[math-fun] Forbidden topics
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> The rule as I understand it is to abstain from posts about politics or climate change. MLB>If I ask a goofy self-referential question about whether this post, which may or may not be about climate change and/or politics--is it permitted?<MLB Boko Haram reportedly has a website promising Sharia punishment for anyone caught using the Internet. --Bill Hey, Rich didn't say anything precluding Religion!
Speaking of off-topic stuff: Does anyone have an explanation for the common experience of the "moving now", aka the "flow of time" ? If so, I'd like to know what it is. Mainstream physics never even mentions the concept. --Dan On 2014-01-16, at 10:29 PM, Bill Gosper wrote:
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> The rule as I understand it is to abstain from posts about politics or climate change.
MLB>If I ask a goofy self-referential question about whether this post, which may or may not be about climate change and/or politics--is it permitted?<MLB
Boko Haram reportedly has a website promising Sharia punishment for anyone
caught using the Internet.
--Bill
Hey, Rich didn't say anything precluding Religion! _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
On 1/16/2014 10:34 PM, Dan Asimov wrote:
Speaking of off-topic stuff:
Does anyone have an explanation for the common experience of the "moving now", aka the "flow of time" ?
If so, I'd like to know what it is. Mainstream physics never even mentions the concept.
Probably because it's trying to explain a feeling and consciousness is still out on the fringe of what can studied as physics. In a sense having different experiences at different times implies a "moving now" just like having different locations at different times implies motion. Max Tegmark just wrote a paper on it though Consciousness as a State of Matter Max Tegmark (MIT) (Submitted on 6 Jan 2014) We examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. We explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as solids, liquids and gases: the information, integration, independence, dynamics and utility principles. If such principles can identify conscious entities, then they can help solve the quantum factorization problem: why do conscious observers like us perceive the particular Hilbert space factorization corresponding to classical space (rather than Fourier space, say), and more generally, why do we perceive the world around us as a dynamic hierarchy of objects that are strongly integrated and relatively independent? Tensor factorization of matrices is found to play a central role, and our technical results include a theorem about Hamiltonian separability (defined using Hilbert-Schmidt superoperators) being maximized in the energy eigenbasis. Our approach generalizes Giulio Tononi's integrated information framework for neural-network-based consciousness to arbitrary quantum systems, and we find interesting links to error-correcting codes, condensed matter criticality, and the Quantum Darwinism program, as well as an interesting connection between the emergence of consciousness and the emergence of time. Comments: 34 pages, 16 figs Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Cite as: arXiv:1401.1219 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:1401.1219v1 [quant-ph] for this version) Brent Meeker
The nature of time, consciousness and free will (if any) are all metaphysical. Of course, there is an answer to these ultimate questions, but I'll have to think about it..
There have been some recent (in the past few years) experiments on whether time really is slowed down when you're in a crisis situation. In one experiment, psychologists tested people's perception of how long it took for them to drop several hundred feet at one of the rides in an amusement park. Businesses like Disney are also particularly interested in the apparent speed of time while you're waiting in line (!). So while physicists aren't particularly interested, psychologists are very interested. At 10:34 PM 1/16/2014, Dan Asimov wrote:
Speaking of off-topic stuff:
Does anyone have an explanation for the common experience of the "moving now", aka the "flow of time" ?
If so, I'd like to know what it is. Mainstream physics never even mentions the concept.
OK, here's this topic again; I'll bite: I think Albert Einstein pretty much nailed the distinction between physical time and the perception of time: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." Facetiousness aside: it seems evident that "awareness" is merely when one part of the universe has built a dynamic (and necessarily incomplete) model of another part, and (self) consciousness is simply when the part modeled includes part of the model. What's the big deal? It's like looking at yourself in your house through a security camera. The video of yourself isn't some magical ghost in the machine (though it's convenient to pretend). This consciousness mystery cult that afflicts otherwise apparently intelligent folks is bemusing. To indulge in psychobabble: at root I suspect it's a compensation for an attachment to a stern self-image of righteous reductionist rationality whose breakdown erupts in rash rank amateur mysticism. Discussions of "consciousness", however clever and glib, strikingly parallel religionist's confused and definitionally unanchored discussions of "the soul" (at least to the extent that undefined terms can be commensurable). Einstein again: ³There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.² Those with a strong need to appear to themselves to adhere to the former have a hard time suppressing their natural human appetite for the latter. Maybe the sense that there's a solvable Mystery of Consciousness is merely another consolation prize we award ourselves for knowing our jellyware vessel's incapacity to contain more than measure zero of the unbounded. And, it's more fun (if not math-fun). Al, that punchliner: ³Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.²
participants (6)
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Dan Asimov -
Dave Dyer -
Henry Baker -
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