Raphael Bousso & Carlo Rovelli Reverse Debate

Raphael Bousso & Carlo Rovelli Reverse Debate introduced by Max Tegmark @ FQXi conference FQXi's 4th International Conference, "The Physics of Information" January 5-10, 2014 Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

It had me scratching my head( how do you walk in another person's shoes).....and really quite humorous. If they tried to exchange shoes that would have been funny too?

Is Reality a Virtual Simulation?

	To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, “Oh, how beautiful ! How could it have been otherwise?” From a personal notebook of Wheeler circa 1991

	This symbol was used to demonstrate in a global sense that everything is derived from bits. Taken from a speech given by John Archibald Wheeler in 1999. Also from, J. A. Wheeler: Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Scientific American Library, Freeman, New York, 1990), pg. 220

The Last Question. Of course in science fiction we like to popularize things. As if, the model itself, has yet to become the real thing? Can one say that there model is better, while they say all other models are insufficient? They have to be speaking from a framework right? In that sense Asimov was a visionary, that brought the dream of, to become something real?

As I was reading I got this impression of the "they( as some grand designer)" as if the designer of the monolith, and those without freewill, apes. I know it's just a story, but the first story to me that somehow as story tellers, we'd given the impression that Hal, was imbued with something more then we had come to know in the beginning days of computer intelligence. In another sense still, moon dwellers, with no freewill.

So in that sense there was this drive to apply human capabilities to a machine, and thus all humanity expression in terms of this machinist attribute of being? So at some point the Frankenstein(a biological design robot) becomes alive through our efforts to construct this live emotive thing we call a robot.

So it is as if the simulation had taken on this elevation of sorts, as to say, that the machine had graduated once having realized that such a robot could dream, and thus a culmination of all things possible for a human being, had somehow now become that simulation of reality? A Second Life?

So we have this godlike power now. And in place of sending machines to distant planets to gather information and to do our bidding in an effort to gather information, some "they" beyond the parameters of our seemingly capable world of science found out, that the biological robot had already been designed? Say what?

SCOAP3 to start on 1 January 2014

Geneva 5 December 2013. After intense preparations and consensus building, CERN^[1] has today confirmed that the SCOAP³ Open Access publishing initiative will start on 1 January 2014. With the support of partners in 24 countries^[2], a vast fraction of scientific articles in the field of High-Energy Physics will become Open Access at no cost for any author: everyone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information.

Convened at CERN this is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations. SCOAP³ enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers. See: SCOAP3 to start on 1 January 2014

See Also:

• Open Access publishing initiative, SCOAP3, to start on 1 January 2014
• 10 journals to go open-access in 2014

It is important to see the efforts of this Open Access in action,  so look there to see what has come of it.

Nima Arkani-Hamed Speaks with Ian McEwan

You Might like to move ahead to 12:45 on sliding scale....somewhat of an improvement from 15:45 of about 3:00 seconds. Nima acknowledges in speaking,  about the introduction of this video,  of a metaphor considering the Higg's Boson,  and of course speaks to the metaphors limitations.  So along with 3 seconds savings,  you also get to enjoy that introduction.

I could not help but think of Leonard Susskind,  Raphael Bousso, Juan Maldacena  and  Joseph Polchinski when talking about Falling into a Blackhole, when Nima was speaking. What Nima is saying is important to me. I understand what he is saying about what drives people to that wonder, and how to science people,  this is a fundamental feeling which is expressed across many of those who have had this mystery about the world at heart. Creatively expressed,  as to get to the source of things whether by the science, or,  with regard to the creation of artistic endeavor whether it be music or writing.

Nima speaks about Truth and that's with a capital "T,"  so I am not lost on the importance of this meaning, but like things of wonder and creativity,  the message of Truth is fundamental as well to people.

When Nima spoke about Stephen Weinberg's first three minutes this sent me back to the ideas regarding how our views have changed,  to ask, what the microseconds might have in store for us.  This becomes fundamental when we learn to see what models can apply them self too,  what we may be looking at the universe. This disturb me somewhat as some spoke ill of conceptual fundamentals of model theories when they did not understand this simple fact and were chorusing. Beauty and deep take on their true meaning.

Ian McEwan at 29:55 approximately spoke about the types of maths, and with his list I believe he failed to see the significance of what was sitting before him as Nima the mathematician. One has to see that the Theoretical was an accomplishment above all the maths to which included,  all these rigid structures Nima was talking about. It is not as if you can take a step and make an pronouncement without leveling the structure in some way without regarding the maths involved. This is what I have learn as a researcher within the subject of the sciences being spoken too, as I have come to know it. A White rectangle was simple in its description but we know what he meant right(LHC)?

Ian started to lose me when the significance of the conversation about commonality now became the race to become a known scientist.  Of course thoughts about publishing in the Arxiv as to the substance and work to establish credibility crossed my mind. But that timing was ill supported to the movement of this conversation to me. While Nima did professed to not understanding the creativity aspect of the work involved he was very aware of the structure ability to get to results being explained in science as his job done well. There could not have been a better discription of the creative process to me then how Nima logically explained it.

See Also:

Nima Arkani-Hamed debates a novelist

Russian Space Walkers

Two Russian cosmonauts in Orlan spacesuits wrapped up a 8-hour, 7-minute spacewalk to attempt the installation of photographic equipment on the exterior of the International Space Station at 4:07 p.m. EST Friday. See: ISS Russian Space walkers Run Into Snag With Camera Installation

Genius Materials

Researchers working with magnetic fluids on the International Space Station are taking "smart materials" to the next level. With proper coaxing, molecules can assemble themselves into "genius materials" with surprising properties. This is opening a new frontier in material science. ScienceCasts: Genius Materials on the ISS

Higg's Boson Explained

CMS p-value

A Scientific Look at the Term Spirit

The English word spirit (from Latin spiritus "breath") has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. The word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. The notions of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both contrast with body and both are understood as surviving the bodily death in religion and occultism,[1] and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.

It is by definition that one can begin to examine the substance of and lead one to ask how such a thing can become of use and measured? I am not saying you give up on what you know to be your truth, but to examine how we might give particular meaning to the term, as in the way we look at our own composition.

The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath", but also "spirit, soul, courage, vigor", ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European *(s)peis. It is distinguished from Latin anima, "soul" (which nonetheless also derives from an Indo-European root meaning "to breathe", earliest form *h₂enh₁- ^[2]). In Greek, this distinction exists between pneuma (πνεῦμα), "breath, motile air, spirit," and psykhē (ψυχή), "soul"^[3] (even though the latter term, ψῡχή = psykhē/psūkhē, is also from an Indo-European root meaning "to breathe": *bhes-, zero grade *bhs- devoicing in proto-Greek to *phs-, resulting in historical-period Greek ps- in psūkhein, "to breathe", whence psūkhē, "spirit", "soul"^[4]).

The word "spirit" came into Middle English via Old French. The distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions: Arabic nafs (نفس) opposite rúħ (روح); Hebrew neshama (נְשָׁמָה nəšâmâh) or nephesh (in Hebrew neshama comes from the root NŠM or "breath") opposite ruach (רוּחַ rûaħ). (Note, however, that in Semitic just as in Indo-European, this dichotomy has not always been as neat historically as it has come to be taken over a long period of development: Both נֶ֫פֶשׁ (root נפשׁ) and רוּחַ (root רוח), as well as cognate words in various Semitic languages, including Arabic, also preserve meanings involving misc. air phenomena: "breath", "wind", and even "odou

How old and illustrious the thought that to begin here is very ancient part of our history,  that it could lead toward the subject unfolding as to something that defines the matter of, in spirit of, as relative to the body? In this sense then can we say that the spirit is a divisible feature of the body by way of applying the distinction right from the start?

 In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,^[1] or that the mind and body are not identical.^[2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism, in the mind–body problem.^[1][2]

So by examination, they are two parts to the subject with which we began that I have separated the body into two? Spirit and Body. If we go toward selecting body so as to see it is not divisible, then one proceeds toward the fashion of what Archimedes demonstrates? What is to measure then?

 Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction.^[1] Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime.

Archimedes Thoughtful by Fetti (1620)

 
How do you measure "the space" in between the bodies materialistic expressions then? If I use a cup of water and deposit a teaspoon of sugar, does the level of the water change? So we say the sugar dissolves into the water.

Now I'm wondering here about that analogy. I know if we said dark matter or dark energy (Of course they are trying to measure), I might have given perspective by such an analogy that you might say that is not a good enough one, but you get the idea I think.  If you can explain this better, knowing what I mean then lets see what you come up with?

Displacement?

  How would you determine Gold?  Is there a better way to measure?

 The results show that the suspension technique is more accurate and precise than the traditional water displacement methods and is more accurate than measuring volume using Vernier calliper measurements. See: Archimedes revisited: a faster, better, cheaper method of accurately measuring the volume of small objects

What is the glue that binds matter would then become a statement for me about what has been the efforts of science that wishes to establish the element of such a gathering. It had been on my mind that such a grouping of birds,  that move in unison could have asked me to ponder about such particulate expressions.  Then to have my mind rest on the Higg's as a particle' of that expression. In that sense,  I have retain the body as a materialistic expression to this point.

When looking to spirit then,  in context of the meaning,  it becomes divisible in relation too, the body. In that sense the question about spirit then becomes a question with regard to what can measure it. And without such measure,  a scientist will have hard time accepting it in terms of discussion in terms of it's validation, but  may still retain it's validity as to the truth for them specifically.

So I wanted people to know that that regardless of such poofs, the world may hold this part of spirit in meaning, while such examinations are still critical for the scientist with regard to a measure.

See:

• Noam Chomsky - "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding"

LHC and Open Access

The CMS experiment at the LHC has released a portion of its data to the public for use in education and outreach. Explore this page to find out more about the data and how to analyse it yourself.

LHC data are exotic, they are complicated and they are big. At peak performance, about one billion proton collisions take place every second inside the CMS detector at the LHC. CMS has collected around 64 petabytes (or over 64,000 terabytes) of analysable data from these collisions so far.

Along with the many published papers, these data constitute the scientific legacy of the CMS Collaboration, and preserving the data for future generations is of paramount importance. “We want to be able to re-analyse our data, even decades from now,” says Kati Lassila-Perini, head of the CMS Data Preservation and Open Access project at the Helsinki Institute of Physics. “We must make sure that we preserve not only the data but also the information on how to use them. To achieve this, we intend to make available through open access our data that are no longer under active analysis. This helps record the basic ingredients needed to guarantee that these data remain usable even when we are no longer working on them.” See: LHC data to be made public via open access initiative

Entanglement and the Geometry of Spacetime

Theorists have forged a connection between wormholes in spacetime (above) and a quantum phenomenon called entanglement.

But how big an insight is this? It depends on whom you ask. Susskind and Maldacena note that in both papers, the original quantum particles reside in a space without gravity. In a simplified, gravity-free 3D model of our world, there can’t be any black holes or wormholes, Susskind adds, so the connection to a wormhole in a higher dimensional space is mere mathematical analogy. The wormhole and entanglement equivalence “only makes sense in a theory with gravity,” Susskind says. However, Karch and colleagues say that their calculations are an important first step toward verifying Maldacena and Susskind’s theory. Their toy model without gravity, Karch says, “gives a concrete realization of the idea that wormhole geometry and entanglement can be different manifestations of the same physical reality."A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement

• Entanglement and Geometry of Spacetime
• Maldacena, Susskind: any entanglement is a wormhole of a sort

Note here about Issuu software in link above. I made a comment about this type of software with regard to document writing and appearance. For an open publishing format I am less then pleased that if you have a shared format and embedding program that allows you to embed articles and then does not do this, to me,  if you go a bit further into the program of Issuu then it's no more then a publishing ploy to get you to pay money for use of this type of publishing format. So while I started to use this program for document sharing I had to only provide the link to an interesting article to the ongoing saga of Maldacena and Susskind. I had to also substitute the main article by Maldacena,  with news story

See Also:

• A Black Hole Mystery Wrapped in a Firewall Paradox
• The black-hole information paradox, complementarity, and firewalls