Free Thought

Dressing Up Science: Richard Feynman And The Costume Parties Of Al Hibbs (Synopsis)

esiegel — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 05:01:42 +0000

Dressing Up Science: Richard Feynman And The Costume Parties Of Al Hibbs (Synopsis)

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." -Richard Feynman

Scientists have long had a reputation for being uptight, serious, and even killjoy personalities. But 50+ years ago, Richard Feynman was forcing everyone who felt that way to challenge their assumptions. With his brash attitude and fun-seeking personality, Feynman seemingly was most at home when he was at his most outrageous.

Feynman at the Myths and Legends Party dressed as “God.” His wife, Gweneth, is dressed as Medusa, with a rock as her date. Image credit: from Christopher Sykes, No Ordinary Genius.

With Halloween on its way, what better way to celebrate than to take a look back at Feynman’s costumed antics, often taking place at the April Fools costume parties of his friend and former student, Al Hibbs? From irreverently dressing as a Ladakhi monk, Queen Elizabeth II, or even God himself, Feynman was always game for pushing the envelope and having a good time.

Richard Feynman dressed as a Ladakhi monk, painted by Sylvia Posner. Image credit: Sylvia Posner.

Come celebrate Halloween in a unique way: with the costumes of one of the 20th century’s greatest physicists, thanks to the incredible storytelling of Paul Halpern!

esiegel Tue, 10/24/2017 - 01:01

Tags

Physics

Random Stuff

Categories

Free Thought

Another funny story about him was that he was a prankster. When he worked on the Manhattan Project, he would crack safes and leave notes reading "guess who?" for the security officers to find.

A costume of 'Queen Elizabeth II,' later revealed at the end of the night to be Richard Feynman

LATER REVEALED? They couldn't tell? Damn!!!!! Dedicated scientists starved of female companions or what!!!

I wonder what the probability is that I left my sum-over-histories back at the house?

A Wheeler quote for CFT and MM (which Feynman agreed with).

No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.

Star Trek: Discovery Goes Psychic & Psychedelic in 'Lethe': Season 1, Episode 6 Review (Synopsis)

esiegel — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 06:33:55 +0000

Star Trek: Discovery Goes Psychic & Psychedelic in 'Lethe': Season 1, Episode 6 Review (Synopsis)

"To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves." -Federico García Lorca

In an episode filled with Vulcan mindmelds, Klingon treachery, a spectacular nebula, themes of racial purity, and PTSD, you’d think all the ingredients were there for a spectacular episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Instead, describing it as a hot mess would be overly generous; this episode is just a disappointment as far as just about every avenue is concerned. Except for the Captain Lorca / Admiral Cornwell scenes, there’s really nothing to like about where this goes.

While running her fingers over his scars on his back while Lorca sleeps, Cornwell suddenly finds herself with a phaser pointed in her face. She understandably doubts whether Lorca is fit to command a vessel as high-priority as Discovery. Image credit: Ben Mark Holzberg/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.

From a psilocybin-ed out Stamets to an increasingly annoying Lilly, to a jackass version of Sarek to a blame-assigning Burnham who can’t believe that the galaxy isn’t fair, this episode is full of weak points. For a show that’s attempting to be an action/drama, this episode is very short on both the action and the drama. The Cornwell/Lorca scenes can’t save the episode, and the science part of the science fiction never even appears.

Some rare galaxies exhibit a green glow thanks to the presence of doubly ionized oxygen. This requires UV light from stellar temperatures of 50,000 K and above. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and W. Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), of NGC 5972.

After a promising fifth episode, Star Trek: Discovery returns to its worst impulses in Episode 6, ‘Lethe’.

esiegel Mon, 10/23/2017 - 02:33

Tags

Star Trek

Categories

Free Thought

Hmm. I actually quite liked this one, better than the last. The segway into 'Sareks Sophies Choice" worked pretty well and didn't trample cannon. And the Captains issues were interesting though I thought they would have reigned him in long ago. It seems the Discovery is Starfleets most important asset/weapon. They don't have any others?

Not sure why they need to take real weapons on the holodeck for the simulations. And why did they need armor? And maybe its me, but the sound the Klingons made when they died (all the same) and the way they disappeared looked and sounded almost exactly like the alien deaths in a classic arcade shoot-em-up game called Area 51 which I got hooked on for a while!!

In the end of the last episode and the beginning of this we see the see -through Klingon shuttle pods that look more like something out of Flash Gordon (the Queen movie version). And the Discovery shuttle had a long ramp up to enter it that disappears a couple of seconds later. AND the shuttle flew out through the containment field. The old Enterprise required depressurization right? Oh well.

Just heard season 2 has been renewed. I will stick with it for now. The trailer at the end of this episode for the next one is the first that got me excited to see the next one - a 30 minute time loop. Yeah.

Got my copy of Treknology. More on that in your new blog. It is quite beautifully produced with lots of nice illustrations etc so hopefully this will end up being a popular stocking stuffer and make you rich beyond your dreams of avarice :-) Only got to the third section so far but I like how the first two are present tense and then after the first paragraph of the third you switched to past tense describing the first warp drive - got a kick out of that!!

As a critic said, the only thing funny about Star Trek Discovery, is its acronym: STD...they really should have thought that one through a bit more, it's almost as bad as 'Research Into Psychically Oriented Flying Fowl'.
.
Orville is the real biological successor to Star Trek, as the co-producer is actually from the original Trek series, and who apparently wasn't too happy with J.J Abrams did to his baby and the abandonment of Start Trek Canon as set up by Roddenberry.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9juvAoaPu4
.
I think Orville is building a strong fan base pretty quickly.

IMO, the Orville should just keep doing what it's doing, and just polish and perfect it. Let the actors relax and mold into the characters. And build on the universe they are creating.

They shouldn't be drawn in to try to make it more ST like, or more comedy like. Trying to fill the shoes of ST legacy is not what Orville I think ever started of with, nor should it try to do as popularity rises. The tone and tempo they set in last 3-4 episodes is great. Just keep making them and avoid outside noise and hype.

Have you noticed how on Rotten Tomatoes that STD is 83 with critics and 58 with viewers, yet Orville is 19 with critics and 92 with viewers?

Man, I had a boner with a capital 'O'.

Oh boy, that was a tenuous reference even for me.

The thing that CBS, Abrams and critics it seems, don't understand is what ST was really about for the audience which then became fans. They are treating it like so many things before.. here's a product i.e. ST.. this is our new vision of the brand and franchise!

But we already had a vision which we loved and followed while it lasted. What we, the fans, wanted was for someone to pick it up and continue with it. We never asked or wanted "re-invention" of the brand. Someone else's "vision" of what ST "ought" to really be like. And that's the issue. That, and the completely un-realistic characters, plot developments and conclusions...

For a war and heavy sci-fi, Battlestar Galactica holds the throne, and STD looks like a toddler in that setting.

Orville, on the other hand shows, that it's not about the "brand", it is about the vision and the way of telling it, is what it was/is all about.

@Sinisa Lazarek #5,
Another series that no one seems to acknowledge as one of the most thoughtful dystopias ever made is CAPRICA. It's what went on before BattleStar Galactica, and it paints a chilling portrait of a society slipping into madness and decline as it's own decadence and vices consume it morally from below while it's run away technology is rotting it out mentally from within. Since the show aired, I have been alarmed at how our society is literally following in its footsteps, especially in regard to lusting after the wonderous promises of AI.

That was quick!!

https://shop.startrek.com/dept/discovery-disco-t-shirt?src=MSGR307067&p…

great.. now the word "disco" is trademarked.. rofl..

I'm gonna trademark "enter", "voya", "deepsp"

OK, so the USS Vengeance did have a hole in the saucer. But thats JJs timeline, and nothing rotated.

Check out this awesome model of the ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOty2weC-Nk

Got a hotel near us that MM will never be able to get to ;-)

https://www.oneoceanresort.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2b7Ar_eL1wIVgYd-Ch2fW…

So Ethan, Einstein owed his insights in part to imagining what the consequences of traveling at the speed of light would look like. What would we 'see'.

It may not mean anything to ask this question, but what if we could go faster than c? What would we 'see'? What consequences would there be? What would it mean for E=mc2? How about time?

@SB #11:
Relativity implies mass mass would become an imaginary number and time would flow backwards (braking causality).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

Imaginary mass going backwards in time....
So I would start going back to where i cam from and would get younger. Wow.

Thanks Frank. Cracking link.

@SB:
Here is a crazy thought experiment (which I think I had read somewhere):

Imagine you are in a spaceship in Earth orbit and watching a live TV broadcast. Later your spaceship starts moving straight in any direction you chose. You keep increasing speed towards speed of light.

What would happen?
You would see the (live) broadcast video slowing down!

And if you could reach speed of of light exactly, then the broadcast video would freeze!

And if you could go faster than speed of light, then the broadcast video would start going backwards!

@SB:
And those situations with time are actually what would be happening to you from people of Earth point of view.

If I truly went backwards in time at the standard rate would I get younger or older?
What if it turns out that we can time travel, but when we get there we are as we were or would be at that time.

@SB:
Good questions. :-)

According to Relativity, when someone travels close to speed of light using a spaceship, time slows down for the spaceship and everyone inside of it. They travel to future but not because of moving faster in time. It is the opposite, they move slower in time, so they age slower. And time in rest of the Universe moves forward at normal rate. So people of the spaceship travel to future, but it happens like a side effect.

So what would happen, if the spaceship moving faster than speed of light, is not really travel to past. The people in the spaceship would get younger, but time for rest of the Universe would not flow backwards. It would still move forward during the travel of the spaceship.

So if the spaceship came back to Earth, the crew would not find themselves in the past. (But they would be younger.)

(So there would be no danger of Grandfather Paradox, meaning causality would not be broken. But if someone used a wormhole to travel to past (assuming also possible) then causality would be broken (Grandfather Paradox).)

I didn't like this episode at all, but I did love Ethan's review! Spot on!

The only thing I definitely liked about this episode was the mention of Spock, and the way they tied Sarek's choice to reserve his son's spot in the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, at the expense of Michael's spot, a choice that was wasted. It was interesting to see a depiction of Vulcan racism... it unintentionally (there's no way these chumps did something subtly good on purpose) reflects on Spock's kolinahr failure in the movies.

There was another thing that seemed crazy at first, but grew on me: Captain Lorca sleeping with a phaser. I think that makes perfect sense, and in fact all starfleet personnel should do so in wartime. After all, they've known for almost a year now that the Klingons have cloaking technology, and we also know that ships don't usually hang out with their shields on... they wait to turn them on when they've detected danger, not before. So, as far as anyone knows, Klingons could easily beam into their bedrooms whenever they feel like it. Maybe keep the safety on, though, and pair it with a shield, in case of battleth attack. Maybe a chainmail pillow? No, chainmail everything!

Things I didn't like:

The vulcans. Being emotionally controlled does not mean being a jerk. Being diplomatic doesn't mean being a jerk. It seems odd that the one outward emotion Sarek allows himself is being snide.

The suicide bomber vulcan situation is terribly illogical. Shouldn't the guy want to conclude the mission first? There's no reason not to, as far as he knows. Why be a suicide bomber when he could just plant a bomb, or do literally anything else, then escape... he only has one target! Why does he announce himself as he's shooting up with the glowing mystery bomb goo, giving Sarek time to react? Why, given the weakness of the explosion, doesn't he latch on to Sarek, or maybe do this whole thing in another room, maybe next to the engines or some other explosive ship component like the antimatter containment pod?

Plus, the suicide bomber thing doesn't fit in well with vucan lore in the first place.

The vulcan mind meld: Why the heck would they need to do a mind meld when their minds were already linked even more than that? Plus, the whole point of a mind meld is that they have to put their hands on pressure points and things like that, but they're already just mental constructs!

Vulcan ships have no voice commands? How logical is that? Heck, why doesn't it send out an emergency beacon automatically?

What the heck was Sarek typing during the bomber's monologue? I thought he was trying to set up a force field or beam the other guy off the ship, but nothing came of it. Why didn't he just hit the big green emergency beacon?

Why do all the spaceships of the future have such terrible controls?

I can see that they might have a holodeck, since they had a prototype on Enterprise, even if they never mentioned it on TOS, but I agree that it seems weird that they would bring in real phasers.

The holodeck target practice: It's like everyone always forgets that they can make their beams wider. "I shot 22!" "Well, I shot all 22 at once, chew on that!" I can't think of many reasons not to keep your phaser on wide mode at all times. Oh, especially if you're keeping it under your pillow! If you're the only one who's supposed to be in the room, and bad guys beam in or whatever, just soak the entire room, because anyone in there not you deserves what they get. Maybe keep it on heavy stun though, just in case you're getting space pranked.

Tyler's promotion: That seems like quite a number of steps up, to go from random lieutenant to security chief, let alone the fact that he's telegraphing 'spy' just as hard as he can.

The Klingon Cloaking Device Situation: I do think Star Fleet forgot they saw this in action in episode one. The heck?

Admiral Cornwell: What a train wreck. She's worried that Lorca's in control of the Discovery, a super duper important ship, but isn't worried that he blew up the Glenn? She's worried that he has PTSD, then has sex with a subordinate officer? He admits that he lied on his psych evals, and to her, (plus aiming a phaser at her) but she doesn't relieve him of duty right then and there? She sees that Lorca's unstable and armed with a phaser, and turns her back on him?

I really thought Lorca was going to just phaser her in the back, then cover it up somehow.

Why is it possible to lie on the psych eval? They have perfect lie detectors in Star Trek!

Tilly: So, before the series began, there was talk of making the bold choice to have someone on the crew who was autistic. That's great, but what I've realized is that everyone on the ship with more than a minute of screen time (so, maybe not the doctor?) is either autistic (Tilly and the science guy just are, Saru is because he's an alien, Michael because she was raised by aliens, Sarek because he's being poorly written), or a psychopath (Lorca for sure, and Tyler if he's really a double agent).

The Vulcan Expeditionary Group: First, how is this a thing that exists as a separate entity alongside Star Fleet? If it's just a separate fleet of just Vulcan ships, you'd think their problem would be filling spots on their ships, since it would be more logical to just stay home. Don't they need grunts? Why is there a hard limit on their group's members?

Running: Michael and Tilly are treating their light jog as if they're running a timed race. As any runner knows, if you can talk when you're running, you're getting a light aerobic workout, not racing. Also, they're running through populated ship's corridors! Shouldn't they have some stationary exercise equipment somewhere, maybe with a wee holographic projector to make it more fun? Speaking of which, why are they the only two running? If that's a thing, shouldn't there be a percentage of the crew running this way at any given time?

At this point, I'm thinking that the entire episode was just a setup for getting the Michael-Sarek mind link out in the open, so they'll use it later when they don't have any other means of communication. It just won't be a surprise to anyone anymore. If so, it's a waste of one of a limited number of episodes.

@Steve Blackband

I thought the shuttle launch through the force field was weird too... The other weird thing is that the force field in sick bay worked the same way, Michael walked right through it. Not even sure why it was there, since he's not sick, he just had a gut wound. We're guessing that it's the future equivalent to a really bad privacy curtain.

Comments of the Week: Final edition?

esiegel — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 06:01:53 +0000

Comments of the Week: Final edition?

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” -Cassandra Clare

Well, the cat's out of the bag. A little over a week ago, Scienceblogs announced to us writers that they no longer had the funds to keep the site operational, and so they would be shutting down. They asked us to keep quiet about this, people didn't and now you know. As of the end of this month, there will be no new articles here on Scienceblogs, and hence, no more comments of the week or synopses, or a chance to interact here. So what can you do? Well, the top thing I'd like you to do is support me on Patreon, where I can start posting all the same content I would normally post here, and you can:

comment,
respond to one another,
post your own inquiries,
respond to one another's inquiries,
and where I can respond to comments as I choose.

It's the best option I can offer, as I'm already on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and even Google+, and try to respond to as many comments in as many places as I can.

Book cover for my new book: Treknology. Image credit: Voyageur Press / Quarto Publishing Group.

Also, for those of you who want to order an autographed copy of Treknology from me, I have the first copies of the book, mailers and other shipping materials are due to arrive on Tuesday, and then I can head to the post office for pricing on shipping. Expect US copies to run about $30, Canada copies to run about $40, and elsewhere in the world to be somewhere in the $50-$60 range. (Sorry, international folks!) Or, you know, just buy it now from Amazon and don't wait! (But if you get it from a third-party seller, know that neither me nor my publisher makes any money.) If you want an unbiased opinion of the book, here is the official TrekCore review. Either way, I'll have the full and final update next week. So I'm sorry to lose this forum and this archive of articles going back nearly a decade, and especially this bizarre and unique community we've built here. But like everything in the Universe, the past is gone and we can only move forward into the future as best we can.

And now, for perhaps the final time, let's dive on into our Comments of the Week!

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Tomruen, viahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_libration_with_phase_Oct_2007_4….

From Art Glick on how the near side of the Moon never sees Earth rise or set: "If you were an observer on the Moon, the Earth would hang there eternally in the same exact location, day after day, year after year, century after century. It would never move!"

Yup. I have no disagreement with this, the mild, tiny effects of lunar libration (shown above) aside. In fact, many years ago, I wrote a piece entitled It's never night on the moon, where I talk about what you'll see from the lunar surface at various locations and under various conditions. In the end, however, I do mention the one reprieve you'd get from seeing the Earth all lit up:

Image credit: JAXA / NHK, Kaguya / Selene, of a lunar eclipse as the Earth rises over the lunar limb.

During a total lunar eclipse! Pretty beautiful, no matter how you slice it.

Perceived knowledge vs. actual knowledge. Image credit: Justin Kruger and David Dunning, 1999.

From Alan G. on the fight club of reason: "The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger Club is that it’s members aren’t ware they are in the Dunning-Kruger Club."

You know, this is not only true, but I love the (sarcastic) way that John Cleese, who happens to be friends with David Dunning, puts it.

It isn't stupidity, per se, but rather expertise in any arena. For example, you may think you know all there is to know about cars, since how complicated could they possibly be? But then when your car fails to start, can you make it start immediately? On the first try? Do you know how to diagnose the problem, and which parts to check? Do you know whether it's a fuse or the starter or a problem with the ignition switch or a dead battery? And if you don't know, could you admit to yourself that you don't know, and that you need to take it to a professional? The lack of respect for those who are experts is a symptom of a larger problem, often on display here, that people think they know more than they do, and simultaneously think that bona fide experts know less than they do. So you pick the expert opinions you can find that agree with your opinions, and use that to justify your reasoning. That's thinking like a lawyer, and that approach is fruitless in science. The Universe is what it is. It's up to us to figure it out. If you want to learn, you must be humble before the Universe. Many of you do this; the rest of you can start today if you choose. It's up to you.

The gaussian curvature in three dimensions can produce interesting two-dimensional effects. If we want our 3D space curved in a particular way, we'd need to look at it from a 4th spatial dimension. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Sam Derbyshire.

From Frank on the curvature of the Universe: "What if Universe is surface of a 4d sphere where 3d surface (space) curved in the 4th dimension (time)?"

Well, there is curvature in the fourth dimension, but the laws of relativity tell you how the relationship between space and time occur. There's no wiggle-room or free parameters in there. If you want the Universe to be the surface of a 4D sphere, you need an extra spatial dimension. There are many physics theories that consider exactly that scenario, and they are constrained but not ruled out.

A Universe that expands and cools today, like ours does, must have been hotter and denser in the past. Initially, the Big Bang was regarded as the singularity from which this ultimate, hot, dense state emerged. But we know better today. Image credit: NASA / GSFC.

From Steve Blackband on other Big Bangs: "I am struggling with how to think about ‘other big bangs’. There is nothing, not even space or time, then there is our big bang, the expanding universe and outside of that no space and time."

You are thinking of the Big Bang as meaning "the birth of space and time." This is no longer the definition of the Big Bang, and it was always an assumption that turned out not to be very good. Here is an article I wrote years ago (before you started reading me, I bet!) that might help clear things up.

Image credit: © 2015 Shaper Helix — II Demo, via http://www.alevelsolutions.com/pure-mathematics.

From Michael Mooney on a math lesson he's about to get: "So when there is no end to how close the repeating .999 decimal gets to 1, the convention is to call it 1. But no matter how close it gets to 1, it’s still not there yet. Like .999 % of a pie still has an ever-diminishing missing slice gap."

You know, I remember being unconvinced that 0.99999.... would equal 1, so I set out to test it out. Mathematics is a wonderfully self-consistent system, so you can do this experiment yourself. You don't need advanced math. In fact, consider this your very, very first algebra lesson. Imagine we have this repeating decimal, 0.99999...., and we're going to call that x. Okay? So we can write: x = 0.999999.... and so on. As many 9s as we can write, and then they go on forever. Now, let me ask you this: what if you had ten xs all together? In other words, multiply both side of that equation, above, by 10. What do you get? 10x = 9.999999..... and again, so on. So we have two equations: x = 0.999999.... and 10x = 9.999999.... Let's subtract the first equation from the second equation. Ready? 10x - x = 9.9999999.... - 0.99999999.... So we do the subtraction, and can you see what happens here? The left side just becomes 9x, but the right side becomes... just 9, all on its own! If 9x = 9, then x = 1. Now, I had the same question as you, once, but once I learned how to do this proof, there was no more questioning. I had proven it, just as countless others before me had, and countless others after me will. x, which we had defined as 0.99999.... is also provably equal to 1.

The USS Discovery, NCC-1031, is perhaps a very thinly-veiled reference to Star Trek's 'Section 31,' and things could get a lot darker before anyone goes back to being an explorer. Image credit: Star Trek / CBS Press Kit.

From Sinisa Lazarek on Swear Trek: "– we get a first ever “FUCK” word in Star Trek… ever. And that by a Cadet in front of officers. Not only is phrase never spoken in ST universe… but we even get more fucks with 2 other people there. Like ST script was only missing that word, and now we’ll multiply."

Yeah, Tilly swears. And then others do it, too. Honestly, I didn't even notice until someone I was watching it with pointed it out. But Tilly is pretty much the audience surrogate: an awkward superfan of everything in the show who gets to be roommates with Michael Burnham. I seriously think Burnham could blow up the entire Earth and Tilly would still be her fan. I am doing my best with this show to "chew on the meat and throw away the bones," otherwise I think, like many others, I'll wind up disappointed.

The warrior that Burnham kills is given the traditional Klingon death ritual... and then predictably used as a political tool to start a war. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.

From Denier on the role of the Klingons in episode 5: "Klingons were back to being one dimensional villains who all spoke English and served their regular role to move the plot along. That, more than anything else, made this episode better."

You know, I did notice this change, and I liked it very much. Hopefully, we'll see less of the fundamentalist theocrat Klingons speaking Klingon and a lot more of... well, everything else.

Burnham, in the first two episodes alone, gets a fatal dose of radiation poisoning, activates a Klingon probe and kills its guardian, mutinies against and knocks out the Captain, and then kills the Klingon leader. Image credit: Jan Thijs, © 2017 CBS Interactive.

From Anonymous Coward on the end of Scienceblogs: "Ethan, I read both you and Orac here on ScienceBlogs and Orac has just mentioned that ScienceBlogs will soon be shutting down for good at the end of the month. There going to be another place where we can see your article summaries and make discussion like this, other than on Forbes itself?"

Unfortunately, unless you come and join my Patreon (asking at least $1 a month is a lot, I know), there's nothing else quite like what we've been doing here. I used to run startswithabang.com and would consider it again, but I simply don't have the time to run my own blog and deal with all the hacks and updates that routinely happen on top of all the things I'm creating at this time.

In the final moments of merging, two neutron stars don't merely emit gravitational waves, but a catastrophic explosion that echoes across the electromagnetic spectrum. Image credit: University of Warwick / Mark Garlick.

From Michael Tiemann on neutron star collisions: "When two neutron stars have been circling each other for 11 billion years, what is the relative velocity of their “collision” when they do collide?"

About a third the speed of light. Pretty impressive, don't you think?

Geordi's VISOR from Star Trek: TNG. Image credit: Memory Alpha.

From Gail Farley on a new Treknology that's been developed quite recently: "Thank you for educating people about technology on Coast to Coast last night and in your book. You stated last night that you were concerned about a technology that can implant memories, and effect the body, including the loss of sight. Please tell me what kind of technology that is, so that I can research it further."

In 2012, a group at Monash University build a working device to transmit optical information directly to the wearer's brain, through an implant in the visual cortex. If you want to get even deeper into the real-life science than my book does, you can read the 2016 article: Monash Vision Group’s Gennaris Cortical Implant for Vision Restoration.

We knew that when two neutron stars merge, as simulated here, they create gamma-ray burst jets, as well as other electromagnetic phenomena. But whether you produce a neutron star or a black hole, as well as how much of a UV/optical counterpart is produced, should be strongly mass-dependent. Image credit: NASA / Albert Einstein Institute / Zuse Institute Berlin / M. Koppitz and L. Rezzolla.

From Omega Centauri and Michael Kelsey on the newest LIGO/Virgo/EM discoveries: "(1) What is the estimate of the NS masses? (2) How did they come up with the age of the NS system? (3) What is the estimated rate of mergers per cube a billion light years on a side? (4) If both NS are near the minimum mass of a NS, can we get a NS rather than BH. (5) Do we expect of significant gamma-ray burst from a BH NS merger? 1) About a solar mass each. 2) Use PSR B1913+16. 3) Not as high as for BH mergers. 4) Yes. 5) Yes."

You may also really, really appreciate the information I gleaned from the theoretical end from an interview a few days ago with Chris Fryer at Los Alamos. That article, in case you missed it, is here.

The quasar QSO J0842+1835, whose path was gravitationally altered by Jupiter in 2002, allowing an indirect confirmation that the speed of gravity equals the speed of light. Image credit: Fomalont et al. (2000), ApJS 131, 95-183, via http://www.jive.nl/svlbi/vlbapls/J0842+1835.htm.

From CFT on the speed of gravity: "IF gravity traveled at the speed of light, how do you explain the actual orbits of planets around the sun?"

Not that you'll learn anything from this, but the actual answer is that, in the context of General Relativity, if gravity moved at any other speed, we wouldn't get the orbits that we see! I wrote an article on the indirect evidence (independent of any gravitational wave detections) that the speed of gravity is equal to the speed of light some time ago, and all that analysis is still valid today. Since, CFT, you're such a fan of getting info from "real" experts, you know, experts not named Ethan, maybe you'll listen to the research of the awesome GR expert Steve Carlip, who wrote up this account of the actual evidence you claim is missing?

The soft capture mechanism installed on Hubble (illustration) uses a Low Impact Docking System (LIDS) interface and associated relative navigation targets for future rendezvous, capture, and docking operations. The system’s LIDS interface is designed to be compatible with the rendezvous and docking systems to be used on the next-generation space transportation vehicle. Image credit: NASA.

From Elle H.C. on kickstarting the saving of Hubble: "Get a Kickstarter-thingy and you might get enough funding by the end of the month."

Well, let's do the math on that. The most Kickstartered-thing ever, as far as I know, is Pebble Time, which is a smartwatch company that had a couple of successful Kickstarters. They raised just slightly north of $20 million. Only three things (two of which are Pebble) have crested the $10 million mark, and there are only about a dozen more that are over $5 million. On the other hand, to boost Hubble would require approximately $500 million, if I'm ballpark-estimating appropriately. You are way better off going to an Elon Musk or a Richard Branson or Roscosmos if NASA won't do it. That sort of money just doesn't seem feasible.

This diagram shows the novel 5-mirror optical system of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Before reaching the science instruments the light is first reflected from the telescope's giant concave 39-metre segmented primary mirror (M1), it then bounces off two further 4-metre-class mirrors, one convex (M2) and one concave (M3). The final two mirrors (M4 and M5) form a built-in adaptive optics system to allow extremely sharp images to be formed at the final focal plane. Image credit: ESO.

From lyle on the oversimplified joke-science that is IFLS: "Further if this article is correct : http://www.iflscience.com/space/telescopes-ground-may-be-cheaper-hubble-shows-why-they-are-not-enough/ “When E-ELT observations start in 2024, the state-of-the-art correction for atmospheric distortion will allow it to provide images 16 times sharper than those taken by Hubble."

This is the big problem you get when you get your science from not only non-scientists, but non-journalists. They are, over at IFLS, basically news readers and re-writers, and they rarely know (or care) enough to put it in context. I've written, recently, about the ELT at length, and it's true that it will have 16 times the resolution of Hubble at certain wavelengths and for certain classes of observations in the cases where atmospheric distortion can be 100% removed, which is never. The scientific fact is there are a whole slew of observations, including UV observations and IR observations, that Hubble can make that no ground-based observatory can. Hubble's lack of atmospheric distortion is incredible, and something no ground-based observatory, even with the best AO there is, can match. In summary, F IFLS, and please don't ever expect anything beyond superficial, partially correct information from them.

The possibility of having artificial gravity is tantalizing, but it is predicated on the existence of negative gravitational mass. Antimatter may be that mass, but we don't yet know, experimentally. Image credit: Rolf Landua / CERN.

From Omega Centauri on the problem of artificial gravity: "Even if anti-matter produces anti-grav, you would need a heck of a lot of it to get 1G. How much mass is needed to create 1G (depends on density, at the average density of about 5 the mass of the earth is needed. Denser matter, and you could get by with less. But, its a huge amount no matter how you do it, and presumably it is also inertial mass, which kind of makes spacecraft difficult to accelerate."

All true. But I will say that I am much more excited about a problem that it is physically possible to solve than one that isn't, and antigravitating antimatter would enable that transformation when it comes to artificial gravity. Now, who has the stable white dwarf matter to build your spaceship out of... and the anti-white-dwarf antimatter, too?

Captain Gabriel Lorca aboard the bridge of the Discovery, during a simulated combat mission with the Klingons. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.

From Douglas Robertson on artificial gravity vs. life support: "What I find funny about fictional artificial gravity is when they are experiencing an emergency. All life support is shut down, but they still have gravity."

Must be a passive system, then. See, not so hard to explain!

Neutron stars, when they merge, can exhibit gravitational wave and electromagnetic signals simultaneously, unlike black holes. But the details of the merger are quite puzzling, as the theoretical models don't quite match what we've observed. Image credit: Dana Berry / Skyworks Digital, Inc.

And finally, from Adam on the origin of gamma rays from the NS-NS merger: "Could the omnidirectional gamma ray bursts be coming from the ejecta themselves? It seems like the process of going from a lump of neutronium to all those heavy elements is a lot like the fission reaction of an atomic bomb – just one the with the mass of 30 to 40 Jupiters."

I doubt it. The ejecta occur on the timescale of hundreds of milliseconds, but the gamma ray burst occurred 1.7 seconds after the gravitational wave signal arrived, so I don't think that's a dealbreaker but I also don't think that lines up. Moreover, the ejecta come mostly from wind interactions in a disk surrounding the neutron stars, so I also don't think that's as likely a source as the ultra-high energies released in the star-star collision. I think it's likely where the surfaces collide that produces such a high-energy, transient burst, but as with all things science, it's going to take some additional evidence to know for certain! Thanks for a great everything, everyone, and we'll have one final just-for-you article next weekend. See you then!

esiegel Sun, 10/22/2017 - 02:01

Tags

Comments of the Week

Categories

Free Thought

"Now, I had the same question as you, once, but once I learned how to do this proof, there was no more questioning. I had proven it, just as countless others before me had, and countless others after me will. x, which we had defined as 0.99999…. is also provably equal to 1."

That proof assumes the existence of limits and the convergence issues of the decimal, but it is a good demonstration. The problem is with the lack of knowledge of the targets who don't believe the equality. There is too much lack of understanding of mathematics to get past. I don't think it's simple coincidence that people who won't take the time to learn the math also won't take the time to learn anything about science (or, more commonly here in West Michigan, vaccine safety).

Best of luck in your future endeavors. Will there ever come an explanation for why the overlords here decided to shut down everything?

So you pick the expert opinions you can find that agree with your opinions, and use that to justify your reasoning.

Or, quite often, you find those with opinions that you find appealing or subversive, and that's how you decide they're an expert.

Must be a passive system, then.

Pretty much. The TNG Technical Manual writers addressed that by inventing devices that produce pseudo-gravitons by spinning at several tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, suspended magnetically inside their containers. They don't need to be fed power continuously and will produce synthetic gravity for several hours after last receiving a "kick" from the power grid.

Of course, I've always been dubious of how much power the life support systems could even be using compared to stuff like the engines or shields. It seems a bit like a nuclear aircraft carrier captain trying to squeeze out more speed by turning off the freezers where they store the food. But, drama.

@dean: Ad revenue has imploded this past year, so I assume the site is just broke. At least one site I frequent gave up on ads entirely because they were no longer worth the hassle for how little money they were bringing in, and it now depends on subscriptions and donations to pay for hosting and writers.

The mathematical sleight of hand in the proof is saying 10x = 9.99999...
You have not exactly defined how multiplication works on non-terminating numerical representations, and instead used the tradition of 'shifting the decimal point'.

But as a general illustration of the point, it will do.

#mathpedant

I am familiar with limits in calculus, and No, I don't agree with certain assumptions being made about them in the name of convention and how they are used. Calculus wants it both ways, it wants to expand something small and straighten it out for ease of computation to discern difference (a la .999 vs .99999 or 1), then pull back and claim there is no difference, they are a point, you can't actually have it both ways except as an illusion of perspective and convenience. If two points appear close, you can pretend they are the same, but they aren't. It does not matter how far you pull back, they still aren't. For the sake of pushing your calculation (good enough for union work) you can treat them that way, but that changes nothing. If I pull away from the earth by a billion light years and then observe how our entire solar system appears, I could call it a point. It still isn't.
.
Anyone who has played with several different calculators and computers also knows that different systems have different numbers of decimal point accuracy. This can become a problem in math classes especially when in relation to how numbers are rounded or handled in calculation, and is a huge problem in reiterative calculation where the limitations of decimal approximation can become quite large. Calling .999... =1 is an approximation as far as computation goes. Hackers and accountants have been playing with loopholes in these discrepancies in actual computations for decades and they aren't trivial. The thing I love about computation is that it demonstrates where the edges of human mathematical assumptions of convenience part ways with what the actual operation of the computation is itself. To a calculator or computer, calculation is never abstract, there is no such thing inside a computer, it is always finite. .9999... is an abstraction because it actually isn't a fixed number at all, its actually a repeating process that keeps getting longer forever, that's what 'infinitely repeating' means, you can talk about it, but you can't actually do it, it's equivalent to 'keep going that a-way!' and pretend it's a finite set amount or set length. In practice, you can use the first tiny part of PI, but NO, you can't actually use the entire number, you will only approximate it in calculation, and YES, that is a big deal, you can read up on how many digits you calculate PI to IS important to various scientific calculations, especially reiterative calculations (rinse, repeat 10 billion times, etc) which are things computers excel at.
.
.99 =/= .999, .999=/= .9999, .9999=/= .99999 . You can have your .999 etc approximated by any FINITE number of 9s, and then someone else comes along and makes the calculation with one more decimal place of accuracy with another 9, and there would be a difference. Ethan is also sidestepping the entire issue with what he is actually doing, if you don't have the infinite time to add up each of the '9s' in your infinite series, you certainly don't have time to subtract them or multiply them either, except as hand waved shorthand inference, which is where he was in the first place with summing over an infinite series, sleight of hand by moving a decimal is all he did and called it proof. You can infer and assume, but you can't actually do an infinite number of operations in a proof, neither can a computer, eventually it too is limited to what it can do in a finite amount of time with a finite number of decimal spaces with a finite amount of memory.
.
In answer to question #2,
I tried looking into this. It's messy. The site was started with a grant from SEED media group by a man named Adam Bly. There are a lot of organizations involved with SEED media group, and it does explain a lot about the left leaning political social-engineering undercurrents of many of the sections. ScienceBlog.com was involved in a scandal of sorts in 2010 when it was being accused of outright propaganda due to some corporate sponsored articles involving PesiCo. I don't think it ever fully recovered.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScienceBlogs
.
Since then, it would appear there might have been some sort of financial damage done, and advertising revenue wasn't enough.
Long story short,
.
They ran out of money.

Ok, as to whole Gravity plate in the deck thing, what happens when you stand on a diving board? You are pushing down on it with your weight. If I could some how make the decking pull you down to it using gravity, why would this not in turn push against the deck? This is what you are doing. Gravity is not magnetism. You would actually start to propel your ship in the direction of the gravity drive pulling or pushing you (this trick can actually be exploited in Space engineers, you merely orient a mass block below your gravity generator, and it falls, pulling your ship with it. If this was intentional and you want to go that direciton, great, otherwise, it might make steering a wee bit difficult if your ship is always having to correct for all the mass pushing in one direction (relatively downwards to the decking). I'm thinking of Star Trek, Star Wars horizontal deck layouts in this scenario

CFT, you contradict yourself immediately. You clearly don't have any understanding of limits or calculus in general. We do not make any distinction between the non-terminating decimal of 9s and 1. That is simply your failure to understand.

"No, I don’t agree with certain assumptions being made about them in the name of convention and how they are used. "

That simply means you are wrong. How did you fail so monumentally at so many areas of educationm

@Ethan,

Mh, it's a numbing feeling to hear that your blog is going to stop (here). I had some great times and learned a lot, you're quite unique!

Mathematicians often forget that even abstract operations imagined outside of time are not possible in actual calculations. Every mathematical operation ever done takes some non zero amount of time to perform. There are no exceptions, unless the mathematician is going to delve off into the pure fantasy of meta time, sequentially observing time outside of time, which is just an attempt to evade the issue.
.
When you multiply a .999 by 10, logically and mechanically, you aren't just moving one decimal point, you are moving every single number in the series one decimal place to the right. The visible shorthand convention is not what is actually happening (the movement of one "."), you have to analyze the change that is occurring to each and every decimal place in the series. If you were to actually multiply an infinitely repeating number by 10, you would also be moving an infinitely repeating number of decimal places. In fact this is just sleight of short-hand, it's the same issue as before with the summing over problem, just with rearranged terms (he's just surreptitiously moved the ball from one hand to the other and claimed it disappeared). This is why I eschew operations involving infinity in actual calculations, as any good programmer should, it's considered a no-no, an infinite loop error, and it really mucks things up with memory and gets your boss mad at you.

Ethan: " In fact, consider this your very, very first algebra lesson."
How utterly, presumptuous and condescending! I said I am not a mathematician, not that I never took a class in algebra.
See my comments in the "Finite or Infinite" post, #79 for a reality check outside the games mathematicians play.

Note: It figures that your new propaganda platform for fame, fortune and fantasy/ opinion (presented as established science) will require payment for membership. Count me out.
I imagine a sigh of relief. You sure don't tolerate criticism, which makes you a very biased non-scientist.

CFT, the issue with the changing decimals is what the details if limits and series explains. Study it.

Mooney, your outrage is false. Your comments in the math have never been a reality check -- they've always been the rants of a person who took trivial and non-substantive classes in areas not related to science but pretends to know something useful.

@CFT: the mathematical underpinning for the real numbers is a wonderful course to take in college, and one I loved in my Math degree.
Taking such a course would help you understand exactly how real numbers make sense, and what mathematicians use to justify it all.

For example, the square root of 2 can be represented by an equivalence group, 'all series of positive rational numbers that converge to a value, that squared equals 2'
And yes, by this point, we are no longer talking about concrete number values, but things that behave so much like numbers that well, let's just treat them as actual numbers.

And when you complain about abstraction vs reality, you may as well throw out all of Euclidean geometry, since in real life, no two physical lines are precisely parallel. Or even infinitely thin!

And yes, I say this a a computer programmer who strives to avoid dumping infinite loops on my users.

@Michael Mooney,
Like many experts, he thinks because he knows something others don't, that he's been elevated to the elite peerage and doesn't have to watch his tone. I beg to strongly differ. Ethan has a nasty habit of glossing over truth in favor of his questionable 'narrative':
.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/10/i-totally-mean-it-inflation-ne…
.
Simple rule of thumb, when your 'brilliant' expert is condescending and insults you:
1.) Ignore/Fire them, they are just like light bulbs, they are replaceable and there's more than one that shines just as brightly, and...
2.) Get another expert who understands that 'arrogance' is not an irresistible cologne from France.

I’m sorry to lose this forum and this archive of articles going back nearly a decade

You're not even going to archive the data?

@MobiusKlein #10,

I have never claimed Euclidean Geometry was reality, or even any other abstraction for that matter, quite the opposite , as it contains no time, which is actually one of the greatest problems with importing time into geometry, it wasn't designed for it. I have also been very vocal about the misuse of points, lines and planes, (infinitely thin or otherwise, makes no difference), and other geometrical constructs having their definitions ignored and being misused as magically reified physical objects imported into physics to carry mass or represent indestructible substances (like point masses and super strings) without even having volume. It even gets more complicated where circles are concerned, as movement in a circular motion has very different constraints than a static fixed circle diagram.
.
There are uses of geometry that overlap in places with reality, obviously, but that does not make one system equivalent to the other any more than two intersecting lines being called congruent because they occasionally intersect at several points.
.
I'm not going to play the 'what is a number game', it has become an unworkable mess of obfuscation that seems to designed just to say "I gotcha!" and count coup. Any time I can attempt to define how a number is used in computation, a mathematician can create yet another abstract layer of manipulation on top of that which skirts it. It goes nowhere fast, like an existentialist discussion about meaning, EVERY SINGLE TIME. So No, I'm not going to conflate things which aren't numbers but some insist treating like numbers in yet another form of highly abstract circular numerical onanism.

CFT, I think your error is in looking at the discussion as an opportunity to count coup, rather than explore ideas.

I play with the concepts of numbers not to find the True Meaning Of Number, but to explore and expand my mind a bit.

I utilize concepts of numbers in the discrete math world of computer science as part of my day job. Which is a different world than quantum mechanics. Could we invent FFT without the mathematical rigor of Real & Imaginary Analysis? nope.

@MobiusKlein,
You can play with numbers as much as you like, but with each layer of abstraction you add, you are actually moving further from not closer to the subject you would model with them.
.
Quantum mechanics is a statistical gloss of some underlying system that really isn't understood, much like trying to understand the roll of a couple of six sided dice by using statistical outcomes, without knowing what dimensions the dice have or what a physical motion like rolling was, and what other things would be involved for that to even happen, i.e. a hand to roll the dice, a surface for the dice to roll on, a certain amount of friction, the construction of the dice and how much they weighed, the air the dice travelled through, the aspect of gravity allowing the dice to be rolled and come to a halt.
.
However things work on a small scale, it isn't statistical math and blatantly fudged solutions like renormalization in QED.
There is something there, it just isn't known. I'm fine with working with QM until a better understanding arrives, But I'd be delusional to think QM is a complete (or coherent) explanation or the best that we can do.

@CFT #13
" I have also been very vocal about the misuse of points, lines and planes, (infinitely thin or otherwise, makes no difference), and other geometrical constructs having their definitions ignored and being misused as magically reified physical objects imported into physics to carry mass or represent indestructible substances (like point masses and super strings) without even having volume."

Me too. (I have been very vocal, as you said.)

I like the head game where an "unstoppable object" collides with an "immovable object."

Of course, neither exist.

Ethan wrote:

"From Frank on the curvature of the Universe: “What if Universe is surface of a 4d sphere where 3d surface (space) curved in the 4th dimension (time)?”"

"Well, there is curvature in the fourth dimension, but the laws of relativity tell you how the relationship between space and time occur. There’s no wiggle-room or free parameters in there. If you want the Universe to be the surface of a 4D sphere, you need an extra spatial dimension. There are many physics theories that consider exactly that scenario, and they are constrained but not ruled out."

Then what if I propose, gravitational field across the Universe is the fifth dimension (for the Universe to be the surface of a 4D sphere)? (And also think about why it seems gravity is the only fundamental force that effects all dimensions. Couldn't it be because gravity itself is a dimension, so it must be included together with other dimensions (of spacetime) in physics calculations.)

More speculations from me if Ethan or anyone interested:
http://fb36blog.blogspot.com/2017/10/geometry-of-our-universe-2.html

@CFT: abstractions, when done right, let us peer deeper into the structure of numbers and systems.

The Fast Fourier Transform would never have been created without imaginary numbers, irrational numbers, and many other high level abstractions.
But damn, it's some awesome code when you turn it into some reality.

And yes, there is some high level wankery you can get lost in, on the math side. That's life, though.

@MobiusKlien #18,

I can appreciate that math has uses, but, and there is a 'but', there is a point where you have to just stop and take a look at where things are actually going.
.
The last I knew, Superstrings theory predicted there might be around 10^500 possible geometries, or landscapes they would have to sift through to get to one that MIGHT be a description of our universe. That number is now, very conservatively calculated to be about 10^272755, that is 10 to the 272,755th power. That is a level of numerical wankery I don't even pretend to consider seriously anymore. As Lana Kane on Archer would say, "NoooooOPE".
.
At some point someone is going to have to set down the bong and sober up. This is not new physics. This Is what being lost looks like. This is NOT abstraction done right. This does NOT lead to 'insights', this is throwing money, resources, and people's entire professional lives down into an abyss no one can ever dig out of.
.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9649
.
Occam's razor should have killed this undead mathematical turd of a theory a long time ago. The fact that the highest levels of the physics community still strongly support it tells me:
1.) They are utterly desperate, and as Peter Woit warned,
2.) They have no plan B, and no plan to have a plan B.
3.) They intend to keep digging themselves deeper until they a.) reach China or even better, b.) get lucky and run across a Balrog, at which point they will c.) claim success and write many fine papers about how they predicted that we actually live in the Middle-Earth universe and that this would happen.

@CFT: Goal post shifting noted.

I take it that you will still be posting on Forbes.

CFT,
If you follow the link below and read what Ethan posted, you'll see Ethan's opinion about String Theory.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2008/04/18/on-string-theory-fro…

@John,
I don't think Ethan is responsible for SuperString theory, (his albatross is inflation), I blame the physics community and academia for that monstrosity. Superstrings has been very good for them financially, it pulled in a lot of money, government support, and public interest...despite the fact it was bunkum. Super Strings are good to bring up because it is a living demonstration of how the scientific community doesn't self correct very well when it is being paid handsomely not to. It has become a big business with an insular tone deaf culture more concerned about continued funding than discovery.
.
I do think Ethan and most anyone else in the physics community with any sanity left should be very actively speaking up and trying to shut this train wreck down instead of just raising their eyebrows, and passively watching it crash and burn. Professional courtesy should have its limits.

@MobiusKlien #22,
By shifting the goal posts do you means changing the subject? I don't have any problem whatsoever with Fourier Transforms, they have a lot of applications in technology and signal processing and are highly useful. I simply don't equate them with 'too big to fail' theories which make no testable predictions about the entire universe we live in, making them de facto 'useless' as science.

The last I knew, Superstrings theory predicted there might be around 10^500 possible geometries, or landscapes they would have to sift through to get to one that MIGHT be a description of our universe. That number is now, very conservatively calculated to be about 10^272755, that is 10 to the 272,755th power.

Congratulations, you can blindly cut and paste from Peter Woit's joint. I don't imagine that you can comment there.

Quantum mechanics is a statistical gloss of some underlying system that really isn’t understood

All this bloviation and general asshurt about not being treated with the respect that you think you deserve, and you barf up hidden variables? This is just sad.

I don’t think Ethan is responsible for SuperString theory

Witten seems to be responsible for the name (sans erratic capitalization), but I didn't realize that it was ever much in currency, and certainly not at this late date.

@Narad 28,
No, I did not piss in your Wheaties.
No, I also didn't 'cut and paste', blindly or otherwise, but I did do several double takes when I saw the size of the number I was transcribing for the new calculated size of the multiverse landscape. I actually thought Woit was trying to be funny by gross exaggeration, but no, that is the actual estimate. If you don't like it, feel free to clutch your pearls in indignation, and then gloss over it.
.
"When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail."
.
Since I don't respect bitter harridans much, forgive my bluntness, but your snarky comments sound more like a particular conceited mainstream 'interpretation' than actual understanding. Hidden variables have been considered and examined by folk far more informed than you, If any of numerous 'interpretations' turns out to be wrong, the whole game changes, so save your 'barf' outrage. All you have is a black box (or, Chinese box if you like) with a heuristic solution slapped on it, and no internal mechanics for causation, just outcomes expressed in probabilities that magically coalesce...or not into reality. Did it occur to you that you can do the exact same thing to almost any system, deterministic or not, and be completely ignorant of how it works? Even Feynman knew there were problems, Dirac as well, short cuts had been taken that merely pushed math. Next to their not so ignorant concerns, your smug conceit is what's pathetic. Listening to you squeal indignantly about hidden variables when your entire quantum theory has no actual mechanics to assign your numbers to, (everything but the outcomes is hidden) is the real tragedy.
.

I actually stopped trying to comment on Peter's site after the last election when his personal political bias filter broke down entirely and he slid hysterically into Trump derangement syndrome... with a passion. When you start insulting everyone who didn't vote for your candidate, and are calling over half the nation racists, sexists, deplorables, etc, you need to get a grip, stop and calm down. Mr. Woit didn't take kindly to this advice. Peter has his own hang-ups, much the same as Ethan in some ways. I've come to expect it from academics who don't live in the real world and have no real interest or clue where money comes from and what economics is or how it works to fund their little activities. Very unlike Ethan however, Peter is very strongly against using bogus science PR propaganda to advance or popularize 'understanding' of big science (a thinly disguised vehicle for convincing people to fund, er, support certain enterprises).

I actually stopped trying to comment on Peter’s site after the last election when his personal political bias filter broke down entirely and he slid hysterically into Trump derangement syndrome

I am mildly amused.

Thanks Ethan the Atheist for explaining to me awesome stories about our universe and putting up with my differing opinions.
You are a great American.
Here:
http://fanbrowser.com/groups/starts-with-a-bang/
I made a section on a site that I am a developer of that compiles all your work that is publicly available along with what you wish to publish. No Fees, no Charge nothing, nada..
I pay for the server time
So all your facebook, twitter, will be there and there is a chat room/ comments section. I can make you an admin and give you the keys if ya wish..
There are so many options
Just my simple way of saying thanks to an Atheist science teacher that has shown respect and decency to us believers.

^ Oh, dear L-rd.

I made a section on a site that I am a developer of

I suppose that explains the nested scroll bars.

@Narad #33,
Interstellar had great music, a good director, top notch actors, cool special effects, contained almost as many plot-holes as 'Plan 9 from Outer Space', and a story that was almost but not quite as scientific as 'Attack of the 50 foot tall Woman', but not quite as 'science-y' as Disney's "The Black Hole"...which is kind of sad...yet at the same time terribly funny for some reason.
.
I'll proudly stand by that particular post you linked to. Du jour science literally IS magic in the movies and television, and it is responsible for a tremendous amount of outright hilarity and confusion of the human race.
.
MILHOUSE: 'I thought radiation causes cancer, not superpowers...'
BART: 'Well, now you know better.'

@ Nared #34
Well MORON WTF can you contribute???
NOTHING,ZERO,NADA...
At least I am putting my money where my mouth is and offering up.
What The fk are you doing?
RETARD!!!!!!!!

@ cft #5 rounding works for finite calculations, not so much for infinite calculations

@cft #25 consider continous multiple big bangs

oh no, don't close down, where else can an amateur (me) get involved in a scientific explanation of the mysteries of the universe with actual physicists and mathematicians

@gahermit,
At any give time, we know parts of the universe are exploding, supernova are everywhere, Nebulae are spewing out stars. As to whether the whole shebang is from one bang, you have to pull a lot of interstellar taffy to make that work in the allotted time, they call it inflation, granting intrinsic material properties to empty space itself by reifying mathematical spaces. I call it desperation trying to prop up the big bang by coming up with a stop-gap explanation borderlining on unfalsifiable when they try and squeeze everything we can now observe into roughly 14 billion years of time.
.
I'd rather they just say they don't know for sure than tortured explanations that give rise to more problems than they resolve.
.
As for physics forums,
Look around, there are many other physics sites. Many do not welcome non-experts, some are far more friendly, a lot of them will have differing internal politics of what they do or do not favor in physics, ie. Lubos Motl (a very difficult person to agree with) has physics blog that is very harsh to anyone who does not completely support Superstrings as de facto truth. Another site called Not Even Wrong is coming from the opposite direction, and pushes the idea that superstrings aren't even science at all and should be jettisoned into the math departments. Ethan on the other hand was pushing the very observably inaccurate view that there is some kind of super majority or consensus about what is and isn't going on, which is just wishful thinking on his part. High energy physics is having an identity crisis right now, trying to decide if it wants to remain testable science or become a new branch of purely mathematical metaphysics, so you are going to see a wide spectrum of opinion even among the 'experts'.

CFT,

As the social portion of the Natural Sciences is inseparable from the rest, I suggest there was, is, and always will be a consensus view on most, if not all, of them.

They are, after all, practiced by humans.

Ragtag Media,

Your site is a very useful resource. Thank you.
I hope it does not go to waste.

Thanks John, it's a heck of a lot of work and money.. things are still a bit janky and glitchy. I just need a few million dollars to hire a real tech team in the U.S. The indie and paki coders are killing me LOL...
Here is a ravens section for ya:
http://fanbrowser.com/groups/baltimore-ravens/

@CFT #15: "... a mathematician can create yet another abstract layer of manipulation on top of that which skirts it. It goes nowhere fast, like an existentialist discussion about meaning, EVERY SINGLE TIME."

Mathematicians can create whatever they want as long as the math is internally consistent, following the rules of math.
Super-strings, malleable spacetime, shrinking objects and distances, new names for unknown particles, fields and forces... with math to make it sound like science.

Existentialism was my favorite philosophy to apply to counseling psychology. It wasn't so much about the cliche' search for the "meaning of life." It is about a radical philosophy of freedom which can inform the "therapist"... to be passed on to the client/patient to help free him/her from whatever dilemma, anxiety or neurosis which brought him to seek help. Of course it's all just talk until the patient realizes the potential for a greater "degree of freedom" in his life.
That's not science either, nor on a particular topic but what the hell!
One must study existentialism before one criticizes it. It's "hard work," but the reward is a "new dimension of freedom."

Well MORON WTF can you contribute???

"Don't use nested scroll bars."

RETARD!!!!!!!!

Once again, an epithet the use of which immediately designates someone as not being worth the time of day.

@Ragtag Media #32:

Is your site have all posts together with the comments since the beginning of this blog?

Because if so or you can make it so then it is or would be a really great reference for Ethan and all of us commenters here.

Even with what I saw so far thank you very much pal.

as far as I can see, rag hasn't actually mirrored science blogs, he just placed it inside his site. When science blogs goes down, so will his "project".

if you want to back-up starts with the bang, I suggest booting your favorite linux distro and go wget on it. SWTB is about 12 gigs.

Sometime ago Ethan used something I said to make sense of something else . Like an analogy sort of .
I have never felt so honoured in an academic way and was amazed Ethan had even read my blatherings.
I just wanted to thankyou and am very sorry to see Scienceblogs possibly folding.
Dialog and interaction between laypeople and academics is a
wonderful thing.

Star Trek: Discovery's 'Choose Your Pain' Finally Feels Like Star Trek; Season 1 Episode 5

esiegel — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 01:05:38 +0000

Star Trek: Discovery's 'Choose Your Pain' Finally Feels Like Star Trek; Season 1 Episode 5

"You are... six years old. You are weak and helpless! You cannot... hurt me!" -Captain Picard, a badass, while being tortured

Star Trek has always been a way for us to look at the best and worst aspects of humanity, often through our confrontations with alien races. Different aspects of our fears, our personalities, and our sense of ethics play out on the stage of futuristic science fiction. Our frailties are exposed, and the crew is challenged to rise to the occasion, and to demonstrate the best of humanity, often in the worst situations. For the first time in five chances, Star Trek: Discovery at last succeeds in the latest episode, ‘Choose Your Pain.’

The tardigrade responsible for the spore drive starts to degrade, but the crew refuses to let it die, despite it putting the Captain’s life and even their own lives at risk. The Captain is captured by the Klingons, but acts in the best interest of his captured cellmate, Lieutenant Ash Tyler (from the Shenzou!), putting his own life at greater risk. Saru, the first officer, confronts his leadership shortcomings, and is pleased to be humbled and learn a lesson. And perhaps most impressively, Burnham follows orders, even when she knows she’s right and her superiors are wrong.

When Saru speaks with Culber and Stamets, he's initially convinced that the tardigrade must be used, even if it's killed, to get the Discovery where it needs to be to rescue Lorca. Image credit: Jan Thijs/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive.

It’s not a massive payoff, but it’s a very big step in the right direction, and it gives me hope for the next installment of Star Trek: Discovery. Come get the review, and the science, of the latest episode today!

esiegel Sun, 10/15/2017 - 21:05

Tags

Star Trek

Categories

Free Thought

Logic dictates that somebody should keep ScienceBlogs going for the sake of future generations.

I finally figured out the whole 'why is there that gap' in the primary hull saucer section, if you look at how they have structured the bridge as well, it looks like they just merged design elements of the center of the deep space nine station with the saucer section of a pre-JJ Constitution class star ship. The overall design of the ship also closely resembles one of the original sketches by Ralph McQuarrie (of Star Wars fame) before they settled on the more curvy organic looking design for the ST:TNG galaxy class cruiser.
.
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/planet-of-the-titans-the-film-that-wa…
.
I also note the ship is not painted, which makes it chronologically incorrect. Starfleet Federation ships were all painted with gray thermal-coat paint until around the time of the original Enterprise's refit when it was decided the newly developed alloy they were using to skin their hulls with didn't require it, and they could save adding many more tons of extra mass to the ship just to paint it.
.
As to the whole spoor drive thingy, why would you stick a human into a device that was already harming a durable creature that could actually survive far more damaging stresses like vacuum and stellar radiation?
.
If you want your fix of not so morally challenged space fantasy, Orville had a far more relevant plot, and saved the stupidity for just the comedy of awkward jokes. The captain has to weigh killing small children aboard an enemy ship in order to save a colony. He makes his choice, and is later coldly informed by the sole surviving adult of the alien vessel that the children will now have first hand experience of why they should hate and kill all humanity in a holy war.

I'm not that thrilled with this episode as Ethan is. In general, felt more or less the same to me as all previous ones. Shallow, incomplete and disappointing.

- we learn that captain Lorca blew up his previous ship with the entire crew on board, rather than let it fall into Klingon hands. An honorable gesture, except yes... he deserted his own ship first, alone, then he blew it up with crew there. Interesting that in this Star Trek, that actually gives you a promotion.

- we get a first ever "FUCK" word in Star Trek... ever. And that by a Cadet in front of officers. Not only is phrase never spoken in ST universe... but we even get more fucks with 2 other people there. Like ST script was only missing that word, and now we'll multiply.

- captain Lorca watches without much interest or any intervention as a lower ranking starfleet officer gets beaten to almost death in front of his nose. He's much more concerned with his eyes and himself. This is before he was "tortured"

- captain Lorca leaves a human on board the Klingon ship, for what will surely be his death. I can see Picard and Sisco acting very differently in that situation

- chief science officer injects himself with DNA modifying thingy that everyone agrees has unknown effects. He faints for a while, yet not a word is said by doctor or anyone after it. Doctor being his partner... but no.. you're fine... all good.

- After saving Lorca + 1... nothing on that in the end, no re-caps.. nothing. It was more important to dump the alien over board like a pile of dung, hoping it will come back alive, then to actually end the episode with some conclusion.

All in all, at least in this season, there's scarce hint there will be any worlds or civilizations to see, let alone explore. On the other hand, maybe it's for the best. You really don't want to be on the receiving side of a new species and encountering this lame crew and ship.

The single biggest thing they got right in this episode of ST:D were the Klingons. In all previous episodes the writers were trying to fill them out so they weren't one dimensional, but the actors are in such heavy prosthetics that they can't emote so they can't connect to the audience. Apparently the rubber masks also make it so they can't. .talk. .faster. .than. .one. .word. .every. .few. ..seconds. But, it doesn't really matter because nothing they do has anything to do with the plot of the episode. Their scenes drag and they only serve to derail whatever momentum the episode had.

In this latest episode, they didn't do any of that. Klingons were back to being one dimensional villains who all spoke English and served their regular role to move the plot along. That, more than anything else, made this episode better.

I love how space is seen as a body, an existential thing, this takes us to a whole new level of understanding, matter as organisms …

I'm not seeing the upside of this latest episode.

Michael Burnham:

Michael Burnham did defy orders... instead of prepping the tardigrade monster for propulsion, she went around Saru's back, got the ship's doctor to weigh in, and the two of them convinced the science officer to take the entire propulsion system offline.

So yes, she mutinied again. What's weird is that they didn't need to do that... They evidently sequenced it's DNA, compared it to a galaxy-wide database, figured out a way to splice it's DNA (or the spore's DNA?) into human DNA, mocked it up, and put it in a ready to use hypospray, all in about 5 minutes.

It was also weird at the end, when Saru tells Michael that he's not afraid of her (despite his fear ganglia things coming out whenever she's around), rather he's jealous of the time she had under their former captain's tutelage. As a consolation prize, she gives him the captain's old telescope. Well, she didn't want it anyway, probably can't keep it if she goes back to prison, and is basically a poor substitute for having a good mentor. Basically a 'Here, have my trash.'

I absolutely agree that she is a bad science communicator though! But then again, that's yet another reason she's a poor Vulcan student and made a lousy First Officer.

Finally, Saru told her to make the tardigrade beast better, but she didn't even really try, she just hoped that jettisoning it out into space with some spores would work. Plus, it didn't look like she got Saru's okay with that, so there's another mutiny for you.

The Genial Genital Fungus Beast:

This entire Tardigrade situation didn't make any sense. They only called it a tardigrade because of its looks (minus the killer tentacles), but now it shrinks up just like one too? As far as I know, real ones only do that when they dry up naturally, they don't expel water!

That's the other thing... this thing is clearly not expelling actual water! It's some kind of substance that dissipates in seconds, even though there's gallons to start with. Saru tells them to rehydrate it, and not only do they not even try (another part where everyone defies orders), they don't tell him that it wasn't water, and they probably don't have any of whatever substance that is on board!

Finally, at the end, Saru tells Michael to make it better. So she blows some spores on it, then just expels it into space. First of all, there's no reason she should have thought that would work, since they didn't give it any material with which to rehydrate. Second, if it worked it space, it should have worked inside the ship too. Third, it did in fact work, and it rehydrated itself with material that came out of nowhere. Finally, when it did jump away to freedom, it did so with a giant light show! That contradicts how it supposedly sneaked on board the Glenn.

Replacing the Tardigrade:

Ethan was spot on when he pointed out that the DNA explanation didn't make any sense... If humans were a match, so too would any other plant or animal on earth be a match. But also as Ethan pointed out, so too should most, if not all, organic based alien life! Not only because they said that the spores extend all throughout the galaxy, but also because in the Star Trek universe most alien species can mate with humans, technically making them actually the same species, just different subspecies! One of the great TOS novels, Spock's world, had a vision of how Spock, a half human half vulcan hybrid, came to be, and that was through a lot of futuristic high tech gene splicing and medical care. However, no one ever picked that idea up in any of the TV shows, so from just TOS and TNG we know of vulcan/human, klingon/human, romulan/human, and betazoid/human, and probably more I can't remember right now. Plus, Worf's first girlfriend, who was klingon/human, was an oops, as was their son Alexander. Long story short, they should all be as compatible with this magical space fungus as humans are.

All that aside, why would they think it would be a good idea to not update the space engine so that it doesn't stab you in the nipples?

Speaking of the nipple stabs, it did seem weird that everyone (except for the ship's doctor!) rushed in to check on the science officer and just stood there (Saru briefly touched his ear, that's it). I guess we're meant to figure that they didn't know how he was reacting to the trauma of being a spore flight computer, but they already knew he wasn't dead because they were just looking at a readout of his life signs! But they did know that the machine had stabbed him repeatedly in the chest! The heck, guys!

Klingons:

Our main Klingon characters from all the previous episodes do not make an appearance. We just get a ship full of Klingon redshirts.

Also, and relating to the interspecies mating angle, Lorca evidently thinks that humans have a different number of genitals than Klingons?

Also, the Klingon captain just got a painful cheek wound, and her eyes looked fine. It would certainly have been poetic justice for her eyes to have been damaged after her torture of Captain Lorca, so that was a missed opportunity. Maybe they'll have changed their mind about that in a later episode, but if so, it won't be because they showed it in this one.

Captain Lorca:

How reprehensible of Captain Lorca to force suicide his own crew because he didn't think they could handle being imprisoned, when he himself easily escapes identical imprisonment?

Granted, the guy they pick up (not a person from the Shenzou) could easily be a spy. It's hard to tell. On one side, they did escape super fast, and very easily, and Lorca did say that no one can withstand klingon torture. On the other hand, they did disintegrate rather a lot of klingons on the way out, and the captain even got winged in the head. But back to the first hand, we don't even really know if she was the captain, she may have just been part of the ruse.

If she was the captain, she's doubly lucky. First, that Lorca didn't finish her off, clearly a dumb move. Second, that the Discovery didn't come over in the confusion, fight their ship, take back all their prisoners, and kill everyone on board. What was Saru thinking!

USS DIscovery as a show:

Finally, I believe this episode is the worst episode so far. The internal consistency is still terrible, but worse, it does nothing to show the hopefulness of the future.

More to the point, as a show, it has gone off the deep in with depictions of torture, bloody wounding, curb stomping, nipple stabbing, and problematic language. A lot of shows go this unnecessary route when they don't appear on network television in order to seem edgier and appeal to an older crowd. That's why I don't like this, it means the show is doubling down on abandoning the kid demographic.

Here are a few other things that bother me about the episode.

-How did they get the space tardigrade's DNA when their cans don't work on it?

-How does the nipple stabbing device work on the tardigrade when it's hide is super tough?

-How does the Discovery get a transporter lock on Lorca and the new guy when their shields are still up? And if they can get the lock, why didn't their sensor scan pick up human life signs? And if they didn't make a scan, why not?

-It seemed like the klingon masks got worse this time around... the klingon captain's real lips were spilling out from behind the immovable mask's fake lips, and it was distracting.

-It bothered me that Lorca didn't go back to help the other prisoners. He knew there was at least one other Starfleet officer as well, not just Mudd.

-It bothered me that Lorca started talking about fairly personal or sensitive information while in the klingon space dungeon, then said he was tricking his cell mates in order to see which one sold him out. Thing is, none of them did! The place was bugged (literally, how very droll) with a listening device in Mudd's pet bug. The thing is, why wouldn't you just assume the entire room is designed to be bugged right from the start? That was pretty foolish.

-Saru deletes his computer request to find out how he stacked up to other great Starfleet leaders before he got his answer. He just looks introspective for a bit, then says 'I know what I did'. However, we don't get to see if he means he thinks he did a good job or a bad job! Interesting that when Michael interprets his last order of 'save the tardigrade's life' as 'eject the thing out into space and hope for the best', it means they'll never be sure whether or not it was intelligent! After all, if it was, then he'd be on the hook for some kind of space war crime, probably worse than Michael's crime.

-Michael was ordered to communicate with the tardigrade, and at no time did she attempt to do so, despite having a link directly into the things brain. Also, they had the thing captured for weeks, and had the thing docile for at least 3 weeks, and no one thought to invite an actual vulcan over for a mind meld? It's not like they were incommunicado - they had shuttles going to and fro, and they even got physical space mail! Now it's gone, good job there, buddy!

-I think the Mirror Universe got a little bit too literal at the end there. If we hadn't already been thinking that everyone was acting as if it were opposite day every day, this still would have been a slap in the face to say, "Eh? Eh? Mirrors!"

-We were on a klingon ship, where were all the battleths?

-Why, when the shuttle Lorca was on was hit with a tractor beam, didn't they try to warp away?

-Why, one the same shuttle, when they had so much time to prepare, and they grabbed their phasers, did they stand so close to the door they couldn't even get a shot off? Actually, why did they forget there was a port hole in the roof and stand directly under that, too? Even if Lorca forgot, shouldn't the pilot have mentioned something? Why don't they have phaser grenades? Couldn't they have ejected their wee warp core? Beamed a torpedo onto the ship like in episode 2? Their shields were obviously down! Heck, they could have opened that round ceiling port themselves, shot their phaser rifles at the emitter, then escaped. The writers really dropped the ball... so much for a gritty and realistic Star Trek battle!

Why is it that Starfleet are never given some kind of space karate or space kung fu training? Everyone's always street brawling. Why is it only the Vulcans who have decent martial arts? Even Worf in TNG was guilty of this except for two times: when he was showing off his battleth skills to his son Alexander, and when he teaches Tai Chi.

@Adam #6:

And you seriously think you are a high level ST fan?
You obviously understand very little. (Just kidding :-)

@Adam wrote:

It was also weird at the end, when Saru tells Michael that he’s not afraid of her (despite his fear ganglia things coming out whenever she’s around), rather he’s jealous of the time she had under their former captain’s tutelage. As a consolation prize, she gives him the captain’s old telescope. Well, she didn’t want it anyway, probably can’t keep it if she goes back to prison, and is basically a poor substitute for having a good mentor. Basically a ‘Here, have my trash.’

That scene was about institutional racism and becoming woke. In a past episode it was made clear that even on Saru's home world he is a minority. He's a minority in Star Fleet and the scene conveyed his lack of success was not due to a lack of ability but rather systemic issues that served to inequitably advance Burnham.

Burnham validates his oppression and signals her allyship by saying "You should have the privilege...." as she gives the telescope. I don't believe that awkwardly worded line of dialogue was accidental. The telescope was trash but it was just in the scene as a vehicle for Burnham's virtue signal and to indicate character growth.

Saru did say that he was a prey species and that his species was farmed, but never specified that the farmers were another intelligent race. That would make sense, but then again a lot of this show doesn't make sense. They also didn't say that they Saru's species were minorities on their home planet (they're not farmed anymore, so maybe that other race is gone?) but he might be in starfleet. Maybe they'll delve further into this later, but I'm not holding my breath for it appearing onscreen. I've heard there's a novel out, maybe they go into it in there?

I don't think it's about being woke. It's either about Michael being nice to Saru because she's a nice person, or more likely, given her nature, it was a calculated and sociopathic move to manipulate Saru's emotions, especially considering the way she called him into the beast lab an episode or so ago under false pretenses just so she could see how his threat ganglia reacted.

Basically, Michael's a bad influence on Saru. I think that's why Saru halted the computer's evaluation of his time as acting captain. He didn't want to hear that his actions showed that he was emulating first Lorca (by being overly harsh on the tardigrade), then Michael (by trusting his gut that Lorca was in the klingon shuttle instead of ordering a sensor sweep) and finally going back to his old ways (by fleeing the battle instead taking out more of the enemy and freeing more prisoners), instead of his idol, Captain Georgiou.

Ethan, I read both you and Orac here on ScienceBlogs and Orac has just mentioned that ScienceBlogs will soon be shutting down for good at the end of the month. There going to be another place where we can see your article summaries and make discussion like this, other than on Forbes itself?

@Adam wrote:

I don’t think it’s about being woke. It’s either about Michael being nice to Saru because she’s a nice person, or more likely, given her nature, it was a calculated and sociopathic move

I only wish. I'd loved for them to have gone the anti-hero route with Michael. Can you imagine a Breaking Bad Star Trek? Michael Burnham starts out as a regulation following pacifist as ingrained by her Vulcan education. An encounter with Klingons rattles her into making a poor decision that sets her on a path into becoming an Arya Stark-like sociopath through her involvement with Section 31 and the increasingly horrible decisions she justifies.

I'd watch the hell out of that but there is no way we're headed there. Bryan Fuller's original plan started with wanting to put a "woman of color at the helm" before any story or anything else was written. This show from the outset put virtue signalling first and everything else second. It shows.

You are free to believe as you want but I think having the acting captain of the most advanced ship in the fleet whine about his jealousy from not having fair opportunity is par for these writers.

"... has just mentioned that ScienceBlogs will soon be shutting down for good at the end of the month."

Whaaaaat?!!

@Sinisa:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2017/10/17/a-change-is-gonna-come/

"Basically, Scienceblogs is shutting down at the end of the month."

:(( that sucks

all the years of article posts, and comments, and discussions... just gone... Unless Ethan decides to migrate the whole database, but he hasn't said anything yet :(

@Denier

That does sound like an interesting idea for the show. They never ask us for our opinions though!

******
Bryan Fuller’s original plan started with wanting to put a “woman of color at the helm” before any story or anything else was written.
******

Too bad they didn't stick to the plan.

I can't help myself.

Just saw it. Still not happy but I can see maybe progress along Etjhans (desperate) defense.

Swear words. I don't actually care. But really? Loose the kids? Even Firefly and Battlestar used substitute words. Frak.

Ship still sucks, disks are a-spinning. I don't buy the filling in DS9 ship argument - thats after ST. This ship should be between Enterprise and ST. They trapped themselves into that with sequelitus.

A sick, sex-tired 7 month prisoner takes out several Klingons in hand to hand combat. I don't think so.

The GFB 'dehydrates' or whatever flowed out of it, and when injected into space rehydrates - with what from where?

And yea 50% DNA works. It was risky but the guy survived. So we are done right - instant travel for everyone. Whats the problem? Klingons would use prisoners of war.

Grrrrr.......

Still stuck on the rotating hull sections .
We got a side view last week which has made me realize something you guys may be ahead of me on.
The discs have no spokes to a hub. Thus to rotate they will not be physically connected to anything - they 'hover' there.
And again we only see them rotate when they jump. If thats all they are for, then why did they make the ship able to do that BEFORE they knew about the genital fungus beast and the anal spores, and how jumping works?

I refuse to talk about why the whole ship spins before the jump :-)

Science’s Greatest Lesson For Humanity Is ‘How To Be Wrong’

esiegel — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 05:31:10 +0000

Science’s Greatest Lesson For Humanity Is ‘How To Be Wrong’

“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” -Augustine of Hippo

Science isn't the easiest endeavor you can undertake. Sure, the rewards are tremendous: you can wind up understanding any phenomenon in the Universe as well (or better) than any human has ever understood it before. But on your way there, you're going to have to do some of the most difficult work you've ever done. It isn't just mathematical and scientific work, either, but internal work on your own psyche. You'll need to learn how to be wrong.

From the distant Universe, light has traveled for some 10.7 billion years from distant galaxy MACSJ2129-1, lensed, distorted and magnified by the foreground clusters imaged here. The most distant galaxies appear redder because their light is redshifted by the expansion of the Universe, which helps explain what we measure as Hubble's law. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Toft (University of Copenhagen) Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH team.

No one comes into a scientific field already knowing all the answers; that's why we do the science in the first place. When you're just learning it, you put an incomplete number of puzzle pieces together, and your incomplete picture is usually incorrect. Or at least, less correct than the best picture. This means it's up to you to challenge your assumptions, revise your internal beliefs, and draw superior conclusions. The reward, if you can make it, is not just a better understanding, but the lesson of how to be wrong, and how to be better in the future.

IBM's Four Qubit Square Circuit, a pioneering advance in computations, could lead to computers powerful enough to simulate an entire Universe. But the field of quantum computation is still in its infancy. Image credit: IBM research.

It's a lesson that goes far beyond science, and can be applied to all areas of our lives. Imagine what the world could be like if we all did it.

esiegel Wed, 10/11/2017 - 01:31

Tags

Categories

The world of physics may seem bleak now to some but I think we maybe really close to TOE.

@Frank #1,
I'm afraid not. They thought they were very close to a TOE in the eighties and early nineties. Since then, Super Strings, M - Theory, etc...None of them have produced anything except excuses and more math, not new physics. This doesn't mean there isn't new physics, it just means they are going to have to back up the car (start discarding assumptions) until they are back on the road again. Once that happens, then you will see something new.
When you stack too many assumptions, if anything is even slightly off with your earlier assumptions, everything on top sort of...falls down.
Check it out!!:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIWN_JgtVq0

"How To Be Wrong" is very simple. Don't assume you "know it all" already. Imagine being an unbiased scientist.

Then start a new blog.... not ***assuming*** a "start" or "beginning."... or that your opinions are established scientific facts.

Imagine an eternally oscillating universe. Forget your instruments and math expertise for that moment of un- programed contemplation
.
That's all I can give you for advice. I'm fairly sure that you will ignore it as always. "Too close to home" is the defense mechanism (just a minimum of "psychology".) I'll be gone soon. Not that interested in sci-fi.

There are many "real science" sites and discussions out there on the net. Best wishes for your sci-fi projects and clique of fantasy followers and pursuit of fame and fortune.

This may be my last post. Or not. Open the box to see if I'm dead or alive... or both until observed!
It's been "interesting."

Michael, why do you take a blog so personal? Ethans blog here is not meant to be be a "Final Solution" answer to everything.
Ethan's strength is his story telling ability within the science community. He just tells a story. he is not trying to prove he is the smartest person who knows everything.

I think you may be taking this blog a we bit personal..
Relax, appreciate the "story"...

@CFT #2,
I agree completely to everything you just said there.
Of course we should always remember lessons of our past to guide our future.

But I would also caution to always remember past experiences cannot be absolute proof for what can or cannot happen in the future.

@Ragtag Media #4,
I agree completely to everything you just said there.

Also I think we became like a family here, just like you had said before. I also think we are always having good time here. Why leave?

Can you imagine a world where humanity valued learning and revising your opinions as much as strongly-held convictions that were unshakable, no matter what the evidence indicated?

I'm in the process of teaching my kid lots of games. Like many small children, he doesn't like to lose. But the more games he plays, the thicker the skin he gets. And the more he does it, the more he thinks about the overall activity rather than the outcome of any specific game. "Daddy won, I'm upset" becomes "Daddy won 6 of the last 10 and I won 4...pretty good" hopefully will become in the future "I have no idea who's won more games this week. Play on!"

I think that's a lot like science. People who do a little of it, or who have one single idea they focus on, tend to worry about whether it's going to 'win.' Professional scientists, OTOH, tend more towards the attitude of "hey, 2 of my 50 papers have stood the test of time. Cool!" Or even "what, that paper of mine is still kicking around? I lost track. Who knew?" The activity becomes the focus, rather than the success or failure of any individual effort's outcome.

@eric #7,
I think it's lovely to think about scientists considering as you speculate, but I would add one more thing. An experiment to test the speculation. Until you test it, all you really do have is an unfinished idea that can't carry it's own weight, much less some other theory. If it can't be tested, don't stack anything else on top of it, perhaps the scientist should try moving the research in a direction that can be tested. Right now we have a preponderance of speculation, almost sixty years of built up theory that may come crashing down because so many scientists kept treating the citing of each others papers as evidence of anything.

Okay CFT, where is the temporal cut-off? If I develop an hypothesis that can't be tested for another week, is it science? How about a year? How about 10 years? How about 100 years?

And let's say nobody can figure out how to test my idea right now. Looks completely untestable to human science. Is it science? But then next week some smart guy comes up with a method to test it nobody had thought of before. In that week, did my idea magically transform from non-science to science?

I agree that testability is a good criteria for science. But I don't think there's any bright line distinction. I think it's within reasonable science behavior to push the boundaries; to consider ideas that are currently untestable or that look to take decades to test by current technology. Because we can be wrong about 'untesable' or 'takes 50 years' just like we can be wrong about an hypothesis. Now no, this doesn't mean every single crank idea should be funded because it might pay off. We still need to prioritize what gets funding using reasonable criteria (and testability is one of them). but I don't think it's the only one or always absolutely necessary. A good national science portfolio should include some high risk, high payoff research. Not a lot, but not none either.

1. Thanks Ethan, for STEALING MY IDEA and writing it up better than I could.

2. Interesting that none of the comments here address being wrong. (Including this one.) Sure, it's epistemology, but....?

3. Paging Dr. Dunning & possibly Dr. Kruger. Dr. Dunning, white courtesy telephone please.

GregH: " 2. Interesting that none of the comments here address being wrong."
My comment above:
How To Be Wrong” is very simple. Don’t assume you “know it all” already.
Look a little closer.

@eric #9:

Okay CFT, where is the temporal cut-off? If I develop an hypothesis that can’t be tested for another week, is it science? How about a year? How about 10 years? How about 100 years?

Perhaps a better word to use would be "falsifiability". If your hypothesis can be falsified, even if we can't test it now (but may be able to later), then I believe we can consider it scientific.

By definition, if its not testable it is not a hypothesis.
Doesn't mean its not science though. Non-hypothesis driven science is certainly viable.

Science- "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

For example, Ethans recent posts on multi-universes being maybe inevitable is science, even though apparently there is no way for us to know if they are real.
String theory research is science, but there is no evidence it is 'right'.
The list is endless.

Steve,

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

What is the purpose of observation and experiment, if not to test a model/hypothesis/theory? I will lump these together with the understanding that a hypothesis is a weaker conjecture than a theory, and that a model is one manifestation. Ref here Sabine's recent critique of Inflation as producing more models than insight.

As I understand the process, if an experiment produces observations (data or numbers) that are consistent with predictions drawn from some theory, then the experiment can be said to corroborate, or even confirm the theory. Conversely, if the data is inconsistent with what one could expect (predictions) from a theory, then the theory is, if not actually disconfirmed, qualified.

As an example, I recall reading in a link from this blog that the discovery of CMB was the measurement that confirmed the Big Bang theory and disconfirmed the Steady-State theory. If that example is challenged due to the "experiment" not being assembled by humans, perhaps the human measurements of "the fluctuation in the CMB, of the large-scale structure of the universe galaxies clump, cluster and form" have tested and confirmed Cosmic Inflation. If these too are inadequate due to their naturalness, surely the LIGO (and now VIRGO) experimental apparatuses tested the prediction of Gravity Waves by theory of General Relativity?

If Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, Lemaître's "Cosmic Egg" (Big Bang theory) and the universe’s preceding Inflation as proposed by Guth (and fixed/enhanced by others) are Science, and they are Science because they could be tested (Karl Popper et al.), then models/hypotheses/theories that cannot (at least in principle) be tested are suspect as not being Science.

You're mixing words up here that are well defined and need to be careful. A hypothesis isn't a conjecture. Nor is it a theory. I use wiki quotes in the below so I don't mess up.

A hypothesis must, by definition, be testable - otherwise it isn't a hypothesis. Its is a proposition of fact based on observations/information. Its testability is the requirement of the scientific method as proposed by Popper. A theory is "a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena:" When you have the theory, you can form hypothesis (or better still a null hypothesis) and test them, and as more of them are proven true the theory becomes stronger. A conjecture is "an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information." These terms have strict mathematical meanings, and there are proposed separate theories and conjectures and they are named as such.

Science itself is "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." It encompasses all of the above.

A theory as a whole may not be testable, but parts of what it implies may be giving it credence. When there is enough evidence and no contradictions it eventually transitions to fact. If any observations contradict the theory, and the observation is sound and reproducible, then the theory must be abandoned.

As would call building equipment as part of science, and you don't need a hypothesis for that.

You said "What is the purpose of observation and experiment, if not to test a model/hypothesis/theory? " The purpose of observation and experiment may be to test a hypothesis (not a theory). The observations can be used to develop theories and conjectures. From those you then develop hypothesis and there we are full circle - the scientific method. (A model is not a theory or a hypothesis).

Steve,

I'm more comfortable with the O.E.D.'s definition of theory (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/theory), where "hypothesis" is given as a synonym. If you use the O.E.D.'s definition of hypothesis, you'll see "theory" given as a synonym. Although you do agree with the O.E.D.'s definition of conjecture, you may be surprised to learn that both "theory" and "hypothesis" are given there as synonyms.

Let us, for the sake of argument, accept as true that a conjecture is an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.

As no science I'm aware of claims to have complete information (TOE), then all science truths are provisional and tentative, some more than others. If you’re comfortable with that, then we’re in agreement about what a conjecture might be.

"… If any observations contradict the theory, and the observation is sound and reproducible, then the theory must be abandoned." While that may be true in theory (pun intended), I doubt many physicists have abandoned GR because of the non-locality of QM.

If it is true that "A theory is 'a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena:' ", then it is false to claim "The purpose of observation and experiment may be to test a hypothesis (not a theory)". I side with Popper on this issue.

We may also have differing POVs about the word "model". I see models as being derived from a theory or hypothesis. The myriad models derived from the Cosmic Inflation hypothesis are what Sabine Hossenfelder took such grave exception to in her guest post here 29-SEP-17. While Ethan remains a stout defender of the hypothesis, even he ended his synopsis with "… the phenomenon of 'infinite model-building,' where theorists churn out model after model after model, predicting every imaginable outcome, and therefore, predicting nothing at all."

Hmmmm. Thanks. Food for thought! Later.

@ Steve Blackband #16
Well said. I agree.
"Theoretical Physics" has abandoned, on a large scale, the evidence required (eventually) to make it science. It's now modern metaphysics ("what if" conjecture) wearing the certified robes of science with doctorate degrees. (Just and "opinion piece".)

Cool

Michael Mooney #11:

I was wrong.

#17.
Theres a difference between words as just words, which are flexible and changing, and words we use in science that we assign (or at least try to assign) stricter definitions to.
Bucket is a synonym of pail, but it is not exactly the same. When there is a difference, Pail is actually a hypernym of bucket. Yea, I had to look that up too. After all its why we use math and not words to predict in science.

So as this guy says:-
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/187967/what-is-the-differen…

"A theory is a set of statements that is developed through a process of continued abstractions. A theory is aimed at a generalized statement aimed at explaining a phenomenon.

A model, on the other hand, is a purposeful representation of reality.

As you can see, both share common elements in their definitions. What differs one from the other (in my opinion) is that one is aimed at generalized statements(theory) while the other is aimed as a helpful tool to understand specific phenomena(modeling).

Another way to link the two and point out differences is, a model is often used to describe an application of a theory for a particular case. Sometimes it involves a given set of initial and boundary conditions.."

Thus theory is a hypernym of model. Similarly Theory and hypothesis may be synonyms, but in science that does not mean they are the same thing. Clearly they are not (and so to with conjecture). In fact the best dictionary definitions say synonyms are the same or NEARLY the same.

All semantics I know, but important for the structure and process of science. As Mr Popper taught us.

Models have to be used carefully and 'sparingly' which I think is more along the lines of what Ethan meant when he wrote “… the phenomenon of ‘infinite model-building,’ where theorists churn out model after model after model, predicting every imaginable outcome, and therefore, predicting nothing at all.” I apologize for putting words into his posts.

I knew a guy who modeled a complex biological process using around one hundred differential equations - carbon metabolism actually. The problem was the model only had a few inputs, and a few outputs. We would tell him the inputs and he would use the model to predict the outputs. We would then do the experiment and get different results than his outputs. He would then wiggle some of the equations and voila, his model (post)predicted the results. The process would repeat. Totally useless. Clearly underparameterised in this case but less extreme cases have the same problem.

A theory is much more robust and must predict the observations, if not it must be abandoned. Models however get tweeked. Or probably more descriptively, twerked, endlessly. Oh no. Mental Chlorox please!

Whoops I stated that wrong way round. Sorry.
Bucket is the hypernym of pail.

Star Trek: Discovery Is Smart-Sounding Scientific Nonsense, Season 1, Episode 4 Recap

esiegel — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 07:03:39 +0000

Star Trek: Discovery Is Smart-Sounding Scientific Nonsense, Season 1, Episode 4 Recap

"You were always a good officer. Until you weren't." -Saru, from Star Trek: Discovery

Science is full of great ideas and brilliant discoveries, and some of those more recent ones have made their way into the popular consciousness. TED talks, popular blogs and online magazines, and Facebook pages and internet memes have helped disseminate bits of knowledge to millions. But how much of what's come through is actually worth knowing, versus how much is simply science-sounding buzzwords that's content-free?

Outside the event horizon of a black hole, General Relativity and quantum field theory are completely sufficient for understanding the physics of what occurs; that is Hawking radiation. Image credit: NASA.

As we dive deeper into the world of Star Trek: Discovery, that's what I fear we're looking at: the IFLS of a Star Trek series. Invented terms an misinterpreted legitimate science is the norm now, as though no one could be bothered to speak with a science consultant. It's like the filming/script-writing crew is suffering from the same myopia as the crew of the Discovery: unable to look beyond of their own, bull-headed path.

In the early 21st-century, we've successfully mapped out practically all the stars in our neighborhood in three-dimensional space. Somehow, we're to expect that starfleet doesn't have vastly improved maps of star systems and black holes hundreds of years in the future. Image credit: Richard Powell / Atlas of the Universe.

The terms may sound smart, but this is jumping from science fiction into science fantasy, and leaving morality behind.

esiegel Mon, 10/09/2017 - 03:03

Tags

Categories

"Black Alert" sounds like something the Wayans Brothers would put on a Star Trek send up.

Shame to hear the reviews. While I'm not paying for access, I did hope the series would be good and not Star Trek: then Next Cancellation.

Crikey when you read your summary you wonder how the hell this got approved.
Yet again everyone was dumb, and don't forget the angry dumbass who took on the water bear and got sliced was the SECURITY officer!!
As to water bear driven space travel with spores all I can think is Dune and the spice. This is not Star Trek.

And the Captain, who has a drive that doesn't work yet and could take them anywhere uses it to jump? Really?

And the hsip, which Ive said many times now I hate with the rings and people peering at each other through the windows and the horrible triangle hull. In this episode the rings rotated in opposite directions but only when they jumped. Whats that for? And if they are only needed when they jump, and they didn't know how the spore drive worked, how did they know they would need it and build the ship like that? Or do they fulfill another function we haven't seen? And what of the people in the spinning disks? I suppose we are supposed to think the artificial gravity and inertial dampers take car of that. How do you cross from the ring to another part of the ship when its spinning since internship beaming is not safe (though we used it again this week)? Yuk.

Orville ep 4 however was another hoot, and Charlize Theron was in it - Mcfarlane got to write a script where he has to kiss her - oh the pain. We had a dark matter storm, a couple of things i won't say as they are spoilers, a good running joke on practical jokes, and jealousy affecting command decisions. Just realized they have quantum drive and tractor beams, but NO transporters (but they will have in the distant future). (I hope you know the transporters, probably the hardest part of Trek, were originally devised to save money so they didn't have to film ships landing). They even had a crashing into the sun scene not as good as Trek in effects but more fun. AND this episode was directed by Johnathon Frakes and you can tell. AND Seths wife in real life is the voice of the computer.

Yet again the Orville beat ST. I am so sad.

As to water bear driven space travel with spores all I can think is Dune and the spice. This is not Star Trek.

Herbert wrote Dune in 1965 (and as you say, it's a different sub-genre of sci fi). So I think completely missing the boat on the capability of 21st century astronomy can be forgiven.

Granted he might still have been behind the times; even in 1965, I doubt physicists would have agreed with the premise that relativistic non-simultenaity makes it impossible to predict where other systems are at any given local time t.

Yea yea. It was the 60s.
To conquer space travel you have to get high. OK. Dude. Cool. Live long and procreate.

But back then i was reading Asimov, Aldiss, Niven and Clarke. Non of this bullshit!!!

And in terms of what Star Trek did, wow, then there is Blade Runner. The old and the new. Wow.
It is a slow film, but you need to have that to get into what happened to Ryans character.
And Harrisons.
I cried.
But I cry real easy.
More human than human.
We all need to be that. We really do.

Hey Ethan,
I didn't miss of course your not so subtle plea to be science advisor for Star trek.
Forget it.
How about you write your own real science based fiction novel?
I am sure you have thought about it.
With this web site you won't be lacking for help. :-)

If you don't like it, don't watch, or read. Write your own, then we can judge your views. It IS fiction, after all. It is a bed for ideas upon which we gain an understanding of where we want to be in our future.
By the way, Rippers nose(mouth) is reminisce of the star nosed mole of Canada.
Since the series is a lead-in to Kirks time, it can only become more comfortable as the series progresses. After all, this is only episode 4.
Enjoy it.
:)

Really. If you don't like it don't watch it? How you gonna know if you don't like it till you watch it?
I am a die hard ST fan of 50 years - what the hell are you talking about?
ST changed America, Europe, maybe the world. Not in 'reality' of course (its a TV show you know that right?). But in our mindset,. Our hopes. Our humanity.
For real. I am not making this up.
Please don't patronize me. I don't even know you,
Express an opinion but leave me alone.
Star Trek was groundbreaking. This show is not. I borrows. They can do so much better. It needs visionary writers like DC Fontana.
Not commercially driven studio hacks.
Any more than real research in the USA need business men telling them what to do.

Yea. That was a sore point. Sorry.

Did you catch Wallace this last few days? Given up on research since his last few grants had, as he put it, their 'lungs ripped out'.

And then he gets a Nobel.

This is messed up.

Read this, especially his last few paragraphs,
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(07)02369-X

The link, as written, does not go anywhere. Perhaps one has to sign up first??
Oh, I didn't address you personally, SB. I'll see your 50 years, and add another 14 of my own.
As I wrote earlier, it will be interesting to see how they blend into Kirks era.

@Ethan

Troll

It's a fiction no need to keep on hammering on.

The idea of the spores and this sub-creature knowing it's way through the underground is quite fascinating. One of the coolest concepts I've seen in a while. It makes me think of the portals in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I thought Dune was actually about a lot more than drug use. It was very provocative because it explored the idea of human progress and what that does or does not mean. The characters in Dune struggle with the fact they don't agree at all what perfection is, or how it should be expressed, or what the role between people and power should be. When one group finally gets their fondest wish and creates what they thought was the perfect superhuman, it turns on them, refusing to be used as their weapon, and enslaves them instead. The entity eventually goes mad when the ability to see the future locks it into a destiny it can't change, the price of actually knowing the future is the inability to change it and having to be captive to it as it plays out.
.
Most people don't know the fascinating backstory to Dune, in which humanity at one time did have utopia-like space faring civilization (like the federation), then got lazy, created artificial intelligences that dwarfed human ability, and they in turn enslaved humanity as pets. The humans managed to take their own freedom back eventually, but had to pay a heavy cost, they were forced to eschew computers and self aware technology above a certain level of sophistication so they wouldn't ever become sentient again. Making a self aware 'machine' in Dune is one of the highest crimes...next to creating artificial life or resurrecting the dead, all of which they have the capacity to do, but are culturally inculcated never to do. To compensate for this loss in computing capability, two divergent groups evolved to fill the void, the Mentats, male living human computers entirely devoted to pure logic and mathematics, and the Bene Gesserit, female bio-engineers who decided superhuman intuition and psychic abilities via genetic manipulation were the key to supremacy. Between the two groups was the spacer's guild, humans mutated into near monsters by the use of a drug that allowed their minds to perceive space and time differently, and somehow change it, basically much like the 'jump drive' from STD. This was combined with the feudal system of government expressed through 'houses' (like game of thrones), which were then ruled by an Emperor who with the vital help of the Bene Gesserit and Mentats and Spacing Guild managed to keep the worlds in communication and commerce with each other, while managing sanctioned wars between houses as almost chess like ritualistic sport to prevent humanity from ever being destroyed by uncontrolled violence. I actually learned a lot about western and eastern civilizations by examining many of these ideas and examining their historical origins. This is science fiction world building at its finest.
.
When I was young, I always assumed the future would be more democratic or socialistic, and much more clean, polished and shiny looking, with machines doing everything (pretty much George Jetson). Frank Herbert turned this idea on its head by going back to the grittiness of actual history and realizing this is usually not the case, human civilizations flourish then collapse and people forget the past very quickly, most people never consider how much of their lives is unquestioning acceptance, democracies tend to be highly unstable long term, and are relatively short lived in almost all precedent. Good science fiction should do more than entertain, it should wake you up to look around and think about it.

The Dune omnibus is the best sc-fi epic I have ever read! Yes, I love ST and SW and Asimov and Clarke and everything else, but Dune is something else. The amount of wisdom and social observations that are present in Dune books, I haven't found anywhere else. Tolkien comes close in terms of scope of the world. But Dune goes beyond. There are passages in Dune, that just make you stop and think about yourself, humans, politics, philosophy, etc. An incredible piece of writing!

“The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.”

Troll !!!!
My first time. I guess i asked for that.

With this I am going to stop commenting at all in this forum on Star Trek and stay with real science.I am not being understood. Of course its fiction - but its special to me and my trolls. I am clearly too emotionally involved and hold ST to too high a standard for my own good - my wife at least, that poor soul, understands this ;-). I am the physicist/astronomy nutcase that pushed Neil Armstrong out of the way to get to Nichelle Nichols after all. Very embarrassing.
Yes Dune was a lot more than spice, but the idea of a drug based or mushroom spore based space drive teeters off the edge of any real joy of imagination or creativity rooted even a tiny bit in the real world. Its lazy. Its not much to ask that the idea inspires rather than wanders off in to Harry Potter land where anything can be a magical talisman. Its like making it rain on Dune. It looks like Michael is going to lead a crisis of conscience using the cuddly water bear as a space drive for moral reasons. OK. But the Klingons, maybe Romulans and certainly the Ferengi wouldn't stop using a drive that can take you anywhere in the universe in an instant. What power. The needs for ships at all would become obsolete. Water bears would be more precious than dilithium. The human batteries of Matrix. So if the Federation chooses not to use it for moral reasons, well, they would quickly become insignificant if not extinct. And thats where forward thinking sic-fi that has a strongly established cannon bitterly disappoints, ESPECIALLY in a prequel (why oh why - sniff sniff).
For me anyway.
And that a comedy is standing up to cannon better than the real (fictional, I know) thing. At least Abrahams understood. Lord I hope these Discovery clowns don't get to make a movie.
At least my oh so precious Blade Runner hasn't bee violated. What a joy that sequel was - talk about the human condition! Ryan's characters emotional roller coaster - well - no spoilers here.
With that, signing off on ST. (Still gonna watch it :-)

Weird on the Wallace article - I can see it and so can my colleagues who sent it.
Heres the link to the pdf instead. He says some terse things about funding and the increasingly sad condition of our universities these days. And i cannot disagree.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(07)02369-X.pdf

#14,

"the idea of a drug based or mushroom spore based space drive teeters off the edge of any real joy of imagination or creativity rooted even a tiny bit in the real world. Its lazy."

It's not lazy, it is a lack of imagination from your part.

Let's imagine the spores and the critter have a kind of metabolism that converts their Proton-shaped bodies, into a kind of particle that is 'superfluid', like how you could turn a 'dead' copper-wire into a magnet, by just twisting it into a coil and run a current through it generating a magnetic field.

Let's say those spores and the animal can solder all quarks thanks to a unique mechanism into an invisible state or code that can flow through sub-gravitational pathways.

Think of SpaceTime as a foam were waves ripple through, from bubble to bubble at a slow steady pace; but how on the other hand electricity can run just right through the edges, at a speed that is a billions time faster; or how our nerves-cells work, sending fast electrick pulses through our solid body vs. our heartbeat at 60 bps.

What you need to ask from your imagination is, what SpaceTime is made off?

Oh Elle. You're winding me up aren't you :-)

And in terms of what Star Trek did, wow, then there is Blade Runner.

Philip K. Dick's writing was more weird and psychedelic than Herbert's (or Roddenberry's screenplays). Valis is probably the go-to example. Yes they've adapted a couple of his stories into very mainstream movies, but claiming Dick had his head on straighter than Herbert...I'd say not by a longshot. Dick saw visions. Literally. He wrote autobiographically about it.

@eric wrote:

Philip K. Dick’s writing was more weird and psychedelic than Herbert’s (or Roddenberry’s screenplays)

Philip K Dick was also paranoid. In that way he was the 180 degree opposite of Roddenberry. GR wanted to see the state as benevolent while PKD had a deep mistrust for all authority. It is that mistrust of authority that seems to resonate with modern audiences. No one now puts total faith into our government, or the press, or corporations. The studios couldn't license PKD's stuff fast enough while CBS seems to have given up on Roddenberry's original vision in producing this darker interpretation.

#17,

"Oh Elle. You’re winding me up aren’t you ?"

Now this is awkward …

Wow, finally watched the fourth episode! What a mess.

@Ethan: Great review! Especially calling them out for the Hawking Radiation Firewall and the obviously chair shaped device that was somehow a great mystery.

@CFT: Great recap of Dune's backstory!

@ Steve Blackband: Good point about the weird spinning ship parts!

The mention of the Glenn running into a Hawking Radiation Firewall was hilarious! I'm glad Ethan pointed out how foolish that was. It's easy to say, 'Wouldn't they be more worried about the black hole in that case?' but clearly the writers were using a random science term generator or something.

Here are some of the other problems I had with the episode, in no particular order.

Science (other than the 'firewall')

The first would be the first time the Discovery jumped, they accidentally showed up next to what they claimed was a type O star. But the star was yellow! A quick trip to Wikipedia would have cleared that up for the writers.

Speaking of which, if they can't aim their ship and their destination is based on probability, wouldn't it be much more likely that they would get stranded in the middle of nowhere?

The Discovery:

When they tried to get away from the star, they were 'caught in the gravity well'. Seriously? Those ships can get away from black holes! I think the writers, and therefor the ships crew, all forgot they have warp drives!

When we start the episode, the bridge crew (and no-one else on the ship) are deep within a battle simulation (which just amounts to a video game). They are up against multiple simulated klingon ships (probably birds of prey, although they mostly look like flying triangles when they're in motion), and for some reason the captain isn't helping them, he's letting each station act independently, which is odd by itself. The bridge crew is just babbling to each other while the captain berates them, his advice boiling down to 'shoot them, and keep shooting them until they blow up'. Seems pretty reasonable to me, considering this version of Star Trek doesn't believe in flight maneuvers and so on, but why wouldn't the crew already know this? Is this their first simulation? Is this a green crew? Why wasn't the first officer involved?

Then captain berates the bridge crew again for not considering their ship's ability to teleport itself during their failed simulation, reminding them that they will be able to get to a war time hot spot before anyone else, and so will be alone. Yet this capability wasn't a part of the simulation at all!

Later, when the ship manages to teleport itself above the imperiled mining colony, the captain fires a few shots at the wee klingon ships, then just has his ship sit there, taking fire and damage, just so that he can trick the enemy ships into flying directly at them, and he can drop some unidentified bombs and use the fungus drive to jump away, leaving the ships to be blown up by the bombs. This was a trick he clearly had in mind from the start, but didn't bother telling his crew about. It was also pretty foolish, because they could have just used their regular weapons to blow them up and not damage the ship on purpose. I thought the whole point was to use the fungus drive to pop up behind them or something, not act as a sitting duck! Their ship is not designed for that!

As the Discovery jumps away, the captain makes a quip, something like 'lets give them something to remember'... then leaves no survivors. How does that make sense?

Speaking of which, where did these space mines come from? One of the other science bays? This is something we've never seen before in Star Fleet!

I wonder if ship repairs will even come up, or if the ship will be magically repaired the next time we see it? Is... Is the ship itself an action star? Is this a flesh wound?

One last thing: all of this goes down just above the settlement itself, and I mean directly above and at a low altitude. Not only do they let off this giant triple-ship destroying explosion way too close to the base they're supposedly trying to save, but the pieces of the destroyed ships start to rain down on the colony as well! We cut away as as the residents stare at the falling flaming wreckage. I hope that admiral who sent them there gives him a scathing report.

The Genital Fungus Beast:

So, okay, it's a space tardigrade now. It's a cute cuddly water bear genital fungus beast who can absolutely still tear through the walls of a ship, can tear the bones right out of people with it's clawed tentacles, and is unphazed by phaser fire. It acts like an animal, but somehow has a brain that acts like a supercomputer. It's as if the cute Bone Vampire from Futurama was crossed with a Star Wars astromech droid.

Last episode, the presence of the beast was a secret, but now he shows Michael like it's no big deal, and later Michael shows Saru the First Officer, and her roommate, and the doctor's aren't shocked by the specifics of the Chief of Security's death, so I guess all that secrecy wasn't necessary.

The captain shows Michael the beast, in what is clearly meant to be some kind of jump scare. However, we've seen the beast there already, so it isn't surprising to us, the audience. Then, Michael's reaction is subdued, because of her vulcan training (it isn't a klingon after all), so there's no way to be shocked by proxy. This was a failed scene.

The captain tells Michael to weaponize the beast. Shouldn't she be aghast at this? The captain sold her on the whole idea of staying with the ship by telling her that she'd be working on the fungus drive, after all.

Michael and the Chief of Security mostly attempt to weaponize the beast by staring at it in a darkened room, then looking at a wireframe picture of it like they're stuck in the 80's. Really? They could at least use a tricorder on it!

The Chief of Security eventually decides she's going to knock the beast out with drugs, then shoot it with a phaser to cut pieces off of it for further study. Three things here: First, she foolishly doesn't bother checking to see if the thing's out first, despite Michael bringing it up. It's not like they can just look, it's dark in there! Second, she's clearly forgotten that phasers don't work on it. Third, she and Michael both seem to have forgotten that their ship computers can alter the force fields to put holes in them! She could have just called up a small hole (too small for a tentacle, obviously), and shot through that.

The Chief of Security was killed by the beast just so Michael could figure out it was afraid of light. But why? It's food glows! That doesn't make any sense.

The genial genital fungus beast is trapped in some kind of holding cell, but how? As far as we know, only the end of the tunnel it's in is a force field, and we know it can tear through hardened safety shield doors, but we're left to guess for ourselves what the cell's walls are made from, and therefor why their security doors aren't made from the same stuff.

On top of that, we learn how the beast got on to the Glenn - it fungus teleported itself in, in search of food, in the form of spare fungus spores they were keeping in their hold! We know the beast can still fungus teleport, because it teleports the ship. We also know that force fields don't hinder it, because it does it from inside a force field anyway. Long story short, there seems to be no reason the beast can't leave at any time under it's own power. At the very least, they could have kept losing it and finding it again in their fungus forest, which would have been a good clue.

Michael befriends the beast by bringing it some spores to eat. (Stolen? Maybe, I guess! Also, seems like a bad move to trust this thing... she should have just teleported the spores in there, or tossed it through the force field really quickly, or pushed them through a small hole in the force field, or maybe used the air handling system to do it as with the knockout gas earlier. This is so poorly written!) Anyway, she releases the spores into the air, they form a cloud, and the beast makes some weird chomping motions randomly in the air. This was both really poor CGI (was it two entirely separate CGI bits that fail to interact?) as well as poor creature design. Shouldn't it be inhaling the spores somehow?

Later, after Michael has sort of befriended the beast, she finally realizes that it's supposed to be clamped into the machine that they found in the Glenn (which they somehow installed, hooked in, powered up, and so on without knowing what it was or what it did) and she's concerned about it's feelings. That's great and all... but then why doesn't she dim the lights? Later, after basically torturing the beast (twice), Michael is shocked that it doesn't like her anymore. What was she expecting?

It was also weird how the Chief Science Officer described the interface with the beast, specifying that a map of all space currently cataloged by the Federation was in the beast's brain, presented in an easy to use visual display. Wouldn't that be more of a clue that the map came from the device?

Don't they all feel silly now that they blew up the Glenn, now that they know there was only the one beast on there? You know, if the beast was so easy to capture that they eventually did it off screen (still don't know how, especially considering their continual screw-ups), there was no reason they couldn't have downloaded all their computer logs first (a tried and true Star Trek trope), salvaged the valuable components from it (wait, they must have at least gone back to get the beast chair equipment!), or just towed it back to space dock as a valuable ship for the ongoing war!

Michael's inheritance:

Okay, so at some point the Discovery, while on a super secret mission, gets a delivery: Some sort of carrying case that she inherited from her former Captain. It's all very sad, since she mutinied against her in the first episode and is responsible for her death. When she finally opens it, we discover that it contains the old-timey (we don't actually know if it's an antique or a new replica) optical telescope they were using on the old ship! This is absolutely ridiculous because it means that that thing was salvaged from the abandoned ship, while the super high tech, valuable, and equal sized 'dilithium processor' is left behind for the klingons to salvage. Also, the telescope was all beat up, but paired with the identity locked case and private message, so they must have found it, found the case, put it in the case, and then carried it out, all while they were evacuating!

We know they didn't come back for it later, because the klingons have just been sitting there right next to all the wrecked ships for the entire six months between the second and fourth show!

The Klingons:

Evidently the Klingons don't have replicators, because they have power, but no food. Even when they finally get the 'dilithium processor' (and what the heck even is that?) and have enough power to move the ship, they still don't have any food... even though they've been stuck out there for ages before the start of the show.

It seems crazy that these religious fanatics decide to follow the new guy... I know the new guy brought food, but seriously, they were about to go get some! They couldn't wait a few more minutes! As we've already established, you can get from one side of the Empire to the other within two hours max.

I guess the deposed albino klingon is going to get some kind of super spy training from his new girlfriend? If it's so good, why hasn't she used it to.. do whatever it is she thinks its going to do for him?

Worst part of the show:

Overall, the worst part of the show was when they casually recount eating the body of the first Captain. Holy what? That's just insult to injury. It sounded like they ate her right away too, not because they were eventually starving. Cannibalism doesn't have a place in klingon lore, and it doesn't have a place in this show.

This episode wasn't enjoyed, it was endured. I hope the entire series doesn't end up the same way!

In terms of science advisors for Discovery, I couldn't find anything online. The IMDB list of complete crew doesn't list anyone in that position.

What I did find however, is that Andre Bormanis, who was science advisor for both TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, and who did gigs with CBS before, isn't on Discovery team. But he is active... he is advising and writing for....yup.. The Orville ;D

On the other hand, if you check the writers of ST:Discovery, and what they did before this... the types of TV shows that they wrote for... is well, as much as a let-down as what ST:D is looking to be (Pushing Daisies, Pepper Dennis, Wonderfalls, GCB, Roswell, 90210 etc.. baah). There is only one or two writers who actually did any ST before). So that might be the reason why this ST seems to be so shallow and bad.

Some more observations about the Captain's desire to be an effective fighting ship along with his mission to develop new weapons tech for Starfleet:

There's no word on how he or Starfleet reconcile having super secret and super sensitive weapons tech testing on a vessel that's putting itself in harms way, or traveling to where the klingons are, or even just drifting around in space. Look what happened to the Glenn! Supposedly they had just as much going on on that ship, just as many wacky schemes and crazy ideas, but one accident later and it's all gone. We know it's all gone because the guys on the Discovery couldn't get all the info on the one project they most needed!

The other weird thing is that with all this focus on new weapons tech, the Captain walks in on his team's battle sim to see them barely keeping up with the battle. Why? Normal Start Trek stuff, where all flying and all targeting is done by typing commands on a keyboard. Of all the Star Trek tropes they wanted to keep, why keep that? Why doesn't the Captain walk in and say, "Guys, what the heck? Can't we set the Ops up like an old time fighter jet, and get the guys firing the phasers some gunners nests? Or maybe a video game controller or something? Or a mouse? Or a touch screen? And maybe, since we can fire more than one thing at a time, we could have multiple people ready to aim and fire them? What do we even have battle stations for, if not for that? Why don't we have the computer do it automatically? Wouldn't that be faster? Someone plug that robot in, see if that helps! Lets get some seat belts and some plastic shields to protect people from the inevitable console sparks! Make it so!"

I guess he's too busy being shady to think about little things like that!

The more I think about the spore drive and the lack of spore drive in any other Star Trek show, the more it feels like a huge plot hole for the series. I'm guessing that the tech is going to be lost at some point, because it's never seen again, and since all the info for it is self contained on the star ship Discovery. However, we've seen countless other civilizations over the various shows, and none of them have this tech either.

It sounds like these spores are everywhere already (that's the whole point of them), and if you grow enough of these spores, spore beasts eventually teleport in, which you would think would be a big clue.

Maybe there's another, even more dangerous beast that shows up eventually, or a preexisting civilization using spore drive that shows up to keep the process to itself, or maybe the spores actually do infect people (like I originally thought they were going for) and anyone who comes in contact with it eventually is forced to evolve into a spore beast of some kind and teleports away (sort of like what happened to Geordi that one time)?

The very last time.

Sorry Elle. You must be winding me up, or really still missing the point. I belabor it and get told to stop hammering on. And now I lack imagination. And then there is this.
"Let’s imagine the spores and the critter have a kind of metabolism that converts their Proton-shaped bodies, into a kind of particle that is ‘superfluid’, like how you could turn a ‘dead’ copper-wire into a magnet, by just twisting it into a coil and run a current through it generating a magnetic field."

Its a word salad. And a terrible analogy. Something Deepak Chopra might say.
BTW a straight copper wire will have a magnetic field.

I can imagine the universe used to be just dark matter, and that dark matter beings were experimenting with protodark matter, when an unanticipated interaction with virtual dark matter caused an irreversible and completely adiabatic increase in the eigen-sate of just one single dark matter gluon. The resulting chromo-dynamic quantum cascade lead to the creation of the first matter which, when entangled with itself in a transdimensional fractal matrix, amplified. Just like when you blow air into a balloon and it gets bigger. The matter started absorbing all the ambient dark energy in the universe, threatening to consume dark matter itself, like an infection. In desperation, the dark matter beings sacrificed 4 of their 27 dimensions, pushing all the matter into them centered on a singularity that was detonated by a gravimetric Higgs anti-boson field generator., aka the big bang. What matter had been generated was scattered so dilutely, just 4%, it could no longer amplify. Matter, if you like, is intergalactic herpes that dark matter can live with. The outcome of this treatment will not be known for millennia or until the flatness of this 4-dimensional sub-universe is unambiguously verified or not, in which case a second singularity may be required, like an intergalactic booster shot. The dark matter beings have formed a monitoring division, the Intergalactic STD Corps, who's sole charge is to monitor the infection and report to Admiral Penny E. Cillin.

OR, the universe is a giant creme brûlée and fluctuations in density depend solely on how heavy handed God was with the torch. Its hard to be sure.

(Common now. Thats funny.)

Now you've made me a liar. I said no more Star Trek. One last time.
Unintended sarcasm in the above aside, this is the last i will say.
I love fiction, superheros, The Magicians is a guilty pleasure, Dr Strange etc etc. but they sway way over to fantasy, and are nothing more than entertainment.
Its just that I, and many others, hold Star Trek through Rodenberrys vision to a higher standard (as he did). As I said before the science in it, even if flakey sometimes, has at least SOME root in reality as we know it (well, mostly - I can guess the episodes you are thinking about right now :-). Its then how humans, life (whatever that is) react to that. Wagon Train in science space. I think ST:TNG did it best and they got scientific advice.

Ive been to a Trek conference - it seemed half full of PhDs. The writers, actors, producers know the cross they bear with Trek, and they accept it. In fact they revel in it. They understand its influence. Thats why Neil Armstrong talked at one even though he had become reclusive. I saw the SpaceX guys talk there. Scotty got an honorary degree from Brown University when a survey showed how big an impact his character made on people going into engineering (goes with a funny story Koenig told). Even Shatner now understands and regrets his 'get a life' tease. Its why serious scientists would write books on Trek tech and physics. What other TV show has done such a thing? And yes its fun and entertaining. And i am a Dr Who fan and do not hold that to the same standard, Good Lord, next thing you know the Dr will be a woman.....

I am sorry but I hold ST to that vision and its cannon, and consequently I, and many others, get very upset when Discovery is appearing to trample all over it.
I will recover. There will be other shows to pick up the torch. But its still disappointing.

OK thats it. For good. No more!!!
I have my novel on intergalactic herpes to complete........

Phillip K. may have had his demons, as do many, but he was visionary and ahead of his time. Where Asimov saw robots as programs simulating emotions and reacting to them, Phil saw the roots as human.
He may have had weirdness and visions - apparently 'sane' people see angels and Gods and slaughter each other over them. As they say, there is a fine line between genius and madness. I say there is no line at all - more a gradient of moral perspective.Maybe. Will have to chew on those words.

Interestingly some of the 19th centuries musicians great works came under some degree of what you might call mental illness. Check out the influence of syphilis....

http://www.urologichistory.museum/content/exhibits/historyforum/AUA2014…

#21. Had me in stitches.
"Its food glows!"

@Sinisa Lazarek wrote:

he is advising and writing for….yup.. The Orville ;D

I wonder if he advised on the Dark Matter Storm.

In all seriousness, there was a moment in ST:D when the chief of security was working with Michael to drop the force field to the tardigrade pen, and I thought for half a second: "No big deal. The Chief of Security is far and away the strongest person on board".

Between the two shows I am liking The Orville better.

@Denier #28,
What make me kind of laugh is, Orville has far more invested in humor, yet when I think of the crew of STD meeting the Orville crew, I can't but help but think Captain Mercer would look at their counterparts angst ridden faces, observe their inhumane and illegal activities and say "What the flying #$%*@ is wrong with you guys?"
.
The way things are going with the plot lines, please tell me if I'm wrong, but doesn't STD seem more like a Mirror Mirror universe than the federation all the other series belong to? I've been curious if that's the rabbit they are going to pull out of their hat, that someone survives the terrible nasty dark federation universe and somehow jumps realities (al la the magic of Abrams) to warn another parallel federation of what not to do. The franchise has a history of altered history, now they can screw around with alternate realities as well.

@19: every reader takes something different away from an author. Personally I don't see paranoia in Dick's writing but rather something related to that: a concern/exploration of the notion of identity. If you're invented, or your memory's changed, or something is beaming thoughts into your head...are you still you? What's the "you" in that case really mean? But I'll also admit it's been many years since I read a PKD book.

@26: I fully agree Dick was a visionary writer in a lot of ways. I was really only quibbling with the implied point in your @4-5 that Dick belongs with Asimov etc. in being considered a more 'hard' sci fi writer. I don't think he ever (or...hardly ever) wrote with science realism in mind.

@29: Now you've got me hoping the Orville writers do a 'mirror, mirror' episode...

#25,

"I belabor it and get told to stop hammering on."

The world has its Einsteins but also its Whinesteins.

My comment #11 was addressed @Ethan.

Discovery Is Smart-Sounding Scientific Nonsense

So, exactly like every other Star Trek then? ST has never really been hard sci-fi - it's always been filled with sciency-sounding bafflegab and magical technology that has exactly whatever capabilities and limits the writers require at that moment in time (and change wildly from episode to episode).

I mean, I love Star Trek, and I've been (re)watching its different incarnations on a more-or-less continuous loop for almost my entire life, but let's not pretend that this is a radical departure. I can't help feeling that a lot of people criticising Discovery are comparing it to some entirely imaginary version of Star Trek that they've got in their heads rather than the real thing. Go back and try to rewatch the first season of TNG with an impartial eye, I dare you - by any objective measure, it's terrible. Yet we love it.

It's Science Fiction, not reality. Does it really matter if the science is correct? Can't we just enjoy the show without a bunch of people tearing it apart for not being real enough?

@Dunc

"So, exactly like every other Star Trek then?"

Precisely, as if beaming a person, made of atoms and molecules, is so different from a critter than can 'beam' itself from one place in space to another.

@Steve Blackband:

Whoa, that fictional paragraph you came up with would make a great comic book backstory!

@Dunc:

One of the great things about star trek has always been at least a nod to both science and continuity. They would write the story first, then, when something sciencey would hapen, they'd write 'tech' into the script, to be filled in later with official technobabble. So, the main story might involve some pop science, then how they deal with it would be in continuity with Star Trek lore.

Another difference is the more episodic nature of those shows. While that sometimes meant that continuity suffered a bit (like when Spock did, did not, then did have greater than human strength), but it also meant that we got a greater variety of science fiction stories. Star Trek: Discovery doesn't have that, we're getting one really long story, and if they muck it up, the don't get to reset for the next episode.

@CFT:

Okay, that would be awesome. I'd heard something about this, but if we're starting in the Mirror Universe, some story choices and character motivations could make more sense. For example, the Vulcans having a policy of shooting first.

Although, we still have the Federation, not the Empire, of planets, the Klingon Empire exists as an empire and is decidedly evil, the klingons don't look right for that universe either, and the future of the Mirror Universe also doesn't have the spore drive.

Yeah... I think that would have been a good idea! However, at this point, it seems that the Discovery writers have actively discouraged good ideas. I'd say that it would be possible that they're in one of the infinite alternate timelines (as shown in that one TNG episode where Worf keeps winning and losing a battleth tournament), but we were assured we're at least in the main timeline.

We can always hope they tie all this together in a satisfying way though!

The more I think about it though, and as cool as the concept would have been, I don't think starting in the Mirror Universe would make sense. If we're only ten years before the start of TOS, and Kirk is already halfway through Starfleet Academy at this point. I don't think that's enough time to turn everyone into crazy murderers.

Unless... maybe the spores act to flip people's morality if they get infected? Is that why the new Captain is so shady? Ehh, but he and the Security Chief were the most shady, and those spores are all through the ship. I guess they could force it to work if they really wanted to, but it really would seem forced.

It's obviously not the Mirror Universe. In the Mirror Universe, Zephram Cochrane kills the Vulcans who make first contact in 2063, and the Terran Empire is conquering its way across the quadrant by 2155. (As shown in ST:E "In a Mirror, Darkly".)

It's not an a parallel timeline. It's the same time timeline as the original series, set 10 years before Kirk, Spock and Enterprise. There are interviews with producers and even official site mentions that it's not exploring the timeline covered in new movies.

Whinestein!!! Funny. I like it.

I stand behind the vision of a unified humanity, science as a savior, and fiction as a way of communicating and compelling that vision. Fantasy is an escape, an excuse to do nothing, as is religion, taking away our accountability.

After all, we don't have much to deal with. Religious war, overpopulation, the sixth mass extinction well underway, material resources diminishing rapidly, deforestation, global warming, pollution of our waters and seas, the end of antibiotics.

Awww crap. We're screwed aren't we? As Pris said in Blade Runner "The we're stupid and we'll die"

I forgot Donald Trump.
Damn it. Need beer.

I forgot Trump.
Damn. Need beer.

@Dunc #37:
I really liked how the real character of Zephram Cochrane turned out a lot different than the people of the future were expecting, in ST First Contact. :-)

@Frank #40

I thought it was interesting too, but mostly because it seemed as if the Enterprise crew was violating the Prime Directive against themselves! "I don't know, if the Federation can't be established without outside interference, perhaps they're just not ready..." I'm sure they had some very interesting paperwork to file when they got back, at the very least!

It’s Science Fiction, not reality. Does it really matter if the science is correct?

Well we are going very far afield here, so I'll try and bring it back to Ethan's original complaint at the end.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It's okay to be space opera or space fantasy. But most fans dislike a show that implies or touts itself as hard science fiction and then indulges in science fantasy.

That isn't exactly what Ethan is complaining about though, I don't think. He's more complaining that the characters in the story don't act in a rational manner given the plot context in which they are put. He's basically complaining that, like characters in old schlock horror movies, they utterly ignore things right in front of their face. Well sure there's a body dismembered by a chainsaw. But why should I believe there's a killer with a chainsaw on the loose?

Star Trek has never touted itself as hard science fiction - at least, not in this universe.

As for the characters acting in ludicrous ways to serve the plot - again, that's exactly like every other iteration of the franchise.

Whats the difference between science fiction and 'hard' science fiction?

This is mostly directed toward the author.

Don't worry about the writers not consulting with scientists, or even scientific journals. That is the least of their problems. They apparently didn't feel the need to actually watch any Star Trek before deciding to write an entire series based in an already established fictional universe.
They basically made a version of Lord of The Rings where Hobbits are eight feet tall, and Gsndalf can teleport anywhere with magical ent dust. Oh, and Boromir carries an AK-47.

Are Space, Time, And Gravity Just Illusions?

esiegel — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 05:16:21 +0000

Are Space, Time, And Gravity Just Illusions?

“Something is happening here and this is going to have an impact.” -Robert Dijkgraaf, on Verlinde's work

There are many attempts out there to reconcile the quantum field theories that describe the electromagnetic and nuclear forces with general relativity, which describes the gravitational force. Certain questions, about gravitational properties in strong fields and on small scales, will never be answered otherwise. In order to make that happen, we'd need a quantum theory of gravity. While string theory is the most popular idea, there are others, such as asymptotic safety, loop quantum gravity, and causal dynamical triangulations.

Outside the event horizon of a black hole, General Relativity and quantum field theory are completely sufficient for understanding the physics of what occurs. But near the singularity, a quantum theory of gravity is needed. Image credit: NASA.

But perhaps the most radical idea came from Erik Verlinde in 2009: the idea that gravity itself is not fundamental, but rather arises from a truly fundamental entity: the entropy of quantum bits of information. Verlinde's work has been intriguing and especially controversial, and I myself have spotted a number of problem areas with his results so far, but it's certainly an idea worth exploring further. At 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT tonight, he delivers the Perimeter Institute's inaugural public lecture of their 2017-2018 series.

If gravitation isn't fundamental, but is rather an emergent force that comes about from the properties of fundamental qbits of information, perhaps this new way of looking at the Universe will answer some of our greatest fundamental puzzles. Image credit: flickr gallery of J. Gabas Esteban.

What will he say? And what will I have to say when I weigh in on it? Find out then on our live-blog of Verlinde's talk tonight!

esiegel Wed, 10/04/2017 - 01:16

Tags

gravity

Physics

Categories

Free Thought

When you replace physics with mathematics, and then complain about the fact your abstract point particle HEP math can't carry physical forces, the solution is not to double down (dig an even deeper hole), and turn the physical forces into abstract mathematics as well.
.
Strange that after such a highly successful and important LHC discoveries like the Higgs particle and it's field (They even got a Nobel prize!!) which was supposed to resolve the issues of particle mass, it would appear HEP is still floundering around with ... the exact same thing they were before.
.
In the standing tradition and spirit of HEP and invoking made up things as actual things:
Leonard Hofstadter was exactly right.

You didn't explain anything... Bait title is bait.

But it is a good bait for making an important announcement and invitation :-)

This blog sounds more and more like an advertisement for whatever Ethan is selling each day as an untested hypothetical, even fictional product. When the title is a question, the blog should present possible answers to the question.
That should at least include an explanation of how the word "fundamental" is being used, as in, "... the idea that gravity itself is not fundamental, but rather arises from a truly fundamental entity: the entropy of quantum bits of information"
We know that mass attracts mass, and that the FORCE of attraction is direct in proportion to amount of mass and inverse with the square of distances between masses. (Once known as the universal LAW of gravitation.) How that works is still the missing link in the Great Quest for an integrating Theory of Everything (all four forces.)

The abstract concept, "the entropy of quantum bits of information" is no substitute for a physical explanation of the FORCE OF GRAVITY in a world of massive physical objects, not just "bits of information."
In spite of the technical difficulties and statistical uncertainty with the LHC at CERN, I still have hope that understanding the Higgs field will eventually explain (in "real world" terms) what might fill space as quanta interconnecting EVERYTHING. That would include gravity and many other unexplained phenomena not yet considered scientifically valid.

@Michael Mooney #4,
If the LHC actually did what it claimed by locating a Higgs particle, and if the Higgs field were actual, the discussion Ethan is proposing would not even be happening.
.
Leonard Hofstadter was so right.

CFT,
It's impossible for an old life-long an amateur scientist to sort out the honest (unbiased) scientists (are there any left?) from the self-serving paper writers and famous multimedia self promoters. (If the shoe fits...)
Maybe the CERN project is just a scam perpetrated by Big Money to support statisticians and liars (not two categories) in a symbiosis among pseudo-scientists and various big promotional dealers. (Like this Star Trek promotional at SWAB.) Maybe not.
I Still have a shred of hope for honest science based on solid empirical evidence, building on the the body of confirmed epistemology... what we know and how we know it.

@Michael Mooney #6,
What you are hoping for will definitely be from outside the box of government funded academia. This has pretty much always been the case. Creativity is not a collectivist process done well by committee. Look outside the establishment for the scientists who are really trying something new without government money and groupthink calling the shots. The beauty of private funding: you aren't being paid to think alike.

@CFT,

"What you are hoping for will definitely be from outside the box of government funded academia. This has pretty much always been the case."

Not sure about this, most people who realise something 'fundamental' have an academic background. Perhaps funding wise they got money from venture fonds.

Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein were all academics, I can't really think of anyone that changed the world that didn't went to the university.

BTW I also don't see how a non-academic can get funding, be it by the government or privately. Usually those who invest also have an academic background.

@Michael Mooney,

Go see a doctor you paranoid freak.

CFT,

Did you even read the article past the title? I think it's pretty ironic that you chose THIS POST to complain about the lack of new and creative ideas in science. The idea that Verlinde had is PRECISELY the kind of thing you are complaining does not exist. Far from being in the scientific mainstream (groupthink as you'd call it), Verlinde's idea pushes well past the accepted ideas about space and gravity into very speculative territory. It may or may not turn out that his idea is viable, but you certainly should NOT be complaining about a lack of creativity and new ideas on this particular post.

CFT,

Just a further thought: has it ever occurred to you that the so-called "groupthink" is simply a result of looking at the evidence at hand and coming to an agreement that the current scientific consensus is what best fits that evidence? Creative is not necessarily correct. The main factor that suppresses new ideas is that pesky thing called observational evidence. If the new idea doesn't explain the observations better than the old idea, then it will be rejected. The burden is on the creator of the new idea to show that it is better than the consensus one, not on the scientific community to demonstrate that the consensus idea is superior.

QBITS studies should get more govt funding than LBTQ....IMHO.

LOL

Housekeeping note: I appreciate that Ethan tried to clean up the nastiest personal abuse here (WOW for example) but why is Elle H.C. (see #9) still here spewing venomous insults?

Content question as per post title: So... Are space, time, and gravity all just illusions?

My answer is that space is the volume in which everything exists and moves; time is the concept of duration as everything moves ("it takes time"), and gravity is the attractive FORCE between masses, mechanism still unknown.

@Sean T #8, #10,
I never said Galileo didn't go to school and university. He obviously did, as did Newton, etc., and they eventually went their own way intellectually when they found the 'consensus' was not to their liking, Academia changed their tune, not the other way around. This is much the same for the others as well. Otherwise you would be implying that Einstein's, Newton's and Maxwell's ideas were academically commonplace when they came up with them? This makes no sense. Academia is an institutional body, used mostly as a dispersion/indoctrination tool for someone else's great idea that has become popular.
.
As to Verlinde's work, It moves in the direction that screwed physics up in the first place, the false premise that Math informs reality. It doesn't, try the other way around. Math also can NOT carry physical forces without resorting to the mental sleight of hand of hypostatization, any more than an imaginary horse that has no physical existence can give you an actual pony ride.
.
My problem with groupthink, is that it isn't actually thinking at all, it's herd instinct. It isn't based on the strength of an argument, or debating an argument, it's just convincing others in the group that agreement is more important than what they are there to do. Consensus is a political process, not a scientific one.
.
If you want a sci-fi approximation, think Jor El. He certainly wasn't correct according to the consensus of the Kryptonian science council. Did the fact he didn't agree with the consensus have anything to do with whether or not he was right in predicting their world was about to end? No. Political consensus often has little to do with reality, the successful use of propaganda on large numbers of people clearly demonstrates this. Large numbers of people are often wrong, especially when agreement is valued more highly than truth and understanding.

CFT,

While I can understand the sentiment of grounding science in hard experimental data, that experimental data often does not exist when you are dealing with the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Sure, all of these ideas are certainly speculative until confirmed by experiment, but does that really mean that physicists should not speculate about them in the meantime? If the data never comes, then the theories will always remain speculative.

I am not sure why you have something against the use of math in physics. Math is just a good way to ask "what if" questions. All math is basically the exercise of assuming that certain statements are true and then deducing the consequences of those statements. Math is very useful in science because we can almost NEVER directly test the truth of our fundamental ideas directly. Consider the fundamental idea that "all matter is made of atoms". That idea cannot be put to a direct test. We must assume it's true, and then deduce the consequences of that truth. We make some more assumptions about the structure of that atom and the behavior of its parts. We can then build upon our other scientific knowledge, such as the behavior of the electromagnetic force, and use that knowledge combined with our mathematical model of atomic structure to make calculations, ie. predictions, about what we will observe in some situations. For instance, we can calculate the energies that the electron in a hydrogen atom can take on. We can then predict that hydrogen will emit light corresponding to the differences of these energies and no other light. We can then energize some hydrogen atoms, look at the light they emit and see if it matches our predictions. If it does, we can conclude that our model (which if you haven't guessed is now called quantum mechanics) is likely correct. We can use that model to predict further observations that we could make and continue to test it. That's how science advances. Without the math, I cannot see how we could test any of our ideas.

Now, obviously, if the math makes a prediction and that prediction doesn't come through, then we must modify the axioms upon which that math was based.

The reluctance of the physics community to do so depends highly on the past success of the model. We didn't throw out Newtonian gravity because the orbit of the planet Uranus didn't match up with prediction. We looked for and found another planet, Neptune, that was causing the deviations. We DID throw out Newtonian gravity when Mercury didn't move as predicted, as general relativity could account better for that (and other) observations. It's often a tricky thing to determine which is most appropriate in a given situation. Sometimes bucking the consensus is right, but the consensus got to be that for a reason, and it's not the conspiratorial, political reasons you seem to think. It's generally because the consensus idea is generally the one that best fits the data. If another idea is presented that fits the data better, it will be adapted. Perhaps it won't happen right away, or as quickly as one would hope (scientists are human and think that they are right after all), but it will happen.

@Michael Mooney,

You are right, it's still a mystery to me why Ethan hasn't blocked my 'new' phone and IP address. I'm spending too much time here being a jackass.

@MM:
"My answer is that space is the volume in which everything exists and moves; time is the concept of duration as everything moves (“it takes time”), and gravity is the attractive FORCE between masses, mechanism still unknown."

Physics described by a child? :-)

Frank,
Thank you. Children are honest before they lose their innocence. Then they grow up to pursue "self interest." ("It's only human.") Scientists are no exceptions.
Do you have any criticism, scientifically speaking, of my statement which you quoted?
Or is this just another personal attack?

Just a tip-o-the-hat to CFT on # 14.
May favorite quote: "As to Verlinde’s work, It moves in the direction that screwed physics up in the first place, the false premise that Math informs reality. It doesn’t, try the other way around."
Kelley Ross agrees too. (Read his paper, folks. I've linked it a few times.)

Everyone should read up on Ethan's philosophy of science, instrumentalism. It will inform you of his bias here.

"It all depends on how you look at it" (generic quote)... the consensus among relativity theorists.

Then you have your time travel and "warp speed" ten times faster than light... and "wormholes" and "white holes"... and "singularities" with no volume but containing everything now observable as a universe. ... and infinite co-existing "universes"...
And 'they' call it science.

Imagine that. But don't call it science.

MM,
I am not sure CFT really likes your continuing support. :-)

Sean T (on CFT):

I am not sure why you have something against the use of math in physics.

It may be bleed over from creationism's influence on conservative thought. They tend to insist science would be better if it stuck much more strictly to experimentation, with a great de-emphasis on theory building. Little or no extrapolation: if the phenomena isn't right in front of you and testable, you don't try and explain it. For creationists, this demand for a more direct empiricism lets them pretend the ToE is not good science; for CFT, it lets him pretend any spending on basic science not directly linked to some pragmatic benefit he agrees with is not good science.

This blog sounds more and more like an advertisement...

...says the guy who brings up his pet peeve in every single thread.

MM, if you don't think advertising has a place on this blog, why do engage in it?

@eric #21,

You are talking out of your data hole again. You know nothing about what I do or do not believe outside of the realm of science from this blog, so please stop pretending you do know.
.
I am not a creationist, but I'm not sure you even understand the irony that if you subscribe to theories like "Thhe big Bang "it popped out of nothing", with some 'quantum' fluctuation nonsense tacked on, you are even more 'creationist' than the creationists themselves, as at least their version has a pre-dating cause, some entity from beyond this universe. The big bang doesn't even have a cause, it requires a whopper of a miracle without even an agent to initiate it. Railing against creationism when it accomplishes nothing, and your own 'best guess' ALSO relies on a miracle itself is pretty stupid. It's a bunch of linguistic nonsense pretending to be science. Zero information informing a theory of spontaneous existence...that kind thing is what a scientist is supposed to avoid like the plague. If you don't know, so be it, you don't know, that is all you can say with honesty in a scientific fashion. If you wish to speculate anyway, fine, but you are doing meta-physics, not science or physics.
.
You have an terrible habit of stating things people never said. I never said I had anything against math being used in physics, I said I had a problem with people who conflate mathematical processes with physics or physical forces and causes.
As far as math goes, it's a human abstract construct. It does not exist without people, as it is an idea, and ideas don't float around without brains (last I checked) that contain minds that can contain the idea. However the universe works, it isn't math. How do I know this? Because math is admittedly used to crudely describe and MODEL the universe, it's a contrived place holder, not the thing itself. This isn't complicated to understand. If you believe differently, that math somehow independently of people 'does or causes things' you are subscribing to a philosophy or idea called mathematical Platonism, which is a form of supernatural mysticism. Sorry, but that's what it is:
.
"Mathematical platonism is any metaphysical account of mathematics that implies mathematical entities exist, that they are abstract, and that they are independent of all our rational activities."
.

I am NOT saying math is not useful, of course it is, it can be very useful in creating models when we have adequate measurements and good data. I am saying math isn't reality itself any more than any other man made abstract idea.
.
Math is used in physics. Math is NOT physics. There's a difference. The universe informs our senses which informs our minds which we use to construct simplified models which mimic aspects of what we observe. Math is used in these models, but math is a second hand abstraction to the abstraction of the model itself which is in turn trying mimic something real. The model determines how the math is used, not the other way around. To simplify the argument somewhat, reality informs your abstract ideas, your abstract ideas do not inform reality.
.
Science is supposed to have limitations, it's a discipline. that's what makes it so useful, it's not supposed to be able to do anything. It can't resort to illogical processes or uncaused events, or causes that are outside the realm of measurement. This means you have to carefully restrict what kinds of answers you have or use. This also means you have to be very skeptical when answers stray outside of these restrictions.
.
As far a science goes, causality rules. Scientifically, I do not believe in causeless events, as they are logically impossible. I may not know the cause, but to subscribe to the tenants of science, you have to look for a cause, period, not a spontaneous miracle workaround to make your theory work. If you can't find a cause, scientifically, that's literally all you can say, "I can't find a cause". The beauty of this simple honesty is, now the way is clear for someone else to come along someday and have another look without them having to wade through a bullshit answer.
.
.http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php

CFT,

Why does everything have to have a cause? That's an assertion on your part that may or may not be true, but one that needs further investigation. As it turns out, it seems that it very likely is not true, in fact. It doesn't mean that there are miracles or anything like that, but rather that some events, especially in the domain of very small scales such as subatomic particles, don't have causes. They are simply random. All the evidence points to the idea that the universe is either inherently random or (and this may be even less palatable) nonlocal. Either way, what most commonly would refer to as causality can be violated. Causality is one of those notions that our brains evolved to help us deal with the world, but is simply not true when we dig deeper into the working of the universe.

@ eric #22
I am here arguing that science ultimately requires empirical evidence. That includes the "cosmology" of a universe which popped out of nothingness, the philosophy of shrinking objects and distances (depending on observational differences), the presentation of concepts and models as if they were entities actually existing in the world ( space, time, spacetime, etc.)... or "are they illusions?... an unanswered post title.
I am not "selling" anything. As an unknown amateur I have nothing to gain (as money or fame) and nothing to lose, like a job as a scientist. Science includes dialogue among different points of view. I am here for that, in the interest of scientific honesty.

Ethan is here promoting (selling) his various "enterprizes" and proudly presenting his speculations, opinions and math models as facts in many cases. Much is pure fiction presented as science.
That is not honest science. It requires criticism. Glad to provide it.

@Sean T #24,
Why did you wait to write your entry #24 until I wrote my entry #23? Luck? Chance? Probability? The Easter Bunny? No, it was because my entry #23 came before and provoked (caused) you to make your entry (effect) #24. Random is a word invoked when people don't literally really know where the number is coming from, in fact in computer science the word 'random' is considered almost a dangerous misnomer, as there is no random, there is merely 'I don't know how (what algorithm)that number was generated', which is how it works in cyber security, even if you could have random, you wouldn't want it as that would just create lots of problems, as you want a system that does not repeat the same sequence of numbers (called a hash collision sometimes) when creating keys.
.
The whole 'random' concept is more about the limits of your information about the subject than the subject itself. Mathematicians who should know better often invoke 'random' when they are being sloppy, while at the same time hiding behind their own mathematical systems which are completely dependent upon a rigid logical hierarchy which serves as an order of operations (cause-effect) in EVERY one of their calculations. This is the deception that all causality defying physics (like time travel) hides behind, by foolishly pretending that math can be outside of time, or that their own internal mathematical hierarchies aren't equally dependent upon sequentially ordered causality to function as everything else in time is (this is where the mathematical Platonism comes into play, they claim it's outside of time, which is complete and utter rubbish) That 'order of operation' is critical if you want your arithmetic to be valid, or the calculation to mean anything, mathematics has rules all over the place determining how calculations are handled in various situations, which rely upon one particular operation after another to be performed. Computers are proof of this as they are cause and effect personified, they can't do anything they are supposed to if one condition isn't met in order for another to happen, no cause and effect, then there is no order or operation, and no logical operation is possible.
.
What you are talking about at the level of the very small is simply this, uncertainty. The smaller you go, the harder it is to know what is influencing what you are observing, eventually even the observing (depending on what that is) will influence what is observed, as even tiny things can have a dramatic effect on tiny things, and you can't really keep track of them all at such a small scale. This does not mean things pop into and out of existence (Any more than stars you can't see through your telescope pop into or out of existence as the come into view) , this means that the model you are using does this because of its inherent flaws and limitations. The map is not the territory, never forget that. Sometimes you sum over a range of countless behaviors (average) and call it a day, but that is dependent on what scale of accuracy suits your needs, the smaller you go the more precarious such abstract operations of averaging become, uncertainty grows, as things that seemed stable at one scale seem far more turbulent at a smaller scale (from far above, the earth also looks peaceful. The closer you get...meh). Probability is also a dodge, as it is, and always has been, and always shall be A CALCULATION utterly dependent upon the data fed into it used to determine uncertainty. Probability has nothing to do with determining reality, it is a second hand calculation which may or may not mimic the process it was designed for accurately. It can be used to describe the statistical outcomes of certain behaviors, but it certainly isn't the cause of those behaviors...which goes back to my earlier statement, Math is not reality, it is used to MODEL reality. Every time you invoke probability, you are actually invoking the accuracy of the model the calculation is being performed inside of, which is a simplification of the subject it mimics in reality. This means a lot of things which influence the reality are not present in the model, and so are not even considered in the calculation at all. Being that many models are highly reiterative (calculation output become calculation input, rinse repeat) eventually the left out bits begin began to become painfully apparent as the model output diverges further and further from the activity of the actual system.
.
To use your own words:
"Causality is one of those notions that our brains evolved to help us deal with the world, but is simply not true when we dig deeper into the working of the universe."
.
You are proposing an end to reasoned inquiry.
...There is no digging into anything whatsoever if you subscribe to this idea, much less science, as the act of digging itself is a sequential process, as is digging a ditch, mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, history, geology, medicine...pretty much put an 'ology' on the end of it, anything involved with observing change, change itself, it all goes caput without causality. Sorry to burst your bubble. You may want to rethink that.

CFT:

Scientifically, I do not believe in causeless events, as they are logically impossible

So, you reject quantum mechanics? The heisenberg uncertainty principle? I think in earlier conversations you've said yes you reject the HUP, so we'll use that as an example.

That long monolog about science vs. math doesn't tell me anything about why you accept F=ma, E=mc^2, but not delx*delrho>=hbar/2. Many physicists will tell you QM is the most tested theory in physics. Predictions have been measured to something like 15 significant digits, and it holds. So how do you justify rejecting such a well-tested 'mathematical model' while accepting 'mathematical models' less rigorously tested?

@eric #27,
I reject some of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, yes. It has uses, but so do epicycles. It doesn't make them good models. I treat a mathematical model as at best an abstract approximation of reality. I don't conflate the two.
As to the claim about QM predictions being accurate to 15 significant digits, may I ask, how do you claim this when it requires you are only off by an infinity?
.
"The shell game that we play to find n and j is technically called "renormalization." But no matter how clever the word, it is what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate. What is certain is that we do not have a good mathematical way to describe the theory of quantum electrodynamics: such a bunch of words to describe the connection between n and j and m and e is not good mathematics."
.
-- Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
.
Dirac (a good friend of Feynman) was also dubious.
"Hence most physicists are very satisfied with the situation. They say: "Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory, and we do not have to worry about it any more." I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation, because this so-called "good theory" does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, neglecting them in an arbitrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it turns out to be small—not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!"
--P. A. M. Dirac, Directions in Physics
.
Of course the problem was ignored by the consensus, and convention became all the proof they needed. Modern physics students don't even bat an eyelash or raise a question anymore because when everyone else does it, who cares if it isn't even mathematically valid?.
.
What you appear to be asking next is:
"How can so many experts possibly be wrong?"
.
Strangely enough, Saint Augustine of Hippo figured out a pretty workable answer:
.
“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
.
Of course this is being applied to a moral context, not a scientific one, but it has some utility in that it clearly identifies being correct is not a factor of numbers or popularity. If you know science history you also know the consensus of experts has been shown to be wrong at the hands of an individual numerous times. Ethan pays lip service to this, but makes the mistake with his convictions that this doesn't really happen much anymore, which is hogwash. The larger the number of people who are lock step with an idea, the greater the stumble if something doesn't pan out with that idea. Lee Smolin talks about this in "The trouble with Physics", not enough intellectual diversity, too many people are betting on the same horse. This will always happen as long as people are people, and trying to figure things out and are challenging an established view. Each time the consensus is finally overthrown, a new consensus starts to take root almost immediately and the process repeats.
.
It all basically comes down to assumptions. If you have very similar assumptions, you can get a lot of agreement about predictions of what might happen. Many idolize this potential consensus as being the desired state of affairs leading to harmony. However, if you don't allow healthy disagreement, and surround yourself with a bunch of people who echo your own assumptions, you get caught flat footed when you discover this makes your entire group equally susceptible to all making the same mistake. You have put all your eggs in one basket.

CFT,

If you have not, I suggest you read “The structure of Scientific Revolutions”, by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn focuses on and illuminates several of the issues you mention above. Besides qualifying some presumptions about Science, he examines in some detail the consensus to which you refer.

At just over two hundred pages, Structure is a relatively quick read, and the fourth edition (2012) is also available in electronic format.

@John #29,
I'll take a look. Sounds interesting.

CFT:

What you appear to be asking next is:
“How can so many experts possibly be wrong?”

No, what I asked is pretty clear. Why do you accept F=ma and E=mc^2 but not delx*delrho>=hbar/2.

You keep writing long posts about skepticism of mathematical models, but you clearly accept some that accurately predict phenomena, while rejecting others...that also accurately predict phenomena. So what do you see as the difference?

What makes you think "hey, E=mc^2 is a good predictor of how things behave...I'll accept that it's physics. The HUP is also a good predictor of how things behave...but I'll reject it as mere math"?

The Suspect Science Of Star Trek: Discovery, 'Context Is For Kings,' Season 1, Episode 3

esiegel — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 06:12:42 +0000

The Suspect Science Of Star Trek: Discovery, 'Context Is For Kings,' Season 1, Episode 3

"If I die trying but I’m inadequate to the task to make a course change in the evolution of this planet…okay I tried. The fact is I tried. How many people are not trying. If you knew that every breath you took could save hundreds of lives into the future had you walked down this path of knowledge, would you run down this path of knowledge as fast as you could." -Paul Stamets

When you look at the dark matter network of the Universe, what do you see? Do you see patterns similar to other networks, like neurons in your brain or the mycological mats found beneath the soil on Earth? Of course you do; our brains are extraordinary at seeing and recognizing such patterns. But do those patterns mean that there's a relationship between the structure of the Universe and these other, biologically-based examples?

Atoms can link up to form molecules, including organic molecules and biological processes, in interstellar space as well as on planets. Is it possible that life began not only prior to Earth, but not on a planet at all? Image credit: Jenny Mottar.

That's a question that you need math and science to investigate. Superficial relationships may have nothing deeper beneath the surface, and it's against that false flag that scientists must be vigilant, in order to not fool ourselves. Yet even though this plays a vital role in Star Trek: Discovery, the episode not only falls for this fallacy, they make it a vital part of their latest episode: Context is for Kings. And it leads to some science-fiction that's rooted in the opposite of science, instead tending towards pure wish-fulfillment.

On the largest scales, the way galaxies cluster together observationally (blue and purple) cannot be matched by simulations (red) unless dark matter is included. This cosmic web may look like a web produced by fungi on Earth, but the analogy does not go deeper than that, either mathematically or physically. Image credit: Gerard Lemson & the Virgo Consortium, with data from SDSS, 2dFGRS and the Millennium Simulation.

The suspect science of the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery sets up an interesting plotline, but fails on the count of believable science fiction.

esiegel Mon, 10/02/2017 - 02:12

Tags

Categories

Ethan,
I will admit I've not watched the new STD (one heck of an unfortunate acronym), but after what you and others have described, and the exclusivist viewing business model being used to market it, I've decided to wait until CBS figures out which demographics actually watch Star Trek.
.
It almost pains me to say this, but new show Orville is actually better Star Trek than Star Trek is right now. It's a tad more silly and a lot more crude than I would like, but it does touch on ideas without losing its mind, heart, or its moral compass in a sea of techno 'context'.
.
When someone believes the mere ability to do something is justification for doing it, they are no longer the good guys. If the producers of Star Trek want to have a positive message, live long and prosper, they should remember that.

Ethan.
"Unless you can recreate the electrical patterns that compose someone's mind a great distance away, and quantum entangle them across that cosmic distance (which can only happen at-or-below the speed of light, mind you), it's never going to be physically feasible."

Really - you bring up 'which can only happen at or the speed of light" for Star Trek? Not physically feasible? The show with WARP DRIVE, transporter beams, hand held energy weapons, tractor beams, inertial dampers, and artificial gravity on a structure that does not rotate?
Now I am worried about your book ;-) ;-) ;-)

Cummon dude. Its fiction. They are exploring - your mind and imagination. This is the first episode that gave me hope - especially the second half. Even a good hard joke at last ("...and he knows you," - perfect). They gave me what I asked for - NEW bad things, new challenges. And Micheal, although still dumb (first thing she does is break in?) is at least having Kirk-like inspirations and it turns out she was right - championing the wild card in the unknown - and Issacs wants that - she's like the SAS in WW2.
The bio/physics stuff is fluffy, magic space mushrooms (dude, cool) - but so is the rest.
Its going to go wrong of course - thats the problem with prequels - its not in all the following series, though in terms of quantum meets biology maybe this is the forerunner of the Genesis device.

And as far as that goes, quantum biology is establishing itself was a new field and tunneling and entanglement may be essential to many life processes, even life itself. We don't know. Crikey, we only know what 4% of the Universe is made of, and we don't know if quantum mechanics is right and there is a better underlying theory.

As to the dark side of the Federation at this point, they are in a rock and a hard place trying to find their feet. The dark and the science hope always drive new empires (without the dark your empire will be crushed). I am hoping that the dark side is what ends up being Section 31.

Picky points - the Jeffries tubes were big and square?
They did a transporter jump in the ship with ease - but cannon says thats real hard and risky, Mr Scott.
Still hate the triangular ship. And the doughnut dish with the gap - the windows, well you just end up looking at the windows on the other side. Roddenberry was right to reject this.

Orville. Wow. Fun like the old ST. Rehashing well worn stories but 3 was awesome. And fun. Liam Neeson!! BUT, if the ST crew can fix their ion drives, foreign tech, in 24hrs, why couldn't Neesons crew do that?
Best line: Ah! Boom! Bitch!
And a series of dick jokes that actually worked. Priceless.

I got TWO fun shows to watch. Joy.

About ST tech, I think we could try to focus on if there maybe any scientifically plausible way to achieve the same results, if any ST tech seems too farfetched :-)

For example, for FTL communication, I think most plausible way would be, if we could create and maintain twin microwormholes, where communication (laser) photons come in from anyone and come out from the other, assuming we had tech as advanced as needed and not to mention astronomical amounts of energy.

Then let me put this another rather graphic simple way.

If the speed of light is a max, then we are virtually screwed. Generational ships, as the one in EOP3 of Discovery that didn't have warp drive is all we can look forward to. I really can live with that, but don't tell me there is something devine about it.

Like kids in a candy store - if there is a God and he shows us all this stuff and says no, you can never go there, well, I don't want to express my feelings about such a God. Masochist. Oh, crap I blew it.

I think (hope) (didn't say believe) there is more.
God I hope so!!!

@Ethan wrote:

In good art you can see the artist in the work. Star Trek is like that. You can see Roddenberry’s love for the state expressed in the work. It is even more than Heinlein, who thought only people who had served in the military should have the right to vote.

Roddenberry’s college major was Police Science. He was a military pilot, then a civilian pilot, then a police officer. He was steeped in service to the state and/or surrounded by those of that mind. As a writer he wrote of Prosecutors in service to the state, and Law Enforcement in service to the state, and Star Ships in service to the state. That is where the Socialism in his universe comes from. He didn’t love the Russians or Karl Marx. He loved the military and its socialist structures such as military housing and the VA hospital.

In Roddenberry’s idealized universe mutiny never happened. In ‘The Tholian Web’ of TOS, Chekov asks Spock if there is any record of mutiny on a Federation starship, and Spock replies “Absolutely no record of such an occurrence, Ensign.” That Michael Burnham exists at all breaks cannon, but that the writers have made her a hero and had a captain essentially say following rules is for losers, is figuratively urinating on Roddenberry’s corpse.

It is not just the disregard for the state, Roddenberry was also anti-religion. Not only did they completely rewrite Sarek’s demeanor but they also gave him a magic soul that can bring humans back to life. Michael Burnham is closer to being Sookie Stackhouse that anything springing from Roddenberry’s imagination. I’m still going to watch it but I agree that it doesn’t feel like a Star Trek series.

doh. misssed the quote.

@Ethan wrote:

Although it still doesn't feel like a Star Trek series, it does feel like a high-quality space adventure.

Now that BBC frequently runs the old Treks, I've come to appreciate how poorly the writers of the series understood stuff like math, physics, and an appreciation of scale differences. Still it was pretty good, drama, and often thoughtful sociology, even if the science was almost completely bunko. So I guess us science types will almost always be disappointed by Sci-Fi,. The best only needs one or two highly unlikely to impossible assumptions about its universe. But, mostly we get runaway artistic sci-abusing nonsense.

#7
Well maybe. But when I saw it first time as a kid, I believed it. Mostly. It was the best guesses from the science of the time.Or guesses of the future. Philip K Dick et al. As they say about hindsight.

Now we have to make the best guesses from the science of OUR time. Whatever the constraints, we could go anywhere from here. Anywhere. And anytime.

Frank
"About ST tech, I think we could try to focus on if there maybe any scientifically plausible way to achieve the same results, if any ST tech seems too farfetched ?"

As I said, WARP DRIVE, transporter beams, hand held energy weapons, tractor beams, inertial dampers, and artificial gravity on a structure that does not rotate?

Where, really, do you want to start? I am game. Believe me. I WANT this possible future. Doesn't make it real.

Oh, and the spaceships bank as they turn. Looks cool, but.....

Omega Centauri #7,
For more plausible but good science fiction, try out "The Expanse". It is far more closer to remotely plausible technology than magic. There are no convenient gravity machines or plot device transporter beams, or space battles with near massless aerial U turns. Humanity is just as flawed as ever in all its wondrous splendor and discord. I like the very un-Trek idea that the series makes abundantly clear: having lots of more toys and technology does not perfect humanity or make people more happy, just more complicated and crowded. It may upset/depress you when you find out what happens to humans who live away from their home planet without enough gravity and radiation shielding for too long on poorly recycled air and water.

The math is really bad, One to the fourth power, can you imagine a bigger number? Then the whole speeds thing, it takes then hour to go a lightyear, yet we see stars rushing by every second. Then the enterprise had a problem traveling the speed of an asteroid that was gonna hit a planet in a few months. The starship is only about a million times faster, but it was such a stretch it broke the engines. And on and on. Yeah, I mostly swallowed it as a kid.

Of course the more modern series, invents a gazillion types of mysterious radiation to endanger the crew in various ways (as the plot dictates), but none of it makes sense from a physics or medical perspective. It really takes a lot of effort to suspend belief enough to actually enjoy this stuff.

Mebbee that's why it's called science fiction ......

Oh yeah, this new series took place 10 years before Kirk, et al.

@#12 1st place so far for comment of the week :)

Well yea. But it needs grounding. I want science fiction, not science fantasy.

"There's a big difference between physics and biology,"

Mh, in my sci-fi TOE project I look at elementary particles as 'organisms' and atoms as tree-structures made out of these organisms, all evolving out of a CA-like mechanism like plants do.

@ SB #15
Early 1900's - car travel was fiction because you would die travelling over 2 MPH. Dick Tracy wrist radio was considered fiction. Rockets to the moon - fiction. At that time it was all fiction & fantasy. Over time, we explored the possibilities of such things; we learned how to harness an idea to make something from that seed. That is how we progress. The unknown and our imaginations are the fertile territory to help us move forward. The future findings are based on past knowledge pushing the boundaries further. ( Sounds like science!) Use your imagination; you may come up with an idea to research.
:)

This was a rough episode for me.

I was worried that this one would be another full on introduction episode, and I was sad to see that that was the case. Michael meets a new Captain, Chief Security Officer, Science Officer, and a roommate.

Michael also meets up with Saru again, and he's been promoted to First Officer. Good for him, but why? He says it's because they saw what he did during the battle from the prior episodes, but all he managed to do was survive, and be a party to the old Captain's war crimes, which have been glossed over. he also throws shade on Michael for not keeping the old Captain alive, which was zero percent her fault. There's also no mention of 'Hey, sorry you mutinied, but upon reflection I now see that the Captain's approach was incorrect."

We see that Michael has only been through proceedings for her mutiny, not for her murders or other war crimes.

The new Captain seems pretty evil so far, so evil Michael should have immediately hopped on the brain horn to Sarek to clue him in on all of this shady research.

It seems we have micro mynocks in Star Trek now, and it seems pretty dumb that the Discovery brought the shuttle infected with them on board without decontaminating it first.

Or saving the pilot of the prison shuttle.

I noticed that the micro quantum fungus spores look exactly the same as the micro mynocks, so much so that it seems strange later when Michael sees the spores in her bedroom and doesn't try to report it.

The phasers seem super weak in this episode, so much so that the characters barely try to use them! They don't even attempt to use full power against the genital fungus beast they encounter on the Glenn.

Speaking of the genital fungus beast, Michael begs for a phaser, shoots the beast in the head to get its attention, then lures it into a Jeffries tube, much like Picard did to lure a biologically transformed Worf into an electric trap. When watching this, I could have sworn that Michael dropped the phaser behind her when she hopped into the shuttle at the end, and I was expecting her to have set it to overload and explode, but that never happened. Instead, they fly back to the ship, and at some time after that but before blowing up their own ship, they acquired the genital fungus beast for their shady lab. How did they get it? They must have beamed it aboard, which means that they must have scanned the ship to find it, which in turn makes you wonder why they didn't just do that in the first place. The klingon wouldn't have been a surprise, for one thing. You would think that this could be part of the overall shadiness of the mission, but literally no one brings this up, even the majority of people who seem not to be in on the conspiracy.

Speaking of the Klingon, Ethan mentions the possibility that something having to do with the research into the magical space spores will be what changes the appearance of the Klingons to what they look like in TOS and TNG. I think that could be the case! Of course, we've already seen a cloned Kahless, and he already looked like the TNG version of the klingons, but I have no doubt that this could be one of the many bits of pre established lore that the show is steamrolling over.

The Captain's introduction was very strange. First, we see a close up of his eye in a darkened room, which I assumed included a reflection of the stars he was looking at through his window. He turns , and slowly the lights become brighter as he faces Michael. This would have been an okay, subdued effect that I probably wouldn't have consciously noticed, but he breaks the rule of cool by stating he did that on purpose because he has eye damage. I can only assume they thought the eye effect was too subtle, because looking back at the eye it looks like it has the glowing space spores embedded in it. I also call shenanigans on this, because he could have easily replicated up some transition lenses for himself, technology that we have today. Also, because the 'star in eye' thing was recently done in the last season of Doctor Who. Double also because now we can expect this eye thing to come up again. Is it a boon that lets him self teleport, or is it a detriment that will allow Michael to get the jump on him in a fight later by shining a light in his face?

Another weird thing was the lack of investigation of the regular crew into the genital fungus beast. No one bothered to get a tricorder reading on it? We had just seen a bunch of messed up crew members, and the first ones they showed were just empty skin sacks, so I assumed they transformed and popped out of their skins. Later we see a guy who'd just been mangled up though, so it would have been nice to have someone say it was definitely an unknown alien or definitely a transformed crew member.

So far the impression I'm getting with this whole spore and monster combo is a bright and shiny copy of the Stranger Things show, where the evil government agents are replaced with people who sure seem a lot like Section 31.

We've also established that the Discovery is on an ultra secret mission, that no-one trusts Michael, and everyone's snubbing her as well. However, the captain orders her to report to one of the science sections, and First Officer Saru brings her there, tells her he thinks she's dangerous - then leaves her outside the door, unsupervised! Then she lets herself in, and the door is unlocked! So that's weird.

Once inside, the Science Officer in charge clearly doesn't trust her, and also finds her education background to be a professional threat. We also hear the Science Officer on a private message to his counterpart on the Glen, talking about being careful about going too far with this research, which is clearly the secret stuff the whole conspiracy is about. What's weird here is that because he's writing Michael off, he gives her what at first appears to be some random data files to sort out, as a test. However, it actually turns out to be the super secret files that govern the secret space spore project!

Somehow, her super vulcan science abilities allow her to find errors even though she doesn't know what the project is supposed to be. She points them out to the Science Officer, who ignores them. Later, the Glenn has some problem that kills everyone on board. However, no one makes any connection between the two! This might come up later, or it might be a red herring, either way it's bad writing, because the Science Officer is distraught later, emotionally compromised enough to spill a whole bunch of exposition about the secret project, but this never comes up as one of the reasons he's sad.

What is this project even for? The captain tells Michael that it certainly isn't a weapon (scoff), but for much faster travel times. However, ever since the soft reboot Abrams movies, all ships move at the speed of plot anyway, so why is this even a concern?

If they're going to start messing around with the universe, they can at least stay internally consistent!

Good points on Saru. The first episode essentially establishes him as a coward. Hardly first officer material. Its hard to see this Captain, shady as he seems, wanting him as first officer - did he have no other choice? Or maybe just his best stop gap until he could get his hands on Michael. He's should stay science officer.

And I am having trouble with Michaels Vulcan smarts. Which she got just by attending Vulcan academy, Its long established cannon that the Vulcans are smarter than us with mental skills we can only dream of. I don't see how she became Vulcan smart just by attending - she's fully human. Spock had a hard enough time and he's half human, though somehow he has full Vulcan ability - one of the best in fact. Maybe Sareks mind meld and weird Katra thing helped her? I'd want that for all the Starfleet Captains at least.

Looks like we are stuck with the bill - Discovery is credited with doubling CBS subscription revenue. Damn them!

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/star-trek-discovery-almost-doubled-cbs-al…

#18 - comment of the week. Never these words in a row before. Hilarious. Would make a great song lyric.
"They don’t even attempt to use full power against the genital fungus beast they encounter on the Glenn."

This is fun :-)

@Adam wrote:

...people who sure seem a lot like Section 31.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. I think the entire ship is Section 31. Even the ship number is NCC-1031.

Suru's warcrimes don't matter to Sec 31 because it was done in the interest of killing the enemy and they have a war to win. I also put zero stock in how superior officers were acting, weak security, and even the genital fungus beast. It has already been established that Sec 31 tests their recruits before admitting them. That the captain knew she had broken in to the lab supports the idea that it was all just evaluation testing.

@ Denier

I hadn't caught the ship number, that's an interesting catch!

I think Saru is only there to make Michael feel better, as a prior step of the Captain's plan. He didn't deserve a promotion, and he doesn't appear to be in the loop about the most secret activities either, like how the Security Chief brought in the beast. In fact, his 'fear of death' tendrils came out around that time, and I'm wondering if he's going to think Michael staying on board triggered them, when it might have been the beast instead.

I suggested section 31 at #2, but I didn't catch the number - thats a quick eye there Adam.

Also, the more I think about the physics/biology speech, the more this spore tech (which will fail) seems like a forerunner to the Genesis device, 'reorganizes matter at the molecular level' where we now think quantum effects play an essential role, and Spock uses phrases like 'It would destroy such life in favor of its own matrix', which is physics/math talk on top of the biological processes. Not a bad effort. There will be a delicious irony there if Michael saves the day, trained by Sarek, and then indirectly ends up saving Sareks son.

It from Bit: Is the Universe a Cellular Automaton?

esiegel — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 05:00:27 +0000

It from Bit: Is the Universe a Cellular Automaton?

“It's always seemed like a big mystery how nature, seemingly so effortlessly, manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex. Well, I think we found its secret. It's just sampling what's out there in the computational universe.” -Stephen Wolfram

In the mid-20th century, computers allowed us to explore a brand new idea: that a discrete space, with a simple set of rules and straightforward initial conditions, could evolve in steps to create a rich, life-like environment. While many of us have played or seen simulations of Conway’s Game of Life, a deeper idea is at the core of such a simulation: that at a fundamental level, the Universe itself may be nothing more than a similar cellular automaton.

Encoded on the surface of the black hole can be bits of information, proportional to the event horizon's surface area. Image credit: T.B. Bakker / Dr. J.P. van der Schaar, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Started by Ed Fredkin in the 1960s, a simple idea that digital information could represent reality, and that bits of that information in different states and configurations could correspond to what we perceive as different particles in our physical Universe. Developed further by John Wheeler and David Bekenstein, and later taken to a quantum level to incorporate the full nature of the Universe, it’s conceivable that both matter and energy could be illusions. If the “It from Bit” hypothesis is true, only digital information would truly be real.

The idea of a self-excited circuit was first presented by Wheeler; as an observer views the Universe, it causes reality to self-create in a certain sense. This was the crux of the 'It from Bit' idea. Image credit: Christopher Langan.

Is it possible that this is how our Universe actually works at a fundamental level? That the whole shebang is nothing more than a cellular automaton?

esiegel Tue, 09/26/2017 - 01:00

Tags

Physics

Categories

Free Thought

IMHO universe/reality must be a Cellular Automata Quantum Computer operating at Planck scale. I had written a lot about this in comments here and in my blog:
http://fb36blog.blogspot.com/2016/12/why-universe-must-be-cellular-auto…

Conway's Game Of Life is probably the most famous CA but I think CA used for fluid simulation (like FHP or LBM) would be a much more relevant example for this topic.

Like I said here sometime ago, I think Black Holes must be made of Planck particles. Which is I think an idea compatible with their surface entropy being (event horizon) surface area divided by Planck area.
(But I think that is entropy of the BH seen from rest of the universe outside/around. The full entropy would be BH volume (of event horizon) divided by Planck volume.)

Universe being a CA would also explain seeming incompatibility between QM and Relativity.

In CA used for fluid simulation, the future is unpredictable in micro (particle size) scale, but it is predictable in macro scale (which shows Navier-Stokes behavior); just like future being unpredictable in quantum scale but being predictable in relativity scale, in the real universe.

And just like what happens in CA used for fluid simulation, future events become more and more predictable with certainty in the real universe, as we look at the world in higher and higher scales.
For example consider how certain future events are in our daily life (Newtonian physics) scale vs how certain events are in macro scale, like motion of Earth in its orbit tomorrow.

A good example for uncertainty in Newtonian physics scale could be weather, like how certain we can predict temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind etc for any location on Earth for 24 hours in the future. And compare that to how certain we can predict location of Earth, its velocity, acceleration etc in its orbit 24 hours in the future.

As for why Black Holes must be made of Planck particles, that is because theoretically those are the smallest possible particles.
(Also Wikipedia article on them was saying they are already naturally show up in some theoretical QM calculations (which I think is similar to how complex numbers were showing up in solutions for some polynomial equations way before they actually discovered by mathematicians).)
Imagine gravity of BH compresses incoming quantum particles until they cannot get any more smaller.

since there's Wolfram's quote at the beginning, it should be fitting to give a link to his lecture about the topic of this post. Seen this years ago and got me really intrigued.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU

Like it or not ("not" prevails here!) it's time for a little primer from the philosophy of science on this subject.

Ethan: " it’s conceivable that both matter and energy could be illusions. If the “It from Bit” hypothesis is true, only digital information would truly be real."

http://fitelson.org/164/realism.html (Edited for brevity and emphasis, my caps.)
Opposed to scientific realism... are a variety of antirealisms... Recently two others, INSTRUMENTALISM and constructivism, have posed special challenges to realism. Instrumentalism regards the objects of knowledge pragmatically, as tools for various human purposes, and so takes RELIABILITY (or empirical adequacy) RATHER THAN TRUTH AS SCIENTIFICALLY CENTRAL. A version of this, FICTIONALISM, contests the existence of many of the objects favoured by the realist and regards them as merely expedient means to useful ends. Constructivism maintains that scientific knowledge is socially constituted, that 'FACTS' ARE MADE BY US. Thus it CHALLENGES THE OBJECTIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE, as the realist understands objectivity, and the independent existence that realism is after. Conventionalism, holding that THE TRUTHS OF SCIENCE ULTIMATELY REST ON MAN-MADE CONVENTIONS, is allied to constructivism."

From "People Who Ask":
"Realism, at it simplest and most general, is the view that entities of a certain type have an objective reality, A REALITY THAT IS COMPLETELY ONTOLOGICALLY INDEPENDENT OF OUR CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc."

"In that sense, INSTRUMENTALISM IS DIRECTLY OPPOSED TO SCIENTIFIC REALISM, which is the view that the point of scientific theories is not merely to generate reliable predictions but to DESCRIBE THE WORLD ACCURATELY. Instrumentalism is a form of philosophical pragmatism as it applies to the philosophy of science."

Note for those not familiar: Ethan is an instrumentalist, and this philosophical bias (opinion) colors everything he presents in this blog as "facts."

http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Realism1.html
"Realism" can be thought of as a philosophical theory answering the old question which we called the "Problem of Authority": how can we justify the claim that it is rational to believe scientific explanations? The realist answers by saying the ultimate authority which justifies the rationality of scientific beliefs is simply that they are true in the sense of "truth"as a relation of **correspondence between what we believe to be the case and what in reality is the case.**" (My **)

It sounds like the theorists have come full circle, from deriding the idea of a created universe, because it was so quaint, culturally gauche and beneath them, to embracing the idea of the universe being someone else's simulation.
...so much for scientific progress.
.
Anyone who has worked seriously with computer programming and modeling knows that what computers do internally to process data isn't what the universe does, much less what humans thinking do. Representation much like allegory is a powerful tool, but when it is abused it can mislead more than inform.

...embracing the idea of the universe being someone else’s simulation.

Where was it ever stated that someone out there is running such a simulation, or even that it is a simulation at all? What we are speaking of here is the underlying nature of reality itself, and if reality itself behaves as a cellular automaton as hypothesised, then by definition it is not a simulation at all!

@Anonymous #10: Exactly so. What I find more interesting about this is that cellular automata are (not by definition, but certainly by usual construction) strictly _local_ in construction. That is, the state transitions of a given cell are determined by the states of their near neighbors. Since quantum mechanics has been demonstrated (by violation of Bell's inequalities and such equivalents as CHSH) to be fully non-local, it's not obvious to me how a CA formulation can give rise to the quantum mechanical features of reality which we actually observe.

"While many of us have played or seen simulations of Conway’s Game of Life, a deeper idea is at the core of such a simulation: that at a fundamental level, the Universe itself may be nothing more than a similar cellular automaton."

You don't get it.

Don't look at the CA but what the CA does.

https://youtu.be/sDW6vkuqGLg

@Michael Kelsey:
That is actually covered in the article:
"Feynman showed that a quantum system could not be fully simulated using a classical computer and classical algorithms, rather one needed what came to be known as a quantum computer. Instead of bits, it would be based on qubits"

Earlier thinking assumed reality as a CA on a classical computer system, which is clearly impossible.
But what if we are talking about a CA on a quantum computer, where each cell (at Planck scale) is a qubit or a qubit register (multiple qubits).
Then compatibility with everything in QM is really possible.

Of course there are many important details to find out, like how many qubits would be needed for each cell, how many other cells each cell needs to be connected, each cell just connected to its neighbors next to it, or M levels (distance) of neighbors, or all cells need to be connected to all others etc.

Also I think earlier thinking assumed a CA at QM scale (particle size). Which I don't think could work. It needs to be at Planck scale (smallest possible size known in physics).
(Which would mean each quantum particle is actually a cluster of information (similar to a quasiparticle).)

If mankind occupies what it is here called a cellular automaton, what difference does it make? It's our habitat and we have to live in it whether we like it or not. Sooner or later we will know for sure and when that happens, it will all go away and we will be free to create another automaton.

There are tons of YouTube videos showing 2D/3D fluid simulation using CA (like Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM)), if anyone like to see just a glimpse of what even very simple CA could do for physics:

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCh809uHBSE"

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR_MX7KXD2A"

Technically it is possible to simulate a quantum-mechanical system using a classical computer and classical algorithms: it is just computationally expensive to do so. All known algorithms for doing this in take space and/or time exponential in the number of particles, which means that simulating even a relatively small number of particles would be intractable.

@Anonymous Coward,

Can you give an example?

@Frank -- multiple great comments!

#16: Using CA for fluid dynamics (and even MHD) is a perfect example of what I had in mind. The interactions are necessarily local (shear, pressure and friction between adjacent fluid elements), and the CA formalism is ideal for that. Thanks for the lovely videos!

#13: But that was my point. If you implement a CA while baking in existing quantum mechanics as a precondition, then you really aren't learning anything new. You're just making a computationally convenient implementation of QM (c.f., lattice QCD).

Wolfram's arm-waving, as I understand it, is that a _classical_ CA (local, deterministic rules) can "somehow" reproduce the full physics we observe in the universe. By definition, that includes non-local, non-classical correlations (a.k.a. Bell's inequalities). But Bell's theorem, which is a proper maths theorem, not just physics, says you can't do that with any local formulation.

Now, I am not a _theoretical_ physicist, so there is probably something deep here that I am missing, but I just don't see the magic step where you get from a local, deterministic CA to non-local, non-classical QM.

@Elle H.C. 18:

This was in the news recently:

https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/09/14/ibm-breaks-ground-complex-quantum-ch…

"Finding exact solutions to such problems numerically has a computational cost that scales exponentially with the size of the system, and Monte Carlo methods are unsuitable owing to the fermionic sign problem. These limitations of classical computational methods have made solving even few-atom electronic-structure problems interesting for implementation using medium-sized quantum computers."

They managed to simulate the chemistry of BeH2 molecule using a primitive quantum computer, a previously intractable problem using classical algorithms.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-quantum-toolkit/

"It will have quite significant memory requirements. The local version will offer up to 32 qubits, but to do this will require 32GB of RAM. Each additional qubit doubles the amount of memory required. The Azure version will scale up to 40 qubits."

@Michael Kelsey:
I am no CA expert but I think if we have a local CA quantum computer, and all currently known particles are quasiparticles (clusters of information) created by that CA, explaining non-local particle interactions like entanglement is no problem.

Because those quasiparticles will be still the same quantum particles we know, which includes non-local entanglement ability. Think about how any two particles get entangled in the first place. Are those interactions really impossible to happen in a local CA QC?

@ Anonymous Coward

I'm not an expert, but I don't think you simulate quantum systems with classical computers and algorithms, in principle. Sure, you can solve the the equations and get statistical predictions (like Monte Carlo method), but you won't get an answer of what is going to happen definately, only probabilites of what might happen.

IMO if one is able to simulate a quantum system i.e. a double slit experiment, or quantum eraser, on a classical computer (not counting the CPU cost), that would mean that there is no "actual" quantum uncertainty, and that the nature is fully deterministic.

@ Michael Kelsey #19

"Wolfram’s arm-waving, as I understand it, is that a _classical_ CA (local, deterministic rules) can “somehow” reproduce the full physics we observe in the universe"

That's not how I understood him. But I might be wrong. The way I see it, it's more along the lines with Mandelbrot and fractals. In a sense, that there are emergent properties in nature, some of them behave like fractals, and some behave like CA's. I don't think anyone is saying or thinking, that i.e. plant growth is only determined by some fractal formula (disregarding biology, physics etc...) or mountain formation or riverbeds or a host of other things. But it is self-evident that fractal patterns emerge in those examples. In the same ways, it seems that certain processes in nature follow the paths of CA's (a set of initial conditions that then grows into something which isn't repetative in a naive sense, some of his examples do nothing until they reach some trillionth iteration, then they seem almost inexplicably do create patterns).
So I think he's saying that for whatever reason, there seems to be an emergent properties in nature that can be very nicely described with CA systems. Not that they can explain everything.

p.s. IMO his arm-waving is more about taking a deeper look into CA's and why do those properties emerge and how, maybe find some deeper rules/laws about them. To not only consider them as interesting oddities.

IMHO there is no doubt a CA QC (running at Planck scale) can recreate QM at its own scale (average particle size) as an emergent property, but even then it would be still a big question if it would also (automatically) recreate Newtonian Physics and Relativity Physics at their own scales (also as emergent properties).

Maybe there are many possible CA that can recreate QM but not NP nor RP. Maybe there are few CA that can recreate QM and NP but not RP. And maybe there is only one CA that can recreate QM, NP, RP altogether (at their own scales), who knows :-)

@Sinisa & Frank: Thank you! I'm not sure I agree with everything, but it's good stuff for me to think about.

@Anonymous Coward,

Mh, this is more about using a quantum computer to simulate molecules and QM interactions.

It's not the same as what CA does, which simulates a medium as a whole. What you're referring to isn't exceptional an sich, cause you can simulate the double slit with QM.

What special is that's CA is about emergent behavior, and that's also the problem with Frank bringing up LBM, for those kinds of simulations there is an a power input. Let's take for example a heat source. In GoL on the other hand there is no real input, it's a zero player game and things fluctuate ongoing.

@SL,

"IMO if one is able to simulate a quantum system i.e. a double slit experiment, or quantum eraser, on a classical computer …, that would mean that there is no “actual” quantum uncertainty, and that the nature is fully deterministic."

That's was also what the comment/argument by Einstein was about vs. Bohr that there is an Aether and nature is deterministic.

My opinion is that a CA with fixed cells won't work, but one with flexible cells might work, and that eventually there is a logical explanation for 'spooky' QM effects.

@ chelle

Einstein's aether and determinism are in no way related.

@Elle:
"that’s also the problem with Frank bringing up LBM, for those kinds of simulations there is an a power input. Let’s take for example a heat source. In GoL on the other hand there is no real input, it’s a zero player game and things fluctuate ongoing."

Not sure what is the problem. In the first video I gave as example, there is continuous input because obviously the goal was to get a continuous fluid flow. In the second video there is no such thing. The liquid starts moving and later starts slowing down. Just like what would happen in the real world if someone done the same experiment with real water.

In our world we have continuous liquid/gas motion because Earth is keep getting energy input from the sun.

Also like I said before, if someday we create a CA that runs on quantum computer, which recreates all known quantum particles (as its own quasiparticles), it could recreate everything in QM, including atom, gas, liquid, solid materials, all kinds of chemical and nuclear reactions.

It can be done with fixed cells because what really move are clusters of information, just like the (moving) quasiparticles created in solids(!) today in real physics experiments.

@Frank,

Lol, you are where I was 8 years ago … it's all very naive … I have done the things that you are talking about, but they don't work because of randomness … LBM is random, GoL isn't because it has a set of organizational rules …

@Elle,
What is the problem with randomness?
Hidden Variable Theory (which Einstein hoped for) already disproved which means any kind of CA trying to reproduce QM would need perfect randomness. There is no way around that.

@Sinisa Lazarek#22: No, it is perfectly possible to simulate quantum mechanical systems using a classical computer. The only problem is as the number of particles you are trying to simulate increases, the amount of memory and processing power required explodes exponentially, such that even a small system will rapidly become intractable even if you had the entire world's computing power and storage space at your disposal. This was something that Richard Feynman noted in 1982, and was the original motivation for a quantum computer.

You can simulate a double slit experiment using a classical computer, but you'll have to be calculating the wave function of the particle if you're going to do it right, and that is by definition a probability amplitude. That's all you can really do to simulate any quantum mechanical system. Perfectly feasible for one or two particles, but if you have many more, well, the problem will rapidly become intractable even if you had the entire world's computing power at your disposal.

Nevertheless, at the current state of our knowledge, it is possible, however very unlikely, that there is some classical computer algorithm hitherto undiscovered of that can simulate quantum mechanical systems at that level without exponential blowup. That's because there's no real mathematical proof that such an algorithm doesn't exist. In formal terms, computer scientists speak of complexity classes, e.g. P, the set of all problems solvable by a classical computer in time proportional to a polynomial in the size of the input (polynomial time). The set of all problems solvable by a quantum computer with bounded error in polynomial time is called BQP. The simulation of arbitrary quantum-mechanical systems is in BQP. It is known that P is a subset of BQP, but there is no real proof that P is a proper subset of BQP. The two sets could actually be equal, and we are just not smart enough to figure out that efficient algorithm yet.

If anyone interested:
If our universe/reality is created by a CA QC at Planck scale, and QM, NP (Newton Physics), RP (Relativity Physics) are its emergent properties at different size scales, then I would think there maybe yet another level of emergent property at even higher size scales where Dark Matter/Energy Physics operate (with its own rules).

@Frank,

"What is the problem with randomness?"

Let's say you have a flat 'medium' to begin wirh, and once you start your simulation patterns should emerge (particles), now when your medium is random there won't emerge any particles. In practice your LBM will stay flat and at most chaotic when you add some vortex confinement, in contrast in GoL you have rules out of which paters can emerge such as gliders. The former stays 'flat' while in the latter a 'structure' emerges.

Note, it is the context wherein I use 'randomness'.

paters > patterns

@Frank #34,

You are using a lot of terms but aren't actually saying nothing. Let's look at the basics; what would cell A pass on to its neighbor cell B?

@ AC #33

Maybe we are differing on opinions between emulation vs simulation. I was under the impression that it can't be simulated even if you have a classical super computer the size of a solar system. So, for the sake of explanation, let's leave processing cost out, and just focus on "how". I'm trying to understand how in terms of theory. A simple thought experiment.

Consider a simple double slit experiment. And let's say we are firing just a single photon for now. QM theory tells us how to calculate the outcome of the experiment in terms of QM statistics (many photons). X photons here, Y photons there. QM doesn't tell us through which slit will every single photon go through, or in fact why. There is inherent "unknown" or randomness in it (modern argument being there isn't a hidden (classical) variable which is unknown, but that it's the fundamental property of nature).

Now let's say we are writing a (classical) computer program to simulate this. How would you go about this? How would you simulate that quantum unknown that happens when a photon encounters the two slits, when even QM doesn't give an answer to this?

Yes, you could have the program solve schroedinger equation before hand to get to statistical prediction of what will happen on the screen (not slits) and then employ some classical random number generator in order to decide if the photon will go left or right when it encounters the slit. But this isn't a simulation, it's an emulation. You are not modeling the underlying properties of the system, you are emulating the result of the experiment.

This is what I don't understand, and this is why I think simulation is not possible even in principal on classical system. Unless you have that quantum (not classical) randomness built in, then it's not doing what it should be doing. This isn't about any randomness, but QM kind of randomness. AFAIK the statistical prediction between QM randomness and classical randomness are different, that's one of the things that are "weird" in QM.

If it can be done classically, in principle, regardless of computing cost, and it gives the exact same solution as QM statistics does. Then the implication IS that the universe might very well be fully deterministic and that there is no "uncertainty" fundamentally present. That's a huge paradigm shift.

@Elle,
All kinds of CA needs an initial state to be setup.

GoL is never started in completely empty state.
If it was, nothing would happen. It would stay empty.
Check the rules carefully:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

I never said if our universe/reality is a CA QC, the Big Bang would happen by itself and our current universe would be reached (after it run for (current age of the universe divided by Planck time) steps).
It would need an initial state setup (like any other CA), like creating a ball of (max dense) energy(ies?) as the seed.

@Frank,

I'm glad that you realized that LMB is not a CA and stopped talking about it.

@Elle,
LBM is a 2d/3d CA. That is a well known fact.

But it seems resources in the internet somewhat unclear about it.

But I wrote many little 1D/2D CA programs over many years myself. I wanted but never wrote an LBM program myself but I wrote FHP. I saw source code of other people for LBM and also read a lot about LBM algorithm.

So I say it is definitely a CA if you can trust me about it though :-)

@Frank,

Idiot.

Where is the 'automaton' in LMB?

I had watched Stephen Wolfram's video above years ago.

Thanks to Sinisa I was rewatching and noticed at some point he explains relationship between number of dimensions and number of neighbors in CA.

If that is true and since our universe has 3+1 dimensions united as spacetime, then maybe it means the CA QC that creates our reality has 4 neighbors for each cell, maybe arranged like in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_neighborhood

@Elle,
You obviously don't know much about CA.
I suggest you start from here and later start researching about LBM algorithm (and not to mention be respectful to everyone commenting here):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton

I see messages saying my comments awaiting moderation :-)

Or the neighborhood of our universe/reality CA QC maybe arranged like a Tetrahedron?

Multiple of my comments awaiting moderation.

@Frank,

CA QC what's the point of this?

You do realize that a QC used qubits which are something such as the polarization of a Photon. Now to simulate a Photon itself (particle/wave) with a CA or LBM-ish simulator you probably need a grid with thousands or millions of cells.

Probably you could use a QC to do the calculations, but that's it, you could do the same calculations with a PC, only slower.

And you still need to answer my question what the interaction will be between 2 cells. I'm guessing in your case pressure, momentum, perhaps viscosity because you're a fan of LBM what else?

A QC uses only used bits, you know zeros and ones, like a processor / transitor does.

@Elle,
I gave LBM as a good example of power of CA to simulate physics. I never claimed our universe/reality actually runs the LBM algorithm. LBM obviously cannot create the all known particles in the Standard Model and calculate their interaction for example.

Also you seem to think LBM cannot be a CA because if it was then the words "Cellular Automaton" would be included in its name.

@Frank,

"Also you seem to think LBM cannot be a CA because if it was then the words “Cellular Automaton” would be included in its name."

LOL. No that's not it. CA uses (boolean) rules:

The cellular automata paradigm presents some weaknesses inherent to its discrete nature. Lattice Boltzmann (LB) models have been proposed to remedy some of these problems, using real-valued states instead of Boolean variables. - http://ergodic.ugr.es/jmarro/fisico/pages/Automatas&LattBoltzm.pdf

The CA and LBM are not the same.

"Elementary cellular automaton" uses binary cells.
Not all CA. There many different types of CA.

In general each CA cell can have N states if it is a discrete CA. There are also continuous state CA types.

Each cell can even have multiple discrete/continuous state variables.

LBM is a CA. Both discrete and continuous types of it.

@Frank,

It's like multiplication and addition, they look the same but they are not the same. The math is different. It's also explained in the paper I linked to. But if you personally feel that they are the same than sure, why not, you can consider them both CFD models. I'm not going to waste anymore time on semantics. Perhaps you should post a link where it's clearly mentioned that LBM is still a CA.

It seem my comments with links go to moderation but I will try.

For example search Google for:
"The cellular automata approach is based on an advanced lattice Boltzmann technique for a discrete microscopic description of the fluid flow."

How about this:
"http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525902000602"

LBM is a more advanced form of LGCA (Lattice Gas Cellular Automata) but it is still a CA itself.

I think what is going on is most resources in the internet written in a way to prevent people mixing them up. So they are not clearly saying LBM itself is also a CA.

@Frank,

"I think what is going on is most resources in the internet written in a way to prevent people mixing them up. So they are not clearly saying LBM itself is also a CA."

They write it that way, because there is a distinction that you are not willing to accept or grasp, where the LBM dissipates energy and dies down vs. CA that keep on 'automatically' going:

"The HPP model is a fundamental lattice gas automaton for the simulation of gases and liquids. It was a precursor to the lattice Boltzmann methods.
…
The model is badly flawed, as momentum is always conserved in both the horizontal and vertical lanes. No energy is ever removed from the model, either by collisions or movement, so it will continue indefinitely." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPP_model

… therfor LBM is based on a more 'natural' process.

Think of a computer using bits and boolean operations, the program can go on automatically, and won't die down because it doesn't dissipate energy.

p.s. Post your email address on your blog and I'll email you, how you might simulate all the laws of the Universe with one basic CA-like model.

Energy dissipation does not decide what is CA what is not.

I was just honestly trying to help you learn and fix your misconceptions but you have many and adamant on keeping them. There is no point arguing anymore.

Elle,

If you really think you have great ideas/thoughts but you cannot do it here, then why do you want to send me private email and share them just with me?

I had started my own blog on Blogger because I thought I can better explain some of my ideas/thoughts that way.
I posted here links to some of my blog entries many times whenever I felt their content is relevant.

Why not you also start your own blog and post here the links whenever you need? It is free.

@Frank,

"I was just honestly trying to help you learn and fix your misconceptions but you have many and adamant on keeping them."

Mh, I posted two quotes that specified how and why the schism happened between CA and LBM.

And you wrote yourself, "most resources in the internet written in a way to prevent people mixing them up".

Don't you think that if LBM was a CA that 'resources' would just state so, instead of now 'preventing' this from happening?

"If you really think you have great ideas/thoughts but you cannot do it here, then why do you want to send me private email and share them just with me?"

LOL, I don't want to share them 'just' with you, it looks like you're paranoid for getting an email.

This is Ethan's blog and it seems like we're the only ones left interested in this topic. I do have my own blog, but it are different fragments, in an email I can have it all explained in a more organized fashion, from the ground up based on GoL, that's all. I could turn it into a new blogpost though … Maybe Ethan could also invite me do a guest post here. ?

Anyway, I'm more focused on finishing my simulator to prove my idea, until then it's just talk.

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw anywhere a full precise definition of what is a Cellular Automaton.
(By precise I mean a definition including all theoretical possibilities for cell states and update rules etc.)

http://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-complexity-rules-out-our-universe-a…

@Ragtag Media:

What that article is really saying is for a classical computer, not for a quantum computer.

Also I think it maybe still unclear to you that what we were talking about is how reality itself maybe WORKING IN A SIMILAR WAY to a (CA) quantum computer.

But even if that turns out to be true someday, it does not mean there is an actual computer (like the ones we built) that runs the reality/universe. Nobody is claiming such thing here.

Think how water molecules act out mathematical (quantum) rules in micro scale (just like a computer), to create world of fluid mechanics (which is working with different laws compared to water molecules).

A fish in water would probably think, idea that water is made of extremely tiny molecules that follow the rules of QM (not rules of fluid mechanics!) is ridiculous :-)

@Ragtag Media:
Sorry that it looks like it was actually CFT who was talking like we are claiming reality is someone's computer simulation. :-)

@Ragtag Media,

Ultimately the question is what is a computer?

Philosophically you could say that our brain is a computer, it's a circuit of 'transitors' that run our thoughts and draws conclusions. Look at the advancements of 'neural' networks.

Now the argument is, you can 'never' simulate a brain with a 'computer', be it classical or quantum, because of the enormous amount of cells and connections, but what if you grow your 'own' brain (computer) out of a kind of Molecular, cellular DNA you constructed. Have you than in that case 'simulated' a brain in which zillions of different possibilities interactions happen.

And finally let's say you create in the same way a DNA that emerges into a brainlike cellular model, but one in which Proton, Electron and Photon cells emerge who have Quantum Mechanical properties aren't you than able to simulating life?

IBM Watson: Not living up to hype as a tool to fight cancer?

oracknows — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 01:24:17 +0000

IBM Watson: Not living up to hype as a tool to fight cancer?

For nearly as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of Jeopardy! Indeed, if I'm at home at 7:30 PM on a weeknight, Jeopardy! will usually be on the television. Given that, I remember what was basically a bit of stunt programming in 2011, when Jeopardy! producers had IBM's artificial intelligence supercomputer Watson face off against two of the most winning champions in the history of the show, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson won, leading Jenning's to add to his Final Jeopardy answer, "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."

Watson's next challenge was similarly highly hyped: cancer. Since 2012, IBM has been collaborating with several cancer institutes to apply Watson's talents to cancer treatment. For instance, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center describes its Watson Oncology initiative thusly:

Watson Oncology is a cognitive computing system designed to support the broader oncology community of physicians as they consider treatment options with their patients. Memorial Sloan Kettering clinicians and analysts are partnering with IBM to train Watson Oncology to interpret cancer patients’ clinical information and identify individualized, evidence-based treatment options that leverage our specialists’ decades of experience and research.

As Watson Oncology’s teacher, we are advancing our mission by creating a powerful resource that will help inform treatment decisions for those who may not have access to a specialty center like MSK. With Watson Oncology, we believe we can decrease the amount of time it takes for the latest research and evidence to influence clinical practice across the broader oncology community, help physicians synthesize available information, and improve patient care.

Not surprisingly, Watson's entry into cancer care and interpretation of cancer genomics was, just like its appearance on Jeopardy!, highly hyped, with overwhelmingly positive press coverage and little in the way of skeptical examination of what, exactly, Watson could potentially do and whether it could actually improve patient outcomes. Overall, as Watson moved into the clinical realm, you'd be hard-pressed not to think that this was a momentous development that would change cancer care forever for the better. There were plenty of headlines like "IBM to team up with UNC, Duke hospitals to fight cancer with big data" and "The future of health care could be elementary with Watson." The future looked bright.

An article in STAT News published a couple of weeks ago week by Casey Ross and Ike Swetlitz suggests otherwise, at least so far: "IBM pitched its Watson supercomputer as a revolution in cancer care. It’s nowhere close."

Watson: Hype versus reality

In the story, STAT looked at Watson for Oncology's use, marketing, and actual performance in hospitals around the world, interviewing dozens of doctors, IBM executives, and artificial intelligence experts and concluded that IBM released a product without having fully assessed or understood the challenges in deploying it and without having published any papers demonstrating that the technology works as advertised, noting that, as a result, "its flaws are getting exposed on the front lines of care by doctors and researchers who say that the system, while promising in some respects, remains undeveloped." From my perspective, that's an understatement. Indeed, STAT observes:

Perhaps the most stunning overreach is in the company’s claim that Watson for Oncology, through artificial intelligence, can sift through reams of data to generate new insights and identify, as an IBM sales rep put it, “even new approaches” to cancer care. STAT found that the system doesn’t create new knowledge and is artificially intelligent only in the most rudimentary sense of the term.

While Watson became a household name by winning the TV game show “Jeopardy!”, its programming is akin to a different game-playing machine: the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing robot of the 1700s, which dazzled audiences but hid a secret — a human operator shielded inside.

In the case of Watson for Oncology, those human operators are a couple dozen physicians at a single, though highly respected, U.S. hospital: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Doctors there are empowered to input their own recommendations into Watson, even when the evidence supporting those recommendations is thin.

Another way of saying this is that Watson isn't really an artificial intelligence when it comes to cancer, but rather a very powerful computer that is very good at coming up with treatment plans based on human-inputted algorithms that it's taught. An example from a hospital in Florida is presented as an example:

On a recent morning, the results for a 73-year-old lung cancer patient were underwhelming: Watson recommended a chemotherapy regimen the oncologists had already flagged.

“It’s fine,” Dr. Sujal Shah, a medical oncologist, said of Watson’s treatment suggestion while discussing the case with colleagues.

He said later that the background information Watson provided, including medical journal articles, was helpful, giving him more confidence that using a specific chemotherapy was a sound idea. But the system did not directly help him make that decision, nor did it tell him anything he didn’t already know.

But it's more than that. You might have noted in the MSKCC blurb I quoted above that MSKCC is described as "Watson's teacher." That is very literally true. Indeed, the STAT story refers to Watson as "essentially Memorial Sloan Kettering in a portable box," noting that its treatment recommendations are "based entirely on the training provided by doctors, who determine what information Watson needs to devise its guidance as well as what those recommendations should be." This reliance on a single institution introduces an incredible bias. MSKCC is, of course, one of the premiere cancer centers in the world, but it's a tertiary care center. The patients seen there are not like the patients seen at most places—or, to some extent, even at my cancer center. They're different, both in the mix of race and socioeconomic status. (MSKCC tends to attract more affluent patients.) Also, the usual differences between the patient mix in a tertiary care center and a typical hospital are more pronounced, because not only is MSKCC a tertiary care center, but it's one of the premier cancer tertiary care centers in the world. There are more advanced and unusual cases, patients who have failed multiple lines of treatment and are looking for one last chance. The mix of patients, cancers, and other factors that doctors at MSKCC see might not be relevant to hospitals elsewhere in the world—or even in different parts of the US. As Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at University of Wisconsin Law School, points out in the article, from the cases used to train Watson, what Watson will learn is "race, gender, and class bias," basically "baking those social stratifications in" and "making the biases even less apparent and even less easy for people to recognize."

Bias is inevitable, particularly when it is only one institution's physicians who are doing the teaching.

It's also widely known in the oncology community that there is a "MSKCC way" of doing things that might not always agree with other centers. Yet IBM denies that reliance on a single institution to "teach" Watson injects bias, to the point where I literally laughed out loud (and was half tempted to insert an emoji indicating that) when I read a quote by Watson Health general manager Deborah DiSanzo, saying, "The bias is taken out by the sheer amount of data we have." (She is referring to patient cases and millions of articles and studies fed into Watson.) I can't help but also note that it isn't just treatment guidelines that MSKCC is providing. It's basically choosing all the medical literature whose results are inputted into Watson to help craft its recommendations. As I read the STAT article, as a clinician and scientist myself, I couldn't help but marvel that IBM is either blissfully unaware that this is a self-reinforcing system, in which one institution's doctors would tend to recommend the very literature that would support the treatment recommendations that they prefer.

And, MSKCC being MSKCC (i.e., a bit arrogant), the doctors "training" Watson don't see the bias as a problem:

Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering acknowledged their influence on Watson. “We are not at all hesitant about inserting our bias, because I think our bias is based on the next best thing to prospective randomized trials, which is having a vast amount of experience,” said Dr. Andrew Seidman, one of the hospital’s lead trainers of Watson. “So it’s a very unapologetic bias.”

I laughed out loud at that quote, too. Having a "vast amount of experience" without having clinical trials upon which to base treatments can just as easily lead to continuing treatments that don't work or hanging on to beliefs that are never challenged by evidence. I'm not saying that having experience is a bad thing. Far from it! However, if that experience is not tempered by humility, bad things can happen. It's the lack of humility that I perceive here that troubles me. There are awesome cancer doctors elsewhere in the world, too, you know:

In Denmark, oncologists at one hospital said they have dropped the project altogether after finding that local doctors agreed with Watson in only about 33 percent of cases.

“We had a discussion with [IBM] that they had a very limited view on the international literature, basically, putting too much stress on American studies, and too little stress on big, international, European, and other-part-of-the-world studies,” said Dr. Leif Jensen, who directs the center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen that contains the oncology department.

And:

Sometimes, the recommendations Watson gives diverge sharply from what doctors would say for reasons that have nothing to do with science, such as medical insurance. In a poster presented at the Global Breast Cancer Conference 2017 in South Korea, researchers reported that the treatment Watson most often recommended for breast cancer patients simply wasn’t covered by the national insurance system.

None of this is surprising, given that Watson is trained by American doctors at one very prestigious American cancer center.

Then there's a rather basic but fundamental problem with Watson, and that's getting patient data entered into it. Hospitals wishing to use Watson must find a way either to interface their electronic health records with Watson or hire people to manually enter patient data into the system. Indeed, IBM representatives admitted that teaching a machine to read medical records is "a lot harder than anyone thought." (Actually, this rather reminds me of Donald Trump saying, "Who knew health care could be so complicated?" in response to the difficulty Republicans had coming up with a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.) The answer: Basically anyone who knows anything about it. Anyone who's ever tried to wrestle health care information out of a medical record, electronic or paper, into a form in a database that can be used to do retrospective or prospective studies knows how hard it is. Heck, just from my five year experience working on a statewide collaborative quality initiative in breast cancer, I know how hard it is, and what we were doing in our CQI was nowhere near as complex as what IBM is trying to do with Watson. For instance, we were looking at only one cancer (breast) and a subset of one state (25 institutions in Michigan), and we were not trying to derive new knowledge, but rather to look at aspects of care where the science and recommendations are clear and we could compare what our member institutions were doing to the best existing evidence-based guidelines.

What can Watson actually do?

IBM represents Watson as being able to look for patterns and derive treatment recommendations that human doctors might otherwise not be able to come up with because of our human shortcomings in reading and assessing the voluminous medical literature, but what Watson can actually do is really rather modest. That's not to say it's not valuable and won't get better with time, but the problem is that it doesn't come anywhere near the hype. I mentioned that there haven't been any peer-reviewed studies on Watson in the medical literature yet, but that doesn't mean there are no data yet. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting this year, there were three abstracts presented reporting the results of studies using Watson in cancer care:

The first study carried out at the Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Bangalore, India, looked at Watson’s concordance with a multi-disciplinary tumour board used for lung, colon and rectal cancer cases. The AI achieved a concordance rate of 96% for lung, 81% for colon and 93% for rectal cancer.

The second study compared Watson’s recommendations to those made by oncologists at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand – this time across multiple cancer types. Its concordance rate was 83%.

The third concordance study compared Watson’s decisions for high-risk colon cancer to a tumour board from Gachon University Gil Medical Centre in Incheon, South Korea. Its concordance rate in terms of colon cancer decisions was 73%, however, it was only 43% in gastric cancer.

The company explained this was due to differences in treatment guidelines for the disease in South Korea, compared to where it was trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

This is mighty thin gruel after such grandiose claims for the technology. Sure, it's a very good thing that Watson agrees with evidence-based guidelines a high percentage of the time. It's not so great that its concordance with recommendations was so low for gastric cancer, but it is that lack of concordance that shows the weakness of a system so dominated by American oncologists and cancer surgeons. The reason that treatment recommendations in Asia differ so markedly from those in the US is because of differences in prevalence (which is much higher in Asia) and even biology.

Of course, it's important that Watson be able to replicate evidence-based treatment recommendations for common cancers, but you don't need a computer to do that, much less an AI. Where Watson was hyped by IBM was for its supposed ability to "think outside the box" (if you'll excuse the term) and come up with recommendations that humans would not have thought of that would result in better outcomes for cancer patients. Even these modest results are being hyped in the form of embarrassing headlines. For instance, ASCO, touting the results of the three studies presented at its annual meeting and other results, wrote "How Watson for Oncology Is Advancing Personalized Patient Care." It read like a press release from IBM. Another article proclaimed that "IBM’s Watson is really good at creating cancer treatment plans." That's nice. So are nearly all oncologists, and it's even arguable that Watson is as good as a typical oncologist.

The M.D. Anderson experience

The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was, along with MSKCC, one of the early adopters of Watson. Its experience with the project is another cautionary note that shows what can happen when not enough skepticism is applied to a project and how a project like Watson can turn into a massive boondoggle. This was revealed when the partnership between M.D. Anderson and IBM basically fell apart earlier this year:

According to a blistering audit by the University of Texas System, the cancer center grossly mismanaged its splashy program with IBM, which started back in 2012. The program aimed to teach Watson how to treat cancer patients and match them to clinical trials. Watson initially met goals and impressed center doctors, but the project hit the rocks as MD Anderson officials snubbed their own IT experts, mishandled about $62 million in funding, and failed to follow basic procedures for overseeing contracts and invoices, the audit concludes.

IBM pulled support for the project back in September of last year. Watson is currently prohibited from being used on patients there, and the fate of MD Anderson’s partnership with IBM is in question. MD Anderson is now seeking bids from other contractors who might take IBM’s place.

As Matt Herper noted over at Forbes:

Usually, companies pay research centers to do research on their products; in this case, MD Anderson paid for the privilege, although it would have apparently also owned the product. This was a “very unusual business arrangement,” says Vinay Prasad, an oncologist at Oregon Health & Science University.

According to the audit report, Chin went around normal procedures to pay for the expensive undertaking. The report notes "a consistent pattern of PwC fees set just below MD Anderson’s Board approval threshold," and its appendix seems to indicate this may have occurred with payments to IBM, too.* She also didn’t get approval from the information technology department.

Yes, it was that bad.

Hype and hubris in AI: Beyond IBM

It's very clear that AI will play an increasingly large role in medicine. The massive amount of genomic data being applied to "personalized medicine," or, as it's now more commonly called, "precision medicine," basically demands it because no human can sift through the terabytes and petabytes of genomic data without assistance to find patterns that can be exploited in treatment. What I do have a problem with is hype, and IBM is clearly incredibly guilty of massively hyping its Watson product before it was ready for prime time, apparently not recognizing just how difficult it would be to train Watson to align company hype with scientific reality.

One way to think about it is to consider how machine learning works, how AI is trained to recognize patterns, come to conclusions, and make recommendations. In other words, how can a machine go beyond human-curated data and recommendations? It's incredibly difficult:

To understand what’s slowing the progress, you have to understand how machine-learning systems like Watson are trained. Watson “learns” by continually rejiggering its internal processing routines in order to produce the highest possible percentage of correct answers on some set of problems, such as which radiological images reveal cancer. The correct answers have to be already known, so that the system can be told when it gets something right and when it gets something wrong. The more training problems the system can chew through, the better its hit rate gets.

That’s relatively simple when it comes to training the system to identify malignancies in x-rays. But for potentially groundbreaking puzzles that go well beyond what humans already do, like detecting the relationships between gene variations and disease, Watson has a chicken-and-egg problem: how does it train on data that no experts have already sifted through and properly organized? “If you’re teaching a self-driving car, anyone can label a tree or a sign so the system can learn to recognize it,” says Thomas Fuchs, a computational pathologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, a cancer center in New York. “But in a specialized domain in medicine, you might need experts trained for decades to properly label the information you feed to the computer.”

That's the bias introduced by relying on MSKCC physicians. It's a bias that's much worse than it needs to be because of how IBM relies on one institution and one relatively small group of physicians to train Watson, but, in fairness, it is an unavoidable bias at this stage in the development of an AI. The problem, as it all too often is, is arrogance. IBM appears to have vastly underestimated the challenge in moving beyond the training dataset (as it's often called in studies like this), for which the answers are known in advance to the computer's analysis, to the validation dataset (for which the answer is not known in advance).

None of this is to say that AI won't eventually make a major contribution to the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Rather, it's just to say that we're nowhere near there yet. Moreover, IBM is no longer the only player in this game, as has been noted:

Since Watson’s “Jeopardy!” demonstration in 2011, hundreds of companies have begun developing health care products using artificial intelligence. These include countless startups, but IBM also faces stiff competition from industry titans such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and the Optum division of UnitedHealth Group.

Google’s DeepMind, for example, recently displayed its own game-playing prowess, using its AlphaGo program to defeat a world champion in Go, a 3,000-year-old Chinese board game.

DeepMind is working with hospitals in London, where it is learning to detect eye disease and speed up the process of targeting treatments for head and neck cancers, although it has run into privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, Amazon has launched a health care lab, where it is exploring opportunities to mine data from electronic health records and potentially build a virtual doctor’s assistant.

A recent report by the financial firm Jefferies said IBM is quickly losing ground to competitors. “IBM appears outgunned in the war for AI talent and will likely see increasing competition,” the firm concluded.

And:

But the “cognitive computing” technologies under the Watson umbrella aren’t as unique as they once were. “In the data-science community the sense is that whatever Watson can do, you can probably get as freeware somewhere, or possibly build yourself with your own knowledge,” Claudia Perlich told Gizmodo, a professor and data scientist who worked at IBM Watson Research Center from 2004 to 2010 (at the same time Watson was being built), before becoming the chief scientist at Dstillery, a data-driven marketing firm (a field that IBM is also involved with). She believes a good data-science expert can create Watson-like platforms “with notably less financial commitment.”

None of this is also to say that IBM is alone in its hubris. It's not. This hubris is shared by many tech companies, particularly those working on computing and AI. For instance, last year Microsoft was roundly (and properly) mocked for its claim that it was going to "solve cancer" in a decade based on this idea:

The company is working at treating the disease like a computer virus, that invades and corrupts the body’s cells. Once it is able to do so, it will be able to monitor for them and even potentially reprogramme them to be healthy again, experts working for Microsoft have said.

The company has built a “biological computation” unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer.

And:

“The field of biology and the field of computation might seem like chalk and cheese,” Chris Bishop, head of Microsoft Research’s Cambridge-based lab, told Fast Company. “But the complex processes that happen in cells have some similarity to those that happen in a standard desktop computer.”

As such, those complex processes can potentially be understood by a desktop computer, too. And those same computers could be used to understand how cells behave and to treat them.

Yes, there is a resemblance between cancer and computing in much the same way that counting on your fingers resembles a supercomputer. The hubris on display was unbelievable. My reaction was virtually identical to Derek Lowe’s, only more so. Indeed, he perfectly characterized the attitude of many in tech companies working on cancer as a “Gosh darn it fellows, do I have to do everything myself?” attitude. Yes, those of us in cancer research and who take care of cancer patients do tend to get a bit…testy…when someone waltzes onto the scene and proclaims to breathless headlines that he’s going to solve cancer in a decade because he has an insight that you stupid cancer biologists never thought of before: The cell is just a computer, and cancer is like a computer virus.

But I digress. I only mention Microsoft to demonstrate that IBM is not alone when it comes to tech companies and hubris about cancer. In any event, I made an analogy to Donald Trump earlier in this post. I was not surprised to find this article making a similar analogy:

“IBM Watson is the Donald Trump of the AI industry—outlandish claims that aren’t backed by credible data,” said Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI and former computer science professor. “Everyone—journalists included—know[s] that the emperor has no clothes, but most are reluctant to say so.”

Etzioni, who helps research and develop new AI that is similar to some Watson APIs, said he respects the technology and people who work at Watson, “But their marketing and PR has run amok—to everyone’s detriment.”

Former employees who worked on Watson Health agree and think the way that IBM overhypes Watson for Oncology is especially detrimental. One former IBM Watson Health researcher and UX designer told Gizmodo of a time they shadowed an oncologist at a cancer center that has partnered with IBM to train Watson for Oncology. The designer claims they spoke with patients who had heard of Watson and asked when it could be used to help them with their disease. “That was actually pretty heartbreaking for me as a designer because I had seen what Watson for Oncology really is and I was very painfully aware of its limitations,” the designer said. “It felt very bad and it felt like there was real hope that had been served by IBM marketing that could not be supported by the product I know.”

That's part of the problem. Patients see the hype and believe it. They then want what IBM is offering, even if it is not ready for prime time. Watson Health general manager Deborah DiSanzo even said, "We’re seeing stories come in where patients are saying, 'It gave me peace of mind,'" and concluded, "That makes us feel extraordinarily good that what we’re doing is going to make a difference for patients and their physicians." Patient peace of mind is important, but not as important as actually producing a product that demonstrably improves patient outcomes.

Again, don't get me wrong. AI is very likely to be quite important in years (more likely decades) to come in health care. Maybe one day it will lead to a real Tricorder, just like in the original Star Trek series. It's just not there yet. I suspect that Watson will not be the last medical AI effort to fail to live up to its early grandiose claims.

oracknows Sun, 09/17/2017 - 21:24

Tags

Categories

Orac writes,

This reliance on a single institution introduces an incredible bias.

MJD says,

A quote from Robert Hart (A London-based researcher and writer with interests in emerging technology, security, and medicine):

"If we don’t closely monitor AI’s use in healthcare, there’s a risk it will perpetuate existing biases and inequalities by building systems with data that systematically fails to account for anyone who is not white and male".

@ Orac's minions,

Are they both right?

In continuation, it could be said that if we don't closely monitor AI's use in healthcare, there's a possibility that it will perpetuate science-based medicine by building systems with data that systematically fails to account for the placebo effect.

Q. Could the use of AI in healthcare adversely affect holistic medicine.

Watson is still much closer to your laptop than it is to a real AI. It will be many years (maybe not as many I think) before the first real AI comes into being. Watson has a long way to go yet before it becomes Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's younger bother).

I think that for all its promise, AI is saddled with a human problem. The people who know how to build it don't really know anything about the problems that they're building it to tackle, but, they are swimming in money from other successes and can't really be told that they aren't competent to build the machine they believe they're building. So, they've got a ton of arrogance and only a tiny bit of actual prowess outside their industry of interest... they see the problem they've tackled as the biggest problem tackle-able and just don't know what they don't know.

For these game playing AIs that have popped up recently, I'm not convinced that they're a good model of real intelligence. The way that these machines are being trained leads them to be very good at a task in the way an autistic savant can become good at a task... that isn't necessarily the same as being capable of a true leap of genius. AI suffers from the fact that we really still don't know what intelligence is.

The third concordance study compared Watson’s decisions for high-risk colon cancer to a tumour board from Gachon University Gil Medical Centre in Incheon, South Korea. Its concordance rate in terms of colon cancer decisions was 73%, however, it was only 43% in gastric cancer.
The company explained this was due to differences in treatment guidelines for the disease in South Korea, compared to where it was trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

So for the gastric cancer run the training set was from a different population than the test set? I'm not too surprised at the poor performance if that's the reality. Were there any predictors for the SK data that couldn't be used in the model developed from the US data?

Watson has a long way to go yet before it becomes Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock’s younger bother).

IBM's Watson has a long way to go before it matches Conan Doyle's Watson, let alone Sherlock or Mycroft. Once in a while the fictional Watson spots something relevant to one of Holmes' cases while the latter's attention is focused elsewhere, e.g., noticing in "Silver Blaze" that the footprints going in the other direction are the same footprints that he and Holmes have been following.

AIs are getting better. Modern AI chess players, for instance, will not fall for the poison pawn trap, as a computer opponent I faced back in the 1980s did. But they still have a long way to go, and cancer is a hard problem.

@Rich Bly - Mycroft was Sherlock's *older* brother in the canon, IIRC. Never having watched the shows, I don't know about them.

MI Dawn,

In the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein refers to Mycroft as Sherlock's younger brother. Having never read the actual Sherlock Holmes books, I don't know which is right.

Also, I have heard the Watson refers to this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson

Obviously, Heinlein never read much Conan Doyle. Who did write some sci-fi with his Professor Challenger stories (only one is worthwhile, The Lost World.

I don't recall the relative ages of Sherlock and Mycroft in Conan Doyle's stories (I have not seen the TV or movie spinoffs thereof), but Conan Doyle specifically states that Mycroft is the smarter of the two. However, Mycroft is also even more socially awkward than Sherlock, regarding these puzzles as mental exercises and preferring to spend all of his time at his club, rather than using his intellect to make a living as Sherlock does.

Heinlein's computer character gets the name Mycroft because it has the contrived acronym HOLMES (which I would have to look in the novel to see what that stands for). It's possible that Manny, the protagonist and first-person narrator of TMIAHM, is the one who gets Mycroft's role in the Conan Doyle canon wrong, and that Heinlein knew the correct relationship, but Heinlein was usually not that subtle.

@Rich Bly: my goodness! That's a book I haven't thought about in many years. Not that I was ever a huge Heinlein fan, but I did read that one. I think that went totally over my head at the time.

@Eric Lund: I really don't remember all that detail! I (metaphorically) doff my hat to you, sir.

“The bias is taken out by the sheer amount of data we have.”

Proving, yet again, that doctors are not automatically scientists.

Eric Lund: "However, Mycroft is also even more socially awkward than Sherlock, regarding these puzzles as mental exercises and preferring to spend all of his time at his club, rather than using his intellect to make a living as Sherlock does."

Mostly due to his girth. I have recently bought a series of radio plays of all of the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, before the production company shut down (no longer available, until they strike a deal with a new company). So I have been listening to them in chronological order by original published date. Mycroft is mentioned in the 23rd tale, "The Greek Interpreter." Which I recently listened to.

Also, it helps to use Wikipedia to refresh my memory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycroft_Holmes

Mycroft seems to show up more in the Holmes "expanded universe" (essentially fan fiction).

It seems to me that the only way to get this to work is to let Watson make suggestions and follow them to the letter and feedback that info to Watson. i.e., we have to let Watson kill people to teach it what *not* to do.

having a vast amount of experience

I suspect Dr. Seidman is overstating things by a factor of two here.

Chris, Archive.org has at least 125 old radio broadcasts of Sherlock Holmes for streaming or download on there old time radio link along with many more radio broadcasts. All are free but they do support their site with donations.

their, not there.

Bionic Dr. Watson is pretty good with treating stab wounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR3s8VUYT9g

Having a literal ton of experience in the industry, Watson is still mostly smoke and mirrors.....as much as IBM likes to tout a bunch of logos, you'll be hard pressed to find a successful implementation anywhere.

None of this is also to say that IBM is alone in its hubris.
gigo vs Big Ego and Big Medicine

Charles: "Chris, Archive.org has at least 125 old radio broadcasts of Sherlock Holmes for streaming or download"

Thanks. I have had it bookmarked for a while. The ones I am listening to are not "old radio", but done during the last fifteen years or so, I have attended a couple of recordings:
http://jimfrenchproductions.com/

Mr. French is not 90 years old, so the actors who worked with him are exploring some licensing options. They did all sixty classic stories, plus 129 "further adventures" of original stories (and they are going to do a few more).

Plus not all radio adaptations are equal. There is a daily download of CBS Mystery Theater, which ran from the early 1970s to about 1982. Several included are the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, but I am put off in that they portray Watson as a buffoon, a depiction Nigel Bruce used even though it was not how the character was written.

It's deja vu all over again. For those interested look on Wikipedia for "expert system". Same old, and back to the 70s no less. I remember it well. At the time Feigenbaum published his book on 5th generation computing I was a newly minted Master of Science and worked in a company where for a brief time his book and the subject caused a sensation. I read the book and dismissed it. I also recall a television documentary around the same time that showed some fellow with a note book (no laptops back then!) following a doctor with a reputation as a master diagnostician as he met patients. The notes were translated into a rules engine that tried to replicate that physician's successful diagnoses. I don't know the specifics, only that other doctors that tried these rules based expert systems were unimpressed and the entire field went into a deep sleep soon after.

As Orac and other commenters noted, there is no artificial intelligence in any of these, not in those ancient expert systems or, now, Watson. On a cursory look Watson's difference from those earlier expert systems is one of degree not of kind, utilizing the staggering improvements in software and hardware and real time access to academic material.

I know nothing about medicine so I won't venture to say why such systems do a poor job of patient diagnosis. But I can see how it must be a terribly difficult problem.

gigo vs Big Ego and Big Medicine

vs the worlds greatest Internet researcher, with more medical knowledge than any actual medical professional, living or dead, right?

AIs are getting better.

I'm not sure that growing a plural represents much of an advance from back in my day.

Take it from a longtime Holmesian. Mycroft Holmes was senior by seven years.

Maybe the reason that Watson is less than advertised is the absence of tarial cells.
Perhaps Ensor could be persuaded to work on it, if he's in a less irritable mood.

For all that we don't see it now, true AI will come upon us a lot sooner than we think, or than we want.
In the meantime I will just have to muddle through with natural stupidity.

That's funny...I always thought you were a tool that "fought" cancer.

Well, a tool, anyway.

For all that we don’t see it now, true AI will come upon us a lot sooner than we think, or than we want.

Here is the brief Schank item on retiring the term that I was thinking of earlier.

I read the Schank item.
People who declare that a given technological advance will forever be impossible have the bad habit of being wrong in the long run.
Some of the nevers include heavier than air flight, landing men on the moon, curing cancer, nuclear fission...

I read the Schank piece.
But remember that the history ofscience is littered with predictions of what would forever remain impossible that were sooner or later proven wrong.
I don't know how long it will take, but I am sure it will happen, probably in ways which either we haven't conceived or have only the dimmest glimpse.