Category: quotes

https://medium.com/pcmag-access/5-thought-experiments-that-will-melt-your-brain-bb5ab7c7fe3c#.ikhd2rsvq

 

1- the basic concept of the “Swampman” thought experiment posited by the philosopher Donald Davidson in the late-1980s. In this experiment a man is traveling through a swamp and killed by a bolt of lightning, but — by sheer chance — another bolt of lightning strikes a nearby swamp and rearranges all the organic particles to create an exact replica (including all the memories and such) of the man who was killed. The new Swampman wakes up and lives the rest of the deceased man’s life.

 

2- Achilles and the tortoise are racing at constant speeds: Very fast and very slow, respectively. At some point in the race, Achilles reaches the tortoise’s original starting point. But in the time it took Achilles to get there, the tortoise has moved forward. So, then Achilles’s next task would be to make up the new gap between himself and the tortoise, however by the time he did that, the tortoise would have again moved forward by some smaller amount. The process then repeats itself again and again. Achilles is always faced with a new (if smaller) gap to overcome. The takeaway: The great Achilles loses a race to a big dumb lumbering tortoise and no deficit is ever surmountable.

 

3- let’s say you just froze time at some point along an arrow’s trajectory . At that particular instant, the arrow is suspended in space in a single location. In any one instant of time, no motion is occurring. The arrow can only be in one place or the other and never in-between. So, how does it get from one instant to another if there is never a moment when it is in between the two places?

 

4- the question at hand is would a blind person who learned to distinguish basic shapes by touch be able to distinguish those objects when he suddenly received the power of sight? In other words, does information from one sensation translate to another, or do we associate them only in our minds?

 

https://news.psu.edu/story/141360/2006/04/17/research/probing-question-if-blind-person-gained-sight-could-they-recognize

 

5- You are on a bridge overlooking a set of trolley tracks and you notice that five people have been tied down to the tracks by a devious (and presumably moustache-twirling) villain. Then you see an out-of-control trolley barreling down the tracks that will certainly kill the unfortunate people unless someone intervenes. you realize that you are sharing your bridge with a gigantic fat man, who — if you were to push him in front of the trolley — would have enough girth to stop the trolley and save the five bound people, though he will certainly be killed.You are now faced with the following options: 1) Do nothing and the five people will die, or 2) Push the fat man in front of the trolley and sacrifice him for the five people. In either scenario, are you at all culpable in these innocent people’s deaths? Should the law make any distinction?
 

http://qz.com/608398/be-prepared-we-gotasked-10-ceos-to-tellgive-us-their-killer-interview-questions/

 

• “Would you rather be respected or feared?”
• “Why are you here today?”
• “What’s your biggest dream in life?”
• “I ask how they were treated.”
• “What is your favorite property in Monopoly, and why?”
• “Tell me about when you failed.”
• “Talk to me about when you were seven or eight. Who did you want to be?”

 

Why is that light is calculated as using the same speed independently from the medium?

 

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Speed_of_light Suppose a baseball pitcher is standing on a train moving at 90 miles per hour relative to the ground. The pitcher throws a 90 mile-per-hour fastball towards the back of the train. While the pitcher and anyone else on the train would measure the speed of the baseball as 90 miles per hour, an observer on the ground would measure the baseball’s speed as 0 miles per hour – the motion of the ball against the train cancels out as far as the observers on the ground are concerned. That is, the baseball would appear to hang in midair, until the back wall of the train caught up to it.

 

Similarly, if the pitcher threw the ball in the other direction, at the same speed, the people on the ground would see the ball travel at an impressive 180 miles per hour, as the ball would gather momentum from the train and the speeds would combine. However, if the pitcher shines a flashlight toward the back of the train, he would measure the speed of the light as c…and so would the observer on the ground.

 

Light can travel in a vacuum, and Maxwell’s equations simply say what the speed is, and are perplexingly silent on the “medium” that it is measured relative to. The speed of light is considered to be an ultimate speed limit–massive objects can obtain speeds arbitrarily close to the speed of light, but can never reach it.

 

Relativity predicts that an infinite amount of energy would be required to accelerate an object of any mass to the speed of light – particles without mass, however, can travel at the speed of light.

 

Suppose Alice observes a light beam. She must therefore be able to observe oscillating electric and magnetic fields, since that’s what light is. Now suppose that she notices Bob traveling at the speed of light alongside that light beam. Bob does not observe oscillating fields; since he’s traveling at the same speed as the oscillations, he would see static fields. Without oscillating fields, there is no light, so the light beam does not exist. But we have postulated that Alice sees a light beam, so it must exist. We therefore have a contradiction, and must abandon one of the following:

 

a.) Alice can observe light;

b.) Bob can travel at the speed of light. We can observe light, so we drop the idea that Bob can travel at the speed of light. Thus, travel at light speed is not possible.

 

The existence of some faster-than-light particles, such as tachyons, has been suggested. Tachyons, if they existed, would be confined to the “other side” of the light-speed barrier; they would be restricted to speeds faster than the speed of light

Gravitational waves are a prediction of the Theory of General Relativity It took decades to develop the technology to directly detect them They are ripples in the fabric of space and time produced by violent events Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light Detectable sources ought to include merging black holes and neutron stars LIGO fires lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36540254

The Babel Fish is an invention of writer Douglas Adams, who used it in his series of books called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams was explicitly an atheist (Richard Dawkins refers to him as his “tallest convert”) and was quite a provocateur when it came to religion.

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe.

It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.   Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this:

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

  “But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”

  “Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

  “Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

  Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

  Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/04/relativity-quantum-mechanics-universe-physicists

At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works.
 
There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbiting planets, colliding galaxies, the dynamics of the expanding universe as a whole. That’s big.
 
Then there is quantum mechanics, which handles the other three forces – electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. Quantum theory is extremely adept at describing what happens when a uranium atom decays, or when individual particles of light hit a solar cell. That’s small.
 
Now for the problem: relativity and quantum mechanics are fundamentally different theories that have different formulations. It is not just a matter of scientific terminology; it is a clash of genuinely incompatible descriptions of reality.
 

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3055241/infographic-of-the-day/the-entire-universe-as-we-know-it-in-one-spectacular-photograph?partner=rss

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/4-timeless-ways-boost-intelligence/

Factors that affect our growth.

a- The environment we choose This is the classic Nature vs Nurture debate. Nature: our genetic makeup. Nurture: the environmental factors which influence our development. Turns out it is not so much Nature vs. Nurture as it is Nature and Nurture

b- The mindset we choose What about when things do happen in our environment, which we have no control over? It comes down to our mindset. Embracing challenges Persisting in the face of setbacks Viewing effort as the path to mastery Learning from criticism Finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others

so… 4 Simple Ways To Get Smarter:

1. Challenge Yourself

2. Read Smarter

3. Hang Out With People Who Are Smarter Than You

4. Become An Idea Machine

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5981472/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-universe-here-is-one-possible-answer

Well, it just so happens that there is a theory that gives a kind of raison d’etre to our universe and all the objects flying through it. If true, it would mean that our universe is nothing more than a black hole generator, or a means to produce as many baby universes as possible. To learn more, we spoke to the man who came up with the idea.

It’s called the theory of Cosmological Natural Selection and it was conjured by Lee Smolin a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. Smolin proposed that Darwinian processes still apply at the extreme macro-scale and to non-biological entities. Because the universe is a potentially replicative unit, he suggests that it’s subject to selectional pressures. Consequently, nearly everything the universe does is geared toward replication.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5891740/quantum-suicide-how-to-prove-the-multiverse-exists-in-the-most-violent-way-possible

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5945801/8-philosophical-questions-that-well-never-solve

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

2. Is our universe real?

3. Do we have free will?

4. Does God exist?

5. Is there life after death?

6. Can you really experience anything objectively?

7. What is the best moral system?

8. What are numbers?

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/opinions/lincoln-einstein-dark-energy/index.html

Current thinking is that the effects of dark energy will increasingly dominate. As the speed of the expansion of the universe speeds up, distant galaxies will be pushed away until they are no longer observed. In the far future, astronomers will see a very different night sky than they do now. Our universe will consist of but a few nearby galaxies (called the Local Group), with all the others pushed too far away to see. Indeed, we live in a privileged time in cosmic history that allows us to study the story of our universe from the beginning to now.

http://www.lifehack.org/305085/7-timeless-tips-learn-any-language-days-not-years
 
the 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
 
the 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
 
the 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
 
the 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
 
the 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
 
the 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
 
the 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
 
the 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences
 

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. — Helen Keller
 
http://completewellbeing.com/article/security-is-an-illusion/
 
The biggest risk in life is not taking risks. Because, then, we do not live – we merely exist.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christoph-adami/did-hawking-just-solve-his-own_b_8040772.html

It’s a bad day both for Albert Einstein and for hackers. The most rigorous test of quantum theory ever carried out has confirmed that the ‘spooky action at a distance’ that the German physicist famously hated — in which manipulating one object instantaneously seems to affect another, far away one — is an inherent part of the quantum world.

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-spookiness-passes-toughest-test-yet-1.18255

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/26/us/sweden-hawking-black-hole-paradox-solution/index.html

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32276547

http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/07/27/18-ways-youre-making-your-life-harder-than-it-has-to-be/

You look to everyone else for the answers only you can give yourself.

You let others make you feel guilty for living your life.

You allow toxic people to get the best of you.

You are part of the drama circle.

You assign negative intent to other people’s actions.

You are too worried that people will steal what you have.

You’re trying to compete with everyone else.

You have been too much of a taker.

You focus on popularity over effectiveness.

You keep cutting corners and taking the easy way out.

You focus on every point in time other than now

You are stuck on your mistakes.

You have an “all or nothing” mentality.

You expect life to always be happy

You keep thinking about worst-case scenarios

You’re letting loss devour you

You avoid facing the truth

You put off making decisions

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150819-a-dream-travellers-guide-to-the-sleeping-mind

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.”  –  Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918
 
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/07/20/quantum-experiment-shows-how-time-doesnt-exist-as-we-think-it-does-mind-altering/
 
The “delayed-choice” experiment, or “quantum eraser,” and it can be considered a modified version of the double slit experiment.
 
“according to the quantum mechanic laws that govern subatomic affairs, of a particle like an electron to exist in a murky state of possibility — to be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all — until clicked into substantiality by a laboratory detector or an eyeball.”
 
“reality does not exist unless we are looking at it.” It suggests that we are living in a holographic-type of universe.
 
“If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance, but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.” – Asher Peres, pioneer in quantum information theory
 
He asks us to imagine a star emitting a photon billions of years ago, heading in the direction of planet Earth. In between, there is a galaxy. As a result of what’s known as “gravitational lensing,” the light will have to bend around the galaxy in order to reach Earth, so it has to take one of two paths, go left or go right. Billions of years later, if one decides to set up an apparatus to “catch” the photon, the resulting pattern would be (as explained above in the double slit experiment) an interference pattern. This demonstrates that the photon took one way, and it took the other way.
 
One could also choose to “peek” at the incoming photon, setting up a telescope on each side of the galaxy to determine which side the photon took to reach Earth. The very act of measuring or “watching” which way the photon comes in means it can only come in from one side. The pattern will no longer be an interference pattern representing multiple possiblities, but a single clump pattern showing “one” way.
 
What does this mean? It means how we choose to measure “now” affects what direction the photon took billions of years ago. Our choice in the present moment affected what had already happened in the past…. This makes absolutely no sense, which is a common phenomenon when it comes to quantum physics. Regardless of our ability make sense of it, it’s real. This experiment also suggests that quantum entanglement (which has also been verified, read more about that here) exists regardless of time. Meaning two bits of matter can actually be entangled, again, in time.

http://qz.com/394713/life-advice-upon-turning-age-30-from-the-president-of-y-combinator/

Short version:

1) Never put your family, friends, or significant other low on your priority list.

2) Life is not a dress rehearsal—this is probably it.

3) How to succeed: pick the right thing to do

4) On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about.

5) On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal.

6) Talk to people more.

7) Don’t waste time.

8) Don’t let yourself get pushed around.

9) Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade.

10) However, as valuable as planning is, if a great opportunity comes along you should take it.

11) Go out of your way to be around smart, interesting, ambitious people.

12) Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter.

13) Keep your personal burn rate low.

14) Summers are the best.

15) Don’t worry so much.

16) Ask for what you want.

17) If you think you’re going to regret not doing something, you should probably do it.

18) Exercise. Eat well. Sleep.

19) Go out of your way to help people.

20) Youth is a really great thing.

21) Tell your parents you love them more often.

22) This too shall pass.

23) Learn voraciously.

24) Do new things often.

25) Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now.

26) Don’t screw people and don’t burn bridges.

27) Forgive people.

28) Don’t chase status.

29) Most things are ok in moderation.

30) Existential angst is part of life.

31) Be grateful and keep problems in perspective.

32) Be a doer, not a talker.

33) Given enough time, it is possible to adjust to almost anything, good or bad.

34) Think for a few seconds before you act. Think for a few minutes if you’re angry.

35) Don’t judge other people too quickly.

36) The days are long but the decades are short.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/06/08/dark-energy-renders-97-of-the-galaxies-in-our-observable-universe-permanently-unreachable/?linkId=14788497

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/35-quotes-how-care-less-about-what-others-think.html?ref=tp&n=1

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” ― Virginia Woolf “A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.” ― Mae West

 

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.” ― Richard P. Feynman

 

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”—Lao Tzu “Never dull your shine for somebody else.” ― Tyra Banks “If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.” ― John Lennon

 

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.” ― Michel de Montaigne

 

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”— Dr. Seuss

 

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. “― Suzy Kassem

 

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”— Oscar Wilde “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”—Steve Jobs “Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.” ― Tina Fey

 

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”— Albert Einstein

 

“Some people say you are going the wrong way, when it’s simply a way of your own.”— Angelina Jolie

 

“I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all.”— Coco Chanel

 

“Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what.” ― Erma Bombeck

“There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.” ― Marianne Williamson

 

“Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.” ― Cynthia Kersey

 

“No name-calling truly bites deep unless, in some dark part of us, we believe it. If we are confident enough then it is just noise.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton

 

“When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I’m already better than them.” ― Marilyn Monroe

 

“Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” ― Tina Fey

 

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” ― Charlotte Brontë

 

“I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.” ― Amy Poehler

 

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” ― Olin Miller

 

“There is nothing more attractive than confidence, once she sees her own beauty, everyone else will.” ― Habeeb Akande

 

“Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not.” ― Wayne Gerard Trotman

 

“So many people along the way, whatever it is you aspire to do, will tell you it can’t be done. But it all it takes is imagination. You dream. You plan. You reach.”― Michael Phelps

 

“Well, laddie, if you’ve let an old buzzard like me hurt your confidence, you couldn’t have had much in the first place.” ― Tamora Pierce

 

“Most people just want to see you fall, that’s more reason to stand tall.” ― Emma Michelle

 

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” ― Aristotle

 

“He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

“When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.” ― Lily Tomlin

 

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ― Sigmund Freud “My dear, I don’t give a damn.” ― Margaret Mitchell

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246429

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/there-is-growing-evidence-that-our-universe-is-a-giant-hologram?linkId=14171150&trk_source=popular

https://medium.com/life-learning/what-i-learned-about-leadership-when-i-interviewed-the-biggest-drug-dealer-in-history-42f6220d962e

 

TRY TO GET THE PEOPLE WORKING FOR YOU TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN YOU

HONESTY

BE VERY LOW KEY

ONLY DO THE ESSENTIAL

DON’T MAKE IT ABOUT THE MONEY

REDUCE CONFRONTATIONS

FREEMIUM

ASSUME THE WORST

 

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/this-list-infographics-about-achieving-success-will-surely-inspire-you.html

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/7-scientific-self-help-books-will-transform-life/

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150424-wormholes-entanglement-firewalls-er-epr/
 
If two quantum particles are entangled, they become, in effect, two parts of a single unit. What happens to one entangled particle happens to the other, no matter how far apart they are.
 
If you come upon the right-handed glove, you instantaneously know the other is left-handed. There’s nothing spooky about that. But in the quantum version, both gloves are actually left- and right-handed (and everything in between) up until the moment you observe them. Spookier still, the left-handed glove doesn’t become left until you observe the right-handed one
 
Hawking realized that if one particle fell into a black hole and the other escaped, the hole would emit radiation, glowing like a dying ember. Given enough time, the hole would evaporate into nothing, raising the question of what happened to the information content of the stuff that fell into it.
 
But the rules of quantum mechanics forbid the complete destruction of information. (Hopelessly scrambling information is another story, which is why documents can be burned and hard drives smashed. There’s nothing in the laws of physics that prevents the information lost in a book’s smoke and ashes from being reconstructed, at least in principle.) So the question became: Would the information that originally went into the black hole just get scrambled? Or would it be truly lost? The arguments set off what Susskind called the “black hole wars.
 
Eventually Susskind — in a discovery that shocked even him — realized (with Gerard ’t Hooft) that all the information that fell down the hole was actually trapped on the black hole’s two-dimensional event horizon, the surface that marks the point of no return. The information wasn’t lost — it was scrambled and stored out of reach. The horizon encoded everything inside, like a hologram.
 
That left open the question of what goes on in the interiors, said Susskind, and answers to that “were all over the map.” After all, since no information could ever escape from inside a black hole’s horizon, the laws of physics prevented scientists from ever directly testing what was going on inside.
 
Then in 2012 Polchinski, along with Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf and James Sully, all of them at the time at Santa Barbara, came up with an insight so startling it basically said to physicists: Hold everything. We know nothing.
 
If a black hole’s event horizon is a smooth, seemingly ordinary place, as relativity predicts (the authors call this the “no drama” condition), the particles coming out of the black hole must be entangled with particles falling into the black hole. Yet for information not to be lost, the particles coming out of the black hole must also be entangled with particles that left long ago and are now scattered about in a fog of Hawking radiation. That’s one too many kinds of entanglements, the AMPS authors realized. One of them would have to go.
 
The reason is that maximum entanglements have to be monogamous, existing between just two particles. Two maximum entanglements at once — quantum polygamy — simply cannot happen, which suggests that the smooth, continuous space-time inside the throats of black holes can’t exist.