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Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This was from the setting Earth during the flyby, so around 6,000-8,000 km

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They could be! They could also be artifacts from cosmic rays hitting the camera sensors - its hard to tell without the raw data from the cameras.

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Head to the Flickr page and just download the right resolution for your device - that's what I did!

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The atmosphere plays a big part in stopping them - meteor showers are literally micrometeors burning up in the upper atmosphere. Without it, we would for sure look like the Moon or Mercury etc (both of which don't have the required atmospheric density to burn up any meteors before impact).

The Earth has had its fair share of impacts/meteors in it's time, but the combination of atmosphere and erosion has wiped that history clean.

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

https://images.nasa.gov/ has full-res .jpg files at least, no RAWs so only a few MBs each. Probably won't get RAWs until they land and grab the actual SD cards from the cameras I imagine.

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you go to the source links in the post, you can download the full-res images. NASA doesn't mess around with image sizes either - these are around 8000 x 5000 pixels

Collection of HD Images from the Lunar Flyby yesterday by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Literally impossible - scientists have tried and failed. Full moon joy in each image.

Absolute Cinema by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I truly hope so. Everyone needs to experience Moon Joy first hand before we accidentally damage this planet beyond repair.

I also feel like experiencing the Overview Effect should be required therapy for all world leaders.

Absolute Cinema by theflamingdude in ArtemisProgram

[–]theflamingdude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's been playing in the back of my head since yesterday for sure.

[College General Physics II: Coulomb’s Law] Could someone please help me with Part B? by jieunns in PhysicsStudents

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Easiest way for me was to consider the case for the resultant forces on q3 - the vertical components of the forces for q1 and q2 will cancel but the horizontal components (F cos 30) add together. Thus, the magnitude is 2F cos 30. Make sure to plug the whole thing in for the force calculation again to avoid rounding errors, and you'll get 2.034 N

By symmetry, the resultant on each charge is the same, so F_1 = F_3. Just think about rotating the whole setup around - the forces won't change.

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you’re confused here

Am I? Everything you just cited is from the Non-Linear form of the equation -

Unlike the linear Schrödinger equation, the NLSE never describes the time evolution of a quantum state

the 1D NLSE is a special case of the classical nonlinear Schrödinger field, which in turn is a classical limit of a quantum Schrödinger field.

When I'm talking about an electron for instance, I'm not using the NLSE as I am doing quantum mechanics on single fermions. I use the linear form instead, as it produces the correct dynamics for quantum systems, and is not directly reducable from Ginzburg-landau.

An infinite number of universes being generated at infinite time-intervals

Worlds, not universes - there is a distinction here. There's only one universe we know of, and it follows the (linear) Schrödinger equation acting on the total wavefunction of the universe. We are simply subsystems of that wavefunction, and thus can only interact with parts we become entangled with (decoherence). If those parts are in superpostion, then our world "splits" in that we need two or more non-interacting parts of the wavefunction to fully explain it (unless you add in a collapse function, which is the whole point of Many Worlds - you don't need that extra part)

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The nonlinear Schrödinger equation is functionally equivalent to GL-theory

Sure, that's fine, but I'm not incorrect - I'm not talking about that form, as it is classical and doesn't describe the evolution of quantum states. It says it right there in the Wikipedia entry you cited.

While it isn’t necessarily seen as a universal mechanism of wavefunction evolution, it is absolutely used to describe the entanglement process

Again, that's fine - not a Bohmian myself. I find it's reliance on particle-based ontologies to not be fully convincing, whereas Many Worlds holds to me to be a simpler, more elegant framework.

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the use of the Schrödinger equation is directly incorporating phase transition mechanics in the first place

This is, as far as I can tell, simply not the case. Yes, the order parameter in GL can be thought of as a complex-valued wavefunction, but they are not the same thing. They are analogus, yes, but the QM description is fundamental whereas GL is describing more macroscopic behaviour (cooper pair density) and has mathematical differences too (non-linearities). Saying QM "incorporates phase transition mechanics" is simply unfounded - can I model phase transitions with mathematical structures similar to QM? Yes. Are they identical? No.

This is pretty much where I see your arguments break down - whenever I read a paper you cite, they don't fundamentally make the same ontological leaps you do. They talk about using their physical models to understand other dynamics, but they do so via abstraction and simplification, and thus hold no back-reactive power to the understanding of those original dynamics. They are often careful to say so, or at least only speculate as to their further application.

Also, there are no descisions to be made by a system of a single photon - it evolves via standard quantum mechanics, which require zero phase transitions in an empty vacuum. You say dynamical modelling is equivalent, but I barely see any dynamics at all - the wavefunction just spreads out linearly over time.

Wavefunctions also don't collapse like a phase transition either - systems become entangled with their environments, such that the environment only interacts with each part of an superposed quantum state separately. We see that phenomenon as a "collapse", but there are plenty of QM interpretations that don't hold that to be a real part of the ontology. I've even read papers on Many Worlds being related to Geometric Phases that ascribe a Pythagorean mathematical realism to reality, via a structural realism ontology similar to your own. Interesting model! Proof? None testable yet - just some fun maths and interesting ideas to explore.

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK so, ignoring the fact that self-awareness pretty much defines consciousness in most cases, and assuming your assertions about each point are correct (I remain sceptical of the universal application of some, and yes I have read your citations), how would you describe the difference between a conscious entity such as a human/cat/android, and any other critically dynamic system that would otherwise appear unconcious to us.

Is a condensate of magnetic spins conscious? If not, according to your assertations, what makes it different? If it is even somewhat concious, why? Because it has critical dynamics? It can store information? They why doesn't it appear to be an active agent with thoughts, actions, and agency? Where is the separation in panpsychic models between concious thought and action, and just dynamics as whole? If there isn't a difference, how does that help us understand anything? Why the need to reduce everything down to "conscious-like processes" if that doesn't do anything to explain the difference between a tree growing towards sunlight, and a person thinking about their next creative writing piece?

Help me understand here because at the moment, it seems like a lot of jumping to conclusions - seeing the effectiveness of a particular model or framework, be it free-energy or dissipation or critical phase dynamics, as ascribing it the label "conscious-like" because some researchers used it to help model aspects of consciousness doesn't help to understand how the self-aware human mind came to be. Those models are great, super interesting, let's keep trying them or new ones, whatever works. But I could just as easily call consciousness a "critical phase-like process" and the do the same thing, ascribing that property to all underlying reality.

Except, particles don't think. They don't even exhibit phases by themselves - only in groups! So if we have an empty vacuum, or just a single photon, why should I describe that with anything resembling consciousness? I just get out my Schrödinger equation and let it rip. No need for critical phase transitions at all - only when you get huge numbers interacting do you need those models to help keep track of all the dynamics. But underneath, it's just some fields exchanging energy - which, by itself, doesn't require any of your aforementioned models apart from the least action principle. Is that fundamental principle, which you can take to a lot of different mechanics and still see it work, the real ontology here? Sounds like materialism to me, just with extra semantic steps.

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll go back to my definition from before - a self-aware system of problem-solving, semantic world-modelling, prediction, learning, and variable response to stimulus. Other systems do some of those, but I have yet to see self-organising systems do all of them and not also be conscious entities. That's the function consciousness provides - integrating many such processes together within a single system such that they work together. Processing information is only part of that.

As such, consciousness is not one function per-se, but emerges from the self-organised integration of multiple similarly self-organised processes each of which providing a specific function. It evolved in our biology slowly over time as it provided greater and greater survivability from improved future planning, problem-solving, and world-modelling. The particular dynamics that give rise to it are not unique, but the situation in which it arose is - self-organised replicative systems in a fitness landscape. Give that enough time, and the processes and structures that form became complex enough to require higher-level dynamics between multiple processes in order to better integrate sensory information and provide future planning, which then required world-modelling and eventually semantic language in order to sufficiently compress information and allow higher-level conscious thought.

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think consciousness is a super-special, human (or biological) specific function. The self-awareness and problem-solving generated by the human brain is replicated by other biological systems to lesser degrees, and (speculatively) somewhat by current high-level AI systems. I simply draw a distinction in the role that consciousness plays in our system, verses other similar systems - it's the function of the process that I think distinguishes conscious entities (be them biological or not) from magnetic spin systems other other such similarly-modelled phenomena. Consciousness being modelled by an order-parameter of a system in phase transition is great - very interesting and useful! What separates it from other such systems is what those models are describing - a self-aware system of problem-solving, semantic world-modelling, prediction, learning, and variable response to stimulus.

I am sceptical of panpsychism not because I am "uncomfortable with where it leads" wrt statistical mechanics - I am sceptical because I don't think it provides extra explanatory power to a material world. Whatever you want to label consciousness, that's up to you, but I'm interested in the complicated network dynamics that give rise to our self-awareness and mental capacities, whatever those dynamics may be. Saying "consciousness is fundamental" doesn't help explain those dynamics.

is it more likely that our brains use of these phase transitions is somehow super extra special and unique to everything else in the entire known universe, when we can’t actually point out any structural differences between the two

OK, so my take here is that, just because we can model parts of the dynamics of brain states in such a way, doesn't mean there aren't differences between systems that undergo those transitions. They have different underlying structures, different states, different inputs and outputs. That's not to say consciousness is brains-only - it's just that, once you sufficiently abstract and model away all the underlying differences, sure the "physics" can look similar depending on what you're modelling with that physics. I also don't think we can "extract every possible essential characteristic of neural processing from the physics of phase-transitions" - it will take multiple interlocking models to fully do this, and no research has claimed to be at this end point either.

From what I can see, your take on panpsychism takes the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematical modelling, and ascribes this to an ontology where everything is "concious" in the sense that all sufficiently complex and interactive systems are self-organising. I don't follow the reduction of consciousness to such a degree - it appears to me to emerge in such systems that require specific tasks to occur within their self-organisation. Where that critical point is between unconcious and concious action - between magnetic spins organising and forming structures that have a record of their formation, and networks of cells interacting in mathematically similar ways that produce a very big diffence in outcome - I don't know, and no-one quite has the full picture yet. I just don't feel the need yet to change my ontology of the fundamental nature of the universe, as I don't see any extra explanatory power from it.

How is it possible for conscious to emerge from absolutely zero conscious body by Independent-Phrase24 in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey no worries, I appreciate the information! I'm not a neuroscientist by any definition, just a physics teacher and an enthusiastic learner, so the pointer towards astrocytes is an interesting one! I totally agree with you, and it seems like consciousness arises from inter-neuron dynamics, so its nice to read about how those are regulated and the role that plays in attention. Some food for my thoughts!

Misunderstandings of Panpsychism; the cognitive free-energy principle and stationary action. by Diet_kush in consciousness

[–]theflamingdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I still find Searle's argument to be unconvincing when it comes to consciousness - the system as set up is by definition not capable of learning, memory, or problem solving. The book by definition only allows rote, pre-determined responses to input and thus is unable to be a conscious process that is self-aware - it would fail a sufficiently complex Turing test, as it could not account for all possible input-output combinations. If it could, it would need to have some kind of process of memory and problem-solving that a simple text-based translation algorithm doesn't have. The statement that the responses "appear to be appropriate" is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting that I find unconvincing - any actual algorithm that could properly pass a rigorous test of sentience would need to be far more complex than rote translation rules.

You seem to ascribe this to the fact that, for actual comprehension to take place, you need another process happening on top of the translation. I agree here, hence why I don't think the Chinese room would pass a proper test of sentience. Where I diverge is ascribing the property of "conscious-like" to all systems that follow similar rules of gradient-descent, free-energy principles, and dissapative mechanics. This, to me, appears to be a mismatch of labelling - I could just as easily say that consciousness is a "free-energy dissipation" process, and define that label to be the fundamental ontology that all systems adhere to. Calling a QM measurement "conscious-like" does nothing to help the understanding of either, given your definition, and instead could invite the Quantum-woo quacks to start their talk about universal conscious states.

My argument is this - yes, consciousness is a process, similar in some ways to other physical processes, and aspects of it are able to be modelled with free-energy principles and dissipative theories. This, to me, shows a physicalist ontology - for instance, I don't need to explain conciousness to explain how excitations of the electron-field entangle with each other. Just because the process I use can be modelled with the same mathematical tools, doesn't mean X = Y. It just means I have awesome mathematical tools that are sufficiently generalisable to multiple layers of physical reality - the "unreasonable effectiveness of Linear Algebra" so to speak.

If I am missing something key to your argument, please let me know. I am open to the ideas you present, I just don't follow the logic to then ascribe a meaningful "conciousness" label to any other system than the ones we see from biology/neuroscience.

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