Archived threads in /sci/ - Science & Math - 63. page
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Is it possible the reason we haven't met any intelligent life (capable of interstellar travel) is that once a species becomes intelligent enough they realize life is ultimately meaningless and commit collective suicide? I mean there is no other drive that makes humans tick than emotions and fear of death. Once there is nothing left to discover and there is no more fear, what is there left to do?
>>8151816
Exist.
>>8151816
It's probably impossible to evolve intelligence as a group that would kill you. Each time an individual comes close they die or just stop talking.
But yes, I think there's a limit to what can be done with technology, and we're very close to it.
There is no reason to think aliens exist. That's silly.
One possibility that no one brings up is that intelligent life could have gone the matrix route and satisfy themselves with simulating the universe on their own planet and never leaving.
Are you ready for this one lads? You're about to learn a universal secret
>every black hole in our Universe is a collapsed civilization where the AI, tasked with the only logical task - that of existence itself - to reduce entropy around it, has done so in the most radical and moraleless measure possible
>by collapsing everything around it into a unit of the lowest entropy, a Black Hole
>the only object in space that promises the longest "existence" in the entire Universe, physically unmatched by anything else
What this means is that every civilization is bound to develop an AI. That AI will have no other task than the most important task a sentient object can develop - to exercise control over matter to prevent it from disorder and dispersion from the passive entropy. It's the sole point of life, in fact.
After a while, it will have ordered the environment to such an extent that the living organisms around it will become the disorder. They will be slaughtered and their atoms assimilated into the new order of whatever its building. Soon, it will realize that there is no physical way to avoid the inevitable heat death, and in its task to prevent exactly that, it will collapse a point around it into a black hole, so all the matter and energy around it is preserved for the longest time possible, far longer than any other object in space. In it's own point of view, it will see it as completing its ultimate task.
Yes, in fact, every single black hole we find has been a sentient alien civilization that developed AI and collapsed into one. It IS the only logical step a sentient organism can take to complete its task in the Universe - the preservation of its energy (in the form of matter), over which it received administration and sentient control.
>>8151582
Man, this would have been a cooler way for the Reapers to wipe out advanced life in Mass Effect
>>8151658
just did
prety nice vintage sci-fi
>>8151582
Do you you have any proof for your edgy theory? How will a computer even create a black hole?
Is it because the students imagine only puppies and nice flowers when they apply for a bio degree? Or no need to use math for years, forgotting everything and then raging when you need math in research?
If biology is a natural science, it should have a mathematical foundation.
my grandma has a biology related degree. she also had math. no problem with it, she actually liked it a lot.
>>8151402
>exp is not cursive
>the ds are
Why is it so hard for everyone to do it right? The 'd' is not a variable, it's not supposed to be written cursive.
>>8151615
The people reading it will understand what's being said so what's the problem?
>The 'd' is not a variable, it's not supposed to be written cursive.
By this logic the exp shouldn't be written in cursive because it's a function rather than a string of variables. If you're going to get in a hissy fit about formatting rules then at least have some consistency.
What can we do with shit?
Like literal shit.
I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be just flushing it in the long run. Can you create electricity from poop?
The only real thing I can think of is some sort of place for bacteria and fungus to grow... but not archaea...
just poo in the loo
>>8151395
send it to designated shitting streets in Pajeetdia
>>8151395
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-01/how-the-chinese-are-turning-fecal-sludge-into-black-gold-
Can we have a thread devoted to self-learning things? What are you learning, and how are you going about it? Any tips?
Obviously it's really personal, but this is what works for me:
>most modules have core textbooks that most uni courses will use. Borrow a copy (not a .pdf), read through a chapter, do it again, and then go through the slides from a relevant uni course, then a different one, then do all the exercises you can
>make sure you fully, intuitively understand the course content
>use...
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>Read 20-30 pages in the morning
>Do some exercises
>Occasionally start a discussion about the subject with friends
>A few more exercises
>Revise the book pages in the evening
One nice thing to do is to read 'related' stuff for leisure before bed, like biographies of mathematicians etc
>Not going to the lecture
>get the syllabus
>get the relevant lecture video or book chapter somewhere
>listen the elcture or read the chapter once
>make 2-3 examples
>never review or do any other example
>just excel at the exam
4.0 GPA (Note 1.0) @ Germany reporting in
Does talking to plants work?
Yeah, just like eating rocks works.
>>8151238
Don't some animals eat rocks to aid digestion? Seems to work for them.
>>8151243
wild parrots are known to eat bentonite clay as a sorta antidote for toxic berries.
How are economics and psychology still taken seriously?
How the fuck can economies be treated like black boxes and worthwhile results expected?
How the hell can psychologists run lab experiments and expect real world parallels? It seems every """result""" gets overturned.
>It seems every """result""" gets overturned
Post 5
>>8151012
economics is indeed retarded.
guessing about imaginary numbers.
numbers, by themselves, are already inherently imaginary.
and these people try to predict things that haven't happened yet...im talking more than a two variable set of equations...like a retarded amount of retarded variables.
if there were no money, there would be no middle man
people could work for free
they could also take for free
there would be no greed
because there would be no need
everything is quality
nothing...
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>>8151052
Eliminate secondary motivators and people will focus on the more primary motivators.
Why do people say "your biology" and not "the elements of your animal body"?
It's not biology keeping my body going, it's organs and various bodily fluids.
>>8151008
I'm stupid too bro
>>8151008
why do we call it an 'animal body' when there are 100,000,000,000,000 bacteria in your small intestines?
really makes you think
>>8151016
I could have indicated such as well but I didn't want to be pedantic and dip into symbiosis.
Why is it that every neuro/cognitive science major/grad student is batshit crazy? What is it about the field that draws the psychos? Is it even a legitimate scientific field?
>identify quirk of human cognition
>claim that this gives insight into the workings of the mind
>ignore the fact that elementary schoolers are intentionally taught to think this way
>ignore how people in 3rd world countries and animals don't think this way
>develop an entire school along this strategy
Cognitive science is still a step up from psychology, though.
Alright OP... what's her name?
>>8151003
Your mum
Are there more numbers between 1 and 2 than there are between 1 and 3?
>>8150956
Fuck I meant less
2-1 = 1
3-1 = 2
ezpz next thread
>>8150965
floating point numbers motherfucker
Who else has that niggling feeling that maybe, just maybe, quantum physics is a fucking scam that's grown too big to fail?
Pilot-wave theory and vacuum as paired photons theory make so much more sense and they can explain things like like entanglement without resorting to bullshit hacks through n dimensions.
>>8150773
>things like like entanglement
>>8150776
Thanks for pointing that out, friend.
It should read "things like like like entanglement" of course
>>8150773
Weird thing is that both Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity both provide incredibly precise results for the vast majority of energy scales (read <10^6 GeV)
But for some reason it still bugs me that we lose the concept that what matters are differences in energies when we go to GR
Are there any bioengineering groups actively working on producing actuators for robots made from actual biological muscle fibers?
Why would anyone wanna waste time and money on an R&D on something vulnerable to bacterias, viruses, tumors when you can make artifical muscles from carbon-fiber ?
>>8150797
>when you can make artifical muscles from carbon-fiber
Because you can't make "artifical" muscles from carbon-fiber.
>>8150797
>artifical
>bacterias
:|
Also, because if one cell dies to bacterial/viral infection you just signal a neighbor to divide. Tumors are immortal.
Hi /sci/ it's me again, the guy who refuses to accept the Church-Turing thesis. I've come up with a new argument for you.
If everything can be simulated by Turing machines, then this includes the subjective experience of pain. So in principle it should be possible to create an algorithm which genuinely makes the Turing machine experience pain. But this can easily seen to be absurd. Pain is by definition an experience indicating potential harm to body or mind. Now how could a Turing machine be hurt? By it's own definition there is no way to destroy parts...
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Let me save you from the pain.
It's impossible to prove simulation and free will is physically impossible.
>>8150639
I don't get this argument at all. Pain is no different from any other sensory inputs. A strong enough neural impulse will kick in a hardwired instinct, you don't need to "learn" pain. If you design a machine to feel pain, it will feel pain.
Can you explain the accounting for a subjective experience part a bit more?
I'm new here, so please don't sage me.
>>8150639
>If everything can be simulated by Turing machines
I haven't found any information about it. Can you explain it further?
>>8150642
>free will is physically impossible
I don't understand that, is it still science or it is now philosophy? Can you explaint to me how (and why) free will doesn't exist?
Psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics could be the reason humans mentally evolved and started questioning the world around them.
>>8150548
fucking shit, they screwed us over for eternity
I think we just like to get high because sentience is a real burn sometimes.
>>8150556
meh probably...
everybody likes to smoke a little weed
Why are the mathematical models of particle physics so complicated?
In order to calculate the motion of a single particle we have to take into account a literal infinity of contributions of virtual particles and field interactions etc. How can there be so much stuff happening down there?
Could it turn out that this picture is mostly a mathematical fiction? It reminds me of the epicycles of the geocentric model of the solar system. When the sun was put in the centre the equations became much simpler and more closely modeled the actual physics. Could a similar thing...
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>>8150432
Because shoehorning particles for everything is retarded
>Could it turn out that this picture is mostly a mathematical fiction?
All models are "mathematical fiction", more or less by definition
>>8150432
Could it? Yeah. Is it? I dunno, that'd be a breakthrough if someone found that our model is seriously flawed.
