| Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to a recommendation from Black Mamba last September, here are the Pet Shop Boys performing West End Girls § in 1984 (3:56). |
I should also like to note that Erik Verlinde, from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam, has an interesting new paper available On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton (PDF), in which as he has said he argues that "Gravity exists because of a difference in the concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings [...] On the smallest level Newton's laws don't apply, but they do for apples and planets. You can compare this to the pressure of a gas. Molecules themselves don't have any pressure, but a barrel of gas does" ~ because as Abraham Lincoln said, "For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like". From the abstract:
Starting from first principles and general assumptions Newton's law of gravitation is shown to arise naturally and unavoidably in a theory in which space is emergent through a holographic scenario. Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even Newton's law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle leads us to conclude that it is actually this law of inertia whose origin is entropic.
In section 6.1 of Verlinde's paper, he writes, "Gravity has given many hints of being an emergent phenomenon, yet up to this day it is still seen as a fundamental force. The similarities with other known emergent phenomenon, such as thermodynamics and hydrodynamics, have been mostly regarded as just suggestive analogies. It is time we not only notice the analogy, and talk about the similarity, but finally do away with gravity as a fundamental force". If Verlinde's conjecture is true, and if his particular derivation of equation 5.34 in his paper is valid, then it's hugely significant. On the other hand, if not, then as Aristotle said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it".
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Interesting idea Vit. Any hope of testing it? How does one go about changing the information between two points anyway?
I have no idea about testing it, Phantom. I can just barely hang on with my fingernails trying to follow what's going on there these days. Yet as I understand it, and as we have discussed before here at SDA LNR and in the SDA DLDI Symposia series, there is a body of argument being made that, fundamentally, all that exists, in the deep existential sense, is information. On the other hand, it could be no more than the case that if humans look hard enough at what's going on, then humans will come up with a model of what's going on that reflects humanity: If we are information processors, then might it not stand to reason that if we look hard enough at existence, then we will find that our model thereto is information-theoretic?
The continuing collapse of the National Health Service.
This is an article we need to quote at the lefties every time there is a discussion about how "great" our public health care system is.
The NHS is where we are headed.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article7052606.ece
Chairman Obama appoints Communist to 9th Circuit
Environmentalists need protection from fraud suits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoZ7odscKCM
The Emperor needs new clothes
George Soros cloaking Obama; Not a Communist, Not a communist, No No No .
http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2010/02/heartache-george-soros-says-hes-not-satisfied-with-obamas-job-performance.html
Gravity is not only a good idea, it is the law.
Um, no, I think that's Erik's point, Ron: gravity is not the
law, it is merely the judgement. Erik's argument is that it is
not fundamental, it is emergent. Information is fundamental.
information is a word?
http://bible.cc/john/1-1.htm
I would hate if this is right.
anyway , Im actually a keener on helical particle waves where the equations just sort of fall out .
Tip:
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2010/03/06/foia-docs-show-obama-asked-george-soros-and-wind-energy-lobbyists-to-hide-european-wind-energy-program-failures.php
My understanding, Cal2, is that it is not the case that information is merely a word: rather, it is existence per se (or so, at least, as it is being argued by some). In terms of your attempted biblical reference, then, it would turn out to be the case that God too is information, if the conjecture is true, because, of course, everything would turn out to be information. Can I just ask, in passing, at what point here do I get some sort of tautology mongering award? I mean, really, does this have to take all night ?-)
I go here and read a couple pages of Thomas Sowell's quotes about once a week.
Need a reminder every now and then that there are sane people out there.
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/thomas_sowell/
Thomas Sowell is excellent, Jim. He's the Rose & Milton Friedman
Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institute at Stanford.
I recommend their Hoover Digest and Policy Review publications.
10 years ago I used to correspond with him until he realized I was more questions than answers.
http://www.heliwave.com/gaasenbeek/spap1.html
but a lot of the gravity equations fall out naturally .
the word stuff was just a brain synapse link, Im keener on the equations than the "word"
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
"The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.”
Thomas Sowell
"The sad & tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable
and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle,
promoting the mindless racism they once fought against".
-- Thomas Sowell
Vitruvius- 9:39 PM
'My understanding, Cal2, is that it is not the case that information is merely a word: rather, it is existence, per se.....'
Well, I tend to differ.
A-well-a, everybody's heard about the bird
Bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a, bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a, bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word....
...A-well-a, don't you know about the bird
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word...
I could go on and on, but I'm sure you'll agree that your argument has been fully and totally refuted.
Peter Griffin is a genius!
"How does one go about changing the information between two points anyway?"
Phantom,
Perhaps we could change the speed of Light...
They have demonstrated the slowing of light to near zero in the Lab (near Zero K)...should we not think that the laws in the Lab also apply in the universe?
Vit,
That is very heavy theory and I will need to read it more than my usual 5 times.. add some missing string theory and "may" comment in about 4 years
Roger that, Phillip, God willing, we'll still be here.
Vitruvius: "If we are information processors, then might it not stand to reason that if we look hard enough at existence, then we will find that our model thereto is information-theoretic?"
Yes. It also stands to reason all the tools (measurement) we build for our model are also information-theoretic. Being a betting man, I bet we are using the wrong tools to support wrong models ... or right tools to support wrong ... whatever ... I'll give ∞ to 5 odds.
Thanks for the Tip Louise at 9:39 PM
Wish I could say more.
Palin discusses the East Anglia 'climate' e-mails in Calgary: the climate science in unsettling.
http://www.canada.com/news/Calgary+crowd+receptive+Palin/2650514/story.html
Over at the CBC there's an article saying 'Canada wanted detainees tortured: Lawer'.
That legal expert's name is Amir Attaran. Yes, THAT Amir Attaran.
*Facepalm*
Of course, this is presented with a complete straight face, and Attaran is presented as a credible source who has absolutely no agenda whatsoever.
GIMME A BREAK!!
Globe and Mail, Saturday, Mar. 6.
The feds are launching a cross-country debate on pensions. They want to ask Canadians what will it take to get them to save more for retirement and what should be done to keep their savings safe.
Here are some clues:
A pension is like a mass savings account shared by thousands of people, that pays a fixed income so long as each recipient remains alive. Like any other savings account, it depends on wealth creation in the economy. Thus the answer to the feds' question is: MAXIMIZE WEALTH CREATION! This means remove all impediments to the free functioning of the economy: all the subsidies, regulations, distortions, and other such nonsense. An economy is the sum total of all acts of production, trade and consumption among individuals. Governments cannot hope to determine what should be produced, traded or consumed in the economy - those decisions belong to free individuals.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2001 (Cooper vs. Hobart) that regulators cannot be held responsible in any way for their own incompetence or malfeasance. And it ruled in 2008 (St. Lawrence Cement) that a company can still be held responsible for pollution even if it meets government standards. Therefore, there is no need for, or value in having, regulation. (I will admit that, since a lot of people consider the banking industry's relative good standing in the midst of the recession to be partly derived from the regulations, that any kind of deregulation should proceed fairly cautiously in this area. But I'm thinking of things like the CRTC, which provides nothing but censorship, and the phony "human rights" commissions like the CHRC. Neither of these produce anything of value to Canadians, and they should be eliminated. That goes for most other regulatory bodies as well.)
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National Post, Saturday, Mar. 6.
Diane Francis proves herself as clueless as ever: "Soros is right about capitalism".
Francis: "His thesis is that ... the system is in ruins and must be rebuilt from scratch ... [he proposes something new] to replace the current laissez-faire version that went bust."
The system is not "in ruins"; in fact it's recuperating fairly well in places like Canada. More importantly, exactly where is this alleged laissez-faire? The total number of regulations, subsidies, and economic distortions in general must number in the tens of thousands. This is not laissez-faire. But Diane Francis is indeed a moron.
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Toronto Star, Saturday, Mar. 6.
An article about community activists makes some suggestions for those so inclined. This one caught my eye: "Organize a mural to cover up graffiti".
In Toronto, this has been tried. One woman got some locals to paint a mural on the side of her building precisely in order to cover up graffiti. What happened was that an idiot city councillor decided the mural should itself be painted over because it wasn't good art. Naturally the graffiti came back. And the building owner is still on the hook to try and get rid of it.
The moral of the story (or one of them at least) is that leftists, whether on city councils or in provincial or federal legislatures, don't give a damn about people - they only care about power for themselves. Because they're basically parasites, and the one thing they really hate is productive people who don't want to be parasites like them.
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Toronto Star, Saturday, Mar. 6.
A Nunavut legislator wants a boycott of E.U. booze, in retaliation for the European ban on seal products from Canada.
Good luck with that. I bet that'll really make your constituents want to prolong your political career.
Click my name. BBC. Switzerland. Lawyers for animals. 'nuf said.
I certainly agree that information is 'all that exists'. Information is energy that is 'in-formed'; that is, it is morphologically organized energy.
I'd also agree that gravity is emergent and not fundamental; however, my view is that gravity is not entropic but anti-entropic. That's the whole point. Gravity exists as the key anti-entropic force in the universe. It moves matter into a different spatial and temporal set of relations or interactions and as such, reduces their exposure to entropic dissipation.
It is interesting to read the comments made here in response to the posting.For me a greater understanding of information of how it is used and manipulated and possibly understood is found on this documentary.One Mainframe To Rule Them All, available on You Tube.The relevance of this is obvious.Try entertaining these thoughts for awhile and not come away without accepting them.
A further commnent - I don't think that gravity emerges in the 'empty space between two masses' (what empty space?). It emerges WITHIN a mass, as a tactic to prevent entropic dissipation of that mass. So, the mass becomes organized in different spatial and temporal values, WITHIN itself.
Some of its mass is organized to interact only within long term time and non-individual space; an example is DNA. It 'fights' entropy. This is a process of 'gravity'.
Some of its mass is organized to interact in short term time and individual space - that's the metabolism of the organism which is highly entropic.
Yes, yes, sounds strange but if you think about it, it might, just possibly, make sense.
Of course, the next question is, how does this sluggish mass, whose relations are slowed to a crawl in time and whose interactions affect a broad spatial area - what does this have to do with gravity as a force? Apples falling and so on. I think that's a result of the spinning revolution of the mass.
So, Newton's gravity, which is based on that spin, still stands. It does indeed hold mass together as a kinetic action. However, there's another force, an emergent internal force, that moulds matter to prevent its dissipation - and that is that organization of mass within a non-individual and non-local spatial and temporal value. Now, that needs some study!
AGW? Not.
The original reduce, reuse, recycle:
"the storm brought hailstones 10cm in diameter — the size of lemons — in an event perhaps not seen since early last century."
"Once-in-a-century storm hits Melbourne"
"The track was covered in hail. It was all white. It looked like it had snowed.”"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7052888.ece
"Manuscript of Einstein's most famous theory on display
JERUSALEM - The original manuscript of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking theory of relativity has gone on display in its entirety for the first time.
The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem began exhibiting the 46-page handwritten document on Sunday as part of its 50th anniversary celebration. In the document, Einstein demonstrated an expanding universe and explained how gravity can bend space and time. The theory, first published in 1916, remains a pivotal breakthrough in modern physics.
Einstein contributed the manuscript to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925. The university is lending the document to the academy for its anniversary celebration."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2010/03/07/13142771-ap.html
Erik isn't saying that "gravity emerges in the empty space between two masses", ET, he is saying that "gravity exists because of a difference in the concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings". In other words, it is the difference between (1) the concentration of information in the empty space between two masses, and (2) the concentration of information in the empty space that is surrounding that empty space between the two masses, that (3) results in the emergence of gravity.
You have to keep in mind here folks that we're talking about real physics, not some sort of hand-waving metaphor. When we speak of information in this context, it's not information like the kinds of macroscopic things we humans experience. In this context we are talking about the information-theoretic application of 't Hooft's holographic principle, which suggests "that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure 'painted' on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies".
As Erik writes, "In this paper we will argue that the central notion needed to derive gravity is information. More precisely, it is the amount of information associated with matter and its location, in whatever form the microscopic theory likes to have it, measured in terms of entropy. Changes in this entropy when matter is displaced leads to an entropic force, which as we will show takes the form of gravity".
But look, these little two- or three-sentence sketches of Erik's argument aren't fair and don't do it justice. The proper way to understand what's going on here is not to work from these little summaries, it is to read On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton itself in order to develop an informed understanding.
Josh Wingrove, Last exit from Kandahar
With a year left in a mission that has cost billions and 140 Canadian soldiers’ lives, Canada takes new risks – but is it too little, too late?
It's all part of the Key Village Approach, introduced last year by Canadian Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance as a way to stabilize this country. Nakhonay was one of the first places to benefit. Once in their compounds, each platoon stays put, fast-tracking development, wooing locals and warding off the Taliban. It's what has Cpl. Riley alternating gun and golf club...
Ham: "Words, words, words".
"reduce, reuse, recycle".
...-
"Waste watchers? British Trash Bins Being Fitted With Microchips, Raising Surveillance Fears
It's the new front in the nanny state: Microchips placed in garbage bins to monitor how much people throw away.
A pro-privacy group warns in a new report that more than 2.6 million of the chips have been surreptitiously installed in what is seen as a first step toward charging those who toss too much.
Proponents say it's a bid to push recycling. Opponents say it stinks.
"They should mind their own business," said Terry Williams, an unemployed Londoner who thinks the government is meddling. "I believe they have gone too far. It's not like we are throwing away anything that is illegal."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2465949/posts
Doing what universities do best, spreading lies:
http://mcgilldaily.com/articles/27871
All in the name of "Israel Arpatheid Week"!
Adam Gadahn arrested:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/07/pakistan.alqaeda.american/index.html?hpt=T1
W.O. Mitchell asked, Who Has Seen The Wind?
Mitchell was a dreamer, right?
"the formation can hold energy that has been converted into air."
"The energy park would be one answer to a problem that has long confounded the utility industry: the inability to store electricity."
...-
"Iowa wind energy storage project moves ahead
DALLAS CENTER, Iowa (AP) — Kent Holst stood in front of the Iowa Stored Energy Park’s municipal utility members and proclaimed, “This time, we have something to show you.”
Holst, the park’s development director, showed the officials a drill rig behind a house on the south side of Iowa Highway 44, two miles west of Dallas Center.
The rig is drilling a 2,800-foot well, which will be used to test the hardness of a sandstone formation. The energy park hopes the formation can hold energy that has been converted into air.
When the municipal utilities that own stored energy need electricity at peak periods, the air will be released to the surface to power turbines in two 134-megawatt generators, making electricity."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2465987/posts
compressed air is a crappy way of storing energy....
my gawd , what have we come to that we have to drill wells to find the hardness of sandstone. they probably have cores of it already. we would also know the frac gradient and the hydrostatic pressure and the size of the structure.
sounds like another gubmint make work project.
Climategate is a fabrication.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/04/penn-state-michael-mann-hockey-stick-science/
Climate Progress is a fabrication.
A complete list of things caused by global warming
An interesting website, most comprehensive list of what is going to happen to whom. Some 690 entries. "alaming"
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Well, I don't know about all this other stuff, but this is the first time I've ever seen/heard, the Pet Shop Boys, and I must say, they're pretty insufferable.
Yeah, well, Black Mamba likes them, so I guess
you can't please all the people all the time. Shrug.
yeah well, I once hinted that I liked Annamaria Alberghetti (sp) but no one ran out and fulfilled my deepest needs.