[Tallguy]

bookmarked -- very interesting...

[Chewbacca]

"Knowing someone's future health, let alone personality or intelligence, based on a genetic readout may be impossible.."


So, are they saying that the future we see in the movie GATACA would be impossible?

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Prof Engineer]

For later

[Billthedrill]

Egad - all we're talking about here is the entire philosophical field of epistemology, that's all...

The very first any freshman in any scientific field learns is how easily we reach the limits of human knowledge. The second thing he or she learns is how difficult it is to actually tell where it is with any precision. But it isn't really the limits of knowledge that is the issue here, it is the adequacy or inadequacy of existing mental models to incorporate new knowledge, and the necessity of modifying them to incorporate it or discard them in favor of models that do - that is the work of science.

The citation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a case in point - there's nothing wrong with the mental models we term "position" and "momentum," but when we discover that we cannot in practice measure both simultaneously the first explanation that comes to mind is the one most often heard - that it is the act of observation that is the problem. Underlying this is the hopeful assumption that a new, non-invasive method of measurement will get us out of this difficulty.

That is a limit of technology, not a limit of the mental models of "position" and "momentum." And it is very likely not true. What is really implied here is more fundamental than that - that the actual information carried by a subatomic particle may be inadequate to satisfy the mental models described by the words "position" and "momentum" simultaneously - that the problem isn't techniques of observation, but an inherent limitation of that way of looking at things.

Professional physicists will, of course, correct my interpretation if it is in error (God bless FR!) but IMHO here is one place where epistemology and scientific observation close the loop and become one. But it is profoundly unsettling to have concepts as intuitive as "position" and "momentum" challenged. Unfortunately, shutting down one's brain won't make the problem go away. I've tried it.

[Physicist]

What if stalactites could talk? If these icicle-shaped mineral deposits somehow preserved the sound waves that impinged on them as they grew, drop by drop, from the ceilings of caves, and if scientists figured out how to recover the precise characteristics of those waves, then maybe they would also be able to use stalactites like natural voice recorders and recover the conversations of ancient cave dwellers. Is it more far-fetched than recovering conversations from magnetized particles on an audio tape?

How bizarre is this?

Several years ago I literally dreamed this. It was so vivid, and stayed with me so indelibly, that I cast it into the form of a sonnet:

Echo and Narcissus

I dreamt last night that scientists had found
Encoded into metal, rock, and glass,
An unexpected form of "fossil sound",
Which cooling solids captured in their mass.

Numerical reagents were applied,
Precipitating meaning from the noise,
Roman blacksmiths from their shackles cried,
The Glass Harmonica held Franklin's voice.

Three seconds long! Yet Franklin's trifling quote
So captivated man's nostalgic heart,
It prompted him, enraptured, to devote
The world's resources towards his new-found art.

And yet, for all the effort that it spurred,
Nothing more of note was ever heard.

For those of you who don't know, the Glass Harmonica was a musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin.

In my dream, the cries of dinosaurs were also pulled from igneous rocks, but that refused to fit the meter.

For the record, I don't think such a thing is possible, but for a long time after my dream I could not shake the notion of "fossil sound" out of my head!

[Physicist]

Something for your ping list.

[Aquinasfan]

Science's Big Query: What Can We Know, and What Can't We?

This is the territory of philosophy, not natural science.

[RightWhale]

Rumsfeld is apparently having an interdisciplinary influence.

[ido_now]

Philosophy has proven abolutely, beyond any doubt, the fact that: "Nothing can be known, therefore nothing can be proven to be true!"

See Proof At: "http://www.halfwhit.edu.your-kids-college/For-$40,000/Year/Sucker.html"

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Wait until I tell my wife!

[Richard Kimball]

bttp

[tet68]

Without another world to show us different laws of nature, "I think we can never know for sure if the universe had to be the way it is, or if other laws of physics would allow other kinds of universes," says Prof. Hut.

How do you ever know?
How do you ever really know?
Sigh.


This mantra brought to you by the Church of the Future. tm.

[VOA]

Science's Big Query: What Can We Know, and What Can't We?

Wasn't this ground covered by philosopher David Hume some centuries ago...

[error99]

"...What if stalactites could talk? If these icicle-shaped mineral deposits somehow preserved the sound waves that impinged on them as they grew, drop by drop, from the ceilings of caves..."
- - -
Yes, but all we would hear would be that incessant:
drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip...

[Physicist]

Ping on #9.

[P.O.E.]

Ping

[Z10N157]

Self flag

[Mr. Mojo]

BTTT, and bookmarked.

[Fiddlstix]

Read Later