Quote from: wr250 on July 07, 2014, 09:01:23 PMThat's me on the left
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Show posts MenuQuote from: wr250 on July 07, 2014, 09:01:23 PMThat's me on the left
Quote from: jazmunda on July 07, 2014, 07:31:51 PMMy people will be waiting to hear from your people.
Don't Skype us, we'll Skype you.
Quote from: jazmunda on July 07, 2014, 07:31:51 PMWe can only hope!
In all seriousness that was a fantastic interview and we'd be very happy to have you back. Perhaps in some parallel universe where Skype actually works.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 07, 2014, 06:57:26 PMhaha, right?
Oh sweet jesus thank god. Here I thought the earth was doomed in 5 billion years when the sun becomes a red giant, but all we merely have to do is convert Jupiter into energy and we can warp the earth to a new star system. And here I was all worried.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 07, 2014, 06:57:26 PMIt's a complete game changer. The smaller they can make the probe they want to send, the better. And there's no telling what other tech and theory may still contribute to this. It's a very ambitious plan, even if it turns out to be nothing I think everyone's still rooting for it
I see, so altering the geometry of the bubble was key. I couldn't find what White kept talking about and it was driving me nuts. I rather like the idea myself, and if it turns out to be viable it changes everything. While sending a spacecraft may be energy prohibitive, I wonder if sending a nanotechnological probe to another star system might be more realistic.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 07, 2014, 03:05:34 PM
Harold White, for some reason that I've yet to uncover, believes that the energy necessary to create the Alcubierre warp field is much less than the usually cited titanic amounts. He keeps saying it in the various articles that have been coming out in conjunction with that concept ship he had an artist render but he hasn't said why. Does anyone know anything about that?
Quote from: zeebo on July 06, 2014, 06:28:39 PM
Ok I admit I have a bit of a bias towards the Alcubierre Drive, since it's just ... cool. But there are some issues, like the colossal amounts of energy required and also I read somewhere that the massive gravitational forces at work would create temperatures higher than the surface of the sun - so bring your Coppertone, it's gonna get a bit toasty.
Anyway here's a pretty good article from a year ago which includes a NASA video worth checking out, if you're interested.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 07, 2014, 03:43:54 AM
So, I have a special question. What are your thoughts on the Alcubierre drive? Just looking for an opinion.
Quote from: jazmunda on July 07, 2014, 03:14:48 AM
The GabCast returns LIVE on Monday 7/7 at 8pm EST/5pm PST.
We have a very special guest joining us for a discussion on all things sciencey. Joining us will be BellGabs own Agent : Orange. We will ask him why he has a space on either side of the colon in his username as well as why he has a predilection for avatars with superheroes in mundane everyday poses. We may also ask him a question or two about science.
Join us and listen and chat LIVE at http://ufoship.com
Contact us by email: thegabcastemail@gmail.com
You can follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegabcast or on Twitter: @TheGabCast
Quote from: jazmunda on July 07, 2014, 03:14:48 AM
The GabCast returns LIVE on Monday 7/7 at 8pm EST/5pm PST.
We have a very special guest joining us for a discussion on all things sciencey. Joining us will be BellGabs own Agent : Orange. We will ask him why he has a space on either side of the colon in his username as well as why he has a predilection for avatars with superheroes in mundane everyday poses. We may also ask him a question or two about science.
Join us and listen and chat LIVE at http://ufoship.com
Contact us by email: thegabcastemail@gmail.com
You can follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegabcast or on Twitter: @TheGabCast
Quote from: jazmunda on July 07, 2014, 03:14:48 AM
The GabCast returns LIVE on Monday 7/7 at 8pm EST/5pm PST.
We have a very special guest joining us for a discussion on all things sciencey. Joining us will be BellGabs own Agent : Orange. We will ask him why he has a space on either side of the colon in his username as well as why he has a predilection for avatars with superheroes in mundane everyday poses. We may also ask him a question or two about science.
Join us and listen and chat LIVE at http://ufoship.com
Contact us by email: thegabcastemail@gmail.com
You can follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegabcast or on Twitter: @TheGabCast
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 07, 2014, 01:35:40 AMThe speed of bullshit!!
Ah yes, you mean the Hoagland Constant, or The Speed of Bullshit. It's the rate at which crap constantly streams from my radio when Hoagland's on.
Quote from: Mind Flayer Monk on July 06, 2014, 08:37:50 PM
Have either of you seen articles comparing/contrasting heat production from gravity (friction?compression?) vs heat production from breaking covalent bonds/reactions?
Quote from: zeebo on July 06, 2014, 06:28:39 PM
Ok I admit I have a bit of a bias towards the Alcubierre Drive, since it's just ... cool. But there are some issues, like the colossal amounts of energy required and also I read somewhere that the massive gravitational forces at work would create temperatures higher than the surface of the sun - so bring your Coppertone, it's gonna get a bit toasty.
Anyway here's a pretty good article from a year ago which includes a NASA video worth checking out, if you're interested.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:18:19 PMI love that 19.5 worked it's way in there too
Oh hell, I can express how that happens mathematically. I call it the Unified Suck Theory. G=F²(19.5-N-D). Whereas G=George, F=the face on Mars, and N equals whatever the hell the Numbers Lady arbitrarily plugs in, and D=the average amount that Ed Dames turns out wrong. The solution always ends up negative. It's in the data, just look at the data.
Quote from: pate on July 06, 2014, 02:17:05 PM
If you write the story, I'll buy and read it! Short or novel length...
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMI would say this scenario doesn't prove the same is happening to us, it is not proof that we are AI inside our own jar but is certainly suggestive that such things are possible. I guess to go farther you have to also demonstrate that the AI is equivalent to a human.
Yes, it's entirely untestable by its nature . . . for ourselves. But then that's what you'd want out of a participant in a simulation. If they knew it was a simulation, then they'd behave differently. But I was more focused on how easy it would be the create such a simulation. When we do create AI, which is probably in our relatively near future, we probably will put one in a snow globe and see what it does unless there's some ethical reason not to. In that case, the idea is testable and falsifiable because we've become God to the AI in the snow globe.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMThe multiverse isn't an ad-hoc philosophical concept introduced into cosmology, it comes directly from a certain class of inflationary model (Linde's work on chaotic inflation started this). It is a consequence of using certain inflationary potentials, and these potentials have observational consequences that influence the properties of the cosmic microwave background, and these can in principle be measured, which is what the now-contested BICEP2 results did earlier this year in March or so. Whether or not those observations hold up under the yoke of reproducibility we shall see. It is a jarniverse in that sense but it's one of the first (as opposed to the second) kind, which has observational signatures of being in a jar. In other words it's possible to tell if you're living in a multiverse or not.
Much like the universe within a hypothetical multiverse. You can't ever observe the multiverse, nor measure it, and if the interior of black holes are any indicator then the laws of physics break down outside the boundaries of this universe. Yet the multiverse is there because a few competing theories introduce it mathematically entirely on the basis of philosophy. The point they make is that there must be something outside to cause an effect within, such as the big bang. In other words a jaruniverse.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMThe center of black holes and the origin of the universe at t=0 are two places where our physics break down. But this is because of the physical theories we're using and not facts of nature, they are deficiencies in our language we use to describe nature. With a better description (quantum gravity) these singularities would presumably go away. The nature of gravity is key to what happens in a black hole and this can be tested by examinations of the shape of accretion disks, radius of the innermost particle orbit and the lensing properties of black holes. All of this stuff is measureable and the conditions around the hole actually have a lot to do with what's going on inside (ie a charged and spinning black hole behaves differently than a non-rotating black hole). So there are consequences to the interior conditions. The central singularity is not directly observable but it's physical properties have direct consequences on the geometry of the event horizon(s). So what we can measure directly constrains what can be.
Same thing with blackholes, since you can't go in, and nothing other than Hawking radiation comes out, and the laws of physics break down at it's event horizon . . . then you're studying an unknowable, unmeasureable, unobservable object entirely on the basis that it's clearly there so you have to explain it somehow.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMScience is meant to connect to the world we can measure and observe, and the consequences of these measurements. It is testable in these terms and theories are right or wrong based on their description of the world. This feedback system doesn't really exist for philosophy on it's own which is unhindered by the observable, which is one of the reasons why it's easy to wander into the wilderness with philosophical arguments. In my view they are not separate issues, but one is constrained by what can be measured and observed, the other is not. A theory which describes some aspect of the world and does not offer a prediction for measurement or a way to falsify it's claims is untestable and by that yardstick can't be answered by scientific process.
I'm applying that reasoning to simulating a human mind. The standard way we look at science? Definitely not. But Ph.D. does stand for Doctor of Philosophy, and science itself still at it's most basic level, especially when dealing with unknowables, is still very much dependent on philosophy.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMI really don't mean to read as stand-offish, I do apologize if I gave that impression! Don't get me wrong I'm digging this exchange. But I have a sense of sarcasm that carries much better in person than in the printed word and without a well-placed emoticon that can sometimes confuse the issue.
I don't mean to provoke an argument. Nobody knows the answers to these things. I'm just stimulating thought.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:02:16 PMAgain I would argue this and hopefully I've been clear in my reasoning above. Even supersymmetry and string theory have observational consequences, the question there is if they are practical to observe or not, and even there positive progress is being made.
I believe I'm rational through faith in my senses like everyone else. I like testable theories too. Problem is, not everything is testable and the universe (or what's outside it) presents us with untestables as a matter of fact and nature. Yet those untestables end up at the forefront of physics. Sort of weird how that happened.
Quote from: pate on July 06, 2014, 05:42:34 AM
GN: Hey, didja know there was a movie I saw with Jim Carey (good friend of mine) called "The Truman Shew"? It sounds just like that, amahzing!
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 06, 2014, 02:24:27 AM
You actually only need one person for the simulation. You.
...
In which case the simulation requirements become much more realistic. Then it's just an AI in a snow globe. If all it knows is the interior of the snow globe, then rationality is entirely defined by what was put inside the snow globe with it.
Quote from: zeebo on July 03, 2014, 04:50:25 PM
Pretty amazing pic of our garden-variety sun
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/sundisk072912.html
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 03, 2014, 03:27:15 PM
Yeah, who'd have thought cosmic ray behavior could possibly hold the key to the big question.
I was thinking, there might not be any point to creating the simulation by time it's possible to do it. If you've already figured out how the universe works through centuries of research in physics, then what would the purpose of the model be? Therefore it may not be created simply because by the time you can build the computer and figure out how to render everything accurately the model would just be a really expensive endeavor with no research purpose. It would just be a toy.
Oddly, that's the basic tenet of all religions: the universe is God's ant farm.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 03, 2014, 12:15:36 AM
You may be right, I just have trouble with the notion that something in the universe might not be mathematically expressible somehow.
Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 02, 2014, 08:38:05 PM
I didn't learn of the green flash until I was in my twenties. Up until then, I might have thought someone was mixing up their superheroes.
But then I read A Flash of Green, a stand alone novel by John D. MacDonald. It was a great read and it talked about the phenomenon.
A movie version was released in 1984. I saw it in the 90s and it was good, if you like that sort of thing, and I do. This is one of those VHS tapes, that if you come across at a thrift store, grab it and sell it on Amazon, where they list for forty or more dollars.
Now that I think of it, there's a good amount of weather in JDM's books.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 02, 2014, 03:58:51 AM
I should probably pre-elaborate on that statement. We have an issue: that the universe got its parameters so right. If they'd have been different it would have resulted in a very different universe than this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 02, 2014, 03:26:40 AMYes, I agree. But in the meantime blind speculation will have to do
Great points. I think ultimately we suffer from a lack of a GUT. We really need to figure out the disconnect between relativity and quantum theory before we can even begin to think of approaching the possibility of simulating an entire universe.
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 02, 2014, 03:26:40 AM
That said, nothing says we don't have millions of years of computer and technological development ahead of us. I'd be hard pressed to say that there won't come a day where we understand enough for a simulation, and there's really no time limit on Nick Bostrom's hypothesis. And if we can't figure it out, it's a good bet that artificially intelligent computers can. Other questions being, what is an accurate simulation of a universe? In comparison to what? What is inaccurate? Would we know about it if it was?
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 02, 2014, 12:42:43 AM
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/11/universe-computer-simulation
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
In short, he argues that one of these three things must be true:
1. Human or all alien civilizations destroy themselves (all of them must do it) before they reach the ability to fully simulate a universe with computers, including sentient entities within it.
2. All civilizations, alien or human, must either not develop a universe simulation out of ethical concerns, or reach a state of resource exhaustion restraining them from further technological development.
3. It is overwhelmingly likely that we live in a computer simulation. The odds of us being the first, *real* universe are astronomically small.
As much as I'd like to, I can't shoot this argument down. And, well, the guy that controls the parameters of the universe simulation, probably some overweight IT guy with a video game addiction and an inability to pick up chicks, would fit the generally accepted attributes of a "god". An even more frightening prospect being that if it is a simulation, and if our social development was pre-programmed, then all religions are simultaneously correct and intentional and so is atheism.
Quote from: jazmunda on July 01, 2014, 12:49:26 AMSkeeter, Daryl & Daryl?
That's an interesting, valid and most likely correct observation. I wonder if Art finally got a non-BellGab accredited lawyer to look over the contract.