Misc. Science Topics

[labelwench]

What is the precursor of 'thought'?

From where? To what? To When?......or should that be from when?

Why the age old axiom, "Be careful what you wish for?"

What possible effect can an unspoken thought have on the state of matter?

And simply for one's listening , a song........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxlJL2g4sLY

[austintorn@aol.com]

The precursor of thought
Is you—your aspirations,
Your memories, your associations,
Your learnings, your methods,
Your personality, your direction,
All that you have become,
And your present state of being.

One must take care
In what one wishes for
If the consequences
Have not been considered.

Unspoken thoughts
Become a part of the repertoire
That contributes to future,
The very purpose of thought.

[austintorn@aol.com]

On the Origin of the Physics

Andreas Albrecht has killed time.

He was interested in a time
When the universe was compressed
Into a space the size of a grapefruit.

The equations of quantum mechanics
Became confusing when he tried
To tell the story in a linear way,
For all possible futures
Were described in terms
Of the probability
That any one would actually happen.

However, he realized that
There was no unambiguous way
To come up with a tick-tock version,
So he tried to manipulate the equations
To isolate time,
Even having to attempt to undo
The unification of space and time,
But still trying to jury-rig
Some kind of a clock.

But his models kept falling apart,
The equations always leading
To a different kind of universe.

He called the problem “clock ambiguity”.

It seemed that the laws
Determining the history of the universe
Could never be specified beforehand
[Indeed, if causeless],
And that the fundamental physical laws
Were not fundamental.

So, then there would be
No timeless rules
That could be described by math,
No ideal realm of forms
That embody the laws of physics.

Smolin, too,
Feels that time as we know it
May not emerge from
Some deeper set of laws

Kauffman offers that
The laws of the universe
May have evolved over time,
Just as those of the biosphere
In which evolution in biology
Favors change from
The simple to the more complex.

Perhaps certain types of laws
Came to dominate
Because they are more successful
In producing a complex universe.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Optimized Mind

The mind (always the brain)
Is not just “good enough”,
Or a “kludge” of a contraption,
But is one of the most
Optimal devices we know.

Nor does it strictly use logic,
As its Artificial Intelligence
“Imitators” found out
When trying simple mathematical models;
But employs vague and generalized notions.

Logic can only be “right” or “wrong”,
But, an emotion, an inseparable part of cognition,
Cannot be, but we can feel them
As “good” or “bad”.

While evolution is a “tinkerer”,
It was cleverer than
We might think.

We neither have a single,
General purpose learning system
Nor a myriad of special-purpose systems.

There are 4-5 core systems
In human babies and non-human animals
For representing:
Objects, actions, number, space,
And possibly social partners.

When the language module
Is added, we can manipulate
And combine the core systems
In various ways that lead
To high level cognition.

Language and cognition co-evolved jointly,
Now a marvel of optimality.

Now, what is it about logic
That misguided all of the
Early artificial intelligence research?

It is that exact matches
Can almost never be achieved,
And so our memories
Must be necessarily vague and uncertain,
But, they can go from vague to crisp representations.

Close your eyes and imagine a familiar object.
It is vague compared to a perception
Of the object with eyes wide open.

During perception, “bottom up” signals
From the visual system
Interact unconsciously with
The vague “top down” signals
Coming from memories.

Only when perception runs its course
Does perception become conscious.

But for this, we would not be able
To understand anything.

The mind-brain has had billions of years
To evolve optimally to solve a wide set
Of unknown future problems.

We are the un-kludged.

[racecar]

Hi racecar. Welcome to the thread where no idea is too large or too small for consideration.

Smart Pills…

The DNA guy may be getting, um, old.

While there are no approved smart pills, there are those taken by college students to stay up all night, plus there is always good nutrition. However, consider cigarettes, which allow the brain to better focus.

Indeed, why pay good money for a modern concentration camp when the same can be had from smoking for even more money. Do not worry about any disadvantages such as death. Those smokers dying young just didn’t keep it up long enough. Even George Burns could have kept on going smoking cigars, but he quit just before he died.

Hi, Austin.

The DNA guy may be old and new, even possibly borrowed and blue...
Someone recently asked me if I had grown up to be a wordsmith. I found this to be laugh out loud funny, considering I'm not wordly wise...even with the handbook. Being loosely interested in language I looked it up...Nope, not me. But I did find this neat website, http://wordsmith.org/ the magic of words and the Darwinian word game: "One Up- smart always wins." So, I play, for fun....And, you, Austin will always one up me.

[austintorn@aol.com]

See William Wordsworth.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Proton—
Lightning in a Bottle

A proton is made of three quarks, true,
But quarks are so small
That they only make up
Two percent or so
Of the proton’s total mass.

The quarks travel about
At near-light speed,
But they are imprisoned
In flickering clouds
Of other particles such
Other quarks and anti-quarks that
Materialize briefly and then vanish,
Plus, above all, gluons,
Which are massless and evanescent
But bind the quarks together
And carry most of the proton’s energy.

Such, it would be accurate to say
That protons are made of gluons
Rather than quarks.

Experiments have proved
Wilczek’s descriptions correct.

Every proton now around
Congealed from
A quark-gluon plasma soup
That existed for a microsecond
After the Big Bang.

In QED,
Which is about interactions
Of electromagnetic fields,
A screen made of photons
And short-lived electron-positron pairs
Partially cancels the electric fields,
Although, on the inside,
The fields get much stronger;

However, in QCD,
The opposite happens,
Called antiscreening—
The strong force between the quarks
Gets weaker as the quarks
Get closer together.

So the quarks seem to be
“Asymptotically free”,
Moving about as if there
Were no force between them at all

But this freedom is an illusion,
For, as the distance between them increases,
So does the strong force.

It is that the proton has parts,
But it cannot be taken apart!

The proton is mostly glue,
A kind of a superglue.

One number remains constant in protons
As their virtual quarks and anti-quarks
Come and go in their uncountable swarms:

Three.

There are always three more quarks
Than anti-quarks.

Why?

Why is the universe made of matter
And not anti-matter?

A slight imbalance between
Quarks and anti-quarks
Already existed in the
Primordial quark-gluon plasma.

Why?

Fredrick knows.

(Prof, where are you?)

[austintorn@aol.com]

*** Eyes Only ***

In this thread,
Which is a kind of microcosm
Of major ToeQuest threads,
We have dealt with
Some real biggies so far,
With no end in sight,
Such as subjective awareness,
The proton, time,
The origin of the physics,
Evolution, the optimal mind,
But they would all pale in comparison
To explaining what it is that collapses
The quantum wave function;

It was formerly thought
To be consciousness,
But it isn’t.

Roger Penrose spoke
At the U. of H. recently
And I found out,
But I don’t know
If I should reveal it here yet.

Should I?

[austintorn@aol.com]

This thread is becoming more like “Scientific Revelations”, as much is clicking into place here.

Perhaps thought is a river of energy
That we can dip into — LabelWench


Empathy Explained,
And More

Why do we not eat all the scarce food,
Feeling the other’s hunger?

Why are moods contagious?

Why do we feel the wish to dance
When we see another doing so?

Why do I feel your pain
When you cut your finger?

Why might I get an itch
When you scratch yours?

How are you “out there”
Felt “in here”?

How do your acts become mine,
And my acts become yours?

Mirror neurons!

Using very thin electrodes,
Experimenters measured
The activity of a single neuron
Of the premotor cortex
In a monkey grasping a peanut.

Amazingly, a bit later,
An experimenter
Grasped a peanut—
And the same
Monkey neuron activated
Merely by watching.

This was the beginning
Of explaining vicarious feelings—
The mirroring of others’ behaviors.

It seems that free will is not so impregnable;
Each time I witness your movements,
You permeate my stronghold.

It extends to sounds, sensations,
And emotions, as well,
And so we can feel
All of those inside of us,
As if we were in another’s shoes.

These brain circuits blur the bright line
Between your experiences and mine.

Without these mirror neurons
There could have been no learning;
But, it goes beyond that
And onto intuitive altruism.

In many places in the world,
People tend to share the wealth.

Of course, sometimes,
Our desire for benefits
Might outweigh our empathy.

In the military,
The General is at a distance
That separates him or her
From the suffering
That their armies cause.

The same for weapons
That kill at a distance—
Empathy can then be bypassed
In the service of efficiency.

Otherwise, it is
“Do unto others
As you would have them do unto you”.

Each time we see an action,
Our mirror neurons mimic
And transform this sight
Into the motor commands
Necessary to replicate the action;
However, a neural gate
Blocks the immediate output
Of our motor areas.

Behind this gate,
We can covertly share
The actions of people around us.

We feel them,
And they thus become
A part of our extended self.

The brain is ethical by design.

It was advantageous
To know another’s needs.

[racecar]

See William Wordsworth.

You are fit as a fiddle in Wordsworth fashion.