25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Martin Rees: We'll Never Hit Barriers To Scientific Under...
We humans haven't changed much since our remote ancestors roamed the African savannah. Our brains evolved to cope with the human-scale environment. So it is surely remarkable that we can make sense of phenomena that confound everyday intuition: in particular, the minuscule atoms we're made of, and the vast cosmos that surrounds us.
Nonetheless—and here I'm sticking my neck out—maybe some aspects of reality are intrinsically beyond us, in that their comprehension would require some post-h...Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
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notes25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
RPG as a Game of Imagination
It's a game of your imagination, where you get to tell storeis by taking on the roles of the main chractes-characters you create. It's a game that offers a multitude of choices-more choices than even the most sophisticated computer game, because the only limit to what you can do is what you can imagine. The story unfolds like a movie, except all of the action takes place in your imagination.
There's no script to follow, other than a rough outline used by the Gamemaster (GM): you decide what ...Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
1 29 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
So Many Objects in Space, Why isn't it Filled with Light?
So numerous are the objects which meet our view in the heavens, that we cannot imagine a point of space where some light would not strike the eye;—innumerable stars, thousands of double and multiple systems, clusters in one blaze with their tens of thousands of stars, and the nebulae amazing us by the strangeness of their forms and the incomprehensibility of their nature, till at last, from the limit of our senses, even these thin and airy phantoms vanish in the distance. Folksonomies: astronomy
Folksonomies: astronomy
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notes04 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Human Race Will Only Improve
Such is the object of the work I have undertaken; the result of which will be to show, from reasoning and from facts, that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties; that the pefectibility of man is absolutely indefinite; that the progress of this perfectibility, henceforth above the controul of every power that would impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us. The course of this progress may doubtless be more or less...Folksonomies: progress perfection
Folksonomies: progress perfection
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notesWe will only progress and proceed toward perfection.
29 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Why Nothing Can Go Faster Than the Speed of Light
Einstein's equation gives us the most concrete explanation
for the central fact that nothing can travel faster than light speed. You may have wondered, for instance, why we can't take some
object, a muon say, that an accelerator has boosted up to 667 million miles per hour—99.5 percent of light speed—and "push it a
bit harder," getting it to 99.9 percent of light speed, and then "really push it harder" impelling it to cross the light-speed barrier.
Einstein's formula explains why such eff... 1 notes
notesBecause its mass will become infinite.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Earth is Not the Center of the Universe
To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither center nor boundary ... Just as we regard ourselves as at the center of that universally equidistant circle, which is the great horizon and the limit of our own encircling ethereal region, so doubtless the inhabitants of the moon believe themselves to be at the center (of a great horizon) that embraces this earth, the sun, and the stars, and is the boundary of the radii of their own horizon. Thus the earth no more than any other world i... 1 notes
notesGiordano Bruno's logical argument that the earth cannot be the center of the Universe, because the universe is infinite in size and something infinite has not center. He would be executed by the church for this heresy.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Universal Intelligence Cannot Exist
We conclude that there cannot be a strongly cohesive network of
communicating, unifying intelligences through the whole universe if (1) such
galactic civilizations evolve upward from individual planetary societies and if (2)
the velocity of light is indeed a fixed limit on the speed of information
transmission, as special relativity requires (i.e., if we ignore such possibilities as
using black holes for fast transport: See Chapter 39). Such a universal intelligence
is a kind of god that cann... 1 notes
notesAt best, aliens advanced enough to be gods could only exist at a galactic level.
15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Demoivre's Death
The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in his sleep. Folksonomies: synchronicity
Folksonomies: synchronicity
1 notes
notesHe slept a little longer each night until he slept for 24 hours, then died.
03 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Hierarchical World of Mathematics and Theoretical Phy...
The world of mathematics and theoretical physics is hierarchical. That was my first exposure to it. There's a limit beyond which one cannot progress. The differences between the limiting abilities of those on successively higher steps of the pyramid are enormous. I have not seen described anywhere the shock a talented man experiences when he finds, late in his academic life, that there are others enormously more talented than he. I have personally seen more tears shed by grown men and women o... 1 notes
notesThe difference in talent between individuals is enormous, and shocking to those who discover others are vastly more talented than they.
18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Law Strives for an Impossible Standard of Accuracy
When we are asked to swear in courts of law that we will tell
'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth', we
are being asked the impossible. It is simply beyond our powers.
Our memories are fallible; even scientific truth is merely an
approximation; and we are ignorant about nearly all of the
Universe. Nevertheless, a life may depend on our testimony. To
swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
to the limit of our abilities is a fair request. Without th...When it asks us to swear to tell the whole truth.
