/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3276908

You can choose what you do, though. Just because you want something doesn't mean you have to choose it.

>>3267839

>They don't seem to have done memory transplants between rats

Most likely because this is a very new technology. Once they've isolated the signals that form memories (which they appear to be very close to doing), then a memory transplant might be possible. In that case, the possibilities of this device become staggeringly large.

>>3267752

1. Troll harder. Teaching people things without context only hurts them. Without a unifying explaination of why things are the way they are, they become unintuitive and unpredictable.

2. Evolution's evidence stretches beyond biology, and it is a very necessary part of biology. Creationist families might hurt their kids by denying them knowledge but we shouldn't play dumb for them over it. It'd be like not giving kids sex ed because a group of Mormons objects to it, or forbidding art classes or a school dance because Puritans find it objectionable

I come from a Creationist background. I had to figure it all out myself. I've seen many, many more Creationists, however, who just accept it and shut their eyes to it. People will do what they'll do. We shouldn't deny kids an education because some might find it objectionable.

You said "Now is not the time to [...] fight the tide of ignorance". It is ALWAYS that time. Giving in to fundamentalism, accepting ignorance; these are the first steps that lead a society into the Dark Ages.

Fuck ignorance. We have the light of knowledge and should only be fanning its flames, not snuffing it for the sake of those who prefer to sit comfortably in the dark so they can imagine whatever they like to be in the consuming shadows.

>>3267026

1. That's like saying that we don't need to teach a concept like gravity to teach the equations to calculate the orbit of the moon, or to explain nuclear synthesis to say the sun is basically a giant nuclear power-plant; it's true enough but it leaves a totally incomplete understanding of how it works.

Biology requires evolution. It's the theory that knits it all together. Without it, you might as well exclude that things are made of atoms from chemistry.

2. Educating people protects them from ignorance. The stupid will always be stupid but the ignorant will not always be ignorant. The most powerful weapon in a Creationist's toolbag (or anyone who has an agenda) is to have an audience who are just slightly uneducated enough to understand them.

Educated people can dismiss arguments as bullshit, and, better still, it exposes them to the beauty of science.

3. Brighter people will do that anyway; curiosity is incurable and people with it will always seek out more information. Schools can't cover it all, after all; at most, they provide a glimmering of it because they're too busy keeping up with the slowest idiot in the race.

Finally, you're a fucking moron if you say people shouldn't fight against ignorance. It's like saying "We shouldn't vaccinate our kids because anti-vaccinators are protesting."

You're a troll, but you're too much of a representation of real people and it pisses me the fuck off.

>>3267633

From what I've read, it basically just simulates an artificial hippocampus, allowing long-term memories to be created and recovered.

Not my field, though, so I could be totally wrong.

Define free will.

If by free will, you mean the ability to make decisions, then we definitely have it. We make decisions all the time.

At least try and be original, OP.

Absolutely awesome inspiration for writing fantasy, well-made, and generally interesting.

Not exactly science, though. Neat math, maybe, but not science. Would be cool if he had some practical proof or use for this, though. That'd definitely be interesting.

>>3241358

"And I remember saying, 'Hold everything right fucking THERE.

'You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and feeding me and clothing me and all-- and, YEAH, whipping me from time to time, and making me live in a house that's freezing fucking cold all the goddamn time-- and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to do and sometimes I just want to scream-- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head-- I go through all this-- and then there's death?

'What is the motherfucking deal here?"

"I remember first learning about death quite vividly.

I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me.

'Sometimes, when someone gets ill, and they're very very old, they don't get better again. They just get iller and iller and then... then their body stops working.'

'I don't understand.'

'What's in them just goes away, and doesn't come back.'

'Grandpa isn't coming back?'

'No,' she said. 'Not ever again.'

'Grandpa said he was going away and not ever coming back after he held Grandma's head in that cotton-dump outside of town and kicked Skeeter seventy-three times.'

'Grandpa was very drunk. That's not the same as being dead. Grandpa's dead, son. He's not there anymore.' "

Why would anyone want to pass on their genes? You either live forever or die happy, it doesn't matter otherwise. If having a child helps you be happy or helps achieve your goals, go for it, but passing on your genes is stupid in this day and age.

The world doesn't matter beyond yourself. I'm hoping for the live forever option, so I'm not going to waste resources on something that might prevent me from doing so, or that might keep me from enjoying my life as I see fit.

If I want to hang around kids, I'll become a teacher. That way, I don't have to deal with their shit when I go home.

>>3208029

I have no doubt that single-purpose nanobots would be immensely useful. Regular injections of respirocytes would make every human on Earth more capable and save a great number of lives.

But generalized nanobots have a pretty much endless list of uses. They have the potential to be to medicine and mass production what the computer has been to every facet of the world.

I'm on the fence about nanobots. On the one hand, there's a lot of challenges involved in developing nanotechnology; the scaling of technology is immensely problematic. Creating a remote-controllable robot the size of a blood cell that can monitor its environment, send back data, and perform multiple operations is a feat well beyond us currently; mass-producing them is well beyond even that.

On the other hand, difficulties in developing technology does not mean it's impossible. Cells prove that tiny machines are possible, and we've continuously shown that we can do in a matter of years what nature took eons to do, or could never do, on a far grander scale.

So, /sci/, what's your opinion on nanobots

>>3198841

... Take a second and think about what you just said.

Humans learn by the same sort of feedback loop; we try out new actions. If they succeed, we repeat them. If they fail, we do them less or not at all. Risk/reward/harm is the basis for learning and, really, any action at all.

For something to be intelligent, it has to have imperatives/emotions that tell it when something it is doing is good or harmful.

Once it has reward/harm built into it, then it can be taught. By giving it new features to interact and dynamically adjusting the reward/harm for its actions (and by adjusting the amount of actions it can take, forcing it to make decisions), it will try and maximize its reward and minimize its harm by adjusting to perameters it is given.

This is essentially learning.

>>3198607

Well, we do, just not personal computers.

Still, you could make it incredibly basic; limit its inputs and what it has to remember. Once you've got the basic system, you can expand the situations it's in.

This isn't a small project, far from it, but we could effectively "raise" a computer with enough time. Start with something that is essentially living in a two dimensional space and teach it reward and harm. As time goes by, add to its database of capabilities and risk/reward responses, creating a hierarchy of risk/reward/harm, and a set of complications to harm.

It's like evolution in fast motion.

>>3198525

A true, "hard" AI doesn't need to be smart, just capable of learning. If we start off with something capable of even the most rudimentary learning, we've opened the doorway for something bigger.

The point isn't to create something as smart as a human, the point is to create something capable of learning. Smart as us is what comes after.

Men are serial monogamists, women are polygamists. For men, going from one female to another, staying just long enough to raise a child to a certain age and providing resources for them, is beneficial. For women, them, and them alone, having the best male is beneficial for them, though they often have to compromise.

Lifetime monogamy is unnatural for humans.

You're also not a douchebag for having sexual thoughts about attractive women even while being in a relationship. You're just a douchebag if you act them out while professing monogamy to your partner.

Best way to trick your brain and maintain a monogamous relationship is to spend time apart from your partner. Not deliberately stay apart, mind you, but just don't do activities together that only one of you likes, and be sure to hang out with people other than them.

>>3190053

But hasn't it? By observing the entangled particle on this end, I know the state of the particle on the other end. Through this observation I know what is going on an arbitrary distance away.

I gained knowledge of the state of a distant particle long before any light from its location could have reached me.

>>3190010
>>3190017

An absence is not something. To say something is absent means it is not there. An absence of anything is to say that nothing is there.

>>3189987

But isn't the knowledge of the spin of the distant particle information?

I'm not talking about communications here, just the knowledge of the spin itself.

Nothing is the absence of anything. It is a non-state that doesn't exist within the universe.

>>3189851

Right, except I'm not saying that we're sending information as a message for humans to use. I'm still measuring the spin of a distant particle, many lightyears away, instantaneously.

For all intents and purposes, I've received a message from the other particle and that message is "My spin is X", regardless of whether someone else set it spinning that way.

Information has travelled, it's just not information that has any real particular use.

I have two entangled particles. I send one a lightyear (or any arbitrary distance) away. I then observe the spin of the particle on my local end.

I now know the spin of this other particle from this arbitrary distance (and this might affect the other particle too).

I have now altered and observed the state of a distant particle.

Isn't this information being sent at FTL speeds?

As you can tell, I clearly do not study physics and am uneducated in the field, but I'm still curious.

Does this have an application for space elevators?