Select Page
Poker Forum
Over 1,291,000 Posts!
Poker ForumFTR Community

Randomness thread, part two.

Page 368 of 420 FirstFirst ... 268318358366367368369370378418 ... LastLast
Results 27,526 to 27,600 of 31490
  1. #27526
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    An apple that is sometimes an orange?

    C'mon, english language! Please let words mean something!
    The straight person might just be drunk and experimenting. Or be doing it for money. They don't have to change their orientation to have gay buttsex. It's not as outrageous as it sounds.
  2. #27527
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Good point.

    Now, if you were to ask someone 'is this casino game fair', and they replied: 'it's fair in the sense that everyone knows it's rigged in favour of the house and they dont have to play if they don't want to', would you

    a. rephrase the question to clarify what you meant; or
    b. start a long argument over what the word 'fair' means because you didn't make it clear yourself the first time
    hmmmm...

    How drunk am I in this scenario?
    I'd say, unfortunately, the more I've had to drink the more likely I am to go with b. over a.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  3. #27528
    haha.

    There's also an option c. Drop it because you already know both you and he know the answer to the question and the other person is obviously trolling you.
  4. #27529
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    The straight person might just be drunk and experimenting. Or be doing it for money. They don't have to change their orientation to have gay buttsex. It's not as outrageous as it sounds.
    le sigh

    Drugs and alcohol don't make you do anything you wouldn't do otherwise... they just give you the excuse to do the things you want to do, anyway.

    Though your comment reminds me of something a stand-up comedian once said.
    "I'm not gay. I'm not. I only F guys in the butt to see that look on their face. I don't love them."

    haha, I suppose. I remember it years later, so I guess it was a good line, though.


    But I don't care. No one should be persecuted for consensual whatever between adults. I just want to know what words mean, and on this topic, it seems our puritanical roots are preventing us from having even enough of a dignified conversation to attach intelligent labels to the things we're talking about. I mean... sure, the alphabet soup of LGBTQQIA.... whatever is cumbersome, but apparently very human. The failed effort to shoehorn sexuality into 2 neat boxes, [men like women] [women like men] is clear. Both Christianity and Islam tried to make it so for hundreds of years and just failed, IMO.
    People are more complex than that. Love is more complex than that. Trying to limit people's ability to express love will always fail. FFS, that's the core theme of so many of our stories, that "True Love" overcomes all. We eat that up. It makes us feel good and powerful and relevant. It's folly to fight something with that kind of hold on us.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  5. #27530
    Isn't there a phrase 'bi-curious', which means someone can be unsure if they'd like it but once they try it they make up their mind? I've heard of this but it seems a bit alien to me I admit. Maybe they're just gay and trying to ease themselves into it psychologically...
  6. #27531
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    It's still not "fair" to treat homosexuals in the same shitty way. Not all homosexuals are treated equally. To claim they are is to claim there is a moral difference between having bum sex (outlawed), and sucking dick (not outlawed). That's a personal opinion influencing your judgement.

    You're not getting away from subjectivity when talking about fairness.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  7. #27532
    I didn't want to touch the "straight people having gay sex" thing because it probably does happen. Some people might discover they're not gay by having gay sex and hating it, idk.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  8. #27533
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    It's still not "fair" to treat homosexuals in the same shitty way. Not all homosexuals are treated equally. To claim they are is to claim there is a moral difference between having bum sex (outlawed), and sucking dick (not outlawed). That's a personal opinion influencing your judgement.

    You're not getting away from subjectivity when talking about fairness.
    You're still using your definition of fair and arguing that it proves my definition is wrong. You're going wrong on such a fundamental level of word usage now that I'm just going to have to give up.
  9. #27534
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Some people might discover they're not gay by having gay sex and hating it, idk.
    They hate it even more when they find out they don't like it and then get thrown off a building.
  10. #27535
    You're still using your definition of fair and arguing that it proves my definition is wrong.
    Wrong. I used your definition...
    "treating a group of people equally and not allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment."
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  11. #27536
    The group in this instance is the group of people who live in the country where the law is. The law punishes the act, not the orientation of the person engaging in it.

    Just like the group of people who could be charged with speeding includes the entire population of the UK. Or are you saying this law is unfair because babies never get caught driving over the speed limit?
  12. #27537
    It'd be like saying a law banning a woman from having an abortion is unfair because men never get pregnant.
  13. #27538
    The group in this instance is the group of people who live in the country where the law is. The law punishes the act, not the orientation of the person engaging in it.
    A law that says carnal intercourse between men is illegal is not a law that applies equally to everyone. It applies to men only.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  14. #27539
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    It'd be like saying a law banning a woman from having an abortion is unfair because men never get pregnant.
    Indeed.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  15. #27540
    I don't think abortion laws are fair. I've never suggested they are. All I suggested was that abortion laws are not remotely on the same level as the persecution of gays.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  16. #27541
    Forget it.
  17. #27542
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    All I suggested was that abortion laws are not remotely on the same level as the persecution of gays.
    Wow.

    I don't agree.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  18. #27543
    Ok mojo, I'll bite. Banning abortion saves the life of a baby. Banning gay sex... who does that benefit?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  19. #27544
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Drugs and alcohol don't make you do anything you wouldn't do otherwise... they just give you the excuse to do the things you want to do, anyway.
    This is factually untrue. Try having an Ambien addiction sometime, and see how that works out for you.
    Last edited by spoonitnow; 07-19-2019 at 08:09 AM.
  20. #27545
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    This is factually untrue. Try having an Ambien addiction sometime, and see how that works out for you.
    I've broken my shoulder blade, and was on a decent dose of hydrocodone for 4 weeks (technically 6, but the dosage cut for the final 2 weeks and the weirdness went with it).
    I'll certainly agree that there was a fuckload of weird shit going on in my apartment that month. I was out of work due to the injury, so I was pretty much home alone for the month, and there's no one to blame but me for that shit.

    Simple example: I found my car keys in the freezer one morning. I definitely hadn't left the house or driven in the past week. I can't remember putting my keys in the freezer, or guess at what thought process resulted in that happening.

    So, sure... to the extent that drugs can make you do weird stuff, I agree.

    However, I'm extremely dubious that I'd have somehow gone out and seduced some guy or let him seduce me under any amount of Hydrocodone. I'm not attracted to guys.

    We're not talking date-rape drugs. Even still... that's not the person choosing whatever is happening to them, as I understand it. It's a person who's so out of their wits that they can't stop whatever's happening to them.

    So I'm not really seeing a great fault in my original statement. There's some nuance to it, but I think it largely holds.
    It is my personal opinion, though, so I'm not digging in on this.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  21. #27546
    Some drugs definitely make people behave in ways that they wouldn't ever behave if they never took drugs. Alcohol would certainly be in that category.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  22. #27547
    Jack Sawyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    7,667
    Location
    Jack-high straight flush motherfucker
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Fuck me you really did go balls out taking my comments literally.
    I didn't really care about any of your comments. But this is a cop out.
    My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...


    Cogito ergo sum

    VHS is like a book? and a book is like a stack of kindles.
    Hey, I'm in a movie!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYdwe3ArFWA
  23. #27548
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer View Post
    I didn't really care about any of your comments. But this is a cop out.
    Then you're as dumb as oskar.

    hyperbole

    noun
    exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  24. #27549
    I put my keys in the freezer sometimes when I'm not on drugs. Does that mean if I take drugs I'll stop doing it?
  25. #27550
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    IDK. Break your scapula and try it out sometime. Personally, I did it by dropping off a motorcycle onto a curb at about 25 mph. Not sure I recommend it, though. The doctor said I was damn lucky it was a clean break and that I somehow took it all on one bone without any shattering. So if you're gonna do it that way, do it right.

    You get a 6-week staycation out of it where you get to be doped out of your head.

    Sleeping sucks, though. The drugs don't last 8 hours, so you'll be waking up in crippling pain every night and you wont get back to sleep for a good 30 minutes or so after you re-dose.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  26. #27551
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I've broken my shoulder blade, and was on a decent dose of hydrocodone for 4 weeks (technically 6, but the dosage cut for the final 2 weeks and the weirdness went with it).
    I'll certainly agree that there was a fuckload of weird shit going on in my apartment that month. I was out of work due to the injury, so I was pretty much home alone for the month, and there's no one to blame but me for that shit.

    Simple example: I found my car keys in the freezer one morning. I definitely hadn't left the house or driven in the past week. I can't remember putting my keys in the freezer, or guess at what thought process resulted in that happening.

    So, sure... to the extent that drugs can make you do weird stuff, I agree.

    However, I'm extremely dubious that I'd have somehow gone out and seduced some guy or let him seduce me under any amount of Hydrocodone. I'm not attracted to guys.

    We're not talking date-rape drugs. Even still... that's not the person choosing whatever is happening to them, as I understand it. It's a person who's so out of their wits that they can't stop whatever's happening to them.

    So I'm not really seeing a great fault in my original statement. There's some nuance to it, but I think it largely holds.
    It is my personal opinion, though, so I'm not digging in on this.
    Weird that you go straight to "I'm not gay." Protesting too much, etc.
  27. #27552
    Jack Sawyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    7,667
    Location
    Jack-high straight flush motherfucker
    My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...


    Cogito ergo sum

    VHS is like a book? and a book is like a stack of kindles.
    Hey, I'm in a movie!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYdwe3ArFWA
  28. #27553
    oskar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Posts
    6,914
    Location
    in ur accounts... confiscating ur funz
    Guns: 1, Tyranny: 0
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  29. #27554
    spoonitnow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    14,219
    Location
    North Carolina


    lol
  30. #27555
    Anyone who thinks cricket is dull knows absolutely nothing about cricket.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  31. #27556
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Anyone who thinks cricket is dull knows absolutely nothing about cricket.
    Both are true for me. Some of the Indian guys at work love it though. And some Brits, but less so.

    Oh and ambien. For some people it doesn't do much but it hits me like a sledgehammer. Definitely can make you do things you wouldn't otherwise, especially if you're not aware what it's gonna do to your mental state. I try to stay away from it.
  32. #27557
    Both are true for me. Some of the Indian guys at work love it though. And some Brits, but less so.
    It does play second fiddle to football here, but I prefer cricket. Money has utterly ruined football, and the players are basically wankers who have no respect for their opponents, the referees, or the fans. Cricket is played in the right spirit, which makes it infinitely more enjoyable.

    Plus it takes up to five days, and if you run out of time (usually due to rain) you basically shake hands, call it a draw, and fuck off to the pub. How marvelously English.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  33. #27558
    Driving through the mountains today I saw a beautiful big stag elk with a full set of antlers in a clearing by the side of the road. I pull up near to him to have a look and he starts eyeing me up so I move up the road another 50 feet or so. The guy behind me pulls up right next to him - and the elk promply head butts the side of his car.

    loltourists.
  34. #27559
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    I kinda respect an animal that looks at a human and is all, "Get off mah land!"

    Not so much the animal that looks at a ton of steel, glass and plastic and is all, "I can take you!"
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  35. #27560
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I kinda respect an animal that looks at a human and is all, "Get off mah land!"

    Not so much the animal that looks at a ton of steel, glass and plastic and is all, "I can take you!"
    yeah I think the elk won that battle though. The car left and he was still there with the does.

    I've seen people do some dumb things with wild animals, and parking up right next to a cranky elk is definitely one of them.
  36. #27561
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    When I was camping in the Smokey Mountains, I saw a ring of tourists standing around a tree... baby bear in the tree... idiots.

    Park Ranger saved all their hides.

    Short version is he pulls up in a pickup truck and talks for about 5 seconds and they all scatter back toward the Ranger outpost on the other side of a parking lot.

    Mama bear comes out of the treeline about 30 seconds later.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  37. #27562
    It's not "tourists", it's "stupid people". It's just these two groups are not mutually exclusive. I've never seen a bear in the wild in my life, but if I saw a baby bear in the wild, my first thought would be "where's the Mother?" and I'd want to get the fuck away as quickly as possible. You don't need to be a local to have a healthy fear of wild bears.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  38. #27563
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    I just spent 30 minutes trying to find the name of a piece of sheet music I have, which has a name and author on it.

    The thing is, I've found the piece under 3 different names, and its authorship attributed to 2 different people.

    IDK what's going on at the bottom of it all, but here's a link to a decent version of the piece.



    I mean... I play it way better than that, ya know. Just imagine that but more compelling. That's how I play it.
    lol


    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  39. #27564
    MMM, drugs affect brain chemistry. What is it that you imagine dictates behavior besides brain chemistry?

    For example Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower at UT Austin and set about sniping people for sport. The note he left asked for his brain to be examined because he developed these violent urges and couldn't control them. He had a tumor pushing on his frontal lobe. Are you of the opinion that his compromised frontal lobe is just an excuse for the mass murderer he actually always was?

    Also the idea that an act, no matter the circumstances forever brands you as X is disturbingly similar to one drop ideas about race. I mean, I played baseball 20 years ago, does that make me a baseball player?
  40. #27565
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Umm... where is all this coming from?

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    MMM, drugs affect brain chemistry. What is it that you imagine dictates behavior besides brain chemistry?
    I'm not qualified to answer, but I'd guess a neuroscientist would say that brain chemistry is everything in this regard.
    I can't brainstorm any reasonable-sounding answer aside from that, but again... I'm not qualified to call that a solid assertion of "there is nothing else."

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    For example Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower at UT Austin and set about sniping people for sport. The note he left asked for his brain to be examined because he developed these violent urges and couldn't control them. He had a tumor pushing on his frontal lobe. Are you of the opinion that his compromised frontal lobe is just an excuse for the mass murderer he actually always was?
    I'm not remotely qualified to assert anything about someone else's claims to sanity or a lack thereof. I have no idea if his assertion is plausible, let alone reasonable.

    Given my near perfect ignorance of this topic, I'd guess that thoughts of violence originate somewhere in the brain, or a bunch of somewheres, and that some kind of brain trauma might excite those areas or suppress other areas that might check-and-balance the violent thoughts.

    I'd also assume that if such a disease is possible, that it wouldn't occur in only 1 person since the rise of diagnostic medicine.

    So maybe it's a guilty person with no medical training looking for excuses to do the things he wanted to do without accepting any personal blame for his choices.
    The fucker was cognizant enough to write a note, then go on a killing spree, but not enough to go see a doctor? C'mon. Sounds like BS.

    IDK

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Also the idea that an act, no matter the circumstances forever brands you as X is disturbingly similar to one drop ideas about race. I mean, I played baseball 20 years ago, does that make me a baseball player?
    It depends, right?
    If you were an alcoholic 20 years ago, I'd recommend behaving like you have an addiction to alcohol and to avoid even tempting that demon.
    If you could ride a bike 20 years ago, I'd wager you can still ride a bike today.

    But Baseball? I'd guess that if you were good at it 20 years ago, that you'd be better at it today than someone who was never good at it. I'd also guess that you'd be nowhere near as good as you once were, let alone as good as you'd be if you'd been playing throughout the past 20 years.
    However, I don't think too many people would call you "a player" if you haven't played in the past 20 years.

    I'd say that your "no matter the circumstances" clause is making this assertion very difficult to take seriously. People are complicated. Some things about ourselves are easily changed, but other things are near impossible to change. For those things that can change, the "no matter what" clause is baseless and cruel, IMO. Like racism is baseless and cruel.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  41. #27566
    Where this comes from:

    -You seem to conflate homosexual acts with homosexuality. While I tend to be on the side of "words need to mean something", I think this is an interesting case, very similar to "one drop" policies concerning race. The reason it's important to forever brand someone for the slightest divergence is do to the stigma associated with being gay or black or whatever. Someone who has one black great grandparent and the rest are white is clearly not black, especially since someone who has all black great grandparents except for one who is white is not white. Similarly, there is a logical paradox in considering a straight guy who, under the influence (or not), engages in gay sex gay, while not classifying a gay person who, under the influence (or not), has straight sex straight.

    -You've stated that
    Drugs and alcohol don't make you do anything you wouldn't do otherwise... they just give you the excuse to do the things you want to do, anyway.

    but this is just nonsense. Certain drugs make people paranoid, how do you fit their paranoid behavior while under the influence into your statement? Other drugs lower your inhibitions. As we've established, we're both fans of words meaning things. If lowering one's inhibitions does not mean "causing one to do what they otherwise wouldn't", what could it possibly mean?


    The Charles Whitman case does not stand alone, it's just the most well known/sensational. This is a well established phenomenon.

    The "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" line of thinking is seriously flawed, just as AA, the organization from which it stems is. Many alcoholics are able to return to casual drinking after recovery. Many others are able to use other substances while avoiding alcohol.

    **I know it was an off handed comment regarding a tangent of a tangent that sparked all this, but it's pretty much my job to check in every few months and find something objectionable you've said.
  42. #27567
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Where this comes from:

    -You seem to conflate homosexual acts with homosexuality. While I tend to be on the side of "words need to mean something", I think this is an interesting case, very similar to "one drop" policies concerning race. The reason it's important to forever brand someone for the slightest divergence is do to the stigma associated with being gay or black or whatever. Someone who has one black great grandparent and the rest are white is clearly not black, especially since someone who has all black great grandparents except for one who is white is not white. Similarly, there is a logical paradox in considering a straight guy who, under the influence (or not), engages in gay sex gay, while not classifying a gay person who, under the influence (or not), has straight sex straight.
    Labels are nothing to be afraid of; jerkfaces who use labels as fuel for hate are.
    My comment about letting words mean something was in jest. Languages are living things. They change over time, and the meaning of words changes over time.
    I don't care that is the case.
    All I care is that when I use words, they mean the same thing to you as they do to me. Otherwise, what's the point in talking?

    I'm talking and trying to understand people. If people describe themselves in a certain way, I try my best to describe them in that same way. If they insist that the words they use to describe themself mean something different than those same words in any other context, then I'm confused, and I see a confused person who is afraid of telling me who they really are. Maybe that's 'cause I'm a jerk. Maybe it's not about me, though, but society at large.

    I'm not saying it's wrong to describe yourself however you like or to shield yourself from ignorant assholes looking for excuses to hate you.
    I'm saying it's wrong to accuse everyone who uses a label of being someone who uses labels to excuse bad behavior.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    -You've stated that
    Quote Originally Posted by MMM
    Drugs and alcohol don't make you do anything you wouldn't do otherwise... they just give you the excuse to do the things you want to do, anyway.


    [/I][/FONT][/COLOR]but this is just nonsense. Certain drugs make people paranoid, how do you fit their paranoid behavior while under the influence into your statement? Other drugs lower your inhibitions. As we've established, we're both fans of words meaning things. If lowering one's inhibitions does not mean "causing one to do what they otherwise wouldn't", what could it possibly mean?
    First of all, I very much appreciate this fine line and that it's never going to be clear or concise. I also appreciate that I'm no expert in this field, and that I'm talking off the cuff about what I understand. I hope you appreciate that I'm humoring you by answering these questions. No one has any reason to put any weight at all on what I'm saying on this topic.


    Based solely on my own experiences with drugs and the people I did drugs with, which was something I heavily dabbled in as a younger man:
    IMO, paranoid is a state of mind, not a behavior. Whatever that paranoid person physically does while they're paranoid is nothing that they wouldn't have done otherwise, or nothing that they haven't thought about and visualized doing. I.e. whatever it is, it's not some "new" inspiration they had because of the drugs.

    IMO, "lowering inhibitions" does not mean "causing one to do what they otherwise wouldn't." It means, this person wanted to do a thing and they found a way to create an excuse that reduced their personal culpability for that thing from society's perspective.

    IMO, contrary to what many artists have claimed, drugs do not give you good ideas. They do not "show you the universe." Drugs work in many and different ways, but none of them make you smarter or more visionary. Some of them do cloud your ability to distinguish a good idea from a bad one, and so your bad ideas seem better, but they're still your ideas.

    Some drugs seem to give an out-of-body experience, but neurologically, what they do is suppress the brain's ability to distinguish internal stimulus from external stimulus. So you suddenly feel like your own thoughts are pouring into you from "outside." It's not that you're "connected to the universe," it's that you've removed your ability to tell the difference between you and not-you.
    Or so a neurologist told me.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    The Charles Whitman case does not stand alone, it's just the most well known/sensational. This is a well established phenomenon.
    then, whether or not I believe his claim couldn't matter less. If there's been scientific study done on the phenomenon, then simply show it to me and I'll never say those dumb things I was saying again.
    Kindly link the research indicating thus and stop treating me like my uninformed opinion is relevant.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    The "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" line of thinking is seriously flawed, just as AA, the organization from which it stems is. Many alcoholics are able to return to casual drinking after recovery. Many others are able to use other substances while avoiding alcohol.
    I disagree, based on the recovered alcoholics I've known. Maybe they don't represent the majority. Maybe they're just not the lucky ones.
    Maybe addiction is more than a merely physical response. Maybe emotional state plays a significant enough role to make "addiction" not simply a chemical issue.
    All of that seems plausible, and doesn't change the fact that "once an alcoholic always an alcoholic" seems to be broadly true for a lot of recovering alcoholics.
    Also note that I never used that phrase. My exact quote was more along the lines of, "if you know you have a problem, then don't press your luck."

    Again, so what? Unless someone's using the word "alcoholic" as an insult or some kind of moral judgement, then I don't even see why it matters to call someone an alcoholic. If they disagree and would prefer not to be called that, then don't call them that. End of story. Treat people how they want to be treated and don't assume they are "like everyone else."

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    **I know it was an off handed comment regarding a tangent of a tangent that sparked all this, but it's pretty much my job to check in every few months and find something objectionable you've said.
    While I appreciate a good conversation about weeding out my nonsense, I don't appreciate your "gotcha" type approach to "helping" me be a better person.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  43. #27568
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    While I appreciate a good conversation about weeding out my nonsense, I don't appreciate your "gotcha" type approach to "helping" me be a better person.
    Yeah, honestly I'm not completely sure why your posts tend to grab my attention. It's hard to dissect one's own biases. I don't think I'm playing a gotcha game, I just rarely visit the forums and if I see something objectionable, you're often the author. Maybe it's because you're one of the few posters who seems to be attempting to be participating in good faith and not just shit posting, so I just filter out partisan hackery but laser in on stuff you say. *shrug*

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4467748/

    http://abta.pub30.convio.net/brain-t...od-swings.html

    Returning to moderation vs abstinence-- maybe this is an issue with definitions. Alcoholism isn't well defined and tends to lump everyone with a problem with alcohol consumption together. It would seem that forever abstinence may be the only real option for dependent drinkers, while others who would commonly be labeled alcoholics can return to moderation.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21319896

    *disclaimer, I have not read any studies myself, but have heard podcasts/read articles and books that summarize/discuss the tumor phenomenon and similarly the abstinence vs return to moderation debate.

    Hope you find this somewhat helpful.
  44. #27569
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    OK. I'll take your angle in good faith, too. It is frustrating to play on this side of a gotcha game, but if you don't mean it to be like that, then I'll try to not see it like that.

    I'm unashamed about what I understand and what I think is right, but I'm not attached to those things like many are. I do not find any direct link between what someone believes and who they are, though I surmise that is not a popular way to think about people. Rather, that's not the way most people view themselves, for what I can tell. I mean... most people seem to put a lot of weight on who they are being equal to what they believe... but that makes no sense to me. What we believe often changes on a minute to minute basis, so assigning a sense of self to such an amorphous swirl doesn't make sense to me.

    ***
    In the following, glioma is a medical term for a tumor that originates in the glial cells in the brain or spine. I.e. a brain tumor.

    Quote Originally Posted by first link
    Indeed, most studies of hallucinations and psychosis in glioma patients are case reports. As case reports often feature highly complex cases, with glioma patients who are suffering not only from the tumor, but also from epilepsy that is difficult to treat, psychosis, behavioral problems, and/or suicidal ideation, it is very difficult to make general statements about the prevalence of these symptoms in glioma patients per se. A review of case studies found that 22% of 148 cases experienced psychotic symptoms (here defined as delusions or hallucinations).

    Psychiatric symptoms seldom occur in isolation from other (psychiatric) symptoms in patients with brain tumors
    That's interesting, and seems to indicate that the tumor by itself is not likely to cause homicidal tendencies. When the tumor compounds other psychiatric problems in the individual, though, it certainly seems plausible that the tumor could dilute their ability to deal with their other issues, or even to aggravate those issues.

    I can't help but note that 22% of any population is significant, and even common within that group.
    Only 2 - 6% of the US has red hair, but it's common enough, e.g.

    So back to the UT story:
    The shooter's claims seem at least to be plausible, assuming he had other psychological issues in addition to the tumor. Also, the data indicating that he could be a homicidal risk cannot be said to be something that a competent psychiatrist "should have" predicted. This is a tragedy on multiple levels.

    I still question that the guy had the mental capacity to write a note, self-diagnosing the tumor as the reason he experiences homicidal thoughts, but then going through with the homicide. That seems more complicated than, "the tumor made him do it," which the article you linked seems to back up, albeit not in a direct or scientific way.

    The 2nd link isn't offering any more than the first link.

    ***
    The 3rd link hinges on the phrase "non-dependent problem drinkers" to describe the population upon which the trials were conducted. (Link to the full publication) I'm not sure what the definition of that group is.
    Also, they're specifically conducting a study to see if a web-based intervention would help this "under-served group of problem drinkers."

    This isn't what I thought you were talking about vis-a-vis recovering alcoholics. This sounds like there is a "lesser" classification of alcohol abuse that falls short of alcohol addiction.

    So that's at least not contradicting my earlier statements that maybe mental state is a factor; maybe the disease is more nuanced than a single definition and treatment applying equally to all.


    It's a little odd, though, that the paper says this group is under-served by the psychiatric profession at large, but offers a piddly web page to address the concern.
    To me, it sounds like something an undergrad would dream up, then not try it, then say it's the tits and it "cures" people, then people try it and they're all, "we found a p-hacked value that makes it look like we didn't waste our grant money on this stupid idea."

    @Poopy: Is this common in the field (web-based intervention)? Does it even sound like a professional approach to you? (If so, can you summarize some positive aspects of it?)
    Last edited by MadMojoMonkey; 09-25-2019 at 11:55 AM.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  45. #27570
    I guess I'm just not sure what you mean if you agree that a person wouldn't have done X but for Y, but refuse to attribute X to Y. There are always preconditions to an action. The 8 ball went in the corner pocket because it was struck by the cue ball-- while the 8 ball's position on the table, the other billiard balls positions, the condition of the felt, the position of the moon, and the fact that Kim Jung Un did not decide to nuke Poolzang Billiard Hall in Seoul where this fateful gaming is taking place-- while all these are preconditions to the ball sinking into the corner pocket, it just strikes me as absurd to preference any of these when describing the event.

    As for Whitman writing the note but also carrying out the massacre, who knows, the mind is super complicated and these things aren't necessarily at odds. The overwhelming urge to do something does not mean you're unaware of how others will perceive it, that you lack concern for your legacy, or lack interest in the mystery of where these sudden urges came from.

    To my recollection, Whitman didn't accurate diagnose a brain tumor, but simply claimed that something was wrong with his brain and requested it be donated to science for examination.

    There is another case where a person (I believe it was a woman) suddenly became obsessed with child pornography. Turned out they had a brain tumor, and their urges completely vanished after it was successfully removed. That is, until some time later they had a relapse which coincided with the tumor growing back. Was there some underlying latent paedophilia? I don't know-- but if there was, what's to say we don't all have these latent urges that just need a little nudge from a tumor to come alive? I guess we're kind of just circling around what exactly it means to be you. You don't think the youness of you is comprised of your beliefs, and I feel drawn to that position myself, but then what does make you you?
  46. #27571
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    I guess I'm just not sure what you mean if you agree that a person wouldn't have done X but for Y, but refuse to attribute X to Y. There are always preconditions to an action. The 8 ball went in the corner pocket because [...].
    I'm saying I don't believe anyone can draw a straight line between 2 dots about X and Y.
    This isn't math, it's human behavior. There are different ways to describe things, and those different descriptions can be equally good, even when they sound very different.

    We are a quantum system, ruled by probability functions.
    We are chemical machines, processing energetically favorable chemical reactions as the opportunities arise.
    We are animals, mammals, with a rich social structure into which we play a role for the pack.
    We are individuals, free of will and conscious (whatever that means), capable of moral thought and therefore responsible for our choices' impacts on others.
    We're just one of the clever ways water has come up with to move itself about.

    All of those are useful descriptions (maybe not the last one), but truths we find in one description can be meaningless in other descriptions.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    As for Whitman [...]
    Yeah. Tragedy on many levels.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    There is another case where a person (I believe it was a woman) suddenly became obsessed with child pornography. Turned out they had a brain tumor, and their urges completely vanished after it was successfully removed. That is, until some time later they had a relapse which coincided with the tumor growing back. Was there some underlying latent paedophilia? I don't know-- but if there was, what's to say we don't all have these latent urges that just need a little nudge from a tumor to come alive?
    I'm really not qualified to talk about anyone's mental health, or brain care in general.

    Just... if you're trying to find excuses for thinking pedo thoughts, then please seek professional mental health and don't pedo.
    mmkay?

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    I guess we're kind of just circling around what exactly it means to be you. You don't think the youness of you is comprised of your beliefs, and I feel drawn to that position myself, but then what does make you you?
    I'm the me I remember I am and actively choose to be.

    My beliefs are a part of the whole of who I am, but they're constantly changing. We grow and learn and become more wise (we hope) as we go. No one reasonable would assert that everything they believe is true. We're all flawed. We are wrong about some things.
    Which things?
    That's a doozy, right? I mean, if we knew which things we are wrong about, then we'd stop being wrong about them, right?

    Right.

    Beliefs are a flawed premise to hinge an identity on. QED
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  47. #27572
    CoccoBill's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,504
    Location
    Finding my game
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  48. #27573
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I'm saying I don't believe anyone can draw a straight line between 2 dots about X and Y.
    This isn't math, it's human behavior. There are different ways to describe things, and those different descriptions can be equally good, even when they sound very different.

    We are a quantum system, ruled by probability functions.
    We are chemical machines, processing energetically favorable chemical reactions as the opportunities arise.
    We are animals, mammals, with a rich social structure into which we play a role for the pack.
    We are individuals, free of will and conscious (whatever that means), capable of moral thought and therefore responsible for our choices' impacts on others.
    I think the bold is almost surely mutually exclusive from the second one, though I'm not sure what to make of the underlined phrase. I'm much closer to sure for the first one.
    All of those are useful descriptions (maybe not the last one), but truths we find in one description can be meaningless in other descriptions.
    While they may or may not all be useful, the fact that they are useful does not negate the fact that other descriptions are worthless, or at least less useful, or worthless or less useful given the context.

    I'm really not qualified to talk about anyone's mental health, or brain care in general.

    Just... if you're trying to find excuses for thinking pedo thoughts, then please seek professional mental health and don't pedo.
    mmkay?
    Yeah, paedophilia makes me squeamish too, but I don't see how any explanation for the condition being labeled an excuse is productive. Certainly there is a reason some want to diddle children, while most don't. Obviously people afflicted with this malady should seek professional help, but what help can they really receive if any possible explanation for their condition is simply an excuse for their thought crimes?

    I'm the me I remember I am and actively choose to be.
    Sounds like a belief

    My beliefs are a part of the whole of who I am, but they're constantly changing. We grow and learn and become more wise (we hope) as we go. No one reasonable would assert that everything they believe is true. We're all flawed. We are wrong about some things.
    Which things?
    That's a doozy, right? I mean, if we knew which things we are wrong about, then we'd stop being wrong about them, right?

    Right.

    Beliefs are a flawed premise to hinge an identity on. QED
    I don't see how the bold follows. The idea that beliefs are the sum of who we are is not predicated on our beliefs being accurate. Nor is the claim built on the unchanging nature of beliefs. Our beliefs change, and who we are changes.

    Underlined: yet if you surveyed their individual beliefs, their answers in sum would be asserting just that. What a fun paradox.
  49. #27574
    Possibly beliefs are simply being falsely identified as the prime movers. What's below beliefs? Maybe the Greeks' concept of virtues, or at least something along those lines is a better place to look.

    I was always fond of this concept-- it reminds me of stats and attributes in an RPG. Given a limited series of spectra on which the various virtues can be mapped, you end up with infinite possible personalities. Yet at the same time you'll have a fairly well encompassing set of archetypes which are easy to grasp.
  50. #27575
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    I think the bold is almost surely mutually exclusive from the second one, [...] I'm much closer to sure for the first one.
    The bold seems at odds with both 1 and 2, IMO, with strong mathematical and experimental evidence that there is no "backward propagation" of consciousness affecting the quantum probabilities at all. (Though, 2 has some subtle things that are at odds with 1, as well.)
    The 3rd and 4th descriptions are still useful at describing human behavior. Systems on larger scales than a few dozen particles or molecules are mathematically intractable in almost all cases (so far).

    We can argue that free will is an illusion, but then what?
    For starters, we must abolish laws as a system of punishments and rehabilitations. We can keep laws for other reasons, but the notion that anyone is "responsible" for their actions would be a lie. There's just the random chance that they did the illegal thing and not something else. They had no agency in that, so punishing them is only about giving the victims a false sense of justice being served. BUT, the punishment cannot affect future behavior of the criminal, and the victims will only feel justice was or was not served randomly, so what's the point? Furthermore, whether or not we do anything is just our own randomness in action. We can't "decide" anything.

    All of which is no way for humans to behave or treat each other. It's nonsense. It goes against what it feels like to be human. For better or worse, that really matters quite a great deal. The way it feels to be us and what feels right, good, fair, etc. matters in how we act and how we treat each other.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    though I'm not sure what to make of the underlined phrase.
    It's hard to put into words concisely, but it's a statement of the conservation of energy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

    It's already getting into sticky business because the 2nd Law of Thermo is saying that Entropy always increases (or stays the same) in any isolated system.
    That's akin to saying energy spreads itself out, or that concentrated energy tends to evolve into diffuse energy... but since energy is neither created nor destroyed, we're talking about the "packedness" of the energy. When energy is packed in a "small" volume, we say the entropy is low, and when that same energy is spread out over a "large" volume, we say it has more entropy than the former case.

    A simple example would be a brick of metal that we heat one end with something. While we are heating the end, we are inserting energy into the brick. The brick + the heat source is an isolated system. The heat flows from the heat source to the brick because that increases the entropy, I.e. it spreads the energy out the most.
    When we remove the heat source, we can now consider the brick an isolated system (assuming it's well insulated from transferring heat to its surroundings). Now the brick is hotter on one end than it is throughout. The temperature doesn't stay concentrated in any single hot spot, but it spreads out uniformly throughout the brick.
    The presence of hot spots indicates lower entropy than uniform temperature, as the uniform temperature is the most spread out the energy can be.

    Back to the underline in my prior post.
    Chemistry happens because things tend to move toward their lowest energy state. I.e. when water gets cold, it takes more energy to stay liquid than to freeze into a solid. So it freezes. When it warms up again, it now takes more energy to hold onto that "frozen" Hydrogen bond than to let it go and move with kinetic energy, so it breaks that bond (melts) and starts moving.

    All of this is pretty hard to get on first approach. Entropy is notoriously hard for students to pin down at first.
    It's not the worst of its kind, though. I find Enthalpy much harder to wrap my head around.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    While they may or may not all be useful, the fact that they are useful does not negate the fact that other descriptions are worthless, or at least less useful, or worthless or less useful given the context.
    I'm standing on a position of ignorance and saying it's OK to wing it, so I don't expect a lot of head nodding as I explain my take on this.

    I do think my thoughts on jurisprudence seem colorful in the context of this conversation, but it's hard to say that making people feel good is a part of understanding what it means to be ourselves. I think it's relevant the descriptions we use to describe things vary wildly as the scale of those things changes.

    QM contains no entropy, but Entropy laws are perfectly valid in chemistry. Neither contains any room for a particle to "decide" anything, but describing conscious minds as lacking agency to decide is not a helpful way to deal with people. The way people behave in isolation is very different to the way people behave in groups, so the societal picture has relevance, too, IMO. Each of those pictures has areas in which it is useful, and areas where it's useless, so it's hard for me to pick one as "better" than the others... even with my bias toward the quantum mechanical picture.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Yeah, paedophilia makes me squeamish too, but I don't see how any explanation for the condition being labeled an excuse is productive. Certainly there is a reason some want to diddle children, while most don't. Obviously people afflicted with this malady should seek professional help, but what help can they really receive if any possible explanation for their condition is simply an excuse for their thought crimes?
    I'm neither a doctor nor a psychologist, and I'm answering your questions 'cause it's fun, not 'cause I'm telling the world I'm an expert on brains and how to deal with one.
    I mean... I'm not qualified to even stand by my own musings as facts, so I feel your skepticism over my POV.

    It's just, I can't fathom the mindset to pedo, and I can't fathom that another person would have no sense of the harm they're causing in that victim.
    Call it a personal failing on my imagination, but it is what it is.

    I'm reluctant (not 'opposed') to excuse terrible behavior based on what a person says, though. They did the thing. They can lie about why. Also, whether they did the thing because of a brain disease or because of conscious intent is kinda beside the point. If they're hurting people for whatever reason, then they need to be put in a situation where they cannot cause further harm. If rehabilitation is possible, then that's best for everyone involved, but even if, that person needs to be isolated from potential victims throughout that rehabilitation.
    That could feel like an undeserved punishment to them, but so what? They've given up their right for us to care about how they feel by committing the heinous acts.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Sounds like a belief
    It is, but the arrow you've attached to it points the other way.

    Basically, I can hang a belief on my identity, but I refuse to hang my identity on a belief.
    Does that make sense?

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    I don't see how the bold follows. The idea that beliefs are the sum of who we are is not predicated on our beliefs being accurate. Nor is the claim built on the unchanging nature of beliefs. Our beliefs change, and who we are changes.
    I didn't mean to say that I'm not the culmination of my beliefs. I meant to say I attach no sense of my identity to that fact.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Underlined: yet if you surveyed their individual beliefs, their answers in sum would be asserting just that. What a fun paradox.
    IMO, it all hinges on the problem that BEING wrong feels the same as BEING right. It's only the transitional moments when we learn we are wrong and amend our beliefs that we feel any negative emotions about it.

    I mean, if you ask someone how it feels to be wrong, they'll probably answer with some negative emotions, but they answered the wrong question. They answered how it feels to realize you are wrong. All the moments before that realization are when you were wrong. It's only in the moment of learning that we feel anything about being wrong.

    Which is all due to the fact that being wrong feels the same as being right.

    And if my feet are to the fire about the one thing to change about humans to help us all live better lives, it would be to change that. Change it so that it feels wrong to be wrong and we're off to the stars.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  51. #27576
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Possibly beliefs are simply being falsely identified as the prime movers. What's below beliefs? Maybe the Greeks' concept of virtues, or at least something along those lines is a better place to look.

    I was always fond of this concept-- it reminds me of stats and attributes in an RPG. Given a limited series of spectra on which the various virtues can be mapped, you end up with infinite possible personalities. Yet at the same time you'll have a fairly well encompassing set of archetypes which are easy to grasp.
    I'm fine with saying that our beliefs are the prime movers in our actions.

    I'm not fine in saying that it's OK to stop growing and maturing because you decided you believe something.



    My problem with RPG stats is that they really want to have intelligence and wisdom as separate and static numbers attached to a person.
    I can't jive that with my own experiences. Firstly that a single number describes intelligence is just nonsense. I'm smart at physics and not much else. I'm downright 'tarded when it comes to social intelligence. I'm not joking when I say that I have no idea when I'm flirting or being flirted with. That's not smart.

    Then Wisdom... does anyone - outside of a RPG context - talk about wisdom like it's a static trait? Everyone I've ever asked "What is wisdom" describes it as an accumulation of life experiences leading to an "informed intelligence" about the world and the events therein.

    I love me some TTRPG's. Not all systems use the D&D based stats, but they're common enough.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  52. #27577
    IMO, it all hinges on the problem that BEING wrong feels the same as BEING right. It's only the transitional moments when we learn we are wrong and amend our beliefs that we feel any negative emotions about it.

    I mean, if you ask someone how it feels to be wrong, they'll probably answer with some negative emotions, but they answered the wrong question. They answered how it feels to realize you are wrong. All the moments before that realization are when you were wrong. It's only in the moment of learning that we feel anything about being wrong.

    Which is all due to the fact that being wrong feels the same as being right.
    This gave me the brain tickles. This is like the eloquent and polite way to say Hitler didn't see himself as evil. I love these aha! moments. Unfortunately the Hitler way of introducing this concept too often shuts down people's intellectual side and they emotionally respond to "Hitler wasn't evil." I'll try this approach going forward.
  53. #27578
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    The bold seems at odds with both 1 and 2, IMO, with strong mathematical and experimental evidence that there is no "backward propagation" of consciousness affecting the quantum probabilities at all. (Though, 2 has some subtle things that are at odds with 1, as well.)
    The 3rd and 4th descriptions are still useful at describing human behavior. Systems on larger scales than a few dozen particles or molecules are mathematically intractable in almost all cases (so far).

    We can argue that free will is an illusion, but then what?
    For starters, we must abolish laws as a system of punishments and rehabilitations. We can keep laws for other reasons, but the notion that anyone is "responsible" for their actions would be a lie. There's just the random chance that they did the illegal thing and not something else. They had no agency in that, so punishing them is only about giving the victims a false sense of justice being served. BUT, the punishment cannot affect future behavior of the criminal, and the victims will only feel justice was or was not served randomly, so what's the point? Furthermore, whether or not we do anything is just our own randomness in action. We can't "decide" anything.

    All of which is no way for humans to behave or treat each other. It's nonsense. It goes against what it feels like to be human. For better or worse, that really matters quite a great deal. The way it feels to be us and what feels right, good, fair, etc. matters in how we act and how we treat each other.
    You agreed to give my no-freewill-mobile a try, but then you just intentionally drove it off a cliff. Dafuq?

    Bold:If there is no real blame, then punishing a perpetrator because they are to blame is a heinous miscarriage of justice. But that doesn't mean there aren't still reasons to punish. A person who is proven to be a serial killer should be isolated from society. They have shown a pattern of behavior that shows that they are not currently (and in this case, possibly ever) able to play nice with the rest of us. Retribution plays no role here.

    Underlined:How'd you land here? They don't need free will to be motivated by stimulus. The punishment (reward?) for not playing nice with society is that we'll remove the literal or hypothetical tumor that's pushing on the part of your brain that makes you not play nice. Removing the tumor may be demonstrating that if you don't play nice, you have to sit in a cage for some time. The effectiveness of punishments aren't supporting evidence for free will. Under this paradigm, if free will is indeed an illusion, we're much more likely to find punishments that are much more just, with much greater efficacy.

    It's hard to put into words concisely, but it's a statement of the conservation of energy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

    It's already getting into sticky business because the 2nd Law of Thermo is saying that Entropy always increases (or stays the same) in any isolated system.
    That's akin to saying energy spreads itself out, or that concentrated energy tends to evolve into diffuse energy... but since energy is neither created nor destroyed, we're talking about the "packedness" of the energy. When energy is packed in a "small" volume, we say the entropy is low, and when that same energy is spread out over a "large" volume, we say it has more entropy than the former case.

    A simple example would be a brick of metal that we heat one end with something. While we are heating the end, we are inserting energy into the brick. The brick + the heat source is an isolated system. The heat flows from the heat source to the brick because that increases the entropy, I.e. it spreads the energy out the most.
    When we remove the heat source, we can now consider the brick an isolated system (assuming it's well insulated from transferring heat to its surroundings). Now the brick is hotter on one end than it is throughout. The temperature doesn't stay concentrated in any single hot spot, but it spreads out uniformly throughout the brick.
    The presence of hot spots indicates lower entropy than uniform temperature, as the uniform temperature is the most spread out the energy can be.

    Back to the underline in my prior post.
    Chemistry happens because things tend to move toward their lowest energy state. I.e. when water gets cold, it takes more energy to stay liquid than to freeze into a solid. So it freezes. When it warms up again, it now takes more energy to hold onto that "frozen" Hydrogen bond than to let it go and move with kinetic energy, so it breaks that bond (melts) and starts moving.

    All of this is pretty hard to get on first approach. Entropy is notoriously hard for students to pin down at first.
    It's not the worst of its kind, though. I find Enthalpy much harder to wrap my head around.
    You lost me a bit here (and now I have a Wikipedia tab opened to Enthalpy which I'm scared to dive into), but I'm pretty confident we're not finding free will here.

    I'm standing on a position of ignorance and saying it's OK to wing it, so I don't expect a lot of head nodding as I explain my take on this.

    I do think my thoughts on jurisprudence seem colorful in the context of this conversation, but it's hard to say that making people feel good is a part of understanding what it means to be ourselves. I think it's relevant the descriptions we use to describe things vary wildly as the scale of those things changes.

    QM contains no entropy, but Entropy laws are perfectly valid in chemistry. Neither contains any room for a particle to "decide" anything, but describing conscious minds as lacking agency to decide is not a helpful way to deal with people. The way people behave in isolation is very different to the way people behave in groups, so the societal picture has relevance, too, IMO. Each of those pictures has areas in which it is useful, and areas where it's useless, so it's hard for me to pick one as "better" than the others... even with my bias toward the quantum mechanical picture.
    No disagreement here. I just would say that we shouldn't jump to extrapolating this physics paradox and start conflating context with scale.

    I'm neither a doctor nor a psychologist, and I'm answering your questions 'cause it's fun, not 'cause I'm telling the world I'm an expert on brains and how to deal with one.
    I mean... I'm not qualified to even stand by my own musings as facts, so I feel your skepticism over my POV.
    Yeah, I'm not an expert in anything-- I just find it gratifying to play with ideas. Thanks for playing.

    It's just, I can't fathom the mindset to pedo, and I can't fathom that another person would have no sense of the harm they're causing in that victim.
    Call it a personal failing on my imagination, but it is what it is.

    I'm reluctant (not 'opposed') to excuse terrible behavior based on what a person says, though. They did the thing. They can lie about why. Also, whether they did the thing because of a brain disease or because of conscious intent is kinda beside the point. If they're hurting people for whatever reason, then they need to be put in a situation where they cannot cause further harm. If rehabilitation is possible, then that's best for everyone involved, but even if, that person needs to be isolated from potential victims throughout that rehabilitation.
    That could feel like an undeserved punishment to them, but so what? They've given up their right for us to care about how they feel by committing the heinous acts.
    You seem to be conflating being a pedo with victimizing children. Presumably not all pedophiles act on their urges.

    Re: trying to understand the mindset of a pedo: I know it's controversial, and can cause problems for the advancement of non-normative sexual orientations, but I just view it as another sexual orientation-- one that allows for no moral way to be indulged in. Also, this is a bit of a sidetrack, but I have a hard time understanding the difference between fetishes and sexual orientations. It honestly feels like the distinction between cults and religions to me. One group has just become socially acceptable.

    I do agree that someone who sexually abuses children should not be around children, and possibly just not be in society so long as they have the urge to abuse children-- where I strongly disagree is the idea that what caused the urge and them to act on it is besides the point. If we want to keep kids from getting diddled, we need to prevent these urges, be able to intervene when we are unable to prevent these urges, and to do so we need to understand their root cause. Just punishing those who have already abused children is a guarantee that children will continue to be abused.

    It is, but the arrow you've attached to it points the other way.

    Basically, I can hang a belief on my identity, but I refuse to hang my identity on a belief.
    Does that make sense?
    Interesting, yeah it does. I wasn't putting much weight on that, just was a fun gotcha-- I wasn't using it to negate what you had said. It's almost impossible to not open yourself up to "gotchas" when discussing this sorta thing, free well, etc, because our language is built on the assumption of free will.

    I didn't mean to say that I'm not the culmination of my beliefs. I meant to say I attach no sense of my identity to that fact.
    Hmm. This is interesting. Is this different from attaching your sense of identity to the sum of your beliefs with the knowledge that they're ever changing in all scenarios you'd hope to inhabit?
  54. #27579
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    You agreed to give my no-freewill-mobile a try, but then you just intentionally drove it off a cliff. Dafuq?
    I can't believe you'd loan me a car without telling me that it had a blind spot. I could've been killed!
    ...
    What're you, blind, McFly? It's there. How else do you explain that wreck out there?
    ...
    My insurance?! It's your car. Your insurance should pay for it. Hey! I wanna know who's gonna pay for this. I spilled beer all over me when that [cliff] slammed into me. Who's gonna pay my cleaning bill?

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Bold:If there is no real blame, then punishing a perpetrator because they are to blame is a heinous miscarriage of justice. But that doesn't mean there aren't still reasons to punish. A person who is proven to be a serial killer should be isolated from society. They have shown a pattern of behavior that shows that they are not currently (and in this case, possibly ever) able to play nice with the rest of us. Retribution plays no role here.
    I did say "We can keep laws for other reasons." None of them are humane, IMO.

    It's taking a long time for this premise to sink in.
    Without personal agency, in a universe controlled by randomness, there is not really any such thing as a serial killer. Let alone a proven one.

    There's the random chance that anyone might kill and that random chance has turned the same person into a killer more than the mean. Others will kill less than the mean. That's what randomness is.
    Punishing a serial killer in this universe makes no sense. They are no more likely to kill in the future than anyone else. They just happen to have killed more in the past.

    It's like if you flipped a hundred coins 12 times and one of the coins flipped 12 heads, you may be tempted to call that coin a "proven heads tosser." It's no different than any of the other coins, though. Every coin had equal likelihood to flip 12 heads.
    Lets say you isolate that coin and then flip it 12 more times. Tadaa! It's rehabilitated.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Underlined:How'd you land here? They don't need free will to be motivated by stimulus. The punishment (reward?) for not playing nice with society is that we'll remove the literal or hypothetical tumor that's pushing on the part of your brain that makes you not play nice. Removing the tumor may be demonstrating that if you don't play nice, you have to sit in a cage for some time. The effectiveness of punishments aren't supporting evidence for free will. Under this paradigm, if free will is indeed an illusion, we're much more likely to find punishments that are much more just, with much greater efficacy.
    Damn. That's solid. You jerk. I already typed out the above twice, and I'm not deleting it.
    Shut up.

    Disregarding tumors and stipulating genetically identical humans.... no... no... you made a good point. I walk back my prior comments on random humans.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    You lost me a bit here (and now I have a Wikipedia tab opened to Enthalpy which I'm scared to dive into), but I'm pretty confident we're not finding free will here.
    Def no free will in here. Agreed.

    Frankly, entropy pisses me off a little bit. It has multiple definitions, I'm assured are equivalent, but some of them are all wishy-washy like what I described, and others are rigorously mathematical. That's part of what makes it hard to learn.
    It doesn't help that the wishy-washy statement says something like, "Entropy is unusable energy in a system," which just sounds like someone didn't figure out how to use something then said it can't be used.
    It doesn't help that a statement of entropy is, "The universe tends toward chaos - i.e. disordered states." That sounds bad because A) flowers bloom - that is, ordered states are clearly a commonplace thing to happen, and B) "disordered" sounds like someone saying, "I couldn't find a pattern, so there is no pattern."
    (Note a flower is not an isolated system and more heat and other forms of disorder are created in the process of a flower growing than are compensated for by the ordered state of the flower.)

    Better definitions of entropy involve information theory. I.e. how many bits of information does it take to completely describe a system? The more bits it takes (a strictly countable number, mind you), the more entopy it has. This is tricky because it offers no proof for how to know that any description is either minimal in bits or complete.

    It's all very squidgy, IMO, and it's not even present in Quantum Mechanics because everything in quantum mechanics is equally like to happen as to "un-happen."
    I.e. you cannot tell if the quantum movie is being played forward or backward. Everything follows all laws of physics in both directions of time on a quantum level.

    So Entropy is a statistical phenomenon that follows from what happens to probability functions when you have a "large" number of random results. Statistically it is akin to regression to the mean. It's not that Entropy cannot decrease in an isolated system so much as it's ridiculously unlikely that it will happen in any given moment of time and preposterously unlikely that it would happen in a sustained way over an extended period of time.

    It's just that.... I've seen quads lose to a royal flush. That's ridiculously unlikely to happen, and a deck of cards is nowhere near as vast as the universe in the scope of possible states.
    So again... what the hell is entropy and why is it so strong a law when there doesn't really seem to be any solid underpinning to derive it? I mean, nothing more solid than asserting that the odds of entropy going "backward" are beyond astronomically small... but ... the universe is beyond astronomically vast.

    Arghy arghy argh.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    No disagreement here. I just would say that we shouldn't jump to extrapolating this physics paradox and start conflating context with scale.
    I think that's my point. (Though that sentence is a bit hard to read the exact meaning to me.)
    Descriptions on one scale do not have to yield truths that are consistent across different scales.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Yeah, I'm not an expert in anything-- I just find it gratifying to play with ideas. Thanks for playing.
    It's fun that I sound like an expert in physics here, but in my job, I am one of the least educated physicists in the house.
    It's fun that I'm an above average engineer in that environment, but if I went over to the engineering department, I'd be the least competent engineer, but an above average physicist, so that's something, I guess.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    You seem to be conflating being a pedo with victimizing children. Presumably not all pedophiles act on their urges.
    Seems scandalous to label someone so harshly for a "thought crime," IMO.
    I do not consider someone who does not act on those urges to be a pedo. Maybe I should. I certainly wouldn't want them around kids without other adults around, but I can't condemn them over thoughts.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Re: trying to understand the mindset of a pedo: I know it's controversial, and can cause problems for the advancement of non-normative sexual orientations, but I just view it as another sexual orientation-- one that allows for no moral way to be indulged in. Also, this is a bit of a sidetrack, but I have a hard time understanding the difference between fetishes and sexual orientations. It honestly feels like the distinction between cults and religions to me. One group has just become socially acceptable.
    That's another good / fair point.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    I do agree that someone who sexually abuses children should not be around children, and possibly just not be in society so long as they have the urge to abuse children-- where I strongly disagree is the idea that what caused the urge and them to act on it is besides the point. If we want to keep kids from getting diddled, we need to prevent these urges, be able to intervene when we are unable to prevent these urges, and to do so we need to understand their root cause. Just punishing those who have already abused children is a guarantee that children will continue to be abused.
    I don't even know how to respond to this.
    It seems like the moral high road to look at it the way you do, but I can't mesh that POV with any actionable solution that is different than what we have.
    Letting a gov't handle that kind of issue is a road to oppression, IMO. It needs to be ignored by lawmakers and addressed by the psychological community at large.

    Personally, I hate the view of jurisprudence as punishment. I can't think of any time in my life that I changed my behavior in the manner intended because of a punishment. I had a pretty rough / abusive childhood and none of that abuse made me "behave." It only encouraged me to be more covert and to lie more. It was never seen by me as a punishment for lying. It was a punishment for getting caught lying. My behavior changed to hide more and lie better, not to behave more and not need to lie. I don't follow any laws today because of the punishment for not following them. I simply hide and lie about the laws I don't follow.

    From what I've read, this is true broadly for all humans. Much research has shown that increased legal punishments for crimes is proven to be ineffective at affecting crime rates.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Interesting, yeah it does. I wasn't putting much weight on that, just was a fun gotcha-- I wasn't using it to negate what you had said. It's almost impossible to not open yourself up to "gotchas" when discussing this sorta thing, free well, etc, because our language is built on the assumption of free will.
    Indeed. Not just the language but our entire social structure.

    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Hmm. This is interesting. Is this different from attaching your sense of identity to the sum of your beliefs with the knowledge that they're ever changing in all scenarios you'd hope to inhabit?
    I don't think so. So long as you consider a belief to be a guess, then you can't really go wrong.

    After all... "faith" is to believe something despite a lack of conclusive evidence... so if you embrace the "lack of evidence" part, it's hard to get all uppety and butthurt over someone saying they don't agree.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  55. #27580
    haha, I enjoyed your digression on entropy. It indeed is a tough concept to grasp, and it's fairly unique in that it's apparent to laymen just the same. Typically that which is hard to master is not recognized as so by the layperson. Even if they acknowledge the tremendous skill it must have taken to be an elite athlete, for example, most people still harbor some vague notion that they could've achieved the same.


    ---
    On Being an Expert: Yeah, I've found that the old thought experiment which implies its better to be the dunce in a room of geniuses than a genius in a room of dunces is trash. You want to be proficient in a trade while in a room of others who are proficient in their own vocation but deficient in your own. When you can appear to do magic, other's will happily share a bit of their magic with you.


    --
    A person who is attracted to children is by definition a pedophile. Being a pedophile is not illegal, therefore not a thought crime-- although I will grant that the (understandable) stigma makes it essentially thought crime. Anyways, this is how I'm using the word and how I thought others were.

    Lawmakers don't just make laws that punish, they also hold the purse strings. It's a politically tenuous position to take to advocate for the unintuitive position of helping pedophiles to help children. It's a tough position to take on crime in general, much less to apply it to the one crime that is most likely to get thinking people to shut off their thinking caps.

    Then, with the advent of photo-realistic CGI, there's the mindfuck of whether or not victimless child porn(no actual children used) should be legal. Gay people should be able to marry and be happy and fondle all the same sex sexual bits as they can get consent to fondle-- all because it's not hurting anyone. The idea of allowing pedophiles indulge in their urges seems on its face repugnant, but what if it were proven not only that it doesn't increase incidents of abuse, but actually decreases them... intuitively it still feels so wrong, no?


    --
    Your point is well taken regarding increased punishments not have an effect on whether or not laws are broken. I definitely don't do a lot of things because I have a strong aversion to going to jail, or at least that's what my internal dialog reveals to me. But I know that even if I am correct about my being influenced by the punishments, it wouldn't appear to be the norm.

    That does make me wonder if the social stigma of being a criminal, which is based on the belief in free will, is keeping a shitload of crime from taking place. I find the idea that the closer our understanding of how things are reflects how they actually are, the better we'll be. But I suppose that could in part mean understanding that we have an innate belief in free will. Maybe we can discuss its nonexistence on an academic level, but maybe it's the only foundation truly available for us to build on.


    --
    btw, wasn't sure where to fit this in, and I don't know how to say it without appearing to be taking a victory lap(that's not what I'm going for), but thanks for acknowledging points that swayed you or helped you better understand my position. I think it's too rare, esp with how partisan everything is, for people to give credit in a discussion/argument.
  56. #27581
    Our lack of ability to accurately describe entropy only exposes our limited understanding of nature, imo. This idea that big things adhere to the direction of time but tiny things don't is a challenging concept. That either tells us that our ability to measure such things is limited, or that we don't understand time. Probably both.

    I learned something recently about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and found it remarkable but also somehow logical. The better we know the location of a particle, the less we know about its momentum. That means it requires more and more energy to locate a particle to greater and greater accuracy. When we get to the Planck length, the energy required to locate the particle is so high that a black hole would form if we could actually do it.

    Our understanding of physics completely breaks down at the Planck scale. It's not just a mathematical curiosity, it's an important scale in nature that defines what we can observe. Entropy is not something we can understand fully until we can peer into this realm, and we might never be able to.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  57. #27582
    ^^ Wrong.

    Damn that felt good.

    Please bring back the Arrrghgghg thread.
  58. #27583
    I can't, otherwise I would. I really didn't mean to delete that thread.

    Do you actually have an opinion regarding my post above? It would kind of be nice to discuss non-political matters with you.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  59. #27584
    I only know about statistical entropy. I don't really do physics.
  60. #27585
    I have no idea what statistical entropy is but it must be a very similar concept, seeing as quantum mechanics appears very much statistical in nature.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  61. #27586
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Our lack of ability to accurately describe entropy only exposes our limited understanding of nature, imo. This idea that big things adhere to the direction of time but tiny things don't is a challenging concept. That either tells us that our ability to measure such things is limited, or that we don't understand time. Probably both.
    Hmm. I don't think it's fair to say we can't accurately describe entropy. Only that there are many descriptions that are equivalent despite seeming to not be equivalent.
    This is not uncommon with the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is by and large a statistical study. It's just that the regression to the mean is so strong when dealing with "many" particles. It's not clear where the line between "many" and "few" really lies, but at the point of an Avogadro's number of particles, it's pretty safely on the "many" side.

    There's a slowly rising field of physics called meso-scale physics that is concerned with the fuzzy boundary between few and many.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I learned something recently about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and found it remarkable but also somehow logical. The better we know the location of a particle, the less we know about its momentum.
    Yes, assuming the product of uncertainties in position (x) and momentum (p) was already near the universally-allowed minimum ( h_bar/2 ).
    The product of uncertainties can always be greater than the minimum.
    It's only strictly the case that "we cannot decrease one without increasing the other" when the product of uncertainties is the minimum.

    But also no. It's not about us; it's about what is defined.
    It's not about what we know; it's about what can be known.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    That means it requires more and more energy to locate a particle to greater and greater accuracy.
    This is only 1 way of thinking about the x, p relationship, and it belies that the energy is somehow responsible for the uncertainty. It's not.
    The uncertainty exists on a fundamental level due to something that will only sound esoteric and hand-wavy until you get knees deep in QM.

    The uncertainty relation exists for any 2 observable properties of a quantum system for which the equation AB - BA != 0 holds true.
    Here, A and B are operators, like {+, *, d/dt, integral, etc}. They must act on a wave function to make sense, so I'm really saying

    A{B{Psi}} - B{A{Psi}} != 0

    if A is x and B is d/dx, then that says
    x*(d(Psi)/dx) - [d/dx(x*Psi)] = x*d(Psi)/dx - [Psi + x*d(Psi)/dx] != 0

    which can only be equal to 0 when -Psi = 0, but that means there's no wave function at all. Therefore, if there is a wave function, that result is not equal to 0. QED.

    in the case you're talking about
    x*p{Psi} - p*x{Psi} != 0

    the x operator is x, but the p operator is (-i h_bar d/dx). Which is identical to the example except for the constant (-i h_bar) out front.

    This breaks the commutative property of algebra, and when 2 operators have this property, we say the operators "do not commute," or they are "non-commuting" operators.
    So, regardless of Energy or any other means of investigating or measuring the properties of a wave function, the uncertainty relation is due to the way a complex-valued wave function projects onto different phase-spaces. I.e. position-space or momentum-space. The wave function exists throughout both, but it looks different in different projections.
    Like a cylinder looks like a circle if you look along its axis, but it looks like a rectangle if you look at it perpendicular to its axis. The projections look different, due to how the object is viewed.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    When we get to the Planck length, the energy required to locate the particle is so high that a black hole would form if we could actually do it.
    Source?
    Oh... it's on the wikipedia page. Talking about creating a black hole the size of the plank length. Yawn. It would evaporate in a nothingth of a second. It's evaporation would release particles (wave functions) from which we could back out the location and momentum of the black hole to some degree.

    Try slamming slightly less energy into the particle and you're as likely to destroy it, anyway. Particles can be created and destroyed and they are all the time. You would annihilate that particle, create a quantum stew of other particles in the mass-energy conversion, and that's basically what the LHC does.

    There's nothing really special about creating a black hole. Especially one so tiny. It'd be cool to do. I'm sure we'd discover some new physics if we could do it, but it wouldn't be dangerous.
    According to Hawking, the black hole cannot destroy any information, so nothing is truly lost in that creation, just changed... maybe obfuscated, but not lost.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Our understanding of physics completely breaks down at the Planck scale. It's not just a mathematical curiosity, it's an important scale in nature that defines what we can observe. Entropy is not something we can understand fully until we can peer into this realm, and we might never be able to.
    No it doesn't. It is a mathematical curiosity.
    The notion that a particle "has size" is already a misguided step. A particle is its wave function; the wave function contains everything that can be known about the particle.
    Wave functions exist on "large" scales. At least, large compared to a Plank length.

    E.g. It's common to hear something like "an atom is mostly empty space," but that couldn't be further from the truth. Even if we just look at the electron's wave function, it fills the volume (the EV of the volume, I mean) of the atom and then some. There are surfaces where the electron cannot exist, but there are no volumes in which the electron cannot exist... I.e. the wave function only goes to 0 on surfaces, not volumes. It occupies all of the space in the atom, even within the nucleus.
    That is to say, an atom is not empty, but filled. The volume the atom occupies is filled with the wave function of the particles that make up the atom. I.e. the volume is filled.
    What you observe when you look at a wave function is a totally different thing to talk about.

    The notion that you can't query something on a given length scale is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the wave function is. It's conflating how we observe the wave function with it's underlying structure.

    Trying to link Entropy to that scale is not going to work too well. Why does it disappear at the scale of particle interactions, but then reappear at the scale of an avogadro's number of particles interacting?
    Last edited by MadMojoMonkey; 10-03-2019 at 03:38 PM.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  62. #27587
    This is how I like to be slapped down. I've had to read that twice, with a break in between watching vids about the Planck length.

    Hmm. I don't think it's fair to say we can't accurately describe entropy
    Well perhaps I should have said "fully understand".

    There's a slowly rising field of physics called meso-scale physics that is concerned with the fuzzy boundary between few and many.
    I'll add this to my "to watch on youtube" list.

    But also no. It's not about us; it's about what is defined.
    It's not about what we know; it's about what can be known.
    Yeah again my language is far too sloppy, but this is what I mean.

    Now we get to the bit where I struggle to follow. After reading three times, I just about followed the maths, but I'm lost with regards to the geometry. I obviously get the cylinder analogy, I just don't understand how this applies to wave functions, how a wave function changes depending on how you view it. I mean, circle or rectangle, it's always a cylinder. I guess maybe what you're saying is if you're looking at it from one angle, you see the circle, so you know everything about one axis, but you know nothing about the other so can't know if it's a cylinder or a sphere. Likewise, if you look at a square, you can't know if it's a cylinder or a cube. But the analogy kind of falls apart when you see a circle then see a square... we've resolved the uncertainty. I think your intended point here might have gone over my head.

    No it doesn't. It is a mathematical curiosity.
    I mean, I'm obviously far less educated than you are, so take what I have to say with the massive pile of salt it deserves.

    With that caveat out of the way, this is kind of how I interpret the wave function. You go on to talk about how it is a phsyical thing, more, that is IS the physical thing, whereas I see it as the mathematical blueprint to describe a phsyical thing. But I have to admit that I've really struggled to get my head waround wave function, and I've tried.

    The Planck length, I needed a refresher because I was sure that it was viewed as the base unit of length in quantum mechanics, but it seems that maybe this is debated. When I said it's not a mathematical curiosity, what I probably meant was that it was a fundamental unit. That's how I understand the Planck length. I even go as far as to consider the possibility that within this realm is the world of the curled up dimensions predicted by string theory. But I'll also admit that is basically sexy word salad and I couldn't elaborate much on that at all. But there is something fundamental about the Plack length, at least based on what I've been watching. Here's a PBS Spacetime vid about the Plack constant...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQSbms5MDvY&t=659s

    The notion that a particle "has size" is already a misguided step. A particle is its wave function; the wave function contains everything that can be known about the particle.
    I wish I understood what the wave function really is.

    The notion that you can't query something on a given length scale is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the wave function is.
    I don't think I'm well placed to disagree with this.

    I'm going to watch something about wave function.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  63. #27588
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    This is how I like to be slapped down. I've had to read that twice, with a break in between watching vids about the Planck length.
    Happy to oblige!

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Well perhaps I should have said "fully understand".
    Science is aimed at making predictions. It can be confusing whether saying "what" causes something to happen is saying "why" it happens.

    Neil DeGrasse Tyson had a funny breakdown on his recent JRE where he went near apoplectic saying something like,
    For you to accuse me of not knowing why, you had to get a hundred why's answered out of me first!

    Still... I'd rather sit on the throne of "science is about what will happen, not why it happens." and let the philosophers and sages figure out the why's, IMO.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I'll add this to my "to watch on youtube" list.
    Good idea, actually. I feel dumb for not doing it already.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Yeah again my language is far too sloppy, but this is what I mean.
    It's a pain in the ass to get all the wording right when talking QM. I make mistakes all the time. Just try to stay vigilant and correct yourself when needed.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Now we get to the bit where I struggle to follow. After reading three times, I just about followed the maths, but I'm lost with regards to the geometry. I obviously get the cylinder analogy, I just don't understand how this applies to wave functions, how a wave function changes depending on how you view it. I mean, circle or rectangle, it's always a cylinder. I guess maybe what you're saying is if you're looking at it from one angle, you see the circle, so you know everything about one axis, but you know nothing about the other so can't know if it's a cylinder or a sphere. Likewise, if you look at a square, you can't know if it's a cylinder or a cube. But the analogy kind of falls apart when you see a circle then see a square... we've resolved the uncertainty. I think your intended point here might have gone over my head.
    The cylinder analogy is a loose way of conveying the idea that things can look very different depending on how you view them. It is kinda useful in introducing the mathematical idea of a projection. A projection is like the shadow of an object.

    When we know the wave function of something, we can operate on that wave function in various ways to tease out different values. Those operations are like projections. When I use the operator to find the energy, the entire projection is just a number (with units of energy). When I use the operator to find the position, I get another function. That function is a probability function in "position space." That is, by using the position operator, I create a shadow of the wave function on the position wall. When I use the operator to find momentum, I create the shadow of the wave function on the momentum wall. That's about where the analogy ends.

    The position space and momentum space projections are related in a way that a cylinder's projections are not. A change in the cylinder's diameter changes the diameter of the circle and the width of the rectangle in the same way. A particle's position-space and momentum-space wave functions have a relationship such that one is the Fourier Transform of the other. That means that the more localized one is, the more spread out the other is, and vice versa. This doesn't really have a macroscopic analogue.

    Whether localized or spread out... it's the same wave function. All that changes is how you looked at it... how you projected it. The wave function contains all the information, position, momentum, spin, whatever properties the particle has is all encoded in the wave function. To tease out any single property, we use the appropriate operator to project the wave function into a phase space. Phase space is just the mathematical name for the metaphorical wall onto which we cast the metaphorical shadow.


    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I mean, I'm obviously far less educated than you are, so take what I have to say with the massive pile of salt it deserves.

    With that caveat out of the way, this is kind of how I interpret the wave function. You go on to talk about how it is a phsyical thing, more, that is IS the physical thing, whereas I see it as the mathematical blueprint to describe a physical thing. But I have to admit that I've really struggled to get my head waround wave function, and I've tried.
    The wave function is the physical thing being observed.
    When we observe a wave function, we sometimes see a particle in a singular position... but if we were to prepare a whole bunch of particles identically and observe them, we would see a spread of positions. The wave function was the same in all cases, so the position learned in any single measurement is not a good description of the particle's location. The location is the probability function that describes that spread in locations the particle might be found if it is observed.

    Note: it's no good to measure the position of the same particle over and over. Once you measure it, the wave function collapses to a sharp spike in the position space. If you measure it again, that's not the same experiment as measuring a different particle that was in the same initial conditions.

    It's tricky language, but when you start saying things better and better, more and more of it clicks into place.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    The Planck length, I needed a refresher because I was sure that it was viewed as the base unit of length in quantum mechanics, but it seems that maybe this is debated. When I said it's not a mathematical curiosity, what I probably meant was that it was a fundamental unit. That's how I understand the Planck length. I even go as far as to consider the possibility that within this realm is the world of the curled up dimensions predicted by string theory. But I'll also admit that is basically sexy word salad and I couldn't elaborate much on that at all. But there is something fundamental about the Plack length, at least based on what I've been watching. Here's a PBS Spacetime vid about the Plack constant...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQSbms5MDvY&t=659s
    Just be careful what you believe. If the person isn't a physicist, then try to not put much weight at all in how they interpret the plank length.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I wish I understood what the wave function really is.
    You and every quantum physicist. Don't lose too much sleep over it. Certainly lose a bit, just not too much.
    lol

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I don't think I'm well placed to disagree with this.

    I'm going to watch something about wave function.
    Yeah... well... I'm not saying there wont come a day when good physics makes me an idiot for saying the plank length has no physical meaning. I just don't think it's today.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  64. #27589
    Loop quantum gravity is the sexy word salad of 2019, and it postulates that the Planck length is the quantum unit of spacetime.

    I'm not so sure about quantum gravity. The problem I have is if spacetime is quantised, then how does expansion work? Either 1) a quantum of space gets bigger, which implies Planck's constant isn't so constant, or 2) new quanta of space are emerging. I can't say I like either of these postulates.

    But I remain convinced the Planck length is significant. It seems to represent a boundary where light cannot penetrate, like a net. Light is simply too big to slip through, the wavelength of light has to be higher than the Planck length otherwise the Uncertainty Principle implies it has infinite momentum. That's what the maths seems to tell us. If it's the upper limit of frequency for light, then it should come as no surprise to us that our view of the universe breaks down here.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  65. #27590
    On another note, when I'm playing live poker, I like to put my phone on vibrate, and nestle it underneath my ballsack. I find that the stimulation helps me to play my A-game. Of course, I have to keep looking at the screen at a juicy pair of titties to maintain my boner, but it helps me make some ridiculously good reads.

    I'm pretty sure this is what Mike Postle has been doing.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  66. #27591
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Loop quantum gravity is the sexy word salad of 2019
    I saw the PBS Spacetime video, but I can't claim to understand it, yet.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    , and it postulates that the Planck length is the quantum unit of spacetime.
    How can a length be the "quantum unit" of a volume-time entity?

    Why all this attention to the Planck length (l_P) and not the dozens of other units that can be derived using Planck units?
    The Planck mass is ~22(10)^-6 g. Kinda small, but huuuge on a QM scale.

    You know you get a factor of 2pi in there whether you choose Planck's constant or Planck's reduced constant as your fundamental constant in this game, right? It's an arbitrary choice what you choose as your fundamental constants. The Planck units focus on experimentally observed universal constants, but there is no good logical argument as to whether or not the reduced constant is "better."

    The units juggling trick is called the Buckingham Pi Theorem, but I couldn't really find an entry level description in a quick web search. They want to give it in a full, generalized mathematical form, which makes it look a lot harder than it is.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I'm not so sure about quantum gravity. The problem I have is if spacetime is quantised, then how does expansion work? Either 1) a quantum of space gets bigger, which implies Planck's constant isn't so constant, or 2) new quanta of space are emerging. I can't say I like either of these postulates.
    I'm not sure, either. The link between quantum and gravity is not known by anyone at this time beyond untested speculations AFAIK.

    Planck's constant is defined as the energy of a photon divided by that same photon's frequency. If it changes at all, it would be quickly noticed. The point is that proportional relationship, E = hf (Energy is h times the frequency), holds true for each photon, regardless of frequency.
    A significant amount of our current tech is based on that relationship, so I'm pretty sure I can rule out 1) above.
    If LQG is accurate, and the loops remain infinitesimally small, then there must be uncountably many new loops created all the time as spacetime expands. 2) seems like the only real option.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    But I remain convinced the Planck length is significant. It seems to represent a boundary where light cannot penetrate, like a net. Light is simply too big to slip through, the wavelength of light has to be higher than the Planck length otherwise the Uncertainty Principle implies it has infinite momentum. That's what the maths seems to tell us. If it's the upper limit of frequency for light, then it should come as no surprise to us that our view of the universe breaks down here.
    The lengths between the things matters, too. If there's a dust cloud of sub-l_P particles, the "characteristic length" of the distance between the particles still affects the propagation of quantum waves. I mean, 1 ultra tiny particle could be impossible to detect with light, but a bunch of them, a universe made of them, would have very definite effects that we do not see.
    If LQG is correct, then these loops are not like tiny particles, but something new.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  67. #27592
    Why all this attention to the Planck length
    I guess that's me being basic and simply referring to a single unit rather then the related units.

    The Planck mass is ~22(10)^-6 g. Kinda small, but huuuge on a QM scale.
    I think you're one order of magnitude off here, but let's ignore that. It's still "big" by quantum measures, not nearly as small as I would have expected, like 30 orders of magnitude bigger than the length. I took a look at the page for Planck mass and it's the only Planck unit that isn't a lower or upper bound. A flea egg is approximately one Planck mass, so clearly it is a macroscopic measure.

    You know you get a factor of 2pi in there whether you choose Planck's constant or Planck's reduced constant as your fundamental constant in this game, right?
    I've no idea what this means and will have to take a look later.

    Planck's constant is defined as the energy of a photon divided by that same photon's frequency.
    Yeah, Max Planck stumbled on this constant almost by accident. It was a mathematical hack to solve the problem of infinities cropping up in the predicted spectrum of blackbody radiation. In assuming that radiation is emitted in multiples of interger values, he basically discovered quantum physics. Of course it took Einstein to realise that the photon is a particle, but Planck made the necessary breakthrough because he was the first to formally assume energy could not be divided into infintesimal quantities.

    If it changes at all, it would be quickly noticed.
    Indeed.

    2) seems like the only real option.
    Agreed, but it still seems, idk, unromatic? It doesn't seem right. I know that's not science, but I can't really explain why I don't like this concept.

    The lengths between the things matters, too.
    idk if "length" has any real meaning at this scale. I suspect our 3D interpretation of the world breaks down here, just like it does in a black hole. Length perhaps becomes a measure of time, not space. I have no idea, but inside a black hole, everything is moving at the same speed in the same direction... space itself is falling towards the singularity. So what is length inside a black hole? It's indistinguishable from time. One second always means the same distance travelled... you can't go back in time without moving faster than light, same is true inside a black hole when we talk about space. You can't accelerate away from the singularity without going >c.

    While the Planck lenth (or volume) might be a fundamental unit of space, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the fundemental unit of everything. There could be any number of 1D objects within this realm. We're touching on string theory now, something LQG was supposed to be an alternative to.

    Of course, I'm just speculating. This is well beyond me. I just have a strong feeling that something important happens at this scale, and understanding what that is will be a huge leap forwards in our quest to solve the mysteries of reality.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  68. #27593
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Why do physicists have Planck units in the first place?

    If we use the units {meters, kilograms, seconds, Coulombs, Kelvin} (SI units) then it's easy to derive all the other units because all of our fundamental units have single dimensions. By single dimensions, I mean that none of their units are compound like kg*m/s^2 or something. Since each of the fundamental units is just us arbitrarily choosing something single-dimensioned and calling it "1".
    In SI, the fundamental unit of length is 1 m; the fundamental unit of mass is 1 kg; the fundamental unit of time is 1 s. Etc.

    We use these all the time and they're great. The problem with them is that they're purely subjective. They're based on what's convenient for us. Great. We're the ones using them, after all.

    Physicists get all fidgety over that kind of thing, though. We lose sleep over the fact that we can only brag to each other about how smart and amazing we are. We really want to brag to aliens, too. But how will they know how smart we are if we only speak in terms we find convenient? Big problem.

    So we set about the question: What are some sensible fundamental units to use? What is something that is true, regardless of our Earthly / human perspective?
    What can be agreed upon by all observers? (I'm being playful, but this question is the heart of physics, in a way.)

    So we look at our theories and try to find something that could be considered fundamental, in such a way that it can be observed by anyone, anywhere in the universe, and agreed upon.
    So far... one of the most popular sets of fundamental constants are these
    Planck's reduced constant, Newton's Gravitational constant, the speed of light in vacuum, the Coulomb constant, and the Boltzmann constant
    These are numbers that cannot be derived in our current theory; they can only be observed.


    OK, so there's the setup. We want to see if there's a kind of capitol F Fundamental set of units to work with. Apparently, there are... but this could all change... there's no theoretical reason why those numbers we have to measure cannot be implicitly defined by a physical theory, they just aren't today.
    Until it changes, the "Planck Units" are our choice. The reason is that we assert that these 5 numbers (with the units attached to them) are something that has no Earthly ties. There's nothing "human" about them. It is assumed that any intelligence with the capacity to progress as far as we have will know these numbers.

    The juggling trick of using them goes like this:
    First choose your fundamental units. These can be anything you like... with some conditions. The Planck units fulfill the conditions.
    Then do simple algebra on those 5 fundamental units to find combinations that yield other useful units.


    Buckingham Pi

    I want units of length. None of my fundamentals has that. How do I find a combination of them that has units of length?


    THIS IS THE BUCKINGHAM PI THEOREM IN ACTION

    Start by listing all of their units:
    Planck's reduced constant, [h_bar] = [L^2 M T^-1]. That is the units of h_bar equals the units Length^2*Mass/Time... e.g. kg m^2/s.
    Newton's Gravitational constant, [G] = [L^3 M^-1 T^-2]
    the speed of light in vacuum, [c] = [L T^-1]
    the Coulomb constant, and the Boltzmann constant - are about electric charge and thermal energy, and they wont be a part of a length calculation.

    So we have 3 fundamental units and we need to arrange them in such a way that all the units cancel out except for the L, which we want raised to the power of 1.
    [length] = {h_bar}^x * {G}^y * {c}^z
    [L] = [L^2 M T^-1]^x * [L^3 M^-1 T^-2]^y * [L T^-1]^z
    This gives us a few equations to solve.
    The units are independent, and we only need to solve for the exponents, so it sets up like this

    1 = 2x + 3y + z || this must be true for our result to have units of L to the 1 power
    0 = x - y || this must be true for our result to have units of M to the 0 power
    0 = -x - 2y - z || this must be true for our result to have units of T to the 0 power

    Solve for 3 equations and 3 unknowns.
    line 2: x = y
    plug that in to line 3: z = -3x
    Plug all that into line 1: 1 = 2x
    solve: x = y = 1/2 ; z = -3/2

    Planck Length = h_bar^1/2 * G^1/2 * c^-3/2 = SQRT(h_bar * G / c^3)

    QED


    So you see that it's just a trick of math that got us here. IF there's any physical relevance, we don't know what, if any, constants multiply that result.
    Note that we chose to use Planck's reduced constant as a fundamental. This is equal to Planck's constant divided by 2Pi. It was an arbitrary choice... no different to our results if we had chosen the (non-reduced) constant... which means we do exactly the same math and we get a result exactly the same, but substitute h for h_bar. (Since both have identical units, nothing in our calculation has changed).

    This is the limit of the Buckingham Pi Theorem. It can give you a constant with any dimensions you like, but it doesn't know the physical relevance or whether or not that constant should be multiplied by 2Pi or 10^23.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  69. #27594
    Can you type all that again please, except replace 2pi with tau?

    I must confess, I'm lost there. I mean, if Planck's constant is derived from the relationship between frequency and energy, then how is it arbitrary? How does dividing it by tau give identical results? That's kind of like saying the speed of light divided by root two gives the same results.

    I'm missing something important here.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  70. #27595
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Of course it took Einstein to realise that the photon is a particle, but Planck made the necessary breakthrough because he was the first to formally assume energy could not be divided into infintesimal quantities.
    Technically, Newton posited his "crepuscular theory of light" ages ago, and crepuscule means particle in today's terms. It's just that it wasn't a "quantum theory," and it was hotly debated at the time. It was relatively easy to show wave-like behavior of light, and people were a long way from accepting wave-particles.
    IDK if it's fair to give Newton the credit for "discovering the particle nature of light," though.

    Planck-Einstein really took the idea much further than simply a particle theory, which you pretty much nail in describing Planck's assumption.

    Planck's assertion was built off of Bohr's lucky guess about quantizing the allowed energies in atomic orbitals (IIRC).

    He was awesome... but he didn't work in isolation. The whole world was discovering QM and GR at about the same time and we still are. Many discoveries in QM are named different things in different countries, due to the fact that these ideas were developed in tandem and each country wants their person's contribution to be listed first.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  71. #27596
    In SI, the fundamental unit of length is 1 m; the fundamental unit of mass is 1 kg; the fundamental unit of time is 1 s. Etc.
    I wouldn't call these "fundamental units" in the same context as what I assume the Planck length to be. They are just standard units, standard to us. An alien race somewhere might use a different system, where their cm is 75% of ours, and their gram is based on the mass of liquid hydrogen. But we'll all agree on how fast light moves, we're just using different metrics. Surely all our other constants are the same?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  72. #27597
    Planck's assertion was built off of Bohr's lucky guess about quantizing the allowed energies in atomic orbitals (IIRC).
    Interesting context I was unaware of. I'll be sure to drop his name in future when discussing this, don't want to deprive the man of his due credit.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  73. #27598
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Can you type all that again please, except replace 2pi with tau?
    I don't have any stake in that argument. Just copy/paste it into any competent word processor, then do a ctrl-F for find and replace if you're remotely serious.

    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I must confess, I'm lost there. I mean, if Planck's constant is derived from the relationship between frequency and energy, then how is it arbitrary? How does dividing it by tau give identical results? That's kind of like saying the speed of light divided by root two gives the same results.

    I'm missing something important here.
    The result is the same, BUT REPLACE h_bar WITH h.

    We didn't take the value of any of the constants into account, only their units. The only thing different between h and h_bar is h_bar = h/tau. It's a change in value, but not units.

    Ergo, if we replace h_bar with h at the start of the calculation, nothing changes, except on the last step of the last line, we substitute h in, instead of h_bar.
    The result is definitely off by a factor of tau - well, sqrt(tau) in this case - but what's that matter? The point is that we made an arbitrary choice at the top and it makes no difference in our calculation, but changes the final result when we plug the numbers in.


    I.e. the value of the Plank Length is really some constant multiple of the final result we get. We don't know that from this calculation.

    If we say h_bar is the fundamental constant then we find
    Planck Length = SQRT(h_bar * G / c^3)

    If we say h is the fundamental constant, then we find
    Planck Length = SQRT(h * G / c^3)

    and these calculations do not yield the same value. You understand that much correctly.

    My point is that our choice of what are the Fundamental constants we arbitrarily chose to start with makes a difference.
    In this case, the difference is to the result's value, but not it's form. This is a special case where the choice is between 2 constants with identical units. This is because the Buckingham Pi Theorem ONLY cares about units, and not the value of the number in front of the units. When we change the value of one of our "fundamental" constants without changing its units, we don't change anything that the Buckingham Pi algorithm "sees."
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.
  74. #27599
    I don't have any stake in that argument. Just copy/paste it into any competent word processor, then do a ctrl-F for find and replace if you're remotely serious.
    haha of course I wasn't being serious! It's just I've seen enough Numberphile to know there's a hot debate between pi and tau, and which one we should use. I don't really care, it was a poor attempt at geek humour.

    I'm going to have to mull this over a bit. Something is close to clicking, but it's not quite happening.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  75. #27600
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    OK. I spent a fair bit of time on this, and while I hope it's not all for naught, I expect it probably is.
    If you're not interested in this level of math in a post, let me know and I wont waste my time on this type of proof in the future.
    While it's a decent wall of test, it's nothing but simple algebra, so it should be easy to follow.

    ***
    Lets do the whole Buckingham Pi Theorem to find the Planck Length without glazing over the algebraic steps, then.

    I'm going to modify this from the above post to add more details.

    Square brackets around a variable indicates that I'm stripping the variable's value away and just looking at its units.
    Kinda roughly like an absolute value sign strips away the +/- and just leaves a magnitude, except we're stripping away the magnitude as well, and just leaving the units.
    So if g is the acceleration of gravity near the Earth's surface, with up being positive, then g = -9.8 m/s^2 upward, and |g| = 9.8 m/s^2, and [g] = m/s^2.

    I'll keep the somewhat confusing capitol letters to signify generic valued units. E.g. using L instead of m, as there is a specific connotation to m for meter, whereas the nonspecific connotation of L for length is more intuitively general.
    It's just letters as variables, and as always in these cases, the idea the variable represents is the important bit, not the letter or symbol we use to represent the idea.

    L is length
    M is mass
    T is time
    Q is electric charge
    {Theta} is temperature

    Start by listing our chosen fundamental constants and their units:

    Planck's reduced constant, [h_bar] = L^2 M T^-1
    I.e. kg m^2 / s.

    Newton's Gravitational constant, [G] = L^3 M^-1 T^-2
    I.e. m^3 / (kg s^2)

    the speed of light in vacuum, [c] = L T^-1
    I.e. m/s

    the Coulomb constant, [k] = L^3 M T^-2 Q^-2
    I.e. F/m, where F is farads (it's ugly to convert Farads into SI, so either do it yourself or trust me)
    Spoiler:
    Note the Coulomb constant is k = 1/( 4 pi {epsilon_0} ). This represents another arbitrary choice in our "fundamentals" naming step. We could have chosen {epsilon_0} instead and we'd still have a mathematically complete set of 5 fundamentals. Neither k nor epsilon_0 is "more" fundamental than the other. The choice between these 2 is not quite as mathematically simple as the choice between h and h_bar, because the units of k and epsilon_0 are the inverse of each other. It's still a simple thing to change in the math, though.


    the Boltzmann constant [k_b] = L^2 M T^-2 {Theta}^-1


    So we have 5 fundamental constants and we need to arrange them in such a way that all the units cancel out except for the L, which we want raised to the power of 1.

    We have to use multiplication and exponents because otherwise we cannot end up with a single term on the left-hand side (LHS) of the equals sign.
    I.e. If we have [length] = [something] + [something], then both of the somethings have to be lengths, OR we have to use multiplication and division to get a common denominator and we're back to multiplication and exponents.

    So we're looking for some combination of the 5 fundamental constants, each raised to some power, that will end up with the units of length.
    [length] = {h_bar}^v * {G}^w * {c}^x * {k}^y * {k_b}^z

    At this point, this is an unproven assertion. We could try to solve for the {v, w, x, y, z} and find that we cannot solve for all 5 values.
    So that's the game, then. Try to solve for the 5 unknown exponents in the above equation.

    At first glance, this is dead in the water. We have 1 equation and 5 unknowns, and there's no solving it.
    However, we can actually break that single equation into 5 separate equations. Then we'll have 5 equations in 5 unknowns and we can probably solve that. Here's how it's done.

    Re-write the equation with just the units.
    [length] = {h_bar}^v * {G}^w * {c}^x * {k}^y * {k_b}^z

    [L] = [L^2 M T^-1]^v * [L^3 M^-1 T^-2]^w * [L T^-1]^x * [L^3 M T^-2 Q^-2]^y * [L^2 M T^-2 {Theta}^-1]^z

    Actually, it'll clean up a later step if we are more careful with the LHS of the above equation.
    Expand the LHS to include every possible unit it could contain, and simply raise the unused units to the 0 power.
    [L^1 * M^0 * T^0 * Q^0 * {theta}^0] = RHS above

    The units are independent (no amount of lengths raised to any power will ever result in a mass, etc.), and this is the important bit. Since the units are independent, we can pull this single equation apart into 5 equations. Here's the first one:
    L^1 = (L^2)^v * (L^3)^w * (L^1)^x * (L^3)^y * (L^2)^z

    I'll state the other 4 equations in a moment, but first let's see where this equation comes from. I look at ONLY the L's in the parent equation, and I state them all out, with their powers. I'm simply ignoring all the other variables, which is the same thing I'm going to do for the other 4 equations. Each daughter equation focuses in on only 1 of the units and states the equation that must be true to achieve the appropriate power on each unit on the LHS of the equation.

    Here's all 5 of them:
    L^1 = (L^2)^v * (L^3)^w * (L^1)^x * (L^3)^y * (L^2)^z
    M^0 = (M^1)^v * (M^-1)^w * (M^0)^x * (M^1)^y * (M^1)^z
    T^0 = (T^-1)^v * (T^-2)^w * (T^-1)^x * (T^-2)^y * (T^-2)^z
    Q^0 = (Q^0)^v * (Q^0)^w * (Q^0)^x * (Q^-2)^y * (Q^0)^z
    {Theta}^0 = ({Theta}^0)^v * ({Theta}^0)^w * ({Theta}^0)^x * ({Theta}^0)^y * ({Theta}^-1)^z


    OK, that's pretty ugly, let's clean it up a bit. Apply this rule (a^b)^c = a^(b*c)
    L^1 = L^2v * L^3w * L^x * L^3y * L^2z
    M^0 = M^v * M^-w * M^0 * M^y * M^z
    T^0 = T^-v * T^-2w * T^-x * T^-2y * T^-2z
    Q^0 = Q^0 * Q^0 * Q^0 * Q^-2y * Q^0
    {Theta}^0 = {Theta}^0 * {Theta}^0 * {Theta}^0 * {Theta}^0 * {Theta}^-z

    One more cleanup pass. Apply this rule a^b * a^c = a^(b + c)
    L^1 = L^(2v + 3w + x + 3y + 2z)
    M^0 = M^(v - w + y + z)
    T^0 = T^(-v - 2w - x - 2y - 2z)
    Q^0 = Q^-2y
    {Theta}^0 = {Theta}^-z

    OK, that's still pretty ugly, but it's about to get a little uglier before we simplify it down.
    The next step is the usual thing when our variables are in the exponents, we take the log of each equation.
    log( L^1 ) = log( L^(2v + 3w + x + 3y + 2z) )
    log( M^0 ) = log( M^(v - w + y + z) )
    log( T^0 ) = log( T^(-v - 2w - x - 2y - 2z) )
    log( Q^0 ) = log( Q^-2y )
    log( {Theta}^0 ) = log( {Theta}^-z )

    Clean it up. Apply the rule log( a^b ) = b*log(a)
    1*log( L ) = (2v + 3w + x + 3y + 2z)*log( L )
    0*log( M ) = (v - w + y + z)*log( M )
    0*log( T ) = (-v - 2w - x - 2y - 2z)*log( T )
    0*log( Q ) = -2y*log( Q )
    0* log( {Theta} ) = -z*log( {Theta} )

    And another cleanup step. Divide each equation by its log term.
    1 = 2v + 3w + x + 3y + 2z
    0 = v - w + y + z
    0 = -v - 2w - x - 2y - 2z
    0 = -2y
    0 = -z

    Here we are. We have 5 simplified equations in 5 unknowns. There was a bit of work to get here, but all of it is really simple steps. Some rarely used log rules and the weird step where you split 1 equation into 5, but all of it is very straightforward to do. No integrals or derivatives or any of that calculus stuff with limits and sums. Just simple algebra. Cool.


    Finally, we solve 5 equations in 5 unknowns.
    lines 4 and 5 from the set of equations are easily solved by eye to get
    y = 0 and z = 0

    This is the "obvious" reason we didn't need to include the Coulomb constant or the Boltzmann constant in the other post where I solved this.
    For each of those, since they are the only place in all of our 5 constants that the Q or {theta} exist, and since our desired result contains neither Q nor {theta}, we can see that those constants must be raised to the 0 power in order to eliminate the Q and {theta} respectively.

    Plugging y = z = 0 into the above set of 5 equations leaves us with 3 equations in 3 unknowns
    1 = 2v + 3w + x
    0 = v - w
    0 = -v - 2w - x

    Notice that the letters are different than my prior post on this, but the letters don't matter... the ideas the letters represent matter. It's actually the identical equation as before, but it looks different because I chose different variables for those ideas this time. It's the ideas that matter, though, not the variables.

    solve line 2: v = w

    plug that in to line 3: 0 = -v - 2v - x
    x = -3v

    Plug all that into line 1: 1 = 2v + 3v + (-3v)
    v = 1/2
    solve:
    v = w = 1/2
    x = -3*1/2

    sol'n: v = w = 1/2 ; x = -3/2

    Planck Length = h_bar^1/2 * G^1/2 * c^-3/2 * k^0 * k_b^0 = SQRT(h_bar * G / c^3)

    QED

    EDIT: screwed up the 2nd to last line by not changing the variables to reflect the current use in this post.
    Last edited by MadMojoMonkey; 10-23-2019 at 06:31 PM.
    You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want, if you're prepared to ignore enough data.

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •