Clear Language, Clear Mind

(got the idea from this guy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formicophilia

Formicophilia, a form of zoophilia, is the sexual interest in being crawled upon or nibbled by small insects, such as ants.[1][2] This paraphilia often involves the application of insects to the genitals, but other areas of the body may also be the focus. The desired effect may be a tickling or stinging sensation, or the infliction of psychological distress on another person.[3]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Frequency.2C_age.2C_and_sex

Popular belief asserts that individuals of either sex who are not in sexually active relationships tend to masturbate more frequently than those who are; however, much of the time this is not true as masturbation alone or with a partner is often a feature of a relationship. Contrary to conventional wisdom, several studies actually reveal a positive correlation between the frequency of masturbation and the frequency of intercourse. A study has reported a significantly higher rate of masturbation in gay men and women who were in a relationship.[29][32][33][34]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_drive

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_circumcision

If this is not one of the most if not the most disgusting things that u have read about, something is wrong with u. Actually, some of it is so bad that i can’t bring myself to quote it. It fysically hurts me to read this stuff.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unexpected_death_syndrome

Which was used in a recent House episode (s08e17 but the Wiki article hasn’t been created yet). Generally, one can learn alot from watching House and reading the Wiki articles (example of one i really liked). This kind of learning is called tangential learning.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money

Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence of a society or economy that relied primarily on barter.[1] Instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economics[1] and debt.[2][3] When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or would-be enemies.[4]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles

I had found this article before but thought that someone had deleted it. Apparently not! It contains lots of hilarious stuff, example.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men

Very interesting fenomenon. If this is caused by increased female independence, then the same thing shud happen in DK (+scandinavia). Females are already a net loss for the economy (work less, get paid less, spend more time being sick, receive more money from the state, …), and males a slight net benefit. However, if more males decide that working ain’t worth it. Generally, males worked to attract high quality mates. If this doesn’t work becus of female independence. Then, why work? But then, if males start working less, they will stop making society run and the wellfare state will collapse. Interestingly, this makes males attractive again if they start working. Going full circle?

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I’m writing this piece as i have gotten rather tired of explaining this point over and over. Writing an article about it saves me time.

The form of reasoning goes something like this:

1. This person uses some other spelling than the standard one for a word.
Therefore, 2. This person does not know how to spell the word.

It shud be relatively easy to see that this does not follow. Obviously, if one is familiar with spelling reform ideas, then that makes for easy counter-examples. But even people who have not thought/read about spelling reforms shud be somewhat familiar with familiar use of non-standard spellings in their native language. For instance, when speed is important, people may use alternative spellings becus they are shorter. For instance, using y for yes. Altho someone might see this as using abbreviations and not non-standard spellings. It can be rather difficult to distinguish between the two. Is becus an abbreviation that doesn’t count? How about ‘cus?

Another realm of counter-examples is when people deliberately ‘misspell’ a word for some other purpose, e.g. humor (making a pun), or to signal dialect (writing aks instead of ask), or murika instead of America thereby noting that the word is pronounced like that by many americans. Clearly, many people who do these things are aware of the standard spelling.

As an inductive inference?

In the above, i assumed that the argument was deductive, as in, the conclusion was supposed to follow with necessity by the reasoner. However, one might think of it as a probabilistic inference. Does it fare much better this way? Sort of. Certainly, sometimes people do try to write the standard spelling of some word, but for some reason write something else than that. This can be for many reasons: hitting the wrong key on the keyboard, being distracted at the moment of typing (typically results in one typing the word that was said to one) or just genuinely making a mistake (genuinely making a mistake! :D) becus one was wrong about how the word is spelled in the standard spelling.

Generally, tho, there are some patterns that one can use to make better guesses at whether people really did make a mistake becus they didn’t know the correct spelling, or something else is the case. There are lists of commonly misspelled words (example), if a person used one of the common but nonstandard spellings, then it increases the probability that it was a mistake. How does one spot typos? Usually, the character that is part of the nonstandard pattern is located near the intended one. This produces things like I luke you instead of I like you. Finally, the function words of a language are rarely misspelled becus they occur in high frequency. For that exact reason they also have the poorest spellings. If someone uses nonstandard spellings for such words, then that increases the probability that it is on purpose. Examples of this are words like could should would you I which might be written cud shud wud u i for various reasons.

Under which conditions wud the inference actually work deductively?

Perhaps if one added some extra premises then the inference wud work. Any candidates? Yes. Adding something like: Every person is always trying to use the standard spelling for every word. Implausible? Very! And it isn’t even enuf. There remains the possibilities of being distracted and hitting the wrong keys, and perhaps some other things i haven’t thought of.

Is it really a modal fallacy?

Yes.

Modal logic is that branch of logic which studies logical relations involving modalities. Modalities are ways, so to speak, in which propositions can be true or false. The most commonly studied modalities are necessity and possibility, which are modalities because some propositions are necessarily true/false and others are possibly true/false. (source)

Name for the fallacy?

Can’t think of anything good. It shud be short and relevant. Things like the anti language reformist fallacy is not short but at least it’s descriptive.

Quantum Theory – A Very Short Introduction

I have recently been in some discussions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the potential consequences of those interpretations. My chief opponent (we may call him) is a Copenhagen interpretation theorist. He has some rather odd views that are incoherent in themselves but apparently common among fysicists (as we will see).

My position has been one of realism+indeterminism. I came to this position some years ago after reading up on QT on a rather sporadic basis (mostly Wikipedia) and reading a paper by one of my favorit filosofers: Raymond Bradley.

Raymond D. Bradley – How to lose your grip on reality An attack on anti-realism in quantum theory (his paper)

It seems to me that Bradley is completely right about verificationism: it is an incoherent theory of meaning. However, i decided to take a closer look at the fysics involved. Admittedly, i did not want to learn everything that someone who takes a bachelor in fysics learns, so i decided to read some books written for laymen by experts. I decided on reading four books from the series A very short introduction to … series. These are: The Elements, Relativity, Quantum Theory, and Particle physics. QT is the third book. I probably shud have chosen another order so that QT was the last to read, but too late now.

What follows are some quotes from the book and my thoughts about them. I don’t bother to cite the page since i uploaded the ebook. Anyone wishing to find the page can just do a search in the pdf.

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The measurement problem continues to cause us anxiety as we
contemplate the bewildering range of, at best, only partially
persuasive proposals that have been made for its solution. Options
resorted to have included disregard (irrelevance); known physics
Darkening perplexities
(decoherence); hoped-for physics (large systems); unknown new
physics (GRW); hidden new physics (Bohm); metaphysical
conjecture (consciousness; many worlds). It is a tangled tale and
one that it is embarrassing for a physicist to tell, given the central
role that measurement has in physical thinking. To be frank, we do
not have as tight an intellectual grasp of quantum theory as we
would like to have. We can do the sums and, in that sense, explain
the phenomena, but we do not really understand what is going on.
For Bohr, quantum mechanics is indeterminate; for Bohm,
quantum mechanics is determinate. For Bohr, Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle is an ontological principle of indeterminacy;
for Bohm, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is an epistemological
principle of ignorance. We shall return to some of these
metaphysical and interpretative questions in the final chapter.
Meanwhile, a further speculative question awaits us.

Notice how the author contrasts an antirealims+indeterminism view with a realism+determinism view. However, these are not the only options. At least, the option of indeterminism+realism is possible. I’m not sure about the antirealism+determinism position. It seems to be ‘claiming’ that everything that happens in the quantum world (or the world at large) has a cause, but that there are no subatomic particles before we measure them. This is odd. The first possibility i suggested is that one that i like the most.

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The EPR effect’s implication of deep-seated relationality present in
the fundamental structure of the physical world is a discovery that
physical thinking and metaphysical reflection have still to come to
terms with in fully elucidating all its consequences. As part of that
continuing process of assimilation, it is necessary to be as clear as
possible about what is the character of the entanglement that EPR
implies. One must acknowledge that a true case of action at a
distance is involved, and not merely some gain in additional
knowledge. Putting it in learned language, the EPR effect is
ontological and not simply epistemological. Increase in knowledge
at a distance is in no way problematic or surprising. Suppose an urn
contains two balls, one white, the other black. You and I both put in
our hands and remove one of the balls in our closed fists. You then
go a mile down the road, open your fist and find that you have the
white ball. Immediately you know I must have the black one. The
only thing that has changed in this episode is your state of
knowledge. I always had the black ball, you always had the white
ball, but now you have become aware that this is so. In the EPR
effect, by contrast, what happens at 1 changes what is the case at 2.
It is as if, were you to find that you had a red ball in your hand, I
would have to have a blue ball in mine, but if you found a green ball,
I would have to have a yellow ball and, previous to your looking,
neither of us had balls of determinate colours.

I agree that the analogy works from the pov of someone who thinks that antirealism about QM stuff is true. I still don’t. It’s going to be very hard to convince me i am wrong about this.

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An alert reader may query all this talk about instantaneous change.
Does not special relativity prohibit something at 1 having any effect
Quantum theory
80at 2 until there has been time for the transmission of an influence
moving with at most the velocity of light? Not quite. What relativity
actually prohibits is the instantaneous transmission of information,
of a kind that would permit the immediate synchronization of a
clock at 2 with a clock at 1. It turns out that the EPR kind of
entanglement does not permit the conveyance of messages of that
kind. The reason is that its togetherness-in-separation takes the
form of correlations between what is happening at 1 and what is
happening at 2 and no message can be read out of these correlations
without knowledge of what is happening at both ends. It is as if a
singer at 1 was singing a random series of notes and a singer at 2
was also singing a random series of notes and only if one were able
to hear them both together would one realize that the two singers
were in some kind of harmony with each other. Realizing this is so
warns us against embracing the kind of ‘quantum hype’ argument
that incorrectly asserts that EPR ‘proves’ that telepathy is possible.

I have seen the claim before, that SR implies that no FTL communication is possible. I don’t see how it follows from the information presented earlier in the book or the introduction to relativity that i read last week.

I have thought up a method for FTL communication. Not sure if it works, probably doesn’t and i’m wrong about some fysical detail, not being a fysicist and all. One takes alot of these entangled particles. Then separates them into two boxes, such that all of those in one box are of the same type of spin, and the same for the other box. Then one ships the one box to out in space with a spaceship. To communicate, one changes the spin of the particles in the box, and the other party can see this change too (becus it is instantaneous). I’m thinking that this method doesn’t work becus of one of the following: 1) it is not possible to separate them into the boxes as described, 2) there are some problems with changing one of the particles and then having the other people measure this without destroying the signal.

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Positivism and realism
Positivists see the role of science as being the reconciliation of
observational data. If one can make predictions that accurately and
harmoniously account for the behaviour of the measuring
apparatus, the task is done. Ontological questions (What is really
there?) are an irrelevant luxury and best discarded. The world of the
positivist is populated by counter readings and marks on
photographic plates.
This point of view has a long history. Cardinal Bellarmine urged
upon Galileo that he should regard the Copernican system as simply
a convenient means for ‘saving the appearances’, a good way of
doing calculations to determine where planets would appear in the
sky. Galileo should not think that the Earth actually went round the
Sun – rather Copernicus should be considered as having used the
supposition simply as a handy calculational device. This face-saving
offer did not appeal to Galileo, nor have similar suggestions been
favourably received by scientists generally. If science is just about
correlating data, and is not telling us what the physical world is
actually like, it is difficult to see that the enterprise is worth all the
time and trouble and talent expended upon it. Its achievements
would seem too meagre to justify such a degree of involvement.
Moreover, the most natural explanation of a theory’s ability to save
appearances would surely be that it bore some correspondence to
the way things are.
Nevertheless, Niels Bohr often seemed to speak of quantum theory
in a positivistic kind of way. He once wrote to a friend that
There is no quantum world. There is only abstract quantum physical
description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out
how nature is. Physics is concerned with what we can say about
nature.
Bohr’s preoccupation with the role of classical measuring
apparatus could be seen as having encouraged such a positivistic-
sounding point of view. We have seen that in his later years he
became very concerned with philosophical issues, writing
extensively about them. The resulting corpus is hard to interpret.
Bohr’s gift in philosophical matters fell far short of his outstanding
talent as a physicist. Moreover, he believed – and exemplified –
that there are two kinds of truth: a trivial kind, which could be
articulated clearly, and a profound kind which could only be
spoken about cloudily. Certainly the body of his writings has been
very variously interpreted by the commentators. Some have felt
that there was, in fact, a kind of qualified realism to which Bohr
was an adherent.

Does everybody else see the glaring almost-contradiction in what Bohr wrote? One cannot both deny that there is a quantum world and then go on to claim that we can’t say anything about it. That is my interpretation of his words, altho he was a bit better in the above quote. He technically only wrote that it is not the case that the task of fysics is to find out how nature is. Since he made some claims about how the world is (in his case, isn’t), apparently he either got his information from fysics even tho that’s not fysics’ task, or he got his information from somewhere else. This is not a contradiction, just odd.

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Not particularly related to any passage in the book, but building on the general idea of the problem of how to reconcile the determinism of the macroscopic world with the indeterminism of the quantum world. After all, the macroscopic world is made of quantum world stuff. The current thinking is that the world is only approximately deterministic. I have a question: suppose that there is a level below quantum world stuff. Is it possible that this level is deterministic? That is, is it possible to have a deterministic layer and then an indeterministic layer on top of it? It seems not. But, it is definitely possible to have a deterministic layer and then a layer that is epistemically indeterministic on top of it.

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I’m still not satisfied. I have not been convinced of antirealism in QM. Usually, the author talks about epistemic limitations, and then in some later passage talks about ontology, as if there were some connection, like the verificationism that Bradley criticized. I will read some more filosofical texts on the matter. Surely, if there is some way to make realism work, someone has thought of it.

http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=quantum is where i must go.

I had been looking for this book for a long time. Finally found it.

An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic From If to Is

The book is extremely dry and boring to read. But it is very comprehensive. I usually use it as a reference work.

Just a collection of links. She was right about black studies.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-most-persuasive-case-for-eliminating-black-studies-just-read-the-dissertations/46346

Her point holds for feminism as well. http://richarddawkins.net/articles/823

Follow-up from the writer: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/black-studies-part-2-a-response-to-critics/46401

She gets fired: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/a-note-to-readers/46608

Comments on the affair: http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/08/chronicle-of-higher-education-fires-blog

The idea of reality being four-dimensional is strange and
counter-intuitive. Even Einstein himself at first had difficulty
accepting Minkowski’s suggestion – though later he was won over
and declared ‘henceforth we must deal with a four-dimensional
existence instead of, hitherto, the evolution of a three-dimensional
existence’. Not that this is meant to imply that time has been
reduced to being merely a fourth spatial dimension. Although
it is indeed welded to the other three dimensions to form a four-
dimensional continuum, it yet retains a certain distinctiveness.
The light cone encircles the time axis, not the others. Absolute
future and absolute past are defined in relation to the time axis
alone.

Acceptance of a four-dimensional reality is difficult because it is
not something that lends itself to easy visualizing – indeed,
forming a mental picture of four axes all mutually at right angles
to each other is impossible. No, we must dispense with mental
pictures and simply allow the mathematics to guide us.
One of the disconcerting features about four-dimensional
spacetime is that nothing changes. Changes occur in time. But
spacetime is not in time; time is in spacetime (as one of its axes).
It appears to be saying that all of time – past, present, and
future – exists on an equal footing. In other words, events that we
customarily think of as no longer existing because they lie in the
past, do exist in spacetime. In the same way, future events which
we normally think of as not yet existing, do exist in spacetime.
There is nothing in this picture to select out the present instant,
labelled ‘now’, as being anything special – separating past from
future.

We are presented with a world where it is not only true that all of
space exists at each point in time, but also all of time exists at each
point in space. In other words, wherever you are seated now
reading this book, not only does the present instant exist, but also
the moment when you began reading, and the moment when you
later decide you have had enough (perhaps because all this is
giving you a headache) and you get up and go off to make a cup
of tea.

We are dealing with a strangely static existence, one that is
sometimes called ‘the block universe’. Now there is probably no
idea more controversial in modern physics than the block
universe. It is only natural to feel that there is something
especially ‘real’ about the present instant, that the future is
uncertain, that the past is finished, that time ‘flows’. All these
conspire against acceptance of the idea that the past still exists
and the future also exists and is merely waiting for us to come
across it. Some leading physicists, while accepting that all
observers are indeed agreed on the value of the mathematical
quantity we are calling ‘the distance, or interval, between two
events in four-dimensional spacetime’, nevertheless deny that we
must go that extra step and conclude that spacetime is the true
nature of physical reality. They maintain that spacetime is merely
a mathematical structure; that is all. They are determined to
retain the seemingly common-sense idea that the past no longer
exists, the future has yet to exist, and that all that exists is the
present. I suspect you are inclined to agree with them. But before
lending them your support, it is worth considering in more depth
what your alternative to the block universe might be.

It is all very well saying that all that exists is what is happening
at the present instant, what exactly do you mean by that?
Presumably you mean ‘me reading this book in this particular
location’. Fair enough. But I imagine you would also include what
is happening elsewhere (literally elsewhere) at the present instant.
For example, there might be a man in New York climbing some
stairs. At the present instant he has his foot on the first step. So,
you will add him, with his foot on that step, to your list of existent
entities. But now suppose there is an astronaut flying overhead
directly above you. Because of the loss of simultaneity of separated
events, he will disagree with you over what is happening
simultaneously in New York while you are reading this book. As
far as he is concerned, the man in New York, at the present
instant, has his foot on the second step – not the first step.
Moreover, a second astronaut flying in a spacecraft travelling in
the opposite direction to the first arrives at a third conclusion,
namely at the present instant the man in New York hasn’t even
reached the flight of stairs yet. You see the problem. It is all very
well saying that ‘all that exists is what is happening at the present
instant’, but nobody can agree as to what is happening at the
present instant.What exists in New York? A man with his foot on
the first step, or a man with his foot on the second step, or one
who has not yet reached the stairs? As far as the block universe
idea is concerned, there is no problem: all three alternatives in

New York exist. The argument is merely over which of those three
events in New York one chooses to label as having the same time
coordinate as the one where you are. Relative motion means one
simply takes different slices through four-dimensional spacetime
as representing the events given the same time coordinate, ‘now’.

But of course, the block universe idea also has its problems.Where
does the perceived special nature of the moment ‘now’ come from,
and where do we get that dynamical sense of the flow of time? This
is a big unsolved mystery, and might remain that way for all time.
It does not seem to come out of the physics – certainly not from
the block universe idea – but rather from our conscious perception
of the physical world. For some unknown reason, consciousness
seems to act like a searchlight scanning progressively along the
time axis, momentarily singling out an instant of physical time as
being that special moment we label ‘now’ – before the beam moves
on to pick out the next instant to be so labelled.

But now we are venturing into the realms of speculation. Let’s get
back to relativity . . .

Actually, it was just getting intresting. Perhaps i’ll have to read some of that filosofy of time after all…

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We have seen that the faster one travels, the more time slows
down. Reach the speed of light, and time comes to a halt. This
appears to raise the question as to what would happen if one were
to accelerate still further until one was travelling faster than the
speed of light.What would that do to time?Would one go back in
time? One hopes not. Such an eventuality could cause all kinds of
confusion. Suppose, for instance, one were to go back and
accidentally run over one’s grandmother – and this before she had
had a chance to give birth to your mother.Without you having a
mother, how did you get here in the first place!? Fortunately, this
cannot happen. As mentioned earlier, nothing can travel faster
than light. How does that come about?

Actually, backwards time travel is not a logical problem (but it is a fysical problem). It follows that since u are here, u did not actually go back and kill ur grandwhatever-relative. See Swartz writings on this subject: e.g. http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/time_travel1.htm

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Does the fact that we cannot accelerate to the speed, c, rule out all
possibility of travelling faster than light? Strictly speaking, no. All
we are saying is that it is impossible to take the kind of matter we
are familiar with and accelerate it to superluminal speeds. But that
does not rule out the rather fanciful possibility of there being a
second type of matter, created at speeds exceeding that of light,
and which can travel only at speeds in the range c to infinity. Such
hypothetical particles have been given the name tachyons. Some
years ago they were the subject of much speculation. It was noted,
for example, that observers made of tachyon matter would
consider that speeds in the tachyon world were confined to be less
than c, and that it was our type of matter that would have speeds
lying in the range c to infinity. But enough of that; there is
absolutely no evidence for tachyons; they are but the subject of
unfounded speculation.

But neutrinos are so cool. :P There are even more strange things that happen if something moved at >c. First, take a look at the graf for momentum made from the relativistic equation p=mv/sqrt(1−v²/c²) (i have set m=1 and c=300000)

Notice how there is no values for x>300000. This is becus after that the v²/c² clause is more than 1, which makes the sqrt take the sqrt from a negative number. This doesn’t work. However, if there really was FTL travel, how wud we alter the equation? How about the simple p=mv/sqrt(abs(1−v²/c²))? This gives the same results for x=[0;30000[ but after that also gives values for x>300000. It looks like this:

This is rather strange to interpret, as mentioned before. Becus at FTL speeds, when the particle speeds up, it loses not gains momentum! Basically, one cud harvest energy from these particles by speeding them up. How very strange. Another thing to note is that one cudn’t continue doing this since if x→∞, then f(x)→3, but only if one looks at x>30000, becus at x<30000, if x→∞, then f(x)→∞.

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That’s interesting.

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In conclusion, the weight of evidence for the existence of
supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies is considered to
be overwhelming.

-.- not sure if intended pun or not.

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For years i had been bothered about how to more precisely formulate my ideas about fallibilism and make them consistent with the existence of noncontingent propositions. The question was: if some propositions are necessarily true, how can it be possible to be wrong about them? Since they are necessarily true, it is impossible for them to be false. But still, there was some sense in which it was possible to be wrong about such things. History of full of examples of noncontingent propositions that people were wrong about (like squaring the circle, naive set theory).

Then i read IEP’s article on falliblism and that makes things clear. Yay! Maybe now i can convince my math friends that they can be wrong about their proofs and simple math truths like 2+2=4.

http://falkvinge.net/2012/04/24/book-release-the-case-for-copyright-reform/

When i first saw this book, i checked the references section at the end of the book, and they seemed rather light. So, i concluded that it was a pretty light introduction to the subject. But after reading it, i figured that it isn’t. The reason is simply that the authors used links to refer to sources.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in copyright reform but either doesn’t want to or don’t have time to read alot about it. It’s a pretty good book. :)

The Case For Copyright Reform (2012) Engstrom-Falkvinge

(Tulimafat is telling jokes)
[06:12:32] Tulimafat:Caught watching porn?
Now it’s a family movie.
[06:13:06] Emil – Deleet: it was before too!

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Do you litter?
No, I hate the metric system.

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I don’t like to say the same thing twice, and I never repeat myself.

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What should the next pirate iPhone from China copy be called? — AyePhone.

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If one is living life on the edge, then one shud get a new mobile network operator.

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(Emil is reading an introduction to the relativity theories)
[11:26:24] Emil – Deleet: relativity is fucked up
[11:28:57] Jens Arhøj – Strawb: Only relatively, lolololol
[11:29:02] Emil – Deleet: lololol

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(talking about this tool for seeing what is on the opposite side of the earth in a cool way)
[16:10:12] Laird Shaw: The tunnelling tool says Australia is your nearest tunnel country, but the map itself shows NZ closer, as you said.
[16:10:30] Emil – Deleet: sea territory
[16:10:37] Laird Shaw: I see.
[16:10:42] Laird Shaw: Or do I sea?

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