Recent content by .Scott

I don't see that much mystery.

I think Penrose is excessively wordy on the matter. In his first book, there's one chapter after another where he uses different attacks to argue the same point - that a normal computer can't be conscious. I have presented my own argument a couple of times on PF, so I won't repeat it here (it's...

Roger Penrose has not only stated that the hard component of consciousness is basic Physics, he has authored three books on the subject - "The Emperor's New Mind", "Shadows of the Mind", and "Consciousness and the Universe". What I disliked about the AI-generated video of Penrose explaining...

They did it with Richard Feynman and now they're doing it with Sir Roger Penrose - and I find it irritating. There is now a youtube channel called "The Roger Physics" that uses an AI-generated Roger Penrose to explain Physics topics. The "Roger" they present never appears as interested or...

If you assume that the paper tape is zero mass and zero thickness, then the force applied to the left side of the spool can only be the result of tension in the tape. That force will be directly up and tangent to the surface of the spool. We can deduce the tension on paper tape by noting that...

Hello Dave, welcome to these forums. I'm way ahead of you - went senile decades ago.

Well, thanks @Warp , you got me thinking. AS a staring point, I will grant you an ## \aleph_0 ## list of terminating algorithms that can be exercised in the way you describe. What you would then need to do is execute algorithm number 1 in the list to generate its first digit, the second one to...

That's a good point. Cantor's diagonal argument is not iron-clad. Bertrand Russell complained about it in Principia Mathematica, as described here. When the algorithm for finding a "Cantor solution" is implemented for only a specified precision, what it returns is only a promise that such a...

A computable number must be the result of a "terminating algorithm". An algorithm that is required to examine each element in a list of cardinality ##\aleph_0## would be "non-terminating". Thus it's result might not be in the set of computable numbers.

You're not going to generate a laser with "infinite energy". And, if you do, those safety goggles won't do you any good. When you ask to eliminate the bleeding from the neon and other energy losses, you're not only setting aside any Engineering obstacles, you're also setting aside the...

Take the Helium Neon laser as an example. A current is applied across the gas mixture at a voltage over 1000V. That discharge excites the Helium atoms which in turn excite electrons in the Neon from their ground state to a higher state. The readiness of these electrons to fall back to their...

It's unbelievable to think that somewhere in this universe is a planet that really looks like that.

In college, I took a 19th century Literature course (strictly because a literature course was "required"). What became very evident to me, very quickly was that this literature was written for an audience that, if not "home bound", was mostly "town-bound" - and without TV or radio (or even the...

Very good. So GR used its first dibs on Alice in Wonderland by claiming the Mad Hatter. Then about 90 years later QM staked its claim to the Cheshire Cat.

If I catch the spirit of you question, you will be gratified to discover that one can design a laser that will continue to operate as it is being vaporized. Project Excalibur created such a design. Had it been developed, it would have been most emphatically a pulse laser.