Actually if there exists a wider multiverse than just our Universe, then it's much more likely we're in a simulated universe than a real one.
Have a read of The Goldilocks Enigma for discussion of multiverses, simulated universes, levitating super-turtles, God and what each hypothesis means and where it falls down... great book:)
"Elements" are called elements because EARLY chemistry believed that all things were made up of a combination of elements in nature (earth, fire, water, etc).
Their four elements were earth, wind, fire, and water. I believe we simply misunderstand the ancients. The four "elements" weren't elements as we know them (hydrogen, helium, etc) but the four states of matter: solid, gaseous, plasma, and liquid.
Of course, they misunderstood the universe. But of course we do, too, although we misunderstand it less and less as time goes on.
So what about Bose-Einsten condensates, supersolids, amorphous solids or the other poor states of matter then:P
The point is that at this scale GR totally breaks down - because the uncertainly in the energy of the gravitational field itself is enough to generate virtual black holes at the Planck scale. Or at least that's the naive interpretation, but it does illustrate that we've gone beyond the limits of both GR and QM at that scale.
Sort of - it's more that it's immeasurable though, as at the Planck scales the Uncertainly Principle means that everything is a constantly changing sea of black holes being created and destroyed, which kind of plays havoc with notions of... well, everything really, up to and including dimensionality - the Universe might have a fractal dimension at this scale...
The granularity at the Planck scale arises from the fact that at distances and times that small the Uncertainly Principle means that you get virtual black holes constantly forming and evaporating... at that scale things are just a seething sea of singularities rather than flat spacetime i.e. "quantum foam".
A hologram is a 2-D surface that gives rise to a 3-D image. The holographic principle is that the interior of a 3-D horizon is completely specified by the information encoding on its 2-D boundary i.e. a 2-D surface giving rise to a 3-D volume...
So the interior can only be described in as much detail as the 2-D surface can store, which works out to mean things can only be specified down to a much larger scale than the Planck length.
Firstly no information can be lost, so when anything falls into a black hole the information has to go somewhere - and the only thing accessable to the outside universe is the event horizon itself. Information and entropy are related (as entropy is a measure of disorder), and entropy is related to temperature. The conservation of information leads to an explaination of why black holes are hot and emit radiation.
From what I remember on an event horizon the fundamental limit of information storage is 1 bit per area of 2x2 Planck lengths i.e. 4 Planck areas. The total information you can store on any event horizon is therefore much less than the inforation that would be required to specify the entire interior volume down to the Planck length. But that is the limit, so therefore the interior must be specified by much less information i.e. bigger spacetime "pixels". If spacetime is only specified to 2 Planck lengths, then spacetime coordinates require 1/16th as much information to specify as an example.
It's like lossy compression - the more fine detail you sacrifice, the less information is required to specify it. And seeing as we're inside a big horizon due to the speed of light (the horizon of the observable Universe), you can apply the same principle to the Universe as a whole.
This book explains it all much better than I did though:)
How would you change the structure of every receptor of that type in the brain?
As for whether it's relative or fundamental, I'd say both - there's increasing evidence of genetic causes and recognition that it is a lifelong condition... adult ADHD is still only a relatively recent diagnosis, before that it was assumed to be a developmental problem. But it's relative in that while some estimates say up to 5% of adults may suffer from it, there's a spectrum of severity and so different solutions for different people.
NICE guidelines here in the UK have recently been changed so that methylphenidate is now the first choice treatment, along with being offered workshops in things like time and work management. I've been following all of this as I'm just about starting the process of possibly being diagnosed myself - having spent 13 years now taking amphetamines to get things done at work, I know that what speed does for me - calms me down and lets me focus on things without getting distracted - is almost the opposite of what it does for most people who take it.
I tend not to reboot my work PC (running XP) for weeks at a time, and that's only because shitty Lotus Notes and our password policy. Can't say I've noticed this mythical "slowdown".
Do repeat on X using Y as separators?;) Ok, stretching it... but I think what you call OO semantics is just a convention. And the Pythonic way also has the advantage that you can see that you're using a string template to generate a string result.
Gah, Java... may I never use it again. C# really is just so much nicer to use if I ever need to use a statically-typed language.
There's a String.format(formatstr,...) method in Java since 1.5 (I think), although it does use the Formatter class internally.
Yes, in Python you could do
{ "bar": "baz" }.format("foo: {bar}")
if there were such a method. I can see where you're coming from, but the present usage is consistent with being "Pythonic" e.g.
", ".join([x * 2 for x in range(10)])
can be read as "use ', ' to join the supplied list" and similarly
"foo: {bar}".format(bar = "baz")
can be read as "use 'foo: {bar}' to format the supplied values'.
The use is also consistent whether or not you use a string or an instance of Formatter to determine formatting, and means you don't need to add a new format method to both tuples and dictionaries so that ("baz", ).format("foo: {0}") also works.
Just read X.m(Y) as "use X to do m on Y" instead:)
As for if ("string".equals(variable)), well, that's just Java being crap really:)
Personal favourite new(-ish) Python feature is its trinary operator:
result = "True" if condition else "False"
A bit odd at first, but much more understandable once you're used to it IMO...
What would you use as a method name other than format, given that the method does variable substution, type conversion, alignment, padding etc etc?:) Plus, it matches usage of the String class in both Java and.NET...
There are physiological differences in people with ADHD, in particular in the structure of their dopamine receptors - which is why amphetamines have a different effect for them compared to most people. ADHD treatment (in adults at least) does contain things like time and work management therapy, but in addition to drugs to treat the underlying physical problem.
"First, thou shalt count to {0}" # References first positional argument "My quest is {name}" # References keyword argument 'name' "Weight in tons {0.weight}" # 'weight' attribute of first positional arg "Units destroyed: {players[0]}" # First element of keyword argument 'players'. "Harold's a clever {0!s}" # Calls str() on the argument first "Bring out the holy {name!r}" # Calls repr() on the argument first
And my mistake, my example should've been one of these:
No, it's about being able to focus on a single task rather than being hyperactive or apathetic (depending on which variety of ADHD you have). Amphetamines and the like relax me and allow me to devote myself to getting stuff done rather than staring at the wall - there's evidence that people with ADHD have slightly different dopamine receptors in their brains which explains the difference in the effect of such chemicals.
But the US spends twice as much as any other country on health care already, the current system not only fails the 40% (IIRC) who have no coverage at all, it's hideously expensive. Even if you discontinued Medicare and Medicaid (which account for half of the GDP spent on health care) you'd still be spending as much as the UK (one of the more expensive systems) without universal coverage.
There's some very good info here about the health care systems of six countries, all of which are implemented in different ways.
As for people getting over the "foolish idea" that health care is special, it's not going to happen. Most people thankfully prefer to live in a society where being healthy isn't a privilege reserved for the rich.
I think you're sadly mistaken if you don't think that humans have just as many builtin instincts driving us to cooperate as ants or bees - that's what our emotions are. Sure we're sapient and aren't totally ruled by instinct, but we certainly follow it 99% of the time whether we're aware of it or not...
Slashdot Mirror
Seconded - it really covers all of this stuff in depth.
Actually if there exists a wider multiverse than just our Universe, then it's much more likely we're in a simulated universe than a real one.
Have a read of The Goldilocks Enigma for discussion of multiverses, simulated universes, levitating super-turtles, God and what each hypothesis means and where it falls down... great book :)
Which is almost certainly does...
"Elements" are called elements because EARLY chemistry believed that all things were made up of a combination of elements in nature (earth, fire, water, etc).
Their four elements were earth, wind, fire, and water. I believe we simply misunderstand the ancients. The four "elements" weren't elements as we know them (hydrogen, helium, etc) but the four states of matter: solid, gaseous, plasma, and liquid.
Of course, they misunderstood the universe. But of course we do, too, although we misunderstand it less and less as time goes on.
So what about Bose-Einsten condensates, supersolids, amorphous solids or the other poor states of matter then :P
The point is that at this scale GR totally breaks down - because the uncertainly in the energy of the gravitational field itself is enough to generate virtual black holes at the Planck scale. Or at least that's the naive interpretation, but it does illustrate that we've gone beyond the limits of both GR and QM at that scale.
Sort of - it's more that it's immeasurable though, as at the Planck scales the Uncertainly Principle means that everything is a constantly changing sea of black holes being created and destroyed, which kind of plays havoc with notions of... well, everything really, up to and including dimensionality - the Universe might have a fractal dimension at this scale...
The granularity at the Planck scale arises from the fact that at distances and times that small the Uncertainly Principle means that you get virtual black holes constantly forming and evaporating... at that scale things are just a seething sea of singularities rather than flat spacetime i.e. "quantum foam".
A hologram is a 2-D surface that gives rise to a 3-D image. The holographic principle is that the interior of a 3-D horizon is completely specified by the information encoding on its 2-D boundary i.e. a 2-D surface giving rise to a 3-D volume...
So the interior can only be described in as much detail as the 2-D surface can store, which works out to mean things can only be specified down to a much larger scale than the Planck length.
Firstly no information can be lost, so when anything falls into a black hole the information has to go somewhere - and the only thing accessable to the outside universe is the event horizon itself. Information and entropy are related (as entropy is a measure of disorder), and entropy is related to temperature. The conservation of information leads to an explaination of why black holes are hot and emit radiation.
From what I remember on an event horizon the fundamental limit of information storage is 1 bit per area of 2x2 Planck lengths i.e. 4 Planck areas. The total information you can store on any event horizon is therefore much less than the inforation that would be required to specify the entire interior volume down to the Planck length. But that is the limit, so therefore the interior must be specified by much less information i.e. bigger spacetime "pixels". If spacetime is only specified to 2 Planck lengths, then spacetime coordinates require 1/16th as much information to specify as an example.
It's like lossy compression - the more fine detail you sacrifice, the less information is required to specify it. And seeing as we're inside a big horizon due to the speed of light (the horizon of the observable Universe), you can apply the same principle to the Universe as a whole.
This book explains it all much better than I did though :)
Bose-Einstein condensates? Superfluids? Amorphous solids? There's at least a dozen states of matter.
How would you change the structure of every receptor of that type in the brain?
As for whether it's relative or fundamental, I'd say both - there's increasing evidence of genetic causes and recognition that it is a lifelong condition... adult ADHD is still only a relatively recent diagnosis, before that it was assumed to be a developmental problem. But it's relative in that while some estimates say up to 5% of adults may suffer from it, there's a spectrum of severity and so different solutions for different people.
NICE guidelines here in the UK have recently been changed so that methylphenidate is now the first choice treatment, along with being offered workshops in things like time and work management. I've been following all of this as I'm just about starting the process of possibly being diagnosed myself - having spent 13 years now taking amphetamines to get things done at work, I know that what speed does for me - calms me down and lets me focus on things without getting distracted - is almost the opposite of what it does for most people who take it.
I tend not to reboot my work PC (running XP) for weeks at a time, and that's only because shitty Lotus Notes and our password policy. Can't say I've noticed this mythical "slowdown".
Do repeat on X using Y as separators? ;) Ok, stretching it... but I think what you call OO semantics is just a convention. And the Pythonic way also has the advantage that you can see that you're using a string template to generate a string result.
Gah, Java... may I never use it again. C# really is just so much nicer to use if I ever need to use a statically-typed language.
I'm fairly sure the studies were done by Phillip-Morris in the Czech Republic.
There's a String.format(formatstr, ...) method in Java since 1.5 (I think), although it does use the Formatter class internally.
:)
:)
Yes, in Python you could do
{ "bar": "baz" }.format("foo: {bar}")
if there were such a method. I can see where you're coming from, but the present usage is consistent with being "Pythonic" e.g.
", ".join([x * 2 for x in range(10)])
can be read as "use ', ' to join the supplied list" and similarly
"foo: {bar}".format(bar = "baz")
can be read as "use 'foo: {bar}' to format the supplied values'.
The use is also consistent whether or not you use a string or an instance of Formatter to determine formatting, and means you don't need to add a new format method to both tuples and dictionaries so that ("baz", ).format("foo: {0}") also works.
Just read X.m(Y) as "use X to do m on Y" instead
As for if ("string".equals(variable)), well, that's just Java being crap really
Personal favourite new(-ish) Python feature is its trinary operator:
result = "True" if condition else "False"
A bit odd at first, but much more understandable once you're used to it IMO...
What would you use as a method name other than format, given that the method does variable substution, type conversion, alignment, padding etc etc? :) Plus, it matches usage of the String class in both Java and .NET...
Try here, here, here or well, any of the articles I found on Google under "adhd dopamine receptors".
There are physiological differences in people with ADHD, in particular in the structure of their dopamine receptors - which is why amphetamines have a different effect for them compared to most people. ADHD treatment (in adults at least) does contain things like time and work management therapy, but in addition to drugs to treat the underlying physical problem.
No, the new style formatting is more powerful:
"First, thou shalt count to {0}" # References first positional argument
"My quest is {name}" # References keyword argument 'name'
"Weight in tons {0.weight}" # 'weight' attribute of first positional arg
"Units destroyed: {players[0]}" # First element of keyword argument 'players'.
"Harold's a clever {0!s}" # Calls str() on the argument first
"Bring out the holy {name!r}" # Calls repr() on the argument first
And my mistake, my example should've been one of these:
print("{0:7.3g}".format(10.0))
print("{number:7.3g}".format(number = 10.0))
Or use
print("7.3g".format(10.0))
like every normal person would.
No, it's about being able to focus on a single task rather than being hyperactive or apathetic (depending on which variety of ADHD you have). Amphetamines and the like relax me and allow me to devote myself to getting stuff done rather than staring at the wall - there's evidence that people with ADHD have slightly different dopamine receptors in their brains which explains the difference in the effect of such chemicals.
Congrats... first /. post to make me actually LOL in bloody ages :)
Medicare's administrative overhead is 3%, actually better than most other countries' health systems.
But the US spends twice as much as any other country on health care already, the current system not only fails the 40% (IIRC) who have no coverage at all, it's hideously expensive. Even if you discontinued Medicare and Medicaid (which account for half of the GDP spent on health care) you'd still be spending as much as the UK (one of the more expensive systems) without universal coverage.
There's some very good info here about the health care systems of six countries, all of which are implemented in different ways.
As for people getting over the "foolish idea" that health care is special, it's not going to happen. Most people thankfully prefer to live in a society where being healthy isn't a privilege reserved for the rich.
I think you're sadly mistaken if you don't think that humans have just as many builtin instincts driving us to cooperate as ants or bees - that's what our emotions are. Sure we're sapient and aren't totally ruled by instinct, but we certainly follow it 99% of the time whether we're aware of it or not...