I would like the Forum to have a "Great Filter" so I don't have to see all the political flame wars.

:)

Eh, future Big Brother contestants, ancient Greek gods, same thing.

@Jeff

The Great Filter SantaClausowitz (348 D)
Sat 19 Jul
The other Great Filter -> Mute thread

"@Fasces - you completely misunderstand probability. 'Your argue boils down to the universe is infinite therefore everything that exists must exist more than once.' Many people used to believe in the infinite monkeys re-producing shakespeare theory. They were wrong then, and you're wrong now."
everything that exists doesn't exist, I'm arguing that because the universe is so large, and because we know that life is possible, and because we know there are trillions upon trillions of planets in our observable universe that have the correct conditions to sustain life, and because over time the chances of life forming increase, the odds of us being alone is statistically insignificant.

As I said, if the probability that a habitable planet will create life over the course of its existence are a billion to 1, you're 5000 times more likely to win the lottery then for us to be alone.

"Actually, Fasces, I've taken Econ. I have said a few times that I'm talking about no population growth after a certain point and that will have an effect on slowing down the part of the economy that relies on population growth. That is not the same thing as zero economic growth."
Zero population growth and zero economic growth are entirely different concepts and twice you called it a zero sum economy, which by definition means its an economy that can't have economic growth.

I can accept that most of the differences in opinion in this argument came to me thinking when you said zero growth I thought you mean zero economic growth but based on your last post it probably meant zero population growth, in which case my argument would be completely different.

There are actually many different economical advantages to an economy without an increasing population (mainly that children are a massive burden on an economy, consuming loads and producing nothing).

"It's called quantum entanglement.
Here is a brief article that presents it nicely as well as its challenges.

http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/science/wms-quantum-communication/"
I'll read this when I have time, I'll concede that I do know very little about quantum physics.

"I would like the Forum to have a "Great Filter" so I don't have to see all the political flame wars."
Mute the treads you don't want to see. Problem solved.

I also wouldn't consider this a political thread (its science not politics) or a flame war (other then me telling Theo to go take Econ 101 I don't think there has been any ad hominems here), but I guess an outside observer would take things differently.

@Theo: To quote the first line in your article you sent me:

"How Does Faster-Than-Light Quantum Communication Work?
Hint: it doesn't."

Not a good start for you, lol

"Now, that’s pretty cool – but it can’t really be used for faster-than-light communication purposes for the simple reason that we cannot control the polarization of the entangled particles. And while it may seem that the two photons are able to communicate with each other in some way, we have no idea how."
I guess the journalist wasn't completely right there though, he's running under the assumption that because we can't currently control the polarization of entangled particles, we never will. So eventually basic FTL communication could be established.

As the article indicates, Quantum Entanglement doesn't don't allow for the transfer of Information, so it can't be used for FTL comm. If it did, relativity would break.

:)

Well, that was just one article that explained the science and problems fairly well. It is a little out-of-date.

There have been studies in the last few years where two particles have been entangled using a laser and separated. One was wiggled, and the other one wiggled along with it. So there is some promise.

The problem is keeping them entangled...entanglement decays very quickly and then each particle does its own thing.

The whole thing is pretty cool and leads to interesting things like pseudo-teleportation.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-05/fyi-how-photon-teleportation-can-bring-us-secure-communications?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=3&con=read-full-story

"As the article indicates, Quantum Entanglement doesn't don't allow for the transfer of Information, so it can't be used for FTL comm. If it did, relativity would break."
Well Abge, since changing the polarization of one particle changes the polarization of another a world a way, if we can change one, and said change be considered a signal of some kind, why wouldn't that be FTL comm?

Because you can't read the polarization of B without destroying the information.

For more info, see No-Communication Theorem.

To be fair, this is a problem that physicists have been debating for a while and resolved using three particles instead of just two.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/teleportation1.htm

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/09/06/physicists-quantum-teleport-photons-over-88-miles/

@Theodosius
Yeah, but it seems 2 of every 3 threads here either starts as or devolves into a political flame war. I wish I could just mute a "Politics" tag instead of individual threads. Every time someone somewhere in the world does something, the news hawks of WebDip are all over it. *yawn* Take those discussions to facebook. ;)

"Because you can't read the polarization of B without destroying the information."
Fair enough, my next question is since photons can share information instantaneously, why can't we, remember we are talking sci-fi here...

"http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/09/06/physicists-quantum-teleport-photons-over-88-miles/"
But was this FTL? Light can cover that distance in 0.00047 seconds...

"@Theodosius
Yeah, but it seems 2 of every 3 threads here either starts as or devolves into a political flame war. I wish I could just mute a "Politics" tag instead of individual threads. Every time someone somewhere in the world does something, the news hawks of WebDip are all over it. *yawn* Take those discussions to facebook. ;)"
Because my facebook friends are all idiots, at least on here we see some evidence (albeit limited) of intelligence.

The answer to FTL communication is...





Maybe.

Maybe 10,000 times the speed of light, maybe faster.

http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/150207-chinese-physicists-measure-speed-of-einsteins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-at-least-10000-times-faster-than-light

Keep in mind that this is the lower limit; their equipment isn't accurate enough to detect faster than that. It could be instantaneous.

But, really, more experimentation needs to be done for real proof.

There is a difference between something happening FTL and information traveling FTL. It's nuanced and Information Theory isn't my strong suite. Basically though, as long as you aren't transferring Information, things can happen faster than light.

@Jeff.
That political discussion comes and goes. It's been a hotspot lately. Some people here enjoy it, others despair. Most participants despair that others just can't see their point. And no one, ever, apologizes for making mistakes.

Some people who like the persuading part of Dip also like debate. And politics is way more debatable than religion because shit happens realtime in politics. Religious books don't change nearly that quickly.

You might try muting what you consider the worst offenders. When threads devolve into flaming, you'll be almost blissfully unaware.

Theoretically, communication using quantum entanglement should be instantaneous regardless of distance.

However, that also apparently breaks other theories or at least physicist's understanding of them, which has lead to a lot of debate.

So far, by my count over the years, Quantum Entanglement physicists 3, Other physicists 0.

But it is far from finished yet. Quantum tech could still die and quantum communication could be slower than light.

I'm just an interested outside observer looking in and it's been a few decades since I could even decipher the equations, much less give an intelligent opinion on their validity.

"Most participants despair that others just can't see their point. And no one, ever, apologizes for making mistakes."
Political discussions on here mimic real politics in this respect.

:)

@Fasces,

"As I said, if the probability that a habitable planet will create life over the course of its existence are a billion to 1, you're 5000 times more likely to win the lottery then for us to be alone."

But it could be 10^billion to 1. We have simply no good reason to believe that it's as low as a billion to 1.

I just want to point the irony of this:
When it comes to debating creationists, atheists will assert the claim that there is a high probability of life forming when the planet meets all suitable conditions.

However suddenly when it comes to arguing about alien life, you guys are saying the probability is near 0.

Either you have to accept that the creationists are right and that life shouldn't exist on earth without the help of a creator, or you have to accept that there is alien life somewhere out there in the universe. There is no in between without creating a contradictory and hypocritical argument.

The arguments used by evolutionists to describe how single cell life originated on this planet is directly applied here, except rather then using one planet as our sample the far larger (~500000000000000000000000>1) number of planets in our universe will be used.

You can't have it both ways, and remember we know of at least one case where life was formed on a planet, and we estimate that first instances of life on earth started within the first 600 million years after earth met most of the required conditions for life to form, which given that we estimate the earth will be a habitable planet for the next 5 billion years (unless us humans destroy the planet first), that means of the ~9 billion years the earth should exist as a habitable planet, it took less then 1/15th of that for life to form on this planet. The point is remember, if life formed on earth 100 millions years earlier, we still would have had a strong chance of evolving into intelligent life. If we assume it takes an average of 3.9 billion years for life to evolve into intelligent life (as our sample size of 1 gives us that), then the first instances of life on earth could have formed 1 billion years from now and we'd still have a good chance of evolving into intelligent life.

Thats my point, a planet that meets the necessary conditions for life has a far greater chance then a billion to 1, and as I said before, given enough time, a planet that meets the conditions to create life will create life. This is a statistical certainty:
http://evolutionfaq.com/articles/probability-life

The question is then how many planets out there meet all of the conditions required to contain life. Of course we don't know the answer to that, but there is no way you can claim to me that the answer is 0, as we know of at least one example (earth).

My point is since we know the odds of life forming out there have to be high enough so that life can form, the odds are insanely high that there is other life out there.

"The arguments used by evolutionists to describe how single cell life originated on this planet is directly applied here, except rather then using one planet as our sample the far larger (~500000000000000000000000>1) number of planets in our universe will be used."
I will grant that most of these planets will be gas giants or too close or far away from a star to be habitable. My argument is that of the 5*10^24 (I'm mostly typing it out as effect to show how large the number is) planets out there the odds of not one of them meeting the conditions to contain life is for all intensive purposes, statistics 0.

Good post, Fasces.

And if we look at how we think life started, with simple amino acids from comets, that shouldn't be unusual in other systems either.

And to point out, we have found evidence of life on mars... The part where its all gone is another thing, but acknowledging it appeared elsewhere than on earth is pretty big.

Did we find life on Mars? I missed that somehow. How odd.

I seem to remember finding life on Mars, but I thought there would have been a huge fuss made about it. News stories across the world saying "we are not alone". Evidence of life is different.