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I read some discussion where it was mentioned something along the lines
that everything in the Universe is energy (the context being that there's
nothing else in the Universe than energy).
This got me thinking: The entire Universe is not pure energy. There are
things that are *not* energy. So what are these things?
For one, timespace, ie. the geometry of the Universe is not energy.
It's the "container" where the energy in the Universe resides, in other
words it *contains* energy, it's not energy in itself.
But are there other things in this Universe which are not energy?
What about the four fundamental interactions? Are they energy, or are
they some property of the Universe distinct from energy? (These fundamental
interactions might not *appear* at all if there were no energy in the
Universe, but that doesn't mean that the fundamental interactions *are*
energy, only that they *act* on energy.)
How about information? Energy can be arranged such that one can define
the amount of information contained in a system because of that arrangment
("information" is actually a pretty well-defined concept of physics).
Without energy there couldn't be information, but that doesn't mean that
information is energy, only that energy is used to construct information.
Information is certainly a physical entity because it can produce causality
chains and such. (Another point which would indicate that information is not
energy is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but information can.)
What else?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> For one, timespace, ie. the geometry of the Universe is not energy.
> It's the "container" where the energy in the Universe resides, in other
> words it *contains* energy, it's not energy in itself.
I don't think science has determined this. GR is background-free, so in a
sense, space-time is a relationship between other things and nothing more.
It's not a "something" but an effect.
> What about the four fundamental interactions? Are they energy, or are
> they some property of the Universe distinct from energy?
They're energy in the sense that they're mass in the sense that they're
mediated by particles (assuming one finds gravitons, at least). The electric
force is photons interacting with electrons, for example, both of which are
energy.
> (Another point which would indicate that information is not
> energy is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but information can.)
Actually, there's good reason to think information cannot be destroyed.
That's what lead to postulating the holographic principle and hawking
radiation. The basic problem is that the QM theories preserve certain kinds
of information that GR does not, so matter falling into a black hole
violates quantum mechanics in a very fundamental way.
I'm not sure I can go any farther than that. I'm not even certain you're
mistaken in saying information isn't energy, spacetime isn't energy, etc.
Just commenting on the bits I've vaguely understood. I can't really say I
understand it well enough to say yes or no on any of it. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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http://xkcd.com/224/
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after finally watching the deep zoom mandelbrot video, I'm sure it's made of
fractals...
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Warp wrote:
> I read some discussion where it was mentioned something along the lines
> that everything in the Universe is energy (the context being that there's
> nothing else in the Universe than energy).
>
> This got me thinking: The entire Universe is not pure energy. There are
> things that are *not* energy. So what are these things?
>
As a nice analogy there are surreal numbers - created
(almost) entirely out of the void (an empty set).
> What else?
pure consciousness?
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On 11/2/2010 2:59 PM, Warp wrote:
>
> What else?
>
Entropy :D
--
~Mike
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Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
> > What about the four fundamental interactions? Are they energy, or are
> > they some property of the Universe distinct from energy?
> They're energy in the sense that they're mass in the sense that they're
> mediated by particles (assuming one finds gravitons, at least). The electric
> force is photons interacting with electrons, for example, both of which are
> energy.
Isn't that like saying "sound is matter"? Sound is transported by matter,
sound isn't matter in itself. Sound is a phenomenon.
Likewise just because the fundamental forces are mediated by energy
doesn't necessarily mean that the forces are energy.
I'm not saying the fundamental forces are not a form of energy, I'm simply
wondering if they are (because I'm not a phycisist and I don't know).
> > (Another point which would indicate that information is not
> > energy is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but information can.)
> Actually, there's good reason to think information cannot be destroyed.
> That's what lead to postulating the holographic principle and hawking
> radiation. The basic problem is that the QM theories preserve certain kinds
> of information that GR does not, so matter falling into a black hole
> violates quantum mechanics in a very fundamental way.
I think in physics "information" is defined in terms of entropy, and as
we know, entropy varies.
--
- Warp
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bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
> > What else?
> pure consciousness?
What is that? How do you define it? How do you measure it?
--
- Warp
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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/2/2010 2:59 PM, Warp wrote:
> >
> > What else?
> >
> Entropy :D
If I'm not completely mistaken, information (in physics) is defined in
terms of entropy, so they are just describing the same property of energy.
--
- Warp
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On 11/3/2010 10:07 AM, Warp wrote:
> Mike Raiford<"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 11/2/2010 2:59 PM, Warp wrote:
>
>>>
>>> What else?
>>>
>
>> Entropy :D
>
> If I'm not completely mistaken, information (in physics) is defined in
> terms of entropy, so they are just describing the same property of energy.
>
That's what I was thinking ... A bit tongue-in-cheek.
--
~Mike
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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> http://xkcd.com/224/
Well, I didn't ask what it was made *with*, but what is it made *of*.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> What about the four fundamental interactions? Are they energy, or are
>>> they some property of the Universe distinct from energy?
>
>> They're energy in the sense that they're mass in the sense that they're
>> mediated by particles (assuming one finds gravitons, at least). The electric
>> force is photons interacting with electrons, for example, both of which are
>> energy.
>
> Isn't that like saying "sound is matter"? Sound is transported by matter,
> sound isn't matter in itself. Sound is a phenomenon.
Sound is made out of matter. The electric field force is an emergent
property of the interactions between electric charge and photons. I think if
you're going to disagree that sound is made out of matter, then it's a
question of semantics you're asking, unrelated to the universe at large.
> Likewise just because the fundamental forces are mediated by energy
> doesn't necessarily mean that the forces are energy.
"Force" is an emergent measurement. It's not an actual thing. It's a
statistic. Just like the acceleration you feel sitting in your chair isn't
a thing, it's an effect caused by the earth and your butt taking convergent
paths through space-time.
> I'm not saying the fundamental forces are not a form of energy, I'm simply
> wondering if they are (because I'm not a phycisist and I don't know).
Electrons repel each other because their statistical interaction with
photons they create is such that they're more likely to wind up farther away
from each other than closer to each other. The "force" is the fact that we
can measure this.
> I think in physics "information" is defined in terms of entropy, and as
> we know, entropy varies.
There's also "information" like "what color is this quark" or "how much
charge does this object hold" that don't disappear. That's why black holes
rotate: angular momentum is a form of information that doesn't disappear.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >>> What about the four fundamental interactions? Are they energy, or are
> >>> they some property of the Universe distinct from energy?
> >
> >> They're energy in the sense that they're mass in the sense that they're
> >> mediated by particles (assuming one finds gravitons, at least). The electric
> >> force is photons interacting with electrons, for example, both of which are
> >> energy.
> >
> > Isn't that like saying "sound is matter"? Sound is transported by matter,
> > sound isn't matter in itself. Sound is a phenomenon.
> Sound is made out of matter. The electric field force is an emergent
> property of the interactions between electric charge and photons. I think if
> you're going to disagree that sound is made out of matter, then it's a
> question of semantics you're asking, unrelated to the universe at large.
That's like saying that text is just ink and paper. Text is more than
that.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> That's like saying that text is just ink and paper. Text is more than
> that.
But text isn't a "thing" independent of the ink and paper. It's a pattern
and its relationship to human thought processes. Similarly, the
electrostatic force isn't a "thing", so asking what it's made out of isn't
really reasonable, beyond the answer "it's made out of the stuff that the
parts are made out of."
It's like asking "what is arithmetic made out of?"
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > That's like saying that text is just ink and paper. Text is more than
> > that.
> But text isn't a "thing" independent of the ink and paper. It's a pattern
> and its relationship to human thought processes. Similarly, the
> electrostatic force isn't a "thing", so asking what it's made out of isn't
> really reasonable, beyond the answer "it's made out of the stuff that the
> parts are made out of."
> It's like asking "what is arithmetic made out of?"
Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?
We know the information exists because of the causality effects it can
produce. The outcome of events can be affected by the information that
is portrayed by the text.
If something exists in this universe, then it is part of it, and hence
the universe is made of it (among other things).
Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
because information can be created and destroyed (or, more specifically,
the amount of information can be changed, as it's basically tied to
entropy, while the amount of energy cannot, as it stays constant).
Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.
The third thing I postulated that exists, and which is neither energy
nor information, is timespace. You would agree that timespace exists.
The only other question is whether timespace is distinct from energy.
As far as I can see, it is (although my arguments of why I think so
are admittedly less thought-out and thus weaker).
--
- Warp
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>bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
>> > > What else?
>> > pure consciousness?
>
> What is that?
You know what is that, everyone does.
>How do you define it?
The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
>How do you measure it?
Perhaps, it is the main goal of this experiment with
the evolution of living creatures as tools for that exact purpose
- to find a way to measure it?
The answer "the U. was made of itself" rises another question:
what was originally used to separate one part of the U from the other?
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Warp wrote:
> Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?
Now you have to define "exists." :-)
The text "exists" only because I look at it and the light from the ink and
paper stimulates the neurons in my brain into a different pattern. The
information represented by the text does not "exist" if there's nobody to
read it.
> We know the information exists because of the causality effects it can
> produce. The outcome of events can be affected by the information that
> is portrayed by the text.
Sure, in some sense. The arrangement of the atoms of ink and paper have a
surprisingly large causal effect when they are (for example) a declaration
of war. I don't know that you can say the *information* exists independent
of the text, for example.
> If something exists in this universe, then it is part of it, and hence
> the universe is made of it (among other things).
>
> Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> because information can be created and destroyed (or, more specifically,
> the amount of information can be changed, as it's basically tied to
> entropy, while the amount of energy cannot, as it stays constant).
Entropy is order, not information.
> Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.
From lots of stuff I've read, information can't actually disappear. Or, to
put it another way, the "information" measured by entropy is only
"information of interest".
Certainly if you take a dynamic but deterministic system, like perfect balls
bouncing around inside a perfect box, and you start with all the balls on
one side and none on the other, entropy will increase even tho there is no
state of the box you cannot deduce from looking at any two moments of state.
QM does have a concept of "information" as well, and it's a symmetry (i.e.,
it might change form but the total amount stays the same). Indeed, that
gives rise to one or the other of the conservation laws that everyone accepts.
> The third thing I postulated that exists, and which is neither energy
> nor information, is timespace. You would agree that timespace exists.
My understanding is that spacetime (aka timespace ;-) doesn't actually
exist, and the lack of its existence is the difference between SR and GR. If
you reformulate special relativity in such a way that you don't have a
"background" coordinate system but only the interactions between what's
there, you get GR. (I may be misunderstanding this, tho.)
> The only other question is whether timespace is distinct from energy.
> As far as I can see, it is (although my arguments of why I think so
> are admittedly less thought-out and thus weaker).
I think that it's more a question of definitions than facts. :-) We have
names for all sorts of things that don't exist in the way they're defined,
like "meaning".
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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bart wrote:
> >bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
> >> > > What else?
> >> > pure consciousness?
> >
> > What is that?
> You know what is that, everyone does.
I don't know about "pure" consciousness. It's pretty easy to understand what
self-awareness is, and hence get an idea of what consciousness is.
> >How do you define it?
> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
That's self-awareness, not consciousness.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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>> >How do you define it?
>> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
>
> That's self-awareness, not consciousness.
>
Probably a question of terminology;
here these terms were considered as synonyms
(pure consciousness = self-awareness, nothing more, no structures)
as in one of the definitions of consciousness on the Web:
"an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your
situation".
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bart wrote:
> >> >How do you define it?
> >> The one can feel it as a kind of "self-existence".
> >
> > That's self-awareness, not consciousness.
> >
> Probably a question of terminology;
> here these terms were considered as synonyms
> (pure consciousness = self-awareness, nothing more, no structures)
> as in one of the definitions of consciousness on the Web:
> "an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your
> situation".
I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure that,
for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho they're
probably not self-aware.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Warp wrote:
> Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?
Or, more specifically, we have mass/energy, and we have relationships
between bits of mass/energy. While those relationships exist, they're not
"made of" anything beyond what they're relating. We think of relationships
(like information, "force", etc) but they doesn't exist outside our own
conceptions of them. If there were no thinking beings, there would be no
text, even if the paper with the ink on it was unchanged.
Sound exists as a pattern of air molecules. But it's made out of air
molecules, just like the molecules are made out of atoms, and the atoms are
out of protons and electrons and such. If you beleve that sound is made out
of something other than air, then you believe that air is made out of
something other than atoms.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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> Sound exists as a pattern of air molecules. But it's made out of air
> molecules, just like the molecules are made out of atoms, and the atoms
> are out of protons and electrons and such. If you beleve that sound is
> made out of something other than air, then you believe that air is made
> out of something other than atoms.
what happened to the sound under water? Is it made of "air molecules"
too?
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> I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure
> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
> they're probably not self-aware.
Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably are.
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> Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?
Yes, it exists and it's made up of atoms. The atoms can either be part of
ink on the paper, transistors in a computer, or neurons in an animal brain.
It's like saying "happyness" exists, it only exists conceptually, physically
it's just represented by atoms.
> Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> because information can be created and destroyed
Cars exist, and they can be created and destroyed, so cars cannot be the
same thing as energy. I don't get your point.
> Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.
Cars also exist, and they are not the same as energy or information, so we
have at least three different things. I'm not convinced by your logic
here...
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > The third thing I postulated that exists, and which is neither energy
> > nor information, is timespace. You would agree that timespace exists.
> My understanding is that spacetime (aka timespace ;-) doesn't actually
> exist, and the lack of its existence is the difference between SR and GR. If
> you reformulate special relativity in such a way that you don't have a
> "background" coordinate system but only the interactions between what's
> there, you get GR. (I may be misunderstanding this, tho.)
Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics. (In fact,
the concept of a closed system "going forward in time" is completely
equivalent to its entropy increasing; the two things are tied together.
You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
time by measuring its entropy.)
Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle. (How could
you state that two particles cannot be at the same *place* at the same
time if the very concept of "place" wouldn't exist?)
Just because space and time are relative doesn't mean they don't exist.
--
- Warp
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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > Would you agree that the information portrayed by the text exists?
> Yes, it exists and it's made up of atoms. The atoms can either be part of
> ink on the paper, transistors in a computer, or neurons in an animal brain.
> It's like saying "happyness" exists, it only exists conceptually, physically
> it's just represented by atoms.
> > Also, if information exists, it cannot be the same thing as energy
> > because information can be created and destroyed
> Cars exist, and they can be created and destroyed, so cars cannot be the
> same thing as energy. I don't get your point.
You can measure the entropy of text or a car, and you can compare it to
the entropy of something else. You could even ostensibly define a unit
of measurement for this.
If something is observable and measurable, and the properties of that
something can be well-defined, then that something is rather obviously
real, in other words, it exists. If it exists, the it's part of this
universe, in other words, it's one component of the universe.
If it exists and it can be created and destroyed, that makes it distinct
from energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed.
> > Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
> > Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.
> Cars also exist, and they are not the same as energy or information
On what do you base the claim that they are not information?
--
- Warp
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bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
> >bart <bar### [at] homeorg> wrote:
> >> > > What else?
> >> > pure consciousness?
> >
> > What is that?
> You know what is that, everyone does.
I don't know what "pure consciousness" is. Can you explain it to me?
And how is it distinct from energy and information?
--
- Warp
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> If it exists, the it's part of this
> universe, in other words, it's one component of the universe.
Sure, everything that exists can be called a component of the universe, but
it doesn't automatically mean that there are existing certain components
that cannot be made from energy.
> If it exists and it can be created and destroyed, that makes it distinct
> from energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed.
How about arrangements of energy? They can be created and destroyed, yet
are still just energy in the end.
>> > Hence there exists at least two different things in the universe:
>> > Energy and information, and they are not the same thing.
>
>> Cars also exist, and they are not the same as energy or information
>
> On what do you base the claim that they are not information?
There's an important difference to what I said and you claimed I said.
Birds are animals, but "bird" has a different meaning to "animal".
Cars could be considered "information", but a "car" is different to
"information".
Cars are made from atoms, but a car is most certainly different to an atom.
My point is that information is just specific patterns of energy. I know
"energy" and "information" have different meanings and refer to different
things, but that doesn't mean information must be made up of something other
than energy.
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Warp wrote:
> Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law is statistical.
> You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
> time by measuring its entropy.)
No you can't, because time is reversible. Entropy is an artifact of measurement.
Take a deck of cards and shuffle it. How likely is the order of cards you
just shuffled? It's exactly the same as the likelihood that all the cards
are in the canonical order (ace to king, sorted by spade, heart, club,
diamond). Entropy is a measurement of how interesting to us a particular
arrangement of atoms is. The fact that you can't get work out of random
heat is simply saying that it's really, really unlikely for random heat to
suddenly all go one direction.
Note that QM has no arrow of time. Reactions going forward are identical
(altho inverted) to reactions going backwards.
Break a rack of pool balls. (I.e., start the game.) Suddenly, it's much less
ordered. But if you could measure exactly where everything is at the end and
how fast it was going before it stopped and exactly how much friction there
was and etc, you could reverse that. (Modulo QM uncertainty, of course.)
> Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle.
The Pauli exclusion principle is not part of GR. It's part of QM. :-)
> (How could
> you state that two particles cannot be at the same *place* at the same
> time if the very concept of "place" wouldn't exist?)
It does in QM. That's the fundamental problem and tension preventing GR from
being unified with QM.
The *concept* of place exists. It's just a question of whether it's
something real or something that falls out of our math and "common sense".
> Just because space and time are relative doesn't mean they don't exist.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting stuff like this:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/background.html
It seems to be saying that GR says that space and time exist because matter
and energy exist. You can't have space or time without energy to be
experiencing them, just like you can't have sound without air to carry it.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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bart wrote:
>> Sound exists as a pattern of air molecules. But it's made out of air
>> molecules, just like the molecules are made out of atoms, and the atoms
>> are out of protons and electrons and such. If you beleve that sound is
>> made out of something other than air, then you believe that air is made
>> out of something other than atoms.
> what happened to the sound under water? Is it made of "air molecules" too?
You're trolling, right?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
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Warp wrote:
> If it exists and it can be created and destroyed, that makes it distinct
> from energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed.
It can be distinct from energy and yet still be made from energy, just like
sound isn't air but it's made from air.
I'll grant you that "information" in the sense of "patterns of combinations
of something else" does "exist". I'm not sure you can say something is "made
out of" information, or that "information" would exist without the substrate
carrying it.
And I'm still not convinced you can actually destroy information. At the
quantum level, time is reversible, which means that information at that
level does *not* get destroyed. From lots of things I've read, figuring out
how you can have black holes and QM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
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bart wrote:
> > I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure
>> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
>> they're probably not self-aware.
> Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably are.
No, they probably aren't. You can test such things, you know. Dolphins,
gorillas, a few others probably are, including some birds.
Chickens and fish probably aren't.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
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>You're trolling, right?
Not at all; the question is interesting and
I just don't get it why you limit it the the air?
We can easily make and hear sounds under water, can't we?
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On 11/04/2010 04:59 PM, Darren New wrote:
> bart wrote:
>> > I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure
>>> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
>>> they're probably not self-aware.
>
>> Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably
>> are.
>
> No, they probably aren't. You can test such things, you know. Dolphins,
> gorillas, a few others probably are, including some birds.
>
> Chickens and fish probably aren't.
>
You are right, it would be difficult to eat them otherwise.
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On 11/04/2010 03:20 PM, Warp wrote:
>I don't know what "pure consciousness" is.
>Can you explain it to me?
I'd like to, but the language is a very limiting tool for this purpose.
I think of pure consciousness as the very basic self-awareness,
nothing more. It is clearly a distinguishing feeling,
but normally we have it at a very low intensity,
only sometimes it could suddenly become very intense for a short time.
Some find that the easiest way to deal with it is to assume
that it is one of the fundamental feature of the universe in the first time.
>And how is it distinct from energy and information?
This is what I eager to know too. May be information
could be considered as a structured energy?
Or an ideal structure, that could be filled with energy?
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bart wrote:
> >You're trolling, right?
> Not at all; the question is interesting and
> I just don't get it why you limit it the the air?
> We can easily make and hear sounds under water, can't we?
Of course, in which case the sound is made out of water molecules.
I'm not limiting sound to only be in air. I'm making an analogy.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And I'm still not convinced you can actually destroy information. At the
> quantum level, time is reversible, which means that information at that
> level does *not* get destroyed.
I don't understand how time could be reversible, because that would imply
that an increase in entropy (of an isolated system) would also be reversible,
which is against the law.
--
- Warp
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bart wrote:
> On 11/04/2010 04:59 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> bart wrote:
>>> > I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty sure
>>>> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
>>>> they're probably not self-aware.
>>
>>> Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably
>>> are.
>>
>> No, they probably aren't. You can test such things, you know. Dolphins,
>> gorillas, a few others probably are, including some birds.
>>
>> Chickens and fish probably aren't.
>>
> You are right, it would be difficult to eat them otherwise.
Yes, certainly, because it's all a big conspiracy to let you eat such
creatures with a clear conscience.
If you weren't trolling, you'd instead say "Gee, that's interesting, tell me
how you can possibly measure such a thing?"
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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bart wrote:
> I'd like to, but the language is a very limiting tool for this purpose.
Not really.
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> > properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics.
> The second law is statistical.
It still states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.
> > You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
> > time by measuring its entropy.)
> No you can't, because time is reversible.
That would mean that entropy is also reversible, which would break the
second law.
> Note that QM has no arrow of time. Reactions going forward are identical
> (altho inverted) to reactions going backwards.
The sourced wikipedia text seems to disagree with that assessment.
"For isolated systems, entropy never decreases. This fact has several
important consequences in science: first, it prohibits "perpetual
motion" machines; and second, it suggests an arrow of time. Increases
in entropy correspond to irreversible changes in a system, because
some energy must be expended as waste heat, limiting the amount of
work a system can do."
> > Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> > properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle.
> The Pauli exclusion principle is not part of GR. It's part of QM. :-)
How does that change the claim "space must exist"?
If you accept the Pauli exclusion principle as one of the fundamental
laws of nature, then you have to accept space existing (or explain the
law in question in the case that space does not really exist).
> > Just because space and time are relative doesn't mean they don't exist.
> Maybe I'm misinterpreting stuff like this:
> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/background.html
> It seems to be saying that GR says that space and time exist because matter
> and energy exist. You can't have space or time without energy to be
> experiencing them, just like you can't have sound without air to carry it.
Even if spacetime couldn't exist without energy, does that mean that
spacetime *is* energy?
--
- Warp
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On 11/04/2010 07:29 PM, Darren New wrote:
> bart wrote:
>> On 11/04/2010 04:59 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>> bart wrote:
>>>> > I think you can be conscious without being self-aware. I'm pretty
>>>> sure
>>>>> that, for example, chickens would be considered conscious, even tho
>>>>> they're probably not self-aware.
>>>
>>>> Yes, it is convenient to think so, but on the other hand they probably
>>>> are.
>>>
>>> No, they probably aren't. You can test such things, you know. Dolphins,
>>> gorillas, a few others probably are, including some birds.
>>>
>>> Chickens and fish probably aren't.
>>>
This is a funny one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/03/clever-chicken-hides-out_n_148133.html
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On 11/4/2010 12:52 PM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
>>> properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics.
>
>> The second law is statistical.
>
> It still states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.
>
>>> You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
>>> time by measuring its entropy.)
>
>> No you can't, because time is reversible.
>
> That would mean that entropy is also reversible, which would break the
> second law.
>
Well, in point of fact, Hawkins has proposed that time is an artifact of
probability, in a sense. I.e., *now* is not a strict result of then, but
rather than now is a product of all possible "thens" that could have
produced this moment. This means that time does pass, but the state of
the universe at any moment is merely the constrained result of the
statistical probabilities of the prior moment. So.. How do you reverse
time, if the further back you go, the greater the degree of variance you
end up with, with respect to what *could have* happened prior, and still
have the same "now" as a result? Basically, you can't, since you can't
know what of the N number of possible "exact" conditions existed in the
last moment, so the farther back you end up, the more likely you are to
land at a state where the odds or 50/50 that you can get back to now, or
worse, slightly in favor of *never* getting back to the same point at all.
At least I think that is what he was getting at, but the article
mentioned the concept in like 2-3 sentences...
Biggest issue though is, there is probably nearly absolute zero
probability of events, i.e., entropy (since it is one of the constraints
itself) actually changing in a way that would result in the prior
moment, instead of the next one. Now.. Whether or not you could create
some sort of "local" change is another matter, but.. just guessing, you
might end up with something more like the Stargate SG1 case where some
guy tried to go back in time using a huge mass of linked gates, and time
reversed "locally", but only from the perspective of those inside the
resulting bubble. To change events such that the rest of the universe
didn't protest the anomaly...
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 11/4/2010 12:27 PM, Darren New wrote:
> bart wrote:
>> >You're trolling, right?
>> Not at all; the question is interesting and
>> I just don't get it why you limit it the the air?
>> We can easily make and hear sounds under water, can't we?
>
> Of course, in which case the sound is made out of water molecules.
>
> I'm not limiting sound to only be in air. I'm making an analogy.
>
Bad one I think. Sound, etc. isn't made up of air, water, or whatever.
It would be more accurate to say that it is made up of what those things
are "doing". This is not *that* different than words on a page. The
words are not ink on paper, they are the arrangement of those things, in
a specific way, which produces a recognizable pattern. We define that
pattern. Something that either didn't see it as a pattern, or commonly
saw similar natural patterns (unlikely, since the point of such patterns
is to make them distinct enough you *don't* generally see them every
place), wouldn't recognize them as anything other than random
arrangements. This is much like sound. White noise, in principle,
doesn't have any arrangement that we recognize as relevant, while speech
does, *but* there are nuts that claim to *hear* real things in white
noise, because sometimes, by shear chance, such noise produces things
that can be mistaken for recognized patterns, just as you can find a
letter A in a rock, or entire Chinese concepts, in similar rocks, by
shear accident. Mind, like the twits hearing "ghost" voices, the odds of
it being an exact match decreases, the more complex the pattern, to the
point where you may "see" or "hear" something that less subjective
analysis shows **isn't there**.
Never quite got why ghosts can "talk to people" via random noise, but
they never manage to do so in a way that matches "any" computer
analysis, based on the phonetics, sounds, or patterns in the actual
language they are supposedly speaking. Apparently, they can only
communicate with sounds that are **not** used in speech, but that the
human brain "mistakes" as sounding similar. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Time must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
>>> properties of physics such as the second law of thermodynamics.
>
>> The second law is statistical.
>
> It still states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.
But that's wrong. It's just very, very unlikely to decrease.
Are you saying it's literally impossible to take a random deck of cards and
shuffle it and wind up with it in order?
>>> You can unambiguously distinguish if a closed system is going forward in
>>> time by measuring its entropy.)
>
>> No you can't, because time is reversible.
>
> That would mean that entropy is also reversible, which would break the
> second law.
No, it means that entropy is a statistical property.
>> Note that QM has no arrow of time. Reactions going forward are identical
>> (altho inverted) to reactions going backwards.
>
> The sourced wikipedia text seems to disagree with that assessment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time
There are lots of "arrows of time". That's the problem.
> "For isolated systems, entropy never decreases.
This is simply untrue. Entropy is a statistical property, just like the
electrostatic "force" is.
>>> Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
>>> properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle.
>
>> The Pauli exclusion principle is not part of GR. It's part of QM. :-)
>
> How does that change the claim "space must exist"?
I was saying that you're arguing that in GR space must exist, and using QM
to prove it, and those are incompatible theories.
> If you accept the Pauli exclusion principle as one of the fundamental
> laws of nature, then you have to accept space existing (or explain the
> law in question in the case that space does not really exist).
And if you accept general relativity and the identity of acceleration and
gravity, you have to throw away space as existing.
That's my point. I'm not saying "space doesn't exist." I'm saying
"physicists are unable to determine yet if space exists, and that's what the
GUT is supposed to determine. Does space exist as a separate thing, or is it
just information?"
I'm saying "it's still up in the air", and you're trying to disprove by
picking half the arguments that the other half are wrong.
> Even if spacetime couldn't exist without energy, does that mean that
> spacetime *is* energy?
My understanding is that this is saying that spacetime is the relationship
between pieces of energy. So space is "information", in some sense.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Warp wrote:
> If you accept the Pauli exclusion principle as one of the fundamental
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loschmidt%27s_paradox
In other words, I'm saying "It's a paradox", and you're using one half of
the paradox to argue that the other half of the paradox isn't true.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Bad one I think. Sound, etc. isn't made up of air, water, or whatever.
> It would be more accurate to say that it is made up of what those things
> are "doing". This is not *that* different than words on a page.
Yep. And the point is that (as I understand it) according to GR, spacetime
is made up out of what energy is doing. You got it on the first try.
There's nothing in the universe except energy, and everything else (force,
space, time, etc) is just what energy is doing.
Whether you want to argue that means there *is* something besides energy is
arguing over whether sound *is* something besides the atoms and their behavior.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> And I'm still not convinced you can actually destroy information. At the
>> quantum level, time is reversible, which means that information at that
>> level does *not* get destroyed.
>
> I don't understand how time could be reversible, because that would imply
> that an increase in entropy (of an isolated system) would also be reversible,
> which is against the law.
Because the law is statistical, and if you get sufficiently few degrees of
freedom, then the statistics work out such that the probability *does*
reverse on occasion.
Take a perfect frictionless billiards table. Rack the balls. Throw one ball
into the middle. Watch them bounce around a while. Will they ever re-rack?
No, that's entropy. Is every interaction reversible? Yes. Is it
*possible* the balls will bounce around enough to eventually come back
together with exactly the right velocities that they'll all rerack? Certainly.
Take a tank of water. Put two atoms of ink in it. Let them diffuse until
they're one on each side of the tank. Is it possible they'll ever randomly
come together to where they're both very close to each other at one corner
of the tank? Sure. How long before 10^20 selected atoms of ink do that at
random? A long, long time. Is it impossible? No.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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bart wrote:
> This is a funny one:
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/03/clever-chicken-hides-out_n_148133.html
Because obviously the rooster knew he is adorable and the people working at
McDonalds would take care of him.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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>> The second law is statistical.
>
> It still states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.
IIRC the derivation/proof of the 2nd law assumes stuff like an infinite
amount of matter - so the probability of the entropy increasing is (almost)
zero.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >>> Space must exist, or else it would be impossible to postulate essential
> >>> properties of physics, such as the Pauli exclusion principle.
> >
> >> The Pauli exclusion principle is not part of GR. It's part of QM. :-)
> >
> > How does that change the claim "space must exist"?
> I was saying that you're arguing that in GR space must exist, and using QM
> to prove it, and those are incompatible theories.
I never said that in GR space must exist. I said that in this universe
space exists. I don't know why you brought GR into this.
> And if you accept general relativity and the identity of acceleration and
> gravity, you have to throw away space as existing.
That statement makes absolutely no sense.
--
- Warp
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