06 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
The One-Electron Universe
I
received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at
Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I
know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass"
"Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!" And, then he
explained on the telephone, "suppose that the world lines which
we were ordinarily considering before in time and space - instead
of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when
we cut through the knot, by the pl... 1 
notes
notes02 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Cognitive Neoteny in Modern Humans
The boy-genius can be seen as a specific instance of psychological neoteny which is apparently adaptive in modernizing cultures, and it occurred early in science because science is one of the most ‘modern’ and advanced social systems [2]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity. It represents a relatively fast and simple way of evolving adaptations – for instance modern humans in Weste...
2 
2 Perpetual education and change has pushed humans into a perpetual state of youthful cognition. Our brains remain childlike in order to continue to learn and adapt to our ever-changing modern environment.
24 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Imagination Builds On Our Experiences
...you can’t have a storage space that is
filled to the brim with boxes. How would
you ever come inside? Where would you
pull out the boxes to find what you need?
How would you even see what boxes
were available and where they might be
found? You need space. You need light.
You need to be able to access your attic’s
contents, to walk inside and look around
and see what is what.
And within that space, there is freedom.
You can temporarily place there all of the
observations you’ve gathe...Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
1 notes
notesIt works within the confines of what we know and how we can work with that knowledge.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Physics Reduced to Probability
Philosophers have said that if the same circumstances don't always produce the same results, predictions are impossible and science will collapse. Here is a circumstance—identical photons are always coming down in the same direction to the piece of glass—that produces different results. We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does this mean that phy...Folksonomies: complexity probability
Folksonomies: complexity probability
1 notes
notesFeynman explains that probabilities are the best we can hope for in complex systems.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Feynman on God
On the contrary, God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such ... 1 notes
notesGod is used to explain what we haven't figured out yet.
12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
QED Explained
Feynman's graphical method provides a way of visualizing each term in the sum over histories. Those pictures, called Feynman diagrams, are one of the most important tools of modern physics. In QED the sum over all possible histories can be represented as a sum over Feynman diagrams like those below, which represent some of the ways it is possible for two electrons to scatter off each other through the electromagnetic force. In these diagrams the solid lines represent the electrons and the wav... 1 notes
notesA good description of the Feynman Diagrams from QED and how the infinite possibilities must be accounted for in mathematics dealing with them.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Computer Programming Brings Complex Thought to the Masses
Omni: Does that limit the number of people who can contribute, or even understand what's being done?
Feynman: Or else somebody will develop a way of thinking about the problems so that we can understand them more easily. Maybe they'll just teach it earlier and earlier. You know, it's not true that what is called "abstruse" math is so difficult. Take something like computer programming, and the careful logic needed for that--the kind of thinking that mama and papa would have said was only for ...A half century ago, the logic required to do computer programming was considered something only professors could do, now everyone does it.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Perspectives Game
I got a kick, when I was a boy, [out] of my father telling me things, so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world. When he was very small we used to rock him to bed, you know, and tell him stories, and I'd make up a story about little people that were about so high [who] would walk along and they would go on picnics and so on and they lived in the ventilator; and they'd go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves a...A game Feynman played with his father, describing a fantastic scene, and the object of the game was to figure out where it was taking place and from what perspective.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Energy Game
My father dealth a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same lesson. I would say "No. What has that to do with the sun shining? It moved because you wound up the springs."
"And why, my friend, are you able to move to wind up this spring?"
"I...A game Feynman's father would play with him, asking what made things work, and following the chain of energy back to the sun.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
A Reversible NAND Gate
The great discovery of Bennett and, independently, of Fredkin is that it is possible to do computation with a different kind of fundamental gate unit, namely, a reversible gate unit. I have illustrated their idea--with a unit which I could call a reversible NAND gate. It has thre inputs and thre outputs. Of the outputs, tow, A' and B', are the same as two of the inputs, A and B, but the third input works this way. C' is the same as C unless A and B are both 1, in which case it changes whateve...Folksonomies: computing
Folksonomies: computing
1 notes
notesFeynman describes a reversible logic gate, with three inputs and three outputs, one of which tracks the change in input and output, allowing the computer to reverse its operation and potentially pursue a different route.
