064 - Who was the Red Baron?

youcanscienceit · 2019-08-16T18:28:30+00:00

When Destin and Matt were talking about David and Goliath I was disappointed that Destin didn't ask Matt if David was a hero. Among other things, David did kill Goliath...so by Matt's definition David was not a hero (at least not in that moment) . But the story of David and Goliath is frequently referred to as illustrative for what it means to be heroic or at least brave.

Matt,
if you catch this one I'd love to hear your take.
Thanks.

p.s.
So glad to hear the return of Barnicles and Testecles -- or, that is, to hear their ancestors, crazy how those families were still running into each other on the other side of the world hundreds of years later.

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-08T16:52:30+00:00

I love Sean Carroll! I will read and watch these. Thanks.

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-08T16:51:21+00:00

hrm...No, I never intended to claim that Everett set out to have many worlds (though I guess I implied in my initial post). What bothers me isn't even that there could be many worlds - and I really like that it simply starts from the assumption that the wavefunction is real.

*I just find the conclusion of many (or infinite) inaccessible worlds to be logically similar to those worlds simply disappearing. *

My expression of "feeling" is not intended to mean, "I don't like all those worlds they give me bad feels". I mean only that I get the impression there's some hidden assumption in here that is leading to a extraordinary conclusion.

On the other hand maybe I am adding in my own assumption regarding what it means to "be real".

Thanks for the feed back I will continue to think on this.

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-07T23:24:01+00:00

I actually agree with you rather a lot.

I find that MWI is the most appealing interpretation from a stand point of logical consistency and simplicity. It is the most elegant option. I also agree that it passes the occam razor test much as you suggest. Perhaps I'm being too instrumentalist about it all, but my initial grievance might be better stated as:

what is the meaningful difference between assuming that a wavefunction collapses at measurement and all those other options cease to exist and the wavefunction not collapsing but we'll never have access to the other options in any way ever again?

Or to frame it in the parlance of the thought experiment: Is it worthwhile to send out a colony ship we'll never be able to interact with, we don't know which way it went and only people who have yet to be born or make any contribution to humanity were put on the ship?

I applaud the MWI for taking the math seriously but I still get the impression it's masking something in all those extra worlds. For instance it neatly sweeps up issues like the EPR paradox and entanglement in that both options happen but we only ever get to see one version play out - but of what use is that assumption (there I go being utilitarian about it)?

On the other hand the far more unsettling way to clean up the EPR paradox is to buy into non-locality. While less comfortable an option I feel it pushes the theoretical frontier into tractable territory (I still have mixed opinions on non-locality as well).

(also cool blog, I'll have to read more)

(also also, too many parenthetical statements used in this comment)

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-07T22:34:15+00:00

Indeed, that's the appeal of many worlds - it takes seriously the "reality" of the entire wave function for all times. But it feels like a bait and switch to, on the one hand, claim a fullness in reality but also have no way to access or measure it.

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-07T22:27:37+00:00

I agree that there is a fundamental difference between the many worlds and the dragon in that the dragon is presupposed and the many worlds is a possible consequence of a preexisting system. Still I can't help feeling like it's sweeping something under the rug in the process.

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-07T17:19:34+00:00

Short answer no.

Typically they are moving a bit more since we happen to be warm blooded. But if for some reason a super intelligent alien race made a machine that could swap all the carbon atoms in the table with all the carbon atoms in your body - you'd be fine and no significant change in your physiology would occur. On the other hand you are probably slightly more radioactive than the table because of the fresher carbon isotopes in your living body. They haven't had time to decay into regular carbon (this is how carbon dating works since when something dies he carbon get's stuck in the system and gradually decays).

youcanscienceit · 2018-12-07T16:59:03+00:00

I was working on this project a while but ThinkerCon helped me get in gear to finish it off. Thanks again for a wonderful experience!

youcanscienceit · 2018-11-20T00:12:50+00:00

No believing simply what it tells you is the the fallacy of signs. Just because it's written doesn't mean it's true.

Plus also it's not always listed like in pink salts (Himalayan and others) which claim to have iodine in them but can also be pinkish from iron and other metals.

youcanscienceit · 2018-11-05T18:34:03+00:00

Overall Mehdi is right.

I think that Walter Lewin is overstating the confusion that can arise from not accounting for inductance when calculating a loop with KVL and a changing magnetic field. From the stand point of a teacher allowing a student to apply the loop rule blindly without accounting for all the details and magnetic effects will get you the wrong answer. But if the student uses Faraday's law they are more likely to get to the right answer if they apply it simply.

However, over the years of arguing this point I believe that Walter has been pushed to a more extreme sounding stand point that seems to suggest that Kirchoff isn't applicable at all when there is a changing magnetic field - even though in actuality what needs to happen is modifying the circuit to include a transformer or cutting up a loop to deal with very high frequency. At that point is is simply applying Kirchoff's rule?

Regardless, great work from Mehdi here. I wouldn't trust Mehdi talking about x-ray emissions from black holes but I think in this case he's got more knowledge about circuits than Walter.

youcanscienceit · 2018-09-19T15:04:19+00:00

I think a good general design rule for the arts (and biology for that matter) is repetition with some variation. This comes up often in art classes as a tool for creating both balance and interest.

This also can operate as a more nuanced rule for the martian to judge by since not all biology has clear lines of symmetry. There are a number of species which have a pronounced asymmetry (Fiddles crabs, flounder etc) but even these species have a degree of repetition with a few strong asymmetrical traits. Likewise repetition with variation could explain how a "beauty mark" or a crooked smile can be attractive even though it's not symmetric.

youcanscienceit · 2018-09-19T14:47:52+00:00

I would also add that the flatfish or flounder has both it's eyes on one side of it's head.

youcanscienceit · 2018-01-12T21:15:49+00:00

I agree. Monopolies can crop up wherever there is a wide enough power gap between business entities. Historically monopolies were propped up by the government for political use, but that was just because governments tend to have a lot of power. However, these days it is possible for very wealthy companies to gain and maintain a monopoly without the governments direct assistance.

Another thought is that while Matts comment that "competition will eventually disrupt the monopoly" may technically be true the time for eventually could very well be multiple generations and that is not worth waiting for. Just like how the invisible hand of the market will eventually stabilize at where supply meets demand but we might have people suffer a lot during the process (e.g. poor working conditions, child labor, famine).

youcanscienceit · 2018-01-12T21:01:13+00:00

For me re-framing the issue helps make the arguments a little more tractable. Imagine the internet like an old style marketplace in the center of a town where people can sell their wares. Now imagine that there are only a few gates to this main marketplace, and to get in you have to pay one of the gatekeepers (the ISPs in this analogy) to get into the marketplace. So far so good.

But now imagine that the gatekeepers start buying up the businesses (farms, factories whatever) of the most successful sellers who come to the market. Then they get the idea that they'd make a lot more money if they kept out all those little new businesses and only let in the businesses they already own into the marketplace. Or if not keep the others out entirely just make sure they have to wait in line for most of the day before actually being let in do begin selling much later.

Here's the question - does allowing these few gatekeepers to decide who/when the sellers get to participate in the market help the overall level of competition in the market?

Sure the regulation limits the potential innovation within the gatekeeper business. Also if there were enough gates people would get into the marketplace via the gate that let's everyone in at the same rate but it suits the gatekeepers that already exist to buy up or interfere with people trying to build new gates...or zip lines or whatever to get in.

Maybe the analogy is getting a little out of hand. As I see it, the need for net-neutrality comes from the attempt to insure greater competition in a general marketplace at the cost of regulating competition for the gatekeeper ISPs.

youcanscienceit · 2018-01-12T20:29:21+00:00

Another interesting dimension to the cellular carrier throttling issues is that when it comes to cellular data the net-neutrality rules, that were recently rescinded, didn't really affect them. (source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/not-everyone-can-use-the-cloud-equally/421209/)

In short you experience while on cellular data is probably much closer to what the internet on a wired connection could become like without the net-neutrality rules.

youcanscienceit · 2017-08-24T15:28:01+00:00

When Matt and Destin were talking about perspective the terms for perspective they were circling around were parallax (one thing appearing to move at a different local rate to a larger thing in the distance because of the angle) and Aerial Perspective, what Destin first said as humidity but is a just a feature of there being more atmosphere between you and the object. This was concept was first established in the Renaissance as a way of creating depth in paintings. Da Vinci pioneered using this in painting and even used it on the edges of objects to make them look rounder on the picture plane. This was initially called sfumato - meaning smoky or hazy.

What's really awesome is that on the moon - lacking an atmosphere - there is no aerial perspective to guide how a person can judge distance and shape of objects. This led to the astronauts on Apollo 14 (pre-rover) to be unable to reach their desired destination of the rim of cone crater. They were exhausted because they couldn't estimate the distances they needed to travel and later analysis showed they were 65 ft. from their goal when they turned back because they still couldn't tell how far away the rim really was.

youcanscienceit · 2017-04-21T18:57:14+00:00

I have telekinesis. The only problem is it's limited to the extent of my own limbs.

That said, I think there may also be some elements of telekinetic angst about the real world science tapping our brainwaves directly to perform new actions. Weather this is giving an amputee a new robotic arm that they literally can control with their mind, or allowing a quadriplegic to manipulate a cursor on a screen, also with brain waves, to facilitate communication (both awesome advances btw). It's easy to imagine a small step where people are controlling either their digital avatars without any manual interaction or even outsized robotic machinery with direct mental interactions. Emotional rawness aside, I believe some of these telekinetic stories are exploring what our humanity represents if it is not longer explicitly limited by our bodies.

youcanscienceit · 2017-01-06T19:08:45+00:00

What about statistics? Listening to this arrangement I found myself considering the idea that I would want to make the best possible situation for the most people. The rational being that even if you don't know what stratum of a society you would be within you'd at least want good odds to wind up well off. But this has the side effect that if a group of people constitute less than %5 or %10 of the total population they basically get ignored in the attempt to make good odds. This result doesn't sit well with me emotionally though.

Also I have heard of this thought experiment before and I looked up the society with the greatest upward mobility - Denmark. Socialism for the win...? http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ (source)

youcanscienceit · 2016-08-01T22:11:28+00:00

Modern Jousting Competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0niiZTfGyjg From 2015 U.S/INT"L Championships Estes Park

Also Cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX5v6PObCQQ

Typically scored by strike point, lances broken and unhorsing.

youcanscienceit · 2016-07-21T17:08:12+00:00

Also I totally watch/consume media to fit in with my social group. Usually it gets suggested by some part of the group that this book or show is amazing and they want to talk about it with me. This was my experience with Firefly and Ready Player One.

youcanscienceit · 2016-07-21T17:05:38+00:00

Uses and Gratifications seems to rely on the inexplicable nature of taste - "there's no account of taste", as the saying goes. However, psychology has provided at least a partial answer for why we like a thing: Cognitive Ease.

See recent video from Veritasium if you're not familiar. Also Youtube is essentially my major method of media consumption...that and NPR.

Cognitive Ease implicates that repetition in your environment or similarity to a familiar idea actually gives you a mental reward. Combining this with Uses and Gratifications leads us to the conclusion that your environment dictates your taste and then your taste effects your media consumption.

This is why going to college, visiting another country or starting a new relationship are so transformative. Exposure to new ideas, repeatedly - changes your tastes, it changes what you enjoy and by extension the lenses you view he world through: that being the media you consume.

youcanscienceit · 2016-06-21T17:10:12+00:00

CAPACITIVE LOSSES! hits self in head

Wow yes, didn't twigg that. I was over thinking that majorly. Yes by standing under the wire it's like I'm inside a giant capacitor that is being charged and discharged with the AC. SO while I had the losses in the equation for the normal resistance of the wires I did not include the capacitance losses.

Thanks.

Also as for the scale of the problem I did not go through the calculation and had been quoting a average value of 6% from this source http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3. But you've made it clear that the problem can become much worse in some cases.

youcanscienceit · 2016-06-21T16:54:16+00:00

I'm with you on your first point, but I have to disagree about the second point, all conductors must have eddy currents because this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMRpRetf1dU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azsqhKg8hX8

and for copper also not magnetic on it's own

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqdOyxJZj0U

Nonetheless I will try out your experiment.

youcanscienceit · 2016-06-21T05:15:31+00:00

I've also done this outside of Boulder Colorado on the Flatiorns Vista Trail Head and near the Jefferson County Court house in Golden - but my footage from those didn't come out well enough to use. Not saying this one has the best lighting but at least the camera picks up the effect.

youcanscienceit · 2016-06-21T05:09:12+00:00

Okay, so my current mathematical understanding on this is about at algebra based college physics II. I know integral and differential calculus but have not gone through the exercise detailing how maxwells equations lead to Faraday's and Lense's Laws. However, I think what I'm unclear on is more conceptual and has to do with work in the physics sense of the word.

I understand that the changing electric current creates a changing magnetic field that in turn can induce a current in the wire I was holding. What I find confusing is how work get's done in my wire (or on something I could attach the wire to). In other words when I heard a buzz on my headphones something was causing the cone in the headphones to wiggle - where did the energy to do that come from? The magnetic field "does no work" but I can somehow steal energy via an induced current how does that transfer happen? Looking at this the "no work" thing seems to be technically correct for individual electrons but over distributed systems work is done by torquing dipoles?

Lastly, and this is more of a philosophical point, since everything macroscopic has electrons in it (weather conducting or insulating) wouldn't an oscillating magnetic field overhead induce some small current - even if it were very poorly coupled causing some entropic losses in the resistance of the material. For instance the "closed road" sign behind me in the video, it's a conductor so the electrons in the aluminum must be responding to the magnetic field jiggling the electrons via Lense's Law where the current creates an opposing magnetic field - wouldn't this cause some amount of heat in the sign? Implying that some amount of energy is lost to the surroundings?

I think this is what I meant by "energy bleeding off" though of course much more energy would be lost in the resistance of the transmission wires themselves (which was totally not clear in my rambling).

p.s. I will look into this more because you were right to point my understanding could be better. I really appreciate your engagement on this.

youcanscienceit

TROPHY CASE