Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 111

You are correct. That's precisely how MWI is thought to work.

The premise of the argument is that, to conserve superposition information, you would necessarily need to prove that it would be grouped with information QM requires to be conserved, when viewed in a space that permitted it to be conserved. If it isn't, then there's no mechanism to preserve it, so no MWI.

Comment Re:Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 111

Not strictly correct. You would be correct for all consequences over any statistically significant timeframe, but (a) I've purposefully included things that aren't actually outcomes, and (b) over extremely short timeframes (femtoseconds and attoseconds), differences would emerge very briefly, because different mechanisms take different routes.

Remember, the maths only concerns itself with outcomes, not the path taken, so identical maths will be inevitable for non-identical paths.

Comment Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 111

I would contend that it should be possible to find an implication of each interpretation that only exists in that interpretation. If, for example, Many Worlds is true, then it necessitates that any sort of information cannot be destroyed and vice versa, when considering the system as a whole. If Many Worlds is false, then superposition information is lost when superposition collapses, you cannot recover from the collapsed wave a complete set of all superposition states that existed. I'm sure that someone will point out that superposition isn't information in some specific sense, but that is the whole point. Many Worlds is impossible if you can show that superposition ISN'T the sort of information that IS conserved, because Many Worlds requires, by its very nature, that it is.

This gives us a test that does not require us to look into other universes and can be done purely by theoreticians. If you regard the system as a 5D system, then is that information conserved or not? Yes or no. If yes, then that does not "prove" Many Worlds, but it does mean that only interpretations that preserve that information in some form are viable. If no, then Many Worlds, and all other interpretations that preserve that information in some form, are ergo impossible. Instead of filling out questionaires on what you think is likely, try to prove that it can't be possible and see if you succeed.

I would also argue that physicists thought that the Lorenz contraction was a neat bit of maths by mathematicians that had nothing to do with reality, until Einstein cottoned onto the fact that it actually did. You cannot trust physicists who have an innate dislike of mathematics. This doesn't mean that maths always represents reality, but it does mean that it does so unreasonably often and unreasonably well.

Comment Re:Somehow... (Score 1) 45

I disagree. First, the bands used for astronomy are regularly used by others, which is one reason why radio telescopes have radio silence zones. Second, astronomy certainly trumps the need for cat videos or porn. Thirdly, you really really don't need all the frequencies that are currently being used for domestic purposes, because they're being used very inefficiently. You can stack multiple streams onto far fewer lanes and use multiplexing. Fourthly, whingers lost any sympathy they might have got from me by voting in twits who keep cutting the science budget. If we had space radio telescopes, you could do what the F you wanted on Earth, but because of the current lunatic situation, you're not only grabbing what scientists need, you're stopping them from alternative solutions as well.

Comment I don't see how that could possibly work (Score 1) 110

TLDR version: "Good ideas" that are actually good are rare, more often than not they aren't.

Long version:

Now, that's not to say people can't experiment with ideas. We know, from US research, that you can temporarily (2 hours max) put humans into a dormant state and revive them successfully. It's used in some types of operation, when a beating heart is not a viable option.

If you do that, glucose uptake drops significantly in regular cells but not in all types of cancer. If the decrease in the most-active of human cells after hibernation is by a factor of X, then it follows you should be able to locally increase glucose-based chemotherapy around the tumour by a factor of X and guarantee healthy cells remain inside levels they can tolerate.

Since hibernation of this sort involves removing all blood and replacing it with a saline solution, washing the chemotherapy out would obviously be possible before reviving the person.

Would this work? Well, it'll work better than bleach, but a quick sanity check shows that this method is (a) impractically risky, (b) likely problematic, (c) likely to produce disastrous side-effects, and (d) unlikely to be effective. Shutting down the body like this is not safe, which is why it is a last-ditch protocol.

What does this tell us? Simply that "good ideas" on paper by someone who isn't an expert are likely very very bad ideas, even if "common sense" says they should be fine.

Now, there ARE cancer treatments being researched which try similar sorts of tricks to allow ultra-high chemotherapy doses, by actual biologists, and those probably will work because they know what they're doing.

Translation: No matter how good you think an idea "should be", it probably isn't. There will be exceptions to that, but you should always start by assuming there's a flaw and look for it. If the idea is actually any good, it'll survive scrutiny and actually improve under it.

Avpidimg confirmation bias is hard, but if you persist in looking for what is wrong with your idea and then try to fix the issue, you'll either avoid penning yourself in a corner or argument-proof your vision. Either way, you're better off.

Comment Gross incompetency in IT security (Score 1) 24

Very few businesses that are involved in IT in any way have anything remotely close to decent security.

Basically, they need to reintroduce the US' Internet Czar, who should have meaningful authority and who should impose meaningful IT security standards. That small companies can't afford to hire security staff is irrelevant as they mostly either work in the cloud using SAAS, at which point their provider should be handling all the security. If you want to roll your own, then you should accept the burden of paying for adequate security. Minimum standards apply to just about everything else in life, and I'd rate getting IT security right just a little bit more important than getting cars to not roll over (you can usually survive a roll) or preventing toasters from spontaneously combusting (you can park electrical appliances away from flammable stuff).

You can avoid catastrophes with defective appliances but you can't avoid catastrophes with defective IT systems.

Submission + - Jury verdict of $23.2 million for wrongful death based on Gmail server evidence (andrewwatters.com)

wattersa writes: In 2022, I wrote here about a complex missing person case, which was partially solved by a Google subpoena that showed the suspect was logged into the victim's Gmail account and sent a fake "proof of life" email from her account at the hotel where he was staying alone after killing her.

The case finally went to trial in July 2025, where I testified about the investigation along with an expert witness on computer networking. The jury took three hours to returned a verdict against the victim's husband for wrongful death in the amount of $23.2 million, with a special finding that he caused the death of his wife. The defendant is a successful mechanical engineer at an energy company, but is walking as a free man because he is Canadian and no one can prosecute him in the U.S., since Taiwan and the U.S. don't have extradition with each other. It was an interesting case and I look forward to using it as a model in other missing person cases.

Comment Re:Lines aren't frozen. (Score 3, Insightful) 265

Good point. An army that sees all others as subhuman and sees only the next death is one that has to keep fighting. It has no choice. It's the only thing it knows. It can keep conquering more territory outwards, or it can slaughter its own government inwards. History shows those are your two options.

Whether or not Russia conquers Ukraine, it will attack other countries - vast numbers of bored, underpaid soldiers would seek entertainment elsewhere if they didn't.

Comment Re:Two simple questions. (Score 1) 248

This is what I'm going by:

The report said that in December 2018, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a special airworthiness information bulletin based on reports from operators of model 737 planes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged.

The airworthiness concern was not considered an unsafe condition that would warrant an airworthiness directive – a legally enforceable regulation to correct unsafe conditions.

The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 aircraft, including Air India’s VT-ANB, which crashed. The report added: “As per the information from Air India, the suggested inspections were not carried out as the SAIB was advisory and not mandatory.”

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Comment Two simple questions. (Score 1) 248

1. Were the safety guards, which were optional, installed?

2. We know investigators are looking into the computer system, does this mean the computer can also set the switch settings?

If the answers are "no" and "no" respectively, it was likely an accidental bump.

If the answers are "yes" and "no", then one of the pilots lied.

If the answer to the second one is yes, then regardless of the answer to the first, I'd hope the investigation thoroughly checks whether the software can be triggered into doing so through faulty data or the existence of software defects.

Comment What kind of volunteering is this? (Score 1) 113

Is this "during work hours, for the hours you're paid, instead of doing the job you normally do, do some warehouse work"?

Or is it "on top of all your regular work, come and volunteer to do additional unpaid work"?

If the former, then, whatever, this is no big deal.

If the latter, then, damn, Amazon needs to get the hell sued out of it. Not that that would happen in our current world.

Slashdot Top Deals

FORTRAN rots the brain. -- John McQuillin

Working...