Bender

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

I find placebo effects and the effects of patient attitude interesting. It does appear like these are real effects. I doubt that these work purely by psychological means and expect there will be biochemical processes at work.

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.

On 22/5/2018 at 12:06 PM, swansont said:

Yes, the color can be an indication of the wavelength you block, since you are removing that part of the spectrum from the transmitted light. So NIR glasses will tend to be bluish/aqua colored, since it blocks off the red end of the spectrum.

But there is NO WAY that you can consider 70% transmittance as safety goggles. Real safety goggle vendors will give the blocking power in optical density, which is powers of 10 in attenuation. e.g. OD=5 transmits 10^-5 of the incident power. 

These goggles are "ideal for use" if you want serious eye damage.

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).

8 hours ago, Randolpin said:

If a thing has a property then the property of that thing can't be explain by itself. For example you see an ant. Why that is the property of an ant? Having long antenna and bites. You can't explain the property in the ant itself. The universe can't escape from this analogy. Our universe has a property. Why the universe has this property? You can't answer it in the universe itself.

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.

2 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

His position was to start off by quoting someone out of context.
If you start from there it's pretty clear you can't do any better.

Perhaps he was hoping we wouldn't notice.

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.

8 hours ago, PaulP said:

Conclusion:

Anyway, there is no sense in debating this. You won't be receptive or open to the possibility of a higher power because it contradicts your inner-model of reality. And quite frankly, I work and have other obligations that call my attention to the real world. I'll be stopping notifications for this thread. Have a nice day.

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.

8 hours ago, PaulP said:

Some pathetic attempt at trying to poke holes in Penrose & Lennox and my responses.

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.

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

I think quantum behaviour is far too low-level to affect the macroscopic signal patterns that are our thoughts. What happens in one atom is not likely to affect an ensemble of trillions of molecules transferring an electrochemical signal, of which many of those make up a thought or an action. It's not plausible.

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.

5 hours ago, Strange said:

Or can you? Is the question about free will vs determinism? In which case, maybe you can't control the future: whatever decision you make (to have a drink or not have drink) may have been predetermined. Even the fact that you change your mind after reading this, to prove that you can, was also predetermined. 

...

...

As was the fact you have just changed it back again

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?

5 hours ago, koti said:

I can make a decision now and the probability of me not sticking to it due to some extraordinary reason occuring between me making the decision and 24:00 tonight is extremely low. I have 100% control over the decision, I cannot control extraordinary future circumstances that could lead me to changing it. I think its a good example, my mind is not yet made...convince me that me having or me not having a drink tonight is predetermined (I think its not)

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.

55 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Does it matter where it came from (probably a gun)? No-one plans a ricochet.

Edit, philosophically speaking, that is, I realise NASA and others have done so, context perhaps?

Would that lead to an answer?

Really? Every moment you think has an outcome, is a moment you may be wrong; not everything breaks...

For instance, if I drop a glass and manage to interrupt its fall, does that mean I'll get to drink again? 

If I want the glass broken, it will be, barring unlikely interrupting events.

3 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What if the bullet breaks your glass?

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?

10 minutes ago, Gees said:

If the Gaia hypothesis is correct or even partly correct, then your argument is not valid. If the theories that state the Universe is alive are correct, then your argument is not valid. This is not such a simple little subject as some of you propose.

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.

16 hours ago, Gees said:

In the post that Bender originally answered, I SPECIFICALLY stated that I was reserving these observations/ideas of consciousness to life forms -- that was the focus. Now, if Bender can not read, what is Bender doing in a forum? If Bender does not know what life forms are, then Bender should go to Biology to learn. If Bender simply does not care about what I stated and just wants to argue about consciousness, then what is Bender doing in this thread about "God", or are we supposed to believe that inanimate things worship a god? So no, I do not understand Bender's nonsense and suspect that he intended to take the subject off topic and to explain his ideas of AI and consciousness.

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.

16 hours ago, Gees said:

Now Science is beginning to think it is the beginning and end of knowledge. Philosophy is acceptable if it supports Science. Religion is irrelevant because it studies things that are of no consequence, or it is dangerous. The result is the destruction of families, children raising themselves and shooting up schools, suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, etc., or a breakdown in the social structure. To try to resolve this problem, we voted in Trump because everyone needs to feel safe and has a "daddy's lap" complex where we think his strength will make us safe.

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.

16 hours ago, Gees said:

What do you think evidence is? It is support. It is not proof. It is not a hypothesis. It is not a theory. It is just support that leads a person in a direction that can at some point possibly end in a hypothesis or theory. The problem with most of the theories of consciousness is that people did not gather enough evidence before deciding on their theories. I refuse to do that.

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.

53 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

billions of years to get back to equilibrium, so...

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.

1 hour ago, xyrth said:

The force of the springs is constant: doesn’t depend of the length of the spring.

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.

On 5/5/2018 at 7:04 PM, czarodziej_snow said:

d(Iω)/dt= ω(dI/dt) + Iɛ =0     (3)

moment of force is

M= Iɛ                     (4)

We know that during the rigit body rotation mechanics, the moment of inertia changes over time I showed it in my simulation above . Changing (3)

dI/dt=-M/ω              (5)

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. 

1 minute ago, StringJunky said:

Your picture says U-235 is an alpha emitter. 

Please read the line above the picture.