From ilia.stambler at gmail.com Sun Oct 1 13:35:53 2017 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2017 16:35:53 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Happy Longevity Day! Message-ID: Dear friends, Happy Longevity Day! ? October 1 ? The Beginning of the ?Longevity Month? campaign of October to promote biomedical research of aging to improve Healthy Longevity for the global population! (Following the UN International Day of Older Persons) Events and promotions in over 10 countries have been confirmed as a part of the Longevity Month Campaign this year. http://www.longevityforall.org/longevity-day-and- longevity-month-october-2017/ If you organize or participate in an event, meeting, study group, promotion or publication within the Longevity Month Campaign ? please share to encourage others! If you are conducting a study group, you may consider the following texts: ?Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives? http://www.longevityhistory.com/book/getbooks.html *?Recognizing Degenerative Aging* as a *Treatable Medical Condition*: *Methodology* and *Policy?* *http://www.aginganddisease.org/EN/10.14336/AD.2017.0130 * *?The application of information theory for the research of aging and aging-related diseases?* https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VjWG14SFllrdt Thank you! Ilia Stambler -- Ilia Stambler, PhD Outreach Coordinator. International Society on Aging and Disease - ISOAD http://isoad.org Chair. Israeli Longevity Alliance / International Longevity Alliance (Israel) - ILA *http://www.longevityisrael.org/ * Coordinator. Longevity for All http://www.longevityforall.org Author. Longevity History. *A History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century* http://longevityhistory.com Email: ilia.stambler at gmail.com Tel: 972-3-961-4296 / 0522-283-578 Rishon Lezion. Israel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Mon Oct 2 07:21:20 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 00:21:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark energy = (anti)gravity? Message-ID: <4f54fbc557dbbf48c0883f960fdae1e0.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: >> ?> ? >> The beginning eigenstate effectively had an energy and entropy of zero >> ? ? >> because both rely on differences between two or more states to have ? ? >> meaning. ? ? >> A single state with no other states to compare it to has zero >> ? ? >> energy and entropy. > > I > ? would? > say in that situation energy and entropy would be undefined not zero. ? ? The entropy of a state with a probability of 1 is ln(1) or precisely zero in both Boltzmann and Shannon formulations. I didn't know this was even controversial. > And we've known for 90 years that at the very largest scale, the > cosmological scale, if Spacetime is curved ? ? > then ? ? > energy is not conserved ? ? > under ? ? > General > ? ? > Relativity. This is because Noether's Theorem > ? ? > tells us that the conservation of energy is equivalent to time ? ? > translation invariance, that is to say the fundamental laws that determine > how things move do not change with time; but if ? ? > Spacetime is curved then they do change, so energy is not > ? ? > conserved. But that is the crux of the issue. Curved space-time introduces many different observers, each with their own time coordinate. And for any single observer, the energy of a system would be conserved but it would not be conserved between observers because time is passing differently for both. But if the universe has a single age that all observers can agree upon, then there must be a universal proper time from which time-symmetry could be introduced. Furthermore by all indications, space-time at the largest measurable scales seems to be flat. The universe seems to only be curved at medium distance scales. It is curved at the scale of stars and galaxies but is flat at the scale of the CMB as well as at the scale of laboratories. Planck satellite data indicates that there is no detectable curvature down to +/- 0.005 based on the CMB. This means that if the universe is curved, it is so large that the curvature is undetectable out to 46 billion light years. So Noether's theorem and Einstein's equations could both be satisfied given the correct boundary conditions. > For example consider all the photons in interstellar space, as > space expands with time the number of photons remains the same but each > individual photon is redshifted and ? ? > thus ? ? > has less energy than it did before. Yes but in that process the particles that emitted those photons and the particles that absorbed of those photons would have gained a proportionate amount of kinetic energy relative to one another by way of their relative Hubble velocities. The energy lost by the photon should be gained by its terminal particles. ? ? > Much more recently physicists discovered > ? ? > it works the opposite way for Dark Energy because the vacuum energy ? ? > of ? ? > empty space ? ? > remains the same but the total amount of empty space increases so the > total amount of energy in the ? ? > universe increases too. However nobody ? ? > needed to rewrite physics textbooks 90 years ago because energy is > conserved ? ? > locally ? ? > if Spacetime is flat as it is in Newtonian physics. Again, the curvature of the universe as a whole has been bounded to be within +/- 0.004 which causes the flatness problem. The FLRW metric implies that if the universe has so little curvature now, in the beginning it would have to have had way less curvature, on the order of 10^?62. That is so infintesimally small that the probability of such an arrangement so close to zero, without actually being zero, is vanishingly small. And in a flat universe, GR conserves total energy at least according to the Friedmann equations and my potential field equations. (Although my equations are based on a vector field in flat space so its kind of axiomatic for my equations.) My equations do predict however that if the universe is flat, then it could could evolve from zero energy to infinite size and twice its current density with no net energy gain. The more potential energy you use the more kinetic energy you gain. Which in turn solves the fundamental problem of where the energy could be coming from. > >> ?> ? >> One of the solutions it yielded was a universe where radius is a >> function ? ? >> of the universe's density. It starts out at zero density and radius, ? ? >> increases in density and radius gradually through a flex point early on. >> ? ? >> Then as the density approaches an assymptote at located at twice the >> ? ? >> critical density Dc = 3H^2/(8*pi*G), the radius shoots up to infinity! >> > > I'm very suspicious of that H term. [snip] ? > Right now we > say the Hubble ? ? > "constant" > ? ? > is 160 km/sec per million-light-year ?s? > , > ? ? > but that figure will change, by how much nobody is quite sure. According to the Friedmann equations: H^2 = 8*pi*G*D + k*c^2/R^2 where D is the density of the universe, R is radius, and k is the curvature. In a k=0 flat universe that simply becomes H^2 = 8*pi*G*D. So yeah, H changes proportionately to the sqare root of density. My field equations should be able to handle a variable H parameter just fine. Incidently because the unitless solution to my potential energy function has an inflection point at Q = .72 of "modern" density, it predicts a fast early expansion, a slow down, and a subsequent speed up. Here is the equation again so you can put it through a graphing calculator: P:=normalized radius = R/Rh (Radius of universe/Hubble radius). Q:=normalized density = D/Dc (Density of the universe/Critical density) Note: Q is omega from the Friedman equations. P = Sqrt(10/(3*(1-2*(2/Q)^(1/3)+2/Q))) For reference, Rh = c/H and Dc = 3H^2/(8*pi*G,)with c being speed of light, G is the gravitational constant, and H is the Hubble "parameter". Because my equations predict that the universe started at zero density and has been increasing in density over time, the Friedmann equation would predict that H has been getting bigger and consequently the Hubble radius has been getting smaller. > > The energy required is not the issue, ? > ?gravity > waves don't travel faster than light, and sending messages into the past > creates logical contradictions.? Even quantum ? > entanglement ? won't let you communicate faster than light. ? Here you are trying to eat your cake and have it too. You say that quantum entanglement doesn't allow "me" to communicate FTL but the particles themselves MUST comunicate FTL ergo the meaning of non-local. You are suggesting since we can't use it to send messages means that quantum entanglement doesn't count as "communication". But before you insisted that the sun and the earth communicate gravitationally with each other with 8 minutes lag time due to speed of light limitations even though it is not possible for us to communicate using gravitational waves because of the energy cost. The universe's "internal memos" are either FTL and off-limits to us or they are not. You can't have it both ways. > > ?> ? > >> In any case it seems that gravity/dark energy somehow connect causally >> disconnected parts of the universe. > > > ?If those regions of Spacetime are causally connected then something must > travel ?faster than light, then you can use that something to send > messages into the past, and they you're in big BIG logical trouble. My point is that you *can't* use it to send messages into the past. Only the universe can. It's like a private communications channel between particles to exchange quantum information like position and momentum. Let me put it another way. How is the mass of a black hole distributed? Is it spread out all over the event horizon? If not, and the mass is inside the event horizon, then the black hole's gravitational influence had to escape the black hole *somehow*. The simplest explanation is that it's going FTL. Damn, I wish LIGO would catch a binary neutron star merger with optical back up already. ? > >> When I mathematically modelled dark energy and causal cells, I came up >> ? ? >> with some very interesting discoveries. Dark energy and gravity are part >> ? ? >> of the same scalar potential field and related vector field. I have ? ? >> equations for these fields but ascii text is not the best medium to >> convey ? ? >> vector field equations.The point is they are the same kind of force! > > > ?Gravity is attractive, Dark Energy is repulsive. Gravity gets weaker as > the universe expands and the density of matter becomes less , but unlike > gravity Dark Energy does not originate from matter but seems to be a > property of space itself, so it never gets diluted regardless of how > empty the universe gets. ? I know it is unintuitive that gravity could be both an attractive and a repulsive force based on density rather than something like charge. But it is rather simple conceptually. Any system with an average mass density equal to or greater than than twice the current density of the universe will gravitationally contract or remain in stable rotation/orbit. And any system with an average mass density less than twice the current density of the universe will expand. I found an old article that almost hit on the same idea. It does a good job of explaining why the attractive component of gravity would be inverse square of radius while the repulsive component would be direct multiplication by r. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1985Obs...105...42G&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YES Their equation #5 is very similar to my acceleration vector field equations: = [H^2 - 4*pi*G*D/(3*r^3)]* which in scalar form is g = H^2*r - G*M/r^2. With H as Hubble parameter and D as density. is the radius vector while r is its norm. Also, if you plug the Freidmann equation into mine, you get: = [8*pi*G*Du - 4*pi*G*Ds/(3*r^3)]* Where Du is the density of the universe and Ds is the density of a subsystem. BTW, as a testable prediction my theory predicts that objects inside an evacuated hollow spherical shell at zero G, should very slowly gravitate to the closest part of the hollow sphere unless they were in the exact center. This is in direct contradiction to what Newton's shell theorem predicts by purely attractive gravity. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Mon Oct 2 11:45:46 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 04:45:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark energy = (anti)gravity In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, October 2, 2017 1:44 am, I wrote: > But it is rather simple conceptually. Any system with an average mass > density equal to or greater than than twice the current density of the > universe will gravitationally contract or remain in stable > rotation/orbit. I made an arithmetic error here. It should read: "Any system with an average mass density equal to or greater than than six times the average density of the universe will gravitationally contract or remain in a stable position or orbit." Stuart LaForge From spike66 at att.net Tue Oct 3 04:53:40 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 21:53:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ligo numbers Message-ID: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> I had an idea upon which John or the other astronomy hipsters might comment. I noticed the masses of the merging black holes seemed to be remarkably even with each other, within a factor of 2: First event, masses of 29 and 35 Second event, masses of 8 and 14 Third event, masses of 19 and 31 Fourth event, masses of 25 and 30 Today a notion occurred to me: there is a reason why this might not be just a crazy coincidence or a characteristic of the LIGO instrument to detect only a certain class of mergers. Consider any two black holes locked into mutual orbit. Always the smaller hole goes into a bigger orbit, so it travels faster and traverses more space. The pair attracts stuff, so gas and perhaps stars are devoured, but always the smaller black hole grows faster because of covering more ground: anything that falls inward toward the pair has a higher chance of being gobbled by the smaller black hole. This might explain why the four observations seen so far are mergers between black holes of almost the same mass. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jordanhh at gmail.com Tue Oct 3 03:08:57 2017 From: jordanhh at gmail.com (Jordan Hosmer-Henner) Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2017 03:08:57 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Market capitalism as quasi-AI; o'Reily interview Message-ID: "I came around to thinking that in some ways financial markets are that rogue AI that people like Elon Musk have been talking about... in which you have an increasingly algorithmic financial system saying, "Hey, optimize for corporate profit because it drives stock price. Never mind what happens to the people. Never mind what happens to society." We're in that AI-driven situation." https://www.edge.org/conversation/tim_oreilly-reality-is-an-activity-of-the-most-august-imagination -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kuudes at leijuvakaupunki.fi Tue Oct 3 12:10:15 2017 From: kuudes at leijuvakaupunki.fi (kuudes) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 15:10:15 +0300 Subject: [ExI] ligo numbers In-Reply-To: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> References: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> Message-ID: <97d14f1b-2d85-7f4e-7a3d-6336e311d86b@leijuvakaupunki.fi> On 03.10.2017 07:53, spike wrote: > Today a notion occurred to me: there is a reason why this might not be > just a crazy coincidence or a characteristic of the LIGO instrument to > detect only a certain class of mergers. > Would we be able to detect the gravitational waves if the object masses were very different? I mean, as a layman it seems to me that with larger mass difference, the smaller mass would have faster orbit if the event duration is constant. This again could mean that the frequency of the wave to detect would be higher, which could mean it would be out of range for our current instruments. If this narrative holds, then the observed effect would be explained by our current instrument limitations. But I am not a gravity physicist. :) What do we currently know about the bounds of observation for LIGO et al? Yours, kuudes From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Oct 3 12:45:37 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 08:45:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Researchers Message-ID: I was surprised they didn't get it last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/science/nobel-prize-physics.html?_r=0 John K Ckark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 4 17:35:07 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 13:35:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ligo numbers In-Reply-To: References: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> Message-ID: I said "until LIGO nobody had ever detected 2 Black Holes in orbit around each other" Now that I think about it that's not quite true, 4 or 5 were discovered by X rays but they were all of the supermassive type of billions of solar masses. John K Clark On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 1:24 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 12:53 AM, spike wrote: > > Consider any two black holes locked into mutual orbit. Always the smaller >> hole goes into a bigger orbit, so it travels faster and traverses more >> space. The pair attracts stuff, so gas and perhaps stars are devoured, but >> always the smaller black hole grows faster because of covering more ground: >> anything that falls inward toward the pair has a higher chance of being >> gobbled by the smaller black hole. > > > ?But there can't be much stuff falling into either Black Hole, if there > were they'd be producing powerful X rays and they would have been seen > years ago, but until ?LIGO nobody had ever detected 2 Black Holes in orbit > around each other. That's really not surprising, those Black Holes are old > and the dusty cloud that made the original stars (assuming those Black > Holes came from stars) would be long gone by now. And if the Black Holes > are primordial there would be even less reason to think they are now in a > crowded part of the universe where lots of things can fall in. > > Also if a Black Hole is much larger than about 100 solar masses the > frequency of the > gravitational > waves will be too low for LIGO to detect. > > ? John K Clark ? > > > > > > >> >> >> >> I had an idea upon which John or the other astronomy hipsters might >> comment. >> >> >> >> I noticed the masses of the merging black holes seemed to be remarkably >> even with each other, within a factor of 2: >> >> >> >> First event, masses of 29 and 35 >> >> Second event, masses of 8 and 14 >> >> Third event, masses of 19 and 31 >> >> Fourth event, masses of 25 and 30 >> >> >> >> Today a notion occurred to me: there is a reason why this might not be >> just a crazy coincidence or a characteristic of the LIGO instrument to >> detect only a certain class of mergers. >> >> >> >> Consider any two black holes locked into mutual orbit. Always the >> smaller hole goes into a bigger orbit, so it travels faster and traverses >> more space. The pair attracts stuff, so gas and perhaps stars are >> devoured, but always the smaller black hole grows faster because of >> covering more ground: anything that falls inward toward the pair has a >> higher chance of being gobbled by the smaller black hole. >> >> >> >> This might explain why the four observations seen so far are mergers >> between black holes of almost the same mass. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 4 17:24:46 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 13:24:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ligo numbers In-Reply-To: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> References: <002801d33c03$95a47d70$c0ed7850$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 12:53 AM, spike wrote: Consider any two black holes locked into mutual orbit. Always the smaller > hole goes into a bigger orbit, so it travels faster and traverses more > space. The pair attracts stuff, so gas and perhaps stars are devoured, but > always the smaller black hole grows faster because of covering more ground: > anything that falls inward toward the pair has a higher chance of being > gobbled by the smaller black hole. ?But there can't be much stuff falling into either Black Hole, if there were they'd be producing powerful X rays and they would have been seen years ago, but until ?LIGO nobody had ever detected 2 Black Holes in orbit around each other. That's really not surprising, those Black Holes are old and the dusty cloud that made the original stars (assuming those Black Holes came from stars) would be long gone by now. And if the Black Holes are primordial there would be even less reason to think they are now in a crowded part of the universe where lots of things can fall in. Also if a Black Hole is much larger than about 100 solar masses the frequency of the gravitational waves will be too low for LIGO to detect. ? John K Clark ? > > > > I had an idea upon which John or the other astronomy hipsters might > comment. > > > > I noticed the masses of the merging black holes seemed to be remarkably > even with each other, within a factor of 2: > > > > First event, masses of 29 and 35 > > Second event, masses of 8 and 14 > > Third event, masses of 19 and 31 > > Fourth event, masses of 25 and 30 > > > > Today a notion occurred to me: there is a reason why this might not be > just a crazy coincidence or a characteristic of the LIGO instrument to > detect only a certain class of mergers. > > > > Consider any two black holes locked into mutual orbit. Always the smaller > hole goes into a bigger orbit, so it travels faster and traverses more > space. The pair attracts stuff, so gas and perhaps stars are devoured, but > always the smaller black hole grows faster because of covering more ground: > anything that falls inward toward the pair has a higher chance of being > gobbled by the smaller black hole. > > > > This might explain why the four observations seen so far are mergers > between black holes of almost the same mass. > > > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 4 17:04:22 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 13:04:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark energy = (anti)gravity? In-Reply-To: <4f54fbc557dbbf48c0883f960fdae1e0.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <4f54fbc557dbbf48c0883f960fdae1e0.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > >> A single state with no other states to compare it to has zero >>> ? ? >>> energy and entropy. >> >> > I would? >> ? ? >> say in that situation energy and entropy would be undefined not zero. ? ? > > > The entropy of a state with a probability of 1 is ln(1) > ? ? > or precisely zero > ? ? > in both Boltzmann and Shannon formulations. I didn't know this was even > ? ? > controversial. ?Entropy is proportional to the logarithm of the number of ? ways previous micro-states ?could have produced the present macro-state, but if at the start of time the universe was in one state there were no previous micro-states ?, or previous anything. ?> ? > if the universe has a single age that all observers can agree upon, > ?But they don't agree, some observers will say the universe is older than others.? > ?> ? > then there must be a universal proper time from which time-symmetry could > be introduced. There is no universal time everybody can agree on. ?If a traveling observer goes from point A to point B the Proper T ime ?of that ? ? journey is the time measured by the observers own stopwatch and using the traveling observer's definition of simultaneity to decide when to start and stop the stopwatch. But there is no universal agreement, some observers will say the stopwatch is running too slow, others will say it is too fast, and they will say the traveling observer started and stopped the watch at the wrong time. > ?> ? > So Noether's theorem and Einstein's equations could both be satisfied > given the correct boundary conditions. > ?Noether's theorem says that if the laws of physics tell a system to behave in a certain way at one time and the system behaves the same way at any other time then energy is conserved, but it won't behave the same way at a different time because spacetime is accelerating.? > > >> ?>? >> consider all the photons in interstellar space, as >> ? ? >> space expands with time the number of photons remains the same but >> each individual photon is redshifted and ?thus ?has less energy than it did >> before. > > > ?> ? > Yes but in that process the particles that emitted those photons and the > particles that absorbed of those photons would have gained a proportionate > amount of kinetic energy relative to one another by way of their relative > Hubble velocities. The energy lost by the photon should be gained by its > terminal particles. > ?We call it Cosmic ? ?Microwave Radiation but when those photons were created 380,000 years after the Big Bang they were not microwave photons they were visible light photons but due to the expansion of the universe they have been stretched out into far less energetic microwave photons. ?The ancient particles that emitted those photons emitted light, the modern particles that absorb those same photons absorb microwaves, the energy in those 2 things are not equal. ?> ? > the curvature of the universe as a whole has been bounded to be > within +/- 0.004 which causes the flatness problem. The FLRW metric > implies that if the universe has so little curvature now, in the beginning > it would have to have had way less curvature, on the order of 10^?62. That > is so infintesimally small that the probability of such an arrangement so > close to zero, without actually being zero, is vanishingly small. > ?I don't know how you could even assign a probability to something like that. If the universe is infinitely large and negatively curved you'd expect the local curvature to be ? vanishingly small ?. ?Even if the universe is finite the local curvature would still be unmeasurably small if the universe were big enough. But is the universe big enough? I can't even make a guess about that. ?> ? > And in a flat universe, GR conserves total energy at least according to > the Friedmann equations and my potential field equations. ?If ? spacetime ? is not evolving then energy is conserved, but we now know something Friedmann did not ; spacetime is evolving, not only is it expanding it's accelerating. ? ?From Sean Carroll at: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy- is-not-conserved/? *"?It?s clear that cosmologists have not done a very good job of spreading the word about something that?s been well-understood since at least the 1920?s: energy is not conserved in general relativity.?"?* > > > ?? > as the density approaches an assymptote at located at twice thecritical > density Dc = 3H^2/(8*pi*G), ?The equation is correct but keep in mind ? H, the Hubble parameter ?,? is not a constant ?but is decreasing with time. And the value of Dc is not just determined by the mass of matter in a unit of space, pressure and tension are also part of it. > >> ?>? >> The energy required is not the issue, ? ?gravity >> ? ? >> waves don't travel faster than light, and sending messages into the past >> ? ? >> creates logical contradictions.? Even quantum ?entanglement ? won't let >> you communicate faster than light. ? > > > ?> ? > Here you are trying to eat your cake and have it too. > ? > You say that quantum > ? ? > entanglement doesn't allow "me" to communicate FTL but the particles > ? ? > themselves MUST comunicate FTL ergo the meaning of non-local. ? No, communicating is not the same thing as influencing, communicating involves transferring Shannon style information and ? ? entanglement ? ? can't do that faster than light. But it will still let you influence things faster than light. You and I have quantum entangled coins, I'm on Earth and you're in the Andromeda Galaxy 2 million light years away. I flip my coin 100 times and record my sequences of heads and tails and then just one hour later you do the same thing. We both think our sequences look completely random as they pass all known tests for randomness. You then get into your spaceship that moves at 99.9% the speed of light and visit me. After 2 million years you arrive on Earth and we compare the notes we took on our two sequences and find that all 100 flips are identical. Clearly my coin influenced your coin 2 million light years away and did so in just one hour, but there is no way I can use that to send a message. All it does is change one apparently random sequence to another apparently random sequence, the fact that there is something funny going on and things aren't as random as they appear can only be discovered when the 2 sequences are placed side by side, and that can only be done at the speed of light or less. > ?> ? > The universe's "internal memos" are either FTL and off-limits to us or > they are not. You can't have it both ways. > ?We don't have it both ways?, it's off limits to us period. > ?> ? > My point is that you *can't* use it to send messages into the past. Only > the universe can. It's like a private communications channel between > particles to exchange quantum information like position and momentum. > OK that might be true, it sounds rather like John Cramer's transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics; but I have to say backward causality makes me nervous even though ? ? nothing ? ? Shannon ? ? would recognize as information is sent into the past and so ?no ? paradoxes ? ? are ? ? produced. > > ?> ? > Let me put it another way. How is the mass of a black hole distributed? Is > ? ? > it spread out all over the event horizon? Nobody knows. General Relativity says all it's mass is concentrated at a mathematical point at the center that has infinite density but that is probably wrong because it doesn't take quantum mechanics into account and in physics if your equation produces infinity in something it's reaching the limit of its usefulness and it's time to start looking for a new equation. But externally it doesn't matter, the gravitational field would be identical if all the mass were at the center or if all the mass were distributed evenly over the event horizon surface. ? ?> ? > Damn, I wish LIGO would catch a binary neutron star merger with optical > ? ? > back up already. > ?It may have already done so, the LIGO people can be pretty secretive. The next few months should be interesting.? > ?> ? > I know it is unintuitive that gravity could be both an attractive and a > repulsive force based on density rather than something like charge. > Einstein says density isn't the only thing that makes a gravitational field, pressure and tension do too, and tension (negative pressure) makes gravity repulsive if the tension is strong enough. And ? ? Dark Energy isn't made of matter so it doesn't become less dense as space expands instead it is a property of space itself ?,? so the density of Dark Energy remains constant regardless of how much space expands. Because Dark energy is persistent it gives a constant push to the universe, and if you push on something with a constant force it will accelerate. > ?> ? > BTW, as a testable prediction my theory predicts that objects inside an > ? ? > evacuated hollow spherical shell at zero G, should very slowly gravitate > ? t? > o the closest part of the hollow sphere unless they were in the exact > ? ? > center. > ? ? > This is in direct contradiction to what Newton's shell theorem predicts by > ? ? > purely attractive gravity. It seems to me that is pretty good evidence your theory must be wrong. ? ? A simple corollary to ? ? Newton's shell theory ? ? states that externally the sun's gravitational field behave ?s? as if all it's mass were concentrated at it's center point, if this were not true the orbits of the planets would be quite different from what we have observed and would have been noticed centuries ago. ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 7 15:43:50 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 10:43:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] food science Message-ID: Not much going on - thought I'd let y'all know about this book: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. By a former Chez Panisse chef, trained in part by Alice Waters, whom some of you will know. No, it's not really heavy on chemistry but it does tell you what each of those things in the title do to the food. In the 37 pages on salt (!), you learn that when you brine meat, the salt gets into the interior and when you cook it that salt holds on the some of the water inside the meat, making it more tender and juicy. You learn to salt some things as much as two days earlier. I have read scores of cookbooks, and this one is my favorite 'how to and why' book. Some interesting tables about how to turn your ingredients into various ethnic dishes. In short, the best cookbook I know - based on the how to and why, rather than the recipes, which I have not tried. I did brine some chicken overnight and my wife asked me what I did to it without knowing that I did anything to it. l brined some pork and it was perfectly seasoned and like the chicken, needed no salt. Bother very tender. This will make more difference in my cooking than any other book I have ever come across. She doesn't use table salt. Throw it away, she says. Kosher or sea salt (and not all koshers are alike - Morton's twice as salty as the other one). >From Discover magazine: people smell better than pigs and even dogs for some substances. Did not test the North American bear, supposedly the champ at odors. Misspelling - 'ascetic acid' (suggesting a puritanical and abstemious lemon juice?) Fire ants can build towers of themselves -- magazine called it 'banding together' - as opposed to 'banding apart'? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Oct 8 02:38:32 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 22:38:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] More news from LIGO on October 16 Message-ID: Rainer Weiss ? who just won the Noble Prize for detecting gravitation waves said LIGO will have more news very soon: ? *"The gravitational? ? waves are interesting, and the fact that you can directly detect them is important, but the real payoff is going to be in the future?.? It's already happened, in some regards, and more of it will happen on October 16. I won't tell you what it is, but I can tell you that there is more there, and I think there's another whoop-de-do arranged for that. And I urge you to go to it, because the announcement is actually very interesting. But I won't say any more than that."* ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Oct 8 03:12:58 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 20:12:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More news from LIGO on October 16 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005e01d33fe3$5a5592c0$0f00b840$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: [ExI] More news from LIGO on October 16 Rainer Weiss >?"The gravitational ? ? waves are interesting, and the fact that you can directly detect them is important, but the real payoff is going to be in the future.? It's already happened, in some regards, and more of it will happen on October 16. I won't tell you what it is, but I can tell you that there is more there, and I think there's another whoop-de-do arranged for that. And I urge you to go to it, because the announcement is actually very interesting. But I won't say any more than that." ?John K Clark? Best guess, they will tell us they found a merger of two neutron stars. That will have a different signature from the black hole merger. Henceforth every gathering of geeks should be called a whoop-de-do. If others are present besides the usual suspects, we hardcore types, that can still be a schmooze. Otherwise, a whoop-de-do. Ooooooh this is cool. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Oct 8 16:37:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 12:37:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] More news from LIGO on October 16 In-Reply-To: <005e01d33fe3$5a5592c0$0f00b840$@att.net> References: <005e01d33fe3$5a5592c0$0f00b840$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 11:12 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > Best guess, they will tell us they found a merger of two neutron stars. > That will have a different signature from the black hole merger. > > I think that's a good guess. And if we're very lucky satellites may have detected a fast gamma ray burst that occurred at the ? ? exact ? ? same time ? ? that ? ? LIGO detected ? ? a ? ? gravitational wave. We know ? ? that ? ? on August 18 2017 at ? ? 12:41:06.47 ? ? Universal Time ? ? the Fermi Gamma-Ray satellite detected a fast gamma ray burst lasting 2.048 seconds ? ? coming from ? ? the ? ? vicinity of ? ? galaxy NGC 4993 ? ? about 130 million ? ? light years ? ? from Earth, ? ? and we know that by fast gamma ray burst standards this one was a bit closer than average but was not particularly powerful, probably because it was not aimed directly at us. Gamma ray bursts are not rare, during the last 9 years on average one has been ? ? detected ? ? per day, ? ? and ? ? on the face of it ? ? there seemed ? ? to be ? ?nothing special about this one, and yet for some reason on that same day of August 18 LIGO sent out confidential messages (that leaked of course) to optical and radio astronomers strongly suggesting that today would be a very good day to look at NGC 4993 ? and its environs. ? Now why ? ? in the world ? ? would they do that? Hmm... ? John K Clark ? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Oct 8 16:43:06 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 09:43:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle Message-ID: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Two of the most overlooked qualities in life are patience and wisdom: This is something I have wondered about for a long time. Most dogs seem to have an intuition that a skunk is something you just jump at every opportunity to not mess with. A squirrel is pretty similar in size and shape. Dogs go nuts when they see those guys, even black ones. Now I hafta wonder if visuals have anything to do with it. If we caught a big black squirrel and dyed a big white stripe on him, would the dogs back off? Regarding instinct, the skunk also seems to know he has nothing to worry about from the dogs. Every time I see a skunk in the neighborhood, he tends to carry himself like he owns the place. Alternative suggestion: the skunk scent is undetectable if he doesn?t spray. You can be within about three paces of it and not smell a thing. Perhaps the dog can? Another puzzle: how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) We can easily imagine a learned behavior of don?t mess with the skunk, but most dogs have never been sprayed, and still know better. I had Dobermans in my misspent youth. They would take on anything, including rattlesnakes (very carefully and always successfully.) Clearly they had instinct with regard to those guys, the kind which is explainable. But there were plenty of skunks out there, and never once did any of them get sprayed or even bark at a skunk. Very puzzling. Ideas? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 170205 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 8 22:50:34 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:50:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 11:43 AM, spike wrote: > > > Two of the most overlooked qualities in life are patience and wisdom: > > > > This is something I have wondered about for a long time. Most dogs seem > to have an intuition that a skunk is something you just jump at every > opportunity to not mess with. A squirrel is pretty similar in size and > shape. Dogs go nuts when they see those guys, even black ones. Now I > hafta wonder if visuals have anything to do with it. If we caught a big > black squirrel and dyed a big white stripe on him, would the dogs back > off? Regarding instinct, the skunk also seems to know he has nothing to > worry about from the dogs. Every time I see a skunk in the neighborhood, > he tends to carry himself like he owns the place. > > > > Alternative suggestion: the skunk scent is undetectable if he doesn?t > spray. You can be within about three paces of it and not smell a thing. > Perhaps the dog can? > > > > Another puzzle: how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get > encoded into the genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously > impact the unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) We > can easily imagine a learned behavior of don?t mess with the skunk, but > most dogs have never been sprayed, and still know better. > > > > I had Dobermans in my misspent youth. They would take on anything, > including rattlesnakes (very carefully and always successfully.) Clearly > they had instinct with regard to those guys, the kind which is > explainable. But there were plenty of skunks out there, and never once did > any of them get sprayed or even bark at a skunk. Very puzzling. > > > > Ideas? > > > > spike > ?I think it's entirely possible that it's a sort of instinct. If you cut out a shape resembling a goose and fly it over a chicken coop such that a shadow of the goose in cast on the ground, you will get no response from the chickens. However, if you turn the goose around so that it appears like a hawk, the chickens will panic. Instinctively afraid of a shadow. Second - for some substances, mostly relating to its survival, dogs have incredibly keen noses. It's highly possible that the dog can smell the skunk and stay away. It may be the smell of the skunk itself rather than the liquid it squirts. Or it may be a tiny amount of the bad smell clinging to the skunks orifice from a time before when it did spray. Third - lots of dogs get sprayed by skunks, so who knows? bill w ? > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 170205 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 13:09:35 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 08:09:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nobel prize Message-ID: We could have said that Kahneman and Tversky's Nobel was psychology's first prize. Now Richard Thaler has won it for behavioral economics - in other words, psychology. Biology is also ripping us off: now there is behavioral biology. Well, it's OK. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 20:30:20 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 16:30:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the > genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the > unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) > > ? The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain; during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators. ? ? I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of passing along its ? ? genes ? ? into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero and over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like the look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such aversion. Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal, and that's why ?the? skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker. ? It ? ? reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing ?like that makes them very poor flyers and ? must greatly reduce ?their? chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large tails. ?Why do females like long tails? Because to mate with the healthiest males ? they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and things can get out of hand. In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes? ?,? birds with midsize tail ?s? would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's genes point of view this was obviously not the most important consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long ?est? tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of superior flight performance ?and longer life ? of birds with midsize ?tails ? outweighs the greater difficulty ? in? finding a mate. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 18:53:19 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:53:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nobel prize In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On Oct 9, 2017, at 6:09 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > We could have said that Kahneman and Tversky's Nobel was psychology's first prize. Now Richard Thaler has won it for behavioral economics - in other words, psychology. > > Biology is also ripping us off: now there is behavioral biology. > > Well, it's OK. > If you want to look at that way, maybe Gary Becker beat the three you mention above. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 20:38:02 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 16:38:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: Symmetry is another tell for good genes and attractive in potential mates. Another example of preprogrammed behaviors can be found in birds. Mother turkeys are great moms as long as their babies chirp. If a non-chirping baby is born, they will generally peck them to death as the chirping is a tell for a healthy baby. In robins, males will attack just the right shade of red feathers when it is presented to them. They don't even need a whole stuffed bird to be triggered. There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into all animals including us, but most of ours are probably psychological at this point. On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: > > > >> ?> ? >> how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the >> genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the >> unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) >> >> ? > The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an > animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no > sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain; > during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators. > ? ? > I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of passing > along its > ? ? > genes > ? ? > into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero and > over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like the > look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such > aversion. > > Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy > way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal, > and that's why > ?the? > skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely > poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but > its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and > would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous > animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker. > ? > > It > ? ? > reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a > ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing > ?like that makes them very poor flyers and ? > must greatly reduce > ?their? > chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large tails. > ?Why do females like long tails? Because to > mate with the healthiest males > ? they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male > from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails > were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and > things can get out of hand. > > In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of > various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes? > ?,? > birds with midsize tail > ?s? > would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's > genes point of view this was obviously not the most important > consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long > ?est? > tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails > producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a > disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of > superior flight performance > ?and longer life ? > of birds with midsize > ?tails ? > outweighs the greater difficulty > ? in? > finding a mate. > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 23:10:21 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 18:10:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into all animals including us, but most of ours are probably* psychological *at this point. dylan Yeah? And just what do you mean by that? Please explain. bill w On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > Symmetry is another tell for good genes and attractive in potential mates. > > Another example of preprogrammed behaviors can be found in birds. Mother > turkeys are great moms as long as their babies chirp. If a non-chirping > baby is born, they will generally peck them to death as the chirping is a > tell for a healthy baby. > > In robins, males will attack just the right shade of red feathers when it > is presented to them. They don't even need a whole stuffed bird to be > triggered. > > There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into > all animals including us, but most of ours are probably psychological at > this point. > > > > On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM, John Clark wrote: > >> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: >> >> >> >>> ?> ? >>> how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the >>> genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the >>> unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) >>> >>> ? >> The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an >> animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no >> sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain; >> during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators. >> ? ? >> I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of passing >> along its >> ? ? >> genes >> ? ? >> into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero and >> over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like the >> look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such >> aversion. >> >> Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy >> way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal, >> and that's why >> ?the? >> skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely >> poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but >> its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and >> would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous >> animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker. >> ? >> >> It >> ? ? >> reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a >> ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing >> ?like that makes them very poor flyers and ? >> must greatly reduce >> ?their? >> chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large tails. >> ?Why do females like long tails? Because to >> mate with the healthiest males >> ? they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male >> from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails >> were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and >> things can get out of hand. >> >> In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of >> various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes? >> ?,? >> birds with midsize tail >> ?s? >> would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's >> genes point of view this was obviously not the most important >> consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long >> ?est? >> tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails >> producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a >> disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of >> superior flight performance >> ?and longer life ? >> of birds with midsize >> ?tails ? >> outweighs the greater difficulty >> ? in? >> finding a mate. >> >> John K Clark >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 23:27:43 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 18:27:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nobel prize In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well now, maybe there's a small discussion here after all. Just what does happen in the Nobel Prize committee when a person's expertise is in biochemistry? Or physical chemistry? Or any other borderline science - that is bridging the gap between two sciences. As for sociology and social psychology, the usual gap is that the former studies people in groups and the latter in individuals, though that is not a clean break. Are there movements to add prizes? Say, behavioral biology, which is neither medicine nor physiology. bill w On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Oct 9, 2017, at 6:09 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > We could have said that Kahneman and Tversky's Nobel was psychology's > first prize. Now Richard Thaler has won it for behavioral economics - in > other words, psychology. > > Biology is also ripping us off: now there is behavioral biology. > > Well, it's OK. > > > If you want to look at that way, maybe Gary Becker beat the three you > mention above. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 00:37:34 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 17:37:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nobel prize In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 9, 2017, at 4:27 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Well now, maybe there's a small discussion here after all. Just what does happen in the Nobel Prize committee when a person's expertise is in biochemistry? Or physical chemistry? Or any other borderline science - that is bridging the gap between two sciences. As for sociology and social psychology, the usual gap is that the former studies people in groups and the latter in individuals, though that is not a clean break. > > Are there movements to add prizes? Say, behavioral biology, which is neither medicine nor physiology. In some sense, the division of prizes and of areas of research is a historical accident, no? That these divisions persist I believe has more to do with pedagogical interests or maybe just the interests of those in these areas (which isn't to bash them; those working often seem to find it fruitful to tightly couple their pursuits) than with how reality is divided. Of course, the persistence of a division might mean someone is cutting along the joints. We'll see, I hope. Isn't behavioral biology also called ethology? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Oct 9 22:42:47 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:42:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nobel prize In-Reply-To: <02c101d3410b$65432020$2fc96060$@rainier66.com> References: <02c101d3410b$65432020$2fc96060$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001f01d3414f$ef3b7770$cdb26650$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: [ExI] nobel prize >?We could have said that Kahneman and Tversky's Nobel was psychology's first prize. Now Richard Thaler has won it for behavioral economics - in other words, psychology. >?Biology is also ripping us off: now there is behavioral biology. >?Well, it's OK. bill w BillW, the Nobel Prize is very famous, but there are some disciplines that will never get there. The math world created the Fields Medal. Perhaps psychology could create some kind of equivalent to Nobel and Fields. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 00:10:31 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 20:10:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: Hi Bill- I'd be interested in your thoughts, but I had in mind something like the reciprocity principle as an example of one of those psychological heuerstics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology) or as another example, the contrast principle : Two different things presented together or sequentially will feel more different than they really are. Hence sell the expensive item first, as the other items will seem cheap after that. I've been reading the book Influence by Cialadini which looks at how sales folks exploit a number of these heuristics. I would imagine there are others. It's hard to believe we have escaped the general concept of fixed action patterns that impact a large number of species that use them to exploit the fact that they are almost always a good behavioral shortcut. Of course, throughout nature, mimics and others have found various ways to exploit these same hard coded behaviors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 7:10 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into > all animals including us, but most of ours are probably* psychological *at > this point. dylan > > Yeah? And just what do you mean by that? Please explain. > > bill w > > On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Dylan Distasio > wrote: > >> Symmetry is another tell for good genes and attractive in potential mates. >> >> Another example of preprogrammed behaviors can be found in birds. Mother >> turkeys are great moms as long as their babies chirp. If a non-chirping >> baby is born, they will generally peck them to death as the chirping is a >> tell for a healthy baby. >> >> In robins, males will attack just the right shade of red feathers when it >> is presented to them. They don't even need a whole stuffed bird to be >> triggered. >> >> There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into >> all animals including us, but most of ours are probably psychological at >> this point. >> >> >> >> On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM, John Clark wrote: >> >>> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>> ?> ? >>>> how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the >>>> genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the >>>> unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) >>>> >>>> ? >>> The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an >>> animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no >>> sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain; >>> during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators. >>> ? ? >>> I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of passing >>> along its >>> ? ? >>> genes >>> ? ? >>> into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero and >>> over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like the >>> look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such >>> aversion. >>> >>> Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy >>> way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal, >>> and that's why >>> ?the? >>> skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely >>> poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but >>> its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and >>> would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous >>> animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker. >>> ? >>> >>> It >>> ? ? >>> reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a >>> ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing >>> ?like that makes them very poor flyers and ? >>> must greatly reduce >>> ?their? >>> chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large >>> tails. >>> ?Why do females like long tails? Because to >>> mate with the healthiest males >>> ? they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male >>> from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails >>> were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and >>> things can get out of hand. >>> >>> In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of >>> various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes? >>> ?,? >>> birds with midsize tail >>> ?s? >>> would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's >>> genes point of view this was obviously not the most important >>> consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long >>> ?est? >>> tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails >>> producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a >>> disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of >>> superior flight performance >>> ?and longer life ? >>> of birds with midsize >>> ?tails ? >>> outweighs the greater difficulty >>> ? in? >>> finding a mate. >>> >>> John K Clark >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 13:51:26 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:51:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle In-Reply-To: References: <001801d34054$855c8520$90158f60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 7:10 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > Hi Bill- > > I'd be interested in your thoughts, but I had in mind something like the > reciprocity principle as an example of one of those psychological > heuerstics: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology) > > or as another example, the contrast principle : Two different things > presented together or sequentially will feel more different than they > really are. Hence sell the expensive item first, as the other items will > seem cheap after that. > > I've been reading the book Influence by Cialadini which looks at how sales > folks exploit a number of these heuristics. > > I would imagine there are others. It's hard to believe we have escaped > the general concept of fixed action patterns that impact a large number of > species that use them to exploit the fact that they are almost always a > good behavioral shortcut. Of course, throughout nature, mimics and others > have found various ways to exploit these same hard coded behaviors: > > ?But I still don't know what you mean by 'psychological'. Do you mean learned? Or mental as opposed to physical? FAPs are not found in people. The closest thing we have is walking! No, not learned.? The fact is that human behavior is widely varied, not extremely strict, as FAPs are. And that's a good thing, as FAPs are very limiting - gives us no options if they don't work. Cialdini's book is a good one. bill w > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern > > On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 7:10 PM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into >> all animals including us, but most of ours are probably* psychological *at >> this point. dylan >> >> Yeah? And just what do you mean by that? Please explain. >> >> bill w >> >> On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Dylan Distasio >> wrote: >> >>> Symmetry is another tell for good genes and attractive in potential >>> mates. >>> >>> Another example of preprogrammed behaviors can be found in birds. >>> Mother turkeys are great moms as long as their babies chirp. If a >>> non-chirping baby is born, they will generally peck them to death as the >>> chirping is a tell for a healthy baby. >>> >>> In robins, males will attack just the right shade of red feathers when >>> it is presented to them. They don't even need a whole stuffed bird to be >>> triggered. >>> >>> There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into >>> all animals including us, but most of ours are probably psychological at >>> this point. >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM, John Clark wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> ?> ? >>>>> how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into >>>>> the genes? The skunk?s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the >>>>> unwise dog?s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.) >>>>> >>>>> ? >>>> The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an >>>> animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no >>>> sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain; >>>> during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators. >>>> ? ? >>>> I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of >>>> passing along its >>>> ? ? >>>> genes >>>> ? ? >>>> into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero >>>> and over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like >>>> the look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such >>>> aversion. >>>> >>>> Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy >>>> way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal, >>>> and that's why >>>> ?the? >>>> skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely >>>> poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but >>>> its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and >>>> would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous >>>> animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker. >>>> ? >>>> >>>> It >>>> ? ? >>>> reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a >>>> ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing >>>> ?like that makes them very poor flyers and ? >>>> must greatly reduce >>>> ?their? >>>> chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large >>>> tails. >>>> ?Why do females like long tails? Because to >>>> mate with the healthiest males >>>> ? they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male >>>> from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails >>>> were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and >>>> things can get out of hand. >>>> >>>> In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of >>>> various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes? >>>> ?,? >>>> birds with midsize tail >>>> ?s? >>>> would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's >>>> genes point of view this was obviously not the most important >>>> consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long >>>> ?est? >>>> tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails >>>> producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a >>>> disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of >>>> superior flight performance >>>> ?and longer life ? >>>> of birds with midsize >>>> ?tails ? >>>> outweighs the greater difficulty >>>> ? in? >>>> finding a mate. >>>> >>>> John K Clark >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 20:00:16 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:00:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] dark matter found? Message-ID: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2149742-half-the-universes-missing-matter-has-just-been-finally-found/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 22:23:20 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 17:23:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] dirty secrets of capitalism? Message-ID: >From The Week: by Rana Foroohar NYT Lending to Main Street (not sure I understand all of the metaphor) comprises 15% of the business of the big NY banks. The rest 'exists in a close loop of trading' and corporate deals that works solely to enrich the already rich. The financial industry provides 4% of America's jobs and takes home 25% of the corporate profit pie. When I first got a job teaching at a college I walked into the local bank, locally owned and asked for a loan to buy a car. My loan officer, the president, asked his secretary for the paperwork, filled it out and told me to call when I knew what I was buying. No history of my finances required. All he knew was that I taught at the college. Do we even have local banks any more, so that we can take our money away from the big banks that use our money to play games with it? Does this dispel the myth that if you raise taxes on the rich you hurt their ability to create jobs, trade, factories, etc.? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 22:55:18 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:55:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] dirty secrets of capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 6:23 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > From The Week: > > by Rana Foroohar NYT > > Lending to Main Street (not sure I understand all of the metaphor) > comprises 15% of the business of the big NY banks. The rest 'exists in a > close loop of trading' and corporate deals that works solely to enrich the > already rich. > Main Street is the real economy as opposed to Wall St. After working for a large investment bank for over a decade, I have come to the conclusion that they need to be broken up and the Glass Steagall Act needs to be reinstated walling off investment banking from private lending. Once they have been broken up into smaller entities, they should be allowed to fail if they take excessive risk. The FDIC will protect most account holders in terms of deposits, and the ones who have to worry about exceeding the maximums are savvy enough to work around it. The market was not allowed to clear after the financial crisis (with the exception of Lehman Brothers). Central banks (Federal Reserve and others) have taken away any worries over risk or failure. If banks had to own their risk, things would be significantly better. Over the course of most US history, this was how financial markets worked. > > Do we even have local banks any more, so that we can take our money away > from the big banks that use our money to play games with it? > Yes, there are still plenty of regional banks that do traditional lending. I encourage you to seek them out and reward them with your business and deposits. > > Does this dispel the myth that if you raise taxes on the rich you hurt > their ability to create jobs, trade, factories, etc.? > I am of the opinion that all taxes are collected staring down the barrel of a gun. They're expropriation by another name. The less of them the better... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 22:57:27 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:57:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] dirty secrets of capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I would add that IMO the Vampire Squid aka Goldman Sachs is the worst offender of the bunch. Goldman always wins at the expense of everyone else. They are embedded throughout the US government including that of the current administration and use their masterful cross pollination between private and public networks to great effect. On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > > > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 6:23 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> From The Week: >> >> by Rana Foroohar NYT >> >> Lending to Main Street (not sure I understand all of the metaphor) >> comprises 15% of the business of the big NY banks. The rest 'exists in a >> close loop of trading' and corporate deals that works solely to enrich the >> already rich. >> > > Main Street is the real economy as opposed to Wall St. After working for > a large investment bank for over a decade, I have come to the conclusion > that they need to be broken up and the Glass Steagall Act needs to be > reinstated walling off investment banking from private lending. Once they > have been broken up into smaller entities, they should be allowed to fail > if they take excessive risk. The FDIC will protect most account holders in > terms of deposits, and the ones who have to worry about exceeding the > maximums are savvy enough to work around it. > > The market was not allowed to clear after the financial crisis (with the > exception of Lehman Brothers). Central banks (Federal Reserve and others) > have taken away any worries over risk or failure. If banks had to own > their risk, things would be significantly better. Over the course of most > US history, this was how financial markets worked. > > >> >> Do we even have local banks any more, so that we can take our money away >> from the big banks that use our money to play games with it? >> > > Yes, there are still plenty of regional banks that do traditional > lending. I encourage you to seek them out and reward them with your > business and deposits. > >> >> Does this dispel the myth that if you raise taxes on the rich you hurt >> their ability to create jobs, trade, factories, etc.? >> > > I am of the opinion that all taxes are collected staring down the barrel > of a gun. They're expropriation by another name. The less of them the > better... > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 11 02:07:52 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 22:07:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] dark matter found? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 4:00 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2149742-half-the-univer > ses-missing-matter-has-just-been-finally-found/?utm_source > =pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits > > ?If this is correct then 10% of normal matter is made up of stars, 40%? is made of gas and dust inside galaxies ?,? and the new discovery is that 50% is in the form of hot gas between galaxies; but all of that put together just makes up 5% of the mass-energy in the universe, 5% is normal matter, 25% is dark matter, and 70% is dark energy. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 22:37:41 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:37:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dirty secrets of capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <067A8C35-B673-4EB2-A6A0-B30E152A6754@gmail.com> On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:23 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > From The Week: > > by Rana Foroohar NYT > > Lending to Main Street (not sure I understand all of the metaphor) comprises 15% of the business of the big NY banks. The rest 'exists in a close loop of trading' and corporate deals that works solely to enrich the already rich. > > The financial industry provides 4% of America's jobs and takes home 25% of the corporate profit pie. > > When I first got a job teaching at a college I walked into the local bank, locally owned and asked for a loan to buy a car. My loan officer, the president, asked his secretary for the paperwork, filled it out and told me to call when I knew what I was buying. > > No history of my finances required. All he knew was that I taught at the college. > > Do we even have local banks any more, so that we can take our money away from the big banks that use our money to play games with it? > > Does this dispel the myth that if you raise taxes on the rich you hurt their ability to create jobs, trade, factories, etc.? I think it's fanciful to believe the corporate ruling class will somehow harm itself for everyone else's benefit. Have a little faith. Whatever reforms may come will be tailored to their desires not yours. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 11 13:24:26 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:24:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] When did Tillerson call Trump a Moron? Message-ID: It was on July 20 right after a meeting at the Pentagon broke up and Trump had told the astonished generals the the USA should increase its nuclear arsenal by ten times. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-wanted-dramatic-increase-nuclear-arsenal-meeting-military-leaders-n809701 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 20:47:12 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:47:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Letters of recommendation bad? Message-ID: https://whatswrongcvsp.com/2017/10/12/whats-wrong-with-soliciting-letters-of-recommendation/ Any ideas for workarounds? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 23:15:44 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 18:15:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks Message-ID: What a treat I have in store for you. A laugh a day. I am reading ScienceBlind, which is mostly about intuitive theories of the world as explored in children, mostly, but college age adults too. Wait until you hear what they think about physics. (hint - you know the one about WWI planes dropping bombs from the cockpit and what happened in training?) Here's the first one: Americans were polled about GMO warning labels. 80% were in favor. They were also 80% in favor of warning labels on anything containing DNA. (yes, these were adults - in age anyway; mental age is in doubt - I wonder what they would have said had they put some random letters in caps in the question?) bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 23:34:24 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 18:34:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind Message-ID: This book is just amazing. I was never into developmental psych, and these findings are just outrageous. I have been mostly interested in cognitive errors, as you may have spotted, and these are in children, but unlike the usual run of errors of adults. Your son may be a bit too old to test for these things that I will be sharing, but OTOH some of the intuitive theories were held by adults. In fact, Ph. D. physicists showed evidence of the same errors found in children, if you can believe that. A surprise for me on every page. Very lucid writing. Method sections you can easily skip. Nature did not prepare us for this world - obviously. We learn, and we learn incorrectly. This is worth your time. In fact, I found myself in an error or two. For instance, what he calls the 'normal force' example consists of a table and book lying on it, and says the table is exerting a force upwards on the book (or else the book would be pulled through it by gravity, which I doubt in the extreme, as both are very solid). Upward force? From where? I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am and he is not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting pressure in every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is the force here?? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 23:23:32 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:23:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NAD+ Message-ID: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/beyond-resveratrol-the-anti-aging-nad-fad/, Keith From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 23:52:40 2017 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:52:40 -0300 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <84b9ad96-ab2a-8dcb-a70a-613f56b10b17@gmail.com> Never doubt human stupidity. In Brazil we have some weird laws about gluten. This causes some weird stuff like 'doesn't contain gluten' printed on salt packages and water bottles. Also other types of weird stuff like packages of frozen fish fillets that alerts 'food allergics beware: contains fish'. The vast majority of people doesn't seem able to walk and chew gum at the same time, like we use to say. On 12/10/2017 20:15, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > What a treat I have in store for you.? A laugh a day.? I am reading > ScienceBlind, which is mostly about intuitive theories of the world as > explored in children, mostly, but college age adults too.? Wait until > you hear what they think about physics. > > (hint - you know the one about WWI planes dropping bombs from the > cockpit and what happened in training?) > > Here's the first one: > > Americans were polled about GMO warning labels. ?80% were in favor. > > They were also 80% in favor of warning labels on anything containing > DNA. (yes, these were adults - in age anyway; mental age is in doubt - > ?I wonder what they would have said had they put some random letters > in caps in the question?) > > bill w > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 01:56:23 2017 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 21:56:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 12, 2017 7:45 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am and he is not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting pressure in every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is the force here?? Do you not know this or are you cleverly feigning to test the list for science blindness? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 02:53:50 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 19:53:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Letters of recommendation bad? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah: focus on resumes of the applicants themselves, just like the non-academic world does it. And borrow the best of what works for them - for instance, if you can create or find an automated test that at least screens out the 90+% of applicants who don't actually know the first thing about the job's subject, do so. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:47 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > https://whatswrongcvsp.com/2017/10/12/whats-wrong-with-soliciting-letters-of-recommendation/ > > Any ideas for workarounds? > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 15:49:49 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:49:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Oct 12, 2017 7:45 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > > > I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon > rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am and he is > not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting pressure in > every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is the force > here?? > > > Do you not know this or are you cleverly feigning to test the list for > science blindness? > ?------------ Ah, if only I were that clever. Even if I were, I'd not pull that on y'all. I just do not understand buoyancy. Another example from the book has a table pushing upwards against a book lying on it. Don't get that either. Don't see where the force is coming from. Lighter things rise. I get that. I just don't see why. bill w? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 16:07:34 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:07:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense object floats in water. It is the same exact principle when you have a less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air: http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Oct 12, 2017 7:45 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" >> wrote: >> >> >> >> I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium >> balloon rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am >> and he is not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting >> pressure in every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is >> the force here?? >> >> >> Do you not know this or are you cleverly feigning to test the list for >> science blindness? >> > ?------------ > Ah, if only I were that clever. Even if I were, I'd not pull that on > y'all. I just do not understand buoyancy. Another example from the book > has a table pushing upwards against a book lying on it. Don't get that > either. Don't see where the force is coming from. > > Lighter things rise. I get that. I just don't see why. > > bill w? > > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 16:23:12 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:23:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:34 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > In fact, I found myself in an error or two. For instance, what he calls > the 'normal force' > ? A normal force is just a force perpendicular to a surface. ?> ? > example consists of a table and book lying on it, and says the table is > exerting a force upwards on the book (or else the book would be pulled > through it by gravity, which I doubt in the extreme, as both are very > solid). Upward force? From where? > ?The short answer is electrostatic repulsion. The most outer part of the atoms on the most outer part of the book consist of negatively charged electrons, and the same is true of the atoms in the table, and 2 negatively charged objects repel each other. The reason this effect does not destroy all solid objects like books and tables is because of chemistry, sometimes 2 atoms can share an electron and form a chemical bond, this would happen if you put glue on the book and stuck it to the table. To explain why sometimes atoms would want to share an electron and form a bond I'd have to get into quantum mechanics. > ?> ? > I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon > rise? > ?Gravity is indeed exerting a downward force on the balloon, but it is also exerting a downward force on the air and because the air is heavier that force is stronger. Air is not a solid so it can move and it moves air under the balloon leaving the balloon nowhere to go but up. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 13:18:35 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:18:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:34 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > In fact, I found myself in an error or two. For instance, what he calls > the 'normal force' > ?A normal force is just a force perpendicular to a surface.? ?> ? > example consists of a table and book lying on it, and says the table is > exerting a force upwards on the book (or else the book would be pulled > through it by gravity, which I doubt in the extreme, as both are very > solid). Upward force? From where? > ?The short answer is electrostatic repulsion. The most outer part of the atoms on the most outer part of the book consist of negatively charged electrons, and the same is true of the atoms in the table, and 2 negatively charged objects repel each other. The reason this effect does not destroy all solid objects like books and tables is because of chemistry, sometimes 2 atoms can share an electron and form a chemical bond, this would happen if you put glue on the book and stuck it to the table. To explain why sometimes atoms would want to share an electron and form a bond I'd have to get into quantum mechanics. ? ? > ?> ? > I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon > rise? > ?Gravity is indeed exerting a downward force ?on the balloon, but it is also exerting a downward force on the air and because the air is heavier that force is stronger. Air is not a solid so it can move and it moves air under the balloon leaving the balloon nowhere to go but up. ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 16:40:26 2017 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:40:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it > would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense > object floats in water. It is the same exact principle when you have a > less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air: > > http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm > > Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at all to make a lighter than helium balloon? I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is considerable in Earth atmosphere. I've been curious about the use of aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see: Hindenberg). I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with environmental air and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time but at least you wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the impact. I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform and literally throw them into space. Imagine a trebuchet floating on a ship launching rocks lifted from the ocean floor, but the ship is floating on the atmosphere and the rocks are aerodynamic sling bullets heading to space. Well, enough thought experiment for now, I have to do actual work. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 16:11:54 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:11:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9A4446B6-16ED-428E-B9F1-2E0605F64940@gmail.com> On Oct 13, 2017, at 8:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> On Oct 12, 2017 7:45 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: >> >> >> I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am and he is not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting pressure in every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is the force here?? >> >> Do you not know this or are you cleverly feigning to test the list for science blindness? > ?------------ > Ah, if only I were that clever. Even if I were, I'd not pull that on y'all. I just do not understand buoyancy. Another example from the book has a table pushing upwards against a book lying on it. Don't get that either. Don't see where the force is coming from. > > Lighter things rise. I get that. I just don't see why. Buoyancy has to do with density of an object in a fluid medium. Your cat and you are not less dense than the air, hence (under everyday conditions) neither of you float away. The book is pulled down by gravity (in classical mechanics). If it's being acted in by a force yet doesn't move (in an inertial frame*), then another force must must be balanced against gravity. Since the book doesn't move, then it must be acted on by an equal and opposing force. In this case the table itself is pushing up against gravity. (In fact, the book will warp the table slightly, though this is unnoticeable is most situations. But imagine a really heavy book if a table that's very flexible. By the way, I notice this with my bookshelves, which have sagged over the years.) Anyone else, please correct me where I've gotten it wrong. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap * Well, it could move with constant velocity too, but the book is doing neither approximately if we take it to be in an inertial frame. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 17:20:31 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:20:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No one of any age should be insulted when someone tries to cure their ignorance. I don't mind being ignorant. It's not shameful to me. I just enjoy not being ignorant any more, so I am thankful to all who help me. Thanks to you and to John Clark for the table explanation. I still don't get some of it. Say you take a less dense object and put it underwater. Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less on it? And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on something more dense? Or is it gravity? If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since there is no air to exert an upward force on my body? If this is correct, I am beginning to get it, eh? bill w On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Dylan Distasio > wrote: > >> I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it >> would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense >> object floats in water. It is the same exact principle when you have a >> less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air: >> >> http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm >> >> > Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at > all to make a lighter than helium balloon? > > I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is > considerable in Earth atmosphere. I've been curious about the use of > aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft > literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than > the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see: > Hindenberg). I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with > environmental air and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time > but at least you wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the > impact. > > I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to > encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform > and literally throw them into space. Imagine a trebuchet floating on a > ship launching rocks lifted from the ocean floor, but the ship is floating > on the atmosphere and the rocks are aerodynamic sling bullets heading to > space. > > Well, enough thought experiment for now, I have to do actual work. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 17:56:56 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:56:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bill- I will leave it to my betters on this list like John C. in terms of corrections to my explanation, but as far as I know it is more about buoyancy, displacement, and Archimedes' principle regarding the WEIGHT of an object. Gravity is constant across both the air and the balloon but because of the density/displacement the weight of the balloon is less than the air around it, so it floats. An object that sinks displaces an amount of fluid equal to the object's volume. Thus buoyancy is expressed through Archimedes' principle , which states that the weight of the object is reduced by its volume multiplied by the density of the fluid. If the weight of the object is less than this displaced quantity, the object floats; if more, it sinks. The amount of fluid displaced is directly related (via Archimedes' Principle) to its volume. The link has a full explanation of the principle. Hopefully, I'm accurate here. College physics is a long ways from these parts for me. On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 1:20 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > No one of any age should be insulted when someone tries to cure their > ignorance. I don't mind being ignorant. It's not shameful to me. I just > enjoy not being ignorant any more, so I am thankful to all who help me. > > Thanks to you and to John Clark for the table explanation. > > I still don't get some of it. Say you take a less dense object and put it > underwater. Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less > on it? And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on > something more dense? Or is it gravity? > > If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since > there is no air to exert an upward force on my body? If this is correct, I > am beginning to get it, eh? > > bill w > > On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Dylan Distasio >> wrote: >> >>> I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it >>> would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense >>> object floats in water. It is the same exact principle when you have a >>> less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air: >>> >>> http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm >>> >>> >> Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at >> all to make a lighter than helium balloon? >> >> I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is >> considerable in Earth atmosphere. I've been curious about the use of >> aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft >> literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than >> the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see: >> Hindenberg). I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with >> environmental air and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time >> but at least you wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the >> impact. >> >> I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to >> encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform >> and literally throw them into space. Imagine a trebuchet floating on a >> ship launching rocks lifted from the ocean floor, but the ship is floating >> on the atmosphere and the rocks are aerodynamic sling bullets heading to >> space. >> >> Well, enough thought experiment for now, I have to do actual work. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 17:13:39 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:13:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at all > to make a lighter than helium balloon? > > I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is > considerable in Earth atmosphere. I've been curious about the use of > aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft > literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than > the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see: Hindenberg). > I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with environmental air > and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time but at least you > wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the impact. Aerogels aren't stiff enough. When the air presses on them and there's nothing behind them, they'd simply collapse to fill up that nothing, and then you'd just have a solid mass of aerogel. I happen to have a theoretical formulation that could do a vacuum balloon, which has withstood all the theoretical analyses I've subjected it to (from myself, and other engineers I trust under NDA; any aerospace or mechanical engineers on this list who would like to review it, please contact me offlist and I'll get you an NDA). I've been trying to find an airship manufacturer or the like who'd be interested in prototyping and licensing the design. > I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to > encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform > and literally throw them into space. There's been some thought put into this concept. Look up "orbital ring" - or, on a far lesser scale (just one balloon), "rockoon". From avant at sollegro.com Fri Oct 13 17:50:55 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:50:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Letters of recommendation bad? Message-ID: <5708a506deb5f1bf443c0cc4c31afbbb.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Dan wrote: >https://whatswrongcvsp.com/2017/10/12/whats-wrong-with-soliciting-letters-of-recommendation/ > >Any ideas for workarounds? While I agree that the author's argument clearly applies to university philosophy departments, I am not sure it applies to academic science, medical, and engineering departments. Academic science at it its core is a very contentious field. In addition to the simple rivalry of the niche job-market aspects of academia in general, you have competition for grant money, you have competition between theories and interpretations of data, as well as interpersonal conflicts. In scenarios where toxic chemicals, or other potentially hazardous technologies, not to mention millions of dollars of grant money are at stake, I think it is comforting for the comittees to know that the job candidate has at least three colleagues familar with his work, who are not being held hostage at the time, that are willing to vouch for him. Stuart LaForge From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 19:09:08 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 15:09:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 1:20 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > No one of any age should be insulted when someone tries to cure their > ignorance. I don't mind being ignorant. It's not shameful to me. I just > enjoy not being ignorant any more, so I am thankful to all who help me. > ?And that is a very enlightened attitude! ? ?> ? > I still don't get some of it. Say you take a less dense object and put it > underwater. Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less > on it? > ?Yes.? > > ?> ? > And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on something > more dense > ? ? > Or is it gravity? > ?Gravity exerts less of a downward force on on something less dense than water then it does on water, it would rise for the same reason a balloon does. ?A bubble of air at atmospheric pressure is 784 times? less dense than water so it rises in water, but air is compressible and water is not, and the pressure increases by one atmosphere every 10 meters down in the ocean you go, so at about 78,400 meters a underwater bubble of air would have the same density as water and so would not rise, and any deeper than that and air would be more dense than water and the air bubble would sink. Only trouble is the sea is not 78,400 meters deep, at least not on this planet, and long before that the air would diffuse into the water, but you get the idea. ?> ? > If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since > there is no air to exert an upward force on my body? > ?In a the air when you step on your bathroom scale there is a gravitational force pulling you down but there is also a less strong force from the air pushing you up, so in a vacuum the reading on the scale would be slightly higher. By the way, Einstein says acceleration and gravity are the same thing, so when a car accelerates it pushes you into your seat but when you put on the brakes you're pulled toward the windshield, however if Einstein was right then a helium balloon in a car? should move in the opposite direction that you do because it is less dense than the air in the car but you are not. This video tests to see if that is really true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8mzDvpKzfY ?John K Clark? > If this is correct, I am beginning to get it, eh? > > bill w > > On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Dylan Distasio >> wrote: >> >>> I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it >>> would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense >>> object floats in water. It is the same exact principle when you have a >>> less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air: >>> >>> http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm >>> >>> >> Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at >> all to make a lighter than helium balloon? >> >> I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is >> considerable in Earth atmosphere. I've been curious about the use of >> aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft >> literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than >> the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see: >> Hindenberg). I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with >> environmental air and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time >> but at least you wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the >> impact. >> >> I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to >> encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform >> and literally throw them into space. Imagine a trebuchet floating on a >> ship launching rocks lifted from the ocean floor, but the ship is floating >> on the atmosphere and the rocks are aerodynamic sling bullets heading to >> space. >> >> Well, enough thought experiment for now, I have to do actual work. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Fri Oct 13 18:28:40 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 11:28:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind Message-ID: <39eceb4331946c7d3d009568b7816d6e.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillW wrote: >I still don't get some of it. Say you take a less dense object and put it >underwater. Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less >on it? And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on >something more dense? Or is it gravity? It is precisely gravity when it is not overwhelmed by the stronger electromagnetic force. For example, if chemical bonds were weaker and all matter was a liquid, you as a liquid, would rise or fall until you were at the layer of all the liquids with your same density. >If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since >there is no air to exert an upward force on my body? If this is correct, I >am beginning to get it, eh? Yes. You would "weigh" appromiximately 1.2 grams more per kilogram of your actual mass if you were in a vaccuum. Stuart LaForge From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 17:21:26 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:21:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: <9A4446B6-16ED-428E-B9F1-2E0605F64940@gmail.com> References: <9A4446B6-16ED-428E-B9F1-2E0605F64940@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 9:11 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > The book is pulled down by gravity (in classical mechanics). If it's being > acted in by a force yet doesn't move (in an inertial frame*), then another > force must must be balanced against gravity. Since the book doesn't move, > then it must be acted on by an equal and opposing force. In this case the > table itself is pushing up against gravity. To extend this: the weight of the book pushes down on the table. Since the table pushes the book up, the table itself is pushed down more. Thus, the floor under the table must bear the downward force (the "weight") of the table and the book, even though only the table is in direct contact with the floor. Eventually you get down to the foundations of the house, which transmit the weight of everything in the house to the earth underneath. Go down far enough and the pressure, from the weight of everything above, would crush any of us were we down there. Fortunately, we are not down there; all that's down there is rock and magma, which are far more resistant to crushing than flesh and bones are. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 18:02:08 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 11:02:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:20 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > No one of any age should be insulted when someone tries to cure their > ignorance. I don't mind being ignorant. It's not shameful to me. I just > enjoy not being ignorant any more, so I am thankful to all who help me. https://xkcd.com/1053/ puts my answer to this well enough. > I still don't get some of it. Say you take a less dense object and put it > underwater. Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less > on it? Less *per unit volume*, yes. In other words, gravity pulls less on it than gravity pulls on an equal volume of water. > And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on > something more dense? Or is it gravity? Two things are being pulled by gravity into the same volume: the object, and enough water to fill that same space. Since the water is being pulled on harder, the water gets in - and the object is forced out. The object has to go somewhere, and if you're out at sea (so "to the sides" runs into "but the water over there is being pulled harder too"), the only way to go is up - so, up the object goes. (In theory, if you set up pipes and columns and stuff, an object could be pushed to the side by this. Something like that is exactly what happens if the object is hit by a water cannon: although gravity is not the source of the force, the water has enough force to try to push the object aside.) > If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since > there is no air to exert an upward force on my body? If this is correct, I > am beginning to get it, eh? Yes and no, though you are beginning to get it. If you were in a vacuum, yes there wouldn't be air trying to push you up - but there also wouldn't be air above you trying to push you down. Remember how a table bears the weight of the book upon it? You bear the weight of the air above you. Fortunately this is a very, very light weight, and you're so used to it (having lived with it literally your entire life) you don't notice. From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 00:23:38 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:23:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fixes cavities and regrows teeth? Message-ID: <2631DF73-EDBE-4CBD-946C-95D545D655C2@gmail.com> https://futurism.com/scientists-have-discovered-this-drug-fixes-cavities-and-regrows-teeth/ One step closer. Will other tech advance first? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 01:54:34 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 21:54:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scieceblind In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I said:? > *"??A bubble of air at atmospheric pressure is 784 times? less dense than > water so it rises in water, but air is compressible and water is not, and > the pressure increases by one atmosphere every 10 meters down in the ocean > you go, so at about 78,400 meters a underwater bubble of air would have the > same density as water?"?* > ?It took a long time but after a very detailed calculation (I was afraid ? my computer's microprocessor would overheat)? I have come to the conclusion ?that 10 times 784 is 7,840 ?not 78,400? as I originally said. That means the critical point is 7,840 meters, about 5 miles, and the sea is that deep in places. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat Oct 14 07:10:15 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 00:10:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark energy = (anti)gravity? Message-ID: <2943dab9e43ad7d53dfc427b2cece70c.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Stuart LaForge > wrote: >> The entropy of a state with a probability of 1 is ln(1) >> ? ? >> or precisely zero ? ? >> in both Boltzmann and Shannon formulations. I didn't know this was even ? >> ? >> controversial. > > ?Entropy is proportional to the logarithm of the number of ? > ways previous micro-states ?could have produced the present macro-state, > but if at the start of time the universe was in one state there were no > previous micro-states ?, or previous anything. Thermodynamics says that entropy is a function of state. That means it is path independent so it doesn't matter how the universe got into its initial state of zero entropy because all paths, including reversible ones, are equally valid. When all possible paths lead back to the initial state, it is the same as as having always been in that state. >> if the universe has a single age that all observers can agree upon, >> > > But they don't agree, some observers will say the universe is older than > others. If that is the case, then of what use is the cosmological principle? Why even bother talking about the universe as some distinct entity unto itself that can have a definable age? > > There is no universal time everybody can agree on. ?If a traveling > observer goes from point A to point B the Proper T > ime ?of that ? > ? journey is the time measured by the observers own stopwatch and using > the traveling observer's definition of simultaneity to decide when to > start and stop the stopwatch. But there is no universal agreement, some > observers will say the stopwatch is running too slow, others will say it > is too fast, and they will say the traveling observer started and stopped > the watch at the wrong time. But in the case of the universe, all those stop watches started at the same time and in the same place. They would have gotten out of synch over the years due to local space-time curvatures but you should be able to average all those stop watches together and get something like a "true age" of the universe. >> So Noether's theorem and Einstein's equations could both be satisfied >> given the correct boundary conditions. >> > > ?Noether's theorem says that if the laws of physics tell a system to > behave in a certain way at one time and the system behaves the same way at > any other time then energy is conserved, but it won't behave the same way > at a different time because spacetime is accelerating.? Perhaps, but then the constants of nature ought to smoothly change over space-time. They wouldn't change drastically all of a sudden. Thus they are still of value as approximations that are asymptotic to an unknowable truth. BTW my equations also predict an accelerating universe. >> the curvature of the universe as a whole has been bounded to be within >> +/- 0.004 which causes the flatness problem. The FLRW metric >> implies that if the universe has so little curvature now, in the >> beginning it would have to have had way less curvature, on the order of >> 10^?62. That >> is so infintesimally small that the probability of such an arrangement >> so close to zero, without actually being zero, is vanishingly small. > ?I don't know how you could even assign a probability to something like > that. If the universe is infinitely large and negatively curved you'd > expect the local curvature to be ? vanishingly small ?. ?Even if the > universe is finite the local curvature would still be unmeasurably small > if the universe were big enough. But is the universe big enough? I can't > even make a guess about that. Well if the universe is negatively curved and infinite then the philosophical implications are similar to a flat universe of infinite extent. The truth is we don't know and might never know. But a flat universe can conserve energy and that is thermodynamically satisfying. In a flat universe, dark energy is just superluminal gravity at long ranges. That is epistemologically satisfying. And the philosophical benefits of an infinite universe are also satisfying. It would mean that we too are infinite with countless copies repeated through time and space across the cosmos. Countless versions of us living identical lives. Countless versions of us living every possible permutation of our lives. Infinite copies of us taking every possible road almost all of which are unique. With all that infinity offers, I would say that Pascals wager might apply to a flat universe. Or even a negatively curved one. >> And in a flat universe, GR conserves total energy at least according to >> the Friedmann equations and my potential field equations. > > > ?If ? > spacetime ? is not evolving then energy is conserved, but we now know > something Friedmann did not ; spacetime is evolving, not only is it > expanding it's accelerating. ? > > ?From Sean Carroll at: > http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy- > is-not-conserved/? >From Carroll's blog post that you cite: "And in my experience, saying ?there?s energy in the gravitational field, but it?s negative, so it exactly cancels the energy you think is being gained in the matter fields? does not actually increase anyone?s understanding ? it just quiets them down. Whereas if you say ?in general relativity spacetime can give energy to matter, or absorb it from matter, so that the total energy simply isn?t conserved,? they might be surprised but I think most people do actually gain some understanding thereby." Here Carroll makes it clear that he denies the conservation of energy to avoid having to explain negative energy to people. It's a pedagological choice he makes, not one based on mathematical reasoning. It is clear here from his explanation here that curved space-time acts exactly like a potential gradient and negative energy behaves like potential energy. I don't see how Carrolls pedalogical choices affects the validity of my theory. >> as the density approaches an assymptote at located at twice thecritical >> density > > Dc = 3H^2/(8*pi*G), > ?The equation is correct but keep in mind ? > H, the Hubble parameter > ?,? > is not a constant ?but is > decreasing with time. And the value of Dc is not just determined by the > mass of matter in a unit of space, pressure and tension are also part of > it. First off keep in mind that in a flat universe Dc is not just the critical density of the universe but also the actual density of the universe. And H is only decreasing with time only if the density of the universe is likewise decreasing with time. But if the density of the universe is increasing with time through conservation of energy and increasing entropy, then H is getting bigger over time while our cosmological horizon shrinks. > No, communicating is not the same thing as influencing, communicating > involves transferring Shannon style information and ? ? > entanglement ? ? > can't do that faster than light. But it will still let you influence > things faster than light. Good. That's all my theory needs is for gravity to be able to "influence things" faster than light. No Shannon entropy need be exchanged. >> My point is that you *can't* use it to send messages into the past. >> Only >> the universe can. It's like a private communications channel between >> particles to exchange quantum information like position and momentum. >> > > OK that might be true, it sounds rather like John Cramer's transactional > interpretation of quantum mechanics; but I have to say backward causality > makes me nervous even though ? ? > nothing ? ? > Shannon > ? ? > would recognize as information is sent into the past and so ?no ? > paradoxes ? ? > are ? ? > produced. It's certainly similar to Cramer's transactional interpretation in that regard although mine is not quantitized. And Cramer's doesn't deal with gravitation. My earlier attempts at quantum gravity have been overturned by the super-long Compton wavelength of the graviton reported by LIGO. It seems unlikely at this point that the Planck constant applies to gravity waves the same way it does to light. >> I know it is unintuitive that gravity could be both an attractive and a >> repulsive force based on density rather than something like charge. >> > > Einstein says density isn't the only thing that makes a gravitational > field, pressure and tension do too, and tension (negative pressure) makes > gravity repulsive if the tension is strong enough. And ? ? > Dark Energy isn't made of matter so it doesn't become less dense as space > expands instead it is a property of space itself ?,? > so the density of Dark Energy remains constant regardless of how much > space expands. Because Dark energy is persistent it gives a constant push > to the universe, and if you push on something with a constant force it > will accelerate. My equations simply lump pressure and tension together with matter density and radiation density through the mass-energy equivalence principle. It just deals with total density of all components of the stress-energy tensor converted to mass. > > >> ?> ? >> BTW, as a testable prediction my theory predicts that objects inside an >> ? ? >> evacuated hollow spherical shell at zero G, should very slowly gravitate >> ? t? >> o the closest part of the hollow sphere unless they were in the exact ? ? >> center. ? ? >> This is in direct contradiction to what Newton's shell theorem predicts >> by ? ? >> purely attractive gravity. > > > It seems to me that is pretty good evidence your theory must be wrong. > ? ? > A simple corollary to > ? ? > Newton's shell theory > ? ? > states that externally the sun's gravitational field behave ?s? > as if all it's mass were concentrated at it's center point, if this were > not true the orbits of the planets would be quite different from what we > have observed and would have been noticed centuries ago. Actually no because my theory predicts that external to the sphere, at least locally, the hollow sphere still behaves gravitationally as a point mass out to the radius of its zero-potential sphere. Alas my suggested experiment is none-the-less untenable. No interferometer is sensitive enough to detect such a small acceleration within any reasonably sized sphere. Stuart LaForge From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 15:59:31 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 10:59:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: scienceblind In-Reply-To: <59E103AE.3060605@yahoo.com> References: <59E103AE.3060605@yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thanks Ben - This makes a lot more sense to me. If I push something with enough force, then when I suddenly move my hand, it should come towards me, right? Hah. Can't be right. Have to make Newton consistent. I like it. bill w ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ben Date: Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 1:19 PM Subject: [ExI] scienceblind To: foozler83 at gmail.com Hi Bill. Excuse me for replying directly to you, but the Exi-Chat list seems to be rejecting my emails nowadays. Feel free to re-post to the list if you want. I've done some engineering courses, and they assume knowledge of basic physics, naturally enough, including this concept of a Normal force, or Reaction force, which I had the same difficulty with as you seem to be having. I'd object to my tutor along the lines of "if this beam experiences an upward force from the support, how come it doesn't shoot up into the air when it's cut in half?" The whole concept of an upward force is nonsense to me, as it seems to be to you. This also applies to Centrifugal Force. Physicists insist that there's no such thing, it's actually 'Centripetal Force', i.e. an inward-pointing force, contrary to all common-sense and experience. The solution, I've finally decided, is that these ideas arise purely from Newtons third law of motion ("any action produces and equal and opposite reaction", in plain english), and the need to make everything, including static loads, fit in to this law. So, if a glass is put on a table, it exerts a force on the table, by virtue of gravity. If the 3rd law is not to be broken, the table 'must' apply an equal and opposite force on the glass. We know that there is no real force that the table exerts (where would the energy come from?), it's a bookkeeping exercise really. But physicists and engineers will insist that yes, there really is an actual force. I reconcile this by thinking this is a 'virtual' force, that only exists while the actual force applies, and as soon as the actual force changes, so does the virtual, opposite one. In the end, it seems to me, it's all about making the maths work out. The important thing is, using this concept, we can succesfully design and build structures that work. If anyone can clarify, contradict (with clear, plain-english explanations) or expand on, this view, I'd welcome it. Cheers Ben --------------------------------------------------------------------- Original Message (to Exi-Chat): Subject: [ExI] scieceblind Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" This book is just amazing. I was never into developmental psych, and these findings are just outrageous. I have been mostly interested in cognitive errors, as you may have spotted, and these are in children, but unlike the usual run of errors of adults. Your son may be a bit too old to test for these things that I will be sharing, but OTOH some of the intuitive theories were held by adults. In fact, Ph. D. physicists showed evidence of the same errors found in children, if you can believe that. A surprise for me on every page. Very lucid writing. Method sections you can easily skip. Nature did not prepare us for this world - obviously. We learn, and we learn incorrectly. This is worth your time. In fact, I found myself in an error or two. For instance, what he calls the 'normal force' example consists of a table and book lying on it, and says the table is exerting a force upwards on the book (or else the book would be pulled through it by gravity, which I doubt in the extreme, as both are very solid). Upward force? From where? I also thought about something not in the book: why does a helium balloon rise? Don't tell l me it's lighter. My cat is lighter than I am and he is not flying around. The gas inside the balloon must be exerting pressure in every direction, so the force cannot be from there. Where is the force here?? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Oct 15 22:06:37 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 18:06:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark energy = (anti)gravity? In-Reply-To: <2943dab9e43ad7d53dfc427b2cece70c.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <2943dab9e43ad7d53dfc427b2cece70c.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 Stuart LaForge wrote: ?> ? > Thermodynamics says that entropy is a function of state. That means it is > path independent so it doesn't matter how the universe got into its > initial state of zero entropy because all paths, including reversible > ones, are equally valid. ?All paths leading up to the first instant of time are equally invalid because there were none. ? > > >> ?> ? >> they don't agree, >> ? ? >> some observers will say the universe is older than >> ? ? >> others. > > > ?> ? > If that is the case, then of what use is the cosmological principle? ?You tell me. T he cosmological principle ? says the universe looks the same at the largest scale, but it doesn't.? Very distant galaxies near the limit of our cosmological horizon are smaller but have larger stars in them than galaxies that are closer to us. ?> ? > Why > ? > even bother talking about the universe as some distinct entity unto itself > that can have a definable age? > ?Nothing has an age everybody can agree on, but that doesn't prevent anybody talking about stuff.? > > >> ?> >> If a traveling >> ? >> observer goes from point A to point B the Proper Time of >> ?t? >> hat journey is the time measured by the observers own stopwatch and using >> ? >> the traveling observer's definition of simultaneity to decide when to >> start and stop the stopwatch. But there is no universal agreement, some >> ? >> observers will say the stopwatch is running too slow, others will say it >> ? >> is too fast, and they will say the traveling observer started and stopped >> ? >> the watch at the wrong time. > > > ?>? > But in the case of the universe, all those stop watches started at the > same time and in the same place. ?But to measure a time interval both a start and stop point is needed and all those stopwatches stopped at different times because ?there is no universal agreement on simultaneity, so there is no agreement on if watch X stopped before watch Y or watch Y stopped before watch X. And to make things even worse the stopwatches are running at different rates. So there is no universal agreement on when the Big Bang happened; right here right now we say it was 13.8 billion years ago, but others would disagree > ?> ? > They would have gotten out of synch over > ? > the years due to local space-time curvatures but you should be able to > ? > average all those stop watches together and get something like a "true > ? > age" of the universe. > There are a infinite number of ways a bunch of distant clocks can be brought ?together in a expanding universe, and I don't see how everyone could agree on how to do it. Should distant clock X be brought to clock Y or should clock Y be brought to clock X? It makes a difference because one clock would be accelerated and the other clock would not and a accelerated clock runs slower than one in a inertial frame of reference. > ?>? > a flat universe can > ? > conserve energy and that is thermodynamically satisfying. A universe can be flat and still be ?expanding and even ? accelerating if there is a property of space itself that causes it to ?intrinsically ? contain energy, and we found out 20 years ago that there is, about 1/100 of a ?n? erg per cubic meter. A erg is about as much energy as a common housefly needs to perform one push-up so that may not sound like much but there is a awful lot of otherwise empty cubic meters out there, so much so that today dark energy makes up 70% of the mass/energy in the entire universe. And that percentage will increase as time passes because both normal matter and dark matter will keep getting diluted but dark energy will not, the more space ?that space itself creates the more dark energy there is ?,? but the amount of matter ?in the universe ? will be constant. ?> ? > And the philosophical benefits of an infinite universe are also > ? ? > satisfying. It would mean that we too are infinite with countless copies > ? ? > repeated through time and space across the cosmos. Countless versions of > ? ? > us living identical lives. Countless versions of us living every possible > ? ? > permutation of our lives. Infinite copies of us taking every possible road > ? ? > almost all of which are unique. > ?I find that philosophically satisfying too, and maybe its true but the universe is under no obligation to conform to human desires. ? > > ?From Sean Carroll at: > > http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy- > > ?> ? > Here Carroll makes it clear that he denies the conservation of energy to > avoid having to explain negative energy to people. It's a pedagological > choice he makes, not one based on mathematical reasoning. ?The only reason humans invented conservation laws is to help us understand how the world works. If in circumstances far from everyday life we have to contort them in complex ways so they still apply then there gets to be a point where it's not worth the effort. The important thing is we can us the ? ? mathematical reasoning ? ? in Noether's theorem ? to conclude that if the fundamental laws that tell objects ?how to move do not change with the passage of time then energy is conceived, but General Relativity says they do change with the passage of time. I go back to my example of a gamma ray photon produced in the Big Bang, because something very fundamental has changes since that photon was produced, space has expanded, that gamma ray photon is now a far less energetic microwave photon and eventually space will have expanded so much it will be a radio photon with a wavelength ? ? longer than the observable universe and be undetectable even in principle. The energy in that photon would have been conserved if space didn't expand, but it does so it isn't. ? > > ?> ? > keep in mind that in a flat universe Dc is not just the critical > ? ? > density of the universe but also the actual density of the universe. > ? > ? The equation you're using, Dc = 3H^2/(8*pi*G) ? , ?where Dc is the critical density ? is only valid if the cosmological constant is zero, but we've known for 20 years that i ?t? can't be zero because the universe is accelerating. So density alone doesn't determine geometry of the universe and ?thus we can't be living in a ? simple? ? Friedmann universe ?.? > ?> ? > And H is only decreasing with time only if the density of the universe is > ? ? > likewise decreasing with time. > ? ? > But if the density of the universe is > ? i? > ncreasing with time through conservation of energy ?The density of normal matter and Dark Matter has decreased over time but it has become clear that the gravitation caused by matter alone (not even with the help of dark Matter) is insufficient to explain the evolution of the universe. For a very long time the expansion of the universe was slowing down just as you'd expect, but about 5 billion years ago (and nearly 9 billion year after the Big Bang) the deceleration stopped and things started to accelerate. This can only be because the matter became diluted and so did the gravitational force trying to slow things down but some property of space itself called Dark Energy which nobody understands causes things to speed up, so whatever it is when there is more space there is more Dark Energy ? > ?>> ? >> communicating is not the same thing as influencing, communicating >> ? >> involves transferring Shannon style information and entanglement can't >> do that faster than light. But it will still let you influence >> ? >> things faster than light. > > > ?> ? > Good. That's all my theory needs is for gravity to be able to "influence > things" faster than light. No Shannon entropy need be exchanged. > ?But you also said:? ?*"?* *In a flat? universe, dark energy is just superluminal gravity at long ranges* ?"? ?I'm not sure what that means. If Dark Energy is a property of space itself as if seems to be then it doesn't need to travel a long distance to be manifest. ? ?> ? > My earlier attempts at quantum gravity have been overturned by the > super-long Compton wavelength of the graviton reported by LIGO. ?I don't know what you mean by that, LIGO has not detected the graviton nor has anybody else, it is purely theoretical and may not even exist and even if it does I think its unlikely anyone will be able to find one this century. ? ?> ? > My equations simply lump pressure and tension together with matter density > and radiation density through the mass-energy equivalence principle. It > just deals with total density of all components of the stress-energy > tensor converted to mass. > Both pressure and tension are potential energy, but Einstein says pressure causes gravitational attraction but ?tension (negative pressure) causes gravitational repulsion. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 03:39:16 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 23:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gravitational waves made by colliding neutron stars found Message-ID: The rumors were true. On Aug 17 at 8:41 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (Aug 18 12:41: Universal Time) LIGO and VIRGO detected a Gravitational Wave coming from the collision of 2 neutron stars of 1.1 and 1.6 solar masses. LIGO/VIRGO immediately alerted other astronomers to look at the region around galaxy NGC 4993 130 million light years away for anything unusual, but the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory had already found a short gamma ray burst from NGC 4993. Soon after that optical astronomers in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope saw blue spot in NGC 4993 that wasn't there just days before, radio telescopes also saw unusual stuff. This time the gravitational wave lasted about 100 seconds, the Black Hole collisions they saw before only lasted about a second; at the start of that 100 seconds the 2 stars were orbiting only 200 miles apart. It's not clear if the merged object is a Black Hole or a larger Neutron star, the transition between the 2 is thought to be between 2.5 and 4 solar masses but the exact ?transition ? point is not known. ? ?But it is thought that the event synthesized and ejected 40 to 100 earth masses of Gold and 10 to 30 earth masses of Uranium. Astronomers were very lucky, all 3 gravitational detectors were online at the same time for only a few weeks but that's when this event happened, and its the closest short gamma ray burst ever found. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-gw170817 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 16:24:07 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 12:24:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gravitational waves made by colliding neutron stars found Message-ID: ?The rumors were true. ? On ? ? Aug 17 at 8:41 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time ? ? (Aug 18 12:41: Universal Time) LIGO and VIRGO detected a Gravitational Wave coming from the collision of 2 neutron stars of 1.1 and 1.6 solar masses. ? ? LIGO/VIRGO immediately alerted other astronomers to look at the region around galaxy ? ? NGC 4993 ? ? 130 million light years away for anything unusual, but the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory ? ? had already found a short gamma ray burst from ? ? NGC 4993. Soon after that optical astronomers in Chile and ? ?the Hubble Space Telescope ? ? saw blue spot in NGC 4993 ? ? that wasn't there just days before, radio telescopes also ?saw? unusual stuff. This time the gravitational wave lasted about 100 seconds, the Black Hole collisions they saw before only lasted about a second; at the start of that 100 seconds the 2 stars were orbiting only 200 miles apart. It's not clear if the merged object is a Black Hole or a larger Neutron star, the transition between the 2 is thought to be between 2.5 and 4 solar masses but the exact ?transition ? point is not known. ? ?But it is thought that the event synthesized and ejected 40 to 100 earth masses of Gold and 10 to 30 earth masses of Uranium. Astronomers were very lucky, all 3 gravitational detectors were online at the same time for only a few weeks but that's when this event happened, and its the closest short gamma ray burst ever found. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-gw170817 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 19:21:11 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:21:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question Message-ID: Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the ground at the same time. I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder in the bullet it would go farther, but the time it takes for a bullet to drop remains the same. ?? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Oct 18 04:31:52 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 21:31:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gravitational waves made by colliding neutron stars found In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c701d347ca$06784eb0$1368ec10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Monday, October 16, 2017 8:39 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Gravitational waves made by colliding neutron stars found >?The rumors were true. On Aug 17 at 8:41 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (Aug 18 12:41: Universal Time) LIGO and VIRGO detected a Gravitational Wave coming from the collision of 2 neutron stars of 1.1 and 1.6 solar masses. LIGO/VIRGO immediately alerted other astronomers to look at the region around galaxy NGC 4993 130 million light years away for anything unusual, but the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory had already found a short gamma ray burst from NGC 4993. Soon after that optical astronomers in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope saw blue spot in NGC 4993 that wasn't there just days before, radio telescopes also saw unusual stuff? This go-around yielded more science than everything we have done in space combined methinks. I admit to having been an early critic of the LIGO notion: skeptical we would ever see anything. Well, I ain?t no more. I have been blown away repeatedly, and learned more physics than at any time before: I reviewed all that crazy-difficult General Relativity stuff, then this latest WOWSers! I would have thought we would be waiting a hundred years between neutron star mergers, perhaps a thousand black hole collisions between every neutron pair merger. Then this happens, oh what a time. The 2017 triumphs of computational astronomy more than makes up for all the political heartbreak and craziness of 2016, makes up for it 100 times over. Life goes on. More mergers coming, more physics to learn, ooooh so cool it is, so cool. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Oct 18 05:08:04 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:08:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002001d347cf$14f77380$3ee65a80$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Monday, October 16, 2017 12:21 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the ground at the same time. I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder in the bullet it would go farther, but the time it takes for a bullet to drop remains the same. ?? bill w It really does work that way. You can demonstrate it if you have access to a still lake when no one is around. Get a sturdy table or something on which you can clamp your rifle, get a precision level, or even a good old carpenter?s level will do, mount it horizontally, fire. Note how quickly you see the first skip out there, a fraction of a second after you pull the trigger. If you decide to do that, note that the slug will skip a bunch of times so make sure it is a really big lake. Otherwise, see if you can find a YouTube where a different yahoo came up with the same idea. Here?s MythBuster?s pretty good version of it, but Carrie Byron isn?t in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wQVIEdKh8 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 19:07:26 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:07:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind 2 Message-ID: Researcher hits a glass beaker with a metal pin, then asks what the 10 year old thinks about it: Kid - I think it's sound waves. R - what do you mean by that? Kid - I'm not sure. They come from your ear. R - How to you think sound travels from the beaker to your ear? Kid - Your ear sends out sound waves and when the sound hits the waves it comes back to your ear. This is called extramissionist belief. This is fairly rare among adults, but what is common among children and adults is an extramissionist belief about light: When given a pencil and paper and asked to draw lines depicting light, Ss draw lines from the eye to some object. This explanation of seeing was believed by Plato, Ptolemy and Leonardo, among others. When asked what happens when viewing a light bulb, the Ss said that light came from the bulb to the eye, but denied that anything comes to our eye when viewing a nonluminescent object. To quote the author: "We don't see light as critical to vision." I don't remember thinking anything like this. Do you? I never heard of such a thing. Much more to come about intuitive theories of the natural world. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 03:13:03 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 20:13:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolutionary puzzle Message-ID: "On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 8:47 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: snip > I've been reading the book Influence by Cialadini which looks at how sales > folks exploit a number of these heuristics. Cailadini has been very influential in my thinking. I reference him in " Evolutionary Psychology Memes and the Origin of War." > I would imagine there are others. It's hard to believe we have escaped the > general concept of fixed action patterns that impact a large number of > species that use them to exploit the fact that they are almost always a > good behavioral shortcut. Of course, throughout nature, mimics and others > have found various ways to exploit these same hard-coded behaviors: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern I think capture-bonding is one of the hard-coded human psychological responses to certain situations. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding I also think humans are hard-coded for wars when the genetic gains from a war are more than the genetic loss expected from fighting (and possibly losing) a war. I have posted on this several times over the last years. Keith From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 15:41:30 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 11:41:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a > bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the > ground at the same time. > I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder in > the bullet it would go farther, > ?If you add more gunpowder the bullet will go faster and thus it will go further in the horizontal direction in the time available, but if the is barrel parallel to the ground then the time available will remain the same, that is the time it takes for the bullet to fall vertically from the gun barrel to the ground. To get maximum horizontal range the gun should be fired at a 45 degree angle, it won't give you maximum time of flight (that would be 90 degrees) or maximum horizontal speed (that would be 0 degrees parallel to the ground) but it would be the best compromise between the two factors to get the most range. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 17:32:59 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:32:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks Spike and John - there's just times where intuitive works, and times when counterintuitive works. When is the problem. ('Always' is my estimate of quantum theory.) No Spike - I won't be trying the gun thing out at a lake. My only weapon is a target 22 (like the pro assassins, right? Richochets around the skull, damaging more tissue). So, no telling where a 22 bullet with ricochet to around a lake. I'll take y'all's word for it. More coming, though. The theories kids dream up to explain evolution, motion, matter, life, etc. A bit under the weather today. Maybe tomorrow. What it reminds me of is my sex class. I created one and thought a pretest of knowledge would be a good thing. Nah. Most of them flunked it, got embarrassed, and shut up the whole semester. Not only that, when it came to believing myths, they were right there with the best. Here's my favorite: If the girl wants to get pregnant, she should put a used sanitary napkin under her pillow. If not, an unused one. How do people dream up these things? bill w On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 10:41 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > ?> ? >> Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a >> bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the >> ground at the same time. >> I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder >> in the bullet it would go farther, >> > > ?If you add more gunpowder the bullet will go faster and thus it will go > further in the horizontal direction in the time available, but if the is > barrel parallel to the ground then the time available will remain the same, > that is the time it takes for the bullet to fall vertically from the gun > barrel to the ground. To get maximum horizontal range the gun should be > fired at a 45 degree angle, it won't give you maximum time of flight (that > would be 90 degrees) or maximum horizontal speed (that would be 0 degrees > parallel to the ground) but it would be the best compromise between the two > factors to get the most range. > > John K Clark > > >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 18:06:44 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 14:06:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a > bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the > ground at the same time. > > I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder in > the bullet it would go farther, but the time it takes for a bullet to drop > remains the same. > More powder and it does go farther, generally. But a bullet is a projectile, and the charge only propels it down the barrel. Once it leaves the barrel, the most significant forces acting on it are gravity and aerodynamic drag. Drag slows the bullet horizontally, but has no affect vertically. Gravity applies the same to a dropped bullet as it does to a fired one: 32 ft/s^2 vertically. That's assuming wind isn't a factor and there's no aerodynamic lift or Magnus effect, which is lift generated by an object spinning in an axis different than its path. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 19:13:33 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 14:13:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scienceblind question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 1:06 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Example in the book: drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a >> bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the >> ground at the same time. >> >> I had trouble with this: it would seem that if you used more gunpowder >> in the bullet it would go farther, but the time it takes for a bullet to >> drop remains the same. >> > > More powder and it does go farther, generally. But a bullet is a > projectile, and the charge only propels it down the barrel. Once it leaves > the barrel, the most significant forces acting on it are gravity and > aerodynamic drag. Drag slows the bullet horizontally, but has no affect > vertically. Gravity applies the same to a dropped bullet as it does to a > fired one: 32 ft/s^2 vertically. > > That's assuming wind isn't a factor and there's no aerodynamic lift or > Magnus effect, which is lift generated by an object spinning in an axis > different than its path. > > -Dave > ?--------------- The subjects in this book I am reading, ScienceBlind, have an intuitive theory that a bullet, or any moving object I think, has more than one force acting on it: gravity and impetus. The impetus idea is wrong but it gave me pause for a few moments. To be fair, these subjects, and me at times, are asked to provide a correct scientific explanation for something they/I have never considered, and would have stumped just about everyone in the history of the human race. Newton himself would have flunked some of the questions they put to children in the book. bill w? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Oct 20 22:52:29 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 18:52:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself Message-ID: Google reports in the current issue ?of? the journal Nature that it has a new greatly improved Go program called "AlphaGo Zero" that is now the most powerful GO program in the world. And ?the program isn't good because of brute force, it needs to make less than one tenth as many calculations as the previous best GO program "AlphaGo" that defeated the world's top human GO player in 2015 4 games out of 5 ?;? and yet AlphaGo Zero just defeated AlphaGo in a 100 game tournament 100 games to zero. Even more interesting is how AlphaGo Zero got so smart. The older program AlphaGo had to start by analyzing hundreds of thousands of championship level games made by human players, but AlphaGo Zero started with nothing but the simple rules of GO and instructions to learn to ?g? et better. At first the program was terrible but day by day it got better and after 40 days of thinking about the problem ?became? the ?best at it in the world. But of course after 40 days of constant self modification no human being can say how AlphaGo Zero works. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/n7676/full/nature24270.html It seems to me the next logical step would be to switch the program's interest from getting better at the game of GO to improving computer code, including its own. I wonder where that could lead. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 01:23:41 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 18:23:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 3:52 PM, John Clark wrote: > It seems to me the next logical step would be to switch the program's > interest from getting better at the game of GO to improving computer code, > including its own. I wonder where that could lead. Who judges whether the result is an improvement? In go, there is an objective standard it can assess repeatedly, with no need for human supervision. One could apply this to specific problems, largely with known solutions, but general-purpose problem solving - indeed, where simply concretely defining the problem may be the first step - is a whole other matter. From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 01:42:26 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 21:42:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 9:23 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> ?>? >> It seems to me the next logical step would be to switch the program's interest >> from getting better at the game of GO to improving computer code, >> ? ? >> including its own. I wonder where that could lead. > > > ?> ? > Who judges whether the result is an improvement? In go, there is an > objective standard it can assess repeatedly, with no need for human > supervision. ?A computer program ?that does the same thing as another but is smaller and executes faster is objectively better. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Oct 21 01:41:04 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 18:41:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002301d34a0d$acce5530$066aff90$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 6:24 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 3:52 PM, John Clark wrote: >>... It seems to me the next logical step would be to switch the program's > interest from getting better at the game of GO to improving computer > code, including its own. I wonder where that could lead. >...Who judges whether the result is an improvement? In go, there is an objective standard it can assess repeatedly, with no need for human supervision. One could apply this to specific problems, largely with known solutions, but general-purpose problem solving - indeed, where simply concretely defining the problem may be the first step - is a whole other matter. _______________________________________________ At first, the objective standard is a clock. We look for ways to make a particular verifiable algorithm faster. This can be envisioned with something like the Lucas-Lehmer algorithm as optimized for various processors by our own local colleague Dr. Ernst Mayer. Imagine the software knows all the signal path lengths everywhere in a processor. It has a lot better chance of figuring out an optimal solution than any human. Oh this is so cool. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Oct 21 02:27:09 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 19:27:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003801d34a14$1905d3d0$4b117b70$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 9:23 PM, Adrian Tymes > wrote: ?> >?Who judges whether the result is an improvement? In go, there is an objective standard it can assess repeatedly, with no need for human supervision. ?>?A computer program ?that does the same thing as another but is smaller and executes faster is objectively better. ?John K Clark Always there is the obvious metric: the program which sells the most or makes the most money is the best one. This leads to the observation that sales are a combination of the appeal of the product and the effectiveness of the marketing strategy. We can imagine software-generated advertisement strategies. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 03:05:20 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 23:05:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 9:42 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > ?A computer program ?that does the same thing as another but is smaller > and executes faster is objectively better. > Smaller is better, all other things being equal. So is faster. But those are two different things. Maybe the fastest possible program to do X is ten times larger than the smallest. Memory is cheap these days but time is always precious. For any but the most trivial tasks, though, the quality of the output is likely to be far more important than executable size or speed of execution. And for programs that have to deal with raw input, robustness might be more important than anything except getting the right answer. The bottom line is that real-world problem solving is vastly more complicated than evaluating board game playing ability. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 13:23:15 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 09:23:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:15 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Americans were polled about GMO warning labels. 80% were in favor. > I'm in favor of GMO *disclosure* because I think consumers have a right to know what they're consuming. But at the same time I'm not in favor of government-mandated GMO disclosure because the government fucks up 99% of everything it does and it does it at the taxpayer's expense. They were also 80% in favor of warning labels on anything containing DNA. > (yes, these were adults - in age anyway; mental age is in doubt - I wonder > what they would have said had they put some random letters in caps in the > question?) > More than 80% of the public are idiots. That kind of explains why we're in the situation we're in. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 13:37:31 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 09:37:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks In-Reply-To: <84b9ad96-ab2a-8dcb-a70a-613f56b10b17@gmail.com> References: <84b9ad96-ab2a-8dcb-a70a-613f56b10b17@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:52 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado < cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com> wrote: > Never doubt human stupidity. In Brazil we have some weird laws about > gluten. This causes some weird stuff like 'doesn't contain gluten' printed > on salt packages and water bottles. > Yeah, that sounds stupid. But if you know someone with a serious gluten problem--doesn't even have to be celiac--you know that grain makes it way into unexpected products. I'm sure it's been used as an anti-caking agent in salt by some producer sometime. Also other types of weird stuff like packages of frozen fish fillets that > alerts 'food allergics beware: contains fish'. > Yeah, that's pure stupid. The vast majority of people doesn't seem able to walk and chew gum at the > same time, like we use to say. > Agreed. Not sure there's a fix for that. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 13:39:54 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 09:39:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] An AI program that teaches itself In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 11:05 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > ?> ? > And for programs that have to deal with raw input, robustness might be > more important than anything except getting the right answer. > ?There is no sure fire guarantee but nevertheless I'd place my bet on a small fast program having fewer bugs than a slow bloated program. ? ?> ? > The bottom line is that real-world problem solving is vastly more > complicated than evaluating board game playing ability. > ?As Spike says making money is a real world problem and that's the great thing about the Free Market, one dimension that covers so many important things. At one time Republicans thought the Free Market was great too and that's why I was a Republican for many years, but times change. ? ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 14:39:45 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 10:39:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:15 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > Americans were polled about GMO warning labels. 80% were in favor. > ? ? > They were also 80% in favor of warning labels on anything containing DNA. > (yes, these were adults - in age anyway; mental age is in doubt > ? On April 1 1983 a newspaper in Michigan ran a ?n? alarming story that ? ? Dihydrogen Monoxide ? ? had been found in ? ? the state's sewer pipes ?,? ?it said? that ?"? Dihydrogen ? ? Monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year ?"? . ? ?S oon afterward "The ? Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide ?" was formed and they started a petition to ban it. The petition said: ? *Dihydrogen monoxide? is? also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.Contributes to the "greenhouse effect".May cause severe burns.Contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.* *?A?ccelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.?M?ay cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.?H?as been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.* *Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:?A?s an industrial solvent and coolant.?I?n nuclear power plants.?I?n the production of styrofoam.?A?s a fire retardant.* *?I?n many forms of cruel animal research.?I?n the distribution of pesticides. * *?A?s an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.* *?And ?even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.? * However it turned out that The ? Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide ? was a parody organization because Dihydrogen Monoxide ? is just water and the petition was written by a clever ? 14 year old ?boy. But he did get 43 people to sign his petition in just one afternoon. John K Clark? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 17:49:26 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:49:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] what a treat - eating rocks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: More than 80% of the public are idiots. That kind of explains why we're in the situation we're in. -Dave Yes, but haven't we been in it for hundreds of thousands of years? I don't think that's enough time to evolve much, so we have been plugging along dragging the vast majority of the human race along with the 5% or so who really make big differences. And that has not changed, eh? We got here by picking berries, collectively killing animals with rocks and sharp sticks, and in some parts of the world it's still not much better than that, is it? No great IQ needed for those things. No need, no change. (Most people's lives are run by fears, and since they are incompetent, that's a good thing: stick with what you know and what those around you know, don't try new things - conservatism is a fear strategy. One could argue that it is what got us here. Look at the fear embodied in that 80%. And give them a break - no one is pushing scientific studies about GMO into their environment. Seen a TV ad showing GMOs are harmless? They are just ignorant. Show them the studies and then see what they believe. Of course many are afraid of science and wary of intellectuals. A wild bunch, to them.) So we have always been stuck with a largely incompetent majority - maybe those stupid kings weren't so stupid after all. Large portions of men can be killed off, reducing need for essentials, and society does not change. But there's no need for cannon fodder now. Wars are now largely fought by smart people. Keep the majority on the dole and feed them prepared foods and TV? Existing only to keep the Consumer Price Index rational? bill w On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 9:39 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:15 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > ?> ? >> Americans were polled about GMO warning labels. 80% were in favor. >> ? ? >> They were also 80% in favor of warning labels on anything containing DNA. >> (yes, these were adults - in age anyway; mental age is in doubt >> > > ? > On April 1 1983 a newspaper in Michigan ran a > ?n? > alarming story that > ? ? > Dihydrogen Monoxide > ? ? > had been found in > ? ? > the state's sewer pipes > ?,? > > ?it said? > that > ?"? > Dihydrogen > ? ? > Monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands > of people every year > ?"? > . > ? ?S > oon afterward "The ? > Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide > ?" was formed and they started a petition to ban it. The petition said: ? > > > > > *Dihydrogen monoxide? is? also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major > component of acid rain.Contributes to the "greenhouse effect".May cause > severe burns.Contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.* > > > > *?A?ccelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.?M?ay cause electrical > failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.?H?as been found > in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.* > > > > > > *Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:?A?s an industrial > solvent and coolant.?I?n nuclear power plants.?I?n the production of > styrofoam.?A?s a fire retardant.* > > *?I?n many forms of cruel animal research.?I?n the distribution of > pesticides. * > *?A?s an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.* > *?And ?even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this > chemical.? * > > However it turned out that > The ? > Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide > ? was a parody organization because > Dihydrogen Monoxide > ? is just water and the petition was written by a clever ? > 14 year old > ?boy. But he did get 43 people to sign his petition in just one afternoon. > > John K Clark? > ? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Oct 23 05:59:39 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 22:59:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] genetic lottery Message-ID: <000001d34bc4$1f215df0$5d6419d0$@att.net> A friend of mine has won the genetic lottery: three years ago he attended his great granddaughter's college graduation. Estimate please: how rare is this? Three sigma case? Yesterday the results came back from his DNA test. I am hoping to obtain the first known four-generation collection of DNA samples. If my niece will get with the program, that might become the first five-generation collection. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Oct 26 18:31:36 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 11:31:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Old list members Message-ID: This article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/computing-and-the-fermi-paradox-a-new-idea-emergestheyre-all-asleep Is about the work of Anders Sandberg who posted here until recently and Robert Bradbury former member here who died in 2011. (Among others.) It's always amusing to see people I know from this list in my professional (IEEE) publication. Keith PS, same issue has this https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-intelligence/alphago-zero-goes-from-blank-slate-to-grandmaster-in-three-dayswithout-any-help-at-all From john at ziaspace.com Sat Oct 28 16:38:03 2017 From: john at ziaspace.com (John Klos) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 16:38:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] Test message Message-ID: Hi, list, I hear there've been problems with this list, so I'm sending a test message to see what's up... John From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Oct 28 17:01:57 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 10:01:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test message In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Received. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap > On Oct 28, 2017, at 9:38 AM, John Klos wrote: > > Hi, list, > > I hear there've been problems with this list, so I'm sending a test message to see what's up... > > John > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 28 19:21:12 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 14:21:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Test message In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, list, I hear there've been problems with this list, so I'm sending a test message to see what's up... John The problem with the list is that no one is contributing to it. bill w On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 12:01 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > Received. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > On Oct 28, 2017, at 9:38 AM, John Klos wrote: > > Hi, list, > > I hear there've been problems with this list, so I'm sending a test > message to see what's up... > > John > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Sat Oct 28 21:52:28 2017 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 14:52:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test message In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you I got it Smile Ilsa On Oct 28, 2017 9:59 AM, "John Klos" wrote: > Hi, list, > > I hear there've been problems with this list, so I'm sending a test > message to see what's up... > > John > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 00:12:54 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:12:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] tech question Message-ID: ?About 60 years ago. VW invaded and showed that American car makers needed to wake up. Since then, Honda has shown Briggs and Statton how to make a lawnmower engine be?tter. Look at the Consumer Reports evaluation of used cars and trucks: Japanese and the occasional Korean vehicles are at the top of every list. (Better than the Germans, note.) We lead the world in Nobel prizes every time, it seems, so why can't we compete with the foreigners in engine design? Billions of our dollars are going overseas because of this, leading to typical negative balance of trade figures. Not the only source, of course. What gives? It can't be just intelligence and creativity, can it? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 01:18:28 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 18:18:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2761FB3C-5CE5-45BE-AAED-C80E8264CE29@gmail.com> On Oct 28, 2017, at 5:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?About 60 years ago. VW invaded and showed that American car makers needed to wake up. > > Since then, Honda has shown Briggs and Statton how to make a lawnmower engine be?tter. > > Look at the Consumer Reports evaluation of used cars and trucks: Japanese and the occasional Korean vehicles are at the top of every list. (Better than the Germans, note.) > > We lead the world in Nobel prizes every time, it seems, so why can't we compete with the foreigners in engine design? Billions of our dollars are going overseas because of this, leading to typical negative balance of trade figures. Not the only source, of course. > > What gives? It can't be just intelligence and creativity, can it? I?m unsure why things need to be made here? What?s wrong with trading with others? Wouldn?t it be less intelligent, less creative to try to make everything within the arbitrary boundaries of some nation state? If anything, the question should be there isn?t more trade, especially with cars. But the answer should be obvious: high trade barriers. In fact, if there were free trade here, my guess is many a bloated conglomerate, including those that make automobiles, would have to radically change or find a new line of business. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 05:31:23 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 22:31:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 5:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > We lead the world in Nobel prizes every time, it seems, so why can't we > compete with the foreigners in engine design? Billions of our dollars are > going overseas because of this, leading to typical negative balance of trade > figures. Not the only source, of course. > > What gives? It can't be just intelligence and creativity, can it? Just because we lead the world in many things, does not imply we necessarily should be leading the world in all the things. Besides, there are rumors the oil companies sometimes bribe American car makers to make things inefficient, to prop up demand for gas. Said rumors also claim the oil companies have not made the same inroads and connections to foreign car makers. From spike66 at att.net Sun Oct 29 06:59:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 23:59:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <015701d35083$866cc710$93465530$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 5:13 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] tech question ?About 60 years ago. VW invaded and showed that American car makers needed to wake up. Since then, Honda has shown Briggs and Statton how to make a lawnmower engine be?tter. Look at the Consumer Reports evaluation of used cars and trucks: Japanese and the occasional Korean vehicles are at the top of every list. (Better than the Germans, note.) We lead the world in Nobel prizes every time, it seems, so why can't we compete with the foreigners in engine design? Billions of our dollars are going overseas because of this, leading to typical negative balance of trade figures. Not the only source, of course. What gives? It can't be just intelligence and creativity, can it? bill w Consumer Reports with the Japanese and occasional Korean vehicles at the top of every list: there was a study done over 20 yrs ago with regard to the Chevy/Geo Metro/Toyota Corolla. Same car, built in the same factory, right here in California: very cheap low-end stripper cars. Consumer Reports rated the Toyotas above average and the same car with the Chevrolet badge on below average. They never could explain how it happened. They claimed it was based on owner satisfaction surveys. Since about the mid to late 90s, American-made cars are price and quality competitive with the Japanese. I have had both Japanese and American cars, and always found better value with American, even as Consumer Reports insist it?s the other way around. I don?t know what gives. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 08:03:24 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 01:03:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: <015701d35083$866cc710$93465530$@att.net> References: <015701d35083$866cc710$93465530$@att.net> Message-ID: <0C357896-A0AA-49FB-949A-A502807A8031@gmail.com> On Oct 28, 2017, at 11:59 PM, spike wrote: > Consumer Reports with the Japanese and occasional Korean vehicles at the top of every list: there was a study done over 20 yrs ago with regard to the Chevy/Geo Metro/Toyota Corolla. Same car, built in the same factory, right here in California: very cheap low-end stripper cars. Consumer Reports rated the Toyotas above average and the same car with the Chevrolet badge on below average. They never could explain how it happened. They claimed it was based on owner satisfaction surveys. > > Since about the mid to late 90s, American-made cars are price and quality competitive with the Japanese. I have had both Japanese and American cars, and always found better value with American, even as Consumer Reports insist it?s the other way around. I don?t know what gives. Have you factored in the several thousand dollar increase on cars imported into the US? Would you be in favor of a complete elimination of all barriers to trade in cars? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Oct 29 14:17:01 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 07:17:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question References: <015701d35083$866cc710$93465530$@att.net> <0C357896-A0AA-49FB-949A-A502807A8031@gmail.com> Message-ID: <007001d350c0$97c661a0$c75324e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan >>?Since about the mid to late 90s, American-made cars are price and quality competitive with the Japanese. I have had both Japanese and American cars, and always found better value with American, even as Consumer Reports insist it?s the other way around. I don?t know what gives. >?Have you factored in the several thousand dollar increase on cars imported into the US? Would you be in favor of a complete elimination of all barriers to trade in cars? Regards, Dan Hi Dan, I favor complete elimination of all import taxes. They are unnecessary, considering that the ocean imposes an import tax of its own that never goes away. The Corolla/Citation case provides a fun example, because import taxes don?t apply to those: both were made in USA. Both were sold by dealers in America (Chevrolet and Toyota) for about the same price (within 50 bucks) with the only mechanical difference being the name on the badge. Otherwise, same car. Big difference in customer satisfaction. There are some legitimate reasons for why this would happen. Honda has a factory in Kentucky. Most of the car builders have factories here. General Motors has a factory in China. This whole question gets still more interesting once we recognize that factories are becoming more automated over time. It matters less than it once did where the factory is located from the point of view of the product, and matters more where the factory is located from the point of view of where the product will be sold (transportation costs of the product.) In the USA, perhaps the biggest consumer item is a car. It is clear enough to see where that is going now: pretty soon most new cars will be self drivers. The way forward in that market is clear enough to me: within a generation, the way those will be purchased will be for the buyer to direct-order from the factory, then the car will be constructed according to your specification with perhaps 100 options, then the car will drive itself to your door, with very few humans anywhere in the supply chain. When that happens, China has few competitive advantages and Japan has huge competitive disadvantages over domestic car builders. Once we get that going, it is easy enough to envision other products going the same route. We will not need or want import taxes or trade barriers of any kind. I don?t think we do now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 14:32:11 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 10:32:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?An_interstellar_asteroid=E2=80=8B_=E2=80=8Bhas_be?= =?utf-8?q?en_found?= Message-ID: For the first time an asteroid ? ? has been found that follows a hyperbolic path not a elliptical one, that means it is not in orbit around the sun but is freely ? ? traveling ? ? between the stars. It's about ? ? 1300 ? ? feet ? ? across and was discovered on Oct 19 *after* it had already made its closest approach to Earth (15 million miles) which must have been on Oct 14. It will never come this way again. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/10/27/a-space-rock-from-another-star-is-spotted-in-our-solar-system-a-cosmic-first/?utm_term=.2f342bf9bebc John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Oct 29 14:43:48 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 07:43:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] trade map: was RE: tech question Message-ID: <009d01d350c4$552163a0$ff642ae0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 7:17 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] tech question >>?Have you factored in the several thousand dollar increase on cars imported into the US? Would you be in favor of a complete elimination of all barriers to trade in cars? Regards, Dan Hi Dan, >?This whole question gets still more interesting once we recognize that factories are becoming more automated over time. It matters less than it once did where the factory is located from the point of view of the product, and matters more where the factory is located from the point of view of where the product will be sold (transportation costs of the product.)?spike Dan for some time I have been thinking about how to create a world trade map. We know the traditional Mercator projection map tends to distort land areas by causing us to overestimate the land area of northern and southern countries while underestimating the land areas of equatorial lands. An example: plenty of people think Canada is way bigger in land area than the USA, but if you look at a globe or this map, you see they are pretty close to each other, within a couple percent: Land area doesn?t matter much. What we need is to create a trade map, where we make distance a function of cost to move goods. Over the sea is lower cost than over land, and over land is way more expensive if good roads are not available. Somehow we would need to take into account import tariffs. It isn?t clear how to map that, but I have a few ideas. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 12069 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 16:15:29 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 11:15:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: <0C357896-A0AA-49FB-949A-A502807A8031@gmail.com> References: <015701d35083$866cc710$93465530$@att.net> <0C357896-A0AA-49FB-949A-A502807A8031@gmail.com> Message-ID: Since about the mid to late 90s, American-made cars are price and quality competitive with the Japanese. I have had both Japanese and American cars, and always found better value with American, even as Consumer Reports insist it?s the other way around. I don?t know what gives. spike Quality competitive? Your data, please. Certainly there must be some bias when a car labeled Chevy gets a lower rating than an identical car labeled Toyota. In the 80s my wife worked at places where lower middle and upper low class people worked. All of them had trucks, big and small. The word among them was that you just could not wear a Japanese truck out. Since they were rather poor, they kept them as long as they could, so they would know what lasts. Used car prices seem to follow CR data - Japanese and Korean higher priced. People who report problems to CR have no reason to lie about the frequency of repair for their cars. Money - let's keep it here if possible. I know vehicles are made all over the place, but don't you think Honda sales money goes mostly to Japan? Aside from CR, I don't know where to get objective data. bill w On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 3:03 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Oct 28, 2017, at 11:59 PM, spike wrote: > Consumer Reports with the Japanese and occasional Korean vehicles at the > top of every list: there was a study done over 20 yrs ago with regard to > the Chevy/Geo Metro/Toyota Corolla. Same car, built in the same factory, > right here in California: very cheap low-end stripper cars. Consumer > Reports rated the Toyotas above average and the same car with the Chevrolet > badge on below average. They never could explain how it happened. They > claimed it was based on owner satisfaction surveys. > > > > Since about the mid to late 90s, American-made cars are price and quality > competitive with the Japanese. I have had both Japanese and American cars, > and always found better value with American, even as Consumer Reports > insist it?s the other way around. I don?t know what gives. > > > Have you factored in the several thousand dollar increase on cars imported > into the US? Would you be in favor of a complete elimination of all > barriers to trade in cars? > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 16:18:25 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 11:18:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] trade map: was RE: tech question In-Reply-To: <009d01d350c4$552163a0$ff642ae0$@att.net> References: <009d01d350c4$552163a0$ff642ae0$@att.net> Message-ID: plenty of people think Canada is way bigger in land area than the USA, but if you look at a globe or this map, you see they are pretty close to each other, within a couple percent: Take away Alaska and refigure. I think that's what people are thinking - just the lower 48 states. bill w On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 9:43 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *spike > *Sent:* Sunday, October 29, 2017 7:17 AM > *To:* 'ExI chat list' > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] tech question > > > > > > >>?Have you factored in the several thousand dollar increase on cars > imported into the US? Would you be in favor of a complete elimination of > all barriers to trade in cars? Regards, Dan > > > > > > Hi Dan, > > > > >?This whole question gets still more interesting once we recognize that > factories are becoming more automated over time. It matters less than it > once did where the factory is located from the point of view of the > product, and matters more where the factory is located from the point of > view of where the product will be sold (transportation costs of the > product.)?spike > > > > > > Dan for some time I have been thinking about how to create a world trade > map. We know the traditional Mercator projection map tends to distort land > areas by causing us to overestimate the land area of northern and southern > countries while underestimating the land areas of equatorial lands. An > example: plenty of people think Canada is way bigger in land area than the > USA, but if you look at a globe or this map, you see they are pretty close > to each other, within a couple percent: > > > > > > > > Land area doesn?t matter much. What we need is to create a trade map, > where we make distance a function of cost to move goods. Over the sea is > lower cost than over land, and over land is way more expensive if good > roads are not available. Somehow we would need to take into account import > tariffs. It isn?t clear how to map that, but I have a few ideas. > > > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 12069 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jordanhh at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 16:33:39 2017 From: jordanhh at gmail.com (Jordan Hosmer-Henner) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:33:39 +0000 Subject: [ExI] tech question Message-ID: Couldn?t it be more banal that American companies found a strategy that generated profit and shareholder value without improving the engineering of the car by focusing on the marketing and satisfaction of a want (big ?powerful? cars) that didn?t require attention to detail or expensive research. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Oct 29 17:27:04 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 10:27:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tech question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 29, 2017, at 9:33 AM, Jordan Hosmer-Henner wrote: > > Couldn?t it be more banal that American companies found a strategy that generated profit and shareholder value without improving the engineering of the car by focusing on the marketing and satisfaction of a want (big ?powerful? cars) that didn?t require attention to detail or expensive research. They also found a much better strategy: restrict competition in their markets via quotas and tariffs, thereby limiting consumer options so they didn?t have to innovate as much. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 31 20:26:52 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:26:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] long article - IQ and genetics Message-ID: https://medium.com/neodotlife/intelligence-genes-eb18c5ef759c bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: