Blogspot keeps failing to format the text properly (on windows, mac and linux :-D)
I decided to fiddle with my fire-effect code (at the end of this blog entry) again, simplify it a bit and have it compile on MacOS.
Typically I've been against macs, but I'm rather enjoying this one (MacBook Air 11") so far, they've come a long way. The keyboard takes some getting used to, but I find the laptop rather elegant in many ways. I especially like the battery lifetime which seems to be around 8 hours if I don't do too much heavy lifting on it. It can play 1080p videos smoothly, doesn't need a fan and can even do some 3D, and is small. Wakes up instantly and boots in 10 seconds or so. Even built in audio is decent for such a small package. The software is fast and responsive, the screen image quality nice, though I suppose FullHD would have been nice, but this is still quite sufficient for a laptop such as this.
I use tinycc on windows because it's just so small, elegant and simple, and handles libraries to my liking...
on mac I compile with gcc (I'm sure there's a better way, like Xcode, but I couldn't be bothered, I like to KeepItSimpleStupid): gcc macfire.c -I/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Headers -lSDL -lSDLmain -framework AppKit -framework Foundation -framework CoreFoundation -framework OpenGL
Yellow rose of texas (4k intro) seems to run fine on my MacBook Air 11" as well. A working binary wasn't available, but it's easy enough to compile your own.
I tried http://upx.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.crinkler.net/ but didn't seem to be able to compress it much, these are very small executables to begin with, but it seems tcc does something which these programs can't handle well. I suppose I should just write asm from the beginning, but it's just so bothersome. Maybe if I had plenty of time to fiddle. There's so much I'd like to do, like FTDT-simulator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-difference_time-domain_method), but just can't be bothered right now. Perhaps Aristotle was right, and all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. Perhaps I should simply do something mundane for a living and save all the really interesting jobs for my hobby. In another news, I was playing with simplicity...
http://alpinelinux.org/
(Later addition: http://tinycorelinux.net/) I wish I could just get an operating system and hardware where I understand every single line of code it runs and there is almost zero redundancy. Like stripped down linux kernel (possibly on raspberry pi), running uClibc, tinycc, busybox, vim etc. without any autodetection and such. In fact I'm not sure even X-windows is needed. Just run everything from console and draw the graphics (like browser) on framebuffer in separate ALT+Fn:s (desktops or consoles or fullscreen windows or whatever you wish to call them) + hardware accelerated OpenGL of course. I really like the idea of a SoC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip). If only the universe was full of stations (floating in space) which would provide all the bare essentials for the explorers and their space ships, food, gas and guns, and in practice all standard supplies, medicare and parts. :-D ...and why do we even needs wallets, cards, money, passports etc. these days. Should all this stuff be just software on our cellphones, laptops (or perhaps pads, which I don't believe in really). There is some elegance in Linux as well, in fact quite a lot. All three Windows (7), Linux and MacOS have come a long way I have to say. They are finally getting mature. Though X on Linux is still insanely slow and there is annoying hardware and software incompatibility and immaturity issues in Linux still, but for homebrew, flexibility, control and servers it just rules. Linux kernel is rather nice already I should say, but X and some of the software it runs really needs some work. It still often can't manage even the simplest things like proper vsync on videos which results in tearing.
I think I'll dump powerpoint for making presentation as well, LaTeX beamer seem to be nice enough and free for that stuff, I'll end up with cleaner outcome with it anyway, and I use LaTeX to write papers anyway so why bother with anything else. There are pretty much only a few commercial programs I really keep using, mainly Matlab and PhotoShop, both are more or less provided to me by the university. They can be replaced by octave and gimp, but neither are really as mature or pleasant to use as these. Additionally there is APLAC which I use for circuit simulation, there is Qucs, but it's again not quite as pleasant and can't do all the stuff APLAC can, perhaps with ngspice one could, but it's annoying and lacks a Josephson junction. If I really had to, I would just switch to Linux entirely. I still try to keep everything compatible even if I'm still waiting for better days. Mac is elegant and windows is diverse, but they are closed and commercial so they will eventually have to go. Then there is of course still minix, I haven't taken a look at that, but it might be a good place to start if I start writing my own kernel again one day. From windows alone I would miss this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmoothVideo_Project
24 fps just isn't good enough for movies these days anymore, the pans are jerky. The new 48 fps is much better, though the movie makers needs to adjust to it a little bit to make it look natural. 60 fps would be better, perhaps sufficient for all material. And 4K, such a nice resolution, I can't wait to get some material, nature documentaries, but then again, why bother buying 4K when there's 8K coming soon, perhaps that is finally enough for resolution. When I get dead silent (without fan) 8K projector with 60 fps capacity and 1000000:1 static ANSI contrast, not some crappy dynamic bullshit values like everything today which are actually more like 300:1 static ANSI, maybe with OLED, then perhaps I'm finally happy with my home theater. 3D? No way, hurts my head, feels unnatural. Maybe when they make the holodeck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck). 3D isn't needed anyway, there's enough to be experienced in other ways. Not to mention someone investing in a decent plot instead of graphics and number crunching. Though my audio system would require some improvements as well, it's pretty nice already, perhaps in some ways the biggest part of my system, but I'd prefer to go real loud real low. Now I can push maybe 130 dB(C) indoors respectably maybe at 30 Hz without distortion (4x15"), but what I would really like is to hit 140dB(C) outdoors to 10 meters or something at 20 Hz, well maybe for a concert at 35-40Hz would actually be sufficient. Perhaps impossible for my budget. Not the biggest problem though, bigger issue is that there are standing waves, frequency dependent constructive and destructive interference within the room. The whole room should be designed from the beginning to act as a horn or something to make decent acoustics and get rid of all this... http://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm ...like this perhaps. Why is it that nobody present the real specs for any of this equipment these days, none of the good stuff. It's almost impossible to find the ANSI contrast figures, black levels etc. for any TV or projector and finding the frequency response, harmonic distortion vs. SPL vs. frequency for speakers is equally nonexistent. This is easy stuff to measure and very important when making decisions about the quality of your stuff, but none of this just seems to be available basically anywhere - ever. Oh well, something for the better days maybe. --
All life occurs between order and chaos. No life can exist at the two extremes. Perhaps the best place to be is right in the middle of everything, a true neutral if you will.
Physically all information processing appears to occur through nonlinear processes which couple different modes together. Often through switches or amplifiers or something similar. One signal controls another, one way or another. All nontrivial evolution is non-adiabatic and entropy changes occur.
Yes, this photo is from my balcony as well.
If it is true that Pi has all possible finite sequences, and the universe is finite, then the entire universe is somewhere described in the digits of Pi. Talk about your compression algorithms.
...but is the zip-code any shorter than the universe it is pointing to?-)
(It is not known for sure that Pi has all possible finite sequences, it is believed to be that case however.)
"Dutch physicist and string theorist Erik Verlinde has generated a self-contained, logical derivation of the equivalence principle based on the starting assumption of a holographic universe. Given this situation, gravity would not be a true fundamental force as is currently thought but instead an "emergent property" related to entropy. Verlinde's approach to explaining gravity apparently leads naturally to the correct observed strength of dark energy."
In a larger and more speculative sense, the holographic principle suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.
"Space is in the first place a device introduced to describe the positions and movements of particles. Space is therefore literally just a storage space for information. This information is naturally associated with matter. Given that the maximal allowed information is finite for each part of space, it is impossible to localize a particle with infinite precision at a point of a continuum space. In fact, points and coordinates arise as derived concepts."
Begins to sound a lot like the uncertainty principle arising from digital information processing. I would say this makes it increasingly plausible that fundamental information processing in the universe (at the holographic screen) is fundamentally deterministic.
"Thus we conclude that acceleration is related to an entropy gradient. This will be one of our main principles: inertia is a consequence of the fact that a particle in rest will stay in rest because there are no entropy gradients."
"We identified a cause, a mechanism, for gravity. It is driven by differences in entropy, in whatever way needed, and a consequence of the statistical averaged random dynamics at the microscopic level. The reason why gravity has to keep track of energies as well as entropy differences is now clear. It has to, because this is what causes motion!"
"We are entering an unknown territory in which space does not exist to begin with."
I love this paper :D
"The assumptions we made have been natural: they fit with existing ideas and are supported by several pieces of evidence."
It appears someone had similar thoughts to me when it comes to information in the universe. I hinted about these a little bit in my entries "Nothing defies reason" and "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.". Of course the paper is kind of old news already, but I hadn't really read it before.
The paper presents a rather plausible model in my opinion for gravity as an emergent entropic force in the universe and supposedly the same idea explains dark energy as well.
If all this is true then our understanding of fundamental physics of this universe might in fact be rather complete in certain ways. Though we should still figure out the rules of the holographic screens.
...in other news today, philosophy is bullshit, according to none other than David Hume...
Perhaps the simple truth is that there are no paradoxes or unanswerable questions. The universe is simply a deterministic digital computer and it like everything else exists due to necessity, kind of like the value of pi. After all when we get right down to fundamentals, no coherent alternative to determinism has even ever been suggested.
In logic and philosophy, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, by giving reasons for accepting a particular conclusion as evident. Any rational postulate must have empirical predictive power over alternatives. Present me some repeatable empirical evidence to justify your postulate or you will have failed to persuade me and along with your failure to do so, your argument has failed by definition as well.
Seems to me this is simply a weakness of natural language. The word description to me is simply information about the way things moved (when someone saw the color red). Experience on the other hand is totally different set of cause and effect in the brain and can only happen with a proper cause which obviously is quite different from the cause like analytical information (obviously doesn't result in the same brain state as the real thing). To me there doesn't appear to be anything particularly puzzling about this.
They say happiness is learning to love what's in front of you. Perhaps I'm a fool, but I have a feeling that is something a quitter would say. Like giving up, I don't like the taste of that. I'd rather fight until the bitter end than accept a mundane existence.
We all have goals, some people just settle for less and some people never reach their goals. The point is to be able to choose what is in front of you and to make it something great. What is worth it and what is noble is a matter of opinion. Personally I'm not afraid of what people think of me, that is irrelevant. What I might be afraid of though, is that I might never get what I want. And yet to pretend that I don't want it, would be self-deception.
I'm an introvert and I don't see why I would want to be anything other than what I am. If I don't like certain activities which are normally considered extroverted, I'd prefer other people to change instead of me so that I could have fun my way. It's not like I hate all the people, I'm just saddened, bored and sometimes annoyed by people who don't love the things I do and that they love the things that I hate, if nothing else, it makes me a bit lonely.
--
Learning refers to the process of observation and the statistical significance of that observation. Learned information doesn't have to be true and most often it is not, since learned information is most of the time only an approximation of the reality or a single narrow view of it, it can also be completely false. Learning only implies a gain of some new knowledge regardless if it is true of false.
--
Luckily when it comes down to it, that fortune is a fallacy. Understanding does not imply a perfect model. It implies a model which approximates the behavior of the whole to fair extent and converges if expanded. We can understand what makes the brain "tick" even if we cannot grasp the entire complexity of the system. Of course no system with finite information content can ever perfectly understand another system with larger information content, but that's not what things are all about. It's like a jpg-picture, a lossy compressor. We can still approach perfection even if we'll never quite reach it.
They: The quote did not imply the understanding of a simplified or approximate model of the brain...so yes, understanding in this case does mean understanding the truth of it or of a perfect model if you will.
I disagree. Natural language contains that implication by default unless otherwise mentioned. It should be obvious from the way natural language is used in everyday life. I would even argue that nothing at all is and never will be understood absolutely perfectly. Absolute knowledge beyond things like "I think therefore I am" is impossible. They aren't by nature similar to understanding of observable things. I find it strange that anyone would even think absolutely perfect model is something which makes any coherent sense whatsoever in this sort of context.
--
This is just an example of how natural language is vague, there is nothing particularly interesting about it. There are different categories to which irrelevant can refer to. The idea of god is irrelevant to the fundamental understanding of the universe even if it is not irrelevant to the understanding of human history and sociological aspects of the peoples faith to such a construct. The term god can be a placeholder or a name for peoples behavioral characteristics, faith etc. however as a name to a natural phenomenon it is totally irrelevant since it doesn't have any connection whatsoever to anything observable or identifiable neither directly or indirectly.
It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
But in the end... there are no genuine philosophical problems.
"The main point is the theory of what can be expressed by propositions - i.e. by language - (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what can not be expressed by propositions, but only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy."
People are only as good as the world allows them to be, but the modern world does allow us to be pretty good if we have the will.
It is my hope that people will eventually see why they should change. People must have the will to do so or it will not happen, no amount of force can make that change, it must come from within, but I'm open to the possibility that the society as a whole might eventually find that will. With gradual changes, if life becomes less stressful, less competitive, healthier, more communal, empathic in general and the following generations are raised with higher awareness and respect for the strength of human character, respect of nature, and logic then maybe they'll learn to value things different from material vanity and then just maybe things can occur... because who knows the future, and it would be so funny if I was right. Making mundane predictions is just so boring anyway.
Somewhat ironically the most inhumane and unnatural things on this planet originate from humans...
inhumane (adj.)
late 15c., from Latin inhumanus (see inhuman). Originally a variant spelling and pronunciation of inhuman, it appears to have died out 17c. but been revived c.1822 as a negative form of humane.
humane (adj.)
mid-15c., variant of human (cf. german/germane, urban/urbane), used interchangeably with it until early 18c., by which time it had become a distinct word with sense of "having qualities befitting human beings." But inhuman still can be the opposite of humane. The Royal Humane Society (founded 1774) was originally to rescue drowning persons. Such societies had turned to animal care by late 19c.
Best isn't always good, it may simply be the lesser of evils.
Isn't it ironic that the purpose of all wars, is peace...
If you are insulted because you are inconsiderate then you deserve to be insulted.
All human will is fundamentally arbitrary by nature. Our preferences are either of biological origin or arbitrary choices. They cannot be fundamentally justified. When it comes right down to it, I will fight you (or your will), not because I would be right or you would be wrong, but because that's the way I am. If you wish to pathologically kill me and there is no logical reasoning which would change your mind, I am going to fight you, and if necessary, kill you in order to preserve myself, and I will feel no regret, because I never had a choice. There may not be a logical reason why I should live, but it is my highest value and compulsion, the preservation of my own consciousness, and it is absolutely non-negotiable. Equally well I will fight to preserve my environment so that I may live, enjoy and keep enjoying what we have. Of course in practice it is very difficult to determine when drastic measures would be necessary and by the time you manage to determine that, it may already be too late. However the point is that you can't get an ought from an is...
We don't put people to prisons because they had a choice and they deserve to be punished. We put people to prisons because ultimately that's the way we enforce our will and optimize our environments and our lives. The world may be deterministic, perhaps the murderers we born to murder, and they never had a choice in the matter, but ultimately that is irrelevant. We simply do what we must. Also, we tolerate certain things to certain extent because that is the path of least resistance. By giving up some of our rights and by allowing others to do things which we don't like, we are actually choosing the path of least resistance, lesser of evils and perhaps in doing so maximize our freedom to do and be what we most wish. Our current actions are a result of an optimization which hopes to maximize our happiness. We chose the way we chose because we acted on our best knowledge at the time. There can never be genuine regret because given what we were and what we knew, we could do nothing wrong and nothing different in the same circumstances. Of course many people are still subjectively speaking wrong, but the reason is simply that they are either uneducated (and should be educated) or their fundamental values and compulsions are in conflict with ours. We work to correct this by fighting their will one way or another with the intent of getting them to agree with us and getting them to work constructively towards our goals.
Some of my values include the maximization of average happiness of all the people on this planet and minimizing the suffering of all conscious creatures, or at least my expectations of such. These are complicated issues however. For example, it is far from clear to me that even distribution of resources (financial or otherwise) would result in maximizing the total sum of happiness on this planet, or freedoms for that matter either. Happiness probably doesn't scale linearly based on freedom or available resources. It could be that the happiness of certain number of "rich" people will contribute more to the total sum of happiness of all the people on this planet that the happiness of the "poor" people would be reduced by the uneven distribution of wealth which allows "rich" people to exist. It is also unclear how to optimize the total sum of all happiness long term because having certain amount of suffering and pain now, might result in larger amount of happiness long term. We mustn't simplify things too much. There is an expectation of the future happiness as well and as a collective mankind we should plan ahead for an eternity to come, or at least to certain vaguely foreseeable future, say 100 generations into the future. Then it's yet another question, is happiness of greatest value or would knowledge and understanding, power, control etc. perhaps be more valuable than happiness. These are all personal preferences and fundamentally arbitrary by nature, however, luckily humans are quite similar in certain ways which still makes co-operation and agreement possible to fair extent.
Another twist to the story is that I tend to place infinite value on the continued existence of my own consciousness. Therefore, even though in general I consider myself a rather moral person, I would, given the ultimatum, choose my own life over any number of people, including the whole of mankind. However, I place high value on the continued existence of mankind, nature and this planet in general as well, because I very much enjoy them as such and plan on enjoying them as long as I'll live, which hopefully (though unlikely) is something I'll be able to choose, perhaps measured in millions of years. It should be fairly easy to see that maximizing the happiness and education of other people, at least to fair extent, also most of the time maximizes your own happiness.
“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” ~ Aristotle
“A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” ~ Friedrich Neitzsche
No good deed goes unpunished. - This means that life is unfair and people can do or try to do good things and still end up in a lot of trouble.
Understanding comes through logic, hard work, research and coherent assumptions. Keep that in mind while considering a religion (I find no place for it in my life). Letting go of material things does not require a religion, you can devote your life to "immaterial" accomplishments easily without it. Helping people, promoting knowledge, learning new skills or simply enjoying life are simple examples, and I would argue that their virtue without religion is much higher than it would be otherwise. The highest virtue and greatest display of willpower I can imagine is to be yourself and to be a perfect person, or at least strive to be as perfect as you can, without any external reason to do so.
The problem is the acceptance of bad ideas and acceptance of actions based on bad choices and bad logic. I consider that all nations have a responsibility to their citizens to educate and guide their ways of thinking to directions which we the "owners" of our countries consider correct, logical and best. Fortunately the choice is still ours. Anything that is culturally unacceptable is so because we choose it to be. We the people, we make the laws, we make the rules...
It's the thought that counts. Who gives a fuck about what's manly or who's the boss, childish and narrow minded words. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. Any dangerous ideology which oppresses people and enslaves their minds is deserving of all ridicule. It's like pollution, even though short-term restricting polluting and consumption is bad for the economy it's still necessary as long as pollution is associated with consumption.
The fact that people don't agree on terms is to some extent irrelevant. We can define words as being what the majority understands them to be. People either accept the common definition or not, but there is a practical statistical penalty in not accepting or using the common definition which is quite obvious if there is a need to interact with other people. I would say it is irrelevant what things are called in general, but it is still necessary to call them something at least if you intend to interact with other people.
Desire is irrelevant. I am a machine! The universe is just a simple finite deterministic computer and so are all the people in it.
Stop muddling the pond by using words incoherently... That's just a red herring. We're discussing reality here, not semantics.
You don't think the world is real because you know the world is real. You think the world is real because your experiences feel meaningful and the world can be felt. It doesn't matter whether you are a human being or if there are other minds. What matters is that your observations play by the rules of the game and you can do no other besides play the game by the only rules you know, keep observing more and hope you may learn new rules.
Having money allows me to ignore people who I don't want to have anything to do with.
I could almost agree, but I didn't pay for my education, I paid for a chance to work at a top facility. Not that education costs anything in my country except indirectly anyway. Perhaps also for credibility which in principle though I wouldn't need if I had something tangible enough to get decent publications in peer reviewed journals.
The adjusted HR for all-cause mortality in vegans was 0.85 (95% CI, 0.73-1.01); in lacto-ovo–vegetarians, 0.91 (95% CI, 0.82-1.00); in pesco-vegetarians, 0.81 (95% CI, 0.69-0.94); and in semi-vegetarians, 0.92 (95% CI, 0.75-1.13) compared with nonvegetarians.
On the "problem" of induction...
I run into this "problem" every now and then and every single time my initial thoughts have basically been... What problem? What the hell is wrong with these people?-)
The dictionary definition of the "problem" I suppose is that any knowledge which we arrive by inductive reasoning, that is by empirical observation and the assumption that past is indicative of future, is without justification. Or as a theist would put it, science can't (supposedly) justify itself. But then, neither can theism or anything else for that matter which kind of makes the statement as such stupid. It should have then simply been that nothing can be (absolutely) justified and science has nothing to do with it.
From wikipedia: "In inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a new claim based on them. For instance, from a series of observations that a woman walks her dog by the market at 8am on Monday, it seems valid to infer that next Monday she will do the same, or that, in general, the woman walks her dog by the market every Monday. That next Monday the woman walks by the market merely adds to the series of observations, it does not prove she will walk by the market every Monday. First of all, it is not certain, regardless of the number of observations, that the woman always walks by the market at 8am on Monday. In fact, Hume would even argue that we cannot claim it is "more probable", since this still requires the assumption that the past predicts the future. Second, the observations themselves do not establish the validity of inductive reasoning, except inductively."
And: "Deductive reasoning (top-down logic) contrasts with inductive reasoning (bottom-up logic) in the following way: In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached from general statements, but in inductive reasoning the conclusion is reached from specific examples."
Deductive reasoning is no better than inductive reasoning. In deductive reasoning the conclusion is uncertain because the premise (general statement) is uncertain. In inductive reasoning the conclusion is uncertain because it doesn't follow with certainty from the premise (specific example which is certain). Both of these "ductions" are essentially the same, they may have a different semantic context, but they are essentially the same. And it doesn't really matter, there is no problem, all knowledge is uncertain, everyone should know this, what we as humans do, is, essentially we collect statistics and we trust the statistics to reasonable extent, because that is all we can ever hope to do. If you think there is something else, it's almost certainly semantic.
In certain sense I would agree with Wittgenstein: "philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language".
Karl Popper argued (in my opinion correctly) that science does not use induction, and induction is in fact a myth. Instead, knowledge is created by conjecture and criticism. The main role of observations and experiments in science, he argued, is in attempts to criticize and refute existing theories. According to Popper, the problem of induction as usually conceived is asking the wrong question: it is asking how to justify theories given they cannot be justified by induction. Popper argued that justification is not needed at all, and seeking justification "begs for an authoritarian answer". Instead, Popper said, what should be done is to look to find and correct errors. Popper regarded theories that have survived criticism as better corroborated in proportion to the amount and stringency of the criticism, but, in sharp contrast to the inductivist theories of knowledge, emphatically as less likely to be true. Popper held that seeking for theories with a high probability of being true was a false goal that is in conflict with the search for knowledge. Science should seek for theories that are most probably false on the one hand (which is the same as saying that they are highly falsifiable and so there are lots of ways that they could turn out to be wrong), but still all actual attempts to falsify them have failed so far (that they are highly corroborated).
Might it be that in fact the only reason we still have academic theists at all is simply that they see a problem of induction where none exists?
This issue of course popped up in yet another debate between a scientist and a theist...
(Appears the video has been removed, a sure sign of a small soul somewhere along the line.)
There is nothing in particular wrong with deductive reasoning as such, but the theists are just doing it wrong. The premises must be founded upon scientific evidence. They treat history etc. as if it was on par with science, but history is not science. History can never overturn what is possible, on the contrary, it rests on science and as such science can overturn anything that was considered historically probable. What these theists are missing, is a proper foundation of knowledge, the connection to reality.
Basically the premises of deduction are either based on induction or nothing at all. Therefore deduction can at best be on par with science and at worst it reduces to irrelevant speculation or otherwise incoherent bullshit.
Krauss has many nice comments about deduction...
"You can make definitions of things, I can try to figure how the universe works, I'll make progress and you'll sit here."
"Q: Mathematics is based on deduction... Krauss: No, it's based on evidence."
Of course the theists will end up stating that the criterion of falsifiability is not falsifiable which of course is totally irrelevant because it doesn't need to be. Basically because all knowledge which isn't fantasy is obtained through the scientific method and falsifiability. There are essentially no other methods of obtaining knowledge besides fantasy which is only semantic, then we can only do what we can. All claims regarding the reality are by nature uncertain because they are based on limited evidence and are empirical, on the other hand claims which are not empirical don't concern reality, so there you go.
Then they will say that atheism cannot be justified, but what they don't understand is that atheism is simply the rejection of claims which have not met their burden of proof, typically because the claims are not based on reality. And as Chrisopher Hitchens put it...
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
I find this theistic quest for certainty through fantasy perverse. People should be honest about their limits, only then can one hope to gain more knowledge and understanding.
These debates are often plain red herrings (a logical fallacy when the argument is irrelevant). This is because even if the argument as a standalone element would be (semantically) valid, that meaning that the conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic, the argument is still invalid if we don't have valid reasons to believe the premises are true. The premises of these argument are often generalizations of some naive everyday reasoning which is applied in a context which is far beyond its validity domain, or simply cases where the premise doesn't have statistics to back it up, basically bullshit fantasy premises. This will of course result in bullshit fantasy arguments.
Much of the first cause bullshit has been debunked elsewhere, but what strikes me odd is that he says (or quotes at 14:35): "Clearly theists and atheists can agree on one thing, if anything exists at all, there must be something preceding it that always existed."
No, just no. As if this would go unchallenged. I for example disagree and therefore by definition the sentence is false. I find it equally possible that the finite universe with the big bang can just exist without having anything preceding it that always existed. In fact I find the whole notion of something eternally existing nonsense. It would have to be rigorously demonstrated that the premise is true or that even the idea is coherent at all. The way these people pull premises out of their asses and assume they are valid is preposterous.
What the hell is this guy talking about... Science can't prove ontological, moral or historical truths? Of course not, nothing besides semantics can ever be proven to full certainty. And moral truths, as far as we know, there are non. Historical truth? Only in a sense that history occurred, but we can't know for certain what happened. Shouldn't it be trivial that therefore historical truths can never be proven. Shouldn't it also be trivial to even a child at a fairly young age that we can never be absolutely certain of anything besides semantics that we personally use at that particular time, a category which is basically irrelevant in every way.
This is simply a result of the fact that everything we ever experience is simply an incomplete and finite experience, essentially an empirical thing. Having a circular semantic construct is hardly synonymous of justified knowledge, but that seems to be what many theists in academy would have us believe.
In fact if I were to guess, based on Gödel's incompleteness theorem, I would say it is foolish to think any theory or method of epistemology can ever perfectly justify or prove itself. However, I consider this irrelevant. If for no other reason, then due to the reason that in the end we have no choice, we must live our lives the way we can. The most certain truths are those which are closest to our consciousness, directly observable and which can directly be interacted with, basically our thoughts and our logic. Anything further, other people, the world, etc. are at a distance from us and less certain.
“If you can't change it why worry about it? If you can change it why worry about it?" - Zen Proverb
The way we typically measure correlations is by using an oscilloscope and comparing two time traces of voltage values obtained simultaneously, however oscilloscopes are expensive and especially when operating at microwave frequencies they are not necessarily the most efficient at doing this.
Instead of the voltage vs. time there is an equivalent way of representing the signal, this being the two quadratures, sine and cosine amplitudes at the measurement frequency. So we can do the correlation as depicted in the figure below.
Now there is one very nice and cheap way of doing this at home. One can buy two of these hacked USB HDTV sticks which use RTL2832u chips, they allow the IQ-values to be streamed on the fly to the computer. In effect this way of collecting data is in fact quite fast and one can collect over 700GB of data per day.
Slight hardware modification is needed though because the reference clock signals these sticks use come from separate crystals and the two crystals are never the same so without modification their phases rotate and the time when individual samples are taken relative to the each others drift resulting in broadened correlation peak like in the picture below, additionally one cannot determine the sign of the correlation unless the clock sources are the same because of uncertain phase.
I solved this problem by simply removing the crystal from one of the sticks and capacitively coupling the remaining crystal to the other stick. This seemed to work without problems. Additionally one could use a separate clock source to feed the 28.8 MHz reference to both of the sticks if one wishes to have common frequency reference for more devices.
There is an additional issue which needs to be handled (which is rather easy though), this being that the starting times of the data collection have a certain time shift. So before collecting data one needs to determine this offset, however after data collection has started it remains constant. Also the phase is randomized at the start of the data collection. However, the sticks drop no bits and maintain perfect synchronization of samples and phase indefinitely once they are started. What I do is that I calibrate the phase and offset with each measurement and then run indefinitely after that.
To test all of this, I was running some calibration of splitted thermal noise from several sources...
And what I saw was perhaps slightly weird... not actually though, but on initial impression not immediately intuitive. What we see in the picture below is cross correlation of the signal received by detectors A1 and A2 in two cases where the source temperature is at two different values. I will explain what these mean. Autocorr is just power, xcorr is the similarity between the signals. For opposite signals xcorr=-1 (normalized), for same signals xcorr=1, for random signals xcorr=0. From the image you should only look at the center, the other values indicate temporal shift and would signify temporal correlation should such exist, however in this case we are only interested in simultaneous correlation.
So the picture tells you that initially there is no correlation when the splitted signal is at room temperature and certain amount of power is received. In the second case I used a HEMT amplifier input as the source of the splitter, this is an interesting case because the input (gate) of the HEMT amplifier is electronically colder than room temperature (in this case around 50K whereas room temperature is 293K). Now one might naively think that in the case where the splitted source is at 293K one should receive certain amount of power and see certain amount of correlation. However we see no correlation whatsoever. In the second case however, when the splitted source is colder, we see less power than in the first case as we would expect, but now we see some correlation as well. How can that be?
There is perfectly good explanation to this though and it has to do with the way the splitter (Wilkinson) works. It is in fact the case that it is impossible to make an impedance matched ideal 3-port splitter which would not have a fourth channel in it. This means that in order to isolate P2 and P3 (in the following picture) there needs to exist another port (at T2). This port T2 is essentially a resistor which has perfect coupling to ports P2 and P3, but in opposite phases relative to the port P1 and since at thermal equilibrium the noises T1 and T2 are equal, but the sign from T2 is opposite you effectively get zero correlation between P2 and P3, only in the case where T1 is not the same as T2 you see correlation. Never the less you will see less power arrive at P2 and P3 when you use T1<T2 as one would expect. Should the port at T2 not exist, you would get correlation due to cross coupling of backaction noise from amplifiers at P2 and P3 so it is in fact necessary.
Well, perhaps this experiment or explanation is not the clearest to anyone expect one who works around this stuff, never the less, I know several people who find this interesting.
Of course I had a certain thought behind this, I was interesting in performing an experiment to see anti-bunching at cryogenic temperatures using a similar usecase with amplifiers, splitters and quadrature detectors, but using a qubit as a source of antibunched photons. In that case one should basically see correlation remain 0, but power go up. Though photon energy at this frequency is rather low relative to the noise temperature of these amplifiers and will require a large amount of averaging etc. These amplifiers have a noise temperature of 50K, now one may achieve a system noise temperature of around 5K by using cryogenic amplifiers. Quantum noise floor is at 50mK though at these frequencies so amplifier noise temperature is about a factor 100 from where we would ideally wish to be. Never the less, with suitable amount of averaging such measurements can be done.
...and correlation from 50K noise source in this case was very easy to measure. It's basically 1 second measurement on a tabletop.
One addition to the use of these sticks...
With each restart (which should be avoided) there appears to be, in addition to randomized phase and offset, an offset which effects the width of the correlation peak. This results in a need to calibrate the absolute value of the correlation amplitude relative to the channel power (there may be 30% variance or so I suppose). This "offset" is seen as width of the peak as see in the following picture in the upper left corner. Ideally this correlation peak is simply one point, but if the first case it seems to have some width which result in less than one-to-one mapping between the channel power and correlation value. In the first case in reality 100% cross correlation would only be seen as 70% cross correlation in the measurement, whereas in the second case real 100% cross correlation would be 100% cross correlation in the measurement as well. Notice though that channel powers are uneffected by this, as one would expect. Not a big problem though because one can calibrate against know signals. Also with suitable restart you can find a point which stays and shows 100% correlation always when it should.
Here's another plot where I logged the intensity correlation in addition to voltage correlation as well in the case where I switch the splitted input from a termination at equilibrium temperature to a termination at lower temperature. In the lower temperature case we see increased correlation both in voltage and intensity and lowered total power, in the equilibrium case there is higher power, but lower correlation.
