1. Log in now to remove adverts - no adverts at all to registered members!

The science behind RHCs liver thread

Discussion in 'Liverpool' started by Prince Knut, Apr 30, 2016.

  1. saintKlopp

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    37,690
    Likes Received:
    25,655
    This is what I don't understand. GR states that gravity is a property of space-time, not a force - yet it is still listed as one of the four fundamental forces and even described in terms of a classical field at times.
    It's too much for my feeble brain.
     
    #101
  2. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    One potential source of your confusion is that there are two different notions of mass even in classical physics, inertial mass and gravitational mass that happen to be identified to a high degree of experimental precision. One appears in F=mia" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">F=miaF=mia as a proportionality factor the other in the Newtons law for the gravitational force (I will neglect all factors like 4π" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">4π4π in the following)

    F=GmgMr2." role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">F=GmgMr2.F=GmgMr2.
    This observation is in fact the key to Einstein's equivalence principle. In general relativity the notion of a gravitational mass for large objects is sort of meaningless, to my knowledge it can only be defined with respect to test particles "at infinity". As you know test objects that are not believed to contribute significantly to the energy momentum tensor T" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">TT, propagate along geodesics with respect to a metric g" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">gg that is a solution of the Einstein field equations
    R−αtr(R)g=T" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">R−αtr(R)g=TR−αtr(R)g=T
    where R" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">RR is the Ricci tensor of the Levi-Civita connection of g" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">gg. The Einstein field equations can be seen as a slightly more sophisticated form of the equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass. In fact one way to define the energy momentum tensor of an arbitrary Lagrangian density L" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">LLis by writing in a coordinate independent form and varying with respect to the metric
    δgL=Tδg." role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">δgL=Tδg.δgL=Tδg.
    So if you take L" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">LL to be the Lagrange density of the standard model, T" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">TT would determine the energy density of a particular classical solution. Perturbative methods in Quantum field theory always involve an expansion around a classical solution. In the case of the Higgs field in a non-trivial space time this would be the solution to a certain differential equation obtained from the Lagrangian in the usual way, possibly local solutions can only be patched together after gauge transformations. If space time is just flat Minkowski space one gets the usual picture of symmetry breaking.


    Perturbative theories of quantum gravity fix a classical solution of the Einstein Field equations (that is a space-time, together with a certain metric g" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">gg on it), so in the case that T" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">TT contains expressions involving a Higgs field this would in principle influence the solution, however as soon as you chooseg" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">gg to be anything but the Minkowski metric or the metric of some other symmetric space you will be hard pressed to even write down the propagator of a free field.

    Gravitons are the quanta of the field that appear when you quantize the Lagrangian for the linear perturbations g+δh" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">g+δhg+δh around a fixed background metric. Classically those are known as gravitational waves. If you were to write down the whole standard model Lagrangian intrinsically and and compute the perturbation (g+δh" role="presentation" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;">g+δhg+δh) to determine the couplings, then you would discover that the graviton in fact couples to every field (massless or not) but very weakly. I think Feynman sketches some of those computations in his text on quantum gravity for QED.

    So the Higgs field and the graviton appear at conceptually different places in any attempt to perturbatively quantize gravity with matter. If you only consider quantum field theory in a curved background, then there is no graviton. It is just much harder to actually do explicit perturbation theory and there is no well defined notion of mass to begin with (unless you assume that at infinity space time is minkowski space), which in quantum theory is intrinsically tied to the representation theory of the Poincare group.


    Hope this helps <laugh>
     
    #102
  3. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839

    Role+presentation x padding = no. <confused>
     
    #103
    saintKlopp likes this.
  4. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    Was reading about this last night in 13 Things That Don't Make Sense:

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/02/3353491.htm

    Could be that not only are the laws different in varying parts of the universe, but as there's no relative universal time across the cosmos, that the laws are different at different at different stages of the universe, and that the past and the future are 'happening' 'now' in relation to us. Freaky.
     
    #104
  5. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    The Top 10 Stories of 2016
     
    #105
    * Record Points Total likes this.
  6. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Hmmm. This is a little difficult for me to accept. I'll have to have a ponder <ok>
     
    #106
  7. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    As far as the last one goes, have you been watching Westworld? Or, indeed, The Brain when it was on BBC with David Eagleman? What is consciousness? What is self awareness? Who are all those people fighting for control in your head? None of us have the 'free will' we think we have. Oh, and have you heard of the Turing Test that they use to determine computer intelligence/self-awareness? The Most Human Human by Brian Christian; a fabulous read.
     
    #107
  8. luvgonzo

    luvgonzo Pisshead

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2011
    Messages:
    102,240
    Likes Received:
    60,467
    I love this thread, but understand none of it.
     
    #108
  9. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    1. No
    2, No
    3. Yes

    Read Shadows of the Mind by Professor Sir Roger Penrose

    It's all about quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain <ok> Turing gets a hefty look in, as does the great Kurt Godl.
     
    #109
    * Record Points Total likes this.
  10. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

    The theory, called "orchestrated objective reduction" ('Orch OR'), was first put forward in the mid-1990s by eminent mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, FRS, Mathematical Institute and Wadham College, University of Oxford, and prominent anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, Anesthesiology, Psychology and Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson. They suggested that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules were "orchestrated" ("Orch") by synaptic inputs and memory stored in microtubules, and terminated by Penrose "objective reduction" ('OR'), hence "Orch OR." Microtubules are major components of the cell structural skeleton.

    Orch OR was harshly criticized from its inception, as the brain was considered too "warm, wet, and noisy" for seemingly delicate quantum processes.. However, evidence has now shown warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and brain microtubules. The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

    "The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

    After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

    An important new facet of the theory is introduced. Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG "beat frequencies." Despite a century of clinical use, the underlying origins of EEG rhythms have remained a mystery. Clinical trials of brief brain stimulation aimed at microtubule resonances with megahertz mechanical vibrations using transcranial ultrasound have shown reported improvements in mood, and may prove useful against Alzheimer's disease and brain injury in the future.

    Lead author Stuart Hameroff concludes, "Orch OR is the most rigorous, comprehensive and successfully-tested theory of consciousness ever put forth. From a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions."

    The review is accompanied by eight commentaries from outside authorities, including an Australian group of Orch OR arch-skeptics. To all, Hameroff and Penrose respond robustly.

    Penrose, Hameroff and Bandyopadhyay will explore their theories during a session on "Microtubules and the Big Consciousness Debate" at the Brainstorm Sessions, a public three-day event at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 16-18, 2014. They will engage skeptics in a debate on the nature of consciousness, and Bandyopadhyay and his team will couple microtubule vibrations from active neurons to play Indian musical instruments. "Consciousness depends on anharmonic vibrations of microtubules inside neurons, similar to certain kinds of Indian music, but unlike Western music which is harmonic," Hameroff explains.
     
    #110

  11. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Is Your Brain Really a Computer, or Is It a Quantum Orchestra?
    07/09/2015 03:39 pm ET | Updated Jul 08, 2016
    510

    Stuart Hameroff
    Anesthesiologist, Professor, Consciousness Researcher

    How does the brain - a lump of ‘pinkish gray meat’ - produce the richness of conscious experience, or any subjective experience at all? Scientists and philosophers have historically likened the brain to contemporary information technology, from the ancient Greeks comparing memory to a ‘seal ring in wax,’ to the 19th century brain as a ‘telegraph switching circuit,’ to Freud’s sub-conscious desires ‘boiling over like a steam engine,’ to a hologram, and finally, the computer.

    Because brain neurons and synapses appear to act like switches and ‘bits’ in computers, and because brain disorders like depression, Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury ravage humanity with limited effective therapies, scientists, governments and funding agencies have bet big on the brain-as-computer analogy. For example billions of dollars and euros are being poured into ‘brain mapping,’ the notion that identifying, and then simulating brain neurons and their synaptic connections can reproduce brain function, e.g. the ‘human brain project’ in Europe, and the Allen Institute’s efforts in Seattle to map the mouse cortex. But the bet, so far at least, isn’t paying off.

    For example, beginning more modestly, a world-wide consortium has simulated the already-known 302 neuron ‘brain’ of a simple round worm called C elegans. The biological worm is fairly active, swimming nimbly and purposefully, but the simulated C elegans just lies there, with no functional behavior. Something is missing. Funding agencies are getting nervous. Bring in the ‘P.R. guys.’

    In a New York Times piece, ‘Face It, Your Brain is a Computer’ (June 27, 2015), NYU psychologist/neuroscientist Gary Marcus desperately beats the dead horse. Following a series of failures by computers to simulate basic brain functions (much less approach ‘The C-word’, consciousness) Marcus is left to ask, in essence, if the brain isn’t a computer, what else could it possibly be?

    Actually, the brain is looking more like an orchestra, a multi-scalar vibrational resonance system, than a computer. Brain information patterns repeat over spatiotemporal scales in fractal-like, nested hierarchies of neuronal networks, with resonances and interference beats. One example of a multi-scalar spatial mapping is the 2014 Nobel Prize-winning work (O’Keefe, Moser and Moser) on ‘grid cells’, hexagonal representations of spatial location arrayed in layers of entorhinal cortex, each layer encoding a different spatial scale. Moving from layer to layer in entorhinal cortex is precisely like zooming in and out in a Google map.

    Indeed, neuroscientist Karl Pribram’s assessment of the brain as a ‘holographic storage device’ (which Marcus dismisses) seems now on-target. Holograms encode distributed information as multi-scalar interference of coherent vibrations, e.g. from lasers. Pribram lacked a proper coherent source, a laser in the brain, but evidence now points to structures inside brain neurons called microtubules as sources of laser-like coherence for the brain’s vibrational hierarchy.

    Microtubules are cylindrical lattice polymers of the protein ‘tubuln’, major components of the structural cytoskeleton inside cells, and the brain’s most prevalent protein. Their lattice structure and self-organization have suggested microtubule information processing, stemming from Charles Sherrington (1951) calling them ‘the cell’s nervous system’. In the 1980s, my colleagues and I proposed microtubules acted like computers, specifically as Boolean switching matrices, or molecular automata, processing information, encoding memory, oscillating coherently and regulating neuronal functions from within.

    For the past 20 years I’ve teamed with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose on a quantum theory of consciousness (‘orchestrated objective reduction’, ‘Orch OR’) linking microtubule quantum processes to fluctuations in the structure of the universe. Our idea was criticized harshly, as the brain seemed too ‘warm, wet and noisy’ for apparently delicate quantum coherence. But evidence now clearly shows (1) plant photosynthesis routinely uses quantum coherence in warm sunlight (if a potato can do it....?), and (2) microtubules have quantum resonances in gigahertz, megahertz and kilohertz frequency ranges (the work of Anirban Bandyopadhyay and colleagues at National Institute of Material Science in Tsukuba, Japan).

    These coherent ‘fractal frequencies’ in microtubules apparently couple to even faster, smaller-scale terahertz vibrations among intra-tubulin ‘pi electron resonance clouds’, and to slower ones, e.g. by interference ‘beats’ giving rise to larger scale EEG. My colleagues and I (Craddock et al, 2015) have identified a ‘quantum underground’ inside microtubules where anesthetic gases bind to selectively erase consciousness, dampening and dispersing terahertz dipole vibrations. A multi-scalar, vibrational hierarchy could play key roles in neuronal and brain functions, driven at the ‘bottom’, inside neurons, by microtubule quantum resonators.

    The most likely sites for consciousness are microtubule networks in dendrites and soma of cortical layer 5 giant pyramidal neurons whose apical dendrites give rise to EEG. Dendritic-somatic microtubules are unique, being interrupted and arrayed in mixed polarity networks, unsuited for structural support but optimal for information processing, resonance and interference.

    Finally, Marcus raises 2 points, which should be addressed.

    Citing conventional wisdom, he concedes ‘the brain’s nerve cells are too slow and variable to be a good match for the transistors and logic gates that we use in modern computers.’

    True! But microtubules inside those nerve cells act at terahertz through gigahertz, megahertz and kilohertz frequencies, and are a very good match, in fact far, far better.

    Finally, Marcus says ‘We need to find a common underlying circuit...logic block that can be configured, and reconfigured...to do a wide range of tasks...highly orchestrated sets of fundamental building blocks,... ‘field-programmable gate arrays’, ...’computational primitives....the Rosetta stone that unlocks the brain.

    I agree completely. And microtubules inside neurons provide exactly, precisely, 100 percent what Marcus is looking for. Viewing neurons as computational primitives is an insult to neurons. Brain mappers should look deeper, smaller, faster, inside neurons. Cytoskeletal circuits of mixed polarity microtubules (‘quantum resonators’) are key instruments of the quantum orchestra.

    Stuart Hameroff MD is Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology Director, Center for Consciousness Studies Banner-University Medical Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
     
    #111
  12. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Antimatter hydrogen passes symmetry test
    No sign of CPT violation seen in measure of atomic energy levels
    BY
    EMILY CONOVER
    11:00AM, DECEMBER 19, 2016
    please log in to view this image

    ANTIMATTER MATCH Scientists with the ALPHA-2 experiment, shown above, found that antimatter and matter versions of hydrogen behave alike. The frequency of light necessary to boost antihydrogen atoms into a higher energy state is the same as that for normal hydrogen atoms.

    CERN

    SPONSOR MESSAGE
    An antimatter atom abides by the same rules as its matter look-alike. Scientists studying antihydrogen have found that the energy needed to bump the atoms into an excited, or high-energy, state is the same as for normal hydrogen atoms.

    Scientists at the European particle physics lab CERN in Geneva created antihydrogen atoms by combining antiprotons and positrons, the electron’s antiparticle. Hitting the resulting atoms with a laser tuned to a particular frequency of light boosted the antihydrogen atoms to a higher energy. The frequency of laser light needed to induce this transition was the same as that needed for normal hydrogen atoms, indicating that the energy jump was the same, scientists from the ALPHA-2 experiment report December 19 in Nature.

    Antihydrogen’s similarity to hydrogen conforms to a principle known as charge-parity-time, or CPT, symmetry — the idea that the laws of physics would be unchanged if the universe were reflected in a mirror, time reversed, and particles swapped with antiparticles. So far scientists have never discovered a situation where this symmetry doesn’t hold up, but antihydrogen provides a precise way to check for subtle breakdowns in the rule.

    Differences between matter and antimatter are essential for the existence of the universe as we know it: The Big Bang produced equal amounts matter and antimatter, yet somehow antimatter became very rare. So scientists are still on the lookout for any unexpected behavior from antimatter.
     
    #112
  13. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    Through the looking glass. How about mirrored holograms?
     
    #113
  14. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Read the stuff I posted about above that one if you want to **** with your head <laugh>
     
    #114
  15. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    What's your view on that Wheeler stuff and the Anthropic principle? I can't help but think that it's a modern day version of a geo-centric universe. And all of this rests on why we can't explain the wave function collapse in the double-slit experiment. Just hit the God (Man) switch.
     
    #115
  16. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Never mind that. What about the consciousness stuff above?
     
    #116
  17. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    I've ordered that book by Penrose that you suggested.
     
    #117
  18. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    ****ing hell <yikes> I can't wait for that review. It's hard going mate, but very rewarding <ok>
     
    #118
  19. Prince Knut

    Prince Knut GC Thread Terminator

    Joined:
    May 23, 2011
    Messages:
    25,482
    Likes Received:
    12,839
    In the 'Very Short Introduction' series by Oxford Press I read Consciousness by Susan Blackmore, and Reality by Sam Westerhoff this year. I love this series, and I've just started The Brain too. Last year I read Nothing by Frank Close, and Particle Physics too. Wow. The Nothing one blew my mind. What I've read during the last couple of years doesn't make me any cleverer - I didn't know just how little I knew, and what I'll go to my death not knowing. But that's reward within itself.

    Biggest thought of all though is realising that it's not just one 'me' inside this head having these thoughts, and that free will (especially your thoughts and beliefs) is pretty much an illusion. This magical universe, including my head and all its occupants, is subject to utter chaos and randomness. 'There's someone in my head, but its not me', as The Floyd once said. (Pink, not Eddie that is).
     
    #119
  20. Red Hadron Collider

    Red Hadron Collider The Hammerhead

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2011
    Messages:
    57,485
    Likes Received:
    9,843
    Frank Close is very good indeed.
     
    #120

Share This Page