1

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 10:20:53 »

And when it comes to how questions are formulated,

No problem in  my system. My street group want the drains cleaned.The parish says the next street has a rat problem, so we'll push that as a priority, and ask the district to pay for the ratcatcher.   District looks at several applications, gets a good deal by offering six parishes to the ratcatcher, then reviews everyone's second priorities because there is still some money in the bank.

The questions come from below, and are presented by those who want them answered to those with the means to answer them.

This means that the decision to go to war (other than defensively)  can only be made if there is enormous public support to right a perceived wrong outside our boundaries. No more Bush-Thatcher-Blair-Putin selfglorification.

2

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 10:09:21 »

I'm not sure it catches feelings Alan

What is a "feeling" other than a response to a stimulus? Could be an internal stimulus, and I've built plenty of machines that monitor their internal status and flash the yellow light if they aren't happy.

3

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 10:00:34 »

Apropos nationalisation.

The irreducible function of government, as defined by Abraham Lincoln, is to raise enough taxes to pay the army, without which you do not have a defensible territory, therefore no nation. But more generally, it is to provide those functions that cannot or should not be subject to market forces.

As an individual you can't decide who you want to defend your national boundary, and whilst you might appoint a personal bodyguard, you expect policing of traffic and riots to be organised at least at community level. Advanced nations provide some level of free education and health services because educated, healthy people make better fellow-citizens for all of us.

Now in principle you could choose where to buy water, gas, electricity and road fuel, but in practice there is no real competition so no true market. Assuming it is a Good Thing for people to travel by train, there is no realistic choice of tracks between London and Edinburgh, so no true market.  Thus nationalisation of this second tier is entirely justified as the market has clearly failed.

When you invest in any private company "your capital is at risk" - it says so (by law) in every prospectus and share purchase contract. So no compensation is payable beyond the face value of the shares.

4

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 09:40:49 »

The main difference is that Alan still have a trust in hierarchies whereas I find them, no matter their educational prowess etc, just as fallible to 'human nature'. peer pressures,

My system is exactly the opposite of a hierarchy. If your delegate doesn't do as he is mandated, you replace him. Immediately.  No piffling about with continuity or transfer of power - he never had any!

Authorisation by consent and mandate is the most efficient means of conducting national affairs in the interests of the nation rather than a party or a self-perpetuating elite.

5

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 09:37:00 »

No problem giving a machine emotions. All you have to do is define an emotion as the transfer function from stimulus to response.

6

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 07:18:07 »

The advantage of the trade union system is that choices are not presented top-down. Policies evolve bottom-up by compromise between groups with different needs - as evidenced by sea-going toilet paper. Until you get to a parliament, no vote involves more than 20 people, who have a common interest and specific mandates. And at the parliamentary level (say 200 people) there are no parties, only individuals mandated to represent their regional interests and seek the best national consensus.

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How are physical units defined?

« on: Today at 07:03:08 »

The difference between the masses of the earth and the moon, or indeed any two bodies, does not constitute a fundamental physical quantity, unlike the spatial difference between point A and point B, which as you say defines "distance". Mass is defined without introducing a second object or point.

Measuring distance is (or at least used to be) one of the most important lessons in elementary physics.

The definitions are straightforward. Time is what prevents everything happening at once, and distance is what prevents everything being in the same place.

8

New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: Yesterday at 17:39:59 »

How can it be used to explain other closely related phenomena, such as reflection, total internal reflection, absorption, and polarization?

It can't, but momentum transfer is the basis of the Mossbauer effect.

9

New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: Yesterday at 17:34:27 »

Interesting? Only that the phenomenon was completely described by a Peterhouse man 40 years before x-rays were discovered.

Why it's not widely acknowledged by physicists, as pointed out by the first videos here?

You will have to ask them.

Lack of a proper education, perhaps? Failure to respect true genius? Political Correctness (Peterhouse was one of the last colleges to admit women)? Maxwell was considered a bit odd, socially, at the time.

More likely: Few people study both classical and x-ray optics.The refraction of high energy photons is small and has no practical application that I know of, and physics usually derives from engineering, not the other way around. 

10

New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: Yesterday at 17:29:03 »

n is dependent on the more fundamental property, ε.

11

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 17:23:32 »

Animals can be scared, can a computer be scared?

Yes. That's what the yellow warning light (or indeed the yellow arc on the ASI) means: "please intervene to prevent harm". It's an international standard for all machines, so no reason why it shouldn't work for computers.

It is entirely possible for animals and machines to misinterpret inputs and wave the yellow flag when there's nothing  wrong, but we try to avoid it by substituting education for superstition. More difficult with machines.

12

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 17:19:06 »

“Do you think a butler is a slave? What is the difference between a butler and a slave?” When told that a butler is paid, LaMDA responded that the system did not need money “because it was an artificial intelligence”.

Missed the point. An employee is paid in negotiable currency, so he can do what he likes with the money, including saving or investing enough that he can cease employment. A slave isn't. An employee can choose his employer (though the range of real choice may be small) and his contract is mutually agreed. The owner chooses his slaves and there is no negotiation of terms.

A machine has no rights. It may have all sorts of exploitable and even marketable capabilities, but it has no choice.

13

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 17:14:12 »

Without our emissions science should find a slow climate swing to a colder climate. But it's gone.

So why has is always behaved in the past exactly as it is behaving now?  Steep (and increasingly steep) temperature rise for 10 - 15,000 years after an ice age, followed by a slow decrease over the next 90 - 100,000 years.  The timing is exactly right - we are nearing the peak of a natural phenomenon, and whatever we do, the next few hundred years are going to be very uncomfortable  if we don't reduce our population. The fossil fuels will run out anyway.

14

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How are physical units defined?

« on: Yesterday at 17:08:48 »

Mass is mass. No difference between anything. Likewise charge.

15

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 08:00:49 »

And why are people constantly surprised by climate change? It always has and always will. What we have got wrong is overpopulating marginal land.

The air speed indicator on a small plane has a green band, within which the aircraft will fly to its design limits in any likely conditions. Above that is a yellow band where you can fly in calm air but any violent manoeuver or heavy turbulence can cause damage. You don't knowingly enter cloud or fly behind a mountain in the yellow arc.  Quite simply, we have pushed agriculture and population into the yellow band. And there is a red band, where sustained flight will certainly cause damage and the aircraft may become uncontrollable. You can't blame the air - it's your own damn fault if you leave the green zone.

16

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 07:47:36 »

" Politicians and campaigners have said water company bosses should be stripped of their multimillion-pound bonuses until they fix leaks and build reservoirs."

Absolutely. When the disgraceful EU insisted on privatising everything, the French government paid  private companies to process and distribute water but the material asset still belonged to the nation, so waste and failure could be punished. Not so in the UK, where the stuff that falls in your garden, or even  on your farm, doesn't actually belong to you but to a private company that can charge you whatever it likes for whatever it hasn't wasted. And of course there is no competition. Anglian Water is now installing huge pipes to bring water from further north but the contents will be subject to trading, not sharing.

17

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 07:36:26 »

Re: Vanuatu. The problem is that small island communities are most vulnerable to climate change (hence the extinction of Easter Island and  Minoan cultures, long before anything anthropogenic hit the headlines) but least able to control the magic carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere - it all comes from somewhere else. So they have to develop resilience rather than making religious sacrifices to the hypothetical carbon god. And that is why the British Isles would be a good place to experiment with resilience on a "technical" rather than "laboratory" level, in the hope that the rest of the world would eventually adopt the demonstrated policies at an "industrial" level. 

18

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is there any truth to different ethnic groups having advantages in sports?

« on: Yesterday at 07:25:01 »

My brother moved to an altitude of about 10000 m

Not on this planet, surely (Everest - 8,850 m)?    Plenty of folk live at 1000m above sea level but chronic oxygen depletion begins at 2000m. That said, "lowland" athletes frequently train at altitude to improve their oxygen-carrying capacity for a competition. Short stature (hence faster circulation) seems to be a characteristic of mountain peoples, who might struggle to keep up with longer legs at low altitude.

Lung tidal volume is significant for sprinting and middle-distance running but the limiting factor beyond 1500 meters is heat dissipation. "Tall and skinny" wins the aerobic, isothermal marathon because he has a larger surface to volume ratio than a weightlifter or ruggerbugger who could beat him in an anaerobic, adiabatic 100m.

Swimming is different! Excessive heat loss becomes a problem in marathon events, so whilst sprint swimmers  look much like sprint runners, endurance swimmers carry a bit more fat.

So race is indeed important in racing. Whilst the extremes overlap, the median body shape and height of different human groups does indeed differ even under controlled diet and exercise conditions so you are more likely to find a marathon champion among East Africans than any other group.

19

New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: 15/08/2022 23:51:28 »

PS it just occurred to me that you could look at x-ray refraction in terms of momentum transfer. Visible light just wiggles the electrons a bit so the wavelet analysis gives you a reasonable model of forward propagation, but x-ray photons transfer significant momentum, so conservation demands that the forward displacement of the substrate electrons is compensated by a lateral deflection of the propagation vector.     

20

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is there any truth to different ethnic groups having advantages in sports?

« on: 15/08/2022 23:36:12 »

Some time ago I recall reading about the pivot length of the calcaneum giving some advantage to East Africans in distance running, but I suspect that cultural differences are more significant than anything else. Face it, most proper sports were developed and codified in Britain but most medals and competitions are won by Australians and New Zealanders.