Quote from: RC5908 on December 09, 2014, 07:30:02 PM

Quote from: Forgewolf on December 09, 2014, 07:28:42 PM

aliens won't want to fuck us up.

you don't laugh at those people? weird.

Thanks for the point out, I fixed it. Okay, aliens is whole different topic and the least likely to cause an apocalyptic like event.

honestly i'd be more worried about something involving AI.

I think it's a matter of degree.

center of the universe? is that you?

yes


Everytime this topic comes up its a shitslinging fest. I became buttflustered.

I'm not even allowed to play my music in public.

"It's these special thingamajigs some people have in their blood that let's them do crazy shit."

Quote from: Dustin My Urethra on December 09, 2014, 05:51:40 AM

I'm just guessing here, but I don't see how there's any pull, other than the "force" of evolution, that draws matter to assemble and disperse energy,

Evolution is not a force, it's only the end result of selection. As for your "pull," it's a well known fact that reactions that release energy are highly favored, meaning they happen spontaneously when certain requirements are met, and that systems as a whole tend to increase in entropy. Physicists don't know the exact reason for this, but it's and observed fact and the universe might not even exist as it is if it weren't true.

Ever heard of Shannon entropy? It's a measure in information theory of the average amount of information in message/system. I've read a couple of papers where they try to link physical entropy in a similar way w/ quantum entanglement correlations.

I'm just guessing here, but I don't see how there's any pull, other than the "force" of evolution, that draws matter to assemble and disperse energy, so I really don't see the point of this physical perspective of life. Unless the implication is that all energy needs to eventually convert to heat energy because of the laws of thermodynamics, which I guess exist so that the universe can eventually collapse back into a singularity in a 'it only exists because its opposite exists' law of the universe.

Did that make any sense or did I just give you all heart attacks in which case...

Physics students: 0
Le Dustin: 10

if you approach it from the point of view of emergence then yeah they can appear to be the same thing. The main difference being that England's formulation is strictly based on a pure logic theory and even has an accompanying mathematical model.

Darwinian evolution should also emerge from this model given enough complexity.

Quote from: SexyPiranha on December 08, 2014, 08:58:40 PM

If you tell me how you typed that I'll give you a hand.

∫^{you're a faggot}_{you can't even into formatting}

no stop I'll cri

If you tell me how you typed that I'll give you a hand.

I'm shit at making interesting thread titles 

http://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

I'll just quote a couple of paragraphs to give a general idea.

Quote

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.

Quote

England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. “I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,” he explained. “On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”

Essentially this guy argues that not only does life not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics(which anyone with even a cursory understanding of thermodynamics will tell you) but that it is mandated by it. Life essentially being part of a set of systems that arrange themselves to better dissipate energy. He even thinks he has a mathematical model. I'm not saying it's right or anything experimental justification is needed but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was an interesting take.

To me this also would imply that probability arguments against abiogenesis hold even less water than they did before, which is to say, "that bucket no longer even has a bottom", assuming it's correct of course.

Here's the paper for anyone interested.
http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf

Thoughts? You guys gonna bring the edgy comments about stupid crap?

Quote from: Meta Cognition on December 08, 2014, 06:32:02 PM

Quote from: challengerX on December 08, 2014, 06:27:23 PM

If you think fascism isn't a serious threat to democracy, you're kidding yourself.

What about militarism, colonialism, Stalinism, anarchism, communism or voluntarism?

I'm actually not that opposed to suppressing fascism, and I'd trust myself to do it right were I in government, but my problem is where do we draw the line. Can we trust the government to only ban the literature that is exceptionally dangerous? Should they ban books with anti-democratic yet non-militarist and non-racist sentiments like anarchism? Should they ban books promoting anarchism if they promote insurrection and revolution? How do you measure danger; is the anarchists homemade-bomb-making guide more dangerous than Mein Kampf? Why do we assume democracy is the best form of government in the first place?

I'm talking about Mein Kampf specifically. Not about censorship of books, although a book detailing how to make explosives is probably not a good idea to allow people to read.

"Hey, stop printing chemistry books."
"Someone might use simple thermochemistry to figure how to make explosives."
"What?! No, that's retarded."

I independently came up w/ an interpretation of quantum mechanics(as in that was the way in which it made the most sense to me) that is analogous to Wojciech Zurek's quantum darwinism so while not totally original I had the basics in my brain before I read the paper.

i don't know where i'm from

i just am

2dep4me

Is that it?

Spoiler

I had a similar thing were you would have to make a triangle such that all the 90+90+x=180, where x is the angle between the lines L and P, and x>0. Obviously, that doesn't exist, hence parallel.
I thought it would be much worse than that.

Quote from: SexyPiranha on December 08, 2014, 04:10:20 PM

Quote from: Fedorekd on December 08, 2014, 04:07:56 PM

I drew a picture but it won't upload to imgur for some reason.

Spoiler

Draw a line L and a point P away from that line. Draw a line C through P perpendicular to L. Draw another line A perpendicular to C through P. Euclid's Fifth Postulate states that angles in a triangle add to 180 (2 right angles, which we have). The lines L and A are parallel, so they will not meet to form a triangle. Any other line drawn through P would form a triangle, but no other parallels exist.

Probably haven't explained well. I'm tired.

That's correct. Stick it in a spoiler pls in case someone else wants to give it a shot. . .lol who am I kidding?

Done.

thnxbby