Bender

On itself: nothing. If you normalise it by dividing by e.g. total time and average heart rate, you get a value that says something about the variability. I guess this works for any graph, but I think there are better ways to describe variability.

Call us when you have any evidence. Until then, the soul not existing is the null hypothesis.

(emphasis added to what I'm replying to) What definition are you talking about? You seem to agree that speed is the magnitude of velocity, then you say that one beam has a higher velocity, while the speed is the same. How can two vectors have different magnitudes if their magnitude is the same?

Somebody did that. Apart from the field of view, it is not clear what the advantage could be, though. There are easier ways to get a large field of view.

I'm not entirely sure what you are talking about, but we already have a way of addressing direction: vectors. The area under the curve does not contain a direction for two reasons: - it is a scalar, not a vector and there would be no difference regardless what the direction of the velocity is - it is not the displacement (which is the difference between end point and point of origin, regardless of the path taken); but rather the distance travelled (which does take into account the path taken). The distance travelled is not a vector, because the path can go along different directions.

Not all spiders have 8 eyes. In fact, from reading the Wikipedia entry, spiders developed away from the compound eye to eyes that can form images. This gives some spiders a 10-times improvement over the dragonfly, which has the best compound eyes of all insects. Some mammals, like rabbits, have a 360° view with only two eyes. Why would they need more? Predators typically have a much smaller angle of view, because they benefit from focusing on smaller regions.

Why wouldn't robots be capable of free will or consciousness, or even religious experiences? Since you like fiction: Battlestar Galactica is a great series that explores that line of thought. Nope. A bunch of hormones is all it takes. Ever heard of oxytocine? Ah, the "blind watchmaker" argument. You might find this video interesting: some guy gave random heaps of gears and springs the ability to mutate and procreate; the result: a functional clock.

What is the largest distance gravity is observed to operate?

Does it need to be completely massless, or does this only pose a (very tiny) upper limit of the mass it could have? As far as I know, neutrino's also have mass, yet they move at nearly the speed of light (we haven't been able to measure a difference), and have a pretty large range. In other words: are we able to detect the difference between completely massless and very nearly massless?

I think my counterargument works just fine. The surface area is a multiplication and, in case of velocity and time, you get a distance with matching units. Changing the units will change the unit and value of the distance (whatever the units of time and velocity you use, the resulting unit will always be one of distance), but not the distance itself.

Correct. You generally don't notice it, because the speed of sound in solids is usually more than 1000 m/s. Imagine pressing an unsupported spring quickly: one end moves while the spring compresses and the other side only follows afterwards. Every solid is a spring. Of course, if you pull something, it gets longer rather than shorter. It only works if a contact force is exerted. e.g. a falling object isn't compressed, because gravity acts on all parts at once (although there is a temporary effect that the object shortens because the force holding it up disappears)

That's an equation that adds information not otherwise present. It ideally should be written as a proper equation in a [math] environment. My point exactly: they lost all of their sweat glands while aquatic. Sweat glands on hand and feet of all primates help in regulating the friction required to climb or hold tools. Personally, my hand or feet barely sweat when my body needs cooling, while my torso is soaked. We generate a lot of heat in our head and we have a very sensitive organ inside. As you explain later yourself, the hair helps to keep our head cool in the sun. You might want to check out crocodiles and leaches. Humans are also horrible at moving in water.

A compound eye is horrible. Why develop a poor eye if you already have a good one with a lens and a high resolution retina?

It is not because it is purely chemical that it is an illusion. We just aren't "more conscious" than a complex computer. Determinism also doesn't contradict free will. We are a bunch of chemical reactions, so if those chemical reactions make a decision, it is our decision.

pada ching

Just wondering: do we have reasons to assume 'gravitons' are massless? Is there a hypothetical possibility that gravitons have a very small mass and as a result travel slightly slower than c?

You cannot remove the issue of elasticity. The speed of sound in the stick is independent of the width. The speed of sound is also the speed any pressure wave travels through a substance.

Changing the scale, or the units, will change the arc length, so no. It would also require adding different units.

I missed the part with the coil. So it does have an electromagnet. Does it have permanent magnets, or is it a reluctance motor?

Let's see: - Piezo electric: huge force, but very small displacement. Rotary motors are generally quite complex to control, so I guess this is not what he's talking about. Includes ultrasonic motors - Shape memory alloys: large power density, but difficult to control and hugely inefficient - Electrostatic: mostly popular in microscopic machines due to the extremely small force at larger scale - Electrostrictive: not particularly interesting to make into a rotary motor - Electro-active polymer: two types. The ionic polymers are quite slow and not very strong; the electrostatic EAP's are quite promising as artificial muscle (it is an elastomer sheet compressed between two conductive foils). I also don't want to keep this swimming blimp from you, powered entirely from non-magnetic electric actuators. Perhaps he found another way. I'm certainly interested to hear about it. About price or efficiency: I'm sceptical that it can improve on an induction machine or a DC motor, which are incredibly simple, can be very cheap and can reach an efficiency above 98% (although it can't do both at the same time ). The number of amps required depends on the design. Usually the voltage is fixed, so to get a higher power, you need more amps, regardless of how you do it. Can you confirm that the current at no point passes through a coil? EDIT: upon rereading: by "5 moving parts", do you mean that there are five parts moving independently. In that case, your claims of simplicity and cost efficiency aren't very likely, since a traditional motor only has one moving part.

Reading sentences with numbers in brackets is already weird, adding another symbol does not make it more weird. Hippos, Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises don't have any sweat glands.

Neurons use pulse frequency modulation to emulate analogue signals, and the function to decide whether to fire is a complex one, but I thought the magnitude of the spike is not varied. I could be wrong. The only functional difference is the level of complexity, which is something I wouldn't categorise as fundamental. I've already debunked all attempts to find other functional differences, many of which with concrete examples. I encourage you to keep trying to find one, and I will keep giving examples of how I can make a computer behave in the way you thought was unique for humans.

It depends on the concentration. I guess the one with the highest concentration would be the solvent, but it is only semantics.

Computers don't need rewiring, because they can store data or install new programs without hardware adaptations. Nevertheless, some computers can do it: programmable logic arrays neural network hardware Details, such as which chemicals are used, do not affect the functionality discussed here. Such an argument is purely anthropocentric. But if you want, there are also computers that use chemicals.

What about beaver, otters, seals, polar bears... With all that hair, they must be poorly adapted to living in aquatic environments . Luckily humans have such nicely streamlined hairless bodies. Or what about the elephant of the rhinoceros? Seriously, though: humans even lack the buoyancy and instinctive swimming abilities that so many other mammals have. Like humans, other apes can be taught to swim. Like Endy0816 implies, I think the ability to cool our body by sweating excessively makes quite a bit of sense as an evolutionary advantage.