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Everything posted by Fred56
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How plausible or likely is human extinction, really?
Fred56 replied to Reaper's topic in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
Seriously? What sort of contribution might this make (apart from the obvious one that you would no longer be a 'consumer', but something to be 'consumed', and therefore contribute to the world's biomass?). You must be able to come up with something more useful than 'exit stage left', surely? My pick also is that there is quite a bit of change on the way, there's going to be "trouble" in paradise for a bit (until the planet settles into its new equilibrium, which humans 'pushed' it to), but I doubt it will mean "the end". The end of what we have now, probably, but not the end of us (and there will still be progress, once we recover from the regress, no doubt). We'll be around for a while yet, but I don't think we (or the planet) can progress without limit, not with just one world to play around with anyway. Possibly the next big step is severing the dependence we have on energy resources, by inventing something less damaging and more or less inexhaustible, say fusion, or something else exotic that we have yet to discover about the quantum world. The big problem we have is that we seem unable to avoid damaging things for other lifeforms, and although we like to think it's ok, it isn't, because we get affected too. What sort of planet would it be with the only large animals around being humans and the handful of ungulates, avians, felines, canines, and rodents that survive our efforts to rid the planet of "unwanted interloper" species (the ones there isn't any room for any more)? -
How plausible or likely is human extinction, really?
Fred56 replied to Reaper's topic in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
There does seem to be a bit of a contention here between the optimists and the pessimists. The optimists appear to think that unbridled growth (to 4 or 5 times 6 billion) is inevitable, or maybe necessary, the pessimists think we won't survive the damage our "success" has been doing. I'm sort of in between, I guess. I don't see how 20-30 billions are going to have much room (or food), when sea-levels get high enough (assuming we ignore climate change, or do nothing effective about stopping it). Where are they all going to live, or grow food for starters? Most of the large cities will have to be abandoned at some stage, so it's "back to the land", wherever that might still be, I guess. And none of this is going to be our problem? I don't think so, it's already happening. So unless you expect to shuffle off sometime in the next 20 odd years, then I would say it is your problem (and mine), and everyone else's who gets born from now on... -
A gun that "fires bricks", so we can do away with all those messy, smoky kilns? A gun that doesn't work (or kills or injures the user) would be my pick. But then crossbows are pretty lethal too (guns are a big unfair advantage, especially for those animal "hunters", give them spears or rocks, i say).
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So my calculus lecturer (who has a graduate degree), is wrong to say that a function's domain can be discontinuous, then? I must see what he has to say about this.
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The answer is 42. Or zero.
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Where change in taxation laws and the disparity between rich and poor is concerned, how badly do you suppose the rich want to give back anything? Don't they just want to get richer --since that's what it's all about after all-- and do pretty much anything they can to avoid paying their "fair share", which means others pay it for them? Or is my observation just semantics in the wind...hang on, I think I feel a burp coming...
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I read a "doomsdayer" guy's blog about the M.E., the war, the oil, and how the whole thing is a Zionist campaign to finally get the "promised" land -the whole goddam land and nothing but, that is... But there is the US dependence on that oil stuff in there too, so supposedly the Zionists have the US fighting the good fight, so to speak.
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There's a lot of information in the world around us. Cosmologists estimate that about 95% of it is in the form of radiation, and space is filled with this background energy, radiating in all directions. This information, however, only becomes real when an observer acquires it, and converts it into more information, which is then maintained by it at some level, in an abstracted form --photons of light become neural signals (in animals that have cells which react to light this way), and are processed and augmented in various biochemical ways, and maintained at some cost. All this requires ongoing change, which must be regulated somehow, to avoid spending too much energy or effort on any particular information. Energy is available to living things from their environment, and they convert their own "information store" (themselves) into available energy, using various labile compounds that bind together reversibly; and also by exploiting the tension that the bonding in stereochemical compounds exhibits. Life has learned to capture and harness ongoing biochemical reactions; it is essentially a vast, complex, self-regulating and assembling phenomenon. Life exhibits purpose, or this behaviour (purposefulness, and others) emerges from this "structured entropy". Structure is also a requirement, or a necessary reality. An organism needs to be contained, or compartmented, somehow (life isn't something that spreads out or diffuses like a gas or a liquid, it "stays together", or has an interface or boundary). This structuring is an important part of Life's ability to "emerge" from a background of matter and energy. There is information in this structuring (it requires ongoing repair and extension), and there is information which represents the activity that ensues (chemical and electrical), upon this structure. Life is like a player or actor upon its own stage (built of information --energy or its equivalent).
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How plausible or likely is human extinction, really?
Fred56 replied to Reaper's topic in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
I personally think that the future human race will be a lot fewer people (there won't be enough arable land or potable water for tens of billions of us), and there will be something of a post-"post-industrial" technology. We won't need (or be able to maintain) as many vehicles or big machines (maybe some really big ones though), and we won't exploit things like rivers (with hydroelectric dams) or big engineering projects that ignore the presence of living things (most current engineers see "life" as an unwanted consideration, they tend to think of geology -rocks and soils-, not ecosystems). We will treat nature with a lot more respect, possibly (after getting kicked in the ass for ignoring her for so long). The technology will be very different, we might have fusion and be able to extract all the energy we need from helium extracted from lunar regolith, or the sea. But there will probably be less than a billion of us, and life (and the planet) will probably look pretty different. Eventually all the continents are going to join together again, so this is a pretty good probability, but we might not be around in 200-and-something million years either -as H. sapiens sapiens, anyway, maybe H. sapiens mechanensis (with an additional qubit-processing computer attached to their brains), or P. troglodytes. -
Can Humans Prevent the Heat Death of the Universe?
Fred56 replied to Luminal's topic in Speculations
Life already 'prevents' entropy from dispersing it, in some sense. Life is like something that exploits entropy, or surfs the wave, type of thing. It's an ongoing balance between expending energy and maintaining an individual reservoir. Life converts itself into (chemical) energy to do this (to convert stuff into itself). Since this involves the one-way "flow" of energy (entropy), there is no going backwards, or stopping (this is death, in fact). We cannot stop the entropic dispersal, so logically, life will eventually be faced with the prospect of being unable to find any "good surf", anywhere, and even trying to look for it, or 'think' about where to look, will be catastrophically "overloading" (the heat will destroy us)... -
21st is u, 23rd is v 'double-u' = 2 'v's = w is 1st letter next 2 are 3 apart. 4th is d is also 4th letter. (more ways than 1) 5th 'splits' the 1st & 2nd letter, or is 1/2 way btween. nswr is "words" (right here they r)...? ?
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Well, the concept of expenditure and risk are part of established Gaming and complex systems theories, but perhaps energy 'exchange' is a safer term. The exchange that the external world 'initiates' by projecting images or sounds, say, at us, so it becomes 'obvious', is only a very small amount (if you think about this, it is surprising that any observer is able to learn much at all). We expend, or exchange further energy with external information to form a stable representation, a mental image, of it. Our brains let us imagine, or project back, various possible reasons, or theories, about this communication, and we are bound to test them to see if our logic is correct (it is a 'safe' event, or it isn't, in which case it might be time for further 'expenditure'). This is what humans (and most other mammals) do with a lot of the 'messages' they get from the external world. So learning must involve a necessary usage of the internal energy store (and its ongoing maintenance) to keep the information (that is learning) from dissipating (entropy again). Life does this by slowing the dissipation process, or riding the surface of it, and harnessing it or accumulating "energy", as knowledge or information, which is the organism itself; we are each a result of "de gustibus unum".
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OK, well it looks like it's all about what someone who has done set or number theory (which isn't seen as a necessary goal when learning about "infinite" series or limits in calculus), has to say about the infinite sets and the transfinite numbers. I have no real concrete idea what Cantor means by "transfinite", except that it looks like another word for infinity. Really you don't need to go beyond the ideas of the integers extending (countably) to +- "infinity", or some limit, and the idea of real numbers (an always larger set), being uncountable. Beyond that it's pretty much custard all the way. What I was getting at, in my own inimitable fashion, was that the idea of a series, or list (which is what a set of real values along the number line is), must have finite, real intervals between them, and adding them together (or just saying that one of them is a whole number, since any interval also contains an infinite set of points with an infinite set of intervals), must make some 'bigger' value. Integrate some interval between any two points (by adding all the intervals together), and call it '1'. then double it to get '2', or subtract it to get '0'. Is this making any more sense?
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I like to think of something that is actually infinite, as a set of numbers to which no number can be added, because there is no number we can add which is outside an (actually) infinite set. Such a set already contains any number we might think of. Then there's the infinite series of numbers which approaches, but doesn't become infinite, which we say has a limit at (a mathematical) infinity. Details, details: There is, one more time, an infinite number of real values (points coinciding with the real number line) between any adjacent 'whole' numbers, on the same line. The interval between any two adjacent real values in the set between such whole values (1 interval), might not be equal to the first or last such interval, but if all the intervals (which are ordered, or have ordinality, along with their infinite cardinality), are added together, a whole value is 'restored'. This addition, or summation, can be done between any two such 'whole values', which cannot otherwise be constructed (starting with real values), but must necessarily be defined (like the single real interval is) first, as particular, but arbitrary points. Therefore this is the idea of two limits (of infinite series) being added or subtracted (or multiplied or divided). Indeed, each particular series (of which I assume there is an infinite variety) can have only one limit, more exactly, taking a particular limit can have only one result. This is our concept of unity. Perhaps Elvis has left the building after all (to see his hairstylist)...
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Perhaps I should have said (I thought I did) that the domain can be discontinous -e.g.: -12 <= x < 0, 0 < x <= 224 which is a (closed) domain for x which has a discontinuity at 0. The range of a function depends on the domain (and of course, the function), but there may be a function which is continuous over its entire range with the domain (for x) specified in the first sentence of this post... Discontinuity is a general concept you can apply to any domain or range, it isn't restricted to the output of a function. Look at the function again in the post previous to your last, the domain (x) is discontinuous (excludes 1), and the range is discontinuous also. P.S. Think about how a function's domain can be the range of another function, etc.
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Women are a lot like cars. Every man wants a hot, sexy-looking one stashed somewhere so he can take it for a drive every now and then, while the other, ordinary-looking one that's easier to handle and gets more mileage is back at home. Never a dull moment Q. What's the good thing about Alzheimers? A. You're always meeting new people...!
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But infinity isn't one thing, its an infinity of things, there are an infinite series of alephs, an infinity of limits, yes? Unfortunately (or whatever), we use the same word for all of them. Or maybe someone can explain transfinite sets...
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Gravity and Charge We have (we believe) answered many questions about the nature of the universe around us. We are now at a stage where we are capable of exploring very small or very energetic or extremely remote (in time and distance from us) events. We are regularly probing the structure of reality with finer and finer precision, but more importantly, greater accuracy (some believe that the limit has already been reached, with the announcement at an Australian University of the measurement of two slightly out of phase pulses of light which they claim was at the Heisenberg limit: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.65.042313 ). We are, apparently, upon the threshold of making some kind of bold leap in terms of our understanding. We may be on the verge of understanding why matter attracts itself; this attraction which we call a force, which is much weaker than any force that matter itself can produce (except we know, or understand that if enough of it attracts itself together and accumulates, or condenses, this can produce a force that results in the complete domination of this 'attraction' over any other, and it somehow "folds" itself up into a superdense state) -- in electrochemical, or EMR terms, and especially not against any 'forces' that interaction at the nuclear level can produce (which can convert some matter back into energy). We have understood this interaction for perhaps the longest part of our learning, and it was one of the first we learned to harness, and exploit with heavy objects, spears, and then arrows. Eventually our innovative and experimental approach brought more learning, along with our increasing knowledge of the power and usefulness of numbers we learned to build more and more useful contraptions. The other interaction that we learned about was the one we now know is responsible for what we see: for light itself; the same thing (fire and the 'fire' that is the sun) that gave us warmth and light for tens of thousands of years has only just recently (in anthropological terms) been explained as the interaction of charged particles, and the fine structure of matter itself (atoms with charged nuclei), the stuff we have harnessed and "played with" for so long. We may also soon learn to build devices, contraptions, inventions that will represent another kind of leap; in our ability to harness matter and its electrochemical interactions, and those combined with our ability to harness light itself in novel and almost magical ways. This will surely represent eventually some resource that we might use to construct a realistic copy, or simulacrum, of a human, (maybe something like a chimp or dolphin brain). Even an actual downloaded conscious mind, a 'soul', as we call it. This would be remarkable indeed, if we could eventually understand ourselves to this extent, and reproduce a kind of existence that could simulate a 'real' one (even if only temporarily --i.e. exploratively or "game" wise). I believe that we will try this, as we are trying to understand consciousness as well, but that the learning process may not be finding some ultimate answer, but perhaps just beginning. Our inventiveness has brought us to understanding of the nature of light, the next most obvious feature that the universe throws, or uses to interact with us. We have yet to understand that other obvious feature of our world that holds it (and us) together --which even a completely blind organism also experiences constantly-- in the same, apparently stable place (well, except for all the earthquakes, eruptions, floods and other dangers, at least)...
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I'm having a little difficulty understanding this. You say that matter is necessary, and the notion of replacing matter with a field (maybe a field of "matter-waves"), is something that we need to 'define' better, perhaps (sorry if I've misunderstood your meaning). How do we say that 'nothing' can be 'something' (or even 'become something')? This is the mathematical equivalent of saying zero (nothing) can be a number with no value, maybe. We do this (with zero) despite also knowing that nothing can't be something, and nor, it seems, can something (life) conceive 'nothing', so we use a symbol. The creation of 'everything', or infinity, out of 'nothing', or zero, is the problem we have.
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I believe, nonetheless, that there is a mathematical definition of infinity. This is the definition used in calculus, and defined by the concept of limits (of an infinite series).Series can converge or diverge all by themselves, right? The infinite series of fractions that add up to the real value 1, for example, how do you explain that this is (actually) a set (of fractions) with infinite cardinality, but a finite limit, neither of which needs to consider the 'physical' limits of measurement (the Planck constant or the wavelength of light), because we can conceive of something smaller than the smallest physical 'thing'? It's a bounded set. So infinity (as you already know) can be bounded, as discussed previously. I think you are splitting philosophical hairs. Of course, actually infinite values are undefined, or unreachable... Your statements so far lead me to think that there must be an objection to the following claim: "The set of natural numbers is defined as positive integers (which, according to the definition used includes or excludes zero), and are used for counting. Since we can count backwards (the concept of subtraction), then either we are subtracting positive natural numbers from some set, or we are adding negative natural numbers." Is there a difference? Is there a genuine philosophical or mathematical objection to claiming that natural numbers can be negative (as well as positive) integers?
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Come on, would I do that to you guys? This is fair dinkum, cobber...
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Physicists at Krackinbrein University in Polend, have discovered evidence of photon “dandruff”, which they say indicates that photons may have “hair”. Photons have long been believed to be completely hairless, but the new research could untangle some of the mysterious properties of these very small bits of matter and/or energy ("or something like that", the researchers say). The scientists are eagerly awaiting the results of new experiments, and have said they expect to find different “styles” of photon's hair. There is eager anticipation of the photon “mullet”, the “Swayze”, the “Jong-Il”; some expect to find bald photons after all: this is (the scientists say) because they have lost their hair --possibly photon hairpieces will be discovered too, but the researchers are keeping quiet about this exciting potential-- and, of course, the “Elvis”...
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Here's a bit of a 'comment' about quantum fields: --”Inertial mass and the quantum vacuum fields” Bernard Haisch, Alfonso Rueda and York Dobyns
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Then calculus is surely in big trouble, if there is "no evidence" infinity actually exists. This must mean that an indefinite integral is impossible (except I do it all the time, so do lots of other people, what do you think they should be told about this stunning revelation?) Really? Does it include a definition of, um, an infinite series, by chance? What brought you to the conclusion that I am saying subtraction and integration are 'connected'? And why is there no response to my query about infinite series that converge (which must be impossible, according to your objections)? And you appear to be saying that [math] (2-1) -(3-2) \neq 0 [/math]
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Apparently the Y is in danger of extinction (because it is an isolated subset of genes that don't normally undergo the 'random' exchange between pairs of chromosomes). I read an article in NS a couple years back, about what sort of replacement evolution might find for it (like hermaphrodites, say).