Saturday, March 6, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Smithsonian, March 2010:
In an article about Ardipithecus ramidus, Ann Gibbons [good name for the author of an article on apes] states the well known fact that...“the gold standard for being a hominid was upright walking” Was is the key word since it is not universally accepted that Ardi was a hominid. She certainly seems to be based on the upright stance and her teeth, but maybe not. What interested me most was what I had not found in any article, the odd case of Oreopithicus. Oreopithicus was found some years ago and was a big shock. Clearly an ancient ape, it was bipedal. Supposedly impossible. As I recall, it was then argued that Oreopiticus was an exception that proofed the rule.*
The explanation I remember was that it was an island ape and island species are often peculiar in their adaptations, being much more extreme and varied than their mainland cousins. I looked up “Ardipithecus ramidus, bipedal, and Oreopithicus.” I found quite a few articles, the essence of which was that Oreopithicus bambolii might have been bipedal.
Either way, human evolution is far different than presumed. A recurring tale which goes back as far as Darwin. The assumptions made about our own evolution have proven wrong again and again. Lest any creationists take pride in this, let me remind them that it is Science, not superstition which has repeatedly found the errors and corrected. them.
For example, a species was once identified as Hesperopithecus was much debated about a century ago. It turned out that the supposed Nebraska Man, who had been identified by a single tooth, was a species of extinct pig. Oops! However, again I point out that the error was found and the correction made, by scientists. Science is such an amazingly useful tool because it is a tool which works. Again and again, it has shown itself to be self correcting. Exactly the opposite of the accusation made by creationists that science is just a another form of belief and has a dogma which may not be questioned. Science always questions, and is always open to new proof. It does require proof, which is consistently absent in the hearts and minds of creationists. Also in their arguments.
*We often hear the irrational and disturbing phrase “This is the exception which
proves the rule.” This makes no sense at all. I read somewhere that the original phrase was, “This is the exception which proofs the rule.” Proof is the old word for testing. Today it is remembered primarily as the identifier of the alcohol content of an intoxicating liquid, as in , 80 proof. Is the etymology actually “proofs” not “proves”? I don't know, but it makes sense and I like it, so I use it.
Final note: Interested in Nebraska Man? Try this address: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html
In an article about Ardipithecus ramidus, Ann Gibbons [good name for the author of an article on apes] states the well known fact that...“the gold standard for being a hominid was upright walking” Was is the key word since it is not universally accepted that Ardi was a hominid. She certainly seems to be based on the upright stance and her teeth, but maybe not. What interested me most was what I had not found in any article, the odd case of Oreopithicus. Oreopithicus was found some years ago and was a big shock. Clearly an ancient ape, it was bipedal. Supposedly impossible. As I recall, it was then argued that Oreopiticus was an exception that proofed the rule.*
The explanation I remember was that it was an island ape and island species are often peculiar in their adaptations, being much more extreme and varied than their mainland cousins. I looked up “Ardipithecus ramidus, bipedal, and Oreopithicus.” I found quite a few articles, the essence of which was that Oreopithicus bambolii might have been bipedal.
Either way, human evolution is far different than presumed. A recurring tale which goes back as far as Darwin. The assumptions made about our own evolution have proven wrong again and again. Lest any creationists take pride in this, let me remind them that it is Science, not superstition which has repeatedly found the errors and corrected. them.
For example, a species was once identified as Hesperopithecus was much debated about a century ago. It turned out that the supposed Nebraska Man, who had been identified by a single tooth, was a species of extinct pig. Oops! However, again I point out that the error was found and the correction made, by scientists. Science is such an amazingly useful tool because it is a tool which works. Again and again, it has shown itself to be self correcting. Exactly the opposite of the accusation made by creationists that science is just a another form of belief and has a dogma which may not be questioned. Science always questions, and is always open to new proof. It does require proof, which is consistently absent in the hearts and minds of creationists. Also in their arguments.
*We often hear the irrational and disturbing phrase “This is the exception which
proves the rule.” This makes no sense at all. I read somewhere that the original phrase was, “This is the exception which proofs the rule.” Proof is the old word for testing. Today it is remembered primarily as the identifier of the alcohol content of an intoxicating liquid, as in , 80 proof. Is the etymology actually “proofs” not “proves”? I don't know, but it makes sense and I like it, so I use it.
Final note: Interested in Nebraska Man? Try this address: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html
Alice In Boringland
Just watched Alice In Wonderland. Many of the characters were great, as with make up. Unfortunately, the story was slow and the plot was stale. Occasionally the 3D action was reminiscent of Bwana Devil--from the old days of red and green 3D paper glasses with spears poking at the audience for no good reason. I am glad I went to see it, but it was disappointing.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Finished reading the Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction, and guess what? The next story was a Time Travel tale...well, no one traveled in time, but they filmed the past. Having just grumbled about the inability of mathematically inclined sci fi authors to imagine a world without slide rules, I must give the author of the last tale credit for a remarkable prediction. The last story in the book was With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson,in which a character declares that his discovery makes possible, “A... drive which makes possible apparent speeds many times that of light -- by means of... deformation of the continuum”, While conceding the absolute speed limit set by the constant of the speed of light,some physicists today dream of traveling from place to place faster than light can travel the same distance, not by exceeding light speed, but by deforming the space time continuum so as to make the distance traveled much shorter. Since the story was written in 1947, that’s a pretty impressive prediction.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Back to time travel... Having read “How to Travel Through Time” by Sean Carroll [Discover, 2010] I was pleased to find a new time travel novel by Willis [Blackout, see entry below]. Naturally, she deals with many of the same issues as Carroll. That is, can one change the past? If not, does this eliminate free will? Or can one go back in time and obviate an undesirable future? I made notes as I read Carroll's article, so I'll just go through and comment on them.
Carroll says: "If physics is not an obstacle[to time travel], however, the problem could still be constrained by logic. Do closed time like curves [physics talk for time travel] necessarily lead to paradoxes?"
The classic example is called the Grandfather Paradox. If your grandfather was an abusive brute, you might get angry enough at what he had done to your father when he was a child to get into a time machine, go back, and shoot your young grandfather before he met your grandmother. This ends the abuse before it happened. Only it would mean that you don’t exist. If you don't exist you can’t go back to kill your grandfather. That means that he will meet your grandmother and your father and you will be born which means you will go back and kill your young grandfather to be, which means...
Some resolve this by stating that if you go back in time, you are going to an alternate universe. Whatever you “change” does not affect your original universe. [This is a variation on Everett’s Many Worlds Hypothesis.] Others say this shows time travel is impossible. Some say that it proves that there is no free will and what must be must be and cannot be changed [que serra, serra]. I believe that all supposed paradoxes; from Zeno, Achilles, and the hare to time travel; are all misuses of language. Paradoxes are impossible, we think they might exist only due to our poor understanding of the facts.
Carroll later states: “In the usual way of thinking, the laws of physics function like a computer. You give as input the present state, and the laws return as output what the state will be... This ability vanishes as soon as someone builds a time machine and creates a closed time like curve.” in other words, the old anti freewill argument which was destroyed by the random nature of quantum physics. Random events, even at the quantum level mean that even knowing the exact state of every particle in the universe and the totality of all forces acting upon them, you cannot predict exactly what the universe will be like in the future. This drove Einstein to an obsession to disprove quantum physics. He and Neils Bohr spent decades debating the issue, with Bohr triumphing time after time.
Please be aware that I am skipping most of the article for the sake of focusing on the points which interest me, but what I am ignoring is also interesting. Carroll comes to the conclusion that if time travel exists, “We would therefore have to abandon the concept of determinism...We would also have to abandon free will...”
I disagree on both points. Determinism had to be abandoned when quantum uncertainty was discovered by Heisenberg. It is long dead. As for free will, this is what interests me the most. I have spent several decades gnawing at that problem.
I believe that the following scenario is much more realistic than the classic Grandfather Paradox:
Let’s assume time travel is possible. You do go back to kill your young grandfather to be. When you point the gun at his back from your ambush, you just can’t do it. You are not a murderer, not even of this awful man. You go back and nothing has changed.
Doesn’t this deny free will? You can go to the past, but you can’t change it. What happened has happened and must happen. This is a form of determinism, but one which applies only in the limited purview of time travel. But I still insist upon free will as an active force. Carroll insists upon logic as denying free will in such a case, I say he is limited to the narrow and constricted view of reality which appertained prior to Einstein's theory of relativity.
Let’s look at a classic and often repeated gedanken experiment, a thought experiment. There is a train traveling along. In the exact center of one car is a light bulb. At each end of the car is a sensor which, when the light is turned on, will open the door at that end of the car. There are two observers to this experiment. One is traveling along in the car, the other is standing still outside the car as it goes by. The light is turned on and the doors open. The observer in the car says both doors open at the same time as the light traveled the same distance and at the same speed. The observer outside the car insists that she is wrong, the door at the rear of the car opened first because it was moving toward the light beam, shortening the distance it had to travel. Since the speed of light is constant, there can be no other conclusion. Logically, using the classic Greek logic of Carroll, they cannot both be correct. The statements of fact are mutually contradictory.
But they are both correct, This has been proven in experiments. Impossible? Not in a relative universe. Each observer is correct, in his or her frame of reference! To the observer in the car the doors opened simultaneously, but to the observer outside the car, the rear door opened first. Reality depends on where you are standing relative to the experiment.
The same situation applies, I believe, to time travel. To the future observer, you are without free will, you must do what you have always done in his past. He sees your actions as completely and totally determined. You are only a robot doing what has been done and will be done and always was done [as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be].
This is true for you only as long as you are in the future, but when you go to the past, your future now includes what you will do in the next few minutes, your now is September 7, 1956 or whenever you have traveled to. In other words, you have choices. You make them using your free will. From your framework this is true and as real as your lack of free will is to the future observer. This is logically contradictory only in a pre relativity world.
Well, took me along time to get to this but there is my answer, summed up in a very brief and simplistic summary.
I am feeling light headed from all this typing and editing. I am done for the day! Back to my sipper full of coke and The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction!
Note: at least one physicist is attempting to create a time machine by using laser beams to create a twisting of space time [so far theoretically possible] in a manner similar to the "frame dragging" which occurs when water spins and swirls down a drain. In this case, of course, the frame is not the water but the space time continuum. Other physicists insist that the power to create such a distortion would requite a couple of cosmic strings, left overs from the big bang which are as thin as a proton but vastly long and heavier than neutronium. Said physicist intends only to create a communication device which can send a few photons into the past. But photons can contain information and the paradox remains.
PPS: If interested look into “light cones”. They get really messed up with time travel.
Carroll says: "If physics is not an obstacle[to time travel], however, the problem could still be constrained by logic. Do closed time like curves [physics talk for time travel] necessarily lead to paradoxes?"
The classic example is called the Grandfather Paradox. If your grandfather was an abusive brute, you might get angry enough at what he had done to your father when he was a child to get into a time machine, go back, and shoot your young grandfather before he met your grandmother. This ends the abuse before it happened. Only it would mean that you don’t exist. If you don't exist you can’t go back to kill your grandfather. That means that he will meet your grandmother and your father and you will be born which means you will go back and kill your young grandfather to be, which means...
Some resolve this by stating that if you go back in time, you are going to an alternate universe. Whatever you “change” does not affect your original universe. [This is a variation on Everett’s Many Worlds Hypothesis.] Others say this shows time travel is impossible. Some say that it proves that there is no free will and what must be must be and cannot be changed [que serra, serra]. I believe that all supposed paradoxes; from Zeno, Achilles, and the hare to time travel; are all misuses of language. Paradoxes are impossible, we think they might exist only due to our poor understanding of the facts.
Carroll later states: “In the usual way of thinking, the laws of physics function like a computer. You give as input the present state, and the laws return as output what the state will be... This ability vanishes as soon as someone builds a time machine and creates a closed time like curve.” in other words, the old anti freewill argument which was destroyed by the random nature of quantum physics. Random events, even at the quantum level mean that even knowing the exact state of every particle in the universe and the totality of all forces acting upon them, you cannot predict exactly what the universe will be like in the future. This drove Einstein to an obsession to disprove quantum physics. He and Neils Bohr spent decades debating the issue, with Bohr triumphing time after time.
Please be aware that I am skipping most of the article for the sake of focusing on the points which interest me, but what I am ignoring is also interesting. Carroll comes to the conclusion that if time travel exists, “We would therefore have to abandon the concept of determinism...We would also have to abandon free will...”
I disagree on both points. Determinism had to be abandoned when quantum uncertainty was discovered by Heisenberg. It is long dead. As for free will, this is what interests me the most. I have spent several decades gnawing at that problem.
I believe that the following scenario is much more realistic than the classic Grandfather Paradox:
Let’s assume time travel is possible. You do go back to kill your young grandfather to be. When you point the gun at his back from your ambush, you just can’t do it. You are not a murderer, not even of this awful man. You go back and nothing has changed.
Doesn’t this deny free will? You can go to the past, but you can’t change it. What happened has happened and must happen. This is a form of determinism, but one which applies only in the limited purview of time travel. But I still insist upon free will as an active force. Carroll insists upon logic as denying free will in such a case, I say he is limited to the narrow and constricted view of reality which appertained prior to Einstein's theory of relativity.
Let’s look at a classic and often repeated gedanken experiment, a thought experiment. There is a train traveling along. In the exact center of one car is a light bulb. At each end of the car is a sensor which, when the light is turned on, will open the door at that end of the car. There are two observers to this experiment. One is traveling along in the car, the other is standing still outside the car as it goes by. The light is turned on and the doors open. The observer in the car says both doors open at the same time as the light traveled the same distance and at the same speed. The observer outside the car insists that she is wrong, the door at the rear of the car opened first because it was moving toward the light beam, shortening the distance it had to travel. Since the speed of light is constant, there can be no other conclusion. Logically, using the classic Greek logic of Carroll, they cannot both be correct. The statements of fact are mutually contradictory.
But they are both correct, This has been proven in experiments. Impossible? Not in a relative universe. Each observer is correct, in his or her frame of reference! To the observer in the car the doors opened simultaneously, but to the observer outside the car, the rear door opened first. Reality depends on where you are standing relative to the experiment.
The same situation applies, I believe, to time travel. To the future observer, you are without free will, you must do what you have always done in his past. He sees your actions as completely and totally determined. You are only a robot doing what has been done and will be done and always was done [as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be].
This is true for you only as long as you are in the future, but when you go to the past, your future now includes what you will do in the next few minutes, your now is September 7, 1956 or whenever you have traveled to. In other words, you have choices. You make them using your free will. From your framework this is true and as real as your lack of free will is to the future observer. This is logically contradictory only in a pre relativity world.
Well, took me along time to get to this but there is my answer, summed up in a very brief and simplistic summary.
I am feeling light headed from all this typing and editing. I am done for the day! Back to my sipper full of coke and The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction!
Note: at least one physicist is attempting to create a time machine by using laser beams to create a twisting of space time [so far theoretically possible] in a manner similar to the "frame dragging" which occurs when water spins and swirls down a drain. In this case, of course, the frame is not the water but the space time continuum. Other physicists insist that the power to create such a distortion would requite a couple of cosmic strings, left overs from the big bang which are as thin as a proton but vastly long and heavier than neutronium. Said physicist intends only to create a communication device which can send a few photons into the past. But photons can contain information and the paradox remains.
PPS: If interested look into “light cones”. They get really messed up with time travel.
From a response to Bobby in regard to stories he's reading: HP Lovecraft stories, used to scare myself silly with these when I was a kid, but finally realized that Cluthuloowoohoohoo couldn't come back until someone said his name three times and no one can say that god awful name! Now I scare my self with the YmmyNummyTummyCron a book of great and fearsome evil--recipes for pie crust made with lard, fries in animal fat, home made bacon, extra salty, etc. It scares my oldest daughter [who lives with me and is aware of my diet] and my doctor, anyway.
Imagine the horror if Cluth... [more consonants and a couple of vowels--I never could even spell the name, much less say it] had a name like Sam or even George. "George Bush, Jr.; George Bush, Jr.;" no I won't say it the third time. He might bring cheney back with him.
Back to reading [also to Bobby]:
My world stumbles on! I am almost finished with "A Secret History of western Sexual Mysticism" or something like that. My mind is reeling with antinomianism, spiritual marriage and other weird stuff. Say you're getting married, can I recommend a spritiual marriage. Its just like ordinary message except that the male never, ever reaches climax. this energizes your mystic sprit to rise above worldly limits to attain union with the godhead. It's not that I hate you, I just want someone to actually try this out and make a report. Purely scientific interest, of course.
And today:
Just finished reading Blackout. Connie Willis' latest in her sometimes superb time traveling series. [To say Nothing of the Dog is as good as Pratchett's best for a series of laughs. And Doomsday is a painfully beautiful examination of the reality of history.] Then read Between Planets--once a favorite when I was a kid. Not bad , even now. Though the insistence on slide rules as essential equipment in the far future is amusing in our world, but mathematicians has reason to love them so I can forgive their inability to imagine a world without them. Finally am on the last novella in the Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction. Some quite good, some less so, but all needed to be read in view of 1940's and 50's scientific understanding.
Imagine the horror if Cluth... [more consonants and a couple of vowels--I never could even spell the name, much less say it] had a name like Sam or even George. "George Bush, Jr.; George Bush, Jr.;" no I won't say it the third time. He might bring cheney back with him.
Back to reading [also to Bobby]:
My world stumbles on! I am almost finished with "A Secret History of western Sexual Mysticism" or something like that. My mind is reeling with antinomianism, spiritual marriage and other weird stuff. Say you're getting married, can I recommend a spritiual marriage. Its just like ordinary message except that the male never, ever reaches climax. this energizes your mystic sprit to rise above worldly limits to attain union with the godhead. It's not that I hate you, I just want someone to actually try this out and make a report. Purely scientific interest, of course.
And today:
Just finished reading Blackout. Connie Willis' latest in her sometimes superb time traveling series. [To say Nothing of the Dog is as good as Pratchett's best for a series of laughs. And Doomsday is a painfully beautiful examination of the reality of history.] Then read Between Planets--once a favorite when I was a kid. Not bad , even now. Though the insistence on slide rules as essential equipment in the far future is amusing in our world, but mathematicians has reason to love them so I can forgive their inability to imagine a world without them. Finally am on the last novella in the Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction. Some quite good, some less so, but all needed to be read in view of 1940's and 50's scientific understanding.
Heard about the straw poll at CPAC? The home hive of the neocon "we hate anything the dems or liberal do" movement gave us a surprise. Ron Paul won the unscientific but not insignificant vote on who should be the next presidential candidate for Conservatives. is it possible the libertarian wing of the republican party is not dead after all?
A few years ago I had an argument with my youngest daughter, the only other family member interested in politics. Her point, as info is declassified, we will see that torture was necessary and did save us. My response, no my dear, we will see that torture hurt us and the government used "classified" to cover us its failures. Cheney's famous memo that would prove torture worked was finally released. It proves that by torturing Zubaida [spelling?] we got info which allowed us to travel back in time and arrest Padilla even before Zubaida was arrested, much less tortured. Wow! the necromancer's had it right, torturing people gives you magic powers!!
A few years ago I had an argument with my youngest daughter, the only other family member interested in politics. Her point, as info is declassified, we will see that torture was necessary and did save us. My response, no my dear, we will see that torture hurt us and the government used "classified" to cover us its failures. Cheney's famous memo that would prove torture worked was finally released. It proves that by torturing Zubaida [spelling?] we got info which allowed us to travel back in time and arrest Padilla even before Zubaida was arrested, much less tortured. Wow! the necromancer's had it right, torturing people gives you magic powers!!
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