Today I Learned

[jim hardy]

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

??

i rather enjoyed "Man and his Symbols"
at least the half of it he wrote. Marylouise von Franz's second half of the book i found impossible to follow.

Today i learned there's a book of their correspondence. Five years ago i couldn't find one...

uh oh, another for the "Read Me" pile.

 

[collinsmark]

Today i learned that Wolfgang Pauli developed a close relationship with Carl Jung, and both delved into the esoteric and mystical world

Both developed an obsession with the number 137

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

Yeah, the fine structure constant. 'Pretty close to 1/137, but at Pauli's time, nobody knew the precision.

Well, we all make mistakes. I've made a bunch of 'em! (I'm not proud of my mistakes. But as long as I learn something in the process, I find my mistakes somewhat palatable. It's better than the alternative of missing out on the learning.)

 

[strangerep]

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

Because Pauli had a severe breakdown and Jung was his psychotherapist. The most logical of minds can be defeated by anxiety, delusion, schizophrenia, etc.

(Indeed, today I learned a little more about the mental instability of Wolfgang Pauli, who I had previously only heard of as being a very smart A-hole. Evidently, one must be wary of very smart, arrogant, manic, A-holes.)

 

[Hornbein]

Today i learned that Wolfgang Pauli developed a close relationship with Carl Jung, and both delved into the esoteric and mystical world

Both developed an obsession with the number 137

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

Is it possible Wolfgang Pauli knows something you don't?

 

[BornCane]

Is it possible Wolfgang Pauli knows something you don't?

dont you think its odd that such a legendary physicist, one of few founders of Quantum Mechanics along with Heisenberg, Born, De Broglie, and others.

would be obsessed with numerology

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Today I learned that a simple majority voting method is not the most "fair".

Hi @TheDemx27:

I was unable to find in the cited article

http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/​

any discussion of "simple majority voting".

What did you mean by this?

Regards,
Buzz

dont you think its odd that such a legendary physicist, one of few founders of Quantum Mechanics along with Heisenberg, Born, De Broglie, and others would be obsessed with numerology

Hi @BornCane:

You might also find it interesting that Arthur Stanley Eddington believed that the fine structure constant was exactly 1/137.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington​

Regards,
Buzz

50-0-50 rule in psychology that pertains to personality and intelligence.

Hi @Pythagorean:

I recall (with some uncertainty) that I first read about this "rule" in Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works. As I remember it, the rule applies to only personality traits rather than intelligence. If you can cite a reference that applies the rule to intelligence, I would very much like to see it.

Regards,
Buzz

"I may not know everything, but I know which books to find the answer in".

Hi @OmCheeto:

I cannot remember where to find the relevant quote, but the quote above reminds me of something I read somewhere. People commonly used to have memory abilities which today would seem fantastic. Then came the printing press.

Regards,
Buzz

I didn't like its clockface because one of the numbers seemed wrong: it was different from what we'd been learning at primary school.

Hi @NascentOxygen:

I think what may have been disturbing is that many clocks with Roman numerals use "IIII" rather than "IV". Someone once explained to me that this was because "IV" had some ecclesiastical significance, and the church did not what "IV" on the clocks. I never tried to check if this was correct, so it might not be the real explanation.

Regards,
Buzz

What, then, do you suppose the most despised art is?

Hi @zoobyshoe:

I am uncertain about what criteria should be used to measure the degree of "despised". Are you perhaps thinking about a world survey asking people if they despise various forms of art?

I would guess that only people who had seen/heard/tasted/smelled a form of art would have an opinion, and they despised the art form they would likely avoid experiencing it again. (I can think of several examples for each of the four senses I listed, but not for tactile art. Ah, how about the art of sex? I would guess that is likely to be the least despised.)

Regards,
Buzz

I thought it was funny some would make a muscle out of an onion.

Hi @thankz:

I agree. They should be using spinach.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye#Spinach .​

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Where the conscious goes, the subconscious must follow.

Hi @jim hardy:

I don't think I can learn the above. I have a bias that the subconscious can be creative. In such cases, the conscious will follow the subconscious.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Sometimes, some otherwise intelligent persons make some pretty stupid comments.

Hi @Astronuc:

I confess I am somewhat sympathetic with the fired Nobel laureate. I agree the remarks were stupid, but the stupidity is the kind often seen with Asperger types. I am guessing his remarks are more of a confession related to personal experiences or conversations than a general bias.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[OmCheeto]

Hi @OmCheeto:

I cannot remember where to find the relevant quote, but the quote above reminds me of something I read somewhere. People commonly used to have memory abilities which today would seem fantastic. Then came the printing press.

Regards,
Buzz

Today I relearned that the printing press was invented around the year 1440.
I would imagine that it took a while for the idea to catch on, and therefore books of knowledge wouldn't start to be common for another 100 years or so.
Might make an interesting research project, to find the relative abundance, of what we now consider really smart people, before and after the period of invention.

Oh, never mind. Here's what I came up with, based upon the businessinsider.com list of the the 40 smartest people of all time, throwing out all the people born within the last 100 years:

0360 Hypatia
0391 maybe the year the Library of Alexandria was destroyed (not from the list, but from my very shallow research)
1440 Gutenberg Printing Press
1452 da Vinci
1473 Copernicus
1473 Thomas Wolsey
1564 Shakespeare
1564 Galileo
1583 Hugo Grotius
1643 Newton
1646 Leibniz
1688 Emanuel Swedenborg
1694 Voltaire
1707 Euler
1749 Goethe
1773 Thomas Young
1777 Gauss
1806 John Stuart Mill
1822 Rudolf Clausius
1822 Francis Galton
1831 Maxwell
1856 Tesla
1867 Curie
1879 Einstein
1887 Ramanujan (my addition to the list)
1898 William Sidis
1904 Nathan Leopold
1906 Ettore MajoranaI'm guessing from the list that:

a. Hypatia was a book worm.
b. da Vinci, Copernicus, and Thomas Wolsey were surrounded by smart people
c. everyone else, as Newton once kind of inferred, read everyone else's books, and expanded on it.
​

I included Ramanujan, as, IMHO, Mathematics is a science where you can just sit down, and from the age of 4, without any help, expand upon it, all by your lonesome.

ps. Full names indicate that I have no idea, whatsoever, what these people are famous for.
pps. Greg one day indicated that we have members from every nation now. I wonder what their lists of "smartest people" would look like:

Hello! Didn't some guy over here invent "Al Gebra!"? And didn't someone over here invent the "zero"? Ever tried to do maths without a zero?
Um... One of our oldsters invented gunpowder, about 1000 years before your smarties were even born. Just sayin...​

 

[Ibix]

ps. Full names indicate that I have no idea, whatsoever, what these people are famous for.

I know some of them and looked up the rest (Wikipedia research only, so you pays your money and takes your chances).

• Thomas Wolsey - Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, and an advisor to Henry VIII (I had to look him up - I knew his name and rank, but no more).
  
• Emanuel Swedenborg - created (yet) another Christian sect. My Dad was a lapsed member; I think his death put a significant dent in the surviving membership.
• Thomas Young - defined Young's[/PLAIN] modulus, the measure of elasticity.
• John Stuart Mill - a Scottish philosopher, a leading proponent of Bentham's school of utilitarianism. Also, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
• Rudolf Clausius - a thermodynamicist. The Clausius-Clapeyron equation is the thing I know him for.
• Francis Galton - I had to look him up (then kicked myself a bit). He's famous for regression to the mean and coining the word eugenics.
• William Sidis - I had not heard of him, but apparently he was an American child prodigy.
• Nathan Leopold - another child prodigy I had not heard of. Famous for murdering a child.
• Ettore Majorana - physicist/mathematician - developed the Majorana equation describing Majorana fermions, fermions which are their own anti-particle. Disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

 

[jim hardy]

I don't think I can learn the above. I have a bias that the subconscious can be creative. In such cases, the conscious will follow the subconscious.

Hmmmm that quote must be from six months ago !

I was being more literal.
Both reside physically in one's brain
and your conscious controls where your feet take you.

Doing random, anonymous acts of kindness will change how you feel, though. Try it for a few days . "Power of Positive Thinking" ?

 

[mfb]

and your conscious controls where your feet take you.

Studies show you can predict this before your consciousness thinks it makes the decision. I don't think they tested feet, but they tested motion of the hand(s). The basic conclusion: you make the decision without consciousness involved, and afterwards your consciousness thinks it made the decision. Very interesting topic. It also has a Wikipedia article.

 

[OmCheeto]

Studies show you can predict this before your consciousness thinks it makes the decision. I don't think they tested feet, but they tested motion of the hand(s). The basic conclusion: you make the decision without consciousness involved, and afterwards your consciousness thinks it made the decision. Very interesting topic. It also has a Wikipedia article.

This kind of reminds me of something I learned about the other day.
Dancing Squid:



I was kind of mortified.

But then, I googled, and everything I read about it, said that the Octopus/Squid didn't have a brain left, so the dancing was caused by the salt in the Soy Sauce.

Something didn't sound quite right, as cephalopods are all salt water creatures.

So I googled the anatomy of cephalopods, and found that their brains are directly between their eyes.
What looks like it might be the cranium on most creatures, turned out to be just about everything but the brain.
So all of these people, thinking they'd beheaded the poor creatures, had simply disemboweled them.

ps. I read the other day, that cephalopods have such a bizarre DNA pattern, that biologist consider them alien creatures, from another world.
google, google, google...
Here's an older reference, but confirms what I read: Scientists declare that octopuses are basically aliens

Seriously, someone with much greater photoshop skills than me needs to create a drawing of what humans would look like if our body parts were arranged like a cephalopod:

Its mouth is between its legs, and its anus, like nearly everything else, is on top of its head!

 

[mfb]

ps. I read the other day, that cephalopods have such a bizarre DNA pattern, that biologist consider them alien creatures, from another world.
google, google, google...
Here's an older reference, but confirms what I read: Scientists declare that octopuses are basically aliens

Alien != Aliens.
They use the same DNA and RNA, the same amino acids, the same translation between RNA and amino acids, and even have many genes in common with other branches of life.

Today I learned from Evolution of cephalopods: Lagerstätte (with ä!) is an "English" word.Edit:

1822 Francis Galton

Today I learned: He was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and their common grandfather also worked on evolution.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

A byte is always 8 bits. Bytes are not words. Words increased in size, bytes did not.

Hi @mfb:

I may be mis-remembering this, but I believe there was a time when a byte was 9 bits including a parity bit.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Fracking adds about 300 million dollars a DAY to the US economy.

Hi @Hornbein:

Does the $3M per day include the costs of dealing with environmental aside effects?

One of the peculiarities of commonly used economic statistics, e.g., GDP, is that negatives like making an environmental mess that requires expensive clean-up adds to the GDP, if the clean-up actually ever happens. If illness is caused, then the costs of corresponding medical care is also added to the GDP.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[BornCane]

Today I learned

that Adolf Hitler had a nephew that fought in the U.S Navy in WW2

 

[collinsmark]

I may be mis-remembering this, but I believe there was a time when a byte was 9 bits including a parity bit.

I think you are thinking of older systems where 7 bits of a byte were used information along with a single parity bit. Total bits in a byte are/were still 8, regardless of how they were used.

By the way, the original ASCII table was made in this way. Since there were only 7 bits of information, there were 2^7 = 128 entries in the table.

The extended ASCII table replaces the parity bit with another bit of information, allowing for 256 entries.

 

[Hornbein]

Hi @Hornbein:

Does the $3M per day include the costs of dealing with environmental aside effects?

One of the peculiarities of commonly used economic statistics, e.g., GDP, is that negatives like making an environmental mess that requires expensive clean-up adds to the GDP, if the clean-up actually ever happens. If illness is caused, then the costs of corresponding medical care is also added to the GDP.

Regards,
Buzz

Hey, I just work here.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Where are those costs not included? Every opponent of nuclear power makes sure they get overestimated as much as possible.

Hi mfb:

I think I may have misunderstood what you posted, or you misunderstood what fresh_42 said.

I understand that fresh_42 was referring to the fact that nuclear waste material has never been safely and permanently disposed of, because it is way too expensive to do this. No matter how much the industry overestimates their costs, which are to be paid for by the rates their customers pay, the future costs of dealing with the accumulated wastes is definitely NOT included.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Today I learned that one of Scott Walker's predecessors as governor of Wisconsin suggested a new slogan for the state's vehicle license plates.

Hi @jtbell:

I think you misread the article you cited. It said that a contest was held to select a new slogan, but the governor rejected the suggestion for the cheese slogan.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[einswine]

Today i learned that Wolfgang Pauli developed a close relationship with Carl Jung, and both delved into the esoteric and mystical world

Both developed an obsession with the number 137

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

I think that had to do with the zeitgeist of Western Culture at that time. And which made seeing the possibility of a connection between aspects of QM and Jung's Synchronicity more natural than it would seem today. Organized religion had become less relevant and a spiritualistic mysticism had become common among both the upper and middle classes. It was accepted at the highest levels of the social hierarchy and it partly shaped Nazi philosophy. Ouija boards and séances were still every where after WWI. Science was at a kind of turning point with the rise of the new physics. And science new a lot less then and a lot less seemed certain about what might or might not be possible.

I think the same will eventually be said of this time :)

My 2 cents.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

According to conference in Davos, 2 million people will lose their jobs because of robotisation in next 5 years.

Hi @Sophia:

John K. Galbraith's book The End of Normal (2014) discusses this.

A few decades ago new technology might end an industry, or change its processes, and thereby end its jobs, but the new technology also led to a new industry with new jobs, or just new jobs in the current industry. That now happens less and less.

Nowadays fewer or less skilled (with lower salaries) or no new jobs are created by new technology. The benefits of the new technology are: (a) reduction by a relatively small amount the costs of goods to many who use the products, and (b) substantial increases in unearned income to stock-holders and salaries to CEO's and other high corporate executives. The down side is lost incomes to many, reducing the population of those able to buy the products of the new technology.

My interpretation of Galbraith's message is that fixing the economic problems created by new technology will require radical changes in the way the economic system functions, and the way the benefits of new technology are distributed.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

It's been my experience, that incidental toxic/deadly "things", in reasonable quantities, can safely be ignored.

Hi @OmCheeto:

Even if the FDA does an excellent job putting maximum allowable limits on each of various "bad" compounds in foods, testing to determine acceptable limits is not done for combinations of "bad" things.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I gathered that much, but the 'why' behind it is beyond my comprehension... and I really doubt I'm learning THAT today... I think it would require a semester or two.

Instead of a sphere, a similar result is easier to conceptualize for an infinite line from -∞ to +∞, and using an infinite number of components.

Decompose the line into the segments ... [-n-1,-n) ... [-1,0) [0,1) ... [n,n+1) ...
let every other segment be put into set A, and put all other segments into set B.
Concatenate all the segments in A together, end to end, to for a line which is the same as the original line.
Do the same for the segments in set B.
The result is what was originally one line has been formed into two lines.

It is clearly much more difficult to visualize the corresponding result with the sphere and only a finite number of pieces.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[OmCheeto]

Hi @OmCheeto:

Even if the FDA does an excellent job putting maximum allowable limits on each of various "bad" compounds in foods, testing to determine acceptable limits is not done for combinations of "bad" things.

Regards,
Buzz

That's kind of what I implied the other day, in another thread.

ps. Happy belated anniversary, @Buzz Bloom .

 

[einswine]

My interpretation of Galbraith's message is that fixing the economic problems created by new technology will require radical changes in the way the economic system functions, and the way the benefits of new technology are distributed.

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. In not too many years there will be none. Truck drivers will be replaced by truck minders but there will be fewer of them and minders will make much less. And then it gets worse as this will be happening in almost every commercial domain. I think it is a safe assumption that without a major black swan event technology will eventually break capitalism.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

without a major black swan event technology will eventually break capitalism.

Hi @einswine:

I agree with your sentiments, but I think the "black swan event" metaphor is flawed. One of the properties of a "black swan event" is that it is a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory​

It doesn't seem plausible to me that a solution to fix the economic problem can happen as a surprise, if it can happen at all. It will require a political process.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[mfb]

@Buzz Bloom: Where is the point in warming up all those months old discussions? And could you please do this in one post, not in 20?

I understand that fresh_42 was referring to the fact that nuclear waste material has never been safely and permanently disposed of, because it is way too expensive to do this.

There are permanent nuclear waste storages for low and medium radioactive materials. Highly activated waste can be stored permanently as well, but keeping it on the surface is actually safer today. So where is the problem?

the future costs of dealing with the accumulated wastes is definitely NOT included.

Of course it is.

 

[einswine]

Hi @einswine:

I agree with your sentiments, but I think the "black swan event" metaphor is flawed. One of the properties of a "black swan event" is that it is a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory​

It doesn't seem plausible to me that a solution to fix the economic problem can happen as a surprise, if it can happen at all. It will require a political process.

Regards,
Buzz

Sorry I was not clear. Black swan was meant as something that would bring an end to technological progress. Say a small accidental nuclear war between Pakistan and India that triggered a mini nuclear winter that caused 2 consecutive years of crop losses.