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swansont

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Everything posted by swansont

  1. Seconded. An abstract is second on the list of the guidelines for posting here https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/86720-guidelines-for-participating-in-speculations-discussions/
  2. Pretty sure. That’s something like evidence or data, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_increase UK is positive, Germany is negative. Europe is negative, but it’s eastern Europe doing the heavy lifting.
  3. Not if we continued to do too little about it, as we collectively have. The impact is still there, and as iNow said, it would just be slower. They include emigration as part of the discussion, which doesn’t fix anything. The overall population hasn’t gone down just because some people moved around. Do you have stats for the population growth/decline, ignoring emigration and immigration? (I believe this is called organic/natural population growth) No, some would have to be removed because of medical advances that extended lifespans. You reduce/eliminate smallpox, tuberculosis and polio, for example, and the population must go up, because you’ve reduced the death rate. Medical advances have to be eliminated for your scenario to work.
  4. 1. How is that not measurable? 2. How does that actually equate to complexity? Where is the energy flow? Atoms have less energy than the constituent particles, and molecules have less energy than the constituent atoms, so that suggests complexity decreases. If they're just sitting there, there is no energy flow, so by your definition they have equal complexity. An atom that absorbs and then re-emits a photon has energy flow, and somehow that atom is more complex than an atom not absorbing a photon. But the atoms are identical. How does that work? A photon not being absorbed by an atom has a greater energy flow than a photon being absorbed by an atom. So not having the interaction results in a more complex system than having the interaction. That seems backwards. If I have a device that converts gravitational potential energy to other forms and I move it to a new location where g is greater, the energy flow rate density will increase. Yet the device is identical. How did it become more complex?
  5. If you don’t have an accepted definition and way to measure it, it can’t be an established fact. Asserting that it’s a fact so you don’t have to deal with this problem isn’t going to fly.
  6. ! Moderator Note The article proposes a definition of complexity, it does not establish it as a fact. Our rules require speculation being backed by more than further speculation. Pick one.
  7. ! Moderator Note You were asked for a science discussion, not credentials You need to start addressing the points raised, and in a substantive way. Immediately.
  8. Which are you wanting to discuss? The teleological question, or complexity? You can't bootstrap one off the other, since neither one represents mainstream science.
  9. Radiative or radioactive decay are probabilistic, and yet not tied to the HUP; there is nothing about them that involves commutation properties of conjugate variables. How so?
  10. ! Moderator Note Threads merged (even though the question is easily found using a search engine)
  11. It was already announced. This was easily found using a search engine https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2021/summary/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2021-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-awarded-for-discoveries-in-sensing-temperature-and-touch1/
  12. What part of the paper? Is it the part where he says that "no compelling evidence exists that evolution itself is progressive or directed (as in “movement toward a goal or destination”)" or the two other times he says something quite similar? How does one define complexity, and how is it measured? The author suggests that this is not currently well-defined, as they offer a definition of their own.
  13. Something that came up in the cryptocurrency thread reminded me of this bit of trivia: In the days of the old west, people used the US dollar and the Spanish 8 Reale coin (they were "pieces of 8") interchangeably because they were basically the same size and made of silver, and that worked because the value was based on the amount of precious metal. They used to chop up the coins when lower denominations weren't readily available. In deference to the Spanish (presumably), it was into 8 bits (1 Reale each) so 25 cents was two bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar (This makes clear that the Spanish dollar was used by a lot of folks, much like the US dollar is used outside the US today)
  14. I think it's a bit (or is it byte?) like people using US currency outside the US
  15. So your response to a request for clarification and a bit of humor is to attack the humor. Partly because nobody had reported the thread as being a problem, but I've taken care of that. The next step is to see if the OP actually engages in worthwhile discussion or continues to be coy. It's not miraculous, strictly speaking, and you are suggesting we know nothing definitive about biology, which is a rather outrageous claim.
  16. Citation needed Don't anthropomorphize nature. She hates that.
  17. In my experience, undergrad intro physics classes require knowledge up through derivatives and integrals. You might see differential equations in derivations of the equations that you use, but you would not be asked to solve them, as such. You might use infinite series, parametric equations and/or polar coordinates, depending on what's covered. Diff Eq's was something learned for later, more in-depth courses in the topics covered in the intro course.
  18. Not only that, but there was the rise of "vampire" circuits in some devices, especially TVs - some part of it was always powered, to shorten the "turn-on" time. So even if the rated power went down, it may still use more energy because it's always drawing power.
  19. Observation, to be sure, but I don't see where consciousness enters into it.
  20. I think you mean absorption. Light doesn't adsorb to anything. And we really can't say this for sure, because we don't have the equations that say what happens. It seems to be what the solution is converging to in the limit of v approaching c, but those equations apply to massive particles.
  21. We don’t have the physics to describe what it would be like. It’s not a valid reference frame.
  22. Is that like AltaVista or Ask Jeeves?
  23. Sounds like a job for…a search engine!
  24. If it's elastic it will rise to its initial height, unless there is rotation imparted to it. It's the inelastic collision that requires more information and analysis.
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