c1ccccc1

24 ms·

181.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
I have a more positive opinion of scientists than you seem to, and I'd like to explain why. A big part of the problem here is selective media reporting of science. All fields have good practitioners and bad practitioners. ("bad&qu
182.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Maximum entropy merely implies that the temperature everywhere is the same (any other situation would necessarily have a lower entropy). You could in theory have maximum entropy at 1000K. Our universe has a ton of empty space, and not all t
183.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Thanks for the link. It seems that the gradual leakage solution was thought to require an additional assumption that violated semiclassical gravity, but this new result is consistent with semiclassical gravity. However, platz's reply
184.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
> It's a theory that is almost uniquely derived from a pre-existing set of assumptions that do have a large body of empirical support. What additional assumptions (on top of the ones Hawking made) does the new calculation use that d
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
So this new result is derived semiclassically, right? Which means it was derived using more or less the same assumptions Hawking used to derive Hawking radiation. So couldn't the same objection be made about the claim that black holes
186.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Just to clarify for those reading this, Wilson studied political science and history, and went to law school. He wasn't a "STEM" professor.
187.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
If all you want to do is sample from possible outcomes of the system, then you should just be able to run a simulation of it on your computer. If you want to condition on an event? Say you want to predict the weather on Tuesday, conditioned
188.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Very cool, thanks.
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
How much louder is it actually? 4 times?
190.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Quantum mechanics doesn't work well with general relativity (gravity), but it works just fine with special relativity. Special relativity still has a concept of spacetime, it's just that the spacetime is flat, not curved like in g
191.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Minor side note, but most runs of the game of life actually will produce spaceships and/or oscillators, even starting from a random configuration. (Initialize a 100 x 100 box of cells randomly, and you're virtually guaranteed to g
192.
Hacking Physics from the Back of a Napkin(hapax.github.io)
3 points by c1ccccc1 6y ago|0 comments
193.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Deuterium-tritium fusion produces neutrons, which can be used to turn lithium into tritium. So in some sense, the required fuels are deuterium and lithium, both of which are abundant enough to be used for fusion. The sun is a great fusion r
194.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Agreed, though the question of how much funding do we give to each of the current promising-seeming approaches is a difficult one. Going all-in on a single approach would be very risky, but spreading the funding so thinly that no approach s
195.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Honestly, anyone whose precision of knowledge is limited only by Godel's incompleteness theorem deserves to be a little bit arrogant. But no such person exists. Looking back on one's life tends to reveal many errors, blunders, and
196.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Nice puzzle. Snarky python solution: x, y = y, x Legit solution (I think): x = x + y y = x - y x = x - y Actually, using bitwise xor would be even easier: x = x ^ y y = x ^ y x = x ^ y
197.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
The terrible thing is that this happened in a chemistry lab, where people should really know better. Liquid nitrogen is dangerous in a surprisingly large number of ways: Cold burns when touched, explosions when sealed in a container. And
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
People are probably less bothered by it because it happened so long ago, and was not perpetrated by any kind of thinking agent. The process of evolution definitely entails a lot of suffering, though. Consider almost any attribute of modern
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
I mean, physicists don't usually go around talking about superworlds, but maybe this corresponds to the concept you want?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
If your goal is human level AI, there are definitely enough qubits. Humans can subsist for quite a while on just a sandwich and a large room full of air. And that is with very inefficient usage of the available negentropy. I guess one would
201.
by c1ccccc1 6y ago
I think MWI actually predicts continuous branching. The prescription for MWI is just to run the Schrodinger equation forwards in time. So the branching would look like one blob of probability gradually becoming bimodal, and then splitting i
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
A good point, but quantum computation can do anything that reversible classical computation can. If you do your entire computation while keeping all the qubits in the {|0>, |1>} basis, then performing a CNOT onto a qubit initialized t
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
By the time we have "immortality", we'll probably be able to have space elevators, and a fleet of space stations orbiting the sun where people can live. Just make a rule that once you are 120 years old, you have to leave Eart
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Nice explanation. Another interesting point is that in some cases there may be infinitely many ESTs, even if the sum is finite. For example, if we take the set {2^n}U{3*2^n}.
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
The comment that mentioned using steam to bend the wood sounds the most plausible, but another technique might be to use a mould with a hole in it and cast the coin with the wood already passing through it. Seems like it would be difficult
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
How about this? Carefully take the cellophane off the box without ripping it, or maybe just make a cut in the bottom. Then put the pack of cards in the box as above. Then put the cellophane through the bottle's neck and slide it back o
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
We have lots of evidence of how the processes of life are chemically driven: Photosynthesis captures energy from sunlight, metabolism of sugars produces ATP which is then used in a variety of ways by the cell's proteins, the DNA->RN
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
If you agree that the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, that these laws are local, and that any given region of the universe can be described with a finite dimensional Hilbert space (informally speaking, it contains a f
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by c1ccccc1 6y ago
Sounds very cool! I'd be interested in looking at the code if you're up for sharing it. Are you computing the labels using DFT, or with a more exact method?
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Philosophical Zombies in Quantum Mechanics(fqxi.org)
1 points by c1ccccc1 6y ago|0 comments

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