Solipsism is a philosophy that the only thing that you can be sure exists is your own mind, because you experience it. Everything else, like other people, the world, and even your own physical body, may be an elaborate fraud that you dreamed up because you got bored. You cannot be sure that other people aren't philosophical zombies, you cannot be sure that other people even exist. Even the world and your body may be a dream. It comes from the latin solo ipse, meaning, "Only Self."
Solipsism is non-falsifiable. Anything I could demonstrate to show you that I'm conscious could be dismissed, as you don't directly experience my mind. In fact, anything I point your attention to could very well be imagined on your part. That rock I dropped on your foot? It's possible that neither the rock nor your foot really existed in the first place. The pain you feel may just be leftover guilt from something you forgot. Or remember.
Since it's non-falsifiable, and leads to some very bizarre conclusions, most philosophers reject solipsism. Even if it was true, you could draw no useful conclusions from it. If you're really a brain in a jar, imagining that you're reading this post...well, could you stop? Recreate the world to suit your own needs? Escape from what seems to be danger? Since you don't seem to be able to stop, you may as well assume it's real.
One of my favorite quotes says: "Reality is that which doesn't go away when we ignore it." Solipsism amounts to plugging our ears and asserting that we can anyway.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Newsspeaker
I hear that Bunnie's Chumby device is quite popular. It's a small, portable computer that can report on preprogrammed feeds of information, so you can always know what's on twitter, or in the news, or how your favorite stock is doing. While you're on the subway. Or at the dentist's. Or at work. (Warning: Do actual work while at work. Checking twitter or whatever all day will get you fired.) It's portable, and can get its Internet connection from any wireless connection, which are more and more common these days.
There are some times when you might want the information, but looking at it is a bad idea. Like, while you're driving. Taking your eyes off the road for even a second is a terrible idea, even if your stocks are tanking, your best friend is having a tempest-like breakup, or the news announced that we're now at war with the entire rest of the earth. As important as these things may be, they're not more important than not colliding with another car at 100KPH.
So, I propose either an addition to the chumby, or a separate device, that connects to a bluetooth receiver in your ear and reads out, in the best synthesized voice that it can manage, a summary of events as they are brought to the device's attention. It would be no more distracting than a radio, which are standard in cars and haven't proven too severe a distraction. It wouldn't be very harsh on the device's CPU, either, due to big advances in speech synthesis. It will sound like a droning robot, which would probably get very old, very fast.
Bonus points if speech transcription software is running at the same time, so you could verbally address the thing. Even if to say, "Computer, shut up." Operating the thing while not being distracted is paramount.
There are some times when you might want the information, but looking at it is a bad idea. Like, while you're driving. Taking your eyes off the road for even a second is a terrible idea, even if your stocks are tanking, your best friend is having a tempest-like breakup, or the news announced that we're now at war with the entire rest of the earth. As important as these things may be, they're not more important than not colliding with another car at 100KPH.
So, I propose either an addition to the chumby, or a separate device, that connects to a bluetooth receiver in your ear and reads out, in the best synthesized voice that it can manage, a summary of events as they are brought to the device's attention. It would be no more distracting than a radio, which are standard in cars and haven't proven too severe a distraction. It wouldn't be very harsh on the device's CPU, either, due to big advances in speech synthesis. It will sound like a droning robot, which would probably get very old, very fast.
Bonus points if speech transcription software is running at the same time, so you could verbally address the thing. Even if to say, "Computer, shut up." Operating the thing while not being distracted is paramount.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Autocabinet
I'm flabbergasted at what cabinets cost. Every house and apartment has them, for storing dishes and things, they're very simple, and they're several hundred dollars. For a very simple arrangement of wood. What the hell?
I'm imaging a system that, given six planes of particle board, slices them into a very attractive arrangement of cabinet, and staples them together. Or nails them together. Or in some way attaches the pieces. It also attaches shelves. Users take this to a forklift-like device that holds them against the wall, where users, knowing where the wall studs are, drills them into place.
Total cost: about $40.
Of course, one problem: No doors on this arrangement, and lots of scrap. But people prefer artistic doors anyway, and would probably be willing to pay a human carpenter to come up with something interesting.
I'm imaging a system that, given six planes of particle board, slices them into a very attractive arrangement of cabinet, and staples them together. Or nails them together. Or in some way attaches the pieces. It also attaches shelves. Users take this to a forklift-like device that holds them against the wall, where users, knowing where the wall studs are, drills them into place.
Total cost: about $40.
Of course, one problem: No doors on this arrangement, and lots of scrap. But people prefer artistic doors anyway, and would probably be willing to pay a human carpenter to come up with something interesting.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Incremental Cooking Automation
A long time ago, I proposed automated cooking, which quite a few people expressed interest in. It's a tricky task, one that I think we'll have to do with incremental evolution, the way that Wright brother's bicycle-like plane that flew slower than I can walk evolved into the supersonic jet. one step at a time.
Some things are more automated now than before. Hand-mixing has mostly given way to mixing machines. Tortillas used to be rolled out by hand, but are now mostly made with a massive metal contraption that rolls them evenly flat, tosses them into a heated area for baking, and produces a picture perfect tortilla every single time. There are bread machines that kneed, rise, and bake the bread, requiring the consumer to add the ingredients and plug it in. These steps are the increments. They do one thing perfectly well. When one of these exists for everything, then the automated kitchen that I described can be made. By integrating one of everything.
Take the tortilla-maker. If I have a food nozzle, a sauce nozzle, a cheese dispenser, and a folding machine, I can combine all of these into a machine that grinds out tortillas and enchiladas. Food factories already have such things, but they don't run all the time. People like a variety of foods, so only so many burritos and so many enchiladas are made, and then those things go back into storage while the factory is set up for something completely different, like chicken pot pie, or crab bisque, or borsch. These are often also at least semi-automated, because the machines work faster and cheaper than humans.
Since I don't work in the food industry, I could not tell you what still needs automation. More complicated dishes, probably. I have yet to hear of a automated risotto machine, or a souffle maker. This is probably due to low demand. Anyone who really wants a souffle is generally willing to hire a professional chef to do so.
I think in the meantime, machines that can do some simple things could be installed in the kitchen and made to cook for you every day, if you really don't like cooking and don't mind having a limited number of things to eat. A limit that goes up every time a new technology is developed and installed.
Some things are more automated now than before. Hand-mixing has mostly given way to mixing machines. Tortillas used to be rolled out by hand, but are now mostly made with a massive metal contraption that rolls them evenly flat, tosses them into a heated area for baking, and produces a picture perfect tortilla every single time. There are bread machines that kneed, rise, and bake the bread, requiring the consumer to add the ingredients and plug it in. These steps are the increments. They do one thing perfectly well. When one of these exists for everything, then the automated kitchen that I described can be made. By integrating one of everything.
Take the tortilla-maker. If I have a food nozzle, a sauce nozzle, a cheese dispenser, and a folding machine, I can combine all of these into a machine that grinds out tortillas and enchiladas. Food factories already have such things, but they don't run all the time. People like a variety of foods, so only so many burritos and so many enchiladas are made, and then those things go back into storage while the factory is set up for something completely different, like chicken pot pie, or crab bisque, or borsch. These are often also at least semi-automated, because the machines work faster and cheaper than humans.
Since I don't work in the food industry, I could not tell you what still needs automation. More complicated dishes, probably. I have yet to hear of a automated risotto machine, or a souffle maker. This is probably due to low demand. Anyone who really wants a souffle is generally willing to hire a professional chef to do so.
I think in the meantime, machines that can do some simple things could be installed in the kitchen and made to cook for you every day, if you really don't like cooking and don't mind having a limited number of things to eat. A limit that goes up every time a new technology is developed and installed.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Nieman's Physics
for the New York Times, artist Christopher Niemann proposes physics laws of parents. Often even slightly accurate.
Eating all cold food would indeed take energy from your body to heat it to body temperature so that you could digest it. As would standing around in extremely cold areas. The Laziness explanation of Newton's first law (Object at rest stays at rest) is one of the funnier ones. As is his explanation of elasticity.
Eating all cold food would indeed take energy from your body to heat it to body temperature so that you could digest it. As would standing around in extremely cold areas. The Laziness explanation of Newton's first law (Object at rest stays at rest) is one of the funnier ones. As is his explanation of elasticity.
Free Will
Advocates of Philosophical Free Will report that all people are deciding agents, who make decisions without interference from the universe at large, and that people are responsible for the implications of their decisions. If you decide to have ice cream, then this was entirely your decision, and the resulting pleasure (and weight gain) are both your own responsibility, and one cannot blame anyone else for chosing the way that you did.
Debates rage about how this fits in with the idea of Determinism, in which things have logical consequences and necessary requirements to have happened in the first place. Under hard determinism, everything that ever happened in the universe, and everything that will happen in the future, was pre-determined from the beginning and there is no other way that it could have happened. Some people argue that determinism is mostly soft, and it is compatible with the idea of free will, but others argue that determinism and free will are incompatible and that only one could possibly apply. These are further split by those that argue that there is free will and no determinism, and those that argue that there is perfect determinism and no free will.
I dislike the idea of determinism, at least in the absolute sense, because I think it undermines the idea of responsibility. If you promise not to get wildly drunk at the weekend party, and then screw up and get wildly drunk...well, then it was inevitable from the formation of the universe that it would happen that way. It seems to encourage a lackadaisical attitude, things are inevitable and don't really matter. Why try?
I also think that absolute free will results in equally silly ideas. We are not omnipotent and omniscient. Sometimes we make bad decisions because we don't have enough information to make a good one. Sometimes we have to follow sub-optimal things because we don't have the resources available to us to optimize. People are bullied into making bad choices, or tricked. Under pure free will, it's your fault when a bad product you made bankrupts the company, even if your boss ordered you to make it or be fired. This seems less than fair. Worrying about things out of your control just seems so...neurotic.
I know scientifically, that some things are deterministic. My computer, given the same instructions, will behave the same way every time. Engineering, chemistry, physics, and electronics relies on consistent reactions and would be impossible without them. And I would also like to believe that humans have at least some free will, and have some responsibility over things that they choose.
Free will also butts heads with religion. Deities, be they a pantheon of gods or one supreme one, are often described as being omniscient and knowing the future. However, if we humans have free will, then the future cannot be known until we make our decisions, as what we decide changes the future. If I decide to work in a research lab, then the future will be different than if I decided to work as a librarian instead. So if God or gods know about what I chose before I chose it, then was my choice really free? Knowing about what hasn't happened yet smacks of hard determinism. The best loophole I can think of is that gods or God know what I'm thinking now, know what the consequences of every choice are, and have some fuzzy-math confidence in which option I will take. (God is 73% confident that I will have a ham sandwich for lunch, and 82% confident that I will go to the bank today instead of Friday.) This is less than satisfying to theologins who proclaim absolute omniscience, and probably has a few loopholes in it, but it's the best I can think of for now for resolving the claims.
I would encourage my philosophical readers to write back with their own opinions on determinism versus free will.
Debates rage about how this fits in with the idea of Determinism, in which things have logical consequences and necessary requirements to have happened in the first place. Under hard determinism, everything that ever happened in the universe, and everything that will happen in the future, was pre-determined from the beginning and there is no other way that it could have happened. Some people argue that determinism is mostly soft, and it is compatible with the idea of free will, but others argue that determinism and free will are incompatible and that only one could possibly apply. These are further split by those that argue that there is free will and no determinism, and those that argue that there is perfect determinism and no free will.
I dislike the idea of determinism, at least in the absolute sense, because I think it undermines the idea of responsibility. If you promise not to get wildly drunk at the weekend party, and then screw up and get wildly drunk...well, then it was inevitable from the formation of the universe that it would happen that way. It seems to encourage a lackadaisical attitude, things are inevitable and don't really matter. Why try?
I also think that absolute free will results in equally silly ideas. We are not omnipotent and omniscient. Sometimes we make bad decisions because we don't have enough information to make a good one. Sometimes we have to follow sub-optimal things because we don't have the resources available to us to optimize. People are bullied into making bad choices, or tricked. Under pure free will, it's your fault when a bad product you made bankrupts the company, even if your boss ordered you to make it or be fired. This seems less than fair. Worrying about things out of your control just seems so...neurotic.
I know scientifically, that some things are deterministic. My computer, given the same instructions, will behave the same way every time. Engineering, chemistry, physics, and electronics relies on consistent reactions and would be impossible without them. And I would also like to believe that humans have at least some free will, and have some responsibility over things that they choose.
Free will also butts heads with religion. Deities, be they a pantheon of gods or one supreme one, are often described as being omniscient and knowing the future. However, if we humans have free will, then the future cannot be known until we make our decisions, as what we decide changes the future. If I decide to work in a research lab, then the future will be different than if I decided to work as a librarian instead. So if God or gods know about what I chose before I chose it, then was my choice really free? Knowing about what hasn't happened yet smacks of hard determinism. The best loophole I can think of is that gods or God know what I'm thinking now, know what the consequences of every choice are, and have some fuzzy-math confidence in which option I will take. (God is 73% confident that I will have a ham sandwich for lunch, and 82% confident that I will go to the bank today instead of Friday.) This is less than satisfying to theologins who proclaim absolute omniscience, and probably has a few loopholes in it, but it's the best I can think of for now for resolving the claims.
I would encourage my philosophical readers to write back with their own opinions on determinism versus free will.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Waterplane
When I was 12, I wanted to be an astronaut. Several things screwed this up. The first one being that I suffer from major motion-sickness. I have to dope myself up to the gills to not heave up my latest meal should I travel by boat or plane or train. (Another thing being that I'd have to join the air force and do well in it, but that's another story.) I do okay in cars for some reason.
The big reason for motion sickness has to do with your vestibular system in your ear. When what you see doesn't match what your system reports the local gravity to be, your body concludes that you're in a whirlpool, and decides that you need to be a little lighter to escape. Up comes your stomach contents. The misery of this also attempts to condition you to not jump in whirlpools, fool. One big problem of this is that it's not a whirlpool, it's a plane, and you can't exactly just jump out of it anytime you feel like.
Then some time ago, I saw a TV program in which physicist Michio Kaku is given something out of science fiction, and told to try and describe a way to have it really happen, as best physics will allow. This particular episode was about "destroying the death star," the pivitol scene from the movie "Star Wars." His version was very different from the movie. One of the things he had to work with was G-Force, in which inertia plus a fast turn proves really, really bad for pilots. Each "G-Force" is an increase in force above what is felt due to gravity, so a pilot experiencing five g-forces is thrown with 5 times the force of earthly gravity. Air force pilots routinely suffer 7 g-forces, and astronauts experience ten. Both require elaborate systems to stay conscious by reducing the effect this has on them. Too many g-forces can prevent your brain from receiving blood, causing you to pass out, and too much more can smash your body to pulp. Dr. Kaku's solution was to immerse the pilot in water. Buoyant force counteracts the inertial force, so even as the water experiences 7, 10, or 50 g-forces, it also distributes it so that your own body doesn't feel them. He proved this with a water balloon in a centrifuge. The balloon in an air filled beaker was flattened by the force. The balloon floating in water retained its shape, no matter how fast the centrifuge went.
This makes me wonder if I flew in a tank of water, if maybe I wouldn't get motion sick. The plane could experience all the turbulence in the world and I wouldn't feel it. I'd need some sort of breathing system, as we humans don't have gills or skin-breathing the way animals that live in water do. If everyone was in tanks like that, you could not bother pressurizing the cabin, just a breathing tube in the tanks. Flying would be a more comfortable, if soggier, experience. I say this because there is a limit to cabin pressurization. The more the plane is pressurized, the harder the forces on the hull, and more than about 8.6 psi is an intolerable risk. Too much pressure and the plane simply pops like a balloon. A balloon made of metal. Not fun for anyone, but even worse for those inside it. So even with pressurization, flying in a plane is like a trip to Tibet. You have much less oxygen, and it's woozy and difficult and your sense of taste is diminished from the low pressure. In tanks, you could get a sea-level amount of air and breathe normally.
The air force would also be interested in this technology. A pilot that flew in a water-filled cockpit could turn harder and faster than one in a conventional cockpit, as he would be without the risk of blacking out. This probably makes it worth the extra weight. Especially if competing planes don't have such a system. Enemy nations would face planes that could abruptly turn around and destroy them from positions that were previously thought of as totally vulnerable. Dives could be further and faster with fewer consequences. Mobility in general would vastly improve.
The big reason for motion sickness has to do with your vestibular system in your ear. When what you see doesn't match what your system reports the local gravity to be, your body concludes that you're in a whirlpool, and decides that you need to be a little lighter to escape. Up comes your stomach contents. The misery of this also attempts to condition you to not jump in whirlpools, fool. One big problem of this is that it's not a whirlpool, it's a plane, and you can't exactly just jump out of it anytime you feel like.
Then some time ago, I saw a TV program in which physicist Michio Kaku is given something out of science fiction, and told to try and describe a way to have it really happen, as best physics will allow. This particular episode was about "destroying the death star," the pivitol scene from the movie "Star Wars." His version was very different from the movie. One of the things he had to work with was G-Force, in which inertia plus a fast turn proves really, really bad for pilots. Each "G-Force" is an increase in force above what is felt due to gravity, so a pilot experiencing five g-forces is thrown with 5 times the force of earthly gravity. Air force pilots routinely suffer 7 g-forces, and astronauts experience ten. Both require elaborate systems to stay conscious by reducing the effect this has on them. Too many g-forces can prevent your brain from receiving blood, causing you to pass out, and too much more can smash your body to pulp. Dr. Kaku's solution was to immerse the pilot in water. Buoyant force counteracts the inertial force, so even as the water experiences 7, 10, or 50 g-forces, it also distributes it so that your own body doesn't feel them. He proved this with a water balloon in a centrifuge. The balloon in an air filled beaker was flattened by the force. The balloon floating in water retained its shape, no matter how fast the centrifuge went.
This makes me wonder if I flew in a tank of water, if maybe I wouldn't get motion sick. The plane could experience all the turbulence in the world and I wouldn't feel it. I'd need some sort of breathing system, as we humans don't have gills or skin-breathing the way animals that live in water do. If everyone was in tanks like that, you could not bother pressurizing the cabin, just a breathing tube in the tanks. Flying would be a more comfortable, if soggier, experience. I say this because there is a limit to cabin pressurization. The more the plane is pressurized, the harder the forces on the hull, and more than about 8.6 psi is an intolerable risk. Too much pressure and the plane simply pops like a balloon. A balloon made of metal. Not fun for anyone, but even worse for those inside it. So even with pressurization, flying in a plane is like a trip to Tibet. You have much less oxygen, and it's woozy and difficult and your sense of taste is diminished from the low pressure. In tanks, you could get a sea-level amount of air and breathe normally.
The air force would also be interested in this technology. A pilot that flew in a water-filled cockpit could turn harder and faster than one in a conventional cockpit, as he would be without the risk of blacking out. This probably makes it worth the extra weight. Especially if competing planes don't have such a system. Enemy nations would face planes that could abruptly turn around and destroy them from positions that were previously thought of as totally vulnerable. Dives could be further and faster with fewer consequences. Mobility in general would vastly improve.
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