So science uncovers yet another way in which our world and universe are mediocre instead of special. Is this surprising?
I agree this isn't surprising. However, the reason this isn't "dumb" has to do with difference is between just letting your imagination run wild and actually doing a physics calculation to find specific alternative stable configurations of physical law.
"A universe without weak interactions is constructed that undergoes big-bang nucleosynthesis, matter domination, structure formation, and star formation. The stars in this universe are able to burn for billions of years, synthesize elements up to iron, and undergo supernova explosions, dispersing heavy elements into the interstellar medium.
There's no evidence such universes exist. But it is still a good exercise to help keep some perspective on what is possible, even in principle, given what we know about physical law. It also highlights that people who make "anthropic principle-like" claims based on fine-tuning haven't bothered to go back to the underlying laws of physics and actually look for other stable configurations, even in theory.
I'm guessing there are many perfectly productive and successful adults out there who also have this "defect." Like ADD and OCD, which can morph into powerful creative and focusing skills as positive adult byproducts, I'm betting this one can manifest itself as otherwise helpful traits such as "never giving up", "persistence in the face of resistance", etc. "Once bitten, twice shy" probably isn't a meaningful phrase for them and they likely wouldn't suffer from a host of ordinary hangups that stymie many adults (who learned from mistakes in an ordinary fashion).
You're not the first person to think so. It is suspicious that no answer is actually given....
I'm not so sure a question phrased like "...these rings that you are building look like the Stargate. What is to guarantee that you are not building a portal to other universes?" really has a succinct scientific answer other than "It won't. The fact that the detector geometry looks like the Stargate is a coincidence. However,...[insert detailed and extended discussion of LHC extra dimension searches]."
I'm not really sure how it's in the best interest of people that use Craig's list to have them wasting money defending such clear cut cases in court. I mean seriously, you don't really have to be an attorney to recognize that a private event run by a private organization that stipulates as a condition for receiving an invite that the tickets are non-transferable would have the legal right to deny entrance to those people.
True true. But then why didn't Craigslist just offer up the name from the start and avoid wasting the court's time (and taxpayer's money) if they were going to default on the process anyway? It seems like Craigslist was sending some kind of message by both not cooperating from the start then simply not showing up.
As Michael Shermer has observed, "smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." A humble reminder that you can have a degree in aeronautical engineering, a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics, and also walk on the fucking moon, and still have totally pseudoscientific, non-evidence-based views about the world just because you personally want them to be true.
A thought-provoking piece written by someone who neither understands the scientific method nor Google. Who doesn't understand the difference between a Theory and a model. Who still doesn't get correlation!=causation. Who probably has never had to actually analyze any substantial amount of data before. And who has clearly been raised on a self-important intellectual diet consisting of too much Buckminster Fuller, Kurtzweil, Frank Tipler, and Derrida. I'm sure there are some kernels of insight buried in there someplace, but I'm just not clear what they are. If his rant is indicative about the future direction of science, we're all doomed.
The oath as presented in TFA sounds nice, but the purity of the hypothesis-theory-data relationship is really what most scientists already tacitly treat as oath-worthy. Scientists who violate this relationship (e.g. falsify data, make theories up with no basis, plagiarize, systematically fail to cite important references, etc.) are pretty much already dumped into the pariah bin, lose their jobs, their credibility, etc. A formal oath stating this is a nice idea, but I don't see it as really necessary. The oath as written in TFA sounds pretty, but that second sentence also wants scientists to be altruistic and -- yikes! -- nice to each other as part of their job. I just don't see it as happening. If people are serious about addressing scientific misconduct, the process needs to be more systematic: scientists need to be educated in ethics not with an oath, but a series of ethics courses as part of any degree.
True, true. But more to the point: Encyclopedias should never be used as primary sources. They have always served only to provide an intellectual foothold into a topic then "springboard" the reader to published references. The idea being that published references have a chain of accountability to experts in various sub-fields, while encyclopedias are merely organized by experts (and experts in organization) -- or, in the case of wikipedia, "anyone" (which seems to do pretty well too).
For most users, it would be more like every front door comes with a big sign that says "please come in" written in a foreign language. In this analogy, 1) door manufacturers probably need to stop doing that if people who know the language take the invitation literally and violate the intentions of the people who bought the door; and 2) people who buy should learn what their door says. Cultural convention and user intent also plays a role here. For example, again as an analogy, many people have door mats that say "welcome," "please come in," or "our home is your home" or some other inviting greeting. All of these could reasonably be interpreted as "please come in," but no one would use that as a defense in court for entering someone's home uninvited (even if the door was unlocked) because these phrases are understood as a cultural platitudes, not a literal invitations.
should be well suited for this genre for all the obvious reasons (not to mention crucial ragdoll effects for the Marionette Hordes and Lobbyists, Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator for realistic simulation of the dissenting opinion, etc.)
X86 Turns 30 Years Old Happy Birthday! But do not be alarmed. That flashing red light on your palm is a natural part of our social order. On Lastday, please report to Carousel for termination at your earliest convenience. The computer is your friend. Oh, wait, you ARE the computer...
However, because the neutrino has mass (or at least 2 of the flavors do for sure, but probably all 3), there is the possibility it may actually be its own antiparticle where the object we call "antineutrino" is merely a different chirality state of the neutrino (i.e. is the neutrino a Majorana or Dirac fermion?). There are a number of experiments (past and pending) around the world trying to address this issue. I wonder how this information affects the Baez supernova discussion above in the context of the article? (IAAP too)
million billion times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth In cgs units, that's about 0.5 PG (petagauss) or, in SI, 50 GT (gigatesla). Definitely watch your credit cards around that one.
Wikipedia articles actually linking to Kevin Bacon should be made "time-like" and given a negative sign in the metric tensor when calculating article "distances" in this exercise.
The rule does seem rather Draconian, but these places are already basically forced fun anyway. This is just one more rule on a heap of existing rules parks like this usually enforce. When someone goes to a place like this, they willingly throwing themselves into the suite of forced fun such a places provide. As long as the rule of no PDAs is well-publicized and people know what they are getting into, I don't really see a problem. Problems would arise if people were led to believe they could bring smartphones and PDAs, but then had them confiscated after they paid. Not knowing the rule, it would also be pretty upsetting to show up after wrangling you family for a day trip to have to bow out at the last minute because you really DID need your PDA for some reason.
Rise and fall and rise of the geek cool aesthetic
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The Rise of Geekdom
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The geek-nerd cool aesthetic can be modeled as a rising line of constant slope (b) with a sinusoidal oscillation whose angular frequency (w) and amplitude (d) must be determined by other socio-economic factors: a+bt+dsin(wt)
In other words, being a geek comes in and out of fashion, but there is an overall rising trend. For example, back in my day (the 80s) movies like Real Genius, Revenge of the Nerds, and Weird Science, along with the rise in popularity of the personal computer, role playing games, etc. were all evidence for the geek empowerment movement.
While I agree we are in a local maximum for the geek aesthetic where software engineers and programmers are like the supermodels of geek culture, the true litmus test for the Age of the Geek will be when a physics major can proudly say so at a party and not have everyone take two steps back. This has never been true, and I see no evidence of this yet.
If we count the genetic code, why not quantum field theory? Nature's been running some revision of it consistently for about 13-something billion years. All those Feynman diagrams are just one big fancy quantum neural network in space-time(s).
It was nice of those guys to stand in front of her computer and pose for her like they were in mug shots. It's almost like they knew they did something wrong! Oh wait...
Driving While Distracted More Dangerous Than Supposed I knew Supposed was pretty dangerous, but this article confirms all my fears.
Re:Second person shooter
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Second Person
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· Score: 1
i\partial\psi = H\psi, surely? Everybody uses units where \hbar = 1, and nobody bothers with the hat on the H. Oh, and only engineers put dots on the top of things. Thanks for the tip, but physicists can use dots and hats whenever they want. And stop calling me Surely.
Slashdot Mirror
So science uncovers yet another way in which our world and universe are mediocre instead of special. Is this surprising?
I agree this isn't surprising. However, the reason this isn't "dumb" has to do with difference is between just letting your imagination run wild and actually doing a physics calculation to find specific alternative stable configurations of physical law.
"A universe without weak interactions is constructed that undergoes big-bang nucleosynthesis, matter domination, structure formation, and star formation. The stars in this universe are able to burn for billions of years, synthesize elements up to iron, and undergo supernova explosions, dispersing heavy elements into the interstellar medium.
There's no evidence such universes exist. But it is still a good exercise to help keep some perspective on what is possible, even in principle, given what we know about physical law. It also highlights that people who make "anthropic principle-like" claims based on fine-tuning haven't bothered to go back to the underlying laws of physics and actually look for other stable configurations, even in theory.
I'm guessing there are many perfectly productive and successful adults out there who also have this "defect." Like ADD and OCD, which can morph into powerful creative and focusing skills as positive adult byproducts, I'm betting this one can manifest itself as otherwise helpful traits such as "never giving up", "persistence in the face of resistance", etc. "Once bitten, twice shy" probably isn't a meaningful phrase for them and they likely wouldn't suffer from a host of ordinary hangups that stymie many adults (who learned from mistakes in an ordinary fashion).
You're not the first person to think so. It is suspicious that no answer is actually given....
I'm not so sure a question phrased like "...these rings that you are building look like the Stargate. What is to guarantee that you are not building a portal to other universes?" really has a succinct scientific answer other than "It won't. The fact that the detector geometry looks like the Stargate is a coincidence. However,...[insert detailed and extended discussion of LHC extra dimension searches]."
I'm not really sure how it's in the best interest of people that use Craig's list to have them wasting money defending such clear cut cases in court. I mean seriously, you don't really have to be an attorney to recognize that a private event run by a private organization that stipulates as a condition for receiving an invite that the tickets are non-transferable would have the legal right to deny entrance to those people.
True true. But then why didn't Craigslist just offer up the name from the start and avoid wasting the court's time (and taxpayer's money) if they were going to default on the process anyway? It seems like Craigslist was sending some kind of message by both not cooperating from the start then simply not showing up.
As Michael Shermer has observed, "smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." A humble reminder that you can have a degree in aeronautical engineering, a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics, and also walk on the fucking moon, and still have totally pseudoscientific, non-evidence-based views about the world just because you personally want them to be true.
Wonder if Viacom's lawyers will use Google Desktop to search the records they obtained from Google...
A thought-provoking piece written by someone who neither understands the scientific method nor Google. Who doesn't understand the difference between a Theory and a model. Who still doesn't get correlation!=causation. Who probably has never had to actually analyze any substantial amount of data before. And who has clearly been raised on a self-important intellectual diet consisting of too much Buckminster Fuller, Kurtzweil, Frank Tipler, and Derrida. I'm sure there are some kernels of insight buried in there someplace, but I'm just not clear what they are. If his rant is indicative about the future direction of science, we're all doomed.
The oath as presented in TFA sounds nice, but the purity of the hypothesis-theory-data relationship is really what most scientists already tacitly treat as oath-worthy. Scientists who violate this relationship (e.g. falsify data, make theories up with no basis, plagiarize, systematically fail to cite important references, etc.) are pretty much already dumped into the pariah bin, lose their jobs, their credibility, etc. A formal oath stating this is a nice idea, but I don't see it as really necessary. The oath as written in TFA sounds pretty, but that second sentence also wants scientists to be altruistic and -- yikes! -- nice to each other as part of their job. I just don't see it as happening. If people are serious about addressing scientific misconduct, the process needs to be more systematic: scientists need to be educated in ethics not with an oath, but a series of ethics courses as part of any degree.
Note light WILL interact weakly with light via virtual charged particles. This is the principle behind gamma-gamma studies and their ilk. Keep in mind, this isn't what the researchers the /. article are doing (see elsewhere in the article and thread for that explanation).
True, true. But more to the point: Encyclopedias should never be used as primary sources. They have always served only to provide an intellectual foothold into a topic then "springboard" the reader to published references. The idea being that published references have a chain of accountability to experts in various sub-fields, while encyclopedias are merely organized by experts (and experts in organization) -- or, in the case of wikipedia, "anyone" (which seems to do pretty well too).
For most users, it would be more like every front door comes with a big sign that says "please come in" written in a foreign language. In this analogy, 1) door manufacturers probably need to stop doing that if people who know the language take the invitation literally and violate the intentions of the people who bought the door; and 2) people who buy should learn what their door says. Cultural convention and user intent also plays a role here. For example, again as an analogy, many people have door mats that say "welcome," "please come in," or "our home is your home" or some other inviting greeting. All of these could reasonably be interpreted as "please come in," but no one would use that as a defense in court for entering someone's home uninvited (even if the door was unlocked) because these phrases are understood as a cultural platitudes, not a literal invitations.
should be well suited for this genre for all the obvious reasons (not to mention crucial ragdoll effects for the Marionette Hordes and Lobbyists, Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator for realistic simulation of the dissenting opinion, etc.)
However, because the neutrino has mass (or at least 2 of the flavors do for sure, but probably all 3), there is the possibility it may actually be its own antiparticle where the object we call "antineutrino" is merely a different chirality state of the neutrino (i.e. is the neutrino a Majorana or Dirac fermion?). There are a number of experiments (past and pending) around the world trying to address this issue. I wonder how this information affects the Baez supernova discussion above in the context of the article? (IAAP too)
noun verb preposition adjective noun!!
Simons, the hedge fund guy who bailed out BNL, was/is also a mathematician and theoretical physicists.
No, I don't know why I'm advocating this.
The rule does seem rather Draconian, but these places are already basically forced fun anyway. This is just one more rule on a heap of existing rules parks like this usually enforce. When someone goes to a place like this, they willingly throwing themselves into the suite of forced fun such a places provide. As long as the rule of no PDAs is well-publicized and people know what they are getting into, I don't really see a problem. Problems would arise if people were led to believe they could bring smartphones and PDAs, but then had them confiscated after they paid. Not knowing the rule, it would also be pretty upsetting to show up after wrangling you family for a day trip to have to bow out at the last minute because you really DID need your PDA for some reason.
In other words, being a geek comes in and out of fashion, but there is an overall rising trend. For example, back in my day (the 80s) movies like Real Genius, Revenge of the Nerds, and Weird Science, along with the rise in popularity of the personal computer, role playing games, etc. were all evidence for the geek empowerment movement.
While I agree we are in a local maximum for the geek aesthetic where software engineers and programmers are like the supermodels of geek culture, the true litmus test for the Age of the Geek will be when a physics major can proudly say so at a party and not have everyone take two steps back. This has never been true, and I see no evidence of this yet.
If we count the genetic code, why not quantum field theory? Nature's been running some revision of it consistently for about 13-something billion years. All those Feynman diagrams are just one big fancy quantum neural network in space-time(s).
It was nice of those guys to stand in front of her computer and pose for her like they were in mug shots. It's almost like they knew they did something wrong! Oh wait...