Month: May 2016

Pilot Wave Theory

The experiment that Steinberg and his team conducted was analogous to the standard 2-slit experiment. They used photons rather than electrons, and instead of sending those photons through a pair of slits, they passed through a beam splitter, a device that directs a photon along one of 2 paths, depending on the photon’s polarization. The photons eventually reach a single-photon camera (equivalent to the screen in the traditional experiment) that records their final position. The question “Which of 2 slits did the particle pass through?” becomes “Which of 2 paths did the photon take?”

Louis Theroux interviewing technique

Louis Theroux’s ability to establish a rapport with subjects is legendary, even with people who are aware that he may be, from their perspective, implicitly hostile. His affectation of ignorance and naivety is part of it, obviously, but it’s more than that: he lets subjects take a position of superiority, remains emotionally detached, yet exposes himself to scrutiny.

Automation 2036

a nice summary if you have been living under a rock

My main assumptions for the next 20 years are:

  • Automation will make more and more people unemployable
  • No dystopia: Democracies will continue to function “reasonably”
  • Some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) will become common
  • Minimum wage will probably disappear: Unions will fight a rear-guard action but in a sense, once you have UBI, much of the justification for minimum wage goes away. And even if “officially” it stays, people will simply become independent and do “consulting jobs” which are exempt from unions
  • Capitalism will be alive and well: While UBI sounds a bit like socialism, and taxes will probably be higher, capitalism as we know it will continue.
  • Automation will accelerate: Once UBI exists, why would somebody do unpleasant work? Well, if it pays very well, or it is challenging. So there will be a bigger push to automate things which are currently done by people on very low wage.

Also, once many / most people are on UBI, I think luddites / unions / special interest groups will find it harder to block further automation: People on UBI will look unkindly on a group suggesting that a service / product should stay expensive just so that group will keep their jobs. Will inequality grow? Depends on how you look at it: Income inequality will probably continue rising (even though taxes will be higher to finance UBI). But how about Quality-of-Life inequality? That’s a lot harder to measure. So what will everybody do?

  • There will be cheap, good education
  • People will have more fun
  • Everybody will be an artist
  • Religions / alternative / new-age stuff
  • Helping others

New clown car side shows

i like that characters in this summer comedy get to develop little spinoff dramas as they leave the main plotline:

I believe in the power of prayer. Be full of faith and so full of joy that this team was chosen to fight a long battle. It took 25 years to defeat slavery. That is a lot longer than 4 years.

Fake Coffee

Someone asked me recently what I would say if some of those who are critiqued for their “cup acting” in this video were to reveal that the cups in question were actually full of liquid, and that this was all in my head. And the truth is we’re past the point where this is about truth: it’s about how the persistence of empty cups has fundamentally altered the way I experience television, and exploring the reasons why that’s happened (and will continue to happen for entirely logical, practical reasons that my brain won’t compute because that’s just how it’s going to be).

Drake equation correlations

Overall, the independence of the terms of the Drake equation is likely fairly strong. However, there are relevant size scales to consider.

  • Over multiple gigaparsec scales there can not be any correlations, not even artificially induced ones, because of limitations due to the expansion of the universe (unless there are super-early or FTL civilizations).
  • Over 100s of megaparsec scales the universe is fairly uniform, so any natural influences will be randomized beyond this scale.
  • Colonization waves in Brin’s model could have scales on the galactic cluster scale, but this is somewhat parameter dependent.
  • The nearest civilization can be expected around , where is the galactic volume. If we are considering parameters such that the number of civilizations per galaxy are low V needs to be increased and the density will go down significantly (by a factor of 100), leading to a modest jump in expected distance.
  • Panspermias, if they exist, will have an upper extent limited by escape from galaxies – they will tend to have galactic scales or smaller. The same is true for galactic habitable zones if they exist. Percolation colonization models are limited to galaxies (or even dense parts of galaxies) and would hence have scales in the kiloparsec range.
  • “Scars” due to gamma ray bursts and other energetic events are below kiloparsecs.
  • The lower limit of panspermias are due to being smaller than the panspermia, presumably at least in the parsec range. This is also the scale of close clusters of stars in percolation models.
  • Time-wise, the temporal correlation length is likely on the gigayear timescale, dominated by stellar processes or advanced civilization survival. The exception may be colonization waves modifying conditions radically.

The hospital may kill you

based on a recent ER experience that involved staff cluelessly looking for me for 30 min even though i was sitting right in front of them, this isn’t hard to believe at all. if you are struggling with the basics, what hope do you have with real problems? the kicker was that that hospital then spammed me a few months later with a call for donations to continue to operate their 3rd world boiler room.