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Category Archives: Science & Technology
Tech Veganism
Came across a new term today: Tech Veganism.
- a preference for open-source software over proprietary software
- a suspicion of big tech companies
- a high bar for privacy and security
No shortage of this thinking on Mastodon.technology. This blog post explains. I’m getting there on those last two bullet points.
Timelapse of the Future
Curiosity – Featuring Richard Feynman
Timelapse of the entire Universe
“On a cosmic time scale, human history is as brief as the blink of an eye. By compressing all 13.8 billion years of time into a 10 minute scale, this video shows just how young we truly are, and just how ancient and vast our universe us.”
Melodysheep is John D. Boswell, a filmmaker, composer, and editor from the pacific northwest. There is a version of this video with narration but without the embed code. I recommend it. Thanks to Kent for pointing us to Melodysheep.
The Emperor’s New Mind
“According to quantum mechanics, any two electrons must necessarily be completely identical. […] This is not merely to say that there is now way of telling the particles apart: the statement is considerably stronger than that. If an electron in a person’s brain were to be exchanged with an electron in a brick, then the state of the system would be exactly the same state as it was before, not merely indistinguishable from it! […] What distinguishes the person from his house is the pattern of how his constituents are arranged, not the individuality of the constituents themselves.”
—The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose
A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality
“Proietti and co’s result suggests that objective reality does not exist. In other words, the experiment suggests that one or more of the assumptions—the idea that there is a reality we can agree on, the idea that we have freedom of choice, or the idea of locality—must be wrong.”
The illusion of free will
“In a study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made 11 seconds before they consciously declared their decisions.”
“In the study, 14 participants—each placed in an fMRI machine—were shown two patterns, one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes. They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between them. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Finally, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons.”
“Using the fMRI to monitor brain activity and machine learning to analyze the neuroimages, the researchers were able to predict which pattern participants would choose up to 11 seconds before they consciously made the decision. And they were able to predict how vividly the participants would be able to envisage it.”
“Lead author Joel Pearson, cognitive neuroscience professor at the University of South Wales in Australia, said that the study suggests traces of thoughts exist unconsciously before they become conscious.”
“The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.”
“A kilogram of mass would convert into approximately 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. The energy in the mass of one raisin could supply most of New York City’s energy needs for a day.”
—Einstein: His Life and Universe (Walter Isaacson)
Just call me
If you really want to communicate with me… just pick up the phone and call me.
Yes, I regularly check email and love iMessage, but I much prefer real-time communication.