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Hello all members, This is what should become a hard core math, physics, and logic team! Not just for fun and recreation, but to have some serious learning too. I won't be too hard on everyone ;). I don't expect us to win every vote chess game or team match, but please try hard. This group has been named after one of Roger Penrose's books, The Emperor's New Mind. TENM is a book covering a wide range of math and physics topics, but is more than just a popular book. This is the first book where Penrose advances The Godelian Case against Strong A.I. The book is heavily spiced with discussions of the mind, where possible quantum effects may occur, etc. Specifically, Penrose (and fellow inventor of the argument, J.R. Lucas) uses Godel's Theorems to try to disprove mechanism. In his later book, Shadows of the Mind, Roger Penrose rebuts the many criticisms to his original argument. Of course, the whole book made a major impact, and whether or not you agree with Penrose or Lucas, it's on fascinating read! Happy playing and good synapses everyone.

I currently see no reason to believe that there is anything other than my subjective experiences. Can anyone prove to me there exists anything independent of myself (I define myself as the sum total of my experiences, and I define an experience as either a thought or a "physical" perception [there is really no distinction between the two for me])?

1.I would like to submit the claim that things experienced during a psychedelic experience are as equally valid as things experienced at any other time or state of mind. What reason would we have to think they are any less believable? Would it just be because such experiences are inconsistent with how we normally perceive things? Because if that is the case, someone could if they really want to just trip most of their waking life, and then their normal perception of things would be consistent with this. Would it be because every other person says what you hallucinated did not occur? But if you believed in the truth of their perceptions over yours, you are still relying on the truth of a particular perception of yours (your perception of every one else's accuracy). But so long as you have relied on the truth of this perception, why not accept other perceptions as well? To accept just one particular perception (your trust in every one else's accuracy) would be completely arbitrary. Independent of this reason, is it not rational to believe that certain things can cause you to perceive things that other people or yourself could ordinarily not? For example, when you wear glasses to enhance your vision you can perceive some things that other people cannot. So there is a rational basis to believe using a hallucinogen would do likewise. Perhaps if every one else used the hallucinogen too, they would see the same sort of things. If this were the case, there would be no problem in saying such hallucinations existed just like there is no problem in saying that you need a microscope to discover that microorganisms exist. To me it seems accurate to say that just because something is hallucinated, this doesn't preclude the possibility of that something still being real. Of course, it might not be real. But your ordinary perceptions might not be real either. They are all just on the same level. 2. I am interested in hearing the experiences of any psychonauts here, with specific interest in philosophical insights gleaned from hallucinogenic experiences.

Recently I've been arguing with some big christians about alien life. I believe there is alien life out there in our membrane(as i am sure most of you do). I am not saying there are for sure, just a very high probability. Heres why(in a nutshell): Our universe(as in everything on our membrane) cannot have edges, so it can be two things: Finite or Infinite.A finite universe would be shaped like a torus, so that if you went in a straight line from point A, you would eventually arrive at point A again without making any turns. However, lights from stars and galaxies don't reappear in specific patters. This doesn't mean that the universe isn't finite. This just means that if it was, it would be very, very large, increasing the probability of there being aliens. If our universe is infinite, than there is a 100% chance we will find aliens. This is for two things. One thing is that because the universe is infinite, but there are only a finite number of combinations of things, the universe must repeat itself, resulting in an identical earth. (FYI, This also eliminates parallel universes, as every possibility of life would be contained in our universe). The second thing is that there are combinations to make alien life, and if the universe is infinite, it will have to cycle through that(assuming that einstein is correct and the world behaves uniformly). Sorry for the long post. Point out where I made mistakes.

A poll: How many demensions do you think we are in? a. 3 b. 4 c. 5 d. more than five

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A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink. "How much?" he asks. Bartender says, "For you, no charge." Some helium floats into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve noble gases here." The helium doesn't react. A neutrino walks into a bar. Bartender says, "We don't serve your kind here." The neutrino says, "I'm just passing through." The tachyon leaves. The bartender says, "We don't serve your kind here." A tachyon walks into a bar. An atom walks into a bar and breaks down into tears. The bartender says, "Hey there pal, what's the matter?" Atom says, "I think I just lost an electron!" Bartender says, "Are you sure?" Atom says, "Yeah, I'm positive!"

So if you had a heavy metal torpedo in the ocean attached to cable that ran down over a mile to the bottom of the ocean. Couldn't you have this torpedo drop down to the bottom while running some kind of turbine either useing the cable or water like a dam would in a sort of way. Then at the bottom release compressed air into air bags to send the turbin torpedo back to the surface to transfer it energy onto some grid, and refill the compressed air tanks atumatically with this stored power. Then repeat the process again. With many of these working together would it be a viable energy sorce?

Having only just caught the news that the LHC might have detected a Higgs, I read that it probably has not. Oh well.

Suppose you set down three cards face down: two hearts, and a spade. You ask someone to pick one of the cards; if they pick the spade, they win. They pick card 1. You then reveal card 3: a heart. You offer to switch their card with 2. Is it favorable to switch? Apparently, it's supposed to be, but I'm a little confused: there are two lines of reasoning that both seem to make sense to me, but they contradict each other: I. There was a 2 in 3 chance you were wrong, and since you know 3 is wrong, you are basically asking yourself a question: were you right or wrong on your first pick? If you pick right you keep your card, which is a 1 in 3 chance; if you pick 2 you are betting on wrong, 2 in 3. Seems to make sense, but... II. We know the third card is a heart. That means the face-up setup is either spade-heart-heart, or heart-spade-heart; what is it really that favors one over the other? When we're deciding what completes the threefold heart-spade complex (i.e., the first two cards, which we know contains a spade and heart), can we not, for all intents and purposes, instead focus on the first two cards, the ones we don't know? We know that one has to be a spade, and one has to be a heart. Either combo seems plausible, doesn't it? Like in algebra, it seems you could cancel out heart, since we know that one; it really boiles down to heart-spade versus spade-heart; the fact that there is an equivalent third card added to both sides doesn't seem to mean much. It's like saying x = y, but x+1 does not equal y+1. Couldn't we just treat this as a new game, one where you put two cards face down, one a spade, other a heart, and ask what they choose? When the heart is revealed, isn't that essentially what you're doing? Why, really, should it matter what you picked before? You're still choosing the completion of the heart-spade complex, aren't you? Isn't that neutral? "I" seems very logical, yet I can't quite refute "II." You know what I think it is? I think it's that when 3 is revealed, your #1 is not eliminated right off the bat, but #3 is. So for example, if you were told that #1, your first pick, was wrong, then the chances of being correct would indeed be 1 in 2 since you know no distinct differences between 2 and 3. But since you know 3 is wrong, you can compare 1 in 2, which, with 3 out, is the choice between right and wrong, reverting back to I. Because 3 is wrong, the value of 1 and 2 I guess do have different values, unlike if 1 was wrong when there is no conflict between 2 and 3. The thing about I is, it is taking into account slightly more information (what you picked) than the more objective postulating in II; that extra information I guess is surprisingly useful!

1.Roger Penrose 2.Edward Witten (well, theoretical physicist) 3.Stephen Hawking 4.Paul Cohen 5.Alain Connes 6.Brian Greene 7.George Lakoff (not exactly a mathematician by formal training, but important) 8.Lee Smolin (another theoretical physicist) 9.Andrew Wiles Look them up on Wikipedia if you haven't heard of them.

Should members who have not logged on in 6 months be deleted? More than 6 months? Or should members never be deleted?

This week I watched a fascinating documentary about doing science at PhD level. Essential viewing for anyone considering doing a PhD or just interested in the process of unraveling natures secrets. It's called Naturally Obsessed.

Does anyone know of any downloadable chat bot that I can teach (i.e., that can record my definitions of things and repeat them in appropriate circumstances, and if I am lucky, say something new about it perhaps based on another different thing I have said)?

Timotheus drew my attention to what could be some huge physics news today. CERN report having measured the speed of neutrinos as being slightly faster than that of light. My first thought was that surely there must be some mistake, and I think this is still a hypothesis at CERN. But then I saw an alternative explanation which may be more interesting. We think of the speed of light as being fundamental, this being closely tied to the fact that photons are massless. But in relativity, it is really what might be called the "speed of space" that is constant, and constrains the speed at which everything else can travel, light being one of those things. One argument for photons moving at the speed of space is really that they have to in order to have any energy, as they are massless (are there experiments that actually show the speed of light is the "speed of space" in relativity?) Meanwhile, previous work has inferred that neutrinos must have small masses (well, at least some of them, but probably all of them). In a sense, light passes through space with the greatest of ease, with no mass being generated by Higgs bosons, whereas neutrinos are slightly hindered by virtual Higgs and acquire some mass. But what if neutrinos actually pass through space more easily than light? We know that neutrinos interact with matter a lot more weakly than light and don't interact with light at all, so surely they interact less with virtual particles of similar types. Can photons acquire a tiny amount of mass because of their interactions with virtual particles? This is so fascinating, when the Higgs is confirmed next year, it may only make page 2.

... in the hope that it would provide 2 minutes of amusement for someone. The Universe and everything

For those who like logic puzzles, here is one I found on BrainDen. You are one of 20 prisoners on death row with the execution date set for tomorrow. Your king is a ruthless man who likes to toy with his people's miseries. He comes to your cell today and tells you:“I’m gonna give you prisoners a chance to go free tomorrow. You will all stand in a row (queue) before the executioner and we will put a hat on your head, either a red or a black one. Of course you will not be able to see the color of your own hat; you will only be able to see the prisoners in front of you with their hats on; you will not be allowed to look back or communicate together in any way (talking, touching.....).The prisoner in the back will be able to see the 19 prisoners in front of him. The one in front of him will be able to see 18…Starting with the last person in the row, the one who can see everybody in front of him, he will be asked a simple question: WHAT IS THE COLOR OF YOUR HAT?He will be only allowed to answer “BLACK” or “RED”. If he says anything else you will ALL be executed immediately.If he guesses the right color of the hat on his head he is set free, otherwise he is put to death. And we move on to the one in front of him and ask him the same question and so on…Well, good luck tomorrow, HA HA HA HA HA HA!”Now since you all can communicate freely during the night, can you find a way to guarantee the freedom of some prisoners tomorrow? How many?

Forensics homework... short answer question: Can Fingerprints Be Altered? Why/why not? A simple question, simple answer, takes only two sentences to answer. There was only enough space on the worksheet for about 3 lines anyway. But I, as always, got carried away, and typed frantically. You could imagine the look on my teacher's face when I turned this in (it was worth the extra credit points) (this is less of a satire to science than my other writing, and is actually intended to be accurately informative on fingerprints in general) The typical answer to this question is a flat no. However, after being exposed to a powerful creativity field, perhaps there does indeed exist a way to alter prints. First, the facts. Fact #1: Fingerprints reside in the dermal layer of skin, below the epidermis. Fact #2: Identical twins have different fingerprints Fact #3: Fingerprints develop at birth, and are permanent and unique. Fact #4: A rare condition exists that negates fingerprints' existence, correlated with lack of sweat glands. Fact #5: Fingerprints exist only on the padded part of hands and feet (the concave part) Fact #6: Palm lines exist in roughly the same location, but the ridges are more bold and longer. (It's all common knowledge, so citations are unnecessary) Now, some analysis. Based on fact #2, it can be shown that fingerprints are not related to DNA. Thus, there must be some other cause. Palm lines are defined by the frequency, power, and location of muscular movement in the hand. Repeated similar movements cause the skin to crease about a number of lines, which create the hand prints. Granted, fingertips do not have a series of muscles that vary tension and stress on the print, but it is likely that the print is caused by minute differences in stress and tension between individual cells, at birth. Minute pressure differences could be caused by a variety of factors. Two prominent ones are dust particles and heat. Before the fingerprint is created, the skin is flat and smooth (Fact #7) (perhaps this is due to friction resulting from multifocal skin contact, supporting Fact #5), but soon expands its surface area, still limiting the volume. Ridges must be created to accommodate the surface area increase. Like a beam that breaks in the location where it is the weakest, regardless of how close in weakness the second weakest point is, the skin on the fingertip gives way to the ridge formation, no matter how minute the differences in material resistance are. Hyperbolic skin is created. Another theory is that the blood vessels and sweat glands in the dermal layer of skin push upwards. Minute differences are again created, but these are a result of internal factors rather than external. This is the more likely, as Fact #4 supports this theory more than the former. Based on the analysis of facts, a series of simple steps may be followed to alter a print. Step 1: Burn/Corrode/Scrape/Peel off the epidermal layer of skin above the print. Step 2: Embed nanotechnology into skin. Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit! Steps 2&3 could use a bit of explanation. In short, “magic happens.” The long-winded explanation is that the nanobots dig into the skin and displace the sweat pores and blood vessels by a miniscule amount. They then form an array over the dermis and link to 4 lattice neighbors each. A current passes through them, affecting local pressure on various locations of the skin, parallel to the vessels and pores. It takes about a week for the individual skin cells to adjust, but then viola! Fingerprint alteration!

Hi all, I've been assigned this project that I'm eventually supposed to present on at a conference in February. Supposedly I should know everything that I need to know in a few months, but seeing as I don't know much about Diophantine Equations now I thought it would be prudent to see if anyone here had any knowledge whatsoever about them. Specifically, I'm going to be doing something about Diophantine Approximations. Does anyone here happen to know anything about Diophantine Equations?

Hi everyone! I was wondering if someone could post some links with great resources for quantum optics. I am currently using the Oxford text written by Mark Fox, but would like to find some more information on this subject. Thanks!