How to get an A on my evil physics final

The action is disgustingly simple. The reason is remarkably complex.

Take off your socks and shoes, and spray just a light mist from the spray bottle onto your feet.
Walk briskly, but don't run, across.

Why? Well, first, the reason you don't wear the boots. Human feet are slightly porous, where leather boots are generally covered with waterproofing. Waterproofing means that the water won't reliably stay on.
Secondly, the reason you don't wear socks. Socks are too porous; they would get soaked.

What you're trying to do is get the water on your feet to create a film boil. At the temperatures we're talking, water doesn't go straight to steam all at once (though ice would, because sublimation is a different process). It forms a film of steam bubbles which act as an insulator. Too much or too little water would ruin the effect, but a light spritz on the bottom of your feet is just about right.

Why walk briskly? Reduces the time you're in contact with the coals, and thus the conduction.
Why not run? Trip, and you're really in trouble.

What about radiation? The coals aren't that hot. If they were hydrogen plasma, yes, radiation would fry you with or without film boiling. But the coals will radiate very little.

Do the boots help? Not a bit. They're waterproof and leather burns.
Does the ice help? Not nearly enough heat capacity to cool the coals. Actually, if you started to throw the ice, I'd stop you and fail you on the spot. The sublimating ice would create a thick mist of very dangerous superheated steam. That's probably the only way you could die from this test.

According to the Harvard Implicit Association Tests...

(You should try these as well:
http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)

Evidently I have (possible psychological explanations in parens):

Little or no preference between the abled and the disabled,
(psychological explanation? Never formed a prejudice.)

A moderate preference for European-Americans compared to African-Americans,
(Grew up at Arrowwood where everyone seemed mistrustful of me because I was white. Not an excuse, but possibly a factor.)

A moderate preference for Fat People compared to Thin People,
(I don't know. Eating disorders make you thin? Subconscious pining for Amber? Concerns about my own weight?)

A moderate preference for Gay People compared to Straight People,
(Seems fairly obvious. No gay person has ever called me a "fag" or told me my sexuality is dysfunctional or immoral. Again, not an excuse, but clearly a factor.)

A slight association of Females with Careers and Males with Family,
(interesting, isn't it? Both of my parents have always worked. Is my father more nurturing? I do think we need a female President.)

A moderate association of Indian people with American and White people with Foreign.
(I'm not sure that's actually a prejudice, is it? I mean, they were here first... I suppose it could be something racial--there is some Mohawk in me after all?--but they didn't do "good/bad" like they did with black and white, they did American/Foreign.)

Maybe an assocation of African-Americans with Weapons and of European-Americans with Harmless Objects?
(I ran this test three times, because the first run really worried me. First time said "strong," second time said "moderate," third time said "little or no." So now I don't know if I have such a despicable racist association in my subconscious or not.)

That's enough of that. These tests really start to get to you after awhile.

And even if they're right, what do they mean? What should we do?

I don't enjoy eating anymore.

Except chocolate, of course, but I can't always be eating chocolate, now can I?

Maybe it's just a transition phase, but eating has become much more of a chore since I became vegetarian. I guess it seems reasonable enough to expect as much, but it's still very frustrating.

A parable of consciousness

The subjective nature of consciousness makes it a very slippery thing.

One could imagine a Chinese-Room Machine which reads inputs and produces outputs by a fixed algorithm, but does it so convincingly that most people would believe it was human.

One could also imagine a Pure-Perception Machine, which is perfectly well aware of itself, and perhaps even has a few rudimentary senses, a conception of space and time and consciousness and so forth, but has no capacity to communicate these conceptions to the outside world.

And so I tell a tale of two fictional MIT grad students, toiling in the AI Lab at the Stata Center, both trying to invent an artificial intelligence.

John Turing builds a Chinese-Room Machine, Creamy as he calls it. It's completely programmed, and he even delights in showing people the 4 million lines of code that it took to create all of Creamy's responses. Yet when people communicate with Creamy (usually by instant-messaging, so as not to be biased by appearance or sound), they have a terribly difficult time differentiating Creamy from John and from human strangers, and get it wrong as often as they get it right.

Jacque Descartes builds a Pure-Perception Machine which he calls Peppy. He claims that it is designed based upon new state-of-the-art theories of psychology, but when he tries to explain, nobody else understands what he's talking about. Jacque caims that Peppy is fully self-aware, and is even learning to understand concepts of philosophy and identity, but every time Jacque tries to demonstrate these capabilities, Peppy's performance is disappointing or even marginal. Jacque always claims that Peppy is exercising its genuine free will not to cooperate, but audiences are rarely convinced.

Are either of these two machines conscious? If we take both John and Jacque at face-value, then Peppy has the subjective features of consciousness and Creamy does not. If, on the other hand, we use the test developed by John's grandfather Alan, we find that Creamy displays behaviors we associate with consciousness, whereas Peppy does not.

So which machine is the AI? Which grad student deserves the McArthur Fellowship?

I think I have to say that John and his granddaddy are wrong. Creamy isn't conscious. That's not the way to AI, and never will be.

But Jacque hasn't convinced me either; he could be lying or misunderstanding his experiment. I don't really believe that Peppy is conscious either.

Though I believe Jacque is conscious, don't I? Why do I believe that? And what would Jacque have to do to prove that Peppy is in fact conscious?

I think what he has to do is justify his theory. He has to explain how consciousness arises in humans in a logical and scientific way, and then show how he replicated that in Peppy.

In the same way, if you could prove to me that Jacque himself is actually a Chinese-Room Machine (peel back his skull and point out the positronic net, download his runtime logs for the last three weeks onto a hard drive), then I wouldn't believe he was conscious either. But as far as I know Jacque is human, and as far as I know humans are conscious.

Philosophical empiricism is simply not true; you don't need to see to believe. You need to understand to believe.

I don't believe in quarks because I've touched, seen, or smelled a quark. I believe in quarks because I've seen experimental results that when considered logically only make sense if there are quarks.

In the same way I know I have a self, because nothing I experience would make sense if there was not an I to do the experiencing.

If Jacque can explain and justify his psychological theories, and then show how he replicated those same effects in the construction of his machine, it is Jacque, not John, who deserves the McArthur.

And now I show my true allegiance...

It seems that once The Math Underground (http://math.communityhigh.org/) was created, I had much less need to blog here. I've written three blogs for it, and none for this, since its inception.

I guess I love math more than I realized...

No comments...

Maybe I should go back to my other blogsites?

I feel like the Xanga types would have commented at some point.

It's worse than I could ever have imagined.

850,000 abortions in the US each year--not counting four states, incl. CA. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0764203.html)

The reasons?
4% for own health, 3% for baby's health, not even 0.5% for rape.
25% for inconvenience, 23% for money. (http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=
/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=13174)

46 million abortions in the world each year--26 million are legal.
(http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_0599.html)

The world death rate (of post-birth people of course) is about 56 million per year. (http://www.indexmundi.com/world/death_rate.html and .../world/population.html)

Thus if a fetus is considered morally equivalent to...

A whole innocent person? Abortions account for 45% of all human deaths.
A half person? Now it's 29% (more than starvation, cancer or heart disease).
10% of a person? 7.6% of all deaths, or 4.6 milion deaths each year (half a Holocaust).
1% of a person? 0.8% of all deaths, or 460,000 deaths each year (more than the number of US soldiers killed in WWII).
0.1%? 46,000 deaths (twice the total of all US citizens killed or injured in the Second Gulf War).
0.01%? 4,600 deaths (more than 9/11).
0.001%? 460 deaths (more than a 747 crash).

However you count your fetuses, that's an awful lot of abortions.

And even if every country in the world somehow had a murder rate as high as Colombia's (highest in the world), homicide would still only be 7% of all deaths. If everywhere were like Slovenia, it would be only 0.08%. The reality is of course in-between, but I couldn't find good data.
(http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html#world)

And can we really say that a fetus is only 1/100,000 of a moral person? Isn't it more like 1, or 1/2, or 1/10 at least? Wasn't I worth a whole person two days before I came out of the womb--after only 30 weeks of pregnancy?

Now I agree that if you don't think abortion is wrong at all, the rate of abortions is no more meaningful than the rate of milkshake sales. But if you're even not sure it's wrong, or think it's wrong sometimes, isn't this data frightening?

For one who thinks it's terribly Wrong, these statistics make me feel slightly sick.

So they do negotiate!

A week late and several thousand short, but maybe it's the thought that counts.

Just got a notice from Columbia that upon request my grant has been increased, and I would now owe a mere $21,125 per year. Had they started there and talked down a few thousand (or had MIT given me the same offer), I might have done it. As it is, I'm committed to Michigan and they're too late to stop me.

But it does show that even in the ivory tower there is some small niche of compassion.

Rethinking sexual orientation

I read an article some time ago that challenged some of the usual concepts of sexual orientation. After careful observation of some escapades at an unnamed party on an unnamed date at an undisclosed location, I came to realize that it may be quite accurate.

In some sense this theory fits with the formal Klein scale, but nobody uses the Klein scale because it is awkward and complicated. It certainly doesn't fit with the Kinsey continuum or the popular labels.
The idea is basically this:

Human beings have three different types of primary sexual orientation, the Physical (the desire for sex per se), the Romantic (the emotional bonds of a sexual relationship), and the Platonic (the emotional bonds of a non-sexual friendship). Each of these is considered more or less independent.

Hence I'd probably be biphysical, slightly homoromantic, and biplatonic. This would of course be encapsulated in the usual label of "bisexual."

But I could be immensely heteroplatonic and still be "bisexual," or I could be even more biromantic than I am. I might not even have to be biphysical. The usual label doesn't say enough.

Furthermore, the theory goes that most "heterosexuals" are actually biphysical, heteroromantic, and homoplatonic.

Hence straight guys will fool around with each other all the time, but they're "not gay." There's no homoromantic, just homophysical.
And notice how most of the close friends of straight males tend to be male?

And so then the traditionally "homosexual" person is moderately homophysical, homoromantic, and heteroplatonic.

And of course it also explains the confusion between different definitions of "gay" versus "straight." Are you talking about the physical or the romantic?

And it also explains why the most homophobic are also often the most "homosexual." If you're intensely homophysical but heteroromantic, the tension within you becomes an envy or hatred for those who lack or have resolved this tension.

As for the party, I made the comparison because the most strongly "straight" in terms of relationships were often the ones cracking the most vividly homosexual jokes, (as a release of biphysical energy?) and of course there was a notable imbalance towards males in the composition of this "straight" man's friendship group. It fit perfectly.

It certainly convinced me that the usual system is more harmful than helpful. Its categorizations are too artificial and divisive. It's worth knowing for yourself who you're attracted to and like to associate with, but it doesn't make sense to draw the line so harshly. Like I said, the Klein scale does this too, but it's too hard to work with. This new three-point scale may be the best compromise.

Think about it. Does this new system change the way you think of yourself?

Symptoms

Years ago ("back in the day" as they say), people got sick with "fever," died of "fever." No one could be sure why some fever was worse than others, why some people died and others didn't.

Today, we realize that "fever" is only a symptom of a whole class of diseases, and that you get sick with influenza, pneumonia, mononucleosis, die of tuberculosis, opportunistic AIDS infection.

In fact, we've come to realize that fever is a defense mechanism against these diseases, and without fever we would probably be worse off than we are.

Modern medical science has lifted the shroud in physical ailments, but in the mental category, it seems we still live by the old ways.

People get "depression" and "autism." We don't know what causes them, they affect people differently, some people kill themselves, and many do not.

Sounds to me like we're talking about all kinds of different diseases, and what we're seeing are symptoms, or perhaps even defense mechanisms. Maybe that's why some antidepressants can increase rates of suicide: they remove the defenses before our bodies can handle the underlying problem.

We need to stop treating the symptoms and finding the problems.

More on the ob versus sub

My concepts of objective and subjective can be extended.

In fact, given these careful distinctions, we come upon a very interesting development of literary theory (which leads to my theory of Informationism-- ND, you've heard this):

Subjects are aware of the existence of other subjects (or at least fairly confident of it. Cf: Solipsism, Alan Turing, Is Data Human?).
Many such subjects desire subjectively to communicate their subjective state to other subjects.
However, there is a problem.
Subjects cannot communicate directly with other subjects.
Objects can communicate with other objects.
Can subjects cammunicate with objects?

Yes we can. It's called choice. We can change the objective world based on our subjective desires by willful physical manipulations of our objective bodies.
But the question becomes, how can objects communicate with subjects?

Well, we subjects are rather ingenious. We created something called symbol.

Using perhaps an evolutionary firmware (or an innate nature of the universe itself), we have developed methods of ascribing subjective meaning to objective things.
Hence one of our greatest human powers: symbolic reasoning.
Letters for instance, words, numbers, electrical signals, traffic lights, facial expressions...

We do our best to correlate these subjective meanings through common training (hence the concept of a language), and then by willfully manipulating the objective world we can communicate our personal subjective world to other subjects.

This communication is imperfect, of course (hence Reader-Response Criticism, which has been blown way out of proportion), but all in all, it's pretty damn good.
The mere fact that I can put forth this theory in a set of keyboard strokes and you can read it in a set of photon patterns is a testament to the robustness of symbol.

Symbol is the objective projection of the subjective.
A chant: Sym is ob pro of sub.

I was underwhelmed by Crash.

Crash was supposed to be Best Picture material, but after finally watching it tonight, I wasn't that impressed.

If real racism were that obvious and exaggerated, I don't think there'd be any debate. But for the most part it isn't. It's subtle, complicated, even accidental (cf. Sean Eldon).
People get shunned for being un-PC without having any malintent.
We become afraid to talk about discrimination for fear of being called discriminators.
And yet the real instiutionalized inequities persist.

We don't need traumatic events to give us perspective, we need to stop labeling people and start respecting them. It's been said so many times it sounds cliche, but it really is the only way. A permanent campaign of censorship compounded with correlation-theory (i.e. political correctness and affirmative-action) doesn't solve anything at all! If anything it just makes already muddy waters so dirty it becomes almost hopeless to clean them.

I have male friends and female friends, gay friends and straight friends, Black friends and White friends, Asian friends and Hispanic friends. In each of these categories there are also people I don't like, people I don't trust. These judgments I base upon nothing more and nothing less than their treatment of me. And furthermore you need neither like nor trust to respect, and I like to think I respect just about everyone.

If we all did that, where would the debate be? Who would need Crash?

I really think Good Night and Good Luck got it better (though the movie as a whole was slow), or rather realized that Shakespeare's Cassius got it better:
"The fault [...] lies not in our stars, but in our selves."

An awesome logical paradox!

Read about this the other day. Intriguingly, it relates to what I was talking about in the last entry on choice.

Here goes. Consider this statement:
If this statement is true, then giant parakeets rule the known universe.


Well, if that statement is true, then it's true, and thus giant parakeets rule the known universe.
But that's what the statement says, and that's true. So it must be true.
Therefore, giant parakeets rule the known universe.
Logic says so, so it must be true.

On the other hand, we could also say:
If this statement is true, then giant parakeets do not rule the known universe.

Then we come to the conclusion that giant parakeets do not rule the known universe.

Isn't that awesome? You can prove anything!

Here's the argument formally:
Suppose X = (X --> Y).
Obviously, X --> X.
Substituting, X --> (X --> Y).
Therefore X --> ((X --> Y) and X).
We know that ((X --> Y) and X) --> Y.
Therefore X --> Y is true.
By definition X = X --> Y.
Therefore X is true.
Therefore Y is true.

And it doesn't matter what Y is!

Where's the problem? Right at the start, the statement X = (X --> Y).

This very definition confuses an empirical X with a hypothetical X --> Y.
In setting these two (essentially incomparable) entities equal, we can create a paradox so deep that it destroys all logic completely.

So I guess we better not do that, eh?