lemur

If a dumptruck filled with bricks dumps the bricks into a pile, the bricks will pile up more or less at a high level of entropy (disorder). If you impart information into the bricks by assembling them into a house, this increases the order of the bricks. If you subsequently bulldoze the house, the entropy is once again increased. In this case, the information was stored in the bricks in the form of potential energy. When you input information into a computer's memory, the signal must add a little heat to the conductors it travels through, but this heat is dissipated by the computer's cooling fan, which increases the heat-differential between the inside of the computer and outside of it. But since the computer is hotter than its surroundings, adding heat technically decreases the entropy of the system containing the computer and its surroundings. Turning off the computer and allowing it to reach temperature equilibrium with its surroundings would be maximum entropy, I think.

I agree. Archaeology can better be described as an interpretive art. Science can best be described as the art of critical empiricism. In a sense, archaeology is dealing with empirical evidence, so it may be somewhat more empirical than historical accounts based on other texts, unless the previous texts are treated as artifacts instead of sources, which may be an overly fine distinction to start with. You can't get around the interpretation of artifacts, though. When you find a jug or a blade, you have to interpret it as having been for water, oil, burial ashes, wine, washing, etc. If you make systematic arguments based on explicit observations about the artifact and submit these as falsifiable, though, what's not scientific about that? E.g. I dig up a bottle and propose a theory/hypothesis that the land used to be inhabited and submit that my hypothesis could be falsified if the land was/is in fact a landfill, then further tests can be deduced to strengthen or undermine the null-hypothesis. For example, if I keep digging and find more bottles, plates, and utensils, it's looking more like someone left their picnic basket when the rain started and if there's loads of old shoes and tires, the landfill hypothesis is getting stronger, no?

First, I don't think it should matter what someone's status is when you're replying to or commenting on their post. Second, I didn't just use the word "arrogant" as a general personal insult. It was in regard to a general write-off of a post as being "nonsense," or "word-salad" without even bothering to consider the intended meaning of the post. I don't find it groundless to distinguish between photons and other kinds of particles in terms of their having inertia. It is perfectly logical that C is the absolute speed-limit of energy simply because particles with inertia cannot achieve infinite energy, whereas photons achieve/express their ultimate energy level by moving at C. It is thus not ridiculous to consider EM radiation as purely radiant energy while particles with inertia can move linearly with momentum but that part of their energy is expressed as inertia or "matter-ness," if you want to call it that. I like to call it "bound energy" because the (radiant) energy appears to be bound up in some kind of configuration that converts ability to radiate into inertia. Thus the "word salad" post that suggested that bound-particles could have some tendency (or maybe "potential" would be a better word) toward achieving C is not as crazy as it may sound to someone with a bias in favor of another description. This is similar to saying that any form of potential energy has a "tendency" to be expressed as kinetic energy, no? A true crackpot would argue irrationally against any counter-argument why this is a poorly conceived thought, but that's not what I am doing (and I don't think it's what the other poster was doing either). I think we were just discussing the idea in a way that gave some credence to the notion that energy can radiate at C or be bound as sub-C inertial particles. Obviously we would like someone with more physics expertise to comment on this idea in a constructive way to push us toward more critical evaluation of such ideas. It's just that it seemed arrogant/rude to refuse us this courtesy because the wording of the idea was not immediately transparent to the (impatient imo) reader. Probably so, but don't be too quick to dismiss me/us as total crackpots, please. I can see how precise mathematical expressions allow for more exact critique. I have nothing against math and I try to express things with mathematical logic even though I don't have any equation writing/interpreting skill for the most part. Still, the idea that radiation energy can be bound up as inertia-particles is not mathematically expressible, as far as I know. Still, there are clearly precedents in other forms of PE/KE. E.g. planets orbiting the sun in a stable orbital pattern have linear momentum but that momentum can be viewed as PE insofar as that momentum can be transferred to other objects through collisions. A solar system can thus be seen as a system of "bound energy" in that the planets are bound in stable orbits, yet they express energy as momentum. How can you call this pure "crackpottery?" Thanks for this example. It's the first I've heard of it.

This is a great point. I am opposed to conformity/standardization among students but the fact is that they do it voluntarily when uniforms are not mandated. So you might as well mandate uniforms so that they will rebel against conformity instead of doing it by choice (or rather by submission to peer pressure and a will to social acceptance).

Maybe the basis for incest laws shouldn't be genetic but social. Parents have special relationships with their adult children that could prevent those children from being able to refuse sex, which would make it effectively rape. Let's say this woman was afraid of losing her inheritance or some other privilege. Wouldn't there then be a question of quid-pro-quo sexual harassment? If a boss can't do it to an employee, why should a father be allowed to do it to an adult child? The amazing part is that it was reported (assuming it's true and not a media stunt).

Great point. Here's another to go with it: The company selling the dialysis machines get a check for X million pounds from the government and refuse to provide a number of machines sufficient to deal with ALL demand for the treatment. So basically the company's directors are sitting around a table saying, "should we let a certain number of people die until we get another X million?" and then they all nod their heads and go on with their business.

Deficit spending is basically giving a gift that has to be paid back. It's like taking an equity mortgage on a house you own and giving the money to your kids to spend. They get the money and think, "great," and hear later that they don't get to inherit the family house because they already blew the money. In the mean time, they think they're doing well because their parents own a house and they got a good education, etc. Another way of looking at it is that the debt is like a deal with the devil. I.e. you get to live it up in the present but in the future you have to become a slave to evil because you sold your soul in exchange for some short-lived pleasure.

Can't you get banned for rudeness or something? When you talk about brain surgery, that's a situation where any mistake can be life-threatening. Adversarial justice is supposed to work by both parties being able to argue their case and, technically, shouldn't require technical expertise although many lawyers will tell you that's not the case any more. When it comes to science, there's no real substitute for grounding things in rigorously reasoned arguments and empirical factuality. You can't just make a claim to your credentials to be right about an unreasoned claim. You're throwing out a bunch of pejorative "BS" instead of reasoning what you're saying. The only basis you have for demanding mathematics in some general way is some general reasoning you have about it. If someone uses a spectrometer to show that some element is present in some star, where is the math? The point is that you can't even logically expect math for something without knowing what that something is. You are calling the discussion of radiant vs. bounded-energy particles BS because of a lack of math. How does that make any sense? It is just a generic argument you use to call anything BS that you don't know how to discuss.

Well, maybe I had made something sound personal by using a tone based on some present state of mind I was in at the time, but I don't think I have anything against you personally. I was just trying to make the discussion interesting, as far as I know. If all matter-energy ended up in the same black hole and developed into a new universe inside the black hole, wouldn't the new universe contain the same amount of energy as the universe that fell into that black hole? Empirically, you can only know what you can observe. Beyond that you can only presume to extrapolate hypotheses by extending knowledge you have from empirically observed situations. You may be right that the laws of physics change in situations that can't be observed, but what's the point of speculating about that? Personally, I find it entirely plausible that the big bang occurred from the singularity inside a black hole. I think this because spacetime-development seems like a logical result of matter-energy in the singularity having no other means of expression. Thus I can fathom that it begins to "expand" internally in a way that is not noticeable in any way within the universe of the black hole it's expanding within. Nevertheless, that black hole could merge with others and capture all energy-matter in its universe, including any hawking radiation it emitted. In fact, I would guess that its gravitational field would be the last thing that it would begin to consume and when that began to fall into the black hole, the gravitation would initiate the expansion of spacetime within the singularity that allows it to expand (causing the internal big bang). Small relative to what? Why would you start with the proposition that energy is infinite? Who cares who is getting bored with you? Are you having a discussion for your amusement or theirs?

Regardless of how much expertise you have in any field, that doesn't give you the authority to determine the meaning of text you don't understand the author's meaning in writing. If you would understand it and show where it fails empirical viability, that would be a different story. Photons may be particles, but they do not have inertia-mass, so they can't slow down below their maximum speed in a given medium. Another way to describe this is to say that are purely radiant energy (whether they consist of particles, fields, or fairies). If inertia-particles consist of the same basic energy configured in a way that allows them to have inertia and move at variable sub-C speeds, I think what you call, "word salad," says something interesting about that relationship between photons and other (inertia) particles. What is a point-particle except the center of a field? It's not 'word-salad' if you read it and understood the meaning in order to criticize it (don't use insulting exaggerations that aren't true). Idk but the point is not that what hasn't become radiant (again) hasn't. The point is that if photons somehow get "bound" as sub-C particles, they could have the tendency to re-emerge as radiant photons under certain conditions, which I do not know. What is just wrong is to think that one's credentials give one the right to "own" language and concepts. You may have a broader range of reasoning at your disposal because of your years of study that give you the power to show where amateurs' ideas fail, but you have to provide those reasons for us to see it. We're not just going to fall on our knees and believe we are totally lost because you say so. You have to ground your claims in specific reasoning. See, there you go. Claim without giving any reason. Your credentials don't give you the right to make unreasoned claims. If anything they're supposed to have learned you that unreasoned claims are valueless.

What causes "vacuum energy" except multiple gravity-wells pulling things away from each other?

That may or may not be the case, but the interesting part is the reasons for claiming it to be or falsifying the possibility. It does not matter who takes which side or whether I disagree just to play devil's advocate (although I don't try to do this). The only thing that is important is applying critical rigor to developing the question into a reasonable set of parameters. If you didn't want to do this, why post it in the first place? To me, you have to have mechanisms such as macro-neutrons or black holes within black holes that model the initial state of the universe in a way that allows you to reason where the energy came from and how it developed. Your approach amounts to deus ex machina, imo, because you just assume that it was somehow created or previously existing without any reason or mechanisms. Infinite things are constantly being generated. They have rates of generation. How can you say that an infinite amount of anything can be generated within a finite period of time? If that's not what you're saying, what then? Well, it's up to you when to move on to more interesting topics. Don't blame it on other people getting bored. It sounds like YOU are the one getting bored.

It's a bit arrogant on your part to assume something is nonsense before you understand it's meaning, don't you think? BBT presumes, to my knowledge, that energy preceded the formation of matter in the early universe. In general, matter is currently thought of as being constituted of energetic fields. Are those fields fundamental and not ultimately reducible to (radiant) energy or composed of it? If so, where did the fields come from separate from the energy? If not, there must have been some moment where (radiant) energy formed into particles. I say "get separated into distinct particles" because it seems logical to me that in a very dense early-universe, all forces were equally strong to strong nuclear force because of dense volume. Thus, I believe that a point of expansion was reached where gravity and EM fields expanded beyond the nuclear force, which would have allowed the initial macro-nucleus to begin fissioning/separating into distinct particles. It's not "word salad," but a reasoned hypothesis. If you have some reason(s) why it's invalid besides it being different than what you've read, please state those. It means that when energy is bound up in a particle, it could have the tendency to become radiant again as the particle approaches C. Since all radiation travels at C, it has to become bound as a particle of matter to move slower than C, which becomes possible once it develops inertia. A more concrete example would be to say that a heavy particle has a tendency to radiate some of its binding energy when it decays and splits. That's the reason you dissect them critically. Too many people reject them outright because they have a fear of such critical dissection. Nevertheless, that is the process of deductive modeling. You formulate a theoretical explanation/model and begin deducing tests that falsify it. I recently read an example in which gravity was modeled/explained as being caused by particles flowing around in space and getting blocked by the sun and the Earth in such a way that a vacuum would form between the two causing them to be attracted. This model was falsified by noting that if such particles were indeed present, they would cause friction as Earth proceeded in its orbit, which would slow down the orbit. It was NOT falsified by either claiming it didn't have math to back it up OR that it was different from other models.

The more practically framed question would be if the tower with the 10 dogs was on the way to the tower with the human, would you skip picking up the dogs to get the human first and then return to pick up the dogs. You may think that people would always choose the human over the dogs but everyday people spend money on their pets that they would not spend on alleviating human suffering. It really comes down to the specific of the actual situation and how the person making the choice thinks about their options.

Did you read my response? Did I not provide some further indication about what was meaningful about it? Here's what I sincerely don't understand: Why is it that someone with presumedly more experience and knowledge with physics like you can get absolutely nothing out of a post like that while I can see relevance in it at the general level of how matter and energy are related? Is it because you aren't capable of thinking at that general a level or because there's something about deep understanding of physics that causes one to become fundamentally blind to very basic generalizations about the relationships between fundamental aspects of physics?

By "crackpot" do you mean deviation from familiar physics or are you actually criticizing the content of the post?

So are you saying that energy (EM radiation) is attracted to itself, which is the basis of gravity? Thus when energy gets separated into distinct particles, it has a tendency toward radiation and this tendency is what causes the particles to be attracted to each other? There is some elegance/simplicity in this.

Imo, violating animal rights is little different than violating human rights. You do it when you think that the benefit outweighs the detriment. The amazing thing to me is how often people can justify the detriment of killing an animal for the benefit of enjoying a piece of meat. You would think that ethical people would only eat meat in situations of famine but they do it for pleasure.

Why not change the word, "electron" to photonator? That sounds cool, like "terminator." "Elecwaveton" has an awkward dipthong with the "c" next to the "w."

First of all, I hope that I have magnetism down. A magnetic field emerges when there is some harmonization among the electrons in the magnet such that the negative charge of (some of) the electrons occurs in unison away from the side where the protons' positive charge is dominant. I hope this is a somewhat accurate description. Now, as for the solid materiality of matter, this seems to be a result of the electrons as well. Only in this case, the electrons orbit the nuclei of the atoms constituting the matter in such a way that they are more or less random relative to one another and the result is that there is little or no magnetic field surrounding the object and the electrons serve only to prevent other atoms from converging with their neighbors. So far so good? So my question is whether the alignment of the electrons that causes the magnetic field shifts field-force away from the task of maintaining the rigidity of the atoms. If so, I would think magnetism could be described as "inverted materiality" since 100% shift from randomness to alignment would cause all the electromagnetic field-force to be expressed as a unified magnetic field, leaving none for shielding the atomic nuclei from one another. This would also seem to imply two things: 1) that "total magnets" where all EM force is harmonized/aligned would no longer exhibit shielding between the nuclei (and thus presumably be more susceptible to nuclear fusion?). 2) that fusion reactions would exhibit a magnetic field proportional to the displaced electron-shielding. Are either of these extrapolations logical and, if so, are they contradicted by observed evidence?

I think you could approach this question by looking at the relationship between the various force-fields present in a given particle, no? An atom has mass due to the protons and neutrons mainly, right? Then there is extra mass added by electrons and weak nuclear force, which seem more like energy-of-motion effects on mass than passive mass (I suspect that no mass is ultimately passive but I don't understand enough about quantum particles to get into that). So you have the strong force of the protons and neutrons attracting each other in the nucleus, right? And the electrostatic force of the electrons and the protons cause the electrons to buffer the atom against other atoms. I think that even the photons sometimes emitted by the electrons generate some gravity, so generally gravitation seems to be some kind of residual force left over from the interactions among the other forces. Is this possible? If so, I would expect a relationship between the cause of mass (i.e. inertia of elementary particles and their configurations) and the effect of gravity (i.e. attractive force among particles with mass). Could the gravity be a separate field from the others or could it be a result of interactions between the other types of fields?

Science is not a region to inhabit or "go beyond." It is a set of ideas about how to approach research. There's nothing unscientific about asking a question and then subjecting it to critical theorizing about what the empirical observables are, how related claims could be tested and/or falsified, etc. Science is concerned with moving research questions from pure philosophy to critical empiricism. Yes, we want to think about how and why but then we want to check our theories against things we can observe. I hope this doesn't oversimplify too much.

This reminds me of a thought I had about constructing gills for people to breath under water. I think I'll go google what makes gills able to absorb oxygen dissolved in water. Still, even if humans could surgically create gills for themselves, how would their skin take the salinity, wetness, and temperature? Maybe there needs to be some serious genetic syntheses with aquatic mammal genes to create undersea humans. Sea monkeys? edit: nevermind. I just read that water only contains 1/20 the amount of oxygen that air does (per unit volume?). I guess this explains why warm-blooded animals, even aquatic ones, require lungs. Oh well, we can still synthesize with dolphin/whale genes to create aquatic humans. They'll just have blow-holes instead of gills.

This may be naive, but I'm wondering how a photon can have a volume/length if it is absorbed in a single instant by an electron? I mean, if different wavelength photons had different lengths/sizes, that would imply that they take longer or shorter time to pass or absorb into a given electron. So would you then say that the photon gets absorbed in its entirety instantaneously even though 180 meters of it (or 20cm) is lagging behind the point of contact? If you said that it took so much time for it to absorb, where has the electron gone in that amount of time? Plus, how did the photon affect the electron when it made contact, etc.? At this moment I am picturing a 180m EM field "blob" reaching an electron at the speed of light and getting sucked in as the electron speeds around the nucleus at ???speed. After all, the photon can't get partially absorbed right? But then can another electron or the nucleus pass through it as it is getting sucked into the moving electron?

An object in motion stays in motion by its inertia until acted upon by an external force, right? So an electron moving toward another would be deflected by the repulsive force of the intersection of their combined fields, right? So couldn't you say that the electrons/fields act like springs compressing according to how much energy they absorb during impact? In a system where the average compression of all the "springs" was relatively high, the average volume of the springs would be relatively small whereas if the average compression was low, the average volume would be higher, right? Presumably this would also correlate with average speed between collisions. Well, then I guess there's no point in explaining but I'll go ahead and give you my version anyway and maybe it will motivate you to learn about the topic and poke holes in my perversion of it that I'm about to explain. If electrons are compressed more by higher levels of gravitation translated into higher collision-speeds as a result of them piling up on each other, then their volume (i.e. the volume of their effective field radius) would shrink. This could be described as volume/space contraction. If the "spring" contracted and expanded faster because the energy they absorb and release is greater, they would move faster on average and this could be described as time dilating/contracting. Now I have to qualify this by saying that some physics expert will read what I just wrote and say this has nothing to do with space/time dilation/contraction and to stop spreading false information. I'm not trolling. I'm just trying to understand this stuff for myself so I'm telling you what I think and recommending that you go study it and then you can maybe explain to me why the experts keep telling me I don't get it.