These have been around for decades. This is nothing new except that he's tied the accelerator to the pedaling. There isn't some sort of uber-efficient tranference of kinetic energy from the pedaling to the wheels. All that is happening is that the motor is doing the work, and the 'pedaling' is the accelerator. If electric bikes were going to revolutionize travel then they'd have done it already. They've been around for a long time. But the fact is that 99 times out of 100 when you are traveling you don't want a bike. You want a car. Cargo, adverse weather, long distances, passengers, comfort, personal safety... These are what make cars preferrable to bikes.

The only places where 'bikes' are of any value at all are very large urban centers. And even then they are only useful (really) for transportation to and from work. They're no good for general purpose transportation. If this was the zhizzle then there'd be a million electric bikes on the streets of every major city right now.

Sorry it took so long to respond, I had a busy weekend.

They are not simple probabilistic events, and they are operating off the same basic principles, that does not mean that systems do not have qualities which their component parts lack.

Does a piston have the capacity to convert petrol into kinetic energy? Does an internal combustion engine have this capacity? Which part of the engine imbues it with this power?

Systems are qualitatively different from their component parts, and some sets of systems, such as systems which decide, are qualitatively different from systems which don't

I'm going to need a definition of "decide" I suppose. It seems like you are dancing around these squishy intuitive concepts instead of having a specific physical distinction to point out. The amoeboid is composed of a lipid bilayer membrane riddled with intricate protein micro-machines that detect changes in the environment, and behaviorally compensate. To discount the intricacy of the mechanisms of genetic expression and chemical signaling that exist even in the simplest of eukaryotic organism is foolish IMHO. Many of the modern models of genetic expression, and compensation for environmental factors look strikingly similar to the connectionist network models of the brain. The computations are similar in the abstract.


You are anthropomorphizing the mold, it does move, this motion increases its chances of finding food, it survives/reproduces. It in no way displays evidence of doing any of this "in order" to accomplish some goal. If you want to suggest that evolution, as a system, displays intelligence, by selecting molds which move in certain ways, I would be willing to acknowledge that intelligence, not a consciousness, but an intelligence.

Well, more likely I'm moldopomorphizing us. What goals do we have that are ultimately distinct from survival, reproduction, and the general continuity of our species? Even something as seemingly unrelated as making music, or art could be cast as some sort of mating ritual. When you somehow separate our behavior from the rest of life on Earth it's as though you want to draw a barrier between us and them. You want to somehow separate us from the natural order. I hate to break it to you, but it just isn't so. We are just demonstrate the spatial heterogeneity of the second law of thermodynamics.


Why is context necessary for experience? What do you experience in infinitesimal time? Why should we posit some sort of experience which is entirely distinct from the type we claim to have?

I experience the moment. In fact, that's all I'm ever experiencing, although my sensation of it may run a little behind. I never experience my memory, I merely compare my experience to memory. Further, what I'm suggesting is not entirely distinct from any experience we claim to have. Some autistic individuals, for instance, report an extremely chaotic existence, in which causal models can't be formed as sensory modalities are not unified in the same way as ours. They are experienced as independent inputs, not reflective of a coherent physical world. Still, they experience it.

Physical laws are not obeyed, they are enforced. electron movements are completely deterministic, like billiard balls, they roll down hill, they don't decide if/when to do so.

Things can not be enforced without an enforcer. Further, as you've conceded the determinism of our brains, again, how are we not passively allowing the laws of nature to push us around? What exactly are we deciding?


I don't believe that you are claiming that electrons have tiny field sensors which feed into a neural network which analyzes them for patterns and then attributes meaning to them by comparing them to earlier similar sensation patterns. Perhaps you can state this more clearly.

No, I believe that by some other physical mechanism, likely involving quarks and particle physics that I admittedly have a poor understanding of, the electron receives information from not immediately proximal locations, and physically displaces itself to a location with more desirable properties given its current energy state. I don't see how that's different than cuddling up to a warm fire.


You seem to be positing that the structure of the universe is not topological, but that it is instead the consequence of 10^80 atoms all working on concert to decide what the laws of the universe are at this moment. If this is your thesis I am inclined to ask on what basis you think it is even vaguely likely that they would came to a consensus, such as they must to allow the functioning of a universe like ours.

Something like that , although I still don't like the word decide. I don't necessarily think they do come to a consensus. It's just that, as with an attractor network, or similar guaranteed convergence dynamical systems, certain macroscopic states are just more likely than others, despite chaos at the subordinate level. The reason I'd rather drop the word decide is because I don't necessarily want to open the door to something like free will. To cast it in a "God" metaphor, I imagine more of an omniscient God, than an omnipotent God.


Please provide some basis to believe that there is a phenomenal experience.

I can't other than to refer you to what I presume you to have. I could suggest focussing on your breathing, or what have you. I can point you towards literature showing that people that claim to focus on their consciousness can perform physical feats not previous considered possible (for instance monks rewriting the books on the physical tolerance of the human body to cold). Otherwise, I can't. I will say this, however, I take it to be the atomic element of inductive reason. The natural "laws" you are taking as primary are secondary. There is a simple reason for this as Alfred North Whitehead pointed out. If suddenly we were to observe all bits of matter floating away from one another, and were to confirm we were not hallucinating, and perhaps have the experience corroborated by our colleagues, it would not be the experience which was wrong, it would be the laws of nature. Experience has primacy. Matter is merely the logical consequence of applying induction to our particular set of shared experiences.


And that will persist as long as we are not talking about anything. You say "X exists". I say "What is X?". You say "You can't disprove X". And here we are talking about nothing.

I told you, in the best english I can, what X is. It's the qualia of phenomenal experience. Now I can't provide you with direct evidence for it, but I can tell you that nearly everyone I talk to has some sense of what I mean.


You must be using an alternate form of the word "believe". How can someone believe something, and simultaneously be completely unwilling to assert that it is a fact?

I take the Bayesian sense of the word. All probabilities are subjective degrees of belief. I adopt this degree of belief based on anecdotal experience and generalizations therein. None of this would be accepted as evidence by any reviewer, nor should it, and thus I wouldn't want to risk my credibility by asserting it as fact. I can believe some hypotheses to be more likely than others on the basis of no evidence, and in fact do all the time. That's how I, and all other scientists, decide what experiment to run next. I should not, however, expect you to believe me a priori, as you may operate on different axioms, and draw from different anecdotal experience. Thus, I would not feel compelled to assert my beliefs as fact, other than in so far as they are, in fact, my beliefs.

>> ^bmacs27: How are our actions not "probabilistic events?" The amoeba is operating off the same basic principals.

They are not simple probabilistic events, and they are operating off the same basic principles, that does not mean that systems do not have qualities which their component parts lack.

Does a piston have the capacity to convert petrol into kinetic energy? Does an internal combustion engine have this capacity? Which part of the engine imbues it with this power?

Systems are qualitatively different from their component parts, and some sets of systems, such as systems which decide, are qualitatively different from systems which don't

It's moving matter in order to seek out food, and even flexing its pseudopods along the shortest path between food sources in proportion to their delivery frequency.

You are anthropomorphizing the mold, it does move, this motion increases its chances of finding food, it survives/reproduces. It in no way displays evidence of doing any of this "in order" to accomplish some goal. If you want to suggest that evolution, as a system, displays intelligence, by selecting molds which move in certain ways, I would be willing to acknowledge that intelligence, not a consciousness, but an intelligence.

Why is memory necessary for experience?

Why is context necessary for experience? What do you experience in infinitesimal time? Why should we posit some sort of experience which is entirely distinct from the type we claim to have?

Electrons are "comparing" electric fields when they settle into a state, otherwise they couldn't obey their physical laws.

Physical laws are not obeyed, they are enforced. electron movements are completely deterministic, like billiard balls, they roll down hill, they don't decide if/when to do so.

As far as I'm concerned an electron is sensing an electrical field in the same way I am sensing visual band EM.

I don't believe that you are claiming that electrons have tiny field sensors which feed into a neural network which analyzes them for patterns and then attributes meaning to them by comparing them to earlier similar sensation patterns. Perhaps you can state this more clearly.

I just believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter.

You seem to be positing that the structure of the universe is not topological, but that it is instead the consequence of 10^80 atoms all working on concert to decide what the laws of the universe are at this moment. If this is your thesis I am inclined to ask on what basis you think it is even vaguely likely that they would came to a consensus, such as they must to allow the functioning of a universe like ours.

It's the sheer fact that there is a phenomenal experience, not the particular nature of those phenomena.

Please provide some basis to believe that there is a phenomenal experience.

You've presented me no evidence that I should only expect phenomenal experience in a complex organism, as you have no test for phenomenal experience.

And that will persist as long as we are not talking about anything. You say "X exists". I say "What is X?". You say "You can't disprove X". And here we are talking about nothing.

"I believe that P(X) > P(!X)". Something you shouldn't really care to contest,

You must be using an alternate form of the word "believe". How can someone believe something, and simultaneously be completely unwilling to assert that it is a fact?

>> ^bmacs27: without defining the deity, you undermine your own argument. That's why I'm an agnostic. I can't make claims about undefined terms.

But you have made a claim, that for some particular X, P(X) > P(!X). On the basis of that statement, and the assumption that you are rational, I draw the conclusion that you have some concept of what X is, or at least what its consequences are, otherwise you are making a non-sequitur claim.

That is, we experience coherent unitary stream of multi-modal sensation. There is no physical reason for that.

We claim to have this experience, I consider it highly dubious to claim, as a consequence, that it actually has some basis in fact. As for reason, I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you mean no apparatus, I don't think that it can be said with any certainty, given our current working models of the brain, that we lack the hardware. If you mean need, there are many possible reason why we, or any complex organism, might need to be able to act as if it has consciousness, it might be required for, or an artifact of, predictive thought.

Before I can explain further, I'd need to know what you mean by act.

The ability to act is the capacity to intermittently convert one type of energy into another on the basis of some trigger other than the application of convertible energy. For instance, a simple example is an internal combustion engine. If the ignition is engaged, then the engine begins to generate force by converting its fuel into kinetic energy. The engine even responds to its ignition switch, or its fuel tank being empty, and could arguably be said to be "conscious" of these things. I would not venture to suggest that the engine has any apparatus to make decisions, or to attach meaning to its simple senses, but it does, as a system, respond to stimuli in a manner distinct from that of its component parts. Each of the parts is still a billiard ball, the whole does something different, but we are not want to say that this is the consequence of some unseen force or entity.

Granted, I'm able to overcome much larger energy barriers than a single billiard ball, but I'm still running down the free-energy hill, as all physical processes are.

I disagree, you, as a system, are running pulleys and shoots to move things around, you are sinking energy to get both thinking and physical actions done in ways that individual components of you could not.

There is no free energy hill. We don't live in a free energy universe. And we are constantly applying energy against the entropic tendency of our universe. We can apply force to billiard balls to facilitate this process, but billiard balls are not a member of the class of systems which do this themselves.

The new BSG does a pretty good job with movie physics. (Besides the FTL drive, I guess.)

A friend of mine used to work for Cymer testing their million dollar lasers. He fell asleep during a test run and burned a largish hole through the wall that's still there today (another friend works in his exact job now... for some reason, my first friend is no longer there).

They're powerful enough, though, and the video gets the physics completely wrong!

E = hf is the formula for A SINGLE PHOTON, not for a laser. The energy delivered by a laser equals the energy put into the laser (minus any inefficancy losses). So a perfectly efficient zetawatt laser shooting through a vacuum will deliver a zetawatt of energy to the target, at any distance, at the speed of light. That's a pretty damn good weapon.

Also, he fucked up the mass section of the video also. Only massless particles can travel at the speed of light. So no kinetic energy for you traveling at the speed of light! (Photons carry momentum but not mass, and kinetic energy is defined by the mass-velocity product). Accelerating a asteroid or whatever towards the speed of light does not "cap out" at .5mv^2 -> mc^2. You can continue pumping energy into a asteroid heading towards earth. It's apparent velocity will not change, but it's apparent MASS will. Hence, conservation of energy.

Essentially, I think this guy doesn't know physics very well - that's all high school physics stuff.

Most space battles end up as a game of joust.

Starship Operators got it right (WARNING: dubbed). Lasers generate heat. A large amount of heat is hard to dissipate, color isn't a big deal since microwaves do just fine.

Kinetic energy weapons are deadly but "slow" ( relativistic momentum is complex) you could potentially doge something if you are really small/fast and have a telescope trained on them. Newtons third law is also a potential problem in space, no place to dig your feet in.

Lastly, photons have no mass but they also carry momentum: p = hcf.

Uh huh, sure... it works by converting magical magnetic energy into kinetic energy.

Weight 62.3 tonnes -> 56517.61 kilos

speed 80km

Kinetic energy 13,677,261.62 Joules

# 1×106 J, the kinetic energy of a one tonne vehicle at 45 metres per second (100 miles per hour)
# 1×106 J, approximately the food energy of a snack such as a Mars bar
# 1×107 J, the energy of a day's worth of heavy labour[2]
# 1×108 J, the kinetic energy of a 55 tonne aircraft at typical landing speed (115 knots or 59 m/s)

powers of 10 are crazy

Well actually, this is more humane than normal weapons. Because it relies on its kinetic energy and not an explosion to cause damage, there is much less collateral damage and shrapnel. Also because the ship that fires it doesn't have to carry explosive rounds anymore, it is much less likely to blow up, potentially saving a lot of lives.

>> ^ReverendTed:
"I'm still fighting with the equivalence of the treadmill scenario, though."


It's all about reference frames. Say there is a car travelling at 10mph, and there is a tailwind of 10mph. From the reference frame of the car, the road is moving backwards at 10mph, and the air is still. The treadmill merely simulates such a reference frame by making the "road" move backwards at 10mph.

"On the treadmill, the energy input is through the wheels and the output is through the propeller."

Sources of kenetic energy changes depending on the reference frame. For example, say there is a car travelling at 10mph, and there is a tailwind of 10mph. The car and wind will have kinetic energy in this "stationary" reference frame. From the "moving" reference frame of the car, however, the air is not moving, and has no kinetic energy, but the road is moving backwards at 10mph and will have kinetic energy.

The treadmill here is supplying the kinetic energy to move the "road" backwards at 10mph. Now, the treadmill is not a perfect simulation of a moving reference frame. But the important thing is that forces acting on the cart is consistent.

"Similar to the "push" the wife gave the original device"

The "push" from the wife was unecessary. The cart would have gained enough speed eventually, albeit slowly.

"the test device would need to be held in place on the treadmill until the propeller got going, otherwise it would simply fall off the back of the treadmill."

Ideally, we'd use an infinitely long treadmill to do the simulation =P. Then you won't need to hold on to the cart.

"Once it's going, it makes sense to me, though - the rotational energy from the wheels is converted into lift (directed horizontally) in the propellers. As long as there is energy being delivered to the wheels, the propeller will spin and provide more lift, which will *supplement* the forward motion of the wheels and cause the device to travel forward. I'm assuming the supplement is steady, though - that is to say it doesn't continue to accelerate, but reaches a steady "overspeed". (As opposed to a perpetual motion machine, which would continue to accelerate.)"

Your intuition from here on is pretty much correct.

I doubt that explosion would have done any damage to the tank, other than knock it around a little bit.

The mine looks like it was too deep, and the resistance of the material above it, seems to have caused it to lose a lot of its kinetic energy.


It looks more like an APC not a tank.

I am not liberal,
I am not religious,
I am not conservative,
I am not republican,
I am not a democrat, I am...
Who am I?

Answer:

˙sʇɥƃıɹ s,ǝslǝ ǝuo ǝɯos uodn sǝƃuıɹɟuı ʎllɐɔısʎɥd ʇı lıʇun ʍǝıʌ ɟo ʇuıod sǝuo ʎɹǝʌǝ oʇ lɐɹʇnǝu ɯɐ ı
˙ʇsılɐuoıʇnʇıʇsuoɔ ɐ ɯɐ ı

It is your(ambiguous association) right to vote rep, dem, independent, libertarian, or what ever party, it is not a wasted vote. Those who say that it is are only angry that you did not vote the way they did, and they feel the need to secure themselves in a group of people that voted the same way.

This system of class warfare is what the parties like, and how they thrive, see past the stupidity of this and be thankful that you belong to the group.. that does vote.

Likewise to say that because some one doesn't vote doesn't have the right to complain is more of the same rhetoric.
They have the same right to complain that you do, as afforded by the constitution of the united states.

How do I come to the conclusion that these petty arguments about voting for who, or not voting at all being a waste of kinetic energy? See the Stalin quote at the bottom.

Voting... Stalin said something about it...

"Those who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything."-
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/those_vote.htm

Effin' awesome. That bolide's packing serious heat. At 500km in radius and a density of say 3000kg/m3 it would have a mass of density*volume=3000*(4/3)*pi*(5*10^5)^3~1.5*10^21 kg. At minimum it'll be traveling at earths escape velocity which is ~10km/s. So it'll hit with a kinetic energy of 0.5*mass*velocity^2 = about 10^29 Joules.

For reference, the nuke that hit hiroshima had a yield of 6*10^13 Joules. THIS EVENT IS ENERGETICALLY EQUIVALENT TO MORE THAN ~ 1,000,000,000,000,000 HIROSHIMA's GOING OFF AT ONCE!

The LHC rams particles into eachother and is said the generate 14 TeV of energy from the colision.

1.6×10-7 J, one TeV (teraelectronvolt), about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito

so about 8 or 9 mosquito's worth of energy. But that high impact does have a risk of forming mBHs (micro black holes). They will also collide lead nuclei with a collision energy of 1,150 TeV. It takes about 2 microvolts to speak a syllable of a word, so a little less than that.

Here is a list of things that can also power the Texas Instruments micro controller: Aardvarks, ants, apples, Avril Lavine, Breadfruit, baguettes, Brussel sprouts, Bark, Batteries, Coneys, Carpet, Cats, Crumbs, Crap, Dams (beaver or man-made), Droids, Energy, Flies, Fruit (any kind), Fire, F-words, Fusion reactors, Grenades, Gum, Guilt imposed on you by your ex, Hedgehogs, hemroids, hockey players, Ion engines, Jack in the box food, kinetic energy, killer bees, linen, locomotives, morose code, melons, Montgomery Burns, name calling, nebula, noogies, and anything you can find in a grocery store or McDonald's.