So if existing data indicated that many things happened before anybody was around to observe them couldn't we argue that time existed before the big bang since the events that cause that explosion still have observable consequences in our current universe? (ie matter formation if everything consisted of uniform background radiation)
This represents a misunderstanding of Big Bang Theory. It is not an explosion happening at some time in an existing universe. What is expanding from the initial singularity is not merely matter, but the structure of space-time itself. So it is meaningless to talk about "before" the Big Bang, not because nobody was there to see it, but because time itself was created in the Big Bang.
Does time have a meaning if there was no one to observe it?
In physics, time is objective rather than subjective. In short, yes. The existing data indicates that many things happened before anybody was around to observe them, and those events have observable consequences.
My simple suggestion: Make one button on the remote a glow-in-the-dark button which (ta-da) turns the back light on for the other buttons.
There is an excellent, if a bit expensive, universal remote that has this very feature. A button on the side turns the back light on for the buttons on the face.
LCD: Looks great, but costs a fortune if you want even a moderately large screen.
Plasma: Boy, these look like crap. Low contrast, poor color range, weak blacks, still pretty expensive.
Rear projection: blurry and dim. Never understood how people can tolerate these.
Front projection: Great if you are a dedicated videophile with a darkened home theater. Otherwise, forget it. And be sure to factor the cost of replacement lamps into the price.
CRT: Ancient technology, destined for obsolescence, weighs a ton. But you get the best picture for the least money. Still the best choice unless you have lots of money or want a really large screen.
I wasn't talking about mathmatically simple theories, but really simple ones based on the most simple possibilities we can think of, such as these:
1. The universe contains only one very large particle. (What we see as particles are probably just locally dense objects.)
Sounds like merely a matter of definition. But it doesn't seem simple at all, since it assumes the existence of entities (a particle, and the things that we call particles that you want to rename "locally dense objects") with complex properties.
2. Only one type of force exists. Assume repulsion.
Force unification is the concept behind unified field theories. But this seems to take the existence of space and time--which seem very complicated--for granted.
Instead of creating complex theories to help us see one level deeper, why not start with the simplest explanation(s) possible, and work our way up from there?
In practice, it seems that the simpler the explanation is, the harder it is to determine whether it really explains our universe. Right now there are numerous mathematically simple theories that might explain our universe. The problem is that figuring out what these simple theories actually predict regarding the nature of the universe turns out to be very difficult.
Obviously there must be something filling the space between what we think of as particles of matter, otherwise gravity, light, magnetism, and inertia (did I leave anything out?) couldn't exist in what we see as a "vacuum".
Perhaps. In modern physics the vacuum is far from empty. On the other hand, trying to figure out what is "filling the space" between particles of matter may be as informative as trying to understand the fundamentals of how a computer works by figuring out what is "filling the spaces" between the bright pixels you see on your screen. Maybe we should be trying to understand what gives us the impression that there is such a thing as space in the first place.
Despite all that math, Cosmology still starts out with "In the beginning everything was in darkness and then [indetermined] said let there be light."
Not really. Conventional Big Bang theory starts out, "In the beginning, everything was light. There was nothing before that--in fact, there was no 'before that'--because time did not exist before the beginning."
But kludge's are the black eye of science, and even really bright people can make them (remember Einstein and his cosmological constant?).
To be fair, the cosmological constant was a constant that emerged naturally from the derivation of General Relativity, with no indication of what its value should be. To apply it to reality, some value had to be assumed or determined. The simplest thing to do would have been to arbitrarily give it a value of zero, but that would have implied an expanding universe. In the absence of evidence for expansion, Einstein chose to give it a value that made the universe static.
Exactly. The Theory of Gravitation could turn out to be wrong, but no reasonable person doubts that things fall. We'd just have to revise our idea of why they fall. Similarly, the Theory of Evolution could turn out to be wrong, but no reasonable person doubts that life evolved. The evidence is just too overwhelming.
Same idea here. Kepler's laws reduced a nightmarish tangle of mathematics to a three line "program", if you will. Out current model of how various things in our universe interact requires a degree in cosmology to fully grasp, and a PhD to do any meaningful work in. Imagine reducing that to one chapter of a freshman-level physics or astronomy course.
Einstein's Special and General Relativity, Maxwell's Equations, and Schrodinger's Equation are all expressed in a few lines of equations. But you need extensive math and physics training to relate them to the familiar world around us. Simple doesn't mean easy. Theoretical physicists are already busily looking for theoretical formulations in which dark matter and dark energy arise naturally, rather than as a kluge. Of course, if the original observations turn out to have been misinterpreted, they may be wasting their time.
Are we all so media-crazed that we always have to buy the latest single songs online? Do we fear that we're no longer cool, so we spend $400 on a jazzed-up Walkman? When the last brick-and-mortar store closes, when the last music-afficionado gets thrown out of work, when the 'hip' bands have been cloned to the point of utter whitewash, when the droids at BestBuy and cdnow.com have completed the assimilation
When the large record producers no longer have a lock on distribution, when even independent artists can make a living if their music is good enough...?
As long as Apple survives, it seems likely that your iTunes songs will continue to be playable and portable. Of course, people have been predicting Apple's imminent demise for over a decade...
Worst case is you burn your stuff to disk and re-rip to mp3 or whatever the current DRM-free format is at the time (or use one of the shareware utilities that does the equivalent without the need for an actual disk), at the price of a small loss in quality.
So is it inconceivable that a similar series of totally negative images and behaviors would have a negative effect on kids?
It's not inconceivable. Neither is it inconceivable that it could have a positive effect--catharsis, learning to deal with aggressive feelings without real-world violence, etc.
So let's look at the data: what has happened to the violent crime rate among the videogame playing deomographic as games have become more popular, more realistic, and more violent?
The only comparison that would work is a country before and after exposure to computer games.
We have that, too. In the US, as video games have become more popular, more violent, and more realistic, violent crime among the age group that plays the most videogames has steadily dropped.
Nobody claimed that video games cause all violence, just that they contribute to it, i.e. that people are more likely to be violent after playing video games. I don't have any evidence one way or another on this.
However, as video games have become more popular, more violent, and more realistic, the rate of violence by the age group that plays videogames has steadily dropped. Now that doesn't prove that videogames don't cause violence, but it does prove that any such effect would have to be negligible compared to other social factors.
How many tragedies in the last 20 years does it take? Why can't one be enought to change our mindset? would you rather it repeat itself?
Because it is profound stupidity to seek general explanations of singular events. Singular events generally have singular explanations--a rare confluence of circumstances that is unlikely to repeat.
Of course, that sort of violence will repeat itself, not because the particular confluence of personalities and events that caused the first one repeats, but because we can't seem to stop talking about it. Huge numbers of disaffected young people saw a handful of kids just like them receive concentrated and ongoing media attention as a result of one violent action. That is an influence far more profound than a million copies of Grand Theft Auto.
I agree that everybody should know what an integral or derivative is, and be able to do a simple integral or derivative. That is a far cry from being able to "outperform" Mathematica in "mathematical sophistication." Integration, in particular, is not something for which there is a general algorithm; it is a grab-bag of tricks and transformations that have been discovered by mathematicians over many generations. I'm not sure what is gained by the average student of, say, physics in mastering the intricacies of this arcane art, as compared to investing the same amount of time on topics more immediately related to his field of study.
Right--in the usual way of doing things, the student and the advisor would co-author a paper together. Instead, Prof. Wolfram insisted that it would be published under his own name--only--or not at all.
The "usual way of doing things" varies depending upon circumstances. In a pharmaceutical company, for example, results may sometimes be considered proprietary for long periods of time. The important thing, ethically speaking, is that everybody is clear from the outset as to what the deal will be regarding publication. Presumably, if the research assistant signed a nondisclosure agreement, that was done.
It is also not uncommon for the publisher of a scientific work to require that the same results not be presented elsewhere prior to publication. If the research assistant felt--after publication of Wolfram's book--that he had not been given proper credit for his contribution, then that would have been the time to protest. But it is difficult to imagine a situation in which it would have been appropriate for the assistant to jump the gun on Wolfram's planned publication. Sounds like the court agreed.
My biggest problem is that he uses a $1500-$3000 dollar Mathematics tool, he says he invented himself, that he profits from, to confirm his research.
Although if you are a student, you could probably use the $140 student edition--although my campus has a site license and makes it available to all students and faculty, anyway.
It seems odd that you would expect a book with "science" in the title to promote Intelligent design/creationism.
If anything, the book provides a strong counterargument to an old creationist standby--the idea that the evident complexity of the physical world demands an intelligent designer. What Wolfram's cellular automata demonstrate is that apparent complexity can arise out of trivially simple rules, and therefore cannot be take as evidence of intelligent design. However, Wolfram turns around and makes the equally valid point that complexity cannot be taken as evidence of optimization by selection. However, while Wolfram seems to see this as a challenge to evolutionary theory, it is unlikely to discomfit anybody but the most extreme selectionists.
Another annoying side is mentioning lot of works by other people without acknowledging them, except in the small-print notes that make up more than 50% of the book's contents.
So your complaint is that he doesn't cite other people except in an unusually extensive citations section? Actually, most of the real meat of the book is in what you dismiss as the "small print notes".
In the 1990's Matthew Cook served as a research assistant to Stephen Wolfram , where among other things he was directed to develop a proof showing that the Rule 110 cellular automaton is Turing-complete . Under non-disclosure until the publication of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, Cook nevertheless presented his proof at a Santa Fe Institute conference. Subsequently, it was stricken from the published proceedings by court order.
Generally, in the sciences, it is not considered appropriate for a research assistant to publish the results of a collaborative project without the consent of his mentor.
Wolfram has clearly made significant discoveries in the field of CA, although he didn't invent them, or the concept. His "experimental mathematics" strategy of using computer simulations to suggest mathematical hypotheses which he then proves by more conventional approaches is probably one that will become increasingly common.
In terms of his "you can explain everything with CA" thesis, Wolfram basically provides little more than preliminary results. The work is intriguing and many aspects appear promising, but as far as I can tell, he hasn't actually solved any major problem in biology or physics using his approach. There have been other examples of mathematical insights that were supposed to revolutionize biology (remember Catastrophe Theory?), and they have rarely turned out to be as revolutionary as their proponents expected. It might be a useful tool, but I'm waiting to see something of value built with it.
Wolfram doesn't care, he's made a nice pile from it, generated some nice PR for himself; refused all peer review; got a bunch of sycophantic reviews -- largely from non-scientists -- took his short term profit, then bailed.
Actually, I'd be surprised if the money that he has made from this book is sufficient to pay him a decent hourly wage for the time that he has invested in it. Fortunately, he has the income from his other major scientific/mathematical contribution--Mathematica--to support this endeavor.
Slashdot Mirror
So if existing data indicated that many things happened before anybody was around to observe them couldn't we argue that time existed before the big bang since the events that cause that explosion still have observable consequences in our current universe? (ie matter formation if everything consisted of uniform background radiation)
This represents a misunderstanding of Big Bang Theory. It is not an explosion happening at some time in an existing universe. What is expanding from the initial singularity is not merely matter, but the structure of space-time itself. So it is meaningless to talk about "before" the Big Bang, not because nobody was there to see it, but because time itself was created in the Big Bang.
Does time have a meaning if there was no one to observe it?
In physics, time is objective rather than subjective. In short, yes. The existing data indicates that many things happened before anybody was around to observe them, and those events have observable consequences.
There is an excellent, if a bit expensive, universal remote that has this very feature. A button on the side turns the back light on for the buttons on the face.
LCD: Looks great, but costs a fortune if you want even a moderately large screen.
Plasma: Boy, these look like crap. Low contrast, poor color range, weak blacks, still pretty expensive.
Rear projection: blurry and dim. Never understood how people can tolerate these.
Front projection: Great if you are a dedicated videophile with a darkened home theater. Otherwise, forget it. And be sure to factor the cost of replacement lamps into the price.
CRT: Ancient technology, destined for obsolescence, weighs a ton. But you get the best picture for the least money. Still the best choice unless you have lots of money or want a really large screen.
I wasn't talking about mathmatically simple theories, but really simple ones based on the most simple possibilities we can think of, such as these:
1. The universe contains only one very large particle. (What we see as particles are probably just locally dense objects.)
Sounds like merely a matter of definition. But it doesn't seem simple at all, since it assumes the existence of entities (a particle, and the things that we call particles that you want to rename "locally dense objects") with complex properties.
2. Only one type of force exists. Assume repulsion.
Force unification is the concept behind unified field theories. But this seems to take the existence of space and time--which seem very complicated--for granted.
3. Waveforms can propagate in any direction.
Isn't this the case in wave theory, anyway?
Instead of creating complex theories to help us see one level deeper, why not start with the simplest explanation(s) possible, and work our way up from there?
In practice, it seems that the simpler the explanation is, the harder it is to determine whether it really explains our universe. Right now there are numerous mathematically simple theories that might explain our universe. The problem is that figuring out what these simple theories actually predict regarding the nature of the universe turns out to be very difficult.
Obviously there must be something filling the space between what we think of as particles of matter, otherwise gravity, light, magnetism, and inertia (did I leave anything out?) couldn't exist in what we see as a "vacuum".
Perhaps. In modern physics the vacuum is far from empty. On the other hand, trying to figure out what is "filling the space" between particles of matter may be as informative as trying to understand the fundamentals of how a computer works by figuring out what is "filling the spaces" between the bright pixels you see on your screen. Maybe we should be trying to understand what gives us the impression that there is such a thing as space in the first place.
Despite all that math, Cosmology still starts out with "In the beginning everything was in darkness and then [indetermined] said let there be light."
Not really. Conventional Big Bang theory starts out, "In the beginning, everything was light. There was nothing before that--in fact, there was no 'before that'--because time did not exist before the beginning."
But kludge's are the black eye of science, and even really bright people can make them (remember Einstein and his cosmological constant?).
To be fair, the cosmological constant was a constant that emerged naturally from the derivation of General Relativity, with no indication of what its value should be. To apply it to reality, some value had to be assumed or determined. The simplest thing to do would have been to arbitrarily give it a value of zero, but that would have implied an expanding universe. In the absence of evidence for expansion, Einstein chose to give it a value that made the universe static.
Just like the Theory of Evolution.
Exactly. The Theory of Gravitation could turn out to be wrong, but no reasonable person doubts that things fall. We'd just have to revise our idea of why they fall. Similarly, the Theory of Evolution could turn out to be wrong, but no reasonable person doubts that life evolved. The evidence is just too overwhelming.
Same idea here. Kepler's laws reduced a nightmarish tangle of mathematics to a three line "program", if you will. Out current model of how various things in our universe interact requires a degree in cosmology to fully grasp, and a PhD to do any meaningful work in. Imagine reducing that to one chapter of a freshman-level physics or astronomy course.
Einstein's Special and General Relativity, Maxwell's Equations, and Schrodinger's Equation are all expressed in a few lines of equations. But you need extensive math and physics training to relate them to the familiar world around us. Simple doesn't mean easy. Theoretical physicists are already busily looking for theoretical formulations in which dark matter and dark energy arise naturally, rather than as a kluge. Of course, if the original observations turn out to have been misinterpreted, they may be wasting their time.
Audio Hijack on the Mac will allow you do this. I believe that I've heard of others, as well as PC programs.
Are we all so media-crazed that we always have to buy the latest single songs online? Do we fear that we're no longer cool, so we spend $400 on a jazzed-up Walkman? When the last brick-and-mortar store closes, when the last music-afficionado gets thrown out of work, when the 'hip' bands have been cloned to the point of utter whitewash, when the droids at BestBuy and cdnow.com have completed the assimilation
When the large record producers no longer have a lock on distribution, when even independent artists can make a living if their music is good enough...?
Worst case is you burn your stuff to disk and re-rip to mp3 or whatever the current DRM-free format is at the time (or use one of the shareware utilities that does the equivalent without the need for an actual disk), at the price of a small loss in quality.
So is it inconceivable that a similar series of totally negative images and behaviors would have a negative effect on kids?
It's not inconceivable. Neither is it inconceivable that it could have a positive effect--catharsis, learning to deal with aggressive feelings without real-world violence, etc.
So let's look at the data: what has happened to the violent crime rate among the videogame playing deomographic as games have become more popular, more realistic, and more violent?
Answer: it has steadily dropped
The only comparison that would work is a country before and after exposure to computer games.
We have that, too. In the US, as video games have become more popular, more violent, and more realistic, violent crime among the age group that plays the most videogames has steadily dropped.
Nobody claimed that video games cause all violence, just that they contribute to it, i.e. that people are more likely to be violent after playing video games. I don't have any evidence one way or another on this.
However, as video games have become more popular, more violent, and more realistic, the rate of violence by the age group that plays videogames has steadily dropped. Now that doesn't prove that videogames don't cause violence, but it does prove that any such effect would have to be negligible compared to other social factors.
How many tragedies in the last 20 years does it take? Why can't one be enought to change our mindset? would you rather it repeat itself?
Because it is profound stupidity to seek general explanations of singular events. Singular events generally have singular explanations--a rare confluence of circumstances that is unlikely to repeat.
Of course, that sort of violence will repeat itself, not because the particular confluence of personalities and events that caused the first one repeats, but because we can't seem to stop talking about it. Huge numbers of disaffected young people saw a handful of kids just like them receive concentrated and ongoing media attention as a result of one violent action. That is an influence far more profound than a million copies of Grand Theft Auto.
I agree that everybody should know what an integral or derivative is, and be able to do a simple integral or derivative. That is a far cry from being able to "outperform" Mathematica in "mathematical sophistication." Integration, in particular, is not something for which there is a general algorithm; it is a grab-bag of tricks and transformations that have been discovered by mathematicians over many generations. I'm not sure what is gained by the average student of, say, physics in mastering the intricacies of this arcane art, as compared to investing the same amount of time on topics more immediately related to his field of study.
The "usual way of doing things" varies depending upon circumstances. In a pharmaceutical company, for example, results may sometimes be considered proprietary for long periods of time. The important thing, ethically speaking, is that everybody is clear from the outset as to what the deal will be regarding publication. Presumably, if the research assistant signed a nondisclosure agreement, that was done.
It is also not uncommon for the publisher of a scientific work to require that the same results not be presented elsewhere prior to publication. If the research assistant felt--after publication of Wolfram's book--that he had not been given proper credit for his contribution, then that would have been the time to protest. But it is difficult to imagine a situation in which it would have been appropriate for the assistant to jump the gun on Wolfram's planned publication. Sounds like the court agreed.
My biggest problem is that he uses a $1500-$3000 dollar Mathematics tool, he says he invented himself, that he profits from, to confirm his research.
Although if you are a student, you could probably use the $140 student edition--although my campus has a site license and makes it available to all students and faculty, anyway.
It seems odd that you would expect a book with "science" in the title to promote Intelligent design/creationism.
If anything, the book provides a strong counterargument to an old creationist standby--the idea that the evident complexity of the physical world demands an intelligent designer. What Wolfram's cellular automata demonstrate is that apparent complexity can arise out of trivially simple rules, and therefore cannot be take as evidence of intelligent design. However, Wolfram turns around and makes the equally valid point that complexity cannot be taken as evidence of optimization by selection. However, while Wolfram seems to see this as a challenge to evolutionary theory, it is unlikely to discomfit anybody but the most extreme selectionists.
Another annoying side is mentioning lot of works by other people without acknowledging them, except in the small-print notes that make up more than 50% of the book's contents.
So your complaint is that he doesn't cite other people except in an unusually extensive citations section? Actually, most of the real meat of the book is in what you dismiss as the "small print notes".
In the 1990's Matthew Cook served as a research assistant to Stephen Wolfram , where among other things he was directed to develop a proof showing that the Rule 110 cellular automaton is Turing-complete . Under non-disclosure until the publication of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, Cook nevertheless presented his proof at a Santa Fe Institute conference. Subsequently, it was stricken from the published proceedings by court order.
Generally, in the sciences, it is not considered appropriate for a research assistant to publish the results of a collaborative project without the consent of his mentor.
Wolfram has clearly made significant discoveries in the field of CA, although he didn't invent them, or the concept. His "experimental mathematics" strategy of using computer simulations to suggest mathematical hypotheses which he then proves by more conventional approaches is probably one that will become increasingly common.
In terms of his "you can explain everything with CA" thesis, Wolfram basically provides little more than preliminary results. The work is intriguing and many aspects appear promising, but as far as I can tell, he hasn't actually solved any major problem in biology or physics using his approach. There have been other examples of mathematical insights that were supposed to revolutionize biology (remember Catastrophe Theory?), and they have rarely turned out to be as revolutionary as their proponents expected. It might be a useful tool, but I'm waiting to see something of value built with it.
Wolfram doesn't care, he's made a nice pile from it, generated some nice PR for himself; refused all peer review; got a bunch of sycophantic reviews -- largely from non-scientists -- took his short term profit, then bailed.
Actually, I'd be surprised if the money that he has made from this book is sufficient to pay him a decent hourly wage for the time that he has invested in it. Fortunately, he has the income from his other major scientific/mathematical contribution--Mathematica--to support this endeavor.