vol VII: Notes
2014
Notes
[Notebook: DB 78: Catholicism 2.0]
[Sunday 19 October 2014 - Saturday 27 October 2014]
Sunday 19 October 2014
[page 46]
Monday 20 October 2014
Little insights creep in without really being noticed. I am very pleased with the comparions between permutation of imagination that occurred to me a while ago but which I hardly thought about at the time [although I wrote it down]. One can see it in action in quantum systems which appear to choose at random from the eigenfunctions with which they respond to observation so that if we observe enough instances of a given observable we are rewarded with an imaginative sequence of permutations of eigenvalues. Physicists are inclined to see these sequences as random, but we know that ideally coded messages are indistinguishable from random sequences even though they are obviously carefully ordered and meaningful to the communicants. Maybe these are today's
[page 48]
hundred words.
Tuesday 21 October 2014
Wednesday 22 October 2014
Thursday 23 October 2014
Friday 24 October 2014
It is traditional in quantum mechanics to say that observation disturbs the system observed because the interaction requires the exchange of at least one quantum of action. Zurek's idea seems better, that observer and observed must agree on a basis, the eigenvectors i the measurement operator, From a communication point of view, we see a quantum 'measurement' as the transmission of one symbol from source to recipient viewed as the completion of the 'eigencomputations' needed to encode and decode the message. Wojciech Hubert Zurek
Saturday 25 October 2014
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Copyright:
You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.
Further reading
Books
Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)
Barnes, Peter, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2006 Amazon Editorial Reviews
Book Description
'In Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of the operating system known as the free market. Despite clunky features, early versions of capitalism were somewhat successful. The current model, however, is packed with proprietary features that benefit a lucky few while threatening to crash the system for everyone else. Far from being "free," the market is accessible only to huge corporations that reap the benefits while passing the costs on to the consumer. Barnes maps out a better way. Drawn from his own career as a highly successful entrepreneur, the author's vision of capitalism includes alternatives to the current profit-driven corporate approach, new legal entities, and a more responsible use of markets and property rights. Capitalism 3.0 offers viable solutions to some of the country's most pressing economic, environmental, and social concerns.'
Amazon
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Feynman, Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Quantum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. ... In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.'
Amazon
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Khinchin, A I, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.'
Amazon
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| Richtmeyer, F K, and E H Kennard, T Lauritsen, Introduction to Modern Physics, McGraw Hill Book Company 1955 Preface to first edition (1928): 'The purpose of this book is, frankly, pedagogical. The author has attempted to present such a discussion of the origin, development, and present status of some of the more important concepts of physics, classical as well as modern, as will give to the student a correct perspective of the growth and present trend of physics as a whole. . . . 'back |
Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...'
Amazon
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Wolfe, Tom, The Painted Word, Picador978-0312427580 2008 Amazon Review: 'Amazon.com Review
In 1975, after having put radical chic and '60s counterculture to the satirical torch, Tom Wolfe turned his attention to the contemporary art world. The patron saint (and resident imp) of New Journalism couldn't have asked for a better subject. Here was a hotbed of pretension, nitwit theorizing, social climbing, and money, money, money--all Wolfe had to do was sharpen his tools and get to work. He did! Much of The Painted Word is a superb burlesque on that modern mating ritual whereby artists get to despise their middle-class audience and accommodate it at the same time. The painter, Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."
The other bone Wolfe has to pick is with the proliferation of art theory, particularly the sort purveyed by postwar colossi like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg. Decades after the heyday of abstract expressionism, these guys make pretty easy targets. What could be more absurd, after all, than endless Jesuitical disputes about the flatness of the picture plane? So most of them get a highly comical spanking from the author. It's worth pointing out, of course, that Wolfe paints with a broad (as it were) brush. If he's skewering the entire army of artistic pretenders in a single go, there's no room to admit that Jasper Johns or Willem DeKooning might actually have some talent. But as he would no doubt admit, The Painted Word isn't about the history of art. It's about the history of taste and middlebrow acquisition--and nobody has chronicled these two topics as hilariously or accurately as Tom Wolfe.' --James Marcus
Amazon
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Papers
| DeLisi, Charles, "Meetings that changed the world: Santa Fe 1986: Human genome baby-steps", Nature, 455, 5, 16 October 2008, page 876-877. 'The 1980s saw plenty of discussion on sequencing the human genome. But, according to Charles DeLisi, one conference was crucial for converting an idea to reality.'. back |
| Hetherington, Alistair M, F Ian Woodward, "The role of stomata in sening and driving environmetnal change", Nature, 424, 6951, 21 August 2003, page 901-908. 'Stomata, the small pores on the surfaces of leaves and stalks, regulate the flow of gases in and out of leaves and thus plants as a whole. They adapt to local and global changes on all timescales from minutes to millennia. Recent data from diverse fields are establishing their central importance to plant physiology, evolution and global ecology. Stomatal morphology, distribution and behaviour respond to a spectrum of signals, from intracellular signalling to global clmatic change. Such concerted adaptation results from a web of control systems, reminscent of a 'scale free' network, whose untangling requires integrated approaches beyond those currently used.'. back |
| Mann, Nicholas H, et al, "Bacterial photosynthesis genes in a virus", Nature, 424, 6950, 14 August 2003, page 741. 'A bacteriophage may protect itself and its host against a deadly effect of bright sunlight.'. back |
| McDonough, William F, "Earth science: Deducing a reducing mantle", Nature, 455, , 16 October 2008, page 881-883. 'Increasingly sophisticated techniques are being used to persuade ancient rocks to yield information about conditions on and in the early Earth — for instance, about the oxidation state of the mantle.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In science, one datum point can be worth a thousand models. On page 960 of this issue, Berry et al.1 report the first results obtained by applying a new approach to estimating the oxidation–reduction (redox) condition of Earth's upper mantle during the Archaean, some 2,700 million years ago. Their study is based on the ratio of different oxidized states of iron (Fe3+ to Fe2+) in inclusions of ancient komatiite rock, trapped in crystals preserved in ancient lava flows in Zimbabwe. The crystals should have protected the inclusions from subsequent alteration, which should thus reflect the native lava state.'. back |
| Südhof, Thomas C, "Neuroligins and neurexins link synaptic function to cognitive isease", Nature, 455, 7215, 16 October 2008, page 903-911. 'The brain processes information by transmitting signals at synapses, which connect neurons into vast networks of communicating cells. In these networks, synapses not only transmit signals but also transform and refine them. Neurexins and neuroligins are synaptic cell-adhesion molecules that connect presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons at synapses, mediate signalling across the synapse, and shape the properties of neural networks by specifying synaptic functions. In humans, alterations in genes encoding neurexins or neuroligins have recently been implicated in autism and other cognitive diseases, linking synaptic cell adhesion to cognition and its disorders.'
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Links
| Dark matter - Wikipedia, Dark matter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. According to present observations of structures larger than galaxies, as well as Big Bang cosmology, dark matter and dark energy account for the vast majority of the mass in the observable universe.' back |
| Feynman diagram - Wikipedia, Feynman diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum field theory a Feynman diagram is an intuitive graphical representation of a contribution to the transition amplitude or correlation function of a quantum mechanical or statistical field theory' back |
| Jessica Irvine, Hit of the Keynes will do us good - Opinion - smh.com.lau, 'The British economist John Maynard Keynes once delivered a beautiful one-liner about facing cold, hard reality. "When the facts change, I change my mind."
When it comes to the federal budget, those words could have been uttered by our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, yesterday. After months of solemn talk about the need to scrimp and save to bolster the budget surplus, the Government has cracked open the piggy bank and money is flying out the door as quickly as possible to arrest the economy's slide.' back |
| SLAC, Theory: Feynman Diagrams (SLAC VVC), 'Richard Feynman was the physicist who developed the method still used today to calculate rates for electromagnetic and weak interaction particle processes. The diagrams he introduced provide a convenient shorthand for the calculations. They are a code physicists use to talk to one another about their calculations.' back |
| Wikipedia, Public Key Cryptography, 'Public-key cryptography is a form of modern cryptography which allows users to communicate securely without previously agreeing on a shared secret key. For most of the history of cryptography, a key had to be kept absolutely secret and would be agreed upon beforehand using a secure, but non-cryptographic, method; for example, a face-to-face meeting or a trusted courier. There are a number of significant practical difficulties in this approach to distributing keys. Public-key cryptography was invented to address these drawbacks — with public-key cryptography, users can communicate securely over an insecure channel without having to agree upon a key beforehand.'
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| Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3))
"Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on -- to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the ``wavepacket collapse'', designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates. In quantum Darwinism, they are the progenitors of multiple copies spread throughout the environment -- the fittest quantum states that not only survive decoherence, but subvert it into carrying information about them -- into becoming a witness.' back |
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