kawa

Their starship was bullshit. On earth they needed a big Saturn 5 like rocket to bring it into space and later they fly into orbit like it's nothing.

If the planets they visited had much lower gravity then earth this may be possible, but this wasn't noticeable or talked about. And even on Mars you need much more fuel to get into orbit than could be stored in their tiny ship.

What determinism do you argue does truly fall out in the end?

Mechanics is fully deterministic. The question is if there is some kind of "QM random generator" which mixes into this, making things nondeterministic in the end. But it's possible to separate both and the "big clumps of matter" part is fully deterministic then because decoherence generally happens so fast that it doesn't matter. You need to prepare systems quite carefully to mix quantum randomness into it (like in Schroedingers cat for example).

In that case, we have two different interpetations that yield the exact same outcomes

Only for "harmless cases". SR allows lots of strange stuff, especially if combined with gravity. Closed timelike curves for example.

But if time is absolute and only slowed down for objects moving against this background, then closed timelike curves couldn't exit. Also the trick with Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates wouldn't work anymore because switching time and space would by unphysical. This way we wouldn't have to care about the singularity (at least in Schwarzschild BHs) anymore, because space would cease to exists behind the horizon of a BH and there would be no Singularity.

You can do all that today, by specifying a reference frame that you want to consider

But that wouldn't work with measurement of entangled object, because there would be no way to define an absolute frame in which the change of the wave-function into an eigenstate happens, it would always depends on the frame of the observer. QM requires that the change happens simultaneously, but SR doesn't allow simultaneous events.

Of course the problem with all of this is, that in the moment I can't see a way to do experiments which decides if there is absolute time or if the SR is correct.

(Spoilers) I think that the part about the guy who's brain traveled to the Trisolarians and communicated back by telling a fairy-tale may be a story about the author himself: He's also in an authoritarian regime and unable to tell things face value, so he communicated by telling a "fairy-tale" (SF in his case) full of metaphors which needs to be decoded by the reader first to get the real meaning.

Ok, maybe I'm reading to much into it, but if it was to obvious, Liu would get intro trouble, so plausible deniability is important. But I think that the books are much more political as many think. But you need to decipher it first...

Just because a system is randomized doesn't mean it's not predictable

That's of course true (In fact I tend to also believe in a non-deterministic universe "at the core").

But if determinism falls out in the end, it's still a hint that there may also be deterministic effects at the root. Current observation can't rule that out, it's just our model which assumes pure randomness. But there are lot's of possibilities how randomness can sneak in into QM which doesn't contradict obserservation.

And unless we solve the measurement problem in QM (by finding a unified theory from which both Schoedingers equations and Borns rule can be derived), it's still an open question. So considering it solved today is quite premature.

... chaotic systems ...

That's still deterministic. Sure, there may be some influence from quantum effects which then are amplified, but the dynamic of the chaotic system itself is still deterministic.

(SR) ... predicting an identical speed of light for all observers

That's not really true. "identical speed of light for all observers" is an observation which was replicated quite often. SR is a way to explain this observation, but there before SR Lorenz already had a different model explaining it too. SR won, because Lorenz used an (at the time) unobservable "ether" and Einstein argued that its better to use Occams Razor and throw this "ether" away.

But Einstein didn't now about QFT, the Big-Bang and the microwave-background - which all contradict Einsteins assumptions: QFT uses an "ether-like" vacuum, the Big-Bang created a "T=0" for the universe and with the microwave-background also an absolute reference frame for an absolute time. This in all contradicts SR, so maybe SR is really wrong on a global level.

Which in turn would allow a non-local, realistic interpretation of quantum measurements because without SR simultaneity could be back on the table.

Sure, but there's absolutely nothing to suggest that it will be some kind of deterministic computation underneath

The universe behaves very deterministically if we look at "clumps of matter". Why is it this way when this determinism isn't already part of the "base"? For me that's at least a "suggestion". Not a proof of course, but still a hint.

... because of general relativity.

General relativity doesn't fits together with QM, so either one is (or both are) "wrong" (in the sense that they only approximate reality to a certain degree).

I'm even sceptical about special relativity: It's a good model and works well in most occasions, but it may still be wrong on a fundamental level. Most of the assumptions under which Einstein proposed SR (no QM, static universe) don't hold anymore.

The best models

Yes, models. But a model doesn't need to be "real", it just models something real to a certain extent. But models tend to break down if you look close enough, and I think this may also happen to QM at some point.

Bell's Theorem doesn't rule out determinism, it only rules out hidden variables. If the universe is non-local, Bell's theorem fits well with determinism.

We don't live in a billiard ball universe

We do - at least as long we look at clumps of matter. The billiard ball universe breaks down if we look at the constituents of matter but somehow it re-remerges if we put enough of those constituents together. It's probably the biggest riddle in Physics why this happens. But it does.

"Thou" sounds very similar to german "du" which is the current informal form. In older german the second person plural ('Ihr', similar to "vous" french from which "you" may come) was also the formal form, but it's out of fashion for a few centuries now.

An "unpure FP" is a procedural programming language, because "unpure functions" are generally called "procedures".

But people tend to avoid the name "procedural" at all cost - which is bad because procedural programming really has it's advantages and should be clearly separated from FP which also has certain advantages.

Lisp is not a FP. It's a "List processing language" with some features based on Lambda calculus.

Real FP means referential transparency and that started with languages like Miranda and later Haskell.

What many people consider "FP" today is in fact just procedural programming with higher order procedures and lexical closure.

It's a little hyperbole but in principle it's true, especially in Germany. Of course you can like the concept of redistribution of income and wealth, but that doesn't makes it "blatantly wrong and reactionary".

Yes, it's quite complicated now (but it's getting better).

But it's not as easy as replacing it with something simpler. If you do, you will discover all the things you can't do with it. So you start to improve it, add features, etc. And after a short time, it's probably even more complex as html/css and still not as flexible and powerful.

There's violence and there is violence. While I can enjoy an action movie or an UFC match, watching images from the Holocaust still makes me sick.

While people are of course more alike to each other than, for example humans and cows, there are still a lot of differences between single persons. People tend to assume that other think as they do, but that's one of the most common sources for misunderstandings.

There are people who can torture a child to death without feeling the smallest amount of guild (maybe they even find it funny or satisfying), others who could do it with the right amount of indoctrination, others who would only do it if their life is in danger (and would feel horrible afterwards) and others who would rather die than doing it.

And it's not possible to shift a person people into all of those categories, it's mostly inborn (like sexual orientation, hair color, etc).

Sure, all those people have lots of other "basic imperatives" in common, but the small difference that some could inflict as much pain as possible to others without feeling even a little bit guilty is a difference with should have quite severe consequences for society as a whole.

So if we try to understand why there is so much violence in the world, it would be quite an oversight to not take those kind of differences into account.

If someone tries to explain stuff based on the "human psyche", it's important to understand that people aren't the same. If someone talks about "we" or "humanity" as a whole, he/she doesn't takes this into consideration - which makes the whole argument questionable.

An estimated 2-5% of all humans are so called "psychopaths", people without the ability to feel empathy for other peoples pain. Those people are at the same time overrepresented as inmates in jails as well as in holders of executive positions. It's totally possible that most violence in human history is a result of those kind of people while the remaining 95-98% are simply victims of those people.

Interestingly the way the author understood the joke with the eggs doesn't speak to well of him: A human can't lay eggs, so the only sensible conclusion is that the deluded person isn't the brother who thinks that he is a chicken but the guy who thinks that a chicken is in fact his brother.

So when he is using the joke to explain that we accept deluded behavior because "we need the eggs", it's in fact him who has a deluded way to think about the situation.

Why allows it for free will?

Consider those two situations:

A: You know everything and decide about something based on all the facts known to you

B: You know everything and decide about something based on all the facts known to you plus the result of a random generator

Why is B more "free will" than A? In B there is simply another fact which is beyond your control which modifies your decision. That doesn't makes your decision more free than A, you simply have an additional "input" to consider.

One may argue that B is more free than A because in principle another person with the same knowledge as you would know what's your decision is in A but won't know it in B because of the influence of the random generator. But that doesn't makes B more "free", it only makes it a bit more unpredictable. But in reality it's impossible to always know all facts leading to the decision in A so both have similar unpredictability.

In fact I would consider only A as real "free will" because even if your decision is only determined by (external) facts, it's still all your reasoning based on your beliefs, experiences etc while in B there is a determining factor outside your reasoning you depend on which makes your decision less free (because you may have to decide for a sub-optimal outcome because you're forced by the random generator to do so).

Whats a "disease" and whats not is not easy to define. If we could look at the living brain at a microscopic level, comparing individual dopamine receptors and the connectome of individual brains, it would be quite easy to give objective evidence for most mental diseases. But we can't. But we can see viruses and tumors and that leads to your idea that those are more "real" because it's more easy to see them. But is "visibility" really a valid criteria here?

For example look at a disease like fibromyalgia: For a very long time there was no objective evidence that this disease really existed, so people suffering from it where often seen as hypochondriacs. Today we know it's really a disease because modern medicine found ways to make it "visible" so it's accepted as a real disease now. But with your way of thinking you would've denied those people analgesics because a few years ago there was no objective way to tell if they really suffered the pain they reported.

OTOH depression is still an "invisible" disease: You can only look at the symptoms to diagnose it, there is no "objective" evidence for it. But still there are lots of people suffering and dying from it. And we know from lots of studies that it's possible to cure or at least manage this disease for a certain percentage of sufferers. So I would consider it unethical to let people suffer or even kill them self only because we can't see objective biological evidence that they have depression.

Now with ADHD it's not as clear as with depression because the symptoms aren't that severe. So you argue that it's just the society which wants "conforming" individuals and declares non-conforming ones as "ill". But if people are really disabled by something which prevents them doing certain things they want to do which the majority (> 90%) of people can do, while medication exists which let them do it, is it really ethical to not give them the medication? Those people are objectively suffering and there exists lots of evidence that their suffering can be reduced be giving them a certain medication. So it's unethically to let them suffer even if there exits a way to stop their suffering.

And yes, if there would be a medication which could lift the IQ of person with low IQ into the average range, I would also consider it unethically to not give this medication to people with low IQ. But such a medication don't exists today.

Boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD (by a factor of 2 to 3) but that probably because boys simply have a higher base aggression level which is "added" to the ADHD symptoms which makes ADHD in boys easier noticeable than in girls. So girls are probably underdiagnosed because nobody notices their attention deficit symptoms and their hyperactivity is still not annoying enough to send them to a counselor.

The video discusses what engineering really is and what the differences are between software engineering and other kinds of engineering.

Gives some food for thought and is kind of a well researched reply to http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/progra...

If you make the opening shot in billiards, the balls are all over the table in the end. In principle you could now make another shot which restores the original, ordered position, but in practice it's impossible. So the opening shot is called 'irreversible'.

Same thing goes for many things, for example letting some hydrogen gas out of a gas bottle: The gas will never go back into the bottle by itself (even if there is a very very small probability that this may happen, in practice it never will). Because the behavior of this kind of systems is described in thermodynamics those systems are called "thermodynamically irreversible".

In the end it simply means that its much more easy to break things than to assemble them again (which also leads to the concept of the always increasing entropy).

Observation means: Interaction with a 'classical system'. Now because of entanglement this also works if we look at chains of interactions: Interaction with another single atom for example is no observation, but if this other atom interacts with a 'classical system' at some point earlier or later we have again an 'observation'.

Now 'classical systems' are systems made of so many elements that we can only make statistical statements about it because we can't ever determine the state of each of it's constituents.

I suspect for some time now that this is also the source for the "quantum randomness". In principle, everything is deterministic, but to observe something we always have interactions with a "big classical system" (in the end it's always our brain). And because we don't know the exact state of those systems but only statistical averages, quantum mechanics looks random for us, even if it's perfectly deterministic in itself. But that's my personal view of the matter.

Politics works on a combination of public opinion and donations to candidates and parties. If you have a lot of money, it's quite easy to move things a bit in the direction you want. Also here, you're doing it for a "good cause", because we all know that drugs are bad and everybody should think of the children, etc...

So of course many people don't suspect bad intentions here, maybe even many politicians or organizations which are on the receiving end of a donation, which originated from drug money.

Of course there are some other reasons too, but considering the amount of stupidity which is necessary to really believe that the "war on drugs" can be won, it's quite unlikely that there isn't lots of active lobbying involved to let the war continue as long as possible.

In the end, it's just a very profitable business and the people involved aren't stupid and have lots of money at their disposal. So why shouldn't they do it?

There's only so much profit in the drug business because of the illegality of many drugs. Changing that would kill the profits of many very rich and powerful criminals and cartels. So it's very understandable that those people do everything they can to prevent their business model from collapsing.

The usual way of doing it is simply lots of lobbying: Paying "well meaning" people, journalists and politicians to stay on the track of keeping most drugs illegal, so that the drug lords and cartels can continue to earn money.

So does really anybody wonder why the (obviously totally pointless) "war on drugs" is still waged and will probably waged for quite a while?

The browser is the "de facto operating system" for the web and javascript is its programming language. Javascript really is the new BASIC...

I would dismiss it as some crude conspiration-theory, but the fact that only 4 month later a plane of the same company has been shoot down under unclear circumstances over the Ukraine is really quite odd.

All those languages look like a combination of Java and ML to me. Of course they use different features and small additions here and there but overall: ML+Java.

BTW: Union types ("tagged unions") predate OOP by some years and thus were there long before OCaml or Haskell. Algol68 had them and also Pascal for example. The invention of ML was pattern matching on those data structures.

I really ask myself why they insist to put the tabs on top. With todays widescreen-displays, putting them left or right makes more sense for most use cases (at least with FF its possible to get this via add-on). OTOH they try to get rid of every pixel to get a bit more space while there are lots of at the left and at the right. Do all developers only work on 13" laptops today?

But considering that the total amount of scientific knowledge is limited, linear progress will find "everything" in a manageable amount of time. Of course we don't know how big the percentage of our total knowledge is, but it's quite possible that we are already getting close to know "everything".

The singularity doesn't promise certain invention (for example it's possible that there is no and will never be a way to go faster than the speed of light) it only promises exponential growth which will bring the "end of science" into the foreseeable future. So if we found maybe 80% of all physics in the last 200 years, with linear progress we would reach the end of physics in 40 years.

scientific progress has really been linear. We didn't "get" physics 50 times better in 1990 compared to 1940

It's very hard to quantify scientific progress. The main reason is that we first pick the "low hanging fruits" and advancements get progressively harder. Just think of particle physics: While the first steps could be done with basic lab bench equipment, today we need to build gigantic accelerators to push the boundaries even a little bit. The same is true in other areas: The first steps are comparatively easy, but the more you know the harder it gets to solve the remaining problems, because you already got the easy ones.

So even if perceived progress is linear, considering the increasing difficulty we may have exponential scientific progress.