Bender

It doesn't just appear to be real, otherwise we wouldn't need double blind experiments. The second statement makes little sense, since "psychological means" work with biochemical processes.

I guess the 70% transmittance is for all visible light, not the blocked wavelengths. That said: Why would you buy any safety equipment in China? There are specialised stores for this in Europe and the US with proper quality control and certification. I wouldn't even buy them at a hobby store or outlet (unless perhaps an outlet specialised in such that can still provide certificates).

You don't even have to look at the numbers. You need to give a nucleus enough energy to create a positron, a neutrino, upgrade a proton to a more massive neutron, and upgrade the nucleus to one with a higher mass per baryon...

IIRC, you cannot be prevented of using your invention if you can prove you had it first, even if you never made it public. It could still be patented, but you can still use it. Caveat : if a big company does have a patent, they can still sue you until you are broke. It could also be difficult to prove you were first if it wasn't public. Publicising on the Internet is also no absolute guarantee if someone patents and nobody encounters that website in the process. Technically, the patent would be void, but that doesn't prevent big companies to sue.

Conservation of energy can be violated, as long as the violation lasts less than [math]\Delta t = \hbar / \Delta E [/math] (which is really short).

I can name hundreds of properties of an ant which are independent of anything outside the ant: mass, number of atoms, water content, ratio of antenna length to body length... If you look at a larger scale, eg the solar system, I cannot think of a single property it could only have from outside the solar system. By definition, in fact, because when any human thinks about such a property, it would be from inside the solar system.

To be fair, he was quoting Lennox, who was misquoting Penrose. He might have not known about the context that Lennox didn't provide. Apologist are not known to dig deeper once they think they see their position confirmed.

Why start a topic, if you don't want to debate it? Your position must be very weak if you leave at the first opposition. Nobody is poking holes in Penrose. He simply does not support your position. I still encourage you to read his work directly instead of relying on a third party with an obvious agenda. You should be able to find his books in large or university libraries.

You might want to actually read Penrose instead of relying on misquotes. This topic is discussed in "Road to reality" Chapter 27. (Which I am currently reading after advice from members on this forum.) It is not the most accessible book, but this Chapter is quite readable. His conclusion is that any theory about an origin of the universe should be able to explain why the initial entropy is so low, not the opt-out "A wizard did it". He even explicitly says so.

The oxigen that we breath is even worse, damaging our DNA about 2000 times per day per cell. No radioactivity required. Luckily, our cells are extraordinarily good at fixing DNA.

Perhaps. I do not rule out the possibility that it can (sometimes) affect whether a neuron fires or not and the timing. A single firing neuron again would have some potential influencing our behaviour. That and Sensei's observation about the decays, which can kill neurons and consequently their future spikes.

Free will vs determinism is a false choice, since there is no conflict. You are your brain, so if deterministic chemical reactions in your brain cause a decision, it is you making the decision. Moreover, these reactions take your personal preferences into account, so you could say you are determined to choose what you want to choose. Isn't making the choices we want to make free will? I guess the answer depends on whether quantum effects can still influence that decision, and perhaps even on whether many-worlds or Copenhagen is closer to the truth. Either way, your actions are either determined or they depend on quantum behaviour over which you have no control. As I stated above, they are your actions, and the interactions in your brain do influence the future.

If I want the glass broken, it will be, barring unlikely interrupting events. I have more than one glass.

Serendipity strikes again. I just heard someone who's bus set off a radioactivity alarm because one of the passengers was recently treated with a radioactive iodine pil.

The stats are pretty impressive. If it performs as promised, diesel trucks will disappear as fast as Tesla manages to make these trucks. Until our electricity network breaks down, of course.

Couldn't there be universes with a different dimensionality or a spacetime that is warped to the point that (some) shapes cannot exist there? Otherwise, you seem to be stating the obvious, and I don't know what to discuss. I can't think of a well defined physical entity or concept that has to exist in every possible universe, except perhaps the existance of a relation between forces, or the existance of (local) curvature and dimentionality. Perhaps "energy" in general?

You have to make up your mind. Either toasters are dead and plants do not consume other life or you argue that plants somehow do eat life, but then you also have to accept that toasters are alive. You cannot swing both ways whenever it suits your fantasies.

You suspected wrong. All I did was remove the baseless claim that life is a requirement, and draw logical conclusions based on the various premises you present. Eg: here your comment about inanimate things believing in God, which is obviously absurd, implies that you think a blade of grass beliefs in God, which is equally absurd. Yes, because all these perverted sientists and atheists voted for Trump... (you may need to recheck your statistics on that one) It may disappoint you that I, as a materialist, have never used drugs, rarely drink alcohol, have never fired a gun, and have a very loving and traditional family. In the absence of evidence, why not go with the null hypothesis?

Never mind, I misread. It is getting late. So in summary : what's new? The simulation looks nice, but you aren't exactly the first to make one of this well known and well documented effect.

This is not quite true, though. To reach the equilibrium, you have to look at the half-life of the decay products, not uranium. You can only reach an equilibrium because of the long half life and the resulting near-constant decay rate of Uranium.

You're right. I did some more reading on the topic and turns out the gamma radiation is most easily detected, but a nuke sends out very little radiation anyway. To the point that a detector which is sensitive enough, would also go off when a container of cat litter or ceramic tiles passes. I was thinking about natural radioactive ore, which has reached a kind of equilibrium of decay chain isotope. While a nuke could get something like that after a couple of years, it is still not very much.

Here you have another error.

The decay products are very relevant when discussing radiation. For each decaying u235, you'll get 7 alpha and 4 beta particles.

I didn't go through all the details, but you made an error in this step. On the left hand side, you assume omega is constant, which makes the right hand side 0.

Please read the line above the picture.