-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The Food Stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is a target for Republicans who voted to cut $40 billion from the program. The reasons that Republicans have given are so divorced from reality that one can reasonably suspect their true motivations lie elsewhere. The primacy of fantasy in the GOP has been recently evidenced by Michele Bachmann who sees signs of the End Times, a wished-for global apocalypse.
First up on the list of fantasies is by Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas) who said “the food stamp program [grew] exponentially because the government continues to turn a blind eye to a system fraught with abuse.” In reality, SNAP participation closely tracks the long term unemployment rate, prolonged by Republicans. The sale of SNAP benefits for cash, called “trafficking,” has been cut to $1 in every $100 of SNAP benefits. The reality is a one percent abuse rate, the fantasy is SNAP is “fraught” with abuse.
The next fantasy is that able-bodied people are getting food stamps instead of working. The reality is that 83% of all SNAP benefits go to households that include a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. The average individual gets $133 a month in SNAP benefits. It is ridiculous to imagine that a person is going to quit their job for $133 a month that can only be spent on food, but Republicans bear ridicule well.
The next fantasy is that SNAP recipients use their benefits to buy cigarettes and alcohol. The SNAP program uses Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, similar to debit cards, that can be used in the supermarket checkout line only to purchase food. The Right likes to point to Jackie Whiton, a Peterborough, New Hampshire, store cashier who declined to accept an EBT card as payment for a pack of cigarettes. In reality, the EBT card contained state assistance money, not SNAP benefits, which can be used to purchase tobacco products. The store she worked for has a policy of accepting EBT cash benefits. In reality, Whiton was fired for violating the company’s policies.
The Republican war on programs that benefit Americans in need isn’t based on a philosophical commitment to small government. If it were, the $20 billion in farm subsidies, a welfare program for agribusiness, would be near the top of their hit list. According to a Greenberg report, the Republicans “are very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority.” The report goes on to say that the “race issue [is] very much alive.” There you have it. Obama is taking their money and giving it to “Those People.”
H/T: Dave Johnson, Paul Krugman, Dottie Rosenbaum, Amanda Marcotte, Brian Tashman, WMUR.
Tony,
Visualization may not be necessary, but a basic visualization of the idea as presented in “Flatland” can be helpful as an introductory aid.
Gene: I like Feynman’s description for his mental visualization of dimensionality; he cheats with other properties. So he says, for example, you have a five dimensional space. Three of them are obvious for visualization; just 3-D space. For the other two, he adds “hair” and “shade” to his particles; the hair length indicates one dimension, and the particular shade of gray indicates the other; movement in that dimension just darkens or lightens the particle; movement in the 4th dimension leaves the particle still in space but grows or retracts the hair on it.
As a mental trick I think it works pretty well for visualizing some higher dimensional transformations. For more precise work, we need not bother; for N dimensions we use a vector of N coordinates. Visualization is not really a necessity, linear transformations (rotations, reflections, movements) are represented by Matrix-Vector multiply (which transforms the vector into another vector of N coordinates), and other physical processes are easily represented too (movement is just adding a directional vector to the position vector, etc).
Tony,
Yeah, we’re saying the same thing. My mind was blown by that article as well. It could be a real game changer.
Bron,
You’re welcome, but Tony did most of the heavy lifting on that one. And I really do suggest “Flatland”. It isn’t very long, but it’s probably one of the best ways for a layman to get their head around dimensionality.
SOT: I don’t know where “twistor” comes from; I imagine Penrose purposely spelt with an “o” to distinguish it from the word “twister” and avoid borrowing that word, I doubt it has anything to do with tornadoes.
The basic idea is that we have, in classical physics, 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension, and that four-dimensional space can be described mathematically by using four complex numbers; which in turn can be represented using matrices (from simple high school linear algebra) that are 4 rows by 4 columns of real numbers, which when multiplied by a “coordinate” vector of 4 real numbers, provides a linear transformation to a new coordinate. So you can imagine the matrix represents a force that moves a particle (like a photon) from one point in space and time to another.
In the sixties when he invented them Penrose was trying to find a theory that incorporated gravity into quantum mechanics. Later, Edward Witten (a mathematical genius working in String Theory) proved a connection between one flavor of string theory and Penrose twistors.
We (all scientists) use language, syntax and prose that you cannot understand without being taught the lingo for the same reason lawyers do, actors do, chefs do, truck drivers do, economists do, bankers do and most professionals do: because it lets us be precise in what we are saying, in short hand. The “borrowed” words are usually reminiscent, to the professional, of some aspect of what they technically describe.
So you have to learn to recognize that many words like “complete,” “efficient,” “signature”, “compact”, “open”, “small” and so on are not normal adjectives that can be replaced with synonyms, the have very specific meanings in mathematics or physics. Once in a while regular adjectives are used in academic prose, but as a rule of thumb (for students learning to read academic papers) one should double check if they are not certain, what sounds like a simple intensifier often indicates a characteristic with a precise mathematical definition.
I tried reading Roger Penrose’s paper on “Twistors in General Relativity” just now and my eyes glossed over. Why can’t you guy’s use language, syntax, and prose that is not so esoteric and replete with laymen loan words to a point where a layperson can at least get a basic idea what you’re working on. Or is that the agenda? Keep the nosy laypeople out of your bailiwick? 🙂
Judging from what you are into I think it is a good idea for you to get into a post-graduate class. This stuff is too dam* hard to follow sans help. I think I would like to follow your suggestion for some matriculation too.
I really would like to know the “evolution” of Penrose’s mind-set re: Twistors. I know it has something to do with string theory and such. The origin of the word “twistors” interests me too. Is it based on the American euphemism for a tornado? But we spell it with an E not an O. But that’s the Brits for you with their version of English spellings of words. We Yanks like to spell things differently here… 🙂
Gene H:
thanks for the education.
Gene: Perhaps we are saying the same thing, but I think of “singularities” as points where a function is not defined; if we have y=(1/x) it is defined everywhere but when x=0; at that singular point y=infinity. So if we don’t believe in infinities, we could say our theory breaks down there and we don’t know what happens. Which is what I think happens with gravitation as a pure inverse square law; we compute with 1/(d^2), and it makes no sense if d=0, and really makes increasingly less sense as distance approaches the atomic domain and probabilistic variation becomes a significant factor.
This is one of the central problems in reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics; a straightforward (one page) substitution ends up dividing non-zero values by zeros, which produces infinities, singularities, poles, whatever you wish to call them.
Some of this (IMO) is because gravitation is missing a “stopping mechanism”, it seems unlikely to me that matter can actually be infinitely compressed. In normal matter we have electromagnetic repulsion, gravity can overcome that, but we are stopped by electron-degeneracy pressure (in white dwarfs). Gravity can overcome that, but we are stopped by neutron-degeneracy pressure (in neutron stars). When gravity overcomes that we have no more degeneracy pressures to consider and we collapse to a black hole. I think that last is a misguided presumption, and although I don’t trust string-theoretic results much, some work in string theory suggests there is a degeneracy pressure for quarks. If there are one or more levels of quark based degeneracy pressure, then black holes would have a non-zero radius. i.e. the black hole may be some kind of quark soup (or if quarks are made of something and gravity breaks them apart a more exotic soup) with gravitation strong enough to trap photons, without being objects of infinitely tiny radius. In fact their radius could plausibly be anywhere greater than zero up to the radius of their event horizon.
I don’t have any more evidence of that, it is personal speculation and an applied mathematical bias against physical models that include infinities, and I don’t have the expertise to pursue it. But I have been thinking about enrolling in another post-graduate degree program to learn enough formally to pursue a list of such things that interest me; and your article on the advances in twistors just added weight for that direction too; I need to wait until December to know the extent of my professional duties in January, if I can afford the time to attend classes I may do that.
Scientists have witnessed FTL. Superluminal speeds are associated with a phenomenon known as anomalous dispersion. Unfortunately information conveyance within the energy pulse would still adhere to Einstein’s theory and not be FTL. Here’s a 2010 article on it: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/jan/11/pulsar-bursts-move-faster-than-light
I think Gene Rodenberry’s version used a packet of one-way communications somehow contained within a warping field. The warp field allowed the packet to achieve multiples of warp just like the star ship, maybe even faster. I think the concept was that the warp field some how shielded the contents from space-time continuum.
A wormhole method of communications I think was tried in other plots in other movies and TV shows.
A physicist in Connecticut (UCONN Physics Dept) claims to have send a gauge boson back in time by 1-second. He claims he did it with a ring laser and frame dragging. But the concept does not transcend location the sub space comm does. You could one day maybe send some sort of message back in time I think. But only as far back as the invention of the sending device he calls a “time machine”.
Ursula’s “anisble” device sounds a lot like what I heard some British ship’s captains experimented with pre-19th century for a new strange form of ocean navigation. It was a cruel experiment that basically delved into the occult IMO. It involved dogs that were subjected to some sort of local torture. Apparently a corresponding dog back at port was supposed to react to the pain as if remotely connected by some sort of invisible conveyance not too much unlike ‘spooky entanglement’. I can’t remember the name and object of the experiment. I think it was quickly abandoned for more reliable magnetic compasses and coordinated time pieces.
The Vikings used something more effective for navigation and equally amazing called a SunStone, but that’s a totally different story all together. More to do with light-polarization than what we were talking about here.
Gene: I’m kind of waiting to see what a new theory I referred to Tony a couple of weeks ago
Did you send me that before? If so I missed it or forgot to read it. So I read it now, and, Wow.
That looks like a huge development to me; and in particular because I find Penrose (the originator of twistor theory this is based on) probably the most astute physicist/scientist I have ever read. I recall years ago trying to follow his twistor theory and I was bogged, I had no idea it was still being developed by others.
So A) That’s awesome… B) I am in the audience with everyone else, but the link to Andrew Hodges site with papers should prove useful.
Looks like I have to learn something about twistor theory after all, and do some catching up on reading papers.
It looks like more recently they have new results on incorporating gravity; as “momentum twistors” and “super-twistors”.
I’m not clear on what it would take to incorporate general relativity, however; if space and time are emergent properties, aren’t movement in space and relative velocity necessarily emergent? Does GR fall out of this Grassmannian? I would think that would have been mentioned if they knew that; so maybe it is on the list of future development.
Also interesting, whether it would be exactly Einsteinian GR, or a tweak of it that avoids infinities: They say this approach avoids or resolves many of the infinities (poles) in computational physics, which are always in space or time. If so it will necessarily be unlike GR. But we know GR is a fairly precise estimator, so “Twistor Relativity” would have to look much the same at the macroscopic level and be very different at the quantum level. So I wonder what does a black hole look like in this formulation?
One of the results of applying string theory to black holes (and this has been related to string theory) suggests matter is incompressible beyond a certain point, so black holes have a physical diameter; they are not points. It will be interesting to see how the Twistor formulation meets up with that.
I suppose one fly in the ointment is the theory is based on super-symmetry, and the recent collider results have made that a nearly dead horse. But Hodges claims super symmetry is not a necessity, it was just chosen for simplicity and the Twistors can be applied to the standard model; but I think that remains to be done.
At this point, because there is a link to string theory (which I think has converted physics into untestable mathematical speculation), this may be a way out of the dilemma Physics finds itself in; and provide a path to preserve the careers devoted to string theory by letting them find the Twistor analogues of their existing work and move forward with some testable, falsifiable science again.
Thanks for the article, Gene, that seems like a real advance of which I was not aware.
Gene,
it is way too late to be discussing math and Einstein-Rosen bridges!! 🙂
Bron,
It has been a long day, so I’ll just say a couple of things since Tony hit the high spots on HU quite well.
Dimensionality does not affect “realness”, but it does constrain your frame of reference. To further illustrate what I mean by this, I refer you to an interesting literary example of the idea: “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” by Edwin Abbott Abbott. Although it is primarily a social satire, the novella is set in a 2D world where a 2D being has an encounter with a 3D being (who is a sphere, but is perceived by the square as a circle). While it was only mildly noted when it was originally published in 1884, it had a popular resurgence in the 20’s after Einstein introduced the idea of time as a fourth dimension. It is commonly assigned as a supplemental reading in physics classes.
The whole idea of HU springs from Gerard ‘t Hooft’s and Leonard Susskind’s reaction to Hawking’s assertion about black holes destroying information – called the black hole information paradox – something Hawking now concedes he was wrong about. It was contrary to the conservation of information, which is in itself a bit controversial. However, the maths around the idea of a HU do resolve the black hole information paradox in addition to “smoothing out some other wrinkles” in string theory/M-theory. The big battle now is over what exactly happens to the information. There are several competing ideas and quite frankly I’m too tired to go into them in depth.
One area where I disagree with Tony is on the notion of the pliability of spacetime. A singularity might very well be an infinitely dense point, but it is a common misconception that “singularity” necessarily means just that (and I know Tony knows this). When physicists say “singularity” what they really mean is “we don’t know/our physics lack a way to quantify this/the rules we know don’t apply”. Space may be more pliant than we think and I’m kind of waiting to see what a new theory I referred to Tony a couple of weeks ago (https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/) has on quantum field theory in general (which could impact all of this discussion) as one of the implications of this new theory is that spacetime might be an illusion created by particle geometry.
As for wormholes, I think the idea and the maths behind an Einstein-Rosen bridge are pretty solid but do such things exist as a natural phenomena? Who knows. We haven’t found one yet although there was some evidence suggestive of a white hole in the late 90’s (that would be the corresponding “other end” of a wormhole created by a black hole), but honestly, I haven’t kept up on what became of those observations. So many interesting things in the universe, so little perceived time. And building a wormhole? Well, let’s just say that’s an engineering problem beyond both our current levels of materials science and ability to harness energy although not theoretically impossible.
SOTB,
“Sub-space communicator” seems to imply utilizing a lower dimension (or at least a different one) that have a different physics to bypass spacetime as a constraint on transferring information. For an SF example of a device that utilizes quantum entanglement, a better example would be Ursula le Guin’s “ansible”.
Of course TonyC you and I could go back and forth finding fallibility in each others arguments. My opinion is that you may be locked into your belief system just as much as I am into mine. We both feel we have plausible technical explanations for them but we may never convince one another. So in the interest of detente let’s let these people have their discussion back on Food Stamps and continue without our secular and non-secular beliefs.
SOT says: I believe, are limping on originally incorrect data about who and what God is and His role in our true origins.
I believe you are limping on bad logic and bad assumptions.
Surely the universe could achieve the order it has by complete accident, there is nothing in it that shows any sign of intelligent design.
God has no role in our true origins, God’s origin is with us. We precede God, your God is an invention of man, as all God’s are, and exist (or existed) only in human imagination extrapolating beyond the scope of the problem they sought to solve, through ignorance.
You were born an atheist, you only ever heard of God from other people. It is hearsay. There is no proof of any supernatural existence.
And you are wrong, the literal definition of “supernatural” is “beyond or above the natural.” I do not believe anything exists that is not subject to the laws of physics, as the human-told stories of God (all Gods) imply.
I happen to know a great deal about the human body and evolution, and I do believe all those complex interdependent systems are the work of mindless non-sentient natural selection, but it is NOT tantamount to randomness. Natural selection involves selection. When complexity improves the odds of survival (or the odds of reproduction), it gets selected, on average. It is a perfectly valid route to useful complexity, and it has been used in simulation to create valuable inventions, better machine parts, better radio antennae for ships at sea, and smarter routes for delivery and logistics systems that save billions of dollars a year. Natural selection with random mutations works fine. You just have your head in the sand because your emotions are tied into your belief system.
” I do not believe anything exists that is not subject to the laws of physics, as the human-told stories of God (all Gods) imply.”
That is a pretty good summary for what I believe.
Yet there seems to be a problem for scientific method.
Supernatural process would seem to be inherently ir-reproducible and therefore beyond scientific examination. If there were supernatural phenomenon it would seem that the best scientific methods would necessarily lead to inconclusive or random results.
And there is, perhaps, a different direction to admit phenomenon beyond scientific explanation. If you believe that all physical phenomenon have mathematical descriptions, then Godel’s incompleteness theorem would suggest the possibility of physical systems with parts or components that are always beyond scientific description – I am not sure that proposition holds up.
Yawn, I going to bed.
Tony C. 1, October 16, 2013 at 7:21 pm
SOT says: To me “spin” sounds kinetic… or movement…
It is related to classical spin of an object in the sense it is measured as angular momentum, but it doesn’t make a difference if it is actually physical movement or not, and best not to think of it that way, because spin is quantized into half units which cannot be changed (based on the type of particle). So a ball might spin a little faster or a little slower, or be stopped. The spin in a particle doesn’t work that way. It is better to think of it as a property or characteristic, not as physical movement.
So that’s why I thought you might be able to detect the “spin” in such a way to get binary communications. Slow as heck but still it should stretch across the Universe. How do we know the QE is not instantaneous even across multiple parsecs?
I’m now rethinking your anti-FTL statement. Since we really don’t understand what’s going on with QE how can we think velocity has anything to do with it. It might be something so far advanced from our present understanding its like a 1st century CE contemporary trying to understand Television.
SOT says: Is it true that the stream will change from simply looking at it?
That is kind of the main point. If you have two slits, and you emit a single photon at a time from an emitter, then if the photon were a classical object it could only go through one slit or the other slit. So we put (say) something photon-sensitive on the other side of the board with the slits, that records photons (imagine a photographic film). What we see is an interference pattern recorded, even one photon at a time, a pattern of light and dark areas that suggest the single photon is a wave with reinforcements and cancellations making a pattern of peaks and troughs; and the only way that could happen is if it went through both slits.
However, suppose behind one slit, AFTER the photon should already have gone through one slit or another, we put a detector that can tell if the photon went through JUST THAT slit. This is our “observer.” What we see is that the pattern on the bigger detector changes; now instead of an interference pattern of stripes, what we see is two blotches with their centers where the slits are. That happens if the photon travels ONLY through one slit or the other. While we are “looking” at it (using a very sensitive detector) we force this one photon to travel through one slit or the other, if we turn the detector behind the slit off, this one photon behaves differently; and the only plausible explanation is that it travels through both slits as a wave and the interference pattern is it interfering with itself.
Oh I get it… it’s a matter of semantics. I thought what I heard was something to do with human eyesight. When you (or they) say “looking at the stream” you mean with detection or measuring equipment not human eyes. You scientists should be more careful with your semantics around lay people. We take you literally at times.
SOT says: On the distance thing I am just saying …
Then you fail to understand my response. It is not some “heretofore unknown energy” because there is no role for “energy.” It is a state of affairs, that is it.
In the infamous words of Donald Rumsfeld “Unknown Unknowns” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk
SOT says: discovered new forms i.e. Dark Energy.
We haven’t discovered dark energy, or dark matter either. Those are proposed solutions to measurement discrepancies that we do not understand. There is no “discovery,” and with the recent actual discovery of the Higgs boson (a force carrier) there are no candidate particles for either dark energy or dark matter. That is one reason many physicists are looking for physics beyond the standard model, but there are no good (testable) candidates for that either.
My bad. “…we do not understand…” Is what I was shooting for and you said it. I said “…discovery of Dark Energy…” incorrectly you are correct about that.
SOT says: So how can one extrapolate that QE could happen over several parsecs without empirical proof. I know you’ll say the maths tell it all. Somehow I don’t feel comfortable with that answer.
The mathematics DO tell it all, we extrapolate that entanglement happens without limit because the mathematics that first identified entanglement also put no limits on it. You don’t get to ask How and then preclude what you know is the only answer!
But I thought you’d understood my misgivings for math’s calculation of the size of the Universe only to be found empirically fallible back in March 2013 by the Planck telescope. And this was not the first time the calculated size of the Universe was called into question and proven fallible. I’m not saying math is wrong. Only the human’s application and interpretations of the math algorithm’s they came up with.
SOT says: You’re probably right but I like doing what-ifs with the acumen I already posses…
The acumen you already possess is insufficient to do what-ifs on this topic; so you are just engaging in fantasy.
So be it. My fantasies are entertaining (to me at least). However, I find it hard to not be in good company by adherent’s to “string theory” a fantasy-based theory for sure…
SOT says: I was talking about CLERGY not the LAITY. They are not far more well-versed in the Bible than a Theologian with years of formal education.
It makes no difference; decades of studying a false premise do not create a true premise. The idea if a supernatural being is pointless.
But I’m saying even that Theologian with all of his/her alleged false premises is a better Bible tutor than an atheist reading something he/she THINKS they understand or with preconceived biases based on what they heard 2nd hand from some Fundamentalist priest, Sunday school teacher, evangelist, Rabbi, Mullah, minister, deacon, etc.
All I’m saying is that you’re not giving the Bible a fair shake. Soren Kierkagard summed it up well as to how Fundamentalists have poisoned the minds of unenlightened humans ever since the 4th century CE (i.e. Emperor Constantine – true father of Catholicism – not Peter).
SOT says: Instead of saying “supernatural” how about saying “things you can’t see”?
No. Because it is indeed supernatural. Electricity is not supernatural, wind is not supernatural, they can be measured, controlled, stopped, started, and they obey mathematical laws.
And no, I see no sentience whatsoever in the design of our bodies, ecosystems, or anything else. They are all explainable, and pretending they are not explainable is just a thought-terminating (and therefore damaging) act. All of science, and therefore your life, and the lives of billions, rests upon the premise that the universe is explainable, and we should never accept any claim that things are the way they are “just because.” Whether it is “just because” without reason or just because God says so.
The modern world, including modern medicine and modern biology, is a result of rejecting God as an explanation and understanding how things work to make the world a better place.
I would agree that the Fundamentalist explanation of God would make you feel that way as they have explained it incorrectly for thousands of years. The definition of supernatural is: something attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
Understanding Biblical miracles could be technology by advanced beings BEYOND scientific understanding is plausible. The same would apply to the arguable super-sentient-quantum-singularity Fundamentally known as God {but actually has a real name not just a simple ubiquitous title}.
You say science can FULLY understand and explain electricity? I know there are credible theories of valence electrons, hole theory, etc. But since when has anyone fully understood “flux”? Yes we can modify the flow of it as arguably that’s how it was designed.
Believe it or not there were requests by people like Moses to identify God physically. God complied with limitations (In Genesis). God has been controlled and stopped several times as He had to keep His promises to free-moral-agent man: See God’s promise to Abraham He had to keep about Israel even when He did not want to due to Israel’s arrogant ways. Read about the High Priest Balaam and the talking (ventriloquism) donkey. God had to trick him to get Balaam to not force God’s hand in doing something He did not want to do. It’s not about being powerful but being honest and complying with promises made and free moral agentry or free will. So God can be measured and controlled within limitations. Maybe not the way you wanted but still the concept has been shown no matter how esoteric it seems.
SOT says: Nice play on words but …
Why should I be surprised you missed the whole point? There are gods that others believe in, or did believe in, as absolutely real beings walking the earth. The ancient Greeks really thought Aphrodite was a physical being that other people had met (and even slept with). But you do not believe in those other gods, you are an atheist with respect to them. I say that so you can have an inkling about how I feel about YOUR God, whatever form it takes in your mind. It is no more real to me than Aphrodite is a real God for you.
I was referring to your ONE LESS GOD than Christians. That’s a math play on words I thought. You think Fundamentalist Christians are monotheistic (1 god?) but they are not if they believe in the Trinity. I did get your comments regarding ancient mythology. The math scenario sounded more topical to me.
The ancient mythological characters may have a very plausible explanation if you believe in the meta * physical world (which you do not). The Bible points out that there were disobedient angels that came to Earth to masquerade as men Genesis 6th chapter. This may explain many of the ancient myths you refer to – they may have REALLY happened. Ancient eyewitnesses giving demigod or godlike explanations of what they incorrectly observed and may explain that. A bit too esoteric for this forum though.
You are the person suffering from Garbage-In Garbage-Out, not me. You have no reason to believe other than pure hearsay. Not knowing how the complexity of the body came about is not a reason to invent a solution out of thin air, and it serves nothing except your own comfort, while actually standing in the way of real understanding that could help people, predict and prevent disease, prevent death and misery, and make the world a better place.
My use of GIGO was not meant as a pejorative attack on you. I was just pointing out how people can come to completely wrong conclusions due to originally bad data. I’m just saying atheists and agnostics, I believe, are limping on originally incorrect data about who and what God is and His role in our true origins.
I really think you should learn more about the human body if you think all of our complex interdependent systems were all the work of mindless non-sentient natural selection and chaos which is tantamount to randomness. And surely the Universe could not achieve the awe inspiring order it has by complete accident.
OK I’ll stop cyber-sparing with you as I really do respect your opinions as I find them quite interesting and I know I could learn a lot from you. TonyC you have my respect and admiration.
Lotta k,
That was one of the most thoughtful upbraidings I have ever seen. And long overdue. Can I have your baby?
My cyber-buddy Blouise summed it up well… She said I was like a river meandering in and out of threads… Remember you are retired I am not.
Now I have read TonyC’s response… give me about an hour… You know I have to battle my ADD 🙂
SOT says: To me “spin” sounds kinetic… or movement…
It is related to classical spin of an object in the sense it is measured as angular momentum, but it doesn’t make a difference if it is actually physical movement or not, and best not to think of it that way, because spin is quantized into half units which cannot be changed (based on the type of particle). So a ball might spin a little faster or a little slower, or be stopped. The spin in a particle doesn’t work that way. It is better to think of it as a property or characteristic, not as physical movement.
SOT says: Is it true that the stream will change from simply looking at it?
That is kind of the main point. If you have two slits, and you emit a single photon at a time from an emitter, then if the photon were a classical object it could only go through one slit or the other slit. So we put (say) something photon-sensitive on the other side of the board with the slits, that records photons (imagine a photographic film). What we see is an interference pattern recorded, even one photon at a time, a pattern of light and dark areas that suggest the single photon is a wave with reinforcements and cancellations making a pattern of peaks and troughs; and the only way that could happen is if it went through both slits.
However, suppose behind one slit, AFTER the photon should already have gone through one slit or another, we put a detector that can tell if the photon went through JUST THAT slit. This is our “observer.” What we see is that the pattern on the bigger detector changes; now instead of an interference pattern of stripes, what we see is two blotches with their centers where the slits are. That happens if the photon travels ONLY through one slit or the other. While we are “looking” at it (using a very sensitive detector) we force this one photon to travel through one slit or the other, if we turn the detector behind the slit off, this one photon behaves differently; and the only plausible explanation is that it travels through both slits as a wave and the interference pattern is it interfering with itself.
SOT says: On the distance thing I am just saying …
Then you fail to understand my response. It is not some “heretofore unknown energy” because there is no role for “energy.” It is a state of affairs, that is it.
SOT says: discovered new forms i.e. Dark Energy.
We haven’t discovered dark energy, or dark matter either. Those are proposed solutions to measurement discrepancies that we do not understand. There is no “discovery,” and with the recent actual discovery of the Higgs boson (a force carrier) there are no candidate particles for either dark energy or dark matter. That is one reason many physicists are looking for physics beyond the standard model, but there are no good (testable) candidates for that either.
SOT says: So how can one extrapolate that QE could happen over several parsecs without empirical proof. I know you’ll say thae maths tell it all. Somehow I don’t feel comfortable with that answer.
The mathematics DO tell it all, we extrapolate that entanglement happens without limit because the mathematics that first identified entanglement also put no limits on it. You don’t get to ask How and then preclude what you know is the only answer!
SOT says: You’re probably right but I like doing what-ifs with the acumen I already posses…
The acumen you already possess is insufficient to do what-ifs on this topic; so you are just engaging in fantasy.
SOT says: I was talking about CLERGY not the LAITY. They are not far more well-versed in the Bible than a Theologian with years of formal education.
It makes no difference; decades of studying a false premise do not create a true premise. The idea if a supernatural being is pointless.
SOT says: Instead of saying “supernatural” how about saying “things you can’t see”?
No. Because it is indeed supernatural. Electricity is not supernatural, wind is not supernatural, they can be measured, controlled, stopped, started, and they obey mathematical laws.
And no, I see no sentience whatsoever in the design of our bodies, ecosystems, or anything else. They are all explainable, and pretending they are not explainable is just a thought-terminating (and therefore damaging) act. All of science, and therefore your life, and the lives of billions, rests upon the premise that the universe is explainable, and we should never accept any claim that things are the way they are “just because.” Whether it is “just because” without reason or just because God says so.
The modern world, including modern medicine and modern biology, is a result of rejecting God as an explanation and understanding how things work to make the world a better place.
SOT says: Nice play on words but …
Why should I be surprised you missed the whole point? There are gods that others believe in, or did believe in, as absolutely real beings walking the earth. The ancient Greeks really thought Aphrodite was a physical being that other people had met (and even slept with). But you do not believe in those other gods, you are an atheist with respect to them. I say that so you can have an inkling about how I feel about YOUR God, whatever form it takes in your mind. It is no more real to me than Aphrodite is a real God for you.
You are the person suffering from Garbage-In Garbage-Out, not me. You have no reason to believe other than pure hearsay. Not knowing how the complexity of the body came about is not a reason to invent a solution out of thin air, and it serves nothing except your own comfort, while actually standing in the way of real understanding that could help people, predict and prevent disease, prevent death and misery, and make the world a better place.
SOTB, You seem to show up only on threads that exceed 400 comments or more. What’s that about? You should be present here more regularly.
lotta, My comments are not long, but yours just was. Thanks for your thoughts and emotion. And, I respect you. We will simply have to disagree. I simply ask you to acknowledge, I was threatened w/ retaliation for something I did not do, and would never do. I handled it w/ the person, and we should be done w/ it. What happened to Tina and Michael was arrogant bullying. I stood up for them. In most circles that’s considered a good thing.