joigus

Very interesting comments. Thank you all for your feedback. I even wonder if meaning (or perhaps information) is in our heads, even. I have the picture of a cat in my head. I say 'cat.' Immediately, a picture of a cat is conjured up in your head. Does information (or meaning, as the case may be) transcend even such deeply ingrained concepts as locality? Was something there from the very beginning that play the role of ultimate congruences, against which we must contrast our conceptions? In the case of a cat, to me, it's very clear that: No, cats appeared historically. They are contingent. I mean something more primitive, like the rules of logic, abstract structures. Something acting, as it were, like a solid material that gives consistence to our fleeting impressions. A cat, after all, is a fleeting impression. I was more trying to Wittgenstein the subject, but that's a good departing point: Plato. So what are the shadows the cast of?

Ah. That sounds interesting. Meaning has a bunch of implications that go beyond simple (digitised, perhaps?) information. Thanks for the contribution.

Back in 2010 I wrote this brief essay on language and meaning. Please bear with me, as I wrote it back when I was still learning to make my English more accurate and efficient at conveying meaning. So it's perhaps peppered with cliches, and other stylistic sins. And, curiously enough, meaning is all it's about. My preoccupation with meaning. Is it, in the last analysis, something unreachable? Do we have to make do with an internal 'prop', so that we can keep communicating? What I'm interested in here is meaning. Does anyone among you share this preoccupation with language that, if you're serious about it, it has the potential to send you into an infinite loop of ultimately un-discernible layers of meaning? Like a monumental chess game played backwards: What was the meaning of the previous sentence? From a practical point of view, speakers of a language have to impose some kind of cutting-off mechanism, so that the sentence doesn't become an un-decipherable sequence. So perhaps, in a sense, we make meaning as we go along. From what I remember of philosophy, Wittgenstein was one of the great thinkers on the topic, so any pointers to what he had to say about this would be welcome. Also, any own reflections that you may have to offer. Yours truly, Joigus PS: As back then, I dedicate this to Katie, the American English teacher who taught me that 'toast' and 'input' are uncountable nouns. I wonder what's become of her.

Quantum mechanics has nothing in the way of a cohesive force. Schrödinger's equation is more like a heat equation, but with an imaginary "heat capacity." And it's generally dispersive.

Before I get more heavily involved in this thread... Could you please clarify these points?: If you want to make a wavepacket reduction possible, you must make the Schrödinger equation either non-linear or non-unitary. Which one is it? It's been tried before in a linear and unitary way: Coleman-Hepp. Criticised by John Bell, very eloquently I think. Weinberg also tried to generalise quantum mechanics to a non-linear dynamical theory. Without much success.

Interference has been described correctly several times, including by David Bohm and Louis DeBroglie (with a "realistic" theory). So it's not the bone of contention, IMO. Anything that has waves will give you interference. Copenhagen's QM too. I also think you should always try to be conservative in your scientific claims, because Nature has a way of doing what we don't expect. And that's all I can say at this point.

Good one. Simultaneity is frame-dependent.

I look much worse when I just wake up. You gotta love lions and lionesses. Wild animals have it very hard. Even a humble magpie. None of us would wanna trade deals with them. Cheers mate! And thanks for the wonderful photos and info.

LOL. I always use Bach to tell the time.

This is definitely worth \( e^{i2\pi} \) reputation.

Thanks a lot. I did miss the "vertical caption."

Help yourself.

As a Zen master would put it: Just wake up!

To those involved in this thread, please try to add some info about the thing. You don't have to write a PhD dissertation, a pointer would be enough. Thank you.

Actually, Wonderful Life is more about Cambrian, although it does talk about Ediacaran. To me, Edicacaran is even more fascinating. The more primitive, the more fascinating.

Rocks and shrimp, very nice. I wonder if the shrimp is venomous. Blue is generally associated to venomous.

I know, I know. I didn't mean to say that these membrane proteins were there at the beginning. I just meant that the "minimum common factor for life" so to speak, is a pathway in which electron carriers (molecules that capture electrons, but not too strongly, so they can be "robbed" of them, are very mobile, etc) play the role of taking these electrons to the ultimate electron acceptor, and get recycled so as to get the cyclic pathway going. ATP synthase and the similar membrane-protein machine in photosynthesis (I forget the name now) are big, sophisticated proton-pumping machines that must have arisen much, much later. But the common theme is (seems to me to be): Some "light" electron acceptors act as electron carriers, while some protein in the pathway graciously takes these electrons and consummates the final oxidative reaction. Is that picture anything like right?

Here's where we disagree. Remember the Aztecs believed in Quetzalcoatl since time immemorial, then came Hernán Cortés, and they immediately identified him with the feathered-serpent-god. Did he look at all like a serpent? No. But myths have a way of hovering there for centuries, and even millenia, in people's minds, until something happens that breaths life into them again. I think there's an element here of how myths operate in the mind of people. It's as if they're there waiting for something significant, memorable, to happen, and "fit the bill."

(My emphasis.) Yes!! Very interesting. Thank you. The most important factor of life is the controlled use of electron carriers in a recyclable way (photosynthesis, ATP production by ATP-synthase.) If you take a look --schematically-- at the chemical pathways, these electron carriers always go round and round and get recycled, getting ready to carry electrons again. I think RNA must be part of the picture too. I'll take a look at the main salient aspects ASAP.

True story.

Flavius Josephus was nearly contemporary --started giving his account a few decades after the "facts". While his focus wasn't on Jesus of Nazareth, he provides a good account on the contextual scenario for the appearance of such figure (relevance of the Essenes). IMO, this contextual scenario is very important and shouldn't be ignored. The case for the existence of a real Jesus, I think, is reinforced by the fact that these different "Jesus-like figures" had been appearing ever since the time of the Greek takeover of official Jewish religion that led to the Maccabean revolt (against the Seleucid kingdom) 200 y before. John the Baptist is a famous example. Another famous one is the Teacher of Righteousness from the Dead Sea Scrolls. While this teacher of righteousness has been robustly, IMO, ruled out as a good candidate for Jesus, his existence goes to prove that the existence of a Jesus figure is very plausible. Political/religious leaders, will tend to adopt strategies that suited their predecessors. And at the time it was very fashionable to go to the desert and start preaching alternative versions of the Jewish law that could find a wide-enough following. Life of Brian paints a hilarious picture of this cauldron of ideas and beliefs. Never mind how the collective memory works, by adding more and more layers of narrative that make the whole thing very confusing. Sometimes previous myths are refused into the new story --here I'm trying to address Richard Carrier's main arguments, although he's a scholar, and I'm just a person who tries to apply common sense almost every minute of the day. Similar cases can be made for David and Solomon, Mohammed, and even Gilgamesh. I'm in no doubt that there was (some kind of) a Gilgamesh king of Uruk. He probably didn't, almost single-handedly, kill a giant in the forests of Lebanon, as the Epic of Gilgamesh tells us, but he just didn't pop out of a vacuum. I'm relying heavily on memory, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Nice mix-and-match. Thank you for taking the time. I have to tell you, I had you very much in mind when I came up with the topic. Pre-Cambrian life fascinates me too. I absolutely relished S.J. Gould's Wonderful Life, which is perhaps more widely known. Thank you.

Sounds like a kind of topic that's particularly close to my heart. These ones too: As to, Duly noted. These kind of topics are a little bit off my radar. But the topic is fascinating. Thank you for the Peebles reference, @MigL. I think I'd heard about it, but haven't read it. I suppose it's a bit outdated now, but duly noted as well. Thanks all for the contributions.

Yes, you've mentioned it before. It seems to meet my criteria. I cannot be totally sure. I don't know the book. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything... I'm aware of the ambiguity of my request!

Is there a book, or a few, that not many people know, but blew your mind? The rules: 1) Scientific books: Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Linguistics, Mathematics, Paleontology, Physics,... The lot! But mainstream science. 2) Not "bibles" of the scientific literature, but can be relatively unknown books from famous author. For example: Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics is not allowed, but Dirac's Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, could be OK. Not best sellers. 3) They can be either technical, or popular science Here's mine: The Quantum Theory of Atoms, molecules, and Photons by John Avery It's a book by a quantum chemist that takes you on a journey of basically everything essential about the quantum. The title is very telling of what it does. Tell me about your hidden treasure.