SYDNEY: It’s not dark matter, multiple universes or weird gravity: the strange deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft is just waste heat – the trouble is nobody’s looked at it the right way, Portuguese researchers report.
Known as the ‘Pioneer anomaly’, the unexplained deceleration of NASA’s two Pioneer spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11...
In this post I try to fathom an informal definition of Self, the "essential qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness". I assume that the most important requirement for a definition of self is time-consistency. A reliable definition of identity needs to allow for time-consistent self-referencing since any agent that is unable to...
I started taking these nootropics back in February - One was citicoline, the other aniracetam. For those who are unfamiliar with nootropics, they're generally defined as drugs & supplements that you can take which are supposed to improve your memory, attention, and other cognitive functions. They are used as a current treatment and...
September through December 2010 was my first semester of education since I left high school in 2007. In one of my courses, Contemporary Issues, I wrote a paper (a very short one) entitled "Why Computers Do Not," which was meant as a counter to the hopelessly superior article by Marvin Minsky of MIT "Why People Think Computers...
Previously on BWBW:
"I know you know that there are no intrinsic problems as such, but only difficulties in maintaining a multilayered reality in immediacy but keep in mind that the essence of the warrior poet is a re-arrangement without thought, consciously keeping the direction of repetition but not allowing the order to emerge until an...
An antenna dish, large and unwavering, sits in a valley of old-growth trees whose bark foretells the legacy of layering and unlayering, whose silent constructions shape and determine the confines and apparent boundary-points of the natural world. Long live the flow of boundless energies: that focal point of nature whose gift predates the workings...
Oh how the collective intelligence of the members of this website blows my mind... The recent posts about the illusion of individualism and the collective nature of the universe, I think, fit well with the topics discussed in this book I recently came across. I have only skimmed through it quickly, but as soon as I saw it I knew it would of...
Sorry if this is a newbie question, but can someone tell me the difference between past and future? I've never experienced time from past to future, as many people say they do all the time, and I'd like to try it. How will I know if it worked?
Here's what I've heard from people who claim to have experienced time:
* There is a lot more...
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Free will does not and cannot imply without cause, randomness or unpredictability. All those qualities, although present in complex systems, would contradict the notion of willful intent. What we want, and therefore do, must be based on reasonable ground....
The Peaceful Resistance
Whenever I'm feeling blue about domestic politics — there is plenty about which to despair — something great happens that reminds me of the long-term case for optimism, which is all about the astonishing expansion of the division of labor globally and in ways that weren't even possible just a few years ago.
The...
In Buddhist philosophy, desire and mental attachment are what keeps you stuck here on Earth, but I have a much easier way to explain it. There are many philosophies I think are mostly true. Anyone can do this.
In 2002 for a few months, I had it a small amount, compared to most people who rarely have it enough to notice it exists. Then because...
A group of physicists in Spain has shown how to make a quantum measurement that overcomes a limit related to Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The researchers confirmed a theoretical prediction of how to beat the Heisenberg limit by using interacting photons to measure atomic spin, and they say that their approach could lead to more...
Video lecture... Jack Cowan: Spontaneous pattern formation in large scale brain activity: what visual migraines and hallucinations tell us about the brain (2006)
“Social media has come to be understood as little more than a marketing opportunity. However, we see it as quite possibly the catalyst for the next stage of human evolution and, at the very least, a way to restore bottom-up participation, p2p value exchange and decentralized innovation to the realms of culture, commerce and government.” –...
Previously on BWBW:
” But what happens when the very task that we set to compute is an iterative branching of meaning?
What happens when the arrangement itself of matter re-coheres itself continuously to fit the desire of the task at hand which is a non-given in chaotic poetry?
I’ll tell you what happens, because I saw it with my very...