That’s not quite correct. There are no good analogies between classical objects like marbles or socks and entanglement.
In fact, Bell’s inequality was stated as a collaboration game that can only succeed if you use entangled particles. No classical object will get you the same results.
You still can’t communicate faster than light but the reason is more subtle. The article does a good job but for a deeper explanation I’d refer to Sean Carrol: https://youtu.be/yZ1KSJbJAng
All analogies are flawed because the underlying reality is different. They can still be useful if they can communicate some more abstract idea.
An analogy I like for entanglement is to picture two atoms that will both decay at the same time. You could place them on other sides of the planet and until one is observed to decay nobody learns anything because the timing is unpredictable. After the observation people agree with that timing independent of distance but can’t communicate anything because the timing was random. Still, having two people both knowing some fact at the same time which can’t be observed by outsiders is a useful in it’s own way.
What I like about this is it’s clear what’s going on is different from what’s being described, it’s describing a property of something, and it separates information from communication. On the other hand it’s got plenty of it’s own problems.
The problem with that analogy is it gives an illusion of understanding while being completely misleading about what Bell’s inequality actually tells us about nature.
The whole point of Bell’s inequality is that quantum entanglement is fundamentally different than classical correlation between two objects which have some opposite properties the observer simply does not know about before observing one of them.
It’s not helpful to use an analogy which teaches the reader the exact opposite of the point you are trying to make.
Your example with decaying atoms suffers from the same misunderstanding. Quantum entanglement is not about lack of information about some specific states, if that was the case, why would anyone talk about loss of locality?
Understanding entanglement and Bell’s inequality requires a completely different ontology than your everyday experience with classical objects. I highly recommend the video I linked above for an approachable explanation. It is not as simple as these analogies but at least it gets to the actual point of this result which tells us something profound about how nature works.
No so fast, Bell’s inequality only invalidates local hidden variables. It’s your interpretation that’s suggesting some local variable like a ticking clock was determining when those atoms would decay, but that’s not part of the analogy.
The many worlds interpretation is analogous to global hidden variables, and while out of favor, perfectly consistent with modern physics. That said, the core issue is IMO only a one dimensional property was correlated which hides a lot of the oddities involved.
You describe that as an analogy, but I always took that to be what it actually is (or at least one very simple example). Are you saying that that is how we interpret our experience intuitively, but we need a more radical account under the various mainstream interpretations of quantum physics (Many Worlds, Copenhagen, etc.)?
That’s right. Not only it’s an analogy, it is also a bad one and completely misleading, at least according to physics of the last 50 years. Note how the article frets about the loss of locality.
The only thing we experience from preforming at an experiment is the data it provides. As such from the data from existing experiments is where all the spooky action at a distance is actually observed.
I don't think this criticism is correct, at least in response to what was said.
Yes, a classical bag containing classical balls doesn't reproduce quantum behavior, because of Bell's theorem. But GP's description isn't classical; it explicitly invokes multiple universes. Once you've done that, quantum behavior is reproducible, because (just as Bell's theorem says) it's no longer possible to ascribe a single hidden state to the ball/bag system, because you can't eliminate the extra universes.
TL;DR Had anxiety. Discovered breathwork. Learned to code and built a free app with no user data collection.
Like for many people, the lockdown was doing real a number on my anxiety. I was lucky to discover breathwork through J. Nestor’s excellent ‘Breath’. Couple more books and podcasts later, I decided to build a simple, privacy-first app around some of the key exercises that affect wakefulness, focus and sleep.
I’m 34 and I had to learn programming from scratch. It’s been a great learning experience to say the least. I would appreciate any advice or feedback on the app or how to become a better app developer.
App: Swift with Xcode using native Apple APIs
Website: Webflow + Cloudflare
In your position I would look to consider 2 things:
1) Add leg straps for kicks! That's a killer ab exercise and would work great with your concept.
2) Let other devs make use of the hardware asap! Your strenght is clearly in the hardware. There are tons of game developers who could create incredible games with this. How great would be UFC game with this?
Thanks for your reply! We are definitely exploring full-body exercises and totally agree that leg straps would make this even more effective. To your second point—we absolutely intend to open our hardware up to 3rd party applications/developers in the future, as we know that broadening the types of experience is key to longevity with a system like this
Zuckerberg's comments are clear and seemingly accurate as far as the publicly available information goes. The only problem is, they do nothing to address the real elephant question in the room. That question is - what is the state of political campaigns powered by the extremely detailed personal data Facebook holds?
Democracy only works when everyone gets an equal vote. What are the consequences when special interest groups, including from abroad, can pay to use the official Facebook APIs and craft targeted messages to shape the public opinion?
We have seen the consequences of this approach. Trump won by the smallest margin. Brexit was nudged with 100% false and misleading statements (300m for NHS, showing refugees from Syria etc.) Should we be OK with this much power available on tap?
The real questions Zuckerberg needs to answer are: what political campaigns are being run? Who is being targeted with political messages? What are the budgets like? Most importantly, who is ultimately paying for shaping the political opinions in our democracies?
This is a question that strikes at the heart of our society. Facebook is not going anywhere. Google is not going anywhere. People will continue to put all their personal data in cloud services without thinking about any Privacy policies whatsoever.
We should have an open debate about how much digital opinion shaping is acceptable before we have built a tool that sells the democratic decision making to the highest bidder. There is a reason why political spending is so carefully controlled in Europe. Facebook needs to own up and come clean on the state of political advertising taking place on their platform.
> Democracy only works when everyone gets an equal vote. What are the consequences when special interest groups, including from abroad, can pay to use the official Facebook APIs and craft targeted messages to shape the public opinion?
Democracy only works with an educated population. Regulating data might act as a short to medium term buffer against this issue; however, as we learn more about how our psychology works, the more often we'll be manipulated. Combined with the interesting argument that being politically uninformed could be rational:
> If the odds that your vote will be decisive are minuscule—Brennan writes that “you are more likely to win Powerball a few times in a row”—then learning about politics isn’t worth even a few minutes of your time. [1]
... we have an interesting problem on our hands. I personally believe that the long term solution is within education, but instead of teaching people "what to think," we ought to be teaching people "how to think". People typically learn naively about how to think: both how to emotionally cope with struggling and with parsing and understanding information. At the minimum I think schools ought to be teaching kids strategies for both arenas.
I personally really enjoy two approaches around "how to think.":
1. The now out of print "How to Develop Your Thinking Ability," is a super old, easy read loosely based on Korzybski's controversial "Science and Sanity." It taught me how to approach my perception as gambles (i.e. to avoid universal judgment). The principles, all often obvious, as I recall, are roughly:
a. Up to a point e.g. that person is annoying, up to a point.
b. To me. That movie is awesome to me.
c. As far as I know. Warren Buffet is 92 as far as I know.
d. Indexing by time: I like John at this point in time.
e. Indexing by place: I like John when we're at the club, but not when we're at the office.
f. Indexing by subindex: Instead of: Guy_1, Guy_2, Guy_3 are all scum, therefore all men are scum, we use indices to avoid generalization.
2. The Happiness Trap: enumerates Acceptance and committance therapy. ACT roughly uses a variety of defusing techniques, mindfulness, and values oriented behavior to help a person handle their thoughts in constructive manners.
The leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are barely starting to talk about some small human missions to Mars and then there is Elon, casually discussing glass domes and tunneling drones creating underground networks on Mars. Truly incredible.
I would say that the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are a little more grounded in reality than Musk in this regard. Glass domes and underground Martian tunnels make for some very interesting science fiction, but I'm concerned about the engineering challenges that he seems to be ignoring in favor of his grand statements of intent.
To pick a specific example, he seems to have very little concern for radiation shielding both during the trip to Mars or on the Martian surface. Both of these present incredibly harsh radiation environments for humans, and we need to develop solutions before we even consider sending explorers, let alone colonists.
Most habitation would be underground (hence the mining drones) to reduce radiation exposure.
Overall radiation exposure would be higher, and life expectancy would take a hit, accordingly. This is a trade-off, not a non-starter. I too would like to see a bit more discussion of specifics, but I also don't see this as the Achilles' heel that many would make it.
> he seems to have very little concern for radiation shielding both during the trip to Mars or on the Martian surface.
I find it hard to believe his team have not considered something so obvious. This seems like one of those statements that assumed the experts are a bit stupid. Just because he hasn't specifically mentioned it doesn't mean it is not considered. And sure somethings are probably not considered, but something as obvious as this...
> "The radiation thing is often brought up, but I think it’s not too big of a deal"
AFAIK no one else within the community would think of saying that.
I'm sure that there are people within SpaceX studying this and taking it into consideration, but my concern is mostly with Musk's cavalier attitude towards individual safety.
I don't think you have looked very hard then. Here's Zubrin on the topic:
>However, we already have data that shows that the accumulation of slow rates of cosmic ray radiation received during long duration spaceflight is not a showstopper for human Mars exploration. GCR dose rates in low Earth orbit are about half those in interplanetary space. Thus, there is a growing number of cosmonauts and astronauts who have already received Mars mission equivalent GCR doses during extended space missions without any radiological casualties.
He mentions in a recent speech that the most deleterious effect of time spent in space is related to zero gravity, not radiation - and that can be fixed with resistance training.
How about one problem at the time. If we can actually go there with lots of stuff, stay for a long period and come back we will already have made more progress then most people thought possible.
We know most of the physics needed to deal with the situation, if we can get equipment to mars. Radiation is a problem, but its not Problem Nr. 1.
1) You imagine what's going on in Elon's head
2) You complain about it on HN
3) You expect other people to care about your fantasy
4) ...
5) ???
There are multiple hard-to-solve problems involved in sending humans to Mars. Complaining that Elon didn't give sufficient weight to your favorite problem in his executive summary is not that interesting.
That's a good point, but it is relevant that Elon Musk isn't just a "scientist" or "expert" but a businessman positioning himself to sell a product.
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one and wait for more details, but at the same time I concede that it's not unreasonable to be wary of claims that the radiation problem "isn't a big deal" from someone planning to sell tickets to Mars. Not everyone has the same notion of what an acceptable risk is.
I'm not very knowledgeable of radiation hazards in space, but from some casual wikipedia browsing, it appears that the primary hazard is from protons (and various charged particles) being spewed out from the sun.
How practical is it to use an electrically charged or magnetic object between the sun and the spacecraft to deflect particles? Presumably, the farther away it is the less deflection would be necessary, but at some point it would be too far away to effectively mask the whole disk of the sun.
Similarly, you could just use a physical screen. Apparently, things like aluminum don't work very well as shielding because the undesirable particles react with the aluminum and produce more undesirable particles. However, if it were far enough away from the ship, it wouldn't need to block the radiation, it would only need to deflect most of it in a slightly different direction. (Whether the "screen" is on a long tether or whether it's a separate drone-spaceship would be an implementation detail that's not particularly important.)
I assume there's some reason this is impractical, otherwise it would be a solved problem already...
(As for shielding on Mars itself, I'm okay with the idea that humans will spend most of their time underground.)
Well, glass dome, water, glass dome is a really old idea that would work, if water is readily accessible.
something like 50 feet of water would also work for the trip, but water is heavy and you need a lot of it. maybe they can catch a comet, or pull it from the moon. I think there are answers, they're all really expensive answers though.
Thats not the reason. The reason is that the leaders of Earth have political constraints that does not allow them to do or change much. It has little to do with technical details.
Musk talks about it because he does not have those constraints.
As for radiation shielding, this has been a topic since the 60s. We know more or less what the risks are, we know the fundamental way to deal with the different type of radiation. The question is how to integrate it in your mission architecture.
He does not spend much talking about this because its not the fundamentally hardest problem that is to solve. The Core Problem to solve is the Transportation Problem. From what he has said about it, he proposed fundamentally the same basic ideas that people have been discussing for many years, and those should work.
Yeah, the Mars One project talks about burying their habitat five meters underground to get the same protection as the Earth's atmosphere; glass domes seem downright reckless in comparison.
All of our cereal crops are planted and harvested every year. They won't have time to accumulate the damage that we need to shield humans from. Also, plants seem to handle radiation very well - see the growth around Chernobyl[1].
(Note: The danger of eating Chernobyl's foliage is not that it has been irradiated, but that it has ingested radioactive material. That shouldn't happen with cosmic rays.)
Everyone's going to appreciate the opportunity to wander a green garden in a t-shirt. Do it at night and you're getting a lot less radiation, and I'll wager it'll be a hell of a sky too.
My impression was that once you're down on the surface of Mars the radiation that isn't blocked by the atmosphere is mostly cosmic rays which don't depend on day or night.
So you're saying that beyond everything else Musk is also making contributions to the marketing of greenhouses? Because "living space" is always related to humans, as far as I can tell.
Though some other comments I think mentioned that it probably wouldn't be too dangerous to allow the occasional stroll through the greenery. Doesn't sound too far fetched if you consider I can choose to hang out at the park without a hat in exchange for an extra dose of UV radiation for the day. Not saying UV is on the same level as cosmic radiation, it's just something to think about :)
I believe I recall talking about using water in the wall lining of the crewed area as shielding for radiation.
Also the radiation exposure during flight which would be the worse is equivalent to smoking for two years and dropping it. (I personally thought it was gonna be higher)
> ...the radiation exposure during flight which would be the worse is equivalent to smoking for two years and dropping it...
Please provide a citation for this. As far as I'm aware, we simply have no idea the kinds of effects that radiation encountered during the flight would have on humans.
The sample size for human exposure to space-based radiation is incredibly small (limited to just the astronauts on the ISS, and even then that is protected by much of the Earth's magnetosphere).
Radiation has been studied since the 60s. Multiple Mars mission had the equipment on board to do the measurements. Nothing to surprising was measured, the same results on Curiosity and Viking.
We know a lot about both type of radiation, cosmic and solar. Why know the basic physics, and we know how to prevent it. Both types of radiation have different properties and have different levels of danger, thus need different solutions.
This had been known for a while and solutions are possible. Thus, its not the most important problem in Humans to Mars architecture, as we know much less about reusable rockets and carbon cryo tanks.
Right!? Like, i have tons of respect for the guy, but the amount of press and attention that they get just by saying "we are going to mars" are crazy! Nothing practical to show, i would be more interested in a mission to build up a base at moon first.
But hey! This is show business, what we losers can possible know!?
"Nothing practical to show" ... I think you may be misinformed. There are a great deal of practical advancements (raptor engine, carbon fiber tanks, software and sensor suites that enable autonomous landing). There's tons of room for discussion around the mars architecture but to discount it because there's "nothing practical to show" is incorrect.
If you're not an expert in the field it might be worth it to do some research before immediately discounting an idea.
Well, TIL. Musk wins again, then. NASA with this huge budget, and I hear nothing. Then Dear Elon does ONE reddit AMA and I doubt I'll hear the end of it before 2023 ;)
Science Fiction writers have been discussing it for decades. Elon I think is A BIT out of touch when it comes to realistically coming up with timescales for this stuff. Obviously some day it will happen, but in the next ten years I think is ridiculous. I hope I'm wrong.
Having worked in both media and creative agencies I can't agree with the potential revenue analysis in the article.
User Generated Content, as many here have pointed out, is not valuable and often is indeed toxic for big brands. The young audience surfing cat pictures is also not valuable. What products will the advertisers sell to them? Games, some fashion, fizzy drinks but then what?
Lastly, non targeted audience is also less valuable for obvious reasons. This is why they are looking at ~ $0.75 CPM but LinkedIn campaigns start at $1.50 and go only up from there.
Successfully monetizing anonymous teenagers wasting time on the internet is something nobody has managed to do so far. Ask Digg.com
You guys know that you can unfollow people while staying friends on FB, right? I personally enjoy 90-100% of the updates on my wall thanks to unfollowing everyone who regularly post rubbish. I wish Twitter would allow it too!
What would be the purpose of "following" someone on Twitter if you don't want to read what they say? Genuinely curious; i'm not a Twitter user, but AFAIK the "following" relation there is unidirectional (i.e. you don't have to follow people that follow you).
I like to have my friends on Twitter so I can shoot them @ messages but as soon as the number of people I follow goes above around 100 the signal to noise ratio turns me off. I don't have the time or the interest to read all of that to find couple of good tweets. I'm a light Twitter user due to this; I assume creating lists can help.
So? Why do you even need the Internet? You could just SMS them? or why do you even need SMS? Why not just send them snail mail letters or see them in person?
There are certain pros and cons -- differeing levels of convenience being one of them -- of every communications medium and your response completely ignores that.
@ mentions have certain properties - it's a semi-open form of communication. Other friends who follow you both can see your communications. That can be handy
If you and others prefer to communicate (for certain purposes) via twitter, and there's another person, X, that you'd like to also include in the communication... sure you can send them a message by some other means, but it'd be more convenient to be able to just include them as well.
>The argument can be turned around - you could just follow people whose updates you don't care about on Twitter so they can message you
As I said, the discussion was not about DMs, but anyway the original point was about how software might be changed to make things more convenient... you seem to be treating less-convenient compromises as the only option that should be considered.
He's referring to Facebook-- there's a feature where you can still be friends with someone and not see anything (or just some things) they post. It's good for obsessive Farmville/Words with Friends types to hide that activity.
Technically, you can only DM people who follow you. Whether you follow them is irrelevant.
Twitter is a pub sub model, it doesn't really make sense to want to sub but not sub. Twitter follows aren't like friendships at all, they're a "I want to see your content" marker.
The problem comes when you realize if you unfollowed everyone who posts unteresting stuff on facebook you would end up with an almost literally empty feed.
While I can appreciate the need for the Bitcoin model I refuse to take part of it due to level of fraud involved. How much Bitcoins have been acquired by malicious bot-nets and held by small number of black hats? How much of the value is directly linked to drug trade or worse?
Sure, similar arguments can be made about using cash but there are fundamental moral issues with Bitcoin I can't agree with. I would like to believe a better model is possible. Thoughts?
I can't give you any numbers to support or refute your suspicions. However, if you genuinely believe that there is a need for something like Bitcoin, honest individuals using Bitcoin will help legitimize the currency and hopefully drive down the level of fraud and other unsavoury behaviour. If that is your only objection to it, then presumably honest folk like yourself staying away from Bitcoin are also preventing it from becoming more acceptable (not that you have any duty or obligation to do otherwise).
Or, are you implying that there is something fundamentally immoral about Bitcoin itself, which cannot be affected by having more honest users? I admit that this could also be the case, for example, if Bitcoin turns out to be such a massive success that it destroys the ability of nations to collect taxes, affect monetary policy, etc.
I do understand that illegal activities being paid with Bitcoins is something that comes with the benefits of the system. You are correct, the ratio of legal/illegal activity will probably improve with time as more legitimate business will be conducted with Bitcoins. At the same time it's worth being concious of the fact that at the moment the biggest use of this tool is paying for criminal activities. If this is true, we can't pretend that bringing in more "real" money to the pool doesn't mostly aid criminals.
What I see as "fundamentally immoral" about Bitcoin is the fact how so much of it has been acquired by black hats through bot-net and hacking of exchanges. They OWN a fixed percentage of this economy thus their net worth increases every time fresh "real" money is brought in anywhere in the pool. There is no way around it that I can see.
To give an analogy, I would personally not eat in a restaurant if I knew it is co-owned by local drug dealers even if the food was delicious.
Obviously I can see the positive side of having the ability to process payments without going through the government. This discussion is not black and white for me at all.
In fact, Bell’s inequality was stated as a collaboration game that can only succeed if you use entangled particles. No classical object will get you the same results.
You still can’t communicate faster than light but the reason is more subtle. The article does a good job but for a deeper explanation I’d refer to Sean Carrol: https://youtu.be/yZ1KSJbJAng