lemur

As I understand it, LEDs generate a single wavelength of light, e.g. blue or red, so no energy goes into making infrared, microwaves, etc. Is there any energy loss within the LED itself, or does the inefficiency of LEDs have to do with their electrical components? You mean AC/DC converters? You're right that those waste energy when the appliance isn't connected and should be unplugged. Still, the problem as I see it is that as light bulbs and electronics use increasingly lower amounts of energy, other applications such as various forms of heating/cooling use so much that efficiency increases in lighting and electronics appear relatively insignificant. For example, if you run a 15W cfl bulb for 10 hours/day, i.e. @300hours/month, that is 4.5kwh. Now if you reduce that by 60% by switching to LED's you save @3kwh/month. But if you look at the electric usage of a household with climate control, household usage can be 500kwh+/month. Since I don't use a/c or electric heat, my usage is often 200kwh/month or less, but 3kwh saved by going from CFL to LED is still just a drop in a bucket. I assume that the majority of the energy I use is for heating water, using an electric range, and the refrigerator. I suppose the water heater and refrigerator could theoretically be made more efficient by coupling them as some kind of heat-pump thermal exchange system. I don't know how cooking could be made more efficient, though, except by designing some kind of solar pressure cookers or something like that. Climate control is the Mt. Everest of energy-efficiency challenges, imo, at least in residential and consumer applications. There may lots of industrial gains to be made but since those are kept private for the most part, I don't know how you could survey and analyze energy applications there. Maybe a really useful way to reduce industrial energy waste, though, would be to combine industrial applications that use large amounts of energy such as bakeries and other oven-using industrial facilities with consumer applications such as malls. That way, heat used for the industrial application could passively benefit the neighboring retail space.

This is a very pertinent read. Do you know if Einstein later completely rejected ether or if he maintained this idea that it was valid as long as no properties of motion (or motionlessness) were ascribed to it?

I started to post this in the thread about light bulbs but I thought it might be considered hijacking. As I understand it, a 15watt cfl produces as many lumens as a 60watt incandescent, both of which can be replaced with a 5watt LED(or was it 3?). I would think LEDs are the limit for lamp efficiency but is any greater efficiency possible? Once total lighting efficiency is reached, what will be the next great "efficient technology race," iyo? Or maybe the better question would be what technology has the greatest potential for energy-efficiency increases after light-bulbs?

I guess it depends on how you regard the motion of photons. If you regard the photons as moving "between" Earth and Mars, then there is some "empty space" that they are traveling "through." If, on the other hand, you regard photons as inter-electron information WITHIN convergent gravitational fields, then you don't really have "space" between Earth and Mars since their gravitational fields merge into one another. Then you would have to decide if you view gravitation as "space" between the electrostatic fields of electrons or if you can treat photons as extending the electron fields they emanate from as they propagate along to their receiving electrons (i.e. are photons moments of extension and merging between different electrons?). If you treated gravity, electromagnetism, and other force fields this way, i.e. as interwoven instead of bounded and separated within a spatial container, then you could theoretically escape relying on space as a container concept for interactions between multiplicities of field-forces.

What about things like how substances behave in various materials, mixtures, etc? E.g. I am guessing that the malleability/ductility of metals have to do with their electron abundance, but is this effect of the atoms interacting with each other explained by QM aspects or does it have to do with how the atoms interact at the inter-atomic level?

Ok, what about inter-atomic physics? I.e. physical interactions among atoms?

Ok, but I have to wonder when people claim that one type of cognitive linguistic category application is more biologically innate than another, how do all the supposedly "less inate" applications of categories occur? When someone categorizes a kindle being more like a book than an iphone, is this some perversion of natural biological cognition or just one possibility among others for how natural categorical cognition can go?

It probably depends one what is inside each individual cognitively and emotionally at the moment the desire comes to take social initiative. So many factors can be at work. For me at least, part of the problem is that the moment you switch from casual public conversation with no strings attached to making plans, you are starting to attach those strings. E.g. if you're just chit-chatting and the other person isn't amused, they can just be on their way. But the more you get to be friends, the more sense of hurtfulness there is if one of you doesn't want to see the other anymore. So once you take that initiative to make plans together, you're raising the ante of what's to lose if things don't work out. Different people have different tolerances at different levels of contact, but if you're aware of the kinds of situations/conflicts you can get into, it can make you apprehensive about "getting involved" unless you're pretty sure it's not going to end up hurting anyone's feelings. Be careful. I knew someone that would party a lot and ask men out at bars. They would say yes but then not show up for the date (stood her up). So people sometimes say yes because they're in that mood and then change their minds later when sober, etc. But of course they probably wouldn't have said yes at all if they didn't find you interesting, so if things don't work out at least you know it wasn't because they didn't like anything about you. I am being too pessimistic though. Probably it will just go well and your biggest problem will be how to juggle three. Xitten, it sounds like you are nervous because you want to control yourself and your situation to make sure things happen perfectly. I would guess you are somewhat of a perfectionist and you get very embarrassed when imperfection or awkwardness is apparent. You probably also feel out-of-control if you get angry and worry that if you express it, people will just disrespect you and take you that much less seriously. I think you need to find some people or situations where you can let go a little and just express your anger or do your singing and just freely be yourself generally. I think this would help you develop self-confidence by showing you that the things you worry about aren't as big a deal as you worry that they are. E.g. you could probably get pretty angry at someone and criticize them fairly aggressively and as long as you didn't really hurt their feelings with insults, etc. they would just accept you as being upset. People aren't usually as sensitive to other people's outbursts as they are embarrassed about their own. I suppose that's very generalizing, but I think it would be true in your case that you would consider your own angry outburst more shocking than whoever you were with.

I would guess that if you analyzed mixed phase states, such as ice-water or boiling-water, you would find that the reason temperature remains constant throughout the phase change is that any temperature deviation in each component of the mixture transfers its heat to the parts that have not yet reached the higher energy phase. So steam bubbles either heat the water that surrounds them or water that rises above 0C in ice-water immediately gives up its heat to remaining ice. So in that sense, you could say that there is not a phase-change state distinct from the phases themselves. Yet, when you chart temperature variation as a function of temperature, there appears to be flat lines during phase-transitions, right? Why can't making reference to space as a curved 'entity' work the same way? I.e. you could recognize that what is really going on is force(field)-vectors influencing each other, but because there is an observed pattern, this can be referred to as 'space(time) curvature.' Then you could just apply deeper scientific understanding to recognize that just as there is no true "phase transition" state distinct from the other phases, there is no "spacetime (curvature)" distinct from the physical relations between matter and (its) energies. Good point, though, about the conflict between "totally nothing" and "something that curves."

And yet people will go on with whatever tacit assumptions they make about the nature of space. Do you think it's possible for humans to suddenly epistemologically cease to conceptualize space because they're not sure about the logic of the foundation of their epistemology?

While I agree with the essential politics of this, I find it somewhat hypocritical when westerners say this considering that 'modern economies' haven't actually eliminated subjugation of the social rights of women (and men) to economic prerogatives of those with power/money, but have rather facilitated them through greater legitimations at the institutional level. So, for example, women are still sold into marriage in the west - only they do the selling themselves and their motivation is that they are seeking a husband who can give them at least as materially wealthy a life as their daddy did (otherwise they feel like a failure or "cheap"). Often times, women who become economically powerful through a job or business instead of marriage are still more attracted to economic power than to other things. And this is true for men as well - money is the master many people love exclusively, whether the currency is camels and sheep or euros.

As potential or kinetic and how? I use p=mv as a short hand for remembering the qualitative notion I have of it. I still think of it in terms of a thing carrying energy in the form of motion though. I'm not saying calculation and measurement aren't handy. I'm saying that some things can be reasoned without calculation, not that everything can. Nothing explains that, does it? But they are logically related as quantized behaviors, aren't they? By the same logic, I would expect redshift/blueshift to be quantized. Has this been empirically tested? Can you give an example? I really do find that interesting. Although I have a hard time understanding and conceptualizing things in terms of math, I have deep respect for it and sometimes I understand the logic of something mathematical and am amazed at how counterintuitive yet useful it is. AJB strikes me as a very learned scholar, though a lot of what he says sounds esoterically inaccessible to me.

But you could just as easily compare a book about ethics with lectures on youtube about ethics as you could compare it with books about frogs. And yet it's probably the case that you have a general symbolic interpretation of the color red built up from numerous associations that include apples, blood, stop signs, lips, red sports cars, tomatoes, chili peppers, etc. Cognition is complex.

Could you maybe give examples for reference since I am somewhat math illiterate? Could you maybe give examples for reference since I am somewhat math illiterate?

I find it easy to say things to random strangers or hold a brief conversation with a stranger in public, but it becomes very awkward to me when I think about asking that person to exchange phone numbers or otherwise extend our public encounter into a private relationship. I don't know why this seems so awkward. I assume I am just shy or prudish or something like that. Maybe it is that the stakes of expressing a desire to go beyond spontaneous public contact seem high. Xitten, flirt! Don't massage A Trip's ego more than it already has been by getting his 3 dates. A Trip, congrats on getting 3 dates just by approaching people in public. That's nice.

How can space precede the entities it is presumed to contain if it doesn't exist independently of them? I say it is an abstraction derived from actual physical interactions that precede and generate it as a result of their motion and relative densities. What's wrong with saying that matter and energy precede and contain space instead of the reverse? Start with a nebula with even consistency, i.e. no density gradation. Then allow it to condense into multiple gravity-wells with density gradations from one well to the next. The low-density areas will be construed as empty space BETWEEN the densified areas of the gravity wells. But why are they now "in-between space" instead of just "low-density areas of the nebula?" Something changed in our perception of the nebula to transform it from a single unit to multiple units with space in between. You could look at the singularity of the big bang the same way, no? What does anyone's "vote" matter? The issue is whether there's any objective basis for describing gravity fields as separate or multi-centered parts of the same unified field? You seem to have completely lost sight of the issue of whether these formulations are rooted in objectivity or subjective convenience. I suppose so, but I guess the deeper point is whether But then how do you measure the amount of distance between things if there's absolutely nothing between them?

I know this is true of known science. Swanson also explains this quite well. Because there are qualitative applications of logic. Conservation of energy, momentum, etc. for example can be applied qualitatively to a number of issues without doing any math. The fact that a black body radiates energy as well as it absorbs it is logical according to conservation logic. If it would radiate less efficiently than it absorbs, energy would have to build up in the material like water flowing into a reservoir faster than it can escape. It also explains why electron levels have to be quantized, since if photons are emitted from electrons in whole packets, that would make it logical that electrons increase and decrease energy levels in corresponding whole amounts. I'm not trying to put qualitative knowledge in competition with quantitative calculation, because they support each other generally. I'm just trying to show that even quantum physicists apply qualitative thinking in some ways and that there's no reason why qualitative concepts can't be applied rigorously without the use of math. It's a question of deducing reasonable applications of logic from known parameters and laws. This doesn't exclude the use of empirical testing and quantitative measurment. The two can be and usually must be in dialogue with each other to work.

I don't know first hand, but I see polygamy as a pragmatic response to marital infidelity. I.e. If you cheat on your wife, you have to take care of her and her children. As I understand it, pre-marital or extra-marital sex is regarded as rape to protect the honor of the woman. This is why it makes sense to make marriage punishment for rape, i.e. because that ensures that the rapist takes responsibility for his victim, whether it was actually consensual or not. I.e. just because it was consensual, that doesn't justify walking away and taking no responsibility for your sexual partner after using her for pleasure.

Intuition isn't its own method. It's just that certain methods are more intuitive than others. E.g. when you think about molecules in a gas getting excited, it is intuitive that they move faster and collide with more momentum. It's not that you're relying purely on intuition. It's just that you are able to move back and forth between intuitive modeling and testing your intuition and its implications against empirical data. I never said that QM was demonstrably wrong. I just said that there's no way to know whether some more intuitive alternative method could also have explanatory and/or predictive value without that model being on hand. So if every time someone comes forth with a seed of an intuitive model and you bash it for not being as strong as QM, that may have some stifling effect on the development of new modeling/methods. I'm not suggesting you should encourage intuitive modeling by avoiding criticizing it. I'm just saying that they should should be critically responded to in a way that stimulates them to prove themselves and develop greater rigor instead of undermining them by any means possible. I don't think there's any danger of advancing false knowledge by doing this. Ideas collapse under their own weight when they build on weak foundations. I think this is what happens in practice most of the time when marginal thinkers post their ideas on this forum anyway, actually. I find it usually only gets really harsh when someone claims to put forth a radically new theory of everything or claim that they have some new model/method to replace existing ones because they claim those are terribly inferior. I just think there should be some room between using proven science to constructively critique ideas and the insistence that proven science is superior and must be accepted by everyone as the only possible approach to studying nature and if they have any thought that doesn't already conform to proven science, they should jettison it and first indenture themselves to becoming experts in academic science and not post a creative thought until they have.

Didn't racially isolated whites used to say the same thing about blacks from watching TV reporting that focussed on negative stories involving blacks like gangs, drugs, poverty, etc.? Still, aren't there plenty of positive representations of Muslims on TV as well?

I'm simply questioning whether the fact that one method of representing scientific truth is the only possible method. There's a big leap between saying that the method you came up works and saying that there's no other method possible. One involves rigorously testing the method you have. The other involves a belief that total oversight over all scientific logic is possible from the perspective of one scientific method. I don't think physicists decide in the sense of actively choosing to favor the method that has built up inertia in their discourse. I think they just continue extending their paradigm into new applications and take each practical success as a confirmation of the validity of the paradigm generally. There is nothing wrong with that. The paradigm is working. But why does that somehow imply that there is no other paradigm possible or that only one paradigm may be allowed at any one moment and all others must be relinquished until the dominant paradigm falls? Why shouldn't the town be big enough for more than one sheriff (or other investigators), so to speak?

I guess what confuses me is if you're sailing across a gravitational gradient in water, how do you know whether the gradient is also an altitude change or not? Does the surface shape of any body of water always behave as the surface of a perfect sphere relative to the center of gravity, regardless of the actual shape and gravitational oddities of the planet/body it's on? Or can it vary topographically according to varying gravity levels?

I thought it was a perfect analogy between material interactions and institutionalized relations, but needless to say "curved spacetime" doesn't have to refer to space(time) as an entity. It can just be a patterned skewing of force vectors, no? I don't understand your thinking. First you question the existence of space as an a priori entity. Then you insist that the space existed between two things before it grew larger. When you tear a piece of paper in half, does the space of the tear exist before the paper is torn? If it does, is it any different than any other two fibers of the paper that are still interwoven? What about with water? When an air bubble is blown underwater, does the air fill a previously empty space? Doesn't the air bubble itself create an empty space within the water by its pressure? Doesn't nuclear force and motion do the same thing within the gravitational field that includes all matter in the solar system? If the attractive force of the nuclei and electrostatics wasn't what it was, along with the densification-effects of gravity, would their be a gradient of density between one gravity-well and another? Whether or not gravity can continue expanding indefinitely doesn't have anything to do with whether it has a limit or not. It could continue expanding indefinitely without ever developing the strength to retract itself into a re-condensed form. The pertinent issue is whether gravity-wells connect, remain connected, and/or disconnect under certain circumstance and, if so, how can you tell when gravity is completely absent or weakly present? Not "nothing-ness," NOTHING. You could just say that particles reach each other with their field-force because the force-fields are ultimately unbounded. In other words, what you want to regard as empty space could just be filled with various extended fields of force, only far weaker than you might choose to validate as significant enough to consider as a continuation of the particle-fields they extend from. What I'm saying is that electrostatic force is a force just like gravity. So when you regard an electron as a point-particle with an electrostatic field extending away from it, that is no different from the gravitational field extending away from it. So what basis is there to regard the points as points along a definite boundary? Both the electrostatic and gravitational fields of the particles extend beyond them for various distances. What keeps you from saying that the force-fields themselves are part of the particles? Why are they external to the particles in your epistemology? Why isn't the gravitational field as a whole a physical entity with no essential core, just coinciding electrostatic and nuclear fields? What I'm saying is that we see what photons bounce off of, i.e. certain electrons. We don't see the gravitational field of Earth, but we do see the electrostatic fields of some of its electrons when they are organized in a way that reflects light. The atmosphere consists of gaseous molecules surrounded by electrons with electrostatic field-force that interacts with light. Why does the gravitation of these particles extend beyond what we typically delineate as the limits of the atmosphere? If the gravitation of Earth extends to the moon and beyond, it extends far beyond the probability area to which we attribute the electrons of the atmosphere, right? Yet, though we can see the atmospheric electrons, we can't see their gravitation, but does that make it less of a boundary-market for the matter than their electrostatics? I.e. gravitation and electrostatics are just two different forces - why should one take precedence in defining the boundaries of matter? Why do they need to be something more than gravitational field-force itself? Why do electrons need to be more than electromagnetic/gravitational field-force? Why do protons need to be more than electrostatic/nuclear/gravitational field force? Why do neutrons need to be more than nuclear/gravitational field-force? Why does field-force need to exist as something that emerges from something else? What is ontologically essential about calling a point at the center of the force-field a 'particle?' If the "rest frame" of Earth containing Mars didn't include the sun, what would the strength of gravitational field-force be between Earth and Mars? What does it mean to have a direction without anything in that direction? I think you keep assuming that when no matter/force/energy is present, there's still something else called "empty space" that IS present. What if there was really NOTHING present in front of your rocket ship? What if the strongest force in the universe was your own gravitation? Where would you go? What would you orbit? What would "spacetime" curve around except you yourself? There would be nothing else, right?

In practice, I'm sure you're right. Still, I have been thinking about the practice of polygamy being limited to 4 wives in Islam and I think there might be more sexual responsibility in that than in freely dating and divorcing/re-marrying limitlessly in the west. Usually, I would think of polygamy as involving more male-dominance than polygamy but I think polygamy could actually function as a restriction for western men if they were required to marry every women they had sex with.

This argument sound biased in favor of conformism. People tend to conform to social norms due to emotional experiences of relative shunning for exhibiting relative independence. Expressions of social-cultural independence are built on solid emotional foundations that people are unconditionally loved by family members, "God," etc. I suppose that also relies on emotional memory but in that case emotional memory liberates more independent cognition. Is it possible I'm misunderstanding you as referring to logic at the level of independent reason whereas you are talking about more base forms of practical/reflexive logic, such as direct responses to emotions that don't involve much reflection and decision-making? Or are you saying that animals and "lower humans" are capable of acting in an emotion-less, calculated logical way and that felt-emotions only surface when a certain level of development has been reached? Basically I was asking you if what you meant was that a well-developed person could be lying and expect others to regard their lies as if they were sincerely expressed. That seem juvenile, imo, though many adults behave in such a deceitful way in search of power.