I definitely agree with the spirit of your post. People waste time at work? So what?
Indeed. I'd go so far as to say that most work is a waste of time, anyway. How many stupid things has your boss told you to do lately? By surfing instead of working, you're actually being more productive!
This story doesn't make a bit of sense. They dug up some cable, and found it had been shot? Are they saying someone first dug it up, shot it, and then gave it a decent burial? That would be a lot of work. Does the cable perhaps run along a sewer tunnel, and someone crawled down the tunnel and shot up the cable over an interval of a kilometer? (Just be alert for a guy who's talking very loudly, and keeps saying, "Speak up, I can't hear you".) And no, a shotgun blast is not going to penetrate anything like a kilometer of cable if you shoot down the length of the cable.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but this article tells me little more than that there was a cable outage, and that the cause can't be explained coherently. Maybe it was mice...they've been known to chew up fiber optics. But that wouldn't make a good headline, would it?
2) Light can and always could go faster than 3X10^8m/s. 3X10^8m/s is the group velocity of the wave, but individual frequencies of light go faster or slower. Since you need the whole wave packet to know the structure of the packet...
No doubt you know what you're talking about, but I could use a bit more explanation here. (Insert usual disclaimer about me being a dysmathic humanities guy.)
You say that individual frequencies of light travel at varying rates. Do you really mean to say that red light travels at a different speed from blue light (or gamma rays)? That's news to me. So the famous "c" is actually an average of the whole electromagnetic spectrum?
I'm also having trouble thinking about a "packet" of light. Yes, I know about the problems of describing light as particles vs. waves, and all that. But you seem to be saying that "packets" of lights (are they the same as photons?) have parts, and that these parts travel at different rates. So each packet has a length? The fastest part (the "head" of the packet) arrives first...and the tail trails in belatedly? And doesn't an individual photon have a single distinct frequency, in any case? I must be totally misunderstanding you.
I wish we could read the paper this is all based on; I doubt whether the author of the cited article understood the research he was reporting. By the way, c is a constant only in a vaccuum, so any light traveling through prisms (or even air) is going to be going slower than c anyway. Did the researchers claim they had exceeded the speed of light in vacuo?
I agree with Noam Chomsky on this issue; since I can't state it as eloquently or concisely as him, here's his take on the subject.
Hmm...I'm not as taken by Chomsky as you seem to be; far from finding him "eloquent" or "concise", I consider his writing to be about as interesting as eating Grape Nuts to a metronome. I tried reading the article you linked, but was unable to get past the sentence that said, "The details need not concern us" because my eyes rolled up into my head and I couldn't see any more.
The whole issue of the so-called "Turing Test" revolves around details. The TT seems very attractive to people who never actually try to specify the details of what such a "test" might look like, and what its objectives might be. If you read Turing's original article, you'll find that he wasn't seriously proposing anything that could be described as as an even vaguely rigorous test for "machine intelligence". The "Turing Test" exists only in the minds of people who either didn't read Turing carefully, didn't unerstand what they read, or perhaps don't remember what they read.
People seem to be very sensitive about computers doing things they think only humans should be able to do. They dismiss defeating a chess grand master or the Turing Test as toy problems.
I did an AI degree in the mid 90s...
Who are these unspecified benighted "people"? I'm having trouble understanding the views you attribute to them. Indeed, only an ignorant person would think that Kasparov's defeat by a computer was insignificant--it showed what good chess-knowledgeable programmers could do, and it highlighted the speed of modern hardware in executing numerous recursive calculations to determine optimal chess moves in about the same time as a human would take to make a move.
I'm even more puzzled by your passing mention of the "Turing Test"; what has this got to do with chess-playing algorithms? You say you have a degree in AI; did you ever actually read Turing's article? If you did, you'd know that, whatever its merits, the article does not clearly specify what a "Turing Test" might be.
... and one of the things we covered was the definition of intelligence. After running through a few unsatisfactory definitions, my conclusion was that people used intelligence to mean whatever could be done better by a human being than anything else...
And your teachers were satisfied with that? No wonder "AI" has gone out of vogue.
But most importantly, IBM's team of chess masters and coders modified the system between chess games after analyzing Kasparov's strategy the previous game. That is, he wasn't playing Deep Blue: he was playing Deep Blue being adapted in semi-real-time by a bunch of human experts. And crucially, IBM hid this fact, knowing that it'd be (rightly) considered highly suspect.
Why is this "highly suspect"? I suppose you might think so if you made the mistake of believing that Kasparov was actually playing against a piece of hardware (the "computer"); but of course he wasnt. Kasparov was playing against a team of chess-knowledgeable programmers; Kasparov was playing against software. The only remarkable thing about the computer itself was its speed--it was fast enough to carry out the laborious recursive brute-force searches for optimal moves in about the same time as a human player would take to decide his move. In theory, you could have done the same thing with a 70s era computer...but the game would have taken forever.
I'm not a chess player, but it's my understanding that during important tournaments, players often talk to advisers to determine their strategy in the next game against a tough opponent. How is this different from the programmers tweaking the software between games? Fundamentally, this was a contest between Kasparov and a team of programmers. Kasparov surely knew that, and accepted the match under those conditions. So I don't think the IBM team can be accused of "cheating".
The fact that such accusations have been made shows how people--even the paranormal crowd that posts to/.--easily forget how computers and computer software work. Once you remind yourself that this is not a case of "man vs. machine", then the philosophical significance of the contest wanes. Computers do not play chess...only people do.
I've noticed what I believe to be an important and prevalent consequence of technological innovation: many recent technological advances entail lowering the qualitative expectations of consumers. For example, the average quality of cell phone calls is significantly lower than anything that would have been deemed acceptable by a land-line customer twenty years ago. Even using a high-end cell phone, you often have calls where there's lots of static, words get "dropped"--or maybe your whole call gets dropped because you're in a poor reception area. Airplane trips have gone from a near-luxurious experience to something like being run through sheep dip. Audio quality, as discussed in this thread, is another clear example of quality suffering at the hands of technology.
Time was when "audiophiles" spent thousands of dollars on then-exotic "hi-fi" gadgetry to achieve a sound that was a "life-like" as possible. (As I recall, some of my friends thought that listening to a recording of a steam locomotive on their hi-fis at top volume was the ultimate auditory experience. I never quite figured that one out.) The ultimate objective of those who were truly "into sound" was to extract every note from their cosseted vinyl recordings with ultimate "fidelity".
Then came the Compact Disk--a development greeted by apocalyptic horror on the part of many audiophiles. I'm aware that this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, so I'm not going to pursue at great length the question of whether CDs per se deliver sound inferior to that of vinyl. All I know is that I've listened to CD and Vinyl recordings of the same musical performances, and the vinyl sounded distinctly better. Maybe this is due to inherent technical limitations of the CD format--or perhaps the studios who produced those CDs just didn't exercise as much care in their making as they might have.
Now we have yet another quality regression: MP3. Nobody is going to tell me that a 128kbps recording of a decent piece of music sounds as good as that same piece played from either a vinyl or CD recording on high-quality equipment. I know that for a fact because I've compared 128 and 256kbps recordings on mediocre equipment (my car stereo), and I cold tell that the 256 sounded way better than the 128. I'd be lying if I said I tried comparing 256kbs against vinyl on good equipment, but I have a hunch that the vinyl would win.
Where am I going with all this? Well, probably not where you think I am. I recently MP3-ized my entire collection of Vinyl and CD recordings (at 256kbps), and the MP3 recordings are the only thing I listen to any more. Why? One word: convenience. I can carry a lot of music around with me on my little 130Mb USB disk. I can stuff many hours of music onto my MP3 player that I listen to at work. I can do the same in my car. At home, the stereo stands idle...I'm always listening to music via my computer's MP3 player while I play games (who needs to hear explosions, anyway?) or read. In other words, I'm willing to trade quality for other benefits, such as the ability to organize my entire music collection into playlists, to instantly find and play whatever song I feel like, or to be able to listen for hours and hours of music without having to get up and fiddle with finding a disk and putting it on the player.
Likewise, I've always got my trusty cell-phone clipped to my belt--it's better to have a static-riddled conversation than not be able to talk to a person at all when time is of the essence. I sure think the airlines suck, though. (Actually, that's a red herring--the quality of airline travel cannot be said to have been improved in any way by technology in the last 20 years.)
As another telling example of sacrificing quality for convenience via modern technology, consider this posting (or article or whatever the heck you call it). A few decades ago, I would have written a carefully polished essay. Now I toss off a piece of schlock while my employer thinks I'm working. Now that's progress!
Maybe it's been broadcast in a way that we just don't recognize yet.
Perhaps. As others have mentioned, communications technologies seem to get increasingly subtle as they become more advanced. Of course, you're assuming that pretty much every other intelligent species is not actually trying to announce their presence. Some here have mentioned that we ourselves have made a political decision not to do that. (First I've heard of that, actually...and who is "we", anyway?)
So everyone else in the universe is just as paranoid as the US government? Jeepers. If even a few species were more trusting, you'd think we would be getting simple, obvious signals. Something like fireworks, say. Ship a bunch of hydrogen bombs way out from the sun so they stand nicely, then detonate them in a very simple mathematical sequence, like a Fibonacci series, or a sequence of prime numbers. Hydrogen bombs are pretty loud in electromagnetic terms. I suppose there might be intelligent species that can't perceive electromagnetic radiation...but then they wouldn't know there was an universe out there, anyway.
Oh...hold on...slight problem with that concept. If a civilization's preferred method of communication is via thermonuclear weapons, it might be best not to answer them...
Another thing that made the dot com bubble unique was the pervasive conviction--at least among young denizens of Silly Valey--that the fundamental nature of business had changed. People actually believed that it wasn't necessary to generate profits, that the "information economy" had superseded the "old-school capitalist model". Anyone who questioned this was told that he "just doesn't get it". From now on, people would live on information services, much like orchids live on air. All any start-up beset by heavy losses needed was to "make it up in volume". Meanwhile, they went to the nearest venture capitalist and collected another few million bucks in "investments" that would give the startup time to lose yet more money.
No, I don't see anything nearly this crazy on the horizon. There's lots of hype for dubious ideas, but that's normal. Time will sort the good ideas from the bad.
You ain't from Texas, so you wouldn't get it.
Picture this story:
Hijacker tries to hijack plane. 60 people get up and shoot at him, miss, and the plane explodes.
I'm in Texas, and I don't get it. I think we'd get at least 30 hits in the "kill" zone. Also, things only blow up that easily in Hollywood. Planes have redundant system; even in the unlikely event that irate passengers would actually fire so many errant rounds, chances are pretty good that nothing critical would be taken out. (And no, people will not explode due to rapid de-pressurization of the plane. The pilot would probably want to lose some altitude quickly, though.)
I dearly wish the airlines recognized my carry permit; I'd feel much better if I could pack my 9mm aboard planes. And I do agree with your major point: even the destruction of the plane would be preferable to allowing the plane to be used as a weapon as happened on 9/11, so why not arm the passengers? I suppose the airlines would probably insist on issuing me frangible ammo before I board...but I suppose I could live with that.
As an added bonus, just think how much more polite everyone would be. Air travel might even become pleasant again.
Apparently there's this fad called "dual boxing". This guy has 50 computers on WoW at a time between him and his gf.
It's not a "fad"--it's more like the standard way "serious" players pursue these games. It's also emblematic of the reason I quit EQ (after playing...what...7 years?), and why I won't be starting a WoW account--if you can "box" a game it's too damn easy. I got tired of not being able to find a group, but lots of spawns camped by one player who was 3 or even 6 boxing. At the start, EQ took some serious thought and skill (not to mention pain tolerance). Despite all its flaws, I enjoyed my early EQ experience tremendously. But at the end, it was all about DPS ("damage per second", for the uninitiated), and crowd control (my chanter's specialty) was irrelevant because everyone was so uber they could take on a red NPC apiece.
It's depressing that a game like WoW is so successful--there's clearly little incentive to come up with something more challenging when an appeal to the lowest common denominator is so profitable. Eve, which I'm playing now, certainly requires more thought than WoW, and it has a lot of original elements that make the game attractive--like no leveling, skill training that happens whether or not you are logged in, a realistic economy, and so forth. But the paranoia level of the game is downright oppressive. You literally can't trust anyone; don't even think about teaming up with anyone who is not in your corp (guild)--they are sure to gank you first chance they get. The game seems to attract a lot of assholes whose sole aim and source of gratification is making others feel bad. I must be a masochist to be playing this thing at all...but I'd really like to play something that involves social interaction, because only humans can make a game interesting enough to hold my long-term interest.
So...any suggestions for an intellectually challenging fantasy online RPG that doesn't mirror the paranoia factor of real life? And has anyone sighted the Holy Grail recently?
The whole WOMD discussion was pointless from the start. What difference would it have made if Saddam did have WOMDs? Would he have posed a threat to the United States, or anyone else, solely on that account? Sure, he could have used poison gas on his neighbors...in fact Iraq did use gas during Iran/Iraq war...and so did Iran. Did the world end? Did it make a difference to the outcome? Did anyone outside the region even complain? No.
As for nukes...well if Saddam had possessed them, he would have been in the same boat as every other government that has them: he couldn't use them because for a state to actually use nukes is suicidal. Though nukes do buy you one very desirable thing: immunity from aggression by another nation-state, because nobody wants to make a nuclear power really desperate. In other words, he would have been safe from attack by the U.S.--or Israel. Iran has noted this, of course, which is why they're working like mad to join the nuke club: they saw what happened to the place next door because it did not have nukes.
In this country (the USA), the people have a right to peacefully assemble and petition for redress of grievances. If the police attack such a peaceful assembly, does that make it a "riot"? I was a student at Berkeley from 66-70, and I was in quite a few such "assemblies" that didn't remain peaceful. Granted, sometimes it was the demonstrators' fault, but more often than not the police simply decided that we had no right to be there, and started tossing tear gas and beating up people. Did being there with my camera make me guilty of something? I don't think so.
I oppose your assertion that being in a "riot zone" is itself some sort of crime, and that anyone who is there deserves getting the crap kicked out of him. For one thing, it's not always easy to distinguish between a riot and a bunch of people who've been attacked by the police--the two look pretty much the same on TV. Second, some people get caught in genuine riots by mistake--they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Third, journalists have an obligation to cover riots--to make sure that the cops stay within reasonable bounds, and use only the amount of force that's necessary. If you don't think it's necessary for the public to watch the police, then you're pretty naive. If you'd seen some of the things I've seen, your attitude might be different.
Oddly enough, the only time I got beat up by the police was after a riot had taken place and been dispersed. I was walking home from campus, and happened on a bunch of cops and a few people just standing around an intersection. I stopped to chat with someone I recognized to find out what had happened. Big mistake...there were no reporters present. I heard one of the cops say, "OK, let's get 'em!"--and the next thing I knew people were running around screaming, being surrounded by cops and methodically clubbed. I remember lying on the ground with some cop poking at my nuts thinking, "Oh my god, they're going to arrest me and my parents will freak!". They didn't break anything, but I was one massive bruise the next day, and my left knee wasn't the same for about a year. Now if we'd only had cellphone cameras in the 60s...
Actually, I just realized that the color is ultimately irrelevant. The blue color of the "puddles" helps create the impression of water when you first look at the picture, but if you think about what you're looking at, the color doesn't make sense. The caption says that the area of the picture is 1 square meter. That's a piddle of a puddle. Puddles never look blue (unless you're looking at them at an angle that reflects the blue sky). Puddles are transparent. So the bright blue coloration is either "false color", or if it's true color, then the blueness means we're looking at something other than a puddle of water.
Together with the fact that these "puddles" are in a steep slope (a.k.a. "cliff"), I can't help but feel that this NS article is a cheap trick.
Lakes and oceans look blue on earth mostly because they reflect our blue sky.
Oh yeah? Then why does the sky look blue? Explain that Mr. Smartypants!
To answer my own (rhetorical) question...I always thought that the ocean looks blue for the same reason that the sky looks blue: all those short blue wavelengths get scattered about, and some are reflected back to our eyes. The red light just keeps on going, and doesn't get reflected back. But this is probably one of those "simple" things that aren't so simple, and I'm totally wrong.
For what it's worth, the North Atlantic isn't blue, anyway--it's a startling turquoise color. I crossed the Atlantic a couple of times (U.S. Army troop carrier...bleh), and noticed that while coastal waters (the English Channel, say) are indeed blue, once you get out into deep water it's blue-green.
As an enthusiastic fan of fantasy/science fiction from an early age, the "many worlds" (MW) hypothesis appeals to me; how nice, if it were true! However, as a fugitive philosopher, I must remain unsmilingly skeptical.
1. Quantum collapse is introduced in the standard interpretation as an arbitrary axiom. Therefore, if any different formulation of quantum mechanics can eliminate this axoim while producing identical predictions about real experiments, we should choose the new formulation based on Occam's razor.
With all respect sir, I must frown on your uttering the name of Occam in the same decade of your life as the phrase "many worlds". I truly cannot think of a more complex hypothesis! Perhaps the MW theory is no more strange than "collapse", but it's quite a bit more extravagant. I mean...all those universes!
2. Because quantum collapse is introduced as an axiom, it is not justified in any specific physical manner. In the many worlds interpretation, collapse is simply seen as "the decoherence caused by interacting with a system containing a very large number of particles". This phenomenon, known as einselection, is rigorously described on a fundamental level. It is a purely mechanical process, not a mystical one. It has nothing to do with knowledge. In fact, it emerges as an obvious consequence of letting an individual particle interact with an object composed of a very large number of particles.
I am pleased to learn that there are no epistemic requirements for MW. That is, I think you're saying that MW does not rely on the activity of observers--that the generation of new universes occurs whether or not someone is observing quantum events. Do I understand this correctly? If so, that is an improvement. I can't, however, concur with your claim that MW is "obvious".
4. Abandoning quantum collapse by choosing the Many Worlds Interpretation of Everett and Wheeler (and more recently Deutsch) results in exactly the same experimental predictions as the "standard interpretation".
This sounds as though neither hypothesis is empirically verifiable; both explain observed phenomena equally well, correct? I suppose that is no reason to reject either theory; I don't know what gravity "really" is, but Newton's--and later, Einstein's--theories of gravity both had "explanatory power".
However, I note that in your article, you call the "collapse" theory "bizarre" and MW "weird". It seems that one sort of strangeness just appeals to you more than the other. (Do you like science fiction, too?) I've learned that when scientists (or philosophers) say such strange things, it's usually because someone is holding a gun to their heads (at least metaphorically). They're trying to explain something that is itself disturbing; if the explanation that occurs to them is also unpalatable, they may nevertheless be driven to embrace it, because they believe that any explanation is better than none at all
So here is where I am with respect to understanding Quantum Mechanics: something has been observed that is so extremely strange, that even two such strange theories as "collapse" and MW look like good life preservers in a stormy sea. My problem now is that I can't properly appreciate the emergency--I can't understand what's been observed that makes apparently sensible people behave like this. It's as though I were sitting in an excursion boat, enjoying the scenery, when suddenly a bunch of geeky-looking fellows jump overboard, clutching life jackets. I have the queasy feeling that maybe I should go looking for one of those jackets (preferably one labeled "MW"), but I don't see any reason to jump overboard just yet.
You have a point--I'd love to be able to use my phone as an MP3 player too. And in fact my Treo 680 is a pretty good MP3 player. The problem is that battery life on the Treo is already marginal (it gets dicey if I don't recharge it every day), so if I listen to music on it too, I risk losing my phone capability when I might really need it. So yes, if they could make a phone with a decent form factor (the Treo is already plenty big) that will also run for a week without recharging (like my Sandisk MP3 player), then I'll want this "all in one" device.
Now, what I really don't want is a phone that plays movies.
On my way home from work tonight, I remembered what really bothers me about quantum mechanics. (It's a long commute.) I'm not really vitally worried about wave/particle stuff, or what the exact characteristics or behaviors of the quantum objects are. What bugs me is "collapse". The way I understand what I've read about QM, I'm required to believe that quantum objects are in some sort of indeterminate state until they are observed. Observation works a change on the observed object (and if "entanglement" is true, it may change another object at a distance, but let's not worry about that now).
I've never understood this. Sometimes, it seems as though the quantum mechanics mean that the change is strictly mechanical--that is, it's a side effect of the instrument used to observe the object's behavior--going through a detector somehow changes the particle. But that seems trivial to me--of course something really tiny is going to be affected in some way if you do something to measure it. At other times, it seems to me that the assertion of "collapse" is something much more mysterious, that it has to do with someone learning about the particle's characteristics. I've read some QM articles in which the author seems to be asserting that the act of someone becoming aware of a particle's behavior somehow changes that behavior. In other words, if the instrument is turned on, and nobody happens to be watching it, then no "collapse" takes place. It's just when the physicist is paying attention that "collapse" happens.
That has got to be wrong, because nobody but a philosopher could possibly say anything so completely silly. (Like David Hume for example, who thought that the world might possibly go away when he closes his eyes, or Berkeley, who averred that the universe only exists because God pays attention to it.) So if it's not a mere mechanical side-effect of instrumentation or a mystical by-product of the physicist's careful observation, what causes quantum "collapse"? (In case you're wondering, I am not pulling your leg--I am really this confused.)
Like he said. And furthermore, this very discussion is one of the things that might pop up in response to a google search on the subject, so your unhelpfulness will be there for all to see. In a sense, we're building a community knowledge base with everything we post, here or anywhere else. Well...everything accurate and helpful that we post...
Thank you for that very lucid explanation, khayman80.
I should lay my cards on the table. I'm not a physicist, I am something far worse: a philosopher. No I'm not kidding, I have a degree that proves that I, for at least a very short time (my dissertation defence took 3 hours), managed to convince 3 other philosophers that I was right about something. (You have to have spent some time around philosophers to understand why that's considered a noteworthy achievement.)
Anyway, words like "knowability" and claims about "reality" are the sorts of words that get philosophers excited (well, as excited as they get), so I've spent a large portion of my life in sort of a stand-off with the quantum mechanics. A lot of them are plainly fools who write popular books to make money...it's pretty easy to pick them out. However, there are also some obviously very intelligent and serious people who talk about this stuff, who devote their lives to studying it, and yet utter what appear to be completely crazy propositions, propositions that should clearly be dismissed out of hand as nonsense.
Though I'd like to, I can't do that--I can't simply dismiss what appears to be the dominant opinion among the leading scientific luminaries of the day. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to agree with it either, because I don't really understand it. Call me stubborn, but I cannot, in good conscience, agree with anything I don't understand.
I must admit to a major handicap that colors my understanding (or lack of it) of this subject: acute dysmathia. Math and I have never gotten along...I can handle logic (deduction, argument, that sort of thing) just fine; I can use words like razors (especially when I'm more awake than I am now). But numbers and funny squiggles have never meant anything to me. It's much the same with music; they tell me that there are different notes, that they are called "A" and "G" or whatever, but I can't repeatably tell one from the other, nor can I recognize melodies--much less discuss the finer points of syncopation.
I have often resented the reliance placed on mathematics by today's physics; it's as though a mere tool had become an end in itself. As you mentioned, one opinion I have taken comfort in is that "well, this quantum wave collapse looks good in their mathematical equations, it makes for an internally consistent mathematical description of what they're trying to explain, but it doesn't have anything to do with the world I live in. If it did, they could show it to me, and explain it in real words and not mathematical squiggles. But now, you're telling me, there's evidence to support the assertion that an object can be in two mutually inconsistent states at once. That is disturbing.
The immediate reply that pops into my head is that if you are empirically demonstrating this "45 degree" spin state, then isn't that itself a measurement that should precipitate the quantum collapse? --But I'm sure someone's thought of that.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that you perform the experiment for me, and I not only understand it, I'm convinced that it shows what you say it shows. You have demonstrated that a "particle" can have two contradictory characteristics (or states, or whatever) at once. In other words, you've demonstrated what appears to be a paradox.
Isn't a such a paradox cause to re-examine our fundamental assumptions, to ask ourselves whether it's not time to take a totally new view of the universe? I'm not qualified to do that, though I have some vague intuitions about what might have gone wrong. For a couple of hundred years, physicists have vacillated between describing light--and then matter--alternatively in terms of either waves or particles. Mathematical models--and observed results--seemed to support both hypotheses in turn. But aren't both particles and waves merely metaphors? We derive the notion of a wave from watching ripples in a pond. Then we find that we can apply this mental model of a wave to both sound an
Interesting, but I'm afraid that your explanation is far too clear...and it's typically a bad sign when I understand something that's supposed to be as complicated as quantum mechanics...in other words, I'm probably not understanding it. Let me put it this way: I need some help to see the "spookiness". You say:
...Thus even though each particle is in a (literally unknowable) superposition of horizontal and vertical, when you measure the first particle and find that it's horizontally polarized, a measurement on the second particle will show that it's vertically polarized....
Not being a physicist, I have no clue what you mean by "superposition of horizontal and vertical" polarization. But that's OK...you're referring to some sort of property or properties that particles can have, and that can be measured. If I understand correctly, you are saying that pairs of these particles are created in such a way that these qualities (whatever they are) must be in a contradictory relationship. So if you measure the (whatever) of one particle, you know that the other particle has the opposite (whatever) quality. But why is that mysterious, or spooky?
Let's say I have a magic particle maker. When I press the trigger, it emits two particles in opposite directions. The particle maker is constructed in such a way that each time I shoot off a particle pair, one of the particles must be blue, and the other white. However, the colors are assigned randomly so that I can never predict whether the particle shot off to the left will be blue or white--I just know that the particle shot off to the right is of the opposite color. Now let's say that I've set up a game of catch-the-particle with Joe and Bill. Joe is standing a mile to my left, and Bill is a mile to my right. Due to the nature of my particle maker, I know that if Joe receives a blue particle, Bill has just got beaned by a white one, and vice versa. That doesn't seem spooky to me...it doesn't even seem particularly interesting.
I have a feeling that what I'm missing is tied up with the word "unknowable" that you used in your explanation. It's not at all clear to me what you meant by that...if some object has a quality that can be measured, then that quality is not "unknowable" just because I haven't measured it yet. I'm sure it's not news to you that "unknown" is not the same as "unknowable". So what did I miss? I think this is the crux of the matter...if you could make this clear to me, I'd be mighty grateful.
As an ex-EQ player who started when the game went public (and spent hours staring at the cleavage of the elf-chick on the login screen, vainly waiting to get connected, while the servers melted into slush), I have to agree with you. The first years of EQ1 were about discovering something totally new, doing stuff you've never done before. I still remember the moment of exhiliariation when I first stood at the front gate of Qeynos watching a crowd of people running around a huge field...chasing rats. Back then, that was an ephiphany; today, it's less than trite. Yet, today's MMORPGs are still stuck on the same basic concepts--whether it's chasing rats or dragons, you rack up your experience points and get that next level. I suppose that's great for people who don't mind doing the same stuff over and over, but I've been longing to relive that moment of wonder I experienced when I first hit the EQ world. (And don't even mention Vanguard...what a disappointment that was.)
I am playing a game now that I think is pretty good. It's a science fiction-based game called "Eve Online". It has several things none of the other games I've tried have, and that make it interesting. For one thing, there's no leveling. The economy is player-driven, and quite complex. And there seems to be a lot of content that I've not been able to get to yet, which gives me an incentive to keep developing my character. In a sense, Eve Online is a fantasy game--the physics in the game make as little sense as most Hollywood SF movies--you can hear explosions in space, ships coast to a halt when you turn off the engines, etc. etc. I try to pretend that it's an alternate world with completely different physics...but it's a stretch.
What I really miss is decent scenery. In Eve, all you ever see is space or the inside of a space station. They try to make space look interesting by filling it with all kinds of colorful billowing gas clouds (which obscure your vision), but I'd rather be running through grassy valleys and swimming underwater in crystal clear lakes. Ah well...you can't have everything. I guess.
In many ways, CCP strikes me as a company that wants to be nice to everyone, but hasn't yet grasped that this doesn't work in the business world. First, they slap a developer on the wrist for cheating on behalf of an in-game guild (they're called "corporations" in EVE), then they get in trouble by being too nicey-nice.
In the most recent flap about a GM stealing a player corp's property, it sounds to me like CCP left themselves open to attack simply by being too helpful. They went out of their way to address a relatively minor player complaint by having a developer intervene in the game-world. This is not only expensive in terms of developer time, but it also leaves CCP open to false charges like these. Elementary common sense dictates that developers should never directly intervene in the game world. The role of developers is to develop code. Testing should be done on the test server (EVE has one), where it is publicly acknowledged that developers are participating in the game as players. All direct ingame interaction between CCP and players should be done by GMs who have strictly defined powers, and who operate under constant and direct supervision of CCP. GMs should never be allowed to do things like assume executive powers over a player corporation so that they can "fix" things, as was done in the latest case.
What should have been done in this case was this: after the GM determined that he could not help the petitioner, he should have apologetically informed the petitioner that there is nothing that can be done to help him, but that a bug report will be filed to fix the game mechanisms that were causing the trouble. That's it.
In response to the previous (genuine) incident of player misconduct, CCP should have done what any sensible business entity would have done: fire the jerk. Failure to do so might have been really warm and nice to the developer, but it was a disaster from a PR perspective. CCP's actions contradicted their words. They said they took the misconduct seriously, but if an employee engages in serious misconduct, then he ought to be fired, no?
As an EVE player who really likes the game, I'm saddened that following my suggestions would imply less responsiveness by CCP to player petitions, but I think that this is a case where better and more strictly defined roles and procedures would ultimately be best for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I'd go so far as to say that most work is a waste of time, anyway. How many stupid things has your boss told you to do lately? By surfing instead of working, you're actually being more productive!
This story doesn't make a bit of sense. They dug up some cable, and found it had been shot? Are they saying someone first dug it up, shot it, and then gave it a decent burial? That would be a lot of work. Does the cable perhaps run along a sewer tunnel, and someone crawled down the tunnel and shot up the cable over an interval of a kilometer? (Just be alert for a guy who's talking very loudly, and keeps saying, "Speak up, I can't hear you".) And no, a shotgun blast is not going to penetrate anything like a kilometer of cable if you shoot down the length of the cable.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but this article tells me little more than that there was a cable outage, and that the cause can't be explained coherently. Maybe it was mice...they've been known to chew up fiber optics. But that wouldn't make a good headline, would it?
No doubt you know what you're talking about, but I could use a bit more explanation here. (Insert usual disclaimer about me being a dysmathic humanities guy.)
You say that individual frequencies of light travel at varying rates. Do you really mean to say that red light travels at a different speed from blue light (or gamma rays)? That's news to me. So the famous "c" is actually an average of the whole electromagnetic spectrum?
I'm also having trouble thinking about a "packet" of light. Yes, I know about the problems of describing light as particles vs. waves, and all that. But you seem to be saying that "packets" of lights (are they the same as photons?) have parts, and that these parts travel at different rates. So each packet has a length? The fastest part (the "head" of the packet) arrives first...and the tail trails in belatedly? And doesn't an individual photon have a single distinct frequency, in any case? I must be totally misunderstanding you.
I wish we could read the paper this is all based on; I doubt whether the author of the cited article understood the research he was reporting. By the way, c is a constant only in a vaccuum, so any light traveling through prisms (or even air) is going to be going slower than c anyway. Did the researchers claim they had exceeded the speed of light in vacuo?
Hmm...I'm not as taken by Chomsky as you seem to be; far from finding him "eloquent" or "concise", I consider his writing to be about as interesting as eating Grape Nuts to a metronome. I tried reading the article you linked, but was unable to get past the sentence that said, "The details need not concern us" because my eyes rolled up into my head and I couldn't see any more.
The whole issue of the so-called "Turing Test" revolves around details. The TT seems very attractive to people who never actually try to specify the details of what such a "test" might look like, and what its objectives might be. If you read Turing's original article, you'll find that he wasn't seriously proposing anything that could be described as as an even vaguely rigorous test for "machine intelligence". The "Turing Test" exists only in the minds of people who either didn't read Turing carefully, didn't unerstand what they read, or perhaps don't remember what they read.
Nah, computers will never beat humans at poker because computers have no money to ante up.
Who are these unspecified benighted "people"? I'm having trouble understanding the views you attribute to them. Indeed, only an ignorant person would think that Kasparov's defeat by a computer was insignificant--it showed what good chess-knowledgeable programmers could do, and it highlighted the speed of modern hardware in executing numerous recursive calculations to determine optimal chess moves in about the same time as a human would take to make a move.
I'm even more puzzled by your passing mention of the "Turing Test"; what has this got to do with chess-playing algorithms? You say you have a degree in AI; did you ever actually read Turing's article? If you did, you'd know that, whatever its merits, the article does not clearly specify what a "Turing Test" might be.
And your teachers were satisfied with that? No wonder "AI" has gone out of vogue.
Why is this "highly suspect"? I suppose you might think so if you made the mistake of believing that Kasparov was actually playing against a piece of hardware (the "computer"); but of course he wasnt. Kasparov was playing against a team of chess-knowledgeable programmers; Kasparov was playing against software. The only remarkable thing about the computer itself was its speed--it was fast enough to carry out the laborious recursive brute-force searches for optimal moves in about the same time as a human player would take to decide his move. In theory, you could have done the same thing with a 70s era computer...but the game would have taken forever.
I'm not a chess player, but it's my understanding that during important tournaments, players often talk to advisers to determine their strategy in the next game against a tough opponent. How is this different from the programmers tweaking the software between games? Fundamentally, this was a contest between Kasparov and a team of programmers. Kasparov surely knew that, and accepted the match under those conditions. So I don't think the IBM team can be accused of "cheating".
The fact that such accusations have been made shows how people--even the paranormal crowd that posts to /.--easily forget how computers and computer software work. Once you remind yourself that this is not a case of "man vs. machine", then the philosophical significance of the contest wanes. Computers do not play chess...only people do.
I've noticed what I believe to be an important and prevalent consequence of technological innovation: many recent technological advances entail lowering the qualitative expectations of consumers. For example, the average quality of cell phone calls is significantly lower than anything that would have been deemed acceptable by a land-line customer twenty years ago. Even using a high-end cell phone, you often have calls where there's lots of static, words get "dropped"--or maybe your whole call gets dropped because you're in a poor reception area. Airplane trips have gone from a near-luxurious experience to something like being run through sheep dip. Audio quality, as discussed in this thread, is another clear example of quality suffering at the hands of technology.
Time was when "audiophiles" spent thousands of dollars on then-exotic "hi-fi" gadgetry to achieve a sound that was a "life-like" as possible. (As I recall, some of my friends thought that listening to a recording of a steam locomotive on their hi-fis at top volume was the ultimate auditory experience. I never quite figured that one out.) The ultimate objective of those who were truly "into sound" was to extract every note from their cosseted vinyl recordings with ultimate "fidelity".
Then came the Compact Disk--a development greeted by apocalyptic horror on the part of many audiophiles. I'm aware that this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, so I'm not going to pursue at great length the question of whether CDs per se deliver sound inferior to that of vinyl. All I know is that I've listened to CD and Vinyl recordings of the same musical performances, and the vinyl sounded distinctly better. Maybe this is due to inherent technical limitations of the CD format--or perhaps the studios who produced those CDs just didn't exercise as much care in their making as they might have.
Now we have yet another quality regression: MP3. Nobody is going to tell me that a 128kbps recording of a decent piece of music sounds as good as that same piece played from either a vinyl or CD recording on high-quality equipment. I know that for a fact because I've compared 128 and 256kbps recordings on mediocre equipment (my car stereo), and I cold tell that the 256 sounded way better than the 128. I'd be lying if I said I tried comparing 256kbs against vinyl on good equipment, but I have a hunch that the vinyl would win.
Where am I going with all this? Well, probably not where you think I am. I recently MP3-ized my entire collection of Vinyl and CD recordings (at 256kbps), and the MP3 recordings are the only thing I listen to any more. Why? One word: convenience. I can carry a lot of music around with me on my little 130Mb USB disk. I can stuff many hours of music onto my MP3 player that I listen to at work. I can do the same in my car. At home, the stereo stands idle...I'm always listening to music via my computer's MP3 player while I play games (who needs to hear explosions, anyway?) or read. In other words, I'm willing to trade quality for other benefits, such as the ability to organize my entire music collection into playlists, to instantly find and play whatever song I feel like, or to be able to listen for hours and hours of music without having to get up and fiddle with finding a disk and putting it on the player.
Likewise, I've always got my trusty cell-phone clipped to my belt--it's better to have a static-riddled conversation than not be able to talk to a person at all when time is of the essence. I sure think the airlines suck, though. (Actually, that's a red herring--the quality of airline travel cannot be said to have been improved in any way by technology in the last 20 years.)
As another telling example of sacrificing quality for convenience via modern technology, consider this posting (or article or whatever the heck you call it). A few decades ago, I would have written a carefully polished essay. Now I toss off a piece of schlock while my employer thinks I'm working. Now that's progress!
Perhaps. As others have mentioned, communications technologies seem to get increasingly subtle as they become more advanced. Of course, you're assuming that pretty much every other intelligent species is not actually trying to announce their presence. Some here have mentioned that we ourselves have made a political decision not to do that. (First I've heard of that, actually...and who is "we", anyway?)
So everyone else in the universe is just as paranoid as the US government? Jeepers. If even a few species were more trusting, you'd think we would be getting simple, obvious signals. Something like fireworks, say. Ship a bunch of hydrogen bombs way out from the sun so they stand nicely, then detonate them in a very simple mathematical sequence, like a Fibonacci series, or a sequence of prime numbers. Hydrogen bombs are pretty loud in electromagnetic terms. I suppose there might be intelligent species that can't perceive electromagnetic radiation...but then they wouldn't know there was an universe out there, anyway.
Oh...hold on...slight problem with that concept. If a civilization's preferred method of communication is via thermonuclear weapons, it might be best not to answer them...
Another thing that made the dot com bubble unique was the pervasive conviction--at least among young denizens of Silly Valey--that the fundamental nature of business had changed. People actually believed that it wasn't necessary to generate profits, that the "information economy" had superseded the "old-school capitalist model". Anyone who questioned this was told that he "just doesn't get it". From now on, people would live on information services, much like orchids live on air. All any start-up beset by heavy losses needed was to "make it up in volume". Meanwhile, they went to the nearest venture capitalist and collected another few million bucks in "investments" that would give the startup time to lose yet more money.
No, I don't see anything nearly this crazy on the horizon. There's lots of hype for dubious ideas, but that's normal. Time will sort the good ideas from the bad.
I'm in Texas, and I don't get it. I think we'd get at least 30 hits in the "kill" zone. Also, things only blow up that easily in Hollywood. Planes have redundant system; even in the unlikely event that irate passengers would actually fire so many errant rounds, chances are pretty good that nothing critical would be taken out. (And no, people will not explode due to rapid de-pressurization of the plane. The pilot would probably want to lose some altitude quickly, though.)
I dearly wish the airlines recognized my carry permit; I'd feel much better if I could pack my 9mm aboard planes. And I do agree with your major point: even the destruction of the plane would be preferable to allowing the plane to be used as a weapon as happened on 9/11, so why not arm the passengers? I suppose the airlines would probably insist on issuing me frangible ammo before I board...but I suppose I could live with that.
As an added bonus, just think how much more polite everyone would be. Air travel might even become pleasant again.
It's not a "fad"--it's more like the standard way "serious" players pursue these games. It's also emblematic of the reason I quit EQ (after playing...what...7 years?), and why I won't be starting a WoW account--if you can "box" a game it's too damn easy. I got tired of not being able to find a group, but lots of spawns camped by one player who was 3 or even 6 boxing. At the start, EQ took some serious thought and skill (not to mention pain tolerance). Despite all its flaws, I enjoyed my early EQ experience tremendously. But at the end, it was all about DPS ("damage per second", for the uninitiated), and crowd control (my chanter's specialty) was irrelevant because everyone was so uber they could take on a red NPC apiece.
It's depressing that a game like WoW is so successful--there's clearly little incentive to come up with something more challenging when an appeal to the lowest common denominator is so profitable. Eve, which I'm playing now, certainly requires more thought than WoW, and it has a lot of original elements that make the game attractive--like no leveling, skill training that happens whether or not you are logged in, a realistic economy, and so forth. But the paranoia level of the game is downright oppressive. You literally can't trust anyone; don't even think about teaming up with anyone who is not in your corp (guild)--they are sure to gank you first chance they get. The game seems to attract a lot of assholes whose sole aim and source of gratification is making others feel bad. I must be a masochist to be playing this thing at all...but I'd really like to play something that involves social interaction, because only humans can make a game interesting enough to hold my long-term interest.
So...any suggestions for an intellectually challenging fantasy online RPG that doesn't mirror the paranoia factor of real life? And has anyone sighted the Holy Grail recently?
The whole WOMD discussion was pointless from the start. What difference would it have made if Saddam did have WOMDs? Would he have posed a threat to the United States, or anyone else, solely on that account? Sure, he could have used poison gas on his neighbors...in fact Iraq did use gas during Iran/Iraq war...and so did Iran. Did the world end? Did it make a difference to the outcome? Did anyone outside the region even complain? No.
As for nukes...well if Saddam had possessed them, he would have been in the same boat as every other government that has them: he couldn't use them because for a state to actually use nukes is suicidal. Though nukes do buy you one very desirable thing: immunity from aggression by another nation-state, because nobody wants to make a nuclear power really desperate. In other words, he would have been safe from attack by the U.S.--or Israel. Iran has noted this, of course, which is why they're working like mad to join the nuke club: they saw what happened to the place next door because it did not have nukes.
In this country (the USA), the people have a right to peacefully assemble and petition for redress of grievances. If the police attack such a peaceful assembly, does that make it a "riot"? I was a student at Berkeley from 66-70, and I was in quite a few such "assemblies" that didn't remain peaceful. Granted, sometimes it was the demonstrators' fault, but more often than not the police simply decided that we had no right to be there, and started tossing tear gas and beating up people. Did being there with my camera make me guilty of something? I don't think so.
I oppose your assertion that being in a "riot zone" is itself some sort of crime, and that anyone who is there deserves getting the crap kicked out of him. For one thing, it's not always easy to distinguish between a riot and a bunch of people who've been attacked by the police--the two look pretty much the same on TV. Second, some people get caught in genuine riots by mistake--they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Third, journalists have an obligation to cover riots--to make sure that the cops stay within reasonable bounds, and use only the amount of force that's necessary. If you don't think it's necessary for the public to watch the police, then you're pretty naive. If you'd seen some of the things I've seen, your attitude might be different.
Oddly enough, the only time I got beat up by the police was after a riot had taken place and been dispersed. I was walking home from campus, and happened on a bunch of cops and a few people just standing around an intersection. I stopped to chat with someone I recognized to find out what had happened. Big mistake...there were no reporters present. I heard one of the cops say, "OK, let's get 'em!"--and the next thing I knew people were running around screaming, being surrounded by cops and methodically clubbed. I remember lying on the ground with some cop poking at my nuts thinking, "Oh my god, they're going to arrest me and my parents will freak!". They didn't break anything, but I was one massive bruise the next day, and my left knee wasn't the same for about a year. Now if we'd only had cellphone cameras in the 60s...
Actually, I just realized that the color is ultimately irrelevant. The blue color of the "puddles" helps create the impression of water when you first look at the picture, but if you think about what you're looking at, the color doesn't make sense. The caption says that the area of the picture is 1 square meter. That's a piddle of a puddle. Puddles never look blue (unless you're looking at them at an angle that reflects the blue sky). Puddles are transparent. So the bright blue coloration is either "false color", or if it's true color, then the blueness means we're looking at something other than a puddle of water.
Together with the fact that these "puddles" are in a steep slope (a.k.a. "cliff"), I can't help but feel that this NS article is a cheap trick.
Oh yeah? Then why does the sky look blue? Explain that Mr. Smartypants!
To answer my own (rhetorical) question...I always thought that the ocean looks blue for the same reason that the sky looks blue: all those short blue wavelengths get scattered about, and some are reflected back to our eyes. The red light just keeps on going, and doesn't get reflected back. But this is probably one of those "simple" things that aren't so simple, and I'm totally wrong.
For what it's worth, the North Atlantic isn't blue, anyway--it's a startling turquoise color. I crossed the Atlantic a couple of times (U.S. Army troop carrier...bleh), and noticed that while coastal waters (the English Channel, say) are indeed blue, once you get out into deep water it's blue-green.
As an enthusiastic fan of fantasy/science fiction from an early age, the "many worlds" (MW) hypothesis appeals to me; how nice, if it were true! However, as a fugitive philosopher, I must remain unsmilingly skeptical.
With all respect sir, I must frown on your uttering the name of Occam in the same decade of your life as the phrase "many worlds". I truly cannot think of a more complex hypothesis! Perhaps the MW theory is no more strange than "collapse", but it's quite a bit more extravagant. I mean...all those universes!
I am pleased to learn that there are no epistemic requirements for MW. That is, I think you're saying that MW does not rely on the activity of observers--that the generation of new universes occurs whether or not someone is observing quantum events. Do I understand this correctly? If so, that is an improvement. I can't, however, concur with your claim that MW is "obvious".
This sounds as though neither hypothesis is empirically verifiable; both explain observed phenomena equally well, correct? I suppose that is no reason to reject either theory; I don't know what gravity "really" is, but Newton's--and later, Einstein's--theories of gravity both had "explanatory power".
However, I note that in your article, you call the "collapse" theory "bizarre" and MW "weird". It seems that one sort of strangeness just appeals to you more than the other. (Do you like science fiction, too?) I've learned that when scientists (or philosophers) say such strange things, it's usually because someone is holding a gun to their heads (at least metaphorically). They're trying to explain something that is itself disturbing; if the explanation that occurs to them is also unpalatable, they may nevertheless be driven to embrace it, because they believe that any explanation is better than none at all
So here is where I am with respect to understanding Quantum Mechanics: something has been observed that is so extremely strange, that even two such strange theories as "collapse" and MW look like good life preservers in a stormy sea. My problem now is that I can't properly appreciate the emergency--I can't understand what's been observed that makes apparently sensible people behave like this. It's as though I were sitting in an excursion boat, enjoying the scenery, when suddenly a bunch of geeky-looking fellows jump overboard, clutching life jackets. I have the queasy feeling that maybe I should go looking for one of those jackets (preferably one labeled "MW"), but I don't see any reason to jump overboard just yet.
You have a point--I'd love to be able to use my phone as an MP3 player too. And in fact my Treo 680 is a pretty good MP3 player. The problem is that battery life on the Treo is already marginal (it gets dicey if I don't recharge it every day), so if I listen to music on it too, I risk losing my phone capability when I might really need it. So yes, if they could make a phone with a decent form factor (the Treo is already plenty big) that will also run for a week without recharging (like my Sandisk MP3 player), then I'll want this "all in one" device.
Now, what I really don't want is a phone that plays movies.
On my way home from work tonight, I remembered what really bothers me about quantum mechanics. (It's a long commute.) I'm not really vitally worried about wave/particle stuff, or what the exact characteristics or behaviors of the quantum objects are. What bugs me is "collapse". The way I understand what I've read about QM, I'm required to believe that quantum objects are in some sort of indeterminate state until they are observed. Observation works a change on the observed object (and if "entanglement" is true, it may change another object at a distance, but let's not worry about that now).
I've never understood this. Sometimes, it seems as though the quantum mechanics mean that the change is strictly mechanical--that is, it's a side effect of the instrument used to observe the object's behavior--going through a detector somehow changes the particle. But that seems trivial to me--of course something really tiny is going to be affected in some way if you do something to measure it. At other times, it seems to me that the assertion of "collapse" is something much more mysterious, that it has to do with someone learning about the particle's characteristics. I've read some QM articles in which the author seems to be asserting that the act of someone becoming aware of a particle's behavior somehow changes that behavior. In other words, if the instrument is turned on, and nobody happens to be watching it, then no "collapse" takes place. It's just when the physicist is paying attention that "collapse" happens.
That has got to be wrong, because nobody but a philosopher could possibly say anything so completely silly. (Like David Hume for example, who thought that the world might possibly go away when he closes his eyes, or Berkeley, who averred that the universe only exists because God pays attention to it.) So if it's not a mere mechanical side-effect of instrumentation or a mystical by-product of the physicist's careful observation, what causes quantum "collapse"? (In case you're wondering, I am not pulling your leg--I am really this confused.)
Like he said. And furthermore, this very discussion is one of the things that might pop up in response to a google search on the subject, so your unhelpfulness will be there for all to see. In a sense, we're building a community knowledge base with everything we post, here or anywhere else. Well...everything accurate and helpful that we post...
I should lay my cards on the table. I'm not a physicist, I am something far worse: a philosopher. No I'm not kidding, I have a degree that proves that I, for at least a very short time (my dissertation defence took 3 hours), managed to convince 3 other philosophers that I was right about something. (You have to have spent some time around philosophers to understand why that's considered a noteworthy achievement.)
Anyway, words like "knowability" and claims about "reality" are the sorts of words that get philosophers excited (well, as excited as they get), so I've spent a large portion of my life in sort of a stand-off with the quantum mechanics. A lot of them are plainly fools who write popular books to make money...it's pretty easy to pick them out. However, there are also some obviously very intelligent and serious people who talk about this stuff, who devote their lives to studying it, and yet utter what appear to be completely crazy propositions, propositions that should clearly be dismissed out of hand as nonsense.
Though I'd like to, I can't do that--I can't simply dismiss what appears to be the dominant opinion among the leading scientific luminaries of the day. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to agree with it either, because I don't really understand it. Call me stubborn, but I cannot, in good conscience, agree with anything I don't understand.
I must admit to a major handicap that colors my understanding (or lack of it) of this subject: acute dysmathia. Math and I have never gotten along...I can handle logic (deduction, argument, that sort of thing) just fine; I can use words like razors (especially when I'm more awake than I am now). But numbers and funny squiggles have never meant anything to me. It's much the same with music; they tell me that there are different notes, that they are called "A" and "G" or whatever, but I can't repeatably tell one from the other, nor can I recognize melodies--much less discuss the finer points of syncopation.
I have often resented the reliance placed on mathematics by today's physics; it's as though a mere tool had become an end in itself. As you mentioned, one opinion I have taken comfort in is that "well, this quantum wave collapse looks good in their mathematical equations, it makes for an internally consistent mathematical description of what they're trying to explain, but it doesn't have anything to do with the world I live in. If it did, they could show it to me, and explain it in real words and not mathematical squiggles. But now, you're telling me, there's evidence to support the assertion that an object can be in two mutually inconsistent states at once. That is disturbing.
The immediate reply that pops into my head is that if you are empirically demonstrating this "45 degree" spin state, then isn't that itself a measurement that should precipitate the quantum collapse? --But I'm sure someone's thought of that.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that you perform the experiment for me, and I not only understand it, I'm convinced that it shows what you say it shows. You have demonstrated that a "particle" can have two contradictory characteristics (or states, or whatever) at once. In other words, you've demonstrated what appears to be a paradox.
Isn't a such a paradox cause to re-examine our fundamental assumptions, to ask ourselves whether it's not time to take a totally new view of the universe? I'm not qualified to do that, though I have some vague intuitions about what might have gone wrong. For a couple of hundred years, physicists have vacillated between describing light--and then matter--alternatively in terms of either waves or particles. Mathematical models--and observed results--seemed to support both hypotheses in turn. But aren't both particles and waves merely metaphors? We derive the notion of a wave from watching ripples in a pond. Then we find that we can apply this mental model of a wave to both sound an
Interesting, but I'm afraid that your explanation is far too clear...and it's typically a bad sign when I understand something that's supposed to be as complicated as quantum mechanics...in other words, I'm probably not understanding it. Let me put it this way: I need some help to see the "spookiness". You say:
Not being a physicist, I have no clue what you mean by "superposition of horizontal and vertical" polarization. But that's OK...you're referring to some sort of property or properties that particles can have, and that can be measured. If I understand correctly, you are saying that pairs of these particles are created in such a way that these qualities (whatever they are) must be in a contradictory relationship. So if you measure the (whatever) of one particle, you know that the other particle has the opposite (whatever) quality. But why is that mysterious, or spooky?
Let's say I have a magic particle maker. When I press the trigger, it emits two particles in opposite directions. The particle maker is constructed in such a way that each time I shoot off a particle pair, one of the particles must be blue, and the other white. However, the colors are assigned randomly so that I can never predict whether the particle shot off to the left will be blue or white--I just know that the particle shot off to the right is of the opposite color. Now let's say that I've set up a game of catch-the-particle with Joe and Bill. Joe is standing a mile to my left, and Bill is a mile to my right. Due to the nature of my particle maker, I know that if Joe receives a blue particle, Bill has just got beaned by a white one, and vice versa. That doesn't seem spooky to me...it doesn't even seem particularly interesting.
I have a feeling that what I'm missing is tied up with the word "unknowable" that you used in your explanation. It's not at all clear to me what you meant by that...if some object has a quality that can be measured, then that quality is not "unknowable" just because I haven't measured it yet. I'm sure it's not news to you that "unknown" is not the same as "unknowable". So what did I miss? I think this is the crux of the matter...if you could make this clear to me, I'd be mighty grateful.
I am playing a game now that I think is pretty good. It's a science fiction-based game called "Eve Online". It has several things none of the other games I've tried have, and that make it interesting. For one thing, there's no leveling. The economy is player-driven, and quite complex. And there seems to be a lot of content that I've not been able to get to yet, which gives me an incentive to keep developing my character. In a sense, Eve Online is a fantasy game--the physics in the game make as little sense as most Hollywood SF movies--you can hear explosions in space, ships coast to a halt when you turn off the engines, etc. etc. I try to pretend that it's an alternate world with completely different physics...but it's a stretch.
What I really miss is decent scenery. In Eve, all you ever see is space or the inside of a space station. They try to make space look interesting by filling it with all kinds of colorful billowing gas clouds (which obscure your vision), but I'd rather be running through grassy valleys and swimming underwater in crystal clear lakes. Ah well...you can't have everything. I guess.
In many ways, CCP strikes me as a company that wants to be nice to everyone, but hasn't yet grasped that this doesn't work in the business world. First, they slap a developer on the wrist for cheating on behalf of an in-game guild (they're called "corporations" in EVE), then they get in trouble by being too nicey-nice.
In the most recent flap about a GM stealing a player corp's property, it sounds to me like CCP left themselves open to attack simply by being too helpful. They went out of their way to address a relatively minor player complaint by having a developer intervene in the game-world. This is not only expensive in terms of developer time, but it also leaves CCP open to false charges like these. Elementary common sense dictates that developers should never directly intervene in the game world. The role of developers is to develop code. Testing should be done on the test server (EVE has one), where it is publicly acknowledged that developers are participating in the game as players. All direct ingame interaction between CCP and players should be done by GMs who have strictly defined powers, and who operate under constant and direct supervision of CCP. GMs should never be allowed to do things like assume executive powers over a player corporation so that they can "fix" things, as was done in the latest case.
What should have been done in this case was this: after the GM determined that he could not help the petitioner, he should have apologetically informed the petitioner that there is nothing that can be done to help him, but that a bug report will be filed to fix the game mechanisms that were causing the trouble. That's it.
In response to the previous (genuine) incident of player misconduct, CCP should have done what any sensible business entity would have done: fire the jerk. Failure to do so might have been really warm and nice to the developer, but it was a disaster from a PR perspective. CCP's actions contradicted their words. They said they took the misconduct seriously, but if an employee engages in serious misconduct, then he ought to be fired, no?
As an EVE player who really likes the game, I'm saddened that following my suggestions would imply less responsiveness by CCP to player petitions, but I think that this is a case where better and more strictly defined roles and procedures would ultimately be best for everyone.