JPowersDC

I can see that this thread has been dead for a while, but I have a quick question that I hope someone can clear up for me. It's my understanding that in the Aspect-like experiments, the results that one obtains when the polarizers are rotated are exactly the same as the results one obtains when the polarizers are stationary throughout the experiment. Is this correct?

That may not be possible. The key thing to remember is that every entity has a specific identity. It is what it is and behaves a certain way under certain conditions. It is not enough to model something, one has to duplicate the relevant properties of the actual entity. The entities that make up our brains have specific properties, and these properties give rise to the property of conciousness. If we wanted to create a man-made device that was concious, we would have to find out the relevant properties of the stuff our brains are made of that give rise to conciousness, and then try to find a way to duplicate them by using actual entities, not computer models of entities. It might be that the entities that make up our brains are the only ones with the necessary properties. For example, if we wanted to make something that was not gold but that had the same density, color, maleability, and conductivity of gold, we might be out of luck! However, if it is true that there are other materials besides brain matter that we could assemble which would have the properties necessary to give rise to conciousness, then we could build a man-made concious entity. It would be a man-made brain; it would probably bare no resemblance to a computer, and it would not be a "model". To put it another way, if one wanted to invent something that has the high transparency property of crystal, one couldn't use a computer to simply model crystal, one would have to invent an actual entity such as acrylic. A computer model might help you in the design phase, but your model would not be transparent, only the final manufactured product would be.

Thanks! Will do.

(This question is mainly for those who are already familiar with Dr. Lewis Little's Theory of Elementary Waves; for those who are not, more information can be found at http://www.yankee.us.com/TEW) I've been thinking about the apparent randomness ("spontaneity") of radioactive decay and how it might be explained by the Theory of Elementary Waves. The following example occurred to me: Let's say we have a small sample of a material with a half-life of 1 day. All of the atoms in our sample have decayed to the stable state except for 256 of them, each of which still has one particle left to release before reaching a stable state. Based on the half-life, we can say that 1 day later, approximately 128 of the atoms will have decayed to a stable state, leaving us with 128 undecayed atoms. One day after that, approximately 64 more will have decayed, and on and on. This is one of the mysteries about half-life (at least to me): the rate of decay in a given sample actually slows down as time moves forward, yet the individual atoms know/care nothing about how many of their brethren in the sample have decayed, and the time of decay of a particular atom has nothing to do with its age (i.e., how long it's been radioactive or how long it's been since it last gave off a particle). It occurred to me that if elementary waves (EWs) are everywhere and constantly interacting, and if particle emission happens when the amplitudes of two or more EWs of the correct "type" for a given particle add together to a sufficient degree in the vicinity of that particle, that this might explain the half-life phenomenon. Let's say our sample is a 1cm cube. If ubiquitous EWs of all different kinds, directions, phases, etc. are passing through our sample and interacting with each other randomly (for all intents and purposes), it would seem that at various points throughout the area that our sample occupies, EWs of the correct type to stimulate particle emission from our atoms would come together with sufficient amplitude to do so. (If you could magically see this happening, it would look like the twinkling of Christmas tree lights throughout the sample.) When one of these events occurs near enough to one of our 256 as-yet-undecayed atoms, it would cause that atom to emit its particle and decay. But as time went on, the density of these EW interactions would remain the same, while the number of target atoms would decrease. This would mean that, statistically, fewer and fewer atoms would be likely to be "hit" in a given amount of time. What do you think of this scenario? Does the standard theory have anything to say about the reasons behind the behavior of decaying samples? I did some Internet searching on the topic and the few people I found who even addressed the "why" of the process said only that "it's a mystery".

I totally agree, BlueWind. I think that most everything one finds sexually attractive about another person is due to the summation of one's values judgements, EXCEPT the sex of the person to whom one is attracted. This is, according to my own hypothesis, due to sensory differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Someone stated earlier... I'm not so sure that's entirely true, and there seems to be a lot of scientific evidence to indicate that smell definately plays some part in sexual attraction. My own hypothesis of the origin of sexual orientation (which I apply only to males because I've seen evidence that it might not apply fully to females) is that it lies in the olfactory receptors and how they are (or which ones are) connected to the sexual centers of the brain. The natural scents given off by people (assuming good hygene) differ because of several factors, with hormones (and consequently, sex) being one of the major ones. I think that, in heterosexual men, some sexual area(s) of the brain are stimulated when chemicals given off by (some/most?) females are sensed; in homosexual men, it's the chemicals given off by (some/most?) males that provide the same stimulation. The details of this (e.g., whether the difference is caused by missing, present, malformed, or mis-wired receptors, or lies in the brain itself) I cannot speculate on. I think this can explain how sexual orientation can be innate, while most or all other aspects of sexual attraction are based on values. I have not stated the entire hypothesis (which also discusses bisexuality) here. I simply want to show that it's possible to have an innate determining factor behind one's preferences if that factor is due to a difference in sensory perception. I want to make one important distinction here. When I say above that a certain sexual part or parts of the brain are stimulated, I am not saying that the person becomes sexually aroused from this alone, at least not past infancy. I think that the stimulation causes the person (probably beginning in infancy) to associate the qualities of certain attributes (e.g., skin texture, vocal tone, general body shape, hairyness, ...) of one sex with sexual arousal, while the quality of those same attributes in the other sex have no special association at all. Thus, I am NOT advocating that humans have pheromones or pheromonal responses like some animals; they most certainly do not.

This happens a lot. Often, music from an older movie by the same studio will be used in the trailer, or even symphonic concert music that was never part of a movie score. The reason is that the trailers are sometimes made even before editing is completed (which is why you'll occassionally see a scene in a trailer that isn't even in the finished film). The addition of the score into the soundtrack is usually the very last step before the film is sent off for duplication/distribution. When a trailer is made, sometimes the score hasn't even been composed yet.

Consider the concept of "center of gravity". For the purposes of most calculations, the gravitational pull of an object (such as the Earth) can be considered to be coming from a single point, the object's center of gravity. We know that that isn't the case in reality, but the equations work just fine with that assumption.

Emergent properties are very interesting. Computers can model things in the real world, even very complex things, and properties can emerge from those models. I saw a documentary the other day where they modeled a tornado in a computer. The computer was not at all _programmed_ to simulate a tornado; it was programmed only to model a huge number of complex, interacting atmospheric phenomena, but a "tornado" emerged from it. If/when we do discover the intricate inner workings of the brain that give rise to conciousness, I'm sure they could be modeled to some degree. But would such a thing be concious? I tend to think not, for the same reason that the above-mentioned tornado, no matter how close the model gets to approximating the real thing, will never destroy a real trailer.