imatfaal

Unfortunately Captain - it's the blind leading the blind on statistical methods. Also would we be encountering an uncertainty limitation - I can't think of one off hand (would time/energy impact on measurements?) but I think the accuracy one would need would be staggering. I am trying to get to grips with equations - and failing at present.

I don't think anywhere reputable do free degrees online.

No. In simple terms the table shows you where you go next - if you are on 8 you goto 0, if you are on 7 goto 4, 4 stays on 4. Just looking at the table alone (or even more so instruction sets) it is sometimes tough to appreciate that loops / cycles will appear. The directed graph [with only one arrow LEAVING each node and the arrows corresponding to the table x and f(x) ] makes it obvious that loops will occur - ie the triangle formed by 1, 6, 3. Any number other than 4 or 7 will put you onto that triangular pathway. The compsci behind cycle detection is beyond me - but the wikipage you quote looks like as good a start as any.

Lemur - you introduced the soul into the discussion, it behoves you to elucidate. I can quite clearly state that I do not believe there is any evidence for conscious thought or the consciousness residing outside the brain. We cannot allow for the sake of argument every conjecture of every religion for that way madness lies; I do not give the existence of the soul (distinct from a conscious mind / brain) any credence; thus I do not have to specify where it is sited. You say you do not posit a supernatural soul - but that is exactly what you are doing. If something is non-attached to the concrete world, is non-corporeal, then we need an explanation that is beyond nature and science. I think you need to define, in as strict terms as you find possible, what you refer to when you use the word 'soul'.

Does Janus really say that? I presume you are referring to the quote in a separate thread - I have reproduced it below in case Janus does not notice he/she is being cross-quoted. My reading of his post is that the present thinking is that one or both of the measurements is/are incorrect - i apologize in advance if I have misinterpreted/misrepresented Janus. .

Lemur - which part of the body, separate from the brain, do you claim might have some role in creating and maintaining the consciousness and memories? If you have any citations for the existence the above claim I would love to see it - but at present I do not believe we have any evidence that any part of the body apart from the brain is involved. Or are you positing the existence of a supernatural soul? And iff you are advocating a soul that is manifest through non-corporeal interactions and media - this is beyond science and relies on faith.

I think you need to first look at the change in redshift that will occur within a measurable amount of time - my gut-reaction would be that it was so far below the noise threshold that no statistical technique could uncover it

I will dig out some pictures of simple curved line folding. They are not closed lines (this wouldn't work without pleating). Imagine a sheet of paper folded with three straight parallel lines - ie viewed from end the edge of the paper would form a W. You can also fold a piece of paper where these lines are curved (and the whole surface ends up curving) - its difficult and requires more precision.

Marat - is there any real evidence for that? I would love to read a paper on it. I feel it is a great idea that fascinates both the press and the story-writers but I am not sure anyone has actual evidence for it. There are so many emotional and societal reasons that would promote and sustain such a meme - but I have yet to see any back-up evidence for it. The difference in connexion ratios between cells in the brain and those in the peripheral nervous system are many orders of magnitude.

But that would apply to diaries, biographies, and a fair amount of historical narrative. The Ad Hom argument is a logical fallacy and is frowned upon in fora such as SFN because this is an arena that exists to allow space for concepts and arguments to be tested and challenged; thus any Ad Hom detracts from an objective argument on the facts. But not everywhere is a debating club and we are not an objective species within our social environment. The vast majority of social interaction is highly personal and completely subjective. Your objection to facebook reads like an rejection of all media with content that is personality based; does this extend to a condemnation of, say, great literature like Dubliners, amazing personal accounts like Touching the Void, the intensely personal music of Joy Division - I could carry on but I am sure you get the idea.

Basically yes - Not so much that it contradict my logical thought process, but that it blows away all the foundations upon which I start the process of applying logic. Of course I could answer, I would be strong and resolute and refuse to worship such an evil god, I would be weak and craven and give up all human dignity in exchange for future rewards; but who actually knows what or how they would react in real world future situations let alone those that challenge one's very ideas of reality. It is a good question that I though I had managed to weasel out of answering - but failed there too... I'll probably burn.

If I could draw it - then I could probably construct it. I will try and explain - but I am not good at it; I see models , I can't vocalize them. If you look at the picture to the right of this post - my picture is a modular origami model. Modular origami is when you create one simple design for a folded piece of paper - and you can combine many of them to create a complex shape. The shape to the right is made from 60 rectangular pieces of paper - folded in straight lines. I am trying to make a module (ie the simple building block) that I can fit together to make more complicated shapes - BUT i am trying to make it from paper that is folded into curving shapes. I cannot manage it, I can barely visualise it, no wonder I cannot explain it. Regarding the remainder of your post - you seem to be doing pretty well. Where are you based? I know many people in UK who have studied to degree/masters/doctoral level in their sixties and seventies. I think its harder to learn at our ages than when you are 18 - but that just makes it more of a challenge! I would whole-heartedly recommend evening/distance learning with a well respected university/

Well for a start it could be zero - ie they are miles apart or concentric. I would ask myself some questions - does it matter what relative size - if Yes - why, what ramifications; if No move on. How can two circles be related - how many intersections do each have.

I think the question fails to work because I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would believe the worship/salvation vs nonworship/damnation decision to be necessary and unchallengeable. For something like that to be proved to me would require a sea-change in my worldview, contradict so much that I hold to be true, and go against the entire logical underpinning of my sense of self; I am not sure that I would be the same person. So much would have changed that I do not think I could give any valid answer as to what I would do in those new circumstances. I would class it with the gedenken that posit a situation totally at odds with physics as we know it (FTL rocket etc) and then ask what happens - if you remove the basic foundation I can no longer base my answer on anything . Still a good question though...

Mr S and I have already confirmed that we went through this process - and the result in my case (and I think in his - sorry if I have misrepresented) is that there is no god. I have studied (my master's thesis was on the modern ramifications of the act of confession in early Christianity) , watched (my family are still Catholic) and even participated in Catholic/Christian worship ; and I have found no reason to believe in god - that is why I am an atheist, not because I cannot be bothered to look.

Vladimir Romanov has released source code for an algorithm which he claims can solve 3-SAT problems. The 3-SAT problem is NP-complete - and Romanov claims his algorithm will solve in polynomial time, this would prove that P==NP as all NP problems can be mapped within polynomial time to the satisfiability problem. With such a seemingly easily falsifiable claim Romanov might be proved wrong quite quickly - for any with the maths and compsci skill here is Romanov's announcement and links to the source code and article - and for those who need a bit more background here is a link to a long slashdot ramble that has some good stuff in it

Not sure that the moments before death are a good time to judge a man - the most obvious example of someone who questions everything in those last minutes, which I mention because it is disturbingly similar to the paragraph you have quoted, is: I don't think your example or my parallel prove anything either way - they have little to do with faith, lack-of-faith, or questioning faith - it is terror, an over-riding all-consuming terror. On a different note - the fact that a faithful person's level of belief can vary has nothing to do with the assertion that many of the posters have made, which I believe, that you cannot choose to believe. I will take your word for it that once you have a core belief, then you can choose to believe to a greater or lesser extent; but I am certain that you cannot make a conscious decision to start believing.

Soul? Presuming medical advances that seems a long long way off... The brain is key - the consciousness in the brain would see a physical shell that looks/sounds different, but then I look/sound very different to when I was a teenager; the body feeding and protecting the brain would feel different, but I am sure the "slimmers of the year" who have shed over a hundred pounds feel different in their bodies and I am sure that changes would occur to your personality through the upheaval and other peoples reaction but our personality changes in greater or smaller leaps throughout life anyway. It would be a massive physical and emotional challenge but without positing unproven supernatural or non-corporeal entities then the consciousness will remain with the brain not the body.

Michel - I would be another one, both my parents are lifelong catholics and even though I was raised a catholic around 16-17 yo I realised that I had no faith nor belief. Subsequent to that I realised that I was not merely unsure about religion, but that I believed that there was no god. I am not sure where you have got your figures from - perhaps there is regional variation - but the 99.99/0.01 split is not something that I recognise at all.

Exactly - you cannot choose to believe. I can understand that it must be very reassuring, comforting, and heartening to have a firm faith in your religion - and I almost envy the camaraderie , and pleasure that some friends have found through belief in god and membership of a religion. But I do not believe in god, and I do not choose to pretend that I do! And as Mr S said, what sort of omni-potent/-scient/-present supernatural being is going to be fooled into granting me eternal salvation when I have metaphorically crossed my fingers behind my back?

I think at the moment the jury is out - but the simplest argument is that these measurements are incorrect. It needs a lot more work and other teams will have to find similar results before any volte-face is considered. I will dig out the references I found when I heard about the actual results a few months back.

Practice giving the talk - I agree with almost everything said above, but I would add that a couple of practices are worth doing. A rehearsal (its got to be out loud - and yes, you will feel a bit of an idiot talking to an empty room) is essential in making sure 1. your timing is right (when I have had to assess presentations I always thought badly of the talks that only covered half the material or had to be wrapped up early because of time constraints. 2. that you will not trip up over certain sections. Unless you are reading a full script (not to be recommended) you can find that your written cue notes will be very hard to interpret whilst speaking at the same time. 3. if it's graded and the grade goes towards anything important - then I would also record one of my private attempts and listen back to it. It's a little weird listening to oneself - but you will be able to identify the areas you are fluent and more confident on and those that require a bit more thought 4. if this is allowed I would also recommend presenting it to a class mate first - his/her comments would be most useful.

That's a good call. I have no intention of trying it out - but it would be a nice code to set. I think it has to be fairly simple; once you get beyond substitution things get very hard, very quickly. I once cracked a playfair cipher for a competition run by NOVA - it took me a couple of weeks AND I had knowledge of a three word phrase that was included (actually a choice of two phrases). If the cipher isn't simple, then I would guess, both the cipher used and a hint must be in the text given and for the life of me I cannot spot it.

In maths there are also things that are demonstrably not true - but using them as an axiom/postulate (that is accepted without proof) can be,or at least has been, highly beneficial. Amongst other things I am thinking, of course, of Euclid's Elements and the parallel postulate. One can make valid and important arguments whilst working with the the parallel postulate - yet non-Euclidean geometry shows that the postulate is not universally correct. Do you not use such things in physics as well? I really would not know - but are there situations where you have to say to yourself "I know this is an incorrect model, but for some reason, in my particular circumstance, it produces predictions that tally with experiment"

The magnetic field is not caused by a simple lump of iron which is magnetic - as you pointed out the iron is above the curie point (about 1000 deg c IIRC) and is no longer a simple magnet. The field is caused by electric currents which flow around/through the core in a rolling cylindircal formation (caused by coriolis) that are aligned NS. You could visualise this as a series of convection currents which form the outer realm of the liquid core - the axis of these rotations is north south - ie a ring of rotating currents around the central mass. This is known as the dynamo effect - but I cannot find a decent webpage to demonstrate nor can I find the words to explain.