Shokwave’s read on this is my take away from experiments like Milgram’s: the situational context is not truly separable from character. Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect really drove this point home to me. He argued strongly against the idea that the abuses at Abu Ghriab were the result of “bad apples” (i.e. result of people with poor character), but that the situation itself led to the abuses, and further (and more controversially), the situation itself was created in order to bring about those behaviors. I don’t mean to say that there is necessarily only one behavioral outcome for a given situation, only that the situation weighs very heavily on the outcome, to the point where finding an unchangeable “character” across situations doesn’t seem feasible.
zaph
Sounds like there should just be a Bethesda meetup for the people that can’t make the Baltimore one :)
The Shady Grove station is the end of the Red Line, one stop past the Rockville station going north. Union Station is on the Red Line as well, if you were going into town to meet Benquo for a ride, or take the train. Going south, its two stops past the Gallery Place—Chinatown stop.
This area is really difficult to arrange meetups, it seems, despite the close proximity mileage wise. The DC and Baltimore gravity wells really slow down travel times. I’ve been idly thinking of suggesting Terrapin Adventures as an outing ( http://www.terrapinadventures.com/ , located in Savage, MD). but I just don’t know if people would be able to make it, due to things like available public transportation. Anyway, hope this meetup is successful, and spawns meetings in DC, Howard, Montgomery, etc.
This is my viewpoint as a philosophical laymen. I’ve liked a lot of the philosophy I’ve read, but I’m thinking about what the counter-proposal to what your post might be, and I don’t know that it wouldn’t result in a better state of affairs. I don’t believe we’d have to stop reading writers from prior eras, or keep reinventing the wheel for “philosophical” questions. But why not just say, from here on out, the useful bits of philosophy can be categorized into other disciplines, and the general catch all term is no longer warranted? Philosophy covered just too wide a swath of topics: political science/economics, physics/cosmology, and psychology, just to name a few. I don’t really know how to categorize everything Leibnitz and Newton were interested in. Now that these topics have more empirical data, there’s less room for general speculation like there was in the old days. When you reclassify the useful stuff of philosophers’ work as science, math, or logic I think it’s very clarifying. All that remains afterwards (in my opinion) is more cultural commentaries and criticisms, and general speculations about life. I wouldn’t call them useless; I found Rawls and Nozick to be interesting. But there would be big picture thinkers, cross-disciplinary studiers, and other types of thinkers even without a formal academic discipline called philosophy.
The RomCom version of Kick Ass would probably do very well at the box office.
Considering the source was Nature, I doubt your analysis is correct. The researchers are from Ludwig-Maximilians-University and ETH Zürich, which appear to be respectable institutions. I found a write-up at Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100727082652.htm) that provides some more details on the research. From that link:
“The teams at LMU and the ETH Zurich have now shown that the result of a measurement on a quantum particle can be predicted with greater accuracy if information about the particle is available in a quantum memory. Atoms or ions can form the basis for such a quantum memory.
The researchers have, for the first time, derived a formula for Heisenberg’s Principle, which takes account of the effect of a quantum memory. In the case of so-called entangled particles, whose states are very highly correlated (i.e. to a degree that is greater than that allowed by the laws of classical physics), the uncertainty can disappear.
According to Christandl, this can be roughly understood as follows “One might say that the disorder or uncertainty in the state of a particle depends on the information stored in the quantum memory. Imagine having a pile of papers on a table. Often these will appear to be completely disordered—except to the person who put them there in the first place.”
This is one of the very few places online that I’ve seen thoughtful discussion on the implications of quantum mechanics, so I felt research that could impact quantum theory would be relevant.
I came across a blurb on Ars Technica about “quantum memory” with the headline proclaiming that it may “topple Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle”. Here’s the link: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/quantum-memory-may-topple-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
They didn’t source the specific article, but it seems to be this one, published in Nature Physics. Here’s that link: http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys1734.html
This is all well above my paygrade. Is this all conceptual? Are the scientists involed anywhere near an experiment to verify any of this? In a word, huh?
Sounds good to me (that’s what I get for typing quickly at work).
That’s a good point, Dan. I guess we’d have to check what the number of base 10 systems were vs. overall systems. Though I would continue to see that as again demonstrating an evolution of complex number theory, as multiple strands joined together as systems interacted with one another. There were probably plenty of historical accidents at work, like you mention, to help bring about the current system of natural numbers.
I’m probably exposing my ignorance here, but didn’t zero have a historical evolution, so to speak? I’m going off vague memories of past reading and a current quick glance at wikipedia, but it seems like there were separate developments of using place holders, the concept of nothing, and the use of a symbol, which all eventually converges onto the current zero. Seems like the evolution of a number to me. And it may be a just so story, but I see it as eminently plausible that humans primarily work in base 10 because, for the most part, we have 10 digits, which again would be dictated by the evolutionary process.
On his human life, point, if DNA encoding encompasses all of complex numbers (being that it needs that system in order to be described), isn’t it then necessarily more complex, since it requires all of complex numbers plus it’s own set of rules and knowledge base as well?
The ban was probably for the best Silas, you were probably confusing everyone with the facts.
Are they saying that they don’t want to be rational, or just not emotionless? I think that people do want to be rational, in some sense, when dealing with emotions, but they’re just never going to have interest in, say, Kahneman and Tversky , or other formal theory. I’ve noticed that some women I know have read “He’s Just Not That Into You”, which from how they describe it, sounds like strategies on rationally dealing with strong emotions. I know it sounds hokey, but people have read that book and were able to put their emotions in a different light when it comes to romantic relationships. I couldn’t tell you if the advice was good or not, but I think it does sound like there’s at least an audience for what you’re talking about.
I reservedly second Wedrifid’s comment that the little piece of paper at the end is worth it. I know people who have gone far in life without one, and I don’t mean amazing genius-savants either, just folks who spent time in industry, the military, etc. and progressed along. But I’ve also seen a number who got stuck at some point for lacking a degree. This was more a lack of signaling cred that smarts or ability. The statistics show that people with degrees on average earn more than those who don’t, if that’s of interest to you. But degrees don’t instantly grant jobs, and some degrees are better preparation than others for the real world. It sounds like you’re interested in a degree in math, which carries over into a lot of different fields.
I think it’s great that your taking stock of what your education experience is giving you. As Wedifrid mentioned, the motivation is an important part of schooling, and if you’re in a program that is known to be rigorous, the credentials are definitely worth it. But those have to be weighed against current employment options. I’d encourage you to consider working with professors on research, investigating internships, etc., so that you get the full educational experience that you’re looking for, and not be one of those graduates that only took classes and then expected a job to be waiting for them when they graduated.
I think the low volume high quality nature of the LW front page is why a forum would be a bonus. People could hash out more low to mid quality ideas without detracting from the more developed postings that the readers who want to invest less time are looking for. I’m not a fan of a forum in lieu of the current LW format, but as an idea incubator, I think it could be interesting and of use.
This and the other probability discussions above have greatly helped me to understand what MWI was getting at. I wasn’t fully grasping what the limitations were, that MWI wasn’t describing limitless possibilities happening infinitely.
Thanks, again, this is the type of explanation that helps me to much better understand the possibilities MWI was addressing. And causation just gives me the reasonable expectation that physics models, biology theories, do adequately model our world without worrying about spooking action throwing too big of a monkey wrench into things.
Thanks, this really helps to clarify the picture for me.
I’m not sure I quite follow. So I have the feeling of confusion, which I attribute to not understanding the ramifications of the physical explanation of quantum effects that the MWI provides. What’s the cognitive explanation for this?
The other interpretations allow for the possibility, but MWI seems to argue for it to definitely occur, in some universe branch.
I think it’s the “wacky but not TOO wacky” world that I find pretty fascinating in QM. I just haven’t seen a description that just seemed to nail it for me. Obviously, YMMV.
Hi Jack,
[i]Anyway it is true that MWI does entail that there is some non-zero possibility that your next words will be in Klingon. But the possibility is so small that the universe is likely to end many, many times over before it ever happens.[/i]
This all could just be an issue of me being massively off on the probabilities, but aren’t there a greater number of possibilities that my next words will be not be in English than in English, and therefore a greater probability that what I would say would not be in English? And in this particular example, there are a number of universes that have branched off that I would have spoken Klingon. I’m not understanding the limitation that would demonstrate that there are more universes where I spoke English instead (i.e. why would there be a bell curve distribution with English sentences being the most frequently demonstrated average?)
And I do want to more clearly re-iterate that I’m not talking about Everett’s formal proof, but the purely philosophical ramifications you mention (and also, I haven’t got some earth shattering thesis waiting in the wings, I’m just describing my confusion). QM is fact, and MWI is a way of interpreting it. For whatever reason, I’m interested in that interpretation. So chalk it up to me thinking through a dumb question. I don’t believe I’ve falsified a mainstream QM theory. I do feel I’ve demonstrated to my satisfaction that I don’t fully understand the metaphysical implications of MWI. It sounds easier to just chalk it up to “it’s the equations”, but I do find the potential implications interesting.
I thank Tony for not taking the immediately self-benefiting path of profit and instead doing his small part to raise the sanity waterline.