Cosmolosophy is what I hope will be a useful new framework for finding meaning and direction in a complicated environment of information, social expectations and economic realities.The intent is to create a new synthesis of science and faith; as well as to strive for a description of us and our place in the Cosmos that balances a questioning mind with the need for that which transcends the merely rational.
Monday, June 22, 2015
The contrast between "A New Kind of Science," and Cosmolosophy -- Additional
I wanted to make note of the fact that I neglected to be as precise about the way I ended the original post as I should have been.
Specifically, I ended this last post by indicating my astonishment concerning the fact that natural systems would create meaning processors, with choice being a very important design requirement.
What I didn't make clear here is the difference between how and why. The how, as was the main thrust of the post, was already established in the contention that any level of complexity could be obtained by conditional iteration starting from simple rules. The why, however, is something else again.
And let us not forget that it was "choice" in the human context. Why would a natural system find that in any way advantageous?
One would think that a purely rationally oriented meaning processing system designed make choices would have no less amount of adaptive advantage, even if it were not better at it. Could there be something in much larger time scales, and/or across significant percentages of the many possible realities, as they play out in those time scales, that makes choice in the human sense, in some way better?
I would like to think that it has something to do with how an ever shifting balance of both the rational, and the subjective, does more than provide simple survival. The real game, as far as the ultimate "Big Picture" is concerned is to walk the fine line between the pure heat of undifferentiated, and constant change, as opposed to a final, and absolutely frozen entropy. That's the only way the questions and answers will keep going.
And make no mistake, In my view, it is all of the frailties of what constitutes the human condition that are what contribute here. The fact that we know fear viscerally, and not for just the self, but for significant others. The fact that we can appreciate something called beauty, whatever that is ultimately. The fact that tones, in various combinations, can create joy, sorrow, and exultation; as well as the fact that cooperation can be a harmony both literally and figuratively.
All of these, in addition to imagination, empathy, and the ability to ponder all things in the abstract, make a choice context a "reasoning engine" will never be able to match. And if we go beyond mere reasoning engines?
The trick there will be in how we set up not only the associating, meaning mechanisms, in these new meaning processing systems, but how we go about nurturing the same kinds of frailties.
Doing that while maintaining effective monitoring and feedback channels in entities that will process millions of times faster than we do may well be a challenge we really ought to think long and hard on before we go any further with it.
The contrast between "A New Kind of Science," and Cosmolosophy
Sunday, June 21, 2015
The contrast between "A New Kind of Science," and Cosmolosophy
If you ever want to get an idea of what
real genius is listen to the presentation by Stephan Wolfram I've
linked below. And if you haven't already, get his book “A New Kind
of Science.” You probably won't understand all of it; I know I
certainly didn't, especially when it came to all of the proofs he
provides with the full explorations of some of the many simple rules
he posits. It takes more math than only getting through Algebra II,
as I have, to have the tools necessary, and I suspect that, even with
more advanced tools at your disposal, it's still a stretch.
Still, the sheer depth and breadth of
what he took on to get this book written is astonishing. I can
remember very clearly how humbled I felt looking at what someone with
truly serious intellectual chops could do with a mind toy I only had
deep feelings about. And of course, in this I am referring to
“Cellular Automata.”
Back in the early to mid eighties, you
see, even after two years at Green River Community college as a
transfer student intending to major in English and Communications,
and completing another two year program at Highline Community College
to get an Associate in Science degree in Data Process, I was still of
the mind that I was going to be a writer of fiction. I say “even
after” because I did a year at Boeing by this time as a “COBOL”
mainframe programmer because an income was required, and I had a
facility for programming. The problem was I hated it; especially as
it was formalized (understandably) within the Boeing bureaucracy.
While I was applying myself quite
doggedly to be better at fiction (without much success), a part of me
was still fascinated by the process of conditional iteration. And
when IBM, as well as the Tandy Corporation, came out with the first
truly commercial personal computers, I was able to indulge my self in
exploring what such machines could do. And as the graphical
possibilities were the most immediately apparent, I went with the
Tandy 2000; one of the very first color PC's to hit the market.
Let me just say, if there is a better
incentive to get a person motivated to delve into the intricacies of
both the hardware, and software, of a personal computer, than
creating conditional structures to create interesting patterns on a
screen, I am certainly not aware of it. And no where was this more
established than with the community surrounding “Cellular
Automata.” Starting with the game of life, and its myriad
variations, “core wars,” and most especially the truly amazing
Mandelbrot routine that was first published in Scientific American.
When I saw that first depiction on the
magazine's cover of what you could create by arbitrarily assigning
colors to count groups of an iterative calculation (involving an
imaginary number, as well as the X,Y coordinates of the pixel array)
that took the results of each run as the input of the next, and where
another arbitrary limit was set to indicate that it was going towards
infinity, so that the color black would be used, I was blown away.
The hours I poured away into coding, and waiting for those first
CPU's to crank out results, would have done any rabid gamer, or
programmer, of today quite proud.
I mention all of this as a way to
emphasize how getting a visceral feeling for the power of conditional
iteration was established in me at the very beginning of the PC
revolution. The interesting thing here, as I finally came to
understand that I was nowhere near ready to write fiction yet, was
that educating myself in all things PC would not only provide me an
new income source, it would lead me not so much into considering
complexity itself, as to trying integrate my love of words, with
process, expression, and what meaning itself was; and this against
the backdrop of the mess that our social processes have become, and
the lack of meaning each of us seems to have the more complicated our
social operating system became.
When Mr. Wolfram's book finally came
out in 2003 I was already several years along in the overt expression
of my critique of our current economic system, and the need for an
alternative. The Old Softy Concerns web site had been running for
nearly 3 years by then and I was just beginning to understand the
need for a formalized philosophical foundation to support the change
in sensibility that I felt was part and parcel of not only the mind
set this alternative was meant to satisfy, but for which a holistic,
systems view of the cosmos demanded. In this, it is safe to say, his
book had a big influence.
What interests me now, though, in
looking back, is not only the commonality of what is in Cosmolosophy
and what is in “A New Kind of Science,” but what is different.
To review, Cosmolosophy posits that the
entirety is an inconceivably big, iterative, question answer engine.
The simple primitives involved here are the elemental embrace (or
love) and mind. These are expressed in an infinite array of vectors
of association which I like to call “Reality Ray Tracing.” The
idea here is that each answer is simply the creation of the next
question, and in this context, the question revolves around the nexus
of “what does it mean,” “what did it mean,” and “what will
it mean.”
The primitives come into the mix as,
first, the need to interact and exchange, and second, the need to
objectify in the first place. Time, of course, is expressed as the
various vectors of association, Space is the tension field
automatically created by having objects, and objects the result of
meaning applied to an interaction interpreted from a singular frame
of reference. In this, as a consequence, is the inherent requirement
of meaning processing systems, which are then able to make choices
based on those meanings. From this as well then comes the layering
upon layer of abstraction that formalizes structure of whatever
complexity you care to contemplate.
Mr. Wolfram's tenets of “Computational
Equivalency,” “Computational Irreducibility,” as well as an
iterative model based on simple rules, certainly doesn't contradict
anything in Cosmolosophy, even if it may only be tangentially
supportive of it at best. What I do think is an important
distinction, however, is where the emphasis is placed.
Mr. Wolfram is primarily concerned with
establishing that complexity does not require complex explanation;
whether that be unbelievably complex mathematical models that can
never quite seem to balance the macro with the micro, or just as
unbelievably absurd intelligent agencies in control of all aspects of
life, save the choices we make, and yet only too willing to punish us
for those choices in a realm far beyond the consequences endured in
the here and now.
His emphasis allows for “free will”
but sees no specialness in the human species. “Meaning processing
systems,” in his view are an aspect of complexity that any simple
computational system can achieve, and he may well be right. The fine
line here is where a “reasoning engine” ends and a self aware
intelligence, that can imagine, empathize, and routinely benefit from
the intuitive leap, begins. Ray Kurtzwiel, another genius way beyond
my pay scale, has been way too enthusiastic in embracing the
inevitability of bridging that fine line; not to mention blithely
ignoring what the consequences may be to for the rest of us along the
way.
It seems to me that “choice” in the
current human sense is a truly breath taking aspect of what one might
expect from a natural system; especially if one allows that such
systems start from very simple rules. Cosmolosophy is an attempt to
provide a basis for appreciating what are the important aspects in
those simple rules that we need to apply in balance if we wish to
preserve human choice, and the kind of structure that makes better
human choices possible.
My hope, in presenting this contrast,
is that not only will Cosmolosophy become more understandable, but
that the reader will take away a new appreciation of the importance
of finding a better social operating system.
Friday, June 19, 2015
A conjecture on scientists in separate, isolated galaxies, and whether their conclusions might vary
Before I begin let me first state that
I am quite aware of the possibility that this particular bit of
pondering has already been postulated, and perhaps even laid to rest
already. I did do some Googling on it and came up empty, but even so,
I can only hope that those of you a good deal more informed than I am
will forgive the conceit of my presenting it here as if it were
anything new at all. As Captain Picard once said “It may be a
conceit but it's a healthy one.” Or at least I hope so.
Try as I might to be well informed,
there will always be things I will miss. One can only do the best
they can with what they have and then hope that they will, from time
to time, be lucky enough to stumble over something worth while. In my
view it is better to try and fail, no matter how much you might
embarrass yourself, than to not try anything at all.
With that out of the way, let us begin.
Here is what I hope is a conjecture for you that is just full of
interesting questions.
Suppose you have two galaxies. Let's
further suppose that both are fairly big as galaxies go, having
already done some intersecting with other, smaller galaxies, and have
accumulated a lot of solar systems as a result. They both also have,
as a result, quite large, mass singularities at their centers, and
because of that, as well as all of the intersecting having already
occurred, some of the solar systems inside are now moving around the
mass singularity at a significant percentage of the speed of light.
As such, relative to the singularity, as well as more than a few
fellow solar systems, time moves a lot slower for them.
With me so far? Good.
So... Let's now suppose that galaxy A
is separated from galaxy B by more than the event horizon formed of
both the rate of overall universe expansion and the inherent limits
of the speed of light. As such nothing, beyond what they could both
get in common before that separation occurred, can translate in the
ordinary fashion through space time between our two fast moving solar
systems. My first question, then, is what is the time relationship
between the two? In other words, would they be in the same rate of
time if they were moving around their respective mass singularities
at similar speeds, and even if they were, would the synchronization
they had relative to the common point of origin (that is, after all,
why an atom in one part of the cosmos is supposed to do the same
things in another) still hold? Does synchronization at all, in this
context, have any applicability in the first place?
Let's take the conjecture further. Let
us suppose that both fast moving solar systems have life, and evolved
sentients to the point that they have a science that is at the level of where we are today. Let us then allow that they have been observing
the cosmos that they can observe, and smashing bits at the quantum
level, just as we have done. As such they would obviously, then, be
formulating conclusions based upon the separate bubble snapshots of
the cosmos, as the light now streaming to them would allow them to
perceive. What do you suppose might be the same in their conclusions,
and what might be different?
On the face of it you might conclude
that the smashing part of their inquiries would yield similar
results, but would that necessarily be true? They are both now
expanding in an isolated realm of their own vector of time. Not only
that, but we cannot be certain that their very small inputs in the
quantum world will not have quite unexpected affects on their bit of
macro; as we already know that small inputs into very complex systems
can yield results far surpassing the scale of the trigger. And then
there would also be the random variations of how each set of
scientists went about their smashing; with something even a simple as the
mind set of the different groups might be applicable here.
Would both solar system groups conclude
that there wasn't enough mass to account for the cosmos they
perceived? Or that there would be an energy not directly observable
now effecting expansion? Might they be right for the wrong reasons?
Or just wrong?
Is one of the basic problems here that
we are making observations, and forming conclusions, without a proper
regard for our own time scale bias? Or, in other words, trying to
deduce relationships that can only be truly understood after, say, at
least ten thousand years of observation? Or even orders of magnitude
more? Does the amount of energy in absolute vacuum disagree with
theory precisely because of such bias, let alone the possibility that
expansion itself is regionally variable?
And then you throw in the idea of worm
holes, as well as quantum entanglement. A pathway to circumvent
ordinary space time? And a meaning link irrespective of distance, at
the very least, and maybe of time as well?
Hoo boy! My head is sure spinning. I do
love it though. Even if this is nothing new to the real brianiacs out
there in science land it sure is fun for me to think about.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Optomisim, Pesimism And Faith. Deities Are Not Required To Have Hope For The Future
It
always amazes me how much one can stumble over by chance on the
internet. The sheer, vastly random, nature of what people choose to
put into it guarantees a wondrous, as well as appalling, depth and
breadth, of content.
I
mention this because, just by accident, I fell into a marvelous bit
of filtering delivered to me via YouTube.
You know
how this can work sometimes. The boffins behind the algorithm of
anticipation, working to present you what you might be interested in,
have a great deal of result that I feel they could be certainly be
proud of, but also quite surprised at. You pick at one thing because
of a link you found by chance, and from that, suddenly, you are
presented with a wholly unexpected content theme.
Case in
point, the view, as expressed by the British, of the differences
between the States and the U.K. Quite illuminating I can assure you;
especially if you listen to every day Brits, as well as their
luminaries. For the purposes of this post, however, I would like to
start with the latter. And there are few better to do this with than
Stephan Fry. If you aspire to be well read, quite reasonably
intelligent and articulate, you could hardly do better than use Mr.
Fry as a role model.
One
thing that he seems to emphasize in interviews (as culled from my
limited sampling) is the American sense of optimism, and the
willingness to take risks. And of course that got me to wondering,
are we still an optimistic people?
Quite by
chance again, however, I started clicking on British and American
comedians doing standup on the various differences and, of course,
making great fun of the various stereotypes and cliches that operate
on both sides of the pond. And therein one inevitably gets to the
ridiculous extremes of religion we manifest here (beyond the guns,
crass commercialism, and obesity we are also noted for). Which also
got me to wondering. Where does religion fit into the idea of
optimism? Or more fundamentally, where does faith itself fit it?
If you
ask yourself: are the overtly religious optimistic? You would
probably have to scratch your head and think... well, maybe, but
then... maybe not. After all, a lot of American religious belief
starts with the notion that we are born sinners and are held over the
fires of hell by an angry god all too ready to let us fall to our
virtually assured judgment. Only by the most arduous of commitments
to piety, denials of the temptations of the flesh, and perhaps most
important of all, an absolute, unquestioning acceptance of scripture,
which is the word of god, can we even begin to hope for salvation.
Other
religions don't go to quite such extremes of course, but they still
put significant amounts of dogma towards the idea that the word of
god is supreme, and salvation comes only from giving your life over
to those words, as well as unquestioning belief in him, and/or his
son.
The
bottom line here is this: just how optimistic can you be when so much
of human nature goes against what is purported to be the word of god?
And it's not just that evolution has made us hard wired to want sex,
or to be fear based in so many of our emotions (where the loss of
love, self worth or meaning creates the lions share of our passions).
We've ended up with a brain that demands curiosity. That is built to
question. How can such a being believe in anything unquestioningly?
Going
down this road then gets one to thinking on how faith and optimism
are related. For it certainly seems to me that faith and hope are
related. To be hopeful for a better day tomorrow, one would think,
ought to mean that one has a certain faith in the means to achieve
it. Unless, of course, one is talking about blind faith. Which,
unfortunately, is kind of like talking about evil. Everyone might
agree that, at the very least, evil exists in the abstract. The
problem comes in when, and how, the term gets applied.
I
mention all of this because one of the other things one gets from the
above mentioned comedians, as they make fun of religious extremes, is
that Atheism isn't very optimistic at all. In fact, one of my
takeaways from Mr. Fry is that it is precisely the denial of faith
inherent in Empiricism, and scientific rationalism in general, that
forms the foundation of British pessimism; where this opposite of
optimism is formed in the cold realities of fixed cause and effect.
The exact opposite of wonder, magic and the notion that anything is
possible.
Where
does all of this leave us?
Well,
for one thing, I don't believe that this is an optimistic country any
more; at least as one gets a general sense of it from the popular
cultural, religious, and commercial expressions one sees currently
predominant. Apocalyptic movies, end of days sermons, and a market
mentality that grows ever more fearful of risk every year hardly
makes a good case for an optimistic nation. Sectors in changing areas
of demographics, and/or geography, still retain various amounts of
optimism certainly, but the overall environment doesn't seem
conducive to the preservation of this important sense of spirit and
mind set.
The
problem for me, and for which I have already written about (see
“Cosmolosophy:
Why is Faith Important“),
is that good people on the one hand, having become disgusted with the
obvious shortcomings of extreme religious belief, have given up on
the idea that faith can still have great value. And on the other
hand, other good people have forgotten that blind faith is not only
possible, but that any adherence to it is not really faith at all (as
the essence of faith is belief within the framework of the doubt of a
questioning mind).
The
thing these two groups have in common is certainty. In the former
group this manifests itself in the certainty of the absolute truth of
empiricism, numbers, and logic. In the latter group it is the
certainty that something written down by generation after generation
of men and women is the literal word of one or another deities.
To start
with, let's be clear on one thing. Empiricism, numbers and logic, can
be very powerful indicators of the truth. We have come to rely on a
great many relationships revealed to us in this way. Relationships
that have provided huge boosts of improvement to every aspect of our
lives. The problem there however, as we delve into trying to
understand ever more complex systems, is that the application of the
empirical method becomes ever more tricky. And this is precisely
because it is human beings who attempt to do it; the very entities
whose frailties, and proclivity towards subjective thinking (where
everything from outright wish fulfillment, to subconscious desires,
run rampant), make them imperfect creators of objective tests and
measurements. Whereupon we now have reoccurring commitments to all
things “double blind,” as well as rigorous numeric proof.
This
becomes even more so when you begin to cross ever greater scales of
consideration; especially when the scales cross down to higher
energies, and much shorter time frames. Not only do you come to the
fringes of what can constitute effective instrumentality, you begin
to question the nature of objectification at its most fundamental
level. This is precisely why the “Grand Unification” of quantum
theory and general relativity have been so difficult.
I
believe, and I want to emphasize that it is a belief, that we will
face a fundamental limit on what can be measured, or tested,
objectively exactly for the reason that what we test with, and the
choices made in testing, are part and parcel of the very thing being
tested, or measured. In other words, the outcome of the test will
ultimately be significantly caused by the test itself, and there will
be nothing we can do to change that. And make no mistake. This has
been established experimentally (see “Let's
hear it for sentient measurers”).
The
danger that I see here is that we test or measure at one scale, and
then extrapolate what we find there for application at other scales
altogether. Not fully appreciating the one thing that very complex
systems are notorious for; hiding channels of feedback, or even feed
forward, for which cascade events can occur out of what always seems
like nowhere. And in the case of an entirety that might be made up of
an infinite number of quantum varied realities, you are guaranteed to
have a lot of unexpected channels, and a completely new concept of
what “coming out of nowhere” might entail.
On the
other side of the equation, however, is recognizing the fundamental
importance of faith. Without faith, it seems to me, one cannon keep a
sense that anything is possible. Faith based at the very least in the
notion that infinite complexity ensures that there will always be
possible e channels for transfer, and translation, that we do not yet
know of; avenues of affect that will always resist specific
objectification and predictability. The thing to always keep in mind
with this is to simply accept that somethings will also still be a
great deal more, or less, probable than others.
With
that in mind, I think, is it possible to keep a balance between
reason and wonder; logic and magic. With that in mind we can dream
the impossible dream. We can aspire towards a reach that exceeds our
grasp. But we can also stay mindful of what is probable this moment
and of the next few. Of what practicality demands because of what we
love, and cherish and feel responsibility towards each moment to the
next.
The
whole point of love, it seems to me, is that your faith in what you
feel from this other is why you take the emotional risk of
integrating them into your sense of yourself, and your being, as you
make choices in the great dance of being and becoming. Likewise, how
can you love life at all if you have no faith in what you feel, or
faith in larger than logic possibilities of what you can accomplish
when honest effort is applied. The benefits of effort after all are
seldom foreseen in high fidelity. What may seem impossible now, after
working towards something, and taking on some risks, may seem a great
deal more possible further on down the road, and from combinations of
factors and occurrences that would have been unthinkable beforehand.
Failure
is a fact of life of course. And it can be painful beyond expression.
How we deal with that pain, and the facts of the failure, are always
a choice however. Just as what we perceive as a worthy goal is a
choice. As well as what constitutes being successful is. The fact of
the matter is that, some times what we want must yield to what is
most probable, and then find a way to make the best of it. Having
said that however cannot be allowed to dissuade as many of us as
possible to dream beyond our grasp, for that is certainly what the
entirety requires of us; for in no other way will we rise to the task
of fully appraising and appreciating its vastness otherwise. A task
that can never be fully completed but one that is essential none the
less. Because it is only by our appreciation and understanding, as
well as our application of love of life, and creating loving
structure, that keeps it going. Something that I have great faith in.
Monday, June 15, 2015
What occupies you is the revolution
Don't occupy
yourself with abstractions
only, the fiction
of ones and zeros
in switches thrown
and addressed
for the state
their programs require.
Occupy your own
lives, and spaces
to make what you will
of what you love
and what is
loved in you.
It is not a street
on which their power moves,
and from seizing
can you dam them
up, to make them
pay you attention.
Occupy yourself
with what your are
where you are.
Don't go
to any work where
you don't fully own
the circumstances
of occupation.
Go to your neighbors
instead, seeking
cooperation in redefining
just what ownership is;
sharing the responsibility
as well as the benefits.
Take away what counts
for them
by not counting
on counters any more.
Take charge
of the charging
motivating yourselves
together.
The new exchange
will be the revolution
and what they count on
won't count at all
anymore.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Mass, relativistic mass, and the synchronization of meaning
I have been quite taken up of late
wondering about relativistic mass.
Mass and mass in motion. From a systems
perspective it sure gets interesting.
On the one hand, you have to accept the
idea that, though any object, or quanta, has a perceived unity of
meaning, and therefore a consistent solidity of boundary properties,
it is still an abstracted unit of process. One for which contained
motion is prominent. The inner workings of other, lower scaled,
abstractions, each with their own set of boundary properties,
interacting with each other, present to us a new, self sustaining
abstraction.
In our scale of things then, when we
imagine, or actually initiate, various external forces to this
already encapsulated bit of meaning, we imply to it motion relative
to us that it did not heretofore have. In doing that we create a new
set of meaning considerations. Though the intrinsic initial mass does
not change, the overall meaning must because there is now the total
kinetic energy of the object. Mass and energy are two sides of the
same coin, of course, so, whatever the rest mass may have been, the
object now has a mass that includes the imparted velocity; something
that is, in one sense a potential, but in another a thing already
realized as any attempt to increase its velocity takes even more
energy; a process that steadily yields diminishing returns as this
potential/real mass increases. Wherein lies the inherent limit of the
speed of light.
It seems to me, then, that all mass is,
in a sense, relative. Already encapsulated bits don't change relative
to us because all of the bits of meaning around us, and of us,
started from the same point of reference. And we now exist in a
synchronized vector of meaning interaction. Which is nothing more
than to say a system where the boundary resolutions at particular
scales of consideration have been set so that fundamental process
abstractions remain constant relative to our vector of association.
One can then consider the system as a
three dimensional white board that must expand so as to allow for
more meanings to begin to collect as the excitement of birth cools
down and basic interactions create more abstractions to allow for
even more complex interactions to follow. Just as more words must
have more pages for which to allow them expression.
Through out all of this, I think, is a
certain synchronicity that remains at various scales so that meaning
can have consistency over space and duration. Complexity, however,
has a habit of throwing ever more uncertainty into total system
process. This would have to become especially vexing for a system
where motion, and the differential of observed, and observer, as
regards duration and the space therein, comes into play.
To my mind everything in this overall,
more complexly expanded, system is relativistic mass to one degree or
another; especially when one begins to consider the biggest of
singular concentrations of encapsulated motion. They seemingly begin
and they end without ever actually creating or destroying anything,
even as they deny any outgoing information. One then has to wonder
just how consistent synchronicity can remain.
We believe we see only so much
ordinarily encapsulated meaning in the cosmos but it is not nearly
enough to account for how overall expansion has proceeded with the
structures thus revealed so far. And now we also detect that
expansion is actually accelerating, though the mass/energy repression
that would account for this is also not directly observable.
Those previously mentioned
concentrations of meaning, representing a speed of process, or
conversely, so much accumulated meaning, that it cannot communicate
in any ordinary sense within our vector of association, still seem to
evaporate in some fashion. But to where, and how? Conversely objects
at a certain scale can become meaning entangled, and remain so,
regardless of distance. But does that necessarily hold true for time
as well?
What I am suggesting here is that
causality, and thus the transfer of meaning, is a great deal more
complex than we currently realize. And one of the important aspects
of this is the fact that observations, and the meanings derived from
them, need to be handled with a great deal more circumspection, as
well as skepticism, when they cross large spans of scale. As such,
taking a measurement at one scale and then using the results to
deduce conclusions at another, may be problematic at best, and
perhaps more invasive, or deterministic—either as a cause or an
effect, than we realize as well.
I can only hope that those who have
credibility in the sciences are already considering these aspects a
great deal more deeply than I am able to.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Oh software, thy name is cruelty
And is there a harsher mistress than hardware? Always so seductive when wearing the ware of the mind, but in the cold light of a real day's labors? Does she bear her wares with truth of your intents? I think not.
The Most Hilarious Robo-Falls from the DARPA Robotics Challenge
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Let's hear it for sentient measurers
The following post was prompted by the gizmag.com article linked below.
Researchers at the Australian National University's School of Physics and Engineering did a variation of the John Wheeler delayed choice experiment; using the more difficult option of atoms, instead of photons.
A diffusion like grating of counter directed lasers first worked to set a single, super cooled helium atom in one of two possible directions. A second set of lasers would either do noting, in expectation of a single atom path, or set up a recombining constructive or destructive wave interference, in expectation of an atom traveling on both paths; with the determination of which option was selected being done by a random number.
The kicker here, of course, is that the measurement was done before the random number was generated and the second set of lasers had done what needed to be done for the atom to be a wave or a singular particle. That measurement merely pre-confirmed what the second lasers were going to do to accommodate the established the atom wave/particle state.
If that's not a mind bender I don't know what is. Be that as it may, however, it does serve to suggest that sentient meaning processors have a pivotal part to play in what constitutes any given reality.
Experiment suggests that reality doesn't exist until it is measured
More really creative thinking
A tip of the hat to this guy. Using V shaped floating barriers to capture waste plastic. Brilliant. In this way he has the ocean's own currents do most of the work of collection.
The Ingenious Plan for the Ocean to Clean Itself Is Led By a 20-Year-Old
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