21 January 2010 PM

A bit of mathematics

Check out this article about classical chaos versus quantum level physics. Yes, you might have heard about “uncertainty principles”. Well, that is very different than classical chaos:

Working in a cramped MIT laboratory in 1961, meteorologist Edward Lorenz stumbled upon a new science. Wanting a closer look at the data of a weather simulation he was running, Lorenz restarted it in the middle. Within a few minutes, everything changed and the data he had expected to see had morphed into strange new patterns. A stunned Lorenz checked his inputs. He had rounded the starting values by about .0001, which should have been insignificant. And yet it was not.

At the time, scientists thought small changes in starting values should make only a small difference in most systems. But sometimes such tiny shifts will cause a very different outcome, completely out of proportion with the size of the change—this hypersensitivity to initial conditions is what Lorenz dubbed the “butterfly effect” and what we now call chaos. [....]

But at the level of atoms, our definition of chaos has run into a problem.

Chaos is usually defined by a system’s movement: Set a pendulum swinging, track exactly where it goes, and its motion will reveal whether it is chaotic. Atoms, however, are governed by the uncertainty principle, which means that their location cannot be known precisely. What’s more, the laws of quantum mechanics say that hypersensitivity to initial conditions, which is considered the primary characteristic of a chaotic system, is physically impossible for atoms—at least in the way it’s understood at the classical level.
This presents a serious quandary because quantum mechanics is considered the most basic set of universal laws. Chaos must have some connection with the quantum level, but how it manifests itself, or how to quantify it, has thus far eluded physicists. Work published recently in Nature helps shed light on this problem as researchers working with cooled atoms searched for what they call signatures of chaos.

Now THAT sounds like interesting research.

Ok, there were problems with Coakley as a candidate: I probably wouldn’t have liked her either. But I take issue with what Marc Randazza says: what he implies is that he is actually happy that Coakley lost more than he is happy about Brown winning, and he is, of course, wrong about her “melting” when hit by water (“dissolving” is the correct term)

Why am I joking about that? Well, if you read Randazza’s excellent post about a case which has made the news, you’ll see that not paying attention to detail can provoke outrage when, well, the situation isn’t outrageous at all. In this case, journalists accuse a major cooperation of picking on a kid and claiming that a kid is infringing on one of it’s trademarks. The only problem: that isn’t happening.

In this case, the cooperation isn’t saying “you can’t use that name as it is similar to what we use” but rather “we object to YOU taking out a trademark on that because it is similar to what we use for our brand”. To me, it shouldn’t be too hard to distinguish the two different situations, but …well, I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, read the post: it is well written; this guy ought to write a book on popular law. I’d buy a copy!

Anyway, back to politics. Yes, stuff like this makes me ill. But Nate Silver says that panicking only makes things worse.

Mind, Religion and all that
I was mildly amused by this article (though I wasn’t surprised):

Of the many viral-video meltdowns pop culture has endured, few are as viscerally disturbing, as painful to watch, as Michael Richards’ racist rant during a 2006 stand-up appearance. As you’ll no doubt remember, the man better known as Kramer lashed out at a heckler in his audience with a shocking string of slurs, including the brutally memorable line, “Fifty years ago, we’d have you upside down with a fork up your ass.” The breakdown so outraged the general public that even today, if you Google “Michael Richards,” it auto-completes to “Michael Richards racist.”

Shankar Vedantam, a science writer with the Washington Post, uses the Michael Richards incident in his new book, “The Hidden Brain,” to illustrate the way he believes our unconscious can betray us — and reveal biases we wouldn’t even acknowledge to ourselves. Vedantam uses a wide array of vivid true stories to make his point: The tragic tale of a woman who is brutally beaten in front of dozens of onlookers illustrates how a crowd’s inaction can trick our brain into ignoring pleas for help; two transsexuals who’ve experienced both sides of the gender divide help illuminate how unconscious sexism can change lives.

Salon spoke with Vedantam over the phone about the role of the unconscious, why we should be gentler to Michael Richards and the connection between racism and a Republican voting record.

(emphasis mine). By the way, I am well aware of the racist “Democrats” in places like Kentucky and West Virginia; there was a time when the Pat Buchananas of the world WERE mostly Democrats.

Religion I am some issues with semantics here:

Many people believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection poses a threat to religion (specifically to Christianity). Dr. Kitcher suggests that, taken on its own, Darwin’s work can be assimilated by many world religions and many versions of Christianity. There is, however, a deeper problem.

The scientific approach that underlies Darwin’s achievements is inimical to all but the most liberal forms of religion. Once this point is appreciated, it is tempting to believe, as the militant Darwinian atheists of our time triumphantly proclaim, that religious practices should simply be eradicated.

Dr. Kitcher argues that this is incorrect, and that a genuinely humane secularism – a real Secular Humanism – should absorb some characteristically religious attitudes. We need to discard the myths offered by supernaturalist doctrines, but we also need what Dewey called “A Common Faith.”

Here is my issue: once we dismiss “supernaturalist doctrines”, we are no longer in the realm of religion, as far as I am concerned. For example, I have no problem with, say, the “7 principles of the Unitarian Universalists”:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote
1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Truth be told: mostly I gave up going to UU services when it started to conflict with ultra training. Ok, the idea that “ideas” such as homeopathy and dousing are considered worthy of consideration kind of irritates me too.

Yes, most people should be respected, but not all of their ideas should be.