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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/06/19 in all areas

  1. This question would need a whole book to be answered. In short: there are many types of brain injuries associated to memory problems such as : stroke,brain turmors, head trauma,cerebrovascular disorders, cerebral infections and others. Also a lot of others patologies such as Alzheimer disease or dementia ( just to name two of many ) can cause memory loss. In order to have strong memory problems, usually, there are three main areas that mainly needs to be damaged ( note that the type of damage and the area where it happens can determine many different deficit) : 1. Mid-Dorsal Nucleus of the Thalamus 2. Mamillary bodies 3. Hippocampus All of the above are neuropsychological diseases caused by brain injuries that do not occur normally. Memory loss can occur also with age ( the age at which they occur mostly depends on the individual lifestyle), and its usually caused by the deterioration of neural synapsis in the brain. Note that recent studies show that intellectual activities, physical activities and general learning can drastically reduce normal memory loss.
    2 points
  2. People imagine solving the Halting problem all the time. If we can solve the Halting problem it shows we're not computations. Nobody has succeeded yet but it's an open question. Likewise I can imagine computing the digits of Chaitin's Omega. I just imagined it. But no computer can do it, because it amounts to solving the Halting problem. There are strict and profound limits on what computations can do. Turing showed that in 1936. Ah yes ... At the very least we KNOW a computation can't solve the Halting problem, and we don't know whether humans can. Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_of_the_Solar_System. Found interesting thread here ... https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/43181/is-the-unsolvability-of-the-n-body-problem-equivalent-to-the-halting-problem Also note that in Newtonian gravity as the distance between two point-masses goes to zero, their gravitational attraction goes to infinity. I believe that's related but haven't references at the moment. The point about Newtonian gravity is that because of chaos, the accumulated effect of tiny rounding errors, we cannot in principle compute the evolution over time of even a perfectly deterministic system. That is, in Newtonian gravity, the motion of every particle is a deterministic function of the position, mass, and momentum of every other particle in the universe; and in principle can be calculated by God's computer. But it can NOT be computed by a Turing machine. This is a fact that's often missed in philosophical discussions. Determinism does not imply knowability or computability. By God's computer I mean the universe itself; which arguably is NOT a Turing machine and perhaps not a computation even in an imaginative extension of its current technical definition as a TM. Computations are limited in what they can do. Jeez is this English 101 day on the forum?? LOL
    1 point
  3. When I open my eyes in the morning I don't see God's love. Instead what I see is Capitalist cruelty and people dying by the numbers every day. I see a world ruled by radical patriarchy and the strong dominating over the weak. This world cannot be the work of an all-loving God. If God created this cruel and corrupt world then he is evil and sadistic and not a loving and caring God at all and especially not one worth worshipping.
    1 point
  4. The fine tuning argument is rendered unconvincing by the Weak Anthropic Principle. i.e. if the universe hadn't chanced to be suitable for life then we wouldn't be here to discuss it. Paley's arguments, though well structured, were contradicted by Darwin and Wallace, and all who came after them. Natural selection of variation in species leads to the new forms that Paley thought required divine intervention. Why? What evidence you have for a single God rather than multiple gods. Genesis asserts that man was made in God's image: man is a social animal, who achieves things through cooperation within a hierarchy, Why would you expect the gods to be arranged differently? As Strange has pointed out twice you have failed to provide any evidence to support your claim of historical accuracy. Don't get me wrong, many of the principles advocated by Christianity are noble in their intent, but the claims of divinity etc are supported only by faith, not facts. If you disagree please provide the evidence.
    1 point
  5. Yes it's possible to achieve a realistic overview, but remember that even Physicists specialise so don't expect to cover it all. This leads nicely to the following suggestion. There have been a number of series of slim monographs from various publishers on a particlar topics in Physics. Cambridge University and Oxford University both do one, but they are both quite demanding on the Mathematics (they have some mongraphs for that as well) Other publishers have some easier ones eg this one from Routledge https://www.amazon.co.uk/Relativity-Physics-Student-R-Turner/dp/0710200013 The series includes Quantum mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism and Classical Mechanics, EM waves which are all good. Allen and Unwin have a good series in mathematics like this. These books can be obtained second had quite cheaply and you can alsway ask here for more detailed help. As a biomedical person I also include this book as it compares how Nature and Man achieve similar mechanical objectives in the real world, non mathematically. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=cats+paws+and+catapults&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=48840195290&hvadid=259123799715&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007149&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11590526212339812244&hvtargid=kwd-314868215186&tag=googhydr-21&ref=pd_sl_6gzxaaawpe_e Just to round it all off, I would accompany this with a good all round general physics book such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=cats+paws+and+catapults&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=48840195290&hvadid=259123799715&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007149&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11590526212339812244&hvtargid=kwd-314868215186&tag=googhydr-21&ref=pd_sl_6gzxaaawpe_e
    1 point
  6. How is Christianity "testable"? And how is it "founded historically"? There are no contemporary records of Jesus and his actions. There have been many threads on the historical existence of Jesus and the conclusion has always been that there is not, or very little, contemporary evidence. And there is just as much, or more, historical evidence for the founders of Buddhism, Sikhism, etc. 1. Just because some said that he said it doesn't make it true. (It doesn't even mean he said it.) 2. Other religions do claim that. There is no evidence that the resurrection happens. You can't use your belief in something as evidence it is rue. But, of course, those other denominations will think that your understanding is wrong and they are the ones who have it right. The fact you are blind to this is staggering. (But, given this is a discussion about baseless beliefs, maybe not.) Yeah, studiot's comments made no sense to me either!
    1 point
  7. As measured from the frame that an object is moving with respect to, there would be an apparent density increase, merely because it would measure more mass in less volume. But this is not in any way connected to the apparent mass increase. That is simply due to the fact that The moving object has a kinetic energy as measured with respect to the measuring frame. That KE has a mass equivalence. One way to think of it is that energy imbues an object with properties ( such as inertia) that used to be just considered associated with "mass". In modern parlance, the "mass" of the object does not change as mass is generally restricted to mean "rest" or "invariant" mass. You have to be careful when dealing with changes in velocity of extended objects. If you have an object that measures itself so that it is x units long, and that object is moving at 0.866c relative to you, then you will measure it to be x/2 units long. If you now bring it to a rest with respect to yourself, you have to consider how this is done. Let's say that it's done so that the object never measures a change in its size during the process. This mean that you will measure its length to increase as it slows. This is due to the relativity of simultaneity . In the object's frame, all its parts "slow down at the same rate at the same time. But events that are simultaneous for the object will not be simultaneous according to you. You will measure the trailing end of the object start to slow down before the leading end does and as a result by the time the whole thing comes to rest, it will be x units long. I don't get where you would get the idea that an object would be more contracted at the leading edge. Photon don't have a "volume". While they have particle-like properties, you can't think of them as little spheres of something.
    1 point
  8. I'm old enough to recall people of my parents' generation not being able to set the clock of their their VCRs (do you remember those things?), so it was always flashing 12:00. I know there is modern technology out there that befuddles people, including me, but the younger crowd is more adept at it, because they grew up with it. I remember way, way back in the early days of the web, I asked a fellow grad student how to create a web page, and he said, "Oh, that's easy" (which doesn't answer the question of how do you do it). Well, it's not easy, if you don't know how to do it. I could take you into my lab and hand you some existing technology, and you would likely not know how to use it. (It would be even harder if I changed the labels on the buttons so they weren't in a recognizable language) It doesn't mean you can't learn it, but until you gain the knowledge, it's pretty much incomprehensible. I have no trouble imagining alien technology would be similar.
    1 point
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