abskebabs

I have to apoogise on 2 grounds. As already noted, I understand I should perhaps be careful of turning this into some sort of heated debate, and I apologise if I gave this impression, as this was certainly not my intention. Also, in my hastiness, I frankly misrepresented my own position, indeed strangely this was something I thought of when I struggled to get to bed last night, among other things... I've decided to quote myself to highlight my error. What I should have said is that just because when you ask me if believe the coin is heads, and I say no, I do not equate this to being the same as saying "I don't believe the coin lands on heads.", hence I am inserting an assertion I make about the conclusion. I guess it boils down to a quibble over semantics. To me, to be agnostic about an outcome should be simply that you just don't know. An atheist to me should be someone who disbelieves in god, as I view that as an active, rather than passive verb. I guess my conception doesn't abide with colloquially alluded definitions of both atheism and agnosticism, though it does seem more consistent to me. I also concede the points earlier posters made about the possibillity of having both a) and c) as a position, as well as b) and c).

I voted for the 3rd option, and I don't view the choices in this poll as inconsistent, despite the remarks earlier posters made. I consider myself agnostic, though I consider this to be quite different to being atheist. I'll illustrate with an example. Suppose you have a coin I cannot see, flip it and ask me whether it lands on heads or tails. If you ask me whether I believe it is heads, and I say no, it doesn't mean I believe it's tails, it could well be I just don't know, and don't care to believe in an outcome. I thought this clarification might be useful, and I'd be interested to see if anyone could counter my above semantic point. To me, it removes the need for a distinction between "weak" and "strong" atheist.

Hi everybody, I've been doing linear algebra revision lately and one query I have has really been winding me up so I'd be really grateful for some help: If I have a linear operator that is not Hermitian or unitary, will its eigenvectors necessarily be orthogonal(in absence of degeneracy)? In either case why? Also, if the eigenvectors do have to be orthogon when there's no degeneracy would you be able to show how this is true? Thanks a lot in advance:-)

Hi ajb, I caught sight of your question and it definitely intrigued me, as i have wondered about this before. I think I find a lot in common, with the sensation you refer to and generally, the feeling of exploration that is gained during the study and thought process while trying to gain cognition fo mathematical systems. One particular example, came from reading the vector calculus chapter and gasping in wonder at the way things developed out of a simple notion considering a vector travelling along a curve. Personally, in order to answer your question, I remember a conversation with some friends from school a while back about this. I remember the question of whether mathematics was a science, and I disagreed interjecting that it was a language. My views have differed since then, but this core insight has been influential in forming my own views on the matter. Mathematics itself may be categorised into boxes like "applied", "pure", geometry and algebra, though i see it much more broadly as a system of thinking and means of application to solve problems. I guess it depends on where you draw the line between mathematics, logic, and even perhaps analytical philosophy. I have recently been reading a lot of economics, and especially that of the Austrian school, and strangely enough, this has reinforced my perception of the importance of logic, and understanding deduction while causing me to become more skeptical of transplanting methods of induction from the natural sciences in order to reason the social sciences. In short, I'm still fascinated by mathematics and mathematical thinking, I guess my general philosophy nowadays is a lot less straightforward. I also think mathematics has artistic elements to it, but thankfully, like with the natural sciences, this is not used to rule out theorems in it, though I guess some may be considered so "pathological" and far from th core or application to be deemed worthy of study. What do you think? I find I get an aesthetic appeal to elegance, when I read a certain tract of mathematics, or even a few pages from a maths or physics textbook, when I feel both the prose and the maths combine to produce this kind of appeal. I guess in this way, it shares a similiar aspect to me in the way words canombine to produce a beautiful book, reinforcing the entire language notion.

Actually, you don't need any. It's not the easiest book to read, but Mises starts right from the beginning considering epistemology, causality,and the appropriate approach to the science of human action(referred to as praxeology). What is known as economics, from this category is simply the result of a partly historical arbitrary distinction made in order to analyse behaviour for "material gain." Also, to Pangloss, I would say the reason for the deductive approach of Austrian economics; from what I've read of it, is really a restriction they place because of the unreproduceabillity of historical events concerning human action. We cannot attain accurate quantitative predictions(as much as we'd like to) concerning supply, demand and prices, as these are determined in a sphere unknowable to us: the volitions, thoughts and ultmately dynamic desires of individuals.

I think we should look at what the purposes of the Federal Reserve are in order to answer your question. I will have a look at 2, to provide price stabillity(control inflation/deflation) and maximise employment. The wikipedia article says that these 2 are contradictory aims, but in a certain sense I think they are imaginary concepts. On price stabillity, even if the dollar was't a manipulated and overprinted currency, it is a currency, and therefore a commodity that happens to be the medium of exchange. Just like any other commodity therefore, it is subject to change in value subjectively according to the mindset of participants in a market, just as the wants and desires of those participants will be dynamic in the marketplace will vary too. Therefore the idea of price stabillity is a myth. Also the amount of money in a market cannot change the situation or productivity of a market economy, thereby increasing employment(not permanently anyway). It simply determines the amount of money in supply, and thereby it's value in comparison with other goods. The malinvestment that causes the recessions is brought about at the beginning of the speculative boom in economic cycles, as the lowering of interest rates distorts the economic calculation of individuals and entrepreneurs. They have to pay for the mistakes further down the line. However bailing out the individuals by printing out more money(let's face it they're not going to increase taxes), is only going to inflate the money supply even further and destroy people's savings in the long run. I confess I still need to develop my economic understanding , and have not yet got to the business cycle theory in Mises' book Human Action, but I'm getting there. I've just recently read the chapter on the Sphere of Economic Claculation, so it may be some time before I can elaborare on that.

I diagree with you, and I don't think the bill should be passed. I wouldn't stop there however, I would abolish the Fed, stop monetising debt, and introduce legislation to allow competition in the currency sector so that people are not left with the worthless paper currency that is going to implode anyway. Indeed, as I've already posted in general discussion I'm considering withdrawing my own trading account from the dollar completely. I also would recommend you read Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises or other works from the Austrian school of Economics before claiming free marketeers are complaining about the current issues for ideological reasons.

Hi everybody, I think I'm usually pretty level headed when dealing with financial news and how it impacts on my own decisions. I do short term stock trading in a dollar denominated account on the American stock exchangs. I have a system that I apply to this trading, so that I only trade stocks short term in sectors that are performing well for the stage the economic cycle is in(e.g. the current recession), unless I decide to start short selling(though I admit I've never actually done that before), then I would do the opposite. The account is dollar denominated however, and strangely in the current situation, I find myself reluctant to talk about this with my family, so I thought I would at least post about it here. Do you think we are in for an era of dollar hyperinflation currently? This is causing me a little anxiety, and even though I can still make money on the market if I'm actively trading I'm thinking of getting my money out of this dollar account, and perhaps buying up some hard commodities like gold or silver. What would you do in my shoes?

Yes, essentially the goal would be to increase the albedo/reflectivity of the polar regions. On your second point, I think perhaps it's effect would be positive if it was powered only by carbon neutral sources. I guess the question is of how long exactly it takes to melt, and how much longer in comparison with ordinary ice. I think the exact amount would determine the calculation of whether such a project would be worth it on different levels. Also it could only make a short term difference.

Hi everybody, perhaps I've chosen a slightly controversial title for this thread, but this is a thought that's been bubbling in my head for a little while. I remember watching a documentary a while back on Pykrete ice, as a a material of about 14% sawdust and 86% water ice as being much stronger and melting much more slowly than ice. Indeed I almost chose it as the subject of a materials presentation I did back in my physics class at high school. I chose not to however as I couldn't find much information on it however... I still can't, which is why I'm making this thread as I hoped others would perhaps have some more information on it. One thing I'd like to ask: What is the melting point of this material? Indeed I'm so intrigued to find it out I'm tempted to try and make it myself. I've heard you can use milk as well to make it, got plenty of that, need to find sawdust! If it melts significantly higher than ice, then could it be feasible that if(regardless of the financial burdens of such a project, as well as assuming it is somehow powered in such a way, that it is carbon neutral): Perhaps sheets of Pykrete were placed at or around the receding polar icecaps, we could slow down the rate of temperature change by a significant amount? I came up with this idea thinking perhaps it buy time, before the changes become absolutely irreversible. I remember watching the news about how the rate of warming is accelerating due to the ocean expanding in the polar areas, and thereby absorbing the heat that the polar caps were previously reflecting.

Does anyone know hawking's reasons for betting that it won't be found?

Is that a joke?? I just had a look and the cam displays what looks like a black hole engulfing the camera view both inside and outside? If it is...

I wasn't asking you what you know, indeed I would strongly doubt you actually know the intentions of the iranian regime, as I strongly presume you are not a part of it. I was asking how much you think Ahmadinejad's statements actually reflect the goals and intentions of the Iranian regime, or rather, to how large an extent he's "preaching" to the Arab world and his own populace. The supreme leader of Iran, Khamenei, and other influential inividuals have often issued statements directly contradicting Ahmadinejad's, even directly after he has made his. I think it's important to realise that with that country your dealing with a wide political spectrum, much like the US, and I think the positions of the reformists have only been weakened by the antagonistic policies of the bush administration and the neocons. Also, I think any other policy, that isn't this childish "we don't like them so we will cut off all diplomatic links and impose sanctions approach" would help the US settle this dispute in a far better fashion.

Pangloss, to me Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plays the role of the public figurehead of the Iranian regime. My question to you is this: How accurately do you think the statements, including the controversial ones he has made reflect the goals and intentions in the near future of those more powerful in Iran, who actually control policy, basically the mullahs and the current Ayatollah? I think if you want to accurately judge a threat based on the characters involved, these guys should be looked at much more closely.

Perhaps not in raw numbers but I think per capita, maybe the Tamil tigers have made more and been more effective with the techinique of suicide bombers. Also many of their bombers are women, one even managed to kill the Prime minister of India in the 80s! Though I guess they are not a government, and not sponsored by any government in the world. I take that back, if I can count the following BBC article credibly, then the following quote damns my country of birth as a culprit. must say, I'm dissapointed: "Different Indian administrations have been responsible for training and arming the Tamil rebels in the past in different parts of the sub-continent." The article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/526407.stm I think also perhaps people are still not seeing Ahmadinejad for what he is. He's a clown of a politician, struggling with bad political opinion of him back home, though sympathised by some arabs foreign to his country(not sure how much that's changed with the recent debacle in lebanon). I think his tactic, and the Iranian regime's of having the Big Satan of America works in their favour to a large extent, to keep power. It's strange in a way, it's like the tactics of both sides mirror themselves. I do think the regime of Iran is despicable, much like China's or Russia's, but just because their a state sponsor of terror doesn't mean their stupid enough to hand nuclear weapons to terrorists. Many countries around the world are, or have been state sponsors of Terror. This includes the US, and their good buddies the Saudi Arabians(no offense to you guys). That's my view anyway.

Though I like physics the most, chemistry was the one I found easiest at "high school". I think if I want to, I can be really good at memorising things, which is what it mostly involved, apart from really basic calculations. Biology.... I just never realy seemed to produce the "right answers" with, even though I don't think it was too bad conceptually, I think I just got very annoyed by the darn mark schemes! Finally physics, I think is possibly the one I found the hardest, but it's by far the most beautiful and motivating to study in my biased opinion;). I think by now it's not so bad, after coming to finish the 2nd year of my undergrad:-)

The questions you're asking are fairly multifaceted, and I am finding them fairly interesting. I'm sorry if I didn't effectively reply to your OP, I think I was skim reading at that point. I will try and help you with what I consider the "easiest" 1st, to help further this discussion. At least mathematically, it doesn't seem to me considering what I know, and especially after the reminder from fredrik's last post, that the conservation laws of CM, necessarily "emerge" from QM, though such laws are defined for both schemes independently(whether in the form of commutators in QM, or Poisson brackets for CM, though I think there are specific nuances to each). There may be convergences, but I suspect, that the way to get from one to the other, should not in prinicple be very much different, as with any other mechanical principles. I apologise if the last sentence sounded like gobbledy gook. Secondly, at least classically, as long as we choose to carry out analysis in an inertial frame, Kinetic energy is only dependent on canonical momenta, and Potential energy only on coordinates(for nonconservative force fields, potential however becomes time dependent). If not inertial, then for the purposes of classification, we may adopt "effective potentials", and these potentials adopt cyclic terms(usually) from the Kinetic energy, and therefore, would include momenta. With regards to your confusion, I'm not sure how the situation could change in QM for this, the question of superposition, and how it plays a part in such a scheme is especially intriguing for me, and I guess suspect that, perhaps some relation is shared with the "cross terms" resulting from the "KE" expression in the Hamiltonian, when we have several particles. As to whether these laws are changing, whether as a result of some form of decoherence, or "einselection", I guess I'm stumped for answering yes or no to that question I'm afraid, though I'm intriugued as to why you think this may be the case. I think it would be useful if someone else tried filling in the rest maybe...

I'm sure you implied this and I'm being pedantic, but the Hamiltonian, and the energy of the system are only equivalent; if the kinetic energy of the system can be expressed as a homogeneous quadratic of generalised velocities. I should probably know this, but; I know that this is the equivalent of the Poisson bracket for QM, but although I know the PB is made up of mixed partial derivatives, what is the quantum equivalent inside the bracketed commutation you have shown above. I really need to start seriously revising QM... I have an exam in that too soon!

The symmetry "with respect to" time is just one kind of symmetry that can result from the lagrangian of a system, resulting a conserved quantity/first integral, aka the Hamiltonian. But many other conserved quantities can be derived, as has been mentioned already; angular momentum, when the angular coordinates have been made cyclic. Anyway, I'm glad fredrik brought up Noether's theorem. I've done a course on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics this year, and even though Noether's theorem wasn't covered in detail, I think I get the gist of it. I just checked out the wikipedia article, and it said the extension in Quantum Mechanics was the Ward-Takahashi identity. Can anyone explain to me in as simple English as possible, how this extends Noether's theorem, the ways it differs and what it means? P.S. It's great to finally be able to read some of these threads and understand them to a fair enough extent to make non-erroneous comments! Woohoo>! Guess I won't be happy if someone corrects what I said above though:doh:.

I'm not sure I understand all the symbols you're using, but I'll try and keep what you've shown here in mind to maybe look at later. As a tool, do these superlines actually make the task of solving differential equations any easier, or are they simply a way of giving another perspective on these types of problems? Then again, this stuff may be well beyond me as I'm having enough trouble trying to understand canonical transformations and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation with my revision...

Interesting. Do you think these people, whatever you would like to call them, would not vocally reject global warming occuring as much if; in the political and public spectrum, it was recognised that big government solutions cannot be used to combat it. I guess really I'm interested if rejection of science is based on ideology concerning the way the economy should function? So in a way global warming is like a "sacrificial lamb" in a debate it has nothing to do with it, ultimately. This is the crux of what I wanted to get at with my OP.

I recognise that this a complex topic, and forms part, philosphically of the discussion on whether government intervention in regulating business should be there at all. The topic of this discussion is on the media, but almost primarily, the attention is on the role of the news media. I think people may recognise that news agencies are becoming increasingly "slanted", one could say in propmoting political views. I guess, it is rather obvious, that they often "spin" the news to protect their owners, and their investors' interests. This makes sense, as in any enviroment the only role of a business is to make profit, it is the yardstick of success. My first question is could this problem be tackled by reducing government regulation. For example, if the government has no power to regulate th media, does this remove the incentive for the media to try and politicise what it produces, as well as remove their incentive to bribe policy makers to pursue beneficial polices to their particular station if the government no longer excerciese such power? I recognise that this problem may be quite hard to combat. Strangely, I think businessmen grow quite fond of regulation if it protects them from competition. So now that a lot of media sources are corporate and politicised(I guess America is my case in point), it will be especially hard to reverse this trend. Secondly, is the fact that media is owned by corporate conglomerates make it impossible for there to be media that do not act directly to protect the interests of their owners, and therefore not report stories that could be to their detriment? Does this mean that regardless of whether government intervention is removed, the media will still be used to try and manipulate the populace for powerful interests? Thirdly, do you think that corporate news media actually have it in their interests to keep news uncritical of other businesses and corporations, being light in coverage of scandals, because they rely on the same kind of outlets for the advertising, and sponsors? I guess part of this, depends on how much variety, we judge there to be in the marketplace. So, any thoughts?

Thanks for that Snail. I guess sometimes I'm a bit frustrated as to how people are much more eager to reply to threads set up to rebuke some kind of crackpot theory than tackle a genuine question. I can't say I'm not guilty myself of acting similiar though, I'm just as mentally lazy as the next person if not more... Also my post in this thread was really in jest:doh:... though in a way I am impressed by the Capn's response. Really I didn't pay that much attention to the titles behind usernames before, apart from "Physics expert", which seemed for better or worse to give off an air of respect. I guess that, and reading through the writing style of how people post I think gives off a kind of gauge of their character in a strange way. I guess there's nothing left to do now but make a thread on government intervention within media.

yay!.......

I must say, reading through this thread is making me quite jealous.It only adds insult to the fact people are so slow to reply to the threads I make that actually are on science(like the one currently in classical physics). I've been on this forum at least as long as Snail, if not longer, and I don't get a special title behind my username! Why can't I be special:-(! Waaaaaaaa... I hate you guys! ...runs off with eyes shut...