Let's have a thread about stuff that isn't religion or politics! POP QUIZ MOTHERF*****:

- What's your favourite factoid/theory/paradox, about the universe, humanity/reality etc?


- What is a book you can recommend?


- What's your favourite quote or monologue?


- What tattoo do you have or would you get if you, like, JUST HAD TO GET ONE, man? Why?


Also if anyone has any palatable online learning resources feel free to share yo. I've been hitting up this online yale course which is alright. andd go

Well i would like to discuss some Thunder Bird physics,or the lack there of.
(Story line).
"There is a problem with a space station it is out of control and heading for the sun,Thunder birds leap into a space ship and have a successful rescue."

1)How do they even get into space with a ship powered by gunpowder.

2)How is it possible for their space ship to travel to the sun in no time at all.

3) The corona of the sun reaches between one and three million degrees.

4)There is a problem of terrestrial distance the military can't get their fast enough (even though they have jets) but the Thunderbirds can.

5)All of their vessels are huge lumbering un- aerodynamic.

There are many more crazy and improbable concepts in the Thunderbird world.

1. I'm still amazed that some radio signals 'bounce' or 'skip' off the ionosphere. My uncle tells stories of talking on his CB radio in his truck in central QLD in the 80s and instead of talking to the local plant operator 10k away, he ended up talking to some guy in Baltimore.

2. Probably not Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Just too weird.
Probably Tuesdays with Morrie

3. You take the good with the bad

4. Dunno.

that was awesome fpot. that experiment is great.

Neuroplasticity - the brains propensity to physically change.

Relating to fpots double slit experiment, quantum entanglement or quantum synchronicity is an interesting theory that proposes that we are all connected by an as yet unobservable force of nature. Buddhist monks have known or 'felt' that we are all one organism for thousands of years but science slowly starting to have a closer look at the pseudo-science pile.

I wasn't inclined to try and make sense of all the findings but the this essay is an example of the progressive attitude of contemporary science and thought this quote was poignant.

The notion that consciousness may be related to the formation of physical reality has come to be associated more with medieval magic and so-called New Age ideas than it is with sober science. As a result, it is safer for one’s scientific career to avoid associating with such dubious topics and subse- quently rare to find experiments examining these ideas in the physics literature. Indeed, the taboo is so robust that until recently it had extended to any test of the foundations of quantum theory. For more than 50 years such studies were considered unsuitable for serious investigators

http://www.deanradin.com/papers/Physics%20Essays%20Radin%20final.pdf


I prefer Bill Hicks' version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D0BeLz5blM#t=74s


Books - The power of now, and A new earth by Eckhart Tolle.

- What's your favourite factoid/theory/paradox, about the universe, humanity/reality etc?

We live on a planet with an enormous about of different species we were also not the only ones to have lived on this planet, there is life out there and all the religious nuts wont be able to take it

- What is a book you can recommend?

Freakanomics

- What's your favourite quote or monologue?

Better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it

- What tattoo do you have or would you get if you, like, JUST HAD TO GET ONE, man? Why?

I would get the kids names that I do not have yet

Snowcrash was excellent.

Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefor I am".
What trips me out the most is that everything you know, every thought that you have is based on a filtered perception of what you gather from your senses. Your perception of reality is different from another's perception. How do you know what you are experiencing is actually what is happening?

http://1111now.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1234792_618071458244597_1789747217_n.jpg


A couple of quotes from 'The Power of Now'...

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.

What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality? Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.

Evidently thinking for many people is an uninterrupted stream of noise that distracts us from our true self. Identifying ourselves with our mind (ego) stops us from hearing our true selves. Our brains can be a very useful tool if used correctly but a very destructive tool in used wrongly but we also have a second dimension of our selves that can observe our thoughts and correct or dismiss any thoughts that don't align with our true selves. Tolle explains that we should stop identifying ourselves as that stream of internal dialogue as it just serves the ego and keeps the thinker in a constant state of delusion.

Identifying the difference between your thoughts and your 'being' is beneficial and alot of meditation techniques are utilised to calm the thoughts down to a point where they actually stop. This is not an easy thing to do. If you can go 10 seconds without a thought popping into your consciousness, for most people, this is good. If you try it now......you will experience the thoughts and the observer and may see that you have very little control over your thoughts. Its a constant barrage of s*** for the most part.

The more I spend here on AG the more I understand and admire the community here and have presumed so far that most of you guys are good people. In saying that I don't want you to think that I am trying to preach anything to you, I am by no means a zen master, I just find psychology interesting and want to pick your brains.....


Another quote I have liked for decades.

http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-nothing-in-the-world-can-take-the-place-of-persistence-talent-will-not-nothing-is-more-common-calvin-coolidge-282291.jpg

Snowcrash was excellent.

i read snowcrash on the reconmendation of qgl, it was ok, definately ahead of its time.

My favourite paradox or real magic as I like to call it is the double-slit experiment.

I can't see anything in the wiki article about particles being affected by the act of observation apart from, "Richard Feynman also proposed (as a thought experiment) that if detectors would be placed before each slit, the interference pattern will disappear."

The reason for the disappearance would be the impact of the tool used for observation.... and it's just a thought experiment anyway.

Seems to be the standard 'humans are special and have magical powers and so can impact the physical world with their subjectivity' that naive, new age, pop-culture loving kiddies who've watched too much star wars (even the 2003 micro-series which was pretty good) believe because they aren't educated enough to know how much our christian heritage shapes our entire psychology and so need to believe that they'll one day have telekinetic powers if they just "evolve" a bit more because they need something to fill the void and confirmation of specialness that religious belief normally fills.

S*** it's 11pm.. better go somewhere and pretend to like people. F*****g stupid gun laws. Get f***ed f*****g hippie c****.

Probably that space, and time, are exactly the same thing, and that everything is constantly moving at the speed of light. Whether simply sitting in your chair motionless, or driving a car at 100km/h, it all means you are moving at the speed of light through spacetime.

The double slit experiment is pretty cool too


Can't really comment on any of the other things

I can't see anything in the wiki article about particles being affected by the act of observation apart from, "Richard Feynman also proposed (as a thought experiment) that if detectors would be placed before each slit, the interference pattern will disappear."

Well that kind of sucks because the video presents it like the experiment actually took place. I am caught in a weird nexus here between believing a youtube video or a wikipedia article.

I was being facetious when I called it real magic. Like Arthur C. Clarke once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Take a smartphone back 100 years and even without connectivity it will still seem like magic to the people from that time. You'd wouldn't be able to even explain it to them. I reckon we're at or just a bit above that stage when it comes to quantum physics. There are things we can hypothesise and even observe that are at this point totally unexplainable. It is easy to say the observer did it because it's for all we know the only variable in the experiment. The question is how did the presence of an observer change things?

so the person resolves the conflict by telling themselves things like 'had a bad day so I deserve this', 'I'll make it up tomorrow' or 'I'm going for a run later today so its ok'.

OR to put it into computer game language:

This hitreg is crap, this server is laggy. Asif that didn't hit. What! I shot him 5 times.

your favourite factoid/theory/paradox, about the universe, humanity/reality etc?

shot down to the end of the thread without reading anything else.


are you attempting AI OP?

Favouroute theory atm is M-theory, and the many-worlds interpretation. Hard to not get on that slant after watching Mr Nobody.

Favourite book is The Drifters, closely followed by Bill Bryson's A short History of Nearly Everything, then Capricornia, by Xavier Herbert. Would recommend all three to anybody.

Favourite quote: “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.” - Bill Hicks

Have a couple of tats that don't hold much meaning to me beyond being reminders of who I was. Have plans to get a partial sleeve consisting of a couple of Alex Grey paintings that symbolise some important realisations and milestones in my life. What I've got in mind is similar to Joe Rogan's beastly sleeve.

- What's your favourite factoid/theory/paradox, about the universe, humanity/reality etc?

I like the idea that there is no such thing as Random. If you could know everything in existance all at once, i believe you could then predict the future forever. You could possibly even rewind/replay the past. Everything is a result of circumstance and what we percieve as Random is just us not knowing about something that has affected the outcome. Also like Fermi. Was explaining that one (poorly) to the wife last night.

- What is a book you can recommend?

Love the 2 Triffid books. Currently reading the "Tomorrow, When the war began" series which is enjoyable. Permutation City is an interesting read (by an Aussie too). Foundation series is good. So is Recluse Saga.

- What's your favourite quote or monologue?

"If our reach does not exceed our grasp, then what is the universe for?" (slight change on an old one by Robert Browning)

- What tattoo do you have or would you get if you, like, JUST HAD TO GET ONE, man? Why?

Love mine even after 4.5years. Managed to pickup a hot GF who became a hot wife while having it so can't be too horrible. :)

http://inta-link.com/tattoo/tattoo.jpg

That is not necessarily the case

I'd reckon it is, only you'd need an unfathomable amount of analytics and computing power/speed

You'd also need all the information at the same time, and because the maximum speed that information can be transferred is the speed of light it wouldn't be available.

I'd reckon it is, only you'd need an unfathomable amount of analytics and computing power/speed

That's under the assumption that everything is is cause and effect, deep down in tiny world of physics, that may not be so. Particles popping into and out of existence in vacuum for instance.

Is that really of much consequence though? I mean the quantum world is great but nothing really runs/moves/lives in the quantum world?

Quantum mechanics describes the real world that we live in and addresses issues with newtonian physics, they're not separate.

It picks up where newtonian physics starts to fail. In order for your Big Brain to do what you want it would need to address the heisenberg uncertainty principle. We're not talking about string theory here, this is about being able to accurately track relatively large particles like electrons. It has huge consequences for causality directly relevant to the notion of building a state machine that could predict the future.

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm

Underneath the hood the universe is built on a chance engine.

I guess my favourite factoid/paradox is the persistent assumption or view that subjectivity, or human observation or simply the human capacity for observation, can have an objective impact.

Schrodingers cat got me started because it seemed really stupid to take a lack of knowledge on the part of the observer, make it part of the equation and then call it all a paradox. Ridiculous even.

What that experiment reveals is that for quantum physics(QP) (which represents things (technically particles, but then it works its way up to cats or protaganists or whatever) in terms of probabilities) to be an objective representation of reality the variable represented by the observer (who may or may not be the one doing the actual calculations) is a necessary part of the equation. Thus, every time I've come across a claim of broken physics, whether it's 2 cats at once or 2 particles in the same place at the same time or particles being affected by observation (which could also be explained by light from the cameras btw, photons attract photons which affect electrons or some s***), and that I've been able to understand of course, they've ALWAYS been easy to explain with limitations on the part of the observer.

The worst cases are experiments that actually try and prove that QP is an objective representation of reality because they always use circular logic - for the experiment to be true and prove that QP is 'real', they have to assume that QP is 'real' as part of the equation. People have even tried to do that with Schrodingers cat.

However...... most physicists dont try and make this claim. But ironically, the brilliant physicists that do try and make this claim are lacking an understanding in very basic philosphy. Less ironically (but still ironical) it's a lack of historical understanding and the impact of our judeo-christian heritage on our cultural psychology - the claim from the QP realists is one of human specialness: humans are so special that they can at times contradict physics; subjectivity, consciousness, freewill are all scientific miracles. But in order to prove this scientifically they must first assume it is true. And the reason why they usually get away with it, or why the assumption is considered at all sound in the first place, is that we have inherited at the cultural level that very same assumption - most(if not all) atheistic or natural philosophies are premised on it as well - the inherent value and abilities of the subject which rarely require validation.

_________________________________________

TL;DR version...

Schrodingers Cat Experiment

That experiment is stupid. It also represents how quantum physics works.

Just ask the f*****g cat.

You're an idiot, Roonee.

I think this will explain it better.

Creative.





Not creative.

Thus, every time I've come across a claim of broken physics, whether it's 2 cats at once or 2 particles in the same place at the same time or particles being affected by observation (which could also be explained by light from the cameras btw, photons attract photons which affect electrons or some s***), and that I've been able to understand of course, they've ALWAYS been easy to explain with limitations on the part of the observer.

Okay, my contribution to this thread is on the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Essentially, the less competent an individual is within a given endeavour, the more likely that individual is to rate themselves as very competent. Conversely, more competent individuals tend to "know how much they don't know" and thus rate themselves as less competent than they really are.

Here's an ABC transcript, there's an audio version if you prefer.

The dumb get confident, while the intelligent get doubtful. That's the conclusion that David Dunning and Justin Kruger came to when studying people's perceptions of their own talents. What has now become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect helps describe why lay people often act as experts and inept pollies get our votes.

you definitely need a thus in there bro

There is one!

*Edit* Nice ninja edit, baz :) But read more carefully next time.

last edited by StopShootingMe at 22:36:47 12/Jan/15

I have a very small tribegang and I dont do facebook so I cant comment.

- What's your favourite factoid/theory/paradox, about the universe, humanity/reality etc?

i can never remember one in particular, but i like listening to speakers / celebrity science & theory communicators whenever i can

- What is a book you can recommend?

i finished reading one recently called How To Be Alone by Sara Maitland. it's a bit of a cosy read over a couple of commutes or afternoon laying about. good for if you're searching for some reasoning and insights into social perceptions / alone time by a well written author. not worth the $11.99 pricetag though, moreso $5.99. you can buy some good albums at that mid to high price....

i'll probably pickup again on H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald when the time is right

- What's your favourite quote or monologue?

at the moment probably 'History never repeats itself but it rhymes' Mark Twain

- What tattoo do you have or would you get if you, like, JUST HAD TO GET ONE, man? Why?

i don't really like the idea of permanent ink. i don't mind seeing nice art that isn't skulls and bones or all deathy but it's not something i'd go out of my way to have done. if really pressed then probably the one my brother had done across his back, just because bro's