vol VII: Notes
2015
Notes
[Sunday 11 October 2015 - Saturday 17 October 2015]
[Notebook: DB 79: Galileo Wins]
[page 105]
Sunday 11 October 2015
Nervous systems work in a way similar to quantum mechanics,
[page 106]
each neuron accepting a superposition of positive and negative inputs from its connections to the rest of the network and integrating over a period to decide whether or not to yield an output signal. Neuron - Wikipedia
Quantum mechanics conforms to the fixed points model, the fixed points being computed by the eigenvalue equation. The invisible and deterministic evolution of the wave equation can be understood as an element of the dynamics of the divinity in the hypothesis that the universe is divine. Is there anything about this scheme which we wish to change? Perhaps only the interpretation of superposition. Current quantum mechanical thought sees all the solutions to a given wave equation as existing simultaneously as complex amplitudes, one alone of which becomes real in a given event through the 'collapse of the wave function'. In the network picture each element of the superposition is understood as a node in the network and an observation is equivalent to communicating with that node to yield a real particle, the message between an observing node and an observed node. What quantum mechanics predicts is the rate of communication on the channels represented by the eigenfunction of the measurement operator. This rate is the ratio of the overlap of each pair of nodes to the total overlap of the two systems [normalized to 1]. From a communication point of view, a quantum system is a source and quantum mechanics predicts the frequency of each letter in the source alphabet. Jim Branson: Eigenvalue Equations, Wave function collapse - Wikipedia
EPR Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen
Unsatisfied with myself because I cannot reach the goals I imagined for myself fifty years ago in my monastic days, coupled paradigm changes in physics and theology, and so to a degree unsatisfied with everybody else. My wave function has not yet collapsed to yield the outputs I long for and which, now the children have grown up I can seek with all my energy.
[page 107]
Maybe time to face another round of student poverty and return to academia.
The wave functions describe space of possibilities that can only be realized one at a time like the serial output of a source. Quantum field theory describes the mechanism behind the source that gives meaning to its output, as my neural processes give meaning to the fixed point (sequence of fixed points) that comprise this text. Reality is constructed from possibilities. [The wave function is a fixed point that defines a symmetry which can be broken by one member its set of solutions].
Kotzwinkle: Queen of Swords Kotzwinkle
We imagine that the universe evolves by variation and selection, beginning with a set of symbols which can be mapped to natural numbers. We understand each symbol to be a logical function, and we string them together according to different permutations. Large processes are cycles of permutations. The propensity to communicate we call charge. The fundamental charge seems to be mass which is equivalent to energy with the constant of proportionality c2. The basic source of variation we take to be the permutation group The 'outputs' from this group we take to be self sustaining cycles of permutation. So we wish to model quarks, gluons, electrons, photons, neutrinos and now the higgs. Is there any chance? Keep rattling the dice. We use metaphysics to make the problem tractable, For physics, metaphysics comprises symmetries and invariant extrema, the boundaries on possibility and the claim that real contradictions do not exist, ie nothing can be both p and not-p simultaneously. This constraint introduces time and energy, we guess, since at a 'point' the only way p and not-p can exist is by taking turns like children with a toy or like the utilization of any other capital good [fixed point, algorithm], potential, airbnb, uber. Here we move away from the omnipotent eternal god and quantum superposition. We see that if we want different frequencies, they must exist in different 'places'. Space is essential if more than one potential is to be realized at once, ie if two particles are to exist, ie two fermions.
[page 108]
Maybe we can see the quantum harmonic oscillator as two degrees of freedom, one of energy, the other the space of memories that store the different frequencies. These locations are differentiated by frequencies , but since they are populated by bosons, they may have any energy, nhν, n = number of photons, ν = address. This suggests that we might think of fermions as memory locations, bosons as their content. The rest mass of an electron is the boson within it? Something like this.
Space-time is a symmetry or algorithm, the algorithm that gives impenetrability to particle so that they do not 'cross', making 3D non-crossing wiring ['private communication', encryption] possible. This contrasts with the complex world of quantum superposition, where amplitudes can exist separately and add linearly.
Field = space = algorithm/symmetry [abstract]
Particle = point [concrete]
So we have basic space-time, which is described by the Lorentz and Einstein metrics, and then we have the higher order spaces which use basic space-time as a subroutine and add their own further complexity. Perhaps space-time is just a boson thing (3D non-interfering communication) and then the more complex structures arise from fermions. Judging by its lack of properties, versions of the Higgs could be the most fundamental of fundamental particles, not least because it is ubiquitous.
Monday 12 October 2015
The metaphysical arguments;
a) The universe has at least the power of a computer network.
b) We are here - anthropic principle. Geraint Lewis. Geraint Lewis, Anthropic principle - Wikipedia
[page 109]
How does the Universe actually (concretely) implement quantum mechanics?
Feynman: 'Simulating . . .' page 476: Bose simulation. Does this article kill my plan. As usual got my back to an intellectual wall and see no way forward. Illogical as ever. Richard P. Feynman
Comment to the Conversation:
Our basic problem seems to be to keep the peace. The two extreme strategies seem to be the pax romana, practised by the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and the Papacy, where the monarch has absolute power and anyone who steps out of line is killed, imprisoned or at least loses their job. Pax Romana - Wikipedia
The other is the democratic ideal embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both approaches have significant prerequisites for success. The first requires the dictator to have absolute power, particularly control of the military and the police. The second requires the voting population to be well informed about the nature of the world they inhabit and the choices available to them. United Nations
There is no doubt that the latter option is to be preferred. Government is a matter of control, and the relevant discipline is cybernetics. A fundamental principle is that a controller must be complex enough to deal with all possible states (‘error modes’) of the system controlled. Once control is lost, trouble is not far away. A dictator does this by trying to suppress the complexity of the population, denying the observation that entropy increases. A democracy attempts to do it by recognizing that the only system complex enough to have a chance of controlling itself is the population itself. Cybernetics - Wikipedia
The dictatorial approach is inherently unstable, but the big difficulty is making the transition from dictatorship to democracy. They key, it seems, is the free flow of true information, something that dictators and others with an interest in the status quo try to prevent by suppressing education and spreading misinformation.
Our bodies are a relatively peaceful coalition of some 10E14 cells. They key to peace here is a shared genotype. This suggests that peace is possible, no matter how large the population, if there is a shared basis of cooperation. In the case of human populations, this basis seems to be a shared vision of reality of the sort produced by science. The fundamental article of scientific faith is that the world is one and consistent. The success of democracy, then, would appear to be based on scientifically guided voting.
There are, of course, many options for which science gives no guidance. Whatever we do, however, should not fly in the face of such realities as science does reveal. A good foundation for democracy, then, would be an education system that makes sure that every voter knows this. I am pleased to feel that the Conversation promotes such education. John Keane
Tuesday 13 October 2015
Quantum theory sees particle as wave-packet, superposition of frequencies that is localized by superposition.
Would love to be able to achieve my theological aims by metaphysical means without having to go into the details of physics, but on the other hand the payoff would be much greater if I can unify theology and physics.
Logical consistency is a feature of formalism and the problem for me is to couple it to real physics. Quantum mechanics has a formally consistent mathematical foundation, but then takes a leap into the concret with a symmetry breaking 'reduction of the wave function'.
Quantum mechanics assumes that a spectrum of frequencies can be superposed a a point but reality demands [separate locations for separate frequencies] (?).
How many network layers does it take to make space-time? Each layer is a new symmetry / algorithm that contributes to the overall functioning. What we need to discern is the ordering of these symmetries.
Feynman's list of physical symmetries: translation in space; translation in time; rotation; inertial motion; reversal of time; reflection of space; interchange of identical particles; quantum mechanical phase; matter-antimatter. Feynman, Leighton & Sands: Feynman Lectures on Physics, I:52
Feynman I:52:'The conservation law which is connected
[page 110]
with the quantum-mechanical phase seems to be the conservation of electrical charge. This is altogether a very interesting business.
Wednesday 14 October 2015
Thursday 15 October 2015
Absolute monarchy: Haile Selassie: Ryszard Kopuscinski, The Emporer Kapuscinski, Haile Selassie - Wikipedia
Friday 16 October 2015
The discussion of energy has been relatively easy and corresponds to 'pure' quantum mechanics. Now we come to momentum and the conservation of momentum which as a symmetry implies that the space algorithm applies throughout space. Quantum mechanics books like to model particles as localized superpositions of frequencies that are equivalent to dirac delta functions, that is points that integrate to 1 which I have liked to model as functions with a width of 1/ℵn and a height of ℵn, but this does not seem very credible.
The practical problem with superposition is the proposed existence of many different frequencies existing at a point. These frequencies are the spectrum of possible solutions to the wave function. On the assumption that a symmetry is expressed by an algorithm, each frequency may be considered as an instance of the algorithm, but, like a real computer, this algorithm can only process one instance at a time, which is why processing tasks with relatively simple algorithms nevertheless take a king time (many cycles) to execute. One of the hopes of quantum computation, which seems doubtful to me, is that a quantum computer can process all the instances of a given algorithm simultaneously in parallel.
[page 111]
Symmetries: 1. The wave equation with its power of complexification via Hilbert spaces of finite and transfinite dimension.
The 'superposition error' leads us to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It recognizes that we need a 'memory' for each element of a superposition and raises each of these to the status of a seperate universe. Quantum superposition - Wikipedia
The wave equation carries us from action to energy.
Let us guess that space enters the picture when we establish distinct Hilbert spaces existing at different points, each operating with a distinct energy (frequency). These Hilbert spaces may be considered as subspaces is a larger space, the tensor product of the originals which has sufficient dimensions to embrace all the interactions between the constituent subspaces. Spaces operating at different frequencies are like a network of computers operating at different frequencies requiring buffering (memory, space) to communicate [maybe buffering is not necessary when amplitudes are simply added, linear superposition].
Feynman, FLP III: 8-5: 'The idea, then, is that to describe the quantum mechanical world we need to pick a set of base states i and to write the physical laws by giving the matrix of coefficients Hij. Then we have everything—we can answer any question about what will happen.' Feynman, Leighton & Sands: FLP III 8
'H*ij = Hji. This follows from the condition that total probability that the system is in some state does not change.
Differential equation = algorithm
How do we get from time to space - via velocity, specifically the velocity of light which 'equalizes' space and time to give the null geodesic.
[page 112]
Feynman III: 7-2 Relativistic transformation of amplitude. Feynman, Leighton & Sands: FLP III 7
Saturday 17 October 2015
Symmetry : degree of freedom, spatial dimension but not time.
Linear addition of phase and reversibility vs entropy and self-reference.
Comment to Commonweal:
The terrorists have won hands down. We have completely failed to deal with the threat they pose. They have produced a catastrophic immune response in capitalist governments which is threatening the life of the body politic. Perhaps it is time to give up the violent response so characteristic of our militarized states and give a bit of thought to the root causes of terrorism: the violent oppression of people who have no other choice than to fight violence with violence. In Australia a few quasi-terrorist incidents have caused the government to legislate away most of our freedoms and institute a full blown police state. Only today they secretly removed a pregnant woman who had been raped in one of our offshore gulags and brought to Australia for medical care. Here clandestine removal to a country where abortion is illegal was avoid court proceedings which sought counselling and a possible termination for the pregnancy caused by her rapist. Poor fella my country.
We begin with a two state system. Two simultaneously existing states require two distinct memories, which, if they are uncorrelated, can look something like a continuous superposition and so imitate the traditional formalism of quantum mechanics. So we built 2 state version of 4-space which will look something like an implementation of the Dirac equation. The first building blocks are the Pauli matrices. Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Pauli matrices - Wikipedia
Algorithms, fixed points within which (or around which) dynamism lives. The fundamental algorithm is ∂ ψ / ∂t = -i E/ℏ ψ, the simplest representation of recursive function theory = computation. Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia
So does the wave equation arise from the dynamics or or the dynamics from the wave equation or do they, as Misner, Thorne and Wheeler saw, come into existence simultaneously in a creative moment. Misner, Thorne & Wheeler: Gravitation page 71.
Journal of Logic and Computation Oxford Journals, Mathematics and Physical Sciences
AND - BOSON
NAND - FERMION
't Hooft Gerard 't Hooft
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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!)
Kapuscinski, Ryszard, The Emporer: Downfall of an Autocrat, Vintage 1989 Jacket: The Emporer is a brilliant portrait of the last days of Haile Selassie and his maniacal, medieval court. Kapuscinski's writing, always concrete and observant, conjures marvels of meaning out of minutiae. And his book transcends reportage, becoming a nightmare of power, power depicted as a refusal of hstory, that reads as if Italo Calvino had rewritten Machiavelli. This Ethiopia is a murderous Ruritania in which real people are starving by the thousand. An unforgettable, fiercely comic and finally compassionate book.' Salman Rushdie.
Amazon
back |
Kotzwinkle, William, Queen of Swords, Abacus 1985 'This is a challenging book by a writer who knows how to create suspense and multi-dimensional characters. The author grabs the reader on the first page and doesn't let go until the last line. His dialogue is unbeatable. I recommend this book to every serious reader who enjoys fantastic literary experiences.' Susan Schubert
Amazon
back |
Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . '
Amazon
back |
Papers
| Toney, Jeffrey H, et al, "Purposeful Learning with Drug Repurposing", Science, 325, 5946, 11 September 2009, page 1339-1340. 'High-throughput screening (HTS) of comprehensive approved drug libraries has revealed new uses for old drugs . Although repurposing of drugs has been used for decades at the discretion of physicians, the Policy Forum "Repurposing with a difference" by M. S. Boguski et al. (12 June, p. 1394) describes a revolutionary approach to research and development in the drug industry that uses "repurposing pharmacovigilance" to find novel beneficial effects of drugs rather than adverse effects. This is a systematic approach that integrates new business models, patient-as-consumer activism through online social networking, information technology, and genomics as powerful tools.' back |
Links
| Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The anthropic principle (from Greek anthropos, meaning "human") is the philosophical consideration that observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it. Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe it is unremarkable that the universe's fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life.' back |
| BBC Earth, Cost the Earth Sources, 'It is widely acknowledged that the natural world should not just be reduced to a series of financial values, which are necessarily estimates.
However, in a world that often focuses on money, it can be a useful tool to help remind us that nature does have a value, and what might be lost if aspects of it disappear.' back |
| Ben Doherty and Paul Farrell, Medial bodies call for all places of detention to be opened up to scrutiny, 'Eighteen of Australia’s peak health bodies issued the statement urging the Australian government to ratify the UN’s optional protocol to the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, known as Opcat.
The Opcat was passed by the UN’s general assembly in 2002 and came into force globally in 2006. Australia is in the unusual position of having signed the treaty in 2009 – an indication of support for the purposes of the treaty – but not ratified it, which would make the country legally bound to adhere to it.
The Opcat requires countries to set up an independent and sufficiently-resourced monitoring body that has unrestricted access to all places of detention, including prisons, police lock-ups, juvenile detention centres, immigration detention facilities, locked psychiatric facilities, and secure disability and aged care facilities.' back |
| Binyamin Appelbaum, Nobel in Economics Given to Angus Deaton for Studies in Consumption, 'The economist Angus Deaton has devoted his career to improving the data that shape public policy, including measures of wealth and poverty, savings and consumption, health and happiness.
Taking advantage of faster computers and an explosion of newly accessible information, he assembled the details of many individual lives to better understand the sweep of economic trends.' back |
| Bruce Alberts, Redefining Cancer Research, 'Senator Ted Kennedy's recent death from malignant glioma, an incurable brain tumor, reminds us of the terrible toll that cancer takes on humanity. The United States alone experiences nearly 1.5 million new cases of cancer each year, resulting in more than 500,000 annual deaths, and about one-fourth of us will die in this way. Jim Watson, of DNA double-helix fame, argues that because of our new profound understandings of the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease, it's finally time to launch a real war on cancer.* I agree. But for success in such a project, we will need to expand the scope of “cancer research” funding, so as to include far more than work with cancer cells themselves.' back |
| Cybernetics - Wikipedia, Cybernetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship.' back |
David Brooks, The Republican's Incompetent Caucus, '. . . this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal. . . .
This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity.' back |
| Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Dirac equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation formulated by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. It describes fields corresponding to elementary spin-½ particles (such as the electron) as a vector of four complex numbers (a bispinor), in contrast to the Schrödinger equation which described a field of only one complex value' back |
| Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, Can the Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?, A PDF of the classic paper. 'In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false, One is thus led to conclude that the description of reality given by the wave function is not complete.' back |
| Feynman, Leighton & Sands, FLP I:52 Symmetry in Physical Laws, 'First, what is symmetry? How can a physical law be “symmetrical”? The problem of defining symmetry is an interesting one and we have already noted that Weyl gave a good definition, the substance of which is that a thing is symmetrical if there is something we can do to it so that after we have done it, it looks the same as it did before. For example, a symmetrical vase is of such a kind that if we reflect or turn it, it will look the same as it did before. The question we wish to consider here is what we can do to physical phenomena, or to a physical situation in an experiment, and yet leave the result the same.' back |
| Feynman, Leighton & Sands, FLP III:7 The Dependence of Amplitudes on Time, 'We want now to talk a little bit about the behavior of probability amplitudes in time. We say a “little bit,” because the actual behavior in time necessarily involves the behavior in space as well. Thus, we get immediately into the most complicated possible situation if we are to do it correctly and in detail. We are always in the difficulty that we can either treat something in a logically rigorous but quite abstract way, or we can do something which is not at all rigorous but which gives us some idea of a real situation—postponing until later a more careful treatment. With regard to energy dependence, we are going to take the second course. We will make a number of statements. We will not try to be rigorous—but will just be telling you things that have been found out, to give you some feeling for the behavior of amplitudes as a function of time.' back |
| Feynman, Leighton & Sands, FLP III:8 The Hamiltonian Matrix, 'One problem then in describing nature is to find a suitable representation for the base states. But that’s only the beginning. We still want to be able to say what “happens.” If we know the “condition” of the world at one moment, we would like to know the condition at a later moment. So we also have to find the laws that determine how things change with time. We now address ourselves to this second part of the framework of quantum mechanics—how states change with time. ' back |
| Geraint Lewis, We are lucky to live in a universe made for us, 'We are not the only universe, but just one in a semi-infinite sea of universes, each with their own peculiar set of physical properties, laws and particles, lifetimes and ultimately mathematical frameworks. As we have seen, the vast majority of these other universes in the overall multiverse are dead and sterile.
They only way we can exist to ask the question “why are we here?” is that we happen to find ourselves in a universe conducive to our very existence. In any other universe, we simply wouldn’t be around to wonder why we didn’t exist.' back |
| Gerard 't Hooft, Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Gravity, 'The requirement that physical phenomena associated with gr
avitational collapse
should be duly reconciled with the postulates of quantum mec
hanics implies that at a
Planckian scale our world is not 3+1 dimensional. Rather, th
e observable degrees of free-
dom can best be described as if they were Boolean variables de
fined on a two-dimensional
lattice, evolving with time. This observation, deduced fro
m not much more than unitarity,
entropy and counting arguments, implies severe restrictio
ns on possible models of quantum
gravity. Using cellular automata as an example it is argued t
hat this dimensional reduction
implies more constraints than the freedom we have in constru
cting models. This is the
main reason why so-far no completely consistent mathematic
al models of quantum black
holes have been found.' back |
| Haile Selassie - Wikipedia, Haile Selassie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Haile Selassie I . . . (23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975), born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael, was Ethiopia's regent from 1916 to 1930 and Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He also served as Chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity from 25 May 1963 to 17 July 1964 and 5 November 1966 to 11 September 1967. He was a member of the Solomonic Dynasty.' back |
| Higgs boson - Wikipedia, Higgs boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the quantum excitation of the Higgs field[6][7]—a fundamental field of crucial importance to particle physics theory,[7] first suspected to exist in the 1960s, that unlike other known fields such as the electromagnetic field, takes a non-zero constant value almost everywhere.' back |
| Jeff Sparrow, Flying a refugee to Nauru in secret" is this any different from extraordinary rendition", 'Today, the institution tasked with responding to desperate people fleeing persecution has been thoroughly militarised. Its personnel are uniformed; its key leaders comes from the army and navy, and treat the most basic information about refugees and their conditions as a state secrets.
But recent events – particularly the government chartering a RAAF jet to secretly fly a pregnant refugee out of Australia to escape a court injunction on Friday – remind us of another, less obvious, intersection between the treatment of asylum seekers and the treatment of terrorists, one that relates to the American policy known as “extraordinary rendition”.' back |
| Jim Branson, Eigenvalue Equations, 'The time independent Schrödinger Equation is an example of an Eigenvalue equation. ' back |
| John Keane, A short history of the future of democracy, 'This is the global orthodoxy. Yet all’s not well in the house of elections; public fractiousness and political dissent are brewing. There are signs of rising citizen disaffection with mainstream ‘catch-all’ parties accused of failing to be all good things to all voters. Support for populist parties is rising. Experiments with ‘anti-political’, direct-action social networks are flourishing. In some quarters, voting is judged a worthless waste of time, money and energy. And more than a few democracies are shaped by what can be called the Philippines syndrome: a strangely contradictory trend marked by elections that come wrapped in intense media coverage and great public excitement mixed with bitter disappointment about the sidelining of elected governments by big banks, big money and the outsourcing of state functions to cross-border power chains. The feeling that elections are pointless manipulations by the rich and powerful finds its nadir in the whole phenomenon of ‘electoral despotism’ in Russia, China, central Asia and elsewhere: the use by oligarchs of periodic elections as an instrument for consolidating arbitrary power.' back |
| Michael Bradley, Anti-rerror laws: Control order plan takes us closer to a police state, '. . . politics trump process every time. All that careful and intricate consideration of what everyone agrees is an extraordinarily harsh instrument of law (we are talking, after all, about the forcible detention of people who have not been charged with any crime) has been casually tossed out the window in the excitement of optimising the opportunity to bite down just a little harder on our freedom of movement, association and expression. That we are now happily contemplating locking up 14-year-olds on suspicion (not proof) of what they may otherwise do is just a fascinating reflection of how far we've come.
For another, sadly, it establishes that Turnbull is apparently every bit as willing to play politics with national security as his predecessor. The death cult is gone, but he is equally unprepared to make out his case using actual facts. As Bret Walker commented this week:
There's simply no experience from which one could sensibly say, "This is going to make us safer".' back |
| Neuron - Wikipedia, Neuron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A neuron . . . is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. These signals between neurons occur via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons can connect to each other to form neural networks. Neurons are the core components of the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system (CNS), and of the ganglia of the peripheral nervous system (PNS).' back |
| Oxford Journals, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Journal of Logic and Computation, Infor for authors: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/logcom/for_authors/index.html back |
| Pauli matrices - Wikipedia, Pauli matrices - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical physics and mathematics, the Pauli matrices are a set of three 2 × 2 complex matrices which are Hermitian and unitary.' back |
| Pax Romana - Wikipedia, Pax Romana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pax Romana (Latin for "Roman Peace") was the long period of relative peace and minimal expansion by the Roman military force experienced by the Roman Empire after the end of the Final War of the Roman Republic and before the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century.' back |
| Peter C. Doherty, Meeting Bill Campbell, the Nobel Prize winner for medicine, 'What I recall most clearly from that evening in 2012 was Bill’s story of his involvement in the discovery and development of Ivermectin. At the time he was as a senior scientist with the Merck drug company. . . . River blindness, a horrible disease that was prevalent in the developing world, is caused by the worm Onchocerca volvulus. When Merk realised it could be treated or prevented with Ivermectin, he and then-Merck President Roy Vagelos arranged for the company to provide the drug free to all who need it, for as long as it’s needed. . . . Now, giving just three inexpensive pills a year prevents people from developing river blindness, with as many as 60 million people treated in any given year.' back |
| Quantum superposition - Wikipedia, Quantum superposition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum superposition is the application of the superposition principle to quantum mechanics. The superposition principle is the addition of the amplitudes of waves from interference. In quantum mechanics it is the sum of wavefunction amplitudes, or state vectors. It occurs when an object simultaneously "possesses" two or more possible values for an observable quantity (e.g. the position or energy of a particle)' back |
| Richard P. Feynman, Simulating Physics with Computers, 'I want to talk about the possibiity that there is to be an exact simulation, that the computer will do exactly the same as nature. If this is t be proved and the type of comuter is as I've already explained, then it's going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be exactly snalyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physicsis not that way, apparently. It allows space to godown into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore if this proposition is right, physical law is wrong. back |
| Ross Gittins, Competition does have its drawbacks, 'In the real world – including the media – competitor-oriented competition is rife. This robs customers of genuine choice. It's a form of risk aversion: if I do the same as my competitor, I minimise the risk of him beating me.
It's what, in Harold Hotelling's classic example, prompts two ice-cream sellers to be back-to-back in the middle of the beach, regardless of whether some other positioning would serve customers better. It explains why business economists' forecasts tend to cluster, usually around the official forecast.' back |
| Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia, Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the Schrödinger equation, proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1926, describes the space- and time-dependence of quantum mechanical systems. It is of central importance in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, playing a role for microscopic particles analogous to Newton's second law in classical mechanics for macroscopic particles. Microscopic particles include elementary particles, such as electrons, as well as systems of particles, such as atomic nuclei.' back |
| Stephen Koukoulas, Dear Scott Morrison: stop waffling anf learn to master your brief, quickly, 'A new slogan, “work, save, invest”, and an analysis of the government’s budget deficit issue as one which is “a spending problem, not revenue” suggests Morrison is either putting politics ahead of economic policy or doesn’t yet understand the linkages in the economy.' back |
| United Nations, Official UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Home Page, 'The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) (French) (Spanish) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.'' back |
| Wave function collapse - Wikipedia, Wave function collapse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum mechanics, wave function collapse is the phenomenon in which a wave function—initially in a superposition of several eigenstates—appears to reduce to a single eigenstate (by "observation"). It is the essence of measurement in quantum mechanics, and connects the wave function with classical observables like position and momentum. Collapse is one of two processes by which quantum systems evolve in time; the other is continuous evolution via the Schrödinger equation.' back |
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