The universe isn't required to have anything even resembling meaning. Meaning is an entirely Human concept -- discovering meaning in the universe would actually be rather surprising, and quite improbable. Nothing physics has EVER discovered has even hinted that there is meaning to be found ANYWHERE beyond the boundaries defined by the half-centimetre of bone around our brains.
The universe doesn't need to be "built" or "made" in any sense that we are familiar with. It could simply be "there". I know that's not particularly satisfying to the overactive agency-detector that evolution equipped us with, but evolution didn't equip us to comprehend the wonders of the universe at all... beyond giving us the intellectual flexibility to master some of the more simpler facets of the universe's workings.
Well, thus far, every experiment has been consistent with theories that incorporate randomness. Obviously, with no deterministic models of the quantum scale (or at least no valid ones), there is no evidence whatsoever for determinist models. See how that works?
I'm just don't get why people care about the philosophical aspects of physics. Modern physics is so inherently removed from our domain of experience that there are simply no valid philosophical implications to be drawn. Does randomness in how fluctuations in the Dirac sea interact mean ANYTHING? I say just go with the best model, and let the philosophy slide.
1.) There are NOT two dimensions. There are three physical dimensions. Calling time a dimension is just a way to make the theory and mathematics of special relativity nice and readable.
2.) Saying that matter is a wave doesn't allow for it to simultaneously have precisely-defined position and momentum in ANY dimensions WHATSOEVER, PERIOD. It's physically impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. In much the same way that a particle can't simultaneously be a photon and a neutrino. A PURE FREQUENCY WAVE DOESN'T HAVE A PRECISE POSITION BY DEFINITION. A PULSE DOESN'T HAVE A PURE FREQUENCY BY DEFINITION. If there is some other system in which heisenberg's uncertainty principle doesn't hold, then in that system MATTER IS NOT A WAVE... and presumably doesn't diffract or experience interference.
But every trans-dimensional theory we have already includes that randomness, as does string theory. They all include randomness.
Science doesn't proceed by asking meaningless pedantic questions. It proceeds by asking questions that lead to experiments or new theories. It proceeds by asking questions about the current model, not by sitting around hoping that there is some other model that doesn't keep you awake at night, trembling at the notion that the universe might actually work the way our current theories suggest.
There were undoubtedly people who sat around during Newton's time saying "but what if there's some higher theory that ISN'T deterministic?" But guess what? Asking that kind of question added NOTHING to science. It was REAL experiments and REAL theories that advanced physics. It was people following the current theory to its natural conclusion, like checking to see if there really was an ether, or investigating why a specific phenomenon works the way it does. All you're doing is trying to cast aspersions upon quantum mechanics so that you wont have to feel so bad about not accepting its precepts.
You can go join the "there is no proof of evolution" / "there's no proof of relativity" / "there's no proof of QM" whackjobs if you like. Meanwhile, the models of quantum physics which accept Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and things like that will continue to make computers and laser possible, just like the models of biology that accept evolution will continue to allow the development of new vaccines for the flu every year.
Is it really relevant if the quantum world is random, or just governed by processes that are absolutely indistinguishable from randomness? I mean, fluctuations in thermal noise may not actually BE random, but it's irrelevant since they are guaranteed by the laws of thermodynamics to be unpredictable by any means whatsoever.
There's always that one guy or girl in every science class, the one that has to start arguing with the professor about theories that make him uncomfortable / offend her faith / aren't politically correct. They can't just go out and do some science; they have to stand around pissing everyone off by being a pedantic asshole that obnoxiously questions everything while having an utterly closed mind.
My favourite was the guy in my computational complexity class who began blabbering like a howler monkey when the professor tried to describe how no Turing Machine or equivalent computational model could ever solve more than an infinitessimally small proportion of the problems that could be posed. I think his final point before the entire class fell silent in embarassment on his behalf was to suggest that maybe art represented a model of computation that could solve the entire problem-space. Yes, he suggested that ART of all things represented model of hypercomputation. I was told that later on, in an Literature class, he publically denied the existence of the transatlantic cable system. Since then, I've had a low tolerance for people who question theories without having the intelligence to understand them in the first place.
No, the heisenberg uncertainty stems directly from the fact that matter is a wave.
Have you ever, you know, seen a wave? Did you notice that it wasn't a point? Did you notice that waves are spread out through space? So clearly, trying to say that they have a well-defined position is a completely retarded thing to do; the kind of thing that would signify that one had absolutely NO idea what's going in the world.
Of course, if you combine several waves of different frequencies, you can create a nice tight little pulse. A pulse is much more localized, but it doesn't have a clearly defined frequency anymore. The more localized the pulse, the wider the range of frequencies occupied by the wave. And the frequency of a wave is directly proportional to its momentum.
Now of course, you can reject the concept that matter exists as a wave. But then you end up having to posit the existence of magic or something to explain why matter undergoes diffraction, interference, doppler-effects, and every single other wave phenomenon known to physics. If you accept that matter is a wave, then the heisenberg uncertainty principle says that not only can you not measure a particle's position and momentum precisely, but that simply do not HAVE a precise position and momentum at the same time.
Occam's razor might help you out here: option 1: matter is a wave, and option 2: there are hidden dimensions containing hidden forces that are somehow totally imperceptable and tie our hands to sticks. I think you know what the razor suggests in this case. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not just about being unable to measure two thing precisely at the same time, it's about that precision simply not existing to be measured.
I'm not sure that you actually know what randomness is. To say that something israndomness isn't to say that there is no statistical predictability to it, or to say that there are no rules governing it. It's just saying that the rules don't require any particular outcome.
For example, in computer science, there are random algorithms. To the novice, this initially sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it simply means that at certain branches in the algorithm, the path taken is determined stochastically -- at random. This actually allows the creation of algorithms that are significantly faster than their deterministic counterparts. It doesn't mean that the algorithm is some mysterious vortex from which knowledge can not escape. It just means that there is some randomness in how the algorithm works. It still does the computation that it is supposed to, it still computes the desired result with perfect accuracy, and it is still an algorithm in every sense of the word. We can know exactly how it works and why. In fact, a good random algorithm is often better vastly better in every regard than its deterministic counterparts (technically, deterministic algorithms are just a subclass of random algorithms with absolutely minimal randomness, but there's no reason to start quibbling about these things).
Similarly, if quantum physics asserts that nuclear decay is random (I don't think that nuclear decay is actually asserted to be fundamentally random, unlike some other quantum phenomena, but it's still a nice example), it's not suggesting that it's some mysterious weird process that we'll never understand. The rate and distribution of decay-events can be known EXACTLY, the possible products can be known EXACTLY, the likelihood of any particular decay mode can be known EXACTLY. We can even have models describing why nuclear decay takes place, although to my knowledge we don't have any serious contenders for position yet (the nuclear shell models sound rather nice, but I haven't heard if they've moved past being idle conjecture).
Besides, random doesn't even have to mean "random". It can just mean "deterministic but inherently unpredictable", like thermal noise or the conjugate pair of momentum and position. If something is inherently unpredictable, you just have to accept that (or discard the physics that say it's unpredictable; and better men than us have tried).
It may even mean that you are discussing a quantity or quantities that aren't actually meaningful -- position and momentum can't be measured precisely at the same time simply because precision in one of them unavoidably destroys the precision of the other, due to the wave-nature of matter. Waves simply can not be localized in space without making their momentum undefined, any more than someone can be active in politics whilst having a well-defined time-of-death. Having a time-of-death by necessity rules out being active in anything (other than maybe vermiculture or composting), and vice versa.
Randomness isn't something to "pushed back" or "settled for". If it's there, it's there. If it's not, it's not. It's no different than determinism. If the model is deterministic, fine. If it's not, fine. It's a property of the model, and ultimately all that matters is how well the model holds and whether it can make good predictions within its domain. And at the quantum scale, deterministic models have consistently failed.
Even in hypothetical extra dimensions, the laws of special relativity would apply... unless those extra dimensions are completely different than the ones we know now.
You're free to consider randomness silly; most people do. It's a perfect example of how the physics of the real world are unsuited to Human comprehension. We live in a macroscopic world of cause-and-effect, where randomness is rare. But iIn the quantum world, cause and effect are indistinguishable, outside of a few unusual classes of weak-interactions. And the quantum world is highly random. You can dislike it all you want, but right now that model, as counterintuitive as it is, is being used to build lasers and electronics and medical hardware that can obliterate a tumour without having to cut the person open to get to it... and without harming any of the tissue surrounding it. That model has actually provided explanations for why Chemistry happens the way it does... something that previous models had great difficulty with. It even makes predictions about cosmology, amazingly enough. Someday, a better model may replace it, and people who find randomness disturbing will be able to sleep at night... but don't hold your breath. You might as well be waiting for the theory of evolution or to be replaced or for the electric-universe theory to become mainstream.
Are you kidding? The fact that scientists no longer receive philosophical training is the whole reason that science advances so fast. By dispensing with inane navel gazing and pedantry, scientists can now focus on science. In particular, they don't have to get bogged down by the ridiculous anthrocentric biases that are the meat and potatoes of philosophy.
I didn't suggest that there was anything wrong with mathematical formulae. Mathematics is one of the most amazing scientific tools that has ever existed, not to mention being fascinating in its own right. But take a look at Lie groups or Bra-Kett notation and tell me that you understand it or feel how it works. It ain't gonna happen.
If anything, mathematics is our salvation, because it allows scientists to determine the solutions to physics problems without requiring any kind of Human intuition or visual model.
I suppose I could be the scientific equivalent of a Catholic. I protest against the abortion of any idea, no matter how inconvenient it might be to the person in whose brain it is residing (and yet I'm pro-abortion for babies... damn parasitic little trogolodytes). In fact, I consider any kind of psychological prophylactic to be immoral. Every bit of brain power is sacred. Casting it upon the ground -- by, say, watching reality television or being a conservative -- is a sin.
I've actually been organizing a great crusade against those "No Godel but Godel" computer science guys in the East. On their way, of course, the armies will loot the magnetism research laboratory of Constant-Dipole, which is the holy city of the Geek Orthodox church -- our ancient enemies.
Did Shakespeare use the word "gobs"? No one counts as eloquent unless they can use the word "gobs" in a non-semen-related context at least once per hour and the word "fuck" at least once a day in a superfluous context and at least once every five minutes as a general-purpose pronoun.
I salute your lack faith in science. Sure, it's only one finger's worth of salue, and a particularly chosen finger at that. But you gotta take what you can get these days, eh?:p
I seem to recall that Douglas Adams wrote about some "peril-sensitive sunglasses". Suppose one were to market a line of quantum wave-function blocking sunglasses, that were designed to darken and prevent the unintentional observation of phenomena. By allowing the wearer to not cause the collapse of a quantum wave function, the wearer would be protected from any legal liability that resulted from any particular outcome of that phenomena. I can picture someone having a productive career as a lawyer who handled very specific types of accident liability suits against "innocent bystanders"... damn bystanders, going around hurting innocent people by collapsing their wave functions.
So a tree falling in the forest only makes a sound for those who hear it. This really seems to fall more into the realm of philosophy than science.
Actually, this is QUITE scientific. Do you really think that a tree falling in the woods makes a sound for those who CAN'T hear it? You "observe" a phenomenon as soon as you interact with it in some way.
What qualifies as the phenomenon tends to increase over time, as more and more things interact with it and become entangled. Pretty soon, you have to stop coming to work, so that you can avoid finding out whether the cat died, and avoid encountering the rock and possibly seeing whether its flecks of mica are shiny with cat-appreciating-happiness or dulled with cat-mourning-sadness, and avoid encountering Robertson from the cryogenics department and possibly seeing his murderous envy towards the rock's glee or his Schadenfreude at the rock's woe, and if you were to run into Karen from HR you might notice that she's carrying a fax indicating that either Robertson be given counselling to help him deal with his bitterness towards to the rock or a raise to reward his wonderful high spirits during this time of cat-induced grief in the Heisenbergian-experiments-department.
Consider a cat of the Schroedinger subspecies. In the experiment, it is neither alive nor dead until observed. A rock, positioned near the detection apparatus, can observe the result. So for the rock, the cat is either alive or dead. But until YOU observe the rock, you don't know whether the rock is happy that the cat is alive, or sad that the cat will never again rub it's tail against the quartz inclusion on the rock's lower anterior surface. The quantum wave-function describing the cat has collapsed with respect to the rock, but to you the quantum wave-function of the cat and the rock are now entangled; in fact, by observing the rock and causing its quantum wave function to collapse, you will also cause the quantum wave function of the cat to collapse... but in both cases, it is collapsing for YOU, the observer. Every other observer has to make them collapse for themselves by either observing something the cat/rock, or observing something that has already collapsed those wave-functions for itself.
Sorry man, but the universe isn't obliged to live up to the expectations that you've developed based on your highly limited experience with the laws of physics. You've observed light in the 300nm to 800nm range, you've observed matter in the 1 milligram to 10 tonne range moving at velocities in the 0.0 m/s to 600.0 m/s range, and just maybe some matter in the 10 gram to 1 microgram range moving at velocities up to 1000 m/s. But man, that ain't shit. The world contains matter moving at up to 0.999999 C, blocks of matter so cold that void of space is over a trillion times warmer, particles that change from antimatter to matter for no apparent reason, and photons energetic enough to shred the nuclei of atoms like a Kattus-Schroedingerus shreds catnip-infused kleenex. There are particles whose position is so inherently imprecise that they have trouble turning because they would start colliding with themselves (like humble electron, for example). There are gobs of matter so weighty that they curve space forming telescopes that are light-years long.
If you think you have even the vaguest conception of how the universe works, then you are inherently wrong, because Human's can't conceive of how the universe works by any means. If you even attempt to apply common sense to the universe, you'll never be able to accept any of the research that actually explains how computers, lasers, DNA, proteins, and light-bulbs work.
Indeed. Maybe with one of those 50000 mCd LEDs mounted underneath it... although that could be a bit over the top. I mean, where do you go from there? After that, anything else would be anticlimatic.
Unless it was a set of vitreous-metal bracers. But how one would go about developing a glowing gold lariat to go with them? Clearly more research is required.
I was going to get my last girlfriend a Titanium band (who doesn't love Titanium?) with one of those awesome blue synthetic diamonds that has the mildly radioactive isotopes in it. She threatened to break up with me if I did. Sigh... geek girls are a tragically rare form of life. Any girl who doesn't appreciate a radioactive gemstone set in a strip of spaceship hull... well, she leaves something to be desired.
progammers these days are sloppy and waste resource
This is one of those pieces of nonsense that gets spread around by... well, jerks.
Software development is like any other type of engineering: you have to balance Human resources against quality. Sure, Microsoft could have allowed the Office team to spend twenty years designing the applications to run lean and mean, to do everything the hard way. But Microsoft (Microsoft the corporation, not some hypothetical "lazy" programmers) chose to use fewer programmers over a shorter length of time, using development techniques that produce a finished, polished product quickly. You may not like how slow Java or Python are, but you can hash out an Enterprise Beans networked database app or a Ruby-on-Rails system in a fraction of the time that it would take to develop a comparable C++ app from scratch using basic principles. By saving that enormous amount of development time, the work is cheaper and more profitable.
Like it or not, the industrial revolution happened. We can sit around like old men pining for the days of artisans, cottage-industries, and guilds; but the rest of the world wants cheap mass-produced merchandise. And this applies to software every bit as much as it applies to steam engines, cotton garments, or anything else. There will always be a small market for the works of artisans, but the great masses of the people have no intention of going without, simply to satisfy some ridiculous notions about the evils of industrialism and mass production.
Modern software is the way it is, not because programmers are lazy, but because customers want to pay less money for more functionality.
Are you some kind if idiot? The sarcasm in my post was overwhelmingly obvious. Besides, the thrust of it was that this kind of things IS going to happen, and that it sucks. Do you honestly believe that there aren't DHS employees working out schemes to do exactly this kind of thing? I'm assuming that you're some kind of retarded GOP supporting sheep who assumes that current administration has your best interests at heart.
Let's see:
1)
Out of state cars that aren't using RFID-tagged plates
Refer to my initial comment, about you being some kind of idiot. There WILL be a national licensing service sooner or later. Implementing a fascist social structure demands nothing less than the complete centralized control of anything and everything that can be used to manipulate or monitor the people.
2)
Passive RFID range is a few inches, up to a maximum of about 20 feet. That maximum is under "ideal" conditions
I'm sure you are aware of the existence of powered RFID. The tags on license plates get replaced yearly anyway, and if the batteries die early it's a perfect chance for the police to issue some large fines and generate some revenue for the city. Assuming you've actually lived on the planet Earth at some point, you're fully aware that this is exactly the kind of thing that cities will be overjoyed to implement.
3)
Unshielded RFID tags in license plates could be used by unauthorized third parties to track the plate. Depending on what information is stored on the RFID tag (i.e. Model: H2 Make: Hummer) this would allow well-organized car thieves to locate and identify the most desirable cars in a city to steal. Combine a few days of RFID reader surveillance with Google Maps, and you can plot the car's home location, how long it stays in that location, and what approximate time it departs/arrives from that location.
As if the government gives a flying shit about what organized crime can do. Besides, if fascism has one redeeming quality, it's that crime can be almost totally surpressed... assuming you're willing to overlook the actions of the government itself. It's easy to eliminate crime when you can simply make ALL of the suspects disappear. Organized crime in particular doesn't last very long; the underlings can be tortured to get the names of the people at the top, and then the people at the top can be arrested and executed without so much as a shred of real evidence. Fascists don't tolerate competition.
Of course, the information in the RFID tags needs to be nothing more than an ID number encrypted along with some random salt, which a central computer system can then use to look-up the driver's information from a (hopefully) secure database. Putting any more information in the tags would be a pointless waste, and a serious security problem. But as I said before, it's not as if the government would care.
Slashdot Mirror
The patent system is nothing more than a form of corporate arm-wrestling, with money-fuelled lawyers substituting for beer-fuelled muscles. The notion that inventiveness, originality, or creativity has anything to do with it is LAUGHABLE.
Except that the scientologists really DO infilitrate governments, and DO use their members in positions of power to persecute and torment their critics.
Science journalism has some... problems. It's unfortunate really, because their often ludicrous claims, contrasted with the steady, gradual, cumulative nature of real research, creates an impression in the public mind that scientists have no goddam idea what they're doing.
Of course, the fact that the west is full of pissed off Iranians who HATE the theocracy, many of whom are now rather wealthy, will only exacerbate the situation. There are more than a few Persians in the USA who have enough money to arrange for a couple of satellites to hover over Iran in geosynchronous orbit, providing free routing for any encrypted data that dissidents care to send.
The best answer we can ever find to that question is simply a model of physics that we can't move past. Maybe we'll discover that the brane-world theory is valid, and then never be able to move beyond it. Maybe we'll find some elegant little system of equations that models all of the four forces all the way back to the planck epock, and then never be able to move beyond it.
It's anthropocentric hubris to assume that these questions are even valid ones to pose. The universe isn't required to have anything even resembling meaning. Meaning is an entirely Human concept -- discovering meaning in the universe would actually be rather surprising, and quite improbable. Nothing physics has EVER discovered has even hinted that there is meaning to be found ANYWHERE beyond the boundaries defined by the half-centimetre of bone around our brains.
The universe doesn't need to be "built" or "made" in any sense that we are familiar with. It could simply be "there". I know that's not particularly satisfying to the overactive agency-detector that evolution equipped us with, but evolution didn't equip us to comprehend the wonders of the universe at all... beyond giving us the intellectual flexibility to master some of the more simpler facets of the universe's workings.
I'm just don't get why people care about the philosophical aspects of physics. Modern physics is so inherently removed from our domain of experience that there are simply no valid philosophical implications to be drawn. Does randomness in how fluctuations in the Dirac sea interact mean ANYTHING? I say just go with the best model, and let the philosophy slide.
1.) There are NOT two dimensions. There are three physical dimensions. Calling time a dimension is just a way to make the theory and mathematics of special relativity nice and readable.
2.) Saying that matter is a wave doesn't allow for it to simultaneously have precisely-defined position and momentum in ANY dimensions WHATSOEVER, PERIOD. It's physically impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. In much the same way that a particle can't simultaneously be a photon and a neutrino. A PURE FREQUENCY WAVE DOESN'T HAVE A PRECISE POSITION BY DEFINITION. A PULSE DOESN'T HAVE A PURE FREQUENCY BY DEFINITION. If there is some other system in which heisenberg's uncertainty principle doesn't hold, then in that system MATTER IS NOT A WAVE... and presumably doesn't diffract or experience interference.
You really need to study QM a bit.
Science doesn't proceed by asking meaningless pedantic questions. It proceeds by asking questions that lead to experiments or new theories. It proceeds by asking questions about the current model, not by sitting around hoping that there is some other model that doesn't keep you awake at night, trembling at the notion that the universe might actually work the way our current theories suggest.
There were undoubtedly people who sat around during Newton's time saying "but what if there's some higher theory that ISN'T deterministic?" But guess what? Asking that kind of question added NOTHING to science. It was REAL experiments and REAL theories that advanced physics. It was people following the current theory to its natural conclusion, like checking to see if there really was an ether, or investigating why a specific phenomenon works the way it does. All you're doing is trying to cast aspersions upon quantum mechanics so that you wont have to feel so bad about not accepting its precepts.
Is it really relevant if the quantum world is random, or just governed by processes that are absolutely indistinguishable from randomness? I mean, fluctuations in thermal noise may not actually BE random, but it's irrelevant since they are guaranteed by the laws of thermodynamics to be unpredictable by any means whatsoever.
There's always that one guy or girl in every science class, the one that has to start arguing with the professor about theories that make him uncomfortable / offend her faith / aren't politically correct. They can't just go out and do some science; they have to stand around pissing everyone off by being a pedantic asshole that obnoxiously questions everything while having an utterly closed mind.
My favourite was the guy in my computational complexity class who began blabbering like a howler monkey when the professor tried to describe how no Turing Machine or equivalent computational model could ever solve more than an infinitessimally small proportion of the problems that could be posed. I think his final point before the entire class fell silent in embarassment on his behalf was to suggest that maybe art represented a model of computation that could solve the entire problem-space. Yes, he suggested that ART of all things represented model of hypercomputation. I was told that later on, in an Literature class, he publically denied the existence of the transatlantic cable system. Since then, I've had a low tolerance for people who question theories without having the intelligence to understand them in the first place.
Have you ever, you know, seen a wave? Did you notice that it wasn't a point? Did you notice that waves are spread out through space? So clearly, trying to say that they have a well-defined position is a completely retarded thing to do; the kind of thing that would signify that one had absolutely NO idea what's going in the world.
Of course, if you combine several waves of different frequencies, you can create a nice tight little pulse. A pulse is much more localized, but it doesn't have a clearly defined frequency anymore. The more localized the pulse, the wider the range of frequencies occupied by the wave. And the frequency of a wave is directly proportional to its momentum.
Now of course, you can reject the concept that matter exists as a wave. But then you end up having to posit the existence of magic or something to explain why matter undergoes diffraction, interference, doppler-effects, and every single other wave phenomenon known to physics. If you accept that matter is a wave, then the heisenberg uncertainty principle says that not only can you not measure a particle's position and momentum precisely, but that simply do not HAVE a precise position and momentum at the same time.
Occam's razor might help you out here: option 1: matter is a wave, and option 2: there are hidden dimensions containing hidden forces that are somehow totally imperceptable and tie our hands to sticks. I think you know what the razor suggests in this case. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not just about being unable to measure two thing precisely at the same time, it's about that precision simply not existing to be measured.
For example, in computer science, there are random algorithms. To the novice, this initially sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it simply means that at certain branches in the algorithm, the path taken is determined stochastically -- at random. This actually allows the creation of algorithms that are significantly faster than their deterministic counterparts. It doesn't mean that the algorithm is some mysterious vortex from which knowledge can not escape. It just means that there is some randomness in how the algorithm works. It still does the computation that it is supposed to, it still computes the desired result with perfect accuracy, and it is still an algorithm in every sense of the word. We can know exactly how it works and why. In fact, a good random algorithm is often better vastly better in every regard than its deterministic counterparts (technically, deterministic algorithms are just a subclass of random algorithms with absolutely minimal randomness, but there's no reason to start quibbling about these things).
Similarly, if quantum physics asserts that nuclear decay is random (I don't think that nuclear decay is actually asserted to be fundamentally random, unlike some other quantum phenomena, but it's still a nice example), it's not suggesting that it's some mysterious weird process that we'll never understand. The rate and distribution of decay-events can be known EXACTLY, the possible products can be known EXACTLY, the likelihood of any particular decay mode can be known EXACTLY. We can even have models describing why nuclear decay takes place, although to my knowledge we don't have any serious contenders for position yet (the nuclear shell models sound rather nice, but I haven't heard if they've moved past being idle conjecture).
Besides, random doesn't even have to mean "random". It can just mean "deterministic but inherently unpredictable", like thermal noise or the conjugate pair of momentum and position. If something is inherently unpredictable, you just have to accept that (or discard the physics that say it's unpredictable; and better men than us have tried).
It may even mean that you are discussing a quantity or quantities that aren't actually meaningful -- position and momentum can't be measured precisely at the same time simply because precision in one of them unavoidably destroys the precision of the other, due to the wave-nature of matter. Waves simply can not be localized in space without making their momentum undefined, any more than someone can be active in politics whilst having a well-defined time-of-death. Having a time-of-death by necessity rules out being active in anything (other than maybe vermiculture or composting), and vice versa.
Randomness isn't something to "pushed back" or "settled for". If it's there, it's there. If it's not, it's not. It's no different than determinism. If the model is deterministic, fine. If it's not, fine. It's a property of the model, and ultimately all that matters is how well the model holds and whether it can make good predictions within its domain. And at the quantum scale, deterministic models have consistently failed.
You're free to consider randomness silly; most people do. It's a perfect example of how the physics of the real world are unsuited to Human comprehension. We live in a macroscopic world of cause-and-effect, where randomness is rare. But iIn the quantum world, cause and effect are indistinguishable, outside of a few unusual classes of weak-interactions. And the quantum world is highly random. You can dislike it all you want, but right now that model, as counterintuitive as it is, is being used to build lasers and electronics and medical hardware that can obliterate a tumour without having to cut the person open to get to it ... and without harming any of the tissue surrounding it. That model has actually provided explanations for why Chemistry happens the way it does... something that previous models had great difficulty with. It even makes predictions about cosmology, amazingly enough. Someday, a better model may replace it, and people who find randomness disturbing will be able to sleep at night... but don't hold your breath. You might as well be waiting for the theory of evolution or to be replaced or for the electric-universe theory to become mainstream.
Are you kidding? The fact that scientists no longer receive philosophical training is the whole reason that science advances so fast. By dispensing with inane navel gazing and pedantry, scientists can now focus on science. In particular, they don't have to get bogged down by the ridiculous anthrocentric biases that are the meat and potatoes of philosophy.
If anything, mathematics is our salvation, because it allows scientists to determine the solutions to physics problems without requiring any kind of Human intuition or visual model.
I've actually been organizing a great crusade against those "No Godel but Godel" computer science guys in the East. On their way, of course, the armies will loot the magnetism research laboratory of Constant-Dipole, which is the holy city of the Geek Orthodox church -- our ancient enemies.
Dig it baby. Glad I could amuse.
Did Shakespeare use the word "gobs"? No one counts as eloquent unless they can use the word "gobs" in a non-semen-related context at least once per hour and the word "fuck" at least once a day in a superfluous context and at least once every five minutes as a general-purpose pronoun.
I seem to recall that Douglas Adams wrote about some "peril-sensitive sunglasses". Suppose one were to market a line of quantum wave-function blocking sunglasses, that were designed to darken and prevent the unintentional observation of phenomena. By allowing the wearer to not cause the collapse of a quantum wave function, the wearer would be protected from any legal liability that resulted from any particular outcome of that phenomena. I can picture someone having a productive career as a lawyer who handled very specific types of accident liability suits against "innocent bystanders"... damn bystanders, going around hurting innocent people by collapsing their wave functions.
What qualifies as the phenomenon tends to increase over time, as more and more things interact with it and become entangled. Pretty soon, you have to stop coming to work, so that you can avoid finding out whether the cat died, and avoid encountering the rock and possibly seeing whether its flecks of mica are shiny with cat-appreciating-happiness or dulled with cat-mourning-sadness, and avoid encountering Robertson from the cryogenics department and possibly seeing his murderous envy towards the rock's glee or his Schadenfreude at the rock's woe, and if you were to run into Karen from HR you might notice that she's carrying a fax indicating that either Robertson be given counselling to help him deal with his bitterness towards to the rock or a raise to reward his wonderful high spirits during this time of cat-induced grief in the Heisenbergian-experiments-department.
Consider a cat of the Schroedinger subspecies. In the experiment, it is neither alive nor dead until observed. A rock, positioned near the detection apparatus, can observe the result. So for the rock, the cat is either alive or dead. But until YOU observe the rock, you don't know whether the rock is happy that the cat is alive, or sad that the cat will never again rub it's tail against the quartz inclusion on the rock's lower anterior surface. The quantum wave-function describing the cat has collapsed with respect to the rock, but to you the quantum wave-function of the cat and the rock are now entangled; in fact, by observing the rock and causing its quantum wave function to collapse, you will also cause the quantum wave function of the cat to collapse... but in both cases, it is collapsing for YOU, the observer. Every other observer has to make them collapse for themselves by either observing something the cat/rock, or observing something that has already collapsed those wave-functions for itself.
Sorry man, but the universe isn't obliged to live up to the expectations that you've developed based on your highly limited experience with the laws of physics. You've observed light in the 300nm to 800nm range, you've observed matter in the 1 milligram to 10 tonne range moving at velocities in the 0.0 m/s to 600.0 m/s range, and just maybe some matter in the 10 gram to 1 microgram range moving at velocities up to 1000 m/s. But man, that ain't shit. The world contains matter moving at up to 0.999999 C, blocks of matter so cold that void of space is over a trillion times warmer, particles that change from antimatter to matter for no apparent reason, and photons energetic enough to shred the nuclei of atoms like a Kattus-Schroedingerus shreds catnip-infused kleenex. There are particles whose position is so inherently imprecise that they have trouble turning because they would start colliding with themselves (like humble electron, for example). There are gobs of matter so weighty that they curve space forming telescopes that are light-years long.
If you think you have even the vaguest conception of how the universe works, then you are inherently wrong, because Human's can't conceive of how the universe works by any means. If you even attempt to apply common sense to the universe, you'll never be able to accept any of the research that actually explains how computers, lasers, DNA, proteins, and light-bulbs work.
Unless it was a set of vitreous-metal bracers. But how one would go about developing a glowing gold lariat to go with them? Clearly more research is required.
I was going to get my last girlfriend a Titanium band (who doesn't love Titanium?) with one of those awesome blue synthetic diamonds that has the mildly radioactive isotopes in it. She threatened to break up with me if I did. Sigh... geek girls are a tragically rare form of life. Any girl who doesn't appreciate a radioactive gemstone set in a strip of spaceship hull... well, she leaves something to be desired.
Software development is like any other type of engineering: you have to balance Human resources against quality. Sure, Microsoft could have allowed the Office team to spend twenty years designing the applications to run lean and mean, to do everything the hard way. But Microsoft (Microsoft the corporation, not some hypothetical "lazy" programmers) chose to use fewer programmers over a shorter length of time, using development techniques that produce a finished, polished product quickly. You may not like how slow Java or Python are, but you can hash out an Enterprise Beans networked database app or a Ruby-on-Rails system in a fraction of the time that it would take to develop a comparable C++ app from scratch using basic principles. By saving that enormous amount of development time, the work is cheaper and more profitable.
Like it or not, the industrial revolution happened. We can sit around like old men pining for the days of artisans, cottage-industries, and guilds; but the rest of the world wants cheap mass-produced merchandise. And this applies to software every bit as much as it applies to steam engines, cotton garments, or anything else. There will always be a small market for the works of artisans, but the great masses of the people have no intention of going without, simply to satisfy some ridiculous notions about the evils of industrialism and mass production.
Modern software is the way it is, not because programmers are lazy, but because customers want to pay less money for more functionality.
Let's see:
1)
Refer to my initial comment, about you being some kind of idiot. There WILL be a national licensing service sooner or later. Implementing a fascist social structure demands nothing less than the complete centralized control of anything and everything that can be used to manipulate or monitor the people.2)
I'm sure you are aware of the existence of powered RFID. The tags on license plates get replaced yearly anyway, and if the batteries die early it's a perfect chance for the police to issue some large fines and generate some revenue for the city. Assuming you've actually lived on the planet Earth at some point, you're fully aware that this is exactly the kind of thing that cities will be overjoyed to implement.3)
As if the government gives a flying shit about what organized crime can do. Besides, if fascism has one redeeming quality, it's that crime can be almost totally surpressedOf course, the information in the RFID tags needs to be nothing more than an ID number encrypted along with some random salt, which a central computer system can then use to look-up the driver's information from a (hopefully) secure database. Putting any more information in the tags would be a pointless waste, and a serious security problem. But as I said before, it's not as if the government would care.
I think you've missed the sense of sarcasm in my post.