>In Buddhism, the term anattā (Pali) or anātman (Sanskrit) refers to the doctrine of "non-self", that there is no unchanging, permanent self, soul or essence in phenomena.
I'm still not sure what distinction you think I made... what I intended was:
1. All Jews are people
2. Computers are not people
3. Therefore computers are not Jews
As a Jewish citizen of both Israel and the US, I understand that it can be hard to exist as a minority in your own country, and I'm sure it's harder in Israel, which doesn't have separation of religion & state.
it even worse than that for people trying to take issue with you. if one has a problem with the statement "people or jews", one would generally assume this removes "jews" from the group of "people". and hence jews aren't people.
Plenty of people who want to live long lives drive cars and take showers, even though those are two of the most dangerous activities normal people get up to.
At least as I practice it, privacy protection is risk analysis, not blind minimization.
If you use a blanket rule like that, then the most likely outcome is that you'll stick to your guns for a while, but once the benefit gets large enough, you'll give up and stop thinking about it at all. Which, in the long run, results in the worst outcome.
It's much more effective to do a lightweight risk analysis and set some sort of standard for what you're ok with given different levels of benefit. For example, if you're generally ok with a privacy policy, maybe you're fine sending your image to random experimental sites that don't have any obvious motive to profit from abusing your data. (Which is actually not quite the case here -- the site in question is specifically thinking about privacy risks, and so probably ought to be given a better prior than a random site.)
Then again, I'm a total hypocrite. If I were to do my own analysis, I would not be ok with having a live mic potentially sending any audio it picks up to a company I already distrust. Especially when their privacy policy is not at all reassuring. And yet, I can see the Echo from where I'm sitting...
The phrase "Multiverse" has become overloaded. Max Tegmark thinks that there are at least four different kinds of "Multiverse", which he organizes into levels. This article corresponds to level 2: post-inflationary bubbles. The four levels are:
1. Space beyond the cosmic horizon.
2. Post-inflationary bubbles (this article).
3. Quantum multiverse, i.e. Many Worlds interpretation.
4. Platonic multiverses. i.e. Other mathematical structures that "are" universes.
It helps to know about the idea of different kinds of multiverse, and how they are not mutually exclusive, when reading articles like this which use the term Multiverse without disambiguating it.
An obvious use case for this API is to allow native games that use Vulkan to be ported to the Web without a proprietary abstraction layer. (The abstraction layer would be in the emscripten standard library rather than the game engine.) But is this a legitimate use case that someone actually needs?
I can see two views here. Firstly, that as the open standard, Vulkan should have a privileged position and be supported from the Web side, to make the Vulkan -> Web -> Native abstraction layer standard, small and efficient. As a developer you would just implement the necessary algorithms for your application once, using Vulkan.
The alternative view is that Vulkan is just too low level and doesn't fit in the web security model. Then, the purpose of WebGPU is not to implement Vulkan in Javascript. Instead, it's another target in addition to the existing three: Apple, Microsoft, Kronos, and web. To get maximum performance, developers must write an application-specific, high level platform abstraction layer, and implement that interface for each supported platform.
It seems to me that this article is of the latter view, especially as it doesn't put Metal in a strategically weaker position than Vulkan.
If you don't need state of the art or original rendering techniques and algorithms, I think there is already a high level abstraction which is compatible with the web: OpenGL ES 2, and soon OpenGL ES 3. (WebGL & WebGL 2).
There was a post here two weeks ago discussing this exact problem. [1] It starts by explaining Democritus' reasoning that matter must be made of discrete atoms. The main point of the article is that a similar logic applies to the future theory of quantum gravity; space and time too must be discrete.
From the article:
> Importing the atomic philosophy of Democritus into modern physics might be essential for reconciling general relativity (which assumes a continuous reality) with quantum mechanics (which very much does not).
As far as infinite vs finite space: because there is a fixed rate of information propagation, we only need to show that time is finite in extent, and it follows that space is also finite. We know that the visible universe is finite (by looking in the sky) and we can explain why: the big bang happened at a finite time in the past.
We don't know if the universe will have a finite future, but it might be the case. One possible cause of a finite future could be accelerating expansion of the universe due to dark energy. [2]
Of course there are other interpretations of "real space", but this one (causally connected) seems parsimonious to me.
we only need to show that time is finite in extent, and it follows that space is also finite [...]
That does not follow: As our universe is spatially flat (or close to it), it is consistent with the infinite-space Friedmann model. The cosmic horizon that bounds the observable universe would still exist due to the metric expansion of space.
To the best of my knowledge, mainstream quantum mechanics assumes continuous spacetime, so the argument that the primary reason it can't be reconciled with general relativity is continuity seems pretty specious to me. And it's possible to come up with a model where the universe is infinite but the visible universe is finite. In fact, I believe FLRW is one such a model, and is supported with high accuracy by the latest experimental observations. So again, your argument doesn't seem that compelling to me.
And it's possible to come up with a model where the universe is infinite but the visible universe is finite. In fact, I believe FLRW is one such a model
Just to clarify, FLRW is a class of models, which includes ones with finite as well as infinite space. We've been able to determine that our universe is close to spatially flat. However, that does not mean it's infinite: If spatial curvature is positive but small compared to the cosmic horizon (which is due to spatial expansion), we won't be able to tell.
That said, even given finite space, spacetime can of course still be infinite if the universe does not recollapse.
> To the best of my knowledge, mainstream quantum mechanics assumes continuous spacetime, so the argument that the primary reason it can't be reconciled with general relativity is continuity seems pretty specious to me.
Your criticism is right and that is a bad argument. The real reasons they are hard to reconcile are technical (see for example [1]), and not mentioned in the source I referred to.
The article only says that a discrete theory of spacetime "might be essential" for the reconciliation; the arguments for this are philosophical - it would be beautiful and historically completing. Read the article if you're interested in the arguments, which aren't included in my comments.
> And it's possible to come up with a model where the universe is infinite but the visible universe is finite. In fact, I believe FLRW is one such a model, and is supported with high accuracy by the latest experimental observations.
I agree with you that the universe could be infinite, but that doesn't contradict my previous comment. I explained that I was talking about local (causally connected to us) space-time, only. I admit this is a bit of a trick, but the parent comment used the term "real space" which I interpreted in such a way to favour an argument for finite space.
> So again, your argument doesn't seem that compelling to me.
I've given reasons but I think it might be helpful to restate what I am actually claiming. I admit I don't know that space and time are discrete. The source I gave is a poetic and philosophical argument that it might be. I think it's established fact that energy and matter are, and that time is finite in the past, so the visible universe is finite. I think it's possible that the future is finite too.
> I think it's established fact that energy and matter are, and that time is finite in the past, so the visible universe is finite.
None of that is established, actually:
Metric expansion of space comes with a cosmic event horizon where redshift goes to infinity. While the energy contained within that region is finite, there's no reason to assume that the universe outside the horizon looks any different than inside the horizon, and it might very well be spatially infinite.
As to time being finite in the past, it is possible to generalize Einstein's equations so that they can be extended past the big bang singularity, and what you get is a mirror universe on the other side. The issue here is that as we approach Planck scale, quantum gravity becomes relevant, and we have no predictive theory of that.
The phrase "both in-person and around the globe" is ambiguous. It could mean either that there were more witnesses in person, and more witnesses around the globe, or it could mean that the total number of witnesses, anywhere, was the largest ever. This is the (terrible) beauty of it: a supporter can believe the former, while the administration needs only to defend the latter.
The phrase "alternative facts" too is ambiguous and, in the way it was used by Conway is classical doublethink. Doublethink involves two actions: a public lie and wilful self-delusion. One interpretation (without context) of the phrase "alternative facts" is that the facts are merely unknown and up for debate. But one merely needs to look at a photo of the inauguration to see that the facts are that Obama had higher attendance in 2009. [1] To claim otherwise is a lie.
Another is that the _true_ facts are known, but Conway is explicitly stating: these are the facts which I am telling you to believe. This is the wilful self-delusion.
From 1984:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink."
To find out the truth about how the world works - observe it, collect evidence, make a hypothesis that explains it, use it to make predictions, and do experiments to test them.
To declare that something is inexplicable is equivalent to saying it's supernatural.
Naturalism is the philosophy that everything is ultimately governed by physical laws and is therefore explicable.