Two words: |
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In this thread we collect and talk about random bits of science that make us horny. |
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Two words: |
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Dream Journal: Dreamwalker Chronicles Latest Entry: 01/02/2016 - "Hallway to Haven" (Lucid)(Or see the very best of my journal entries @ dreamwalkerchronicles.blogspot)
Someone has been reading Godel Esher Bach... |
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This is all stuff from the first year of my degree, actually! It's certainly some of the most awesome stuff I've learned so far, although totally useless, as far as I can tell. I don't remember seeing it in GEB... actually, Hofstadter does briefly talk about the diagonal argument and I think even a hierarchy of infinities, but that's as far as he goes. |
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Think of a transistor as used in a digital circuit. Two simple switches, one that is ON when the gate is ON, and one that's OFF when the gate is ON (CMOS). And think of how you can combine these to get simple elements like adders, multipliers, latches, memory elements etc. And think of how these can be connected together to form complex structures, and in the end a processor. And imagine all the things this processor can do. And how all it does is really defined by a long string of ones and zeros. Now that's hot. |
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April Ryan is my friend,
Every sorrow she can mend.
When i visit her dark realm,
Does it simply overwhelm.
What is your degree in? Sorry I just assumed, he talks about set theory sporadically and Cantors Theorem occasionally as well. I’ve just been obsessed with understanding this book for about a month so I just notice references to it everywhere I go. |
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Last edited by stormcrow; 05-25-2011 at 11:35 PM.
Last edited by ninja9578; 05-25-2011 at 11:46 PM.
You are allowed to post stuff other than set theoretic paradoxes, yaknow. |
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Ya I know I guess I was playing off your OP. |
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Sorry, I was actually referring to ninja, who posted Banach-Tarski again. |
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Last edited by Xei; 05-26-2011 at 12:42 AM.
Superconductor levitation |
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Last edited by ninja9578; 05-26-2011 at 12:24 AM.
Chapter 2, "The Replicators," from Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (the chapter is available in its entirety online here as a sample of the book) was definitely a "holy shit" moment for me when I first read it. In it he gives a discussion of how the principles of imperfect replication and survival of the most stable could have given rise to the first forms of "life," if we want to call it that. It's a relatively brief treatment of the topic, and not an area in which Dawkins himself is an expert, but it's a pretty amazing introduction nonetheless both to the ideas of abiogenesis and to evolution. |
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Non-newtonian fluids |
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I bite and blood turns me on. Science! |
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THIS QUESTION IS FALSE! |
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Kitty says: "Achoo..!"
I didn't know about non-Newtonian fluids until the day I found my neighbour at Cambridge filling our sink with corn starch, haha... I was very nearly late to a tutorial and needed a change of clothes before I went to it. |
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The pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander had a theory of evolution which stated humans evolved from a lower life form and that all life came originally from the sea and humans used to be fish |
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The epiphany for me was that the principles that drive biological evolution, with which I was already somewhat familiar, could just as easily be applied to abiogenesis. My view at the time was along the lines of "this evolution by natural selection stuff seems great once life has already appeared, but it's still a pretty big mystery how that happened in the first place." The passage I referred to opened my eyes to the possibility that it could just as easily bridge the gap between life and non-life. It really expanded the sheer breadth and significance of the principles for me. |
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Not sexy, but it relates to abiogenesis. I have a hard time believing that aristotelian abiogenesis was taken seriously...maggots just popped out of rotting meat and stuff. KSDJhghfgjk |
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
Aristotle was pretty much wrong about everything. |
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