Leaderboard

NEW YEAR Since I don't want to end the year on bad terms with anyone, perhaps you would all just apologise to me now.

A ruler does not measure distance, a ruler is distance? A scale does not measure weight, a scale is weight? A thermometer does not measure temperature, a thermometer is temperature? A depth gage does not measure depth, a depth gage is depth? A pressure gage does not measure pressure, a pressure gage is pressure? A speedometer does not measure speed, a speedometer is speed? Etc.

Me too. I posted an explanatory link of the blok universe model ( much to Studiot's displeasure, it seems ) only because another poster had misconceptions about where the model is applicable. As with all models, it is not applicable in all circumstances, and I, myself, am not overly fond of it. However, I'm even less fond of the misconceptions that get posted on this forum about it.

I find “feeling hotter” to be utterly unsurprising. An obese person is better insulated and is also somewhat more spherical than a skinny person. Both promote retaining heat. I don’t see how wearing heavy clothes would incentivize exercise, which raises your core temperature. For me, feeling hot has the opposite effect. Overheating tended to shut down my ability to exercise. It’s easier to keep warm than cool off; in my experience we tolerate a wider range of cooler temperatures than warmer temperatures from a starting point of what’s normally comfortable (“room temperature” or ~22 degrees C)

‘Mr Ripley’ is now reported by the NYT to be under federal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, and also by the Nassau Coumty N.Y. district attorney’s office of Anne Donnelly. Both are looking into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos’ during his successful 2022 campaign to represent parts of of Long Island and Queens”. NBC News reports that George Santos lent his own election campaign $700,000 in 2021, even though he had signed a declaration on a campaign finance form that he was making just $55,000 per year in 2020 - which meant he would have had to save 13 years of income in its entirety to make such a donation. Under FEC regulations, candidates are required to itemise and declare campaign donations above $5000, so in the absence of records that could account for this $700,000 loan, investigators will be taking a long hard look at his state and federal tax returns to determine whether they are looking at tax fraud, campaign finance fraud - or both.

I did not revise any definitions, so that's a false characterization of what I said. I pointed out the distinction between moral objectivity (i.e. that there is some objective condition that is a moral state) and objectivity of measurable social outcomes. I suggested that the latter is a real part of science and can make findings as to how moral/ethical beliefs and practices affect the viability of societies and welfare of its members. Nor was I confining objectivity to "what I know," which borders on a trollish insult but perhaps you meant well. Indeed, I was opening up an entire world of data across multiple fields such as anthropology, ethnography, sociology, psychology, economics, population biology, et al. It would seem to me that it is you who is choosing to ignore the most salient points of my previous posts and feeding them back in a dumbed-down form. I already have sensed that you are not likely to acknowledge this or any other mistakes in reading, so I won't trouble you further.

Assuming the Earth isn't engulfed when the Sun enters its red giant stage, you'd be looking at something more like trillion of years, with a lot happening along the way. Right now, the Moon exerts the largest tidal effect on the Earth, So, first it will lock to it. Tidal braking from the Sun will continue to work to slow its rotation, But the Moon will fight it. The basic effect will be that as the Sun slows the Earth, it begin begins to rotate slower than the Moon orbits. In this scenario, the Moon-Earth tidal reaction is for the Moon to give up some of its angular momentum back to the Earth, dropping into a lower, even faster orbit. Even if, at first, the Sun has the advantage, the Moon will eventually move in close enough to once again be the dominate tidal effect, The Earth's rotation will begin to speed up again, with the Moon getting closer and closer. Then eventually, the Moon would pass below the Roche limit and break up into a ring. With its mass spread out in evenly around the Earth as a ring, it loses it tidal influence, and now the Sun could eventually lock it to itself. And even being tidally locked to the Sun wouldn't guarantee an end to "seasons". The Earth could be tidal locked to the Sun and still have an axial tilt. It would rotate once per orbit, but the North pole would still lean towards the Sun at one part of the orbit, and away half an orbit later. We see this with the Moon, which is tidally locked to the Earth, it has a small axial tilt of 6° It alternates between showing us more of its North pole or South pole during it orbit.

If distance is a property of a thing, then it can't be the thing itself, can it? Like kinetic energy is a property of a moving object, but not the actual object.

This is pretty much what happens in what is called the “transactional interpretation” of QM. Needless to say that, just as the case with all interpretations, there are problems and issues with this, but truth be told I’m not familiar enough with this particular interpretation to offer more meaningful details. I think we have somewhat different ideas about what it actually is that physics as a discipline does. To me, physics makes descriptive models of certain aspects of the world around us; it is not in the business of putting forth ontological claims about “what things really are”. That job description belongs more to philosophy, though clearly there is a large amount of overlap too. Thus, to me, the standard QM formalism for entanglement is a pretty thorough description of what goes on here. I see no a priori reason why any other kind of causal mechanism must necessarily be involved in this. The initial interaction, to me, provides enough of a causal mechanism. You’re probably familiar with the old classical analogy of a pair of gloves being put into separate boxes (so that the handlers don’t know which glove is in which box), and those boxes then mailed to distant locations. Upon opening, and subsequent comparison of their handedness, a perfect anti-correlation will always be found. What is the causative mechanism of that anti-correlation? It’s because the statistical correlation was set up this way from the beginning, when the pair of gloves was first distributed into the boxes - there is no additional mechanism or interaction that is triggered by opening the boxes, somehow acting non-locally. We simply set up a correlation, which is then maintained through time. Thus, the statistical (anti-)correlation is a complete description of what goes on here; no further causative mechanisms are required, and you would probably agree with me that there is no mystery at all involved in any aspect of the glove scenario. You get either |LR> or |RL>, but never |LL> or |RR>. Quantum entanglement is really not much different - the only difference is that, unlike in the classical case involving gloves, there is no local realism, so there is no meaningful way to speak of the “state” of the system, unless a measurement is performed. That makes it all seem much more mysterious than it actually is; but ultimately the principle is the same one - a correlation is prepared by letting the particles interact in a certain way, and this correlation then persists up until an observation takes place. Note also that the act of measurement is itself a form of entanglement - when you measure one particle, it ceases to be entangled with the other particle, and instead becomes entangled with the measurement apparatus. How’s that for a head-wrecker

I never ever said or implied anything about there not being a causal explanation or physical basis. The causal link between a pair of entangled particles is their past interaction, which is when the entanglement relationship becomes first established. That’s the causal explanation. This is not in contention, and it’s not a mystery. You don’t get entangled pairs unless they first interact in certain ways to set up this relationship, and no one here has claimed otherwise. But the meaning of “entanglement” is nevertheless a statistical correlation of measurement outcomes, as I have attempted to explain. The thing is that, if you look at just one of these particles and perform a local (!) measurement there, then each outcome (‘0’ or ‘1’) will appear with equal probability of 0.5. The same is true for local measurements on the other particle - each outcome will appear with equal probability of 0.5 to that local observer. Neither observer can predict the outcome of his own local measurements, he can only define probabilities for them, and these probabilities are identical whether or not the particles are entangled. To put this differently - there is no local experiment you can perform that will tell you whether the single particle you have in front of you is entangled or not. Entanglement is meaningless when only a single particle is considered. It is only when you compare the outcomes of the two measurements on the two constituents of the system that you will find the overall two-particle state to be either |01> or |10> (with equal probability!), but never |11> or |00>. This is in contrast to unentangled particle pairs, which can yield any of the four possible states. So entanglement means you reduce the pool of possible global states by introducing a statistical correlation. So yes, entanglement is defined to be a statistical correlation between measurement outcomes. There’s nothing unphysical about statistics at all, it’s a straightforward description of what we actually see when we perform these experiments in the real world. Yes, of course - they’re caused by the initial interaction that sets up the correlation. This then persists until the entanglement is broken again, which happens if and when any of these two particles is interacted with in any way. There are plenty of concepts in physics that are statistical in nature, and don’t make sense for systems that have only one state, or only one constituent. Obvious examples that come to mind are things like temperature, and entropy. You cannot meaningfully apply these to a single particle - and the same is true for entanglement.

You are correct, in that all observers agree on physical events. In this case, this “event” is the intersection of the world line of the in-falling particle with the event horizon. While observers disagree on the where and when of this, they all agree that the two do in fact intersect - including the distant Schwarzschild observer. The reason why he can’t correlate that intersection with a reading on his own clock is that he shares no concept of simultaneity with a clock that’s actually at the horizon. The issue is simultaneity. He does, however, fully agree on the length and geometry of the in-fall world line, since these are all geometric quantities that are independent of specific coordinate choices. So, the fundamental difference between these two observers is that the in-falling one physically measures the length of this world line (since his clock falls along it), whereas the distant Schwarzschild observer does not. Thus it really isn’t a surprise that their clocks disagree. As I have said on many occasions, time becomes a purely local concept once gravity is involved. Exactly +1 Very nice analogy, I like it +1

Totally agree. What’s that have to do with religion? Other sources of social mores were clearly present and contributing to all that. Why lay the wreath of victory squarely at the feet of theistic religion? Again, we’re in violent agreement. I can’t stop people from believing in stupid fictions, but will defend like Voltaire their right to live life in such a foolish misplaced trust kinda way. Yeah. Thank goodness their prohibition nonsense got reversed, for example. Christmas with the extended family would be hard if being sober for amorphous religious reasons were mandated for all. Like in Qatar, for example (but even there the wealthy have ways of cheating).

A long time ago, I thought of a programming problem I wanted to work on. I coded 16 hours a day for two weeks, got some results, and then didn't do any significant amount of programming for at least a year. Then the same thing happened with another problem sometime later. 16 hours a day for two weeks, some results, and then no significant amount of programming for a long time. More recently, I spent several months programming pretty intensively on various projects. Paced myself, started with small exercises, didn't overdo it, but the last project got a little hairy, so I was a bit burned out by the end. I haven't done any significant amount of programming since then. Getting back into physics now, because that's what I've always loved, but no sign of interest in programming coming back to me. I even had a similar experience in my job history. Several years in software development back in the tech boom, but I was never really passionate about it, and I haven't worked in that field at all since then. I find it hard to focus on technical work when there's a lot of political tension in the news. Not that my experiences necessarily apply to you, but the lesson for me was that I'm not really cut out for full-time technical work. I like to dabble, it's a great hobby for me, but if I procrastinate on something, it may mean that I like the idea of getting the benefits of having finished the project but not enough to justify all the work involved. Or, maybe for you it's just a matter of pacing yourself. As people love to say, life is a marathon, not a sprint. 🙂

That part really seems like procrastination to me. Essentially it is the tendency of folks to seek out activities that makes them feel better right now and putting off tasks that could make them feel bad. This is especially problematic for long-term projects, as the expected reward is only to be found at the end, whereas playing a game will make you feel better right now. There are few ways to handle these kind of things, which can include changing you mindset. But simpler method, e.g. rewarding yourself by setting yourself certain rules can also help, too. For example, you could say set yourself a rule that only after working for a certain amount of time, you get to reward yourself (say take break, have a treat but something that does not distract you too much). Set yourself milestone for the day and if you get to the point you allow yourself to do something you like for a set amount of time.

The poles would be in permanent twilight which would I guess tend to stabilise the Antarctic ice sheet and see the northern ice sheets extend over northern Eurasia and North America. The ITCZ would stabilise over the equator giving permanent cloud cover to the tropics, and reducing seasonal rains in the subtropics. Subtropical deserts would therefore extend towards the temperate latitudes, which would enjoy an 'interesting' climate given the intensification of the north-south temperature gradient. Most of these processes would markedly increase the earth's albedo and perhaps even reverse the current warming trend. Sounds like a good attempt at restablishing snowball earth. So no noticeable seasons. Not much of anything really.

For completing a project, another useful thing is to create a place where you can only do the one thing. A desk, a chair, the bare minimum of whatever tools a job requires. A minimalist space that says you are here to work. Ideally, outside that space is an area to walk in that clears your mind and does not distract it. It seems paradoxical, but creativity blooms in a boring setting.

If you really want to accomplish a specific goal, you've already got the best motivation there is. Nothing gets us going more than doing something we really want to do. If you really want it but it's not happening, WHY isn't it happening? If you're like a lot of folks, you're somehow telling yourself it's not going to happen. You're programming your brain with negativity, so you don't get a positive outcome. You started working on your app "a few years ago", and I'll bet you've semi-given-up on it several times by telling yourself many different negative things. A lot of folks are taught that being your own cheerleader is vain and egotistical, and that's a shame because nobody knows your capabilities better than you. It may seem weird at first, but looking in the mirror every morning and reminding yourself how lucky you are to know what you really want to do is a great positive step towards motivation. And do you know how hard it is for most people to stop drinking or smoking?! You're amazing! And you live in a country that realizes you have much to offer that has nothing to do with your disability. And don't forget that you're a self-sufficient person as well, able to live on your own at 25 years old in these modern times. Bravo! Do me a favor, will you? If you can, put your arms up in the air like a "V" above your head, and imagine a whole stadium full of people are chanting your name and applauding, acknowledging the hardships you've faced, and admiring the fact that you still want to engage with the people around you and move on to your next goals. We're cheering for you because you deserve it, you're a very good person, and we all want to see you succeed. We want to see this app you've been telling us about for the last few years, and we're getting just as excited as you!

Professional psychotherapy?

I think, they all agree that particle falls through the horizon. They disagree only on the timing of this event: for one, it happens in a finite time, for the other - infinite.

However, it happens all the time. A car moves as seen by a person standing outside, and it does not move as seen by its passenger. No contradiction.

Just want to throw in here (as an uninvolved reader) that you all seem to be tacitly equating religion with theism. But these are not the same things at all - not all religions are theistic in nature. I think it is important to distinguish these concepts more carefully.

Let me add a few thoughts from an entirely godless entity who next monday will be celebrating his 19th wedding anniversary to a devout Christian. Everybody needs some sort of world model within their heads to assess the consequences of their actions before they commit to them. Some models give different results in different aspects of life. But they are vital since they are integral part and parcel of the full package of that person's personality. Trying to deprive an adult of such a vital part of their being can only diminish them. My wife is more than I deserve as the full package and therefore I have learned to respect her religious views, as she has learned to accept my entirely materialist world view. A second lesson I have learned is that while her religion tends sometimes to give her a more optimistic attitude than I might feel certain situations merit, that isn't such a bad thing. It does at least make me examine whether I'm taking too safe an approach at times. The diversity of viewpoints is a good thing and makes us stronger together than apart. And there are areas where I know her judgment is simply better than mine. Particularly in assessing the dynamics going on between the people around us and how they are likely to respond to our activities. Science is as yet generally a very poor guide in such matters. Of course organised religion must be strongly opposed where it tries to prevent the proper teaching of sciences, etc., but I think we should take care when we consider beeing so vehement towards individuals who differ from us only in their private personal philosophy.

i offered as much evidence as you did. Ancient Sumerian societies did develop towns based on agriculture in the fertile crescent, but the town grew around temples. Most 'political' leaders were also religious leaders. "Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites." From Sumer - Wikipedia

Most people should be able to differentiate between religious beliefs and fairy tales ( as INow states ), and some of the sentiments expressed by religion, like peace and good will for all, which can be worthy of respect. Religion is a human construct and as such, it has flaws which can be exploited by the unscrupulous to their advantage and the suffering of the many. But religion does have some redeeming qualities, like the sentiment mentioned above. Should we throw out the baby with the bathwater ?

I think they should allow sales on the condition that the smoker pay for extra private insurance on top of the national healthcare guaranteed to all citizens and paid for with tax dollars.

I think the already low rate of smoking is why lawmakers thought they could get away with this. As @Sensei noted, you would have absurd situations. In 2050, the forty year old can't buy cigarettes. But his spouse is 43, so he just has them pick up a carton when they're at the store, since they have a legal right he lacks. Unenforceable. If you are going to ban something, just ban it, period.

No. I’ll do what I want. Keep your childish fairy tales to yourself you deluded fool. lol. Too over the top?

Ok, you can call your dog a lion if you like. It doesn't alter the fact. If you read my posts, you would have seen that I supplied you with two official definitions which are nothing like your use, and which you chose to ignore. But that's your prerogative, have a nice day yourself, whatever day means.