Perpetual Motion Machines

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John Clark

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Nov 29, 2019, 9:57:16 AM11/29/19
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All this talk about energy conservation has got me thinking about Perpetual Motion Machines, there are 2 types, both are impossible but one is more impossible than the other. One type would violate the known laws of physics, or maybe not; it seems to me that in an accelerating universe it would be possible, at least in theory, to extract work (force over a distance) from nothing and keep doing so forever.

The other type of Perpetual Motion Machine would violate the second law of thermodynamics, you couldn't create energy from nothing but you could keep recycling the same energy and keep extracting work out of it forever. That would violate not just a law of physics but a law of logic too. If you could do that then you could also make entropy decrease, but that would be illogical because there is no getting around the fact that there are just more ways something can be disorganized than organized.

John K Clark

Philip Thrift

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Nov 29, 2019, 1:23:48 PM11/29/19
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All of this is based on premises that are, basically. only mere presumptions. Nothing is settled truth here.

@philipthrift


Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time

 3.70  ·   Rating details ·  132 ratings  ·  9 reviews
Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way. Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why, for example, does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? Price shows that, for over a century, most physicists have thought about these problems the wrong way. Misled by the human perspective from within time, which distorts and exaggerates the differences between past and future, they have fallen victim to what Price calls the "double standard fallacy": proposed explanations of the difference between the past and the future turn out to rely on a difference which has been slipped in at the beginning, when the physicists themselves treat the past and future in different ways. To avoid this fallacy, Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. We need to imagine a point outside time - an Archimedean "view from nowhen" - from which to observe time in an unbiased way. Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Many consequences of quantum theory appear counter-intuitive, such as Schrodinger's Cat, whose condition seems undetermined until observed, and Bell's Theorem, which suggests a spooky"nonlocality, " where events happening simultaneously in different places seem to affect each other directly. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past. This demystifies nonlocality, ...





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Brent Meeker

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Nov 29, 2019, 4:50:45 PM11/29/19
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I'll take Price's advice and avoid the "double standard" by forgetting the past (in which Vic already wrote a book about retrocausation).

I wonder why philosophers are so fond of representing the future as fixed in a block universe model; instead of concluding that maybe the past is undetermined.

Brent


On 11/29/2019 10:23 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:



All of this is based on premises that are, basically. only mere presumptions. Nothing is settled truth here.

@philipthrift


Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time

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 3.70  ·   Rating details ·  132 ratings  ·  9 reviews
Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way. Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why, for example, does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? Price shows that, for over a century, most physicists have thought about these problems the wrong way. Misled by the human perspective from within time, which distorts and exaggerates the differences between past and future, they have fallen victim to what Price calls the "double standard fallacy": proposed explanations of the difference between the past and the future turn out to rely on a difference which has been slipped in at the beginning, when the physicists themselves treat the past and future in different ways. To avoid this fallacy, Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. We need to imagine a point outside time - an Archimedean "view from nowhen" - from which to observe time in an unbiased way. Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Many consequences of quantum theory appear counter-intuitive, such as Schrodinger's Cat, whose condition seems undetermined until observed, and Bell's Theorem, which suggests a spooky"nonlocality, " where events happening simultaneously in different places seem to affect each other directly. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past. This demystifies nonlocality, ...





@philipthrift

 
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John Clark

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Nov 29, 2019, 5:11:04 PM11/29/19
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> Hue Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. 

Our natural tendency is to remember the past but not the future, so Price asks us to change the way we think in a rather profound way. I can't imagine how he expects us to do that.

John K Clark

Philip Thrift

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Nov 29, 2019, 5:34:05 PM11/29/19
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As Price says, we do remember (or retrosee) the past and do not remember (or foresee) the future. That's the way we are (in this universe, or part of the universe). But does it have to be that way?

@philipthrift

Brent Meeker

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Nov 29, 2019, 6:39:54 PM11/29/19
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Yes it does.  If we remember the future and learned the past then we'd just swap words.  If we remembered the both we'd never learn anything, we'd just exist.  If we didn't remember anything, either past of future, then we wouldn't exist.

Brent

Philip Thrift

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Nov 30, 2019, 2:55:14 AM11/30/19
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I don't thinks so.

All of Price's "models" involve stochasticity. They are not deterministic.

As in the case of the interrogators of Ypiaria in his book.

@philipthrift

Brent Meeker

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Nov 30, 2019, 3:49:15 PM11/30/19
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I don't see how that counters my point.

Brent


As in the case of the interrogators of Ypiaria in his book.

@philipthrift
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Philip Thrift

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Nov 30, 2019, 4:04:38 PM11/30/19
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On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 2:49:15 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:


On 11/29/2019 11:55 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:


On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:


On 11/29/2019 2:34 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:


On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 4:11:04 PM UTC-6, John Clark wrote:

> Hue Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. 

Our natural tendency is to remember the past but not the future, so Price asks us to change the way we think in a rather profound way. I can't imagine how he expects us to do that.

John K Clark





As Price says, we do remember (or retrosee) the past and do not remember (or foresee) the future. That's the way we are (in this universe, or part of the universe). But does it have to be that way?

Yes it does.  If we remember the future and learned the past then we'd just swap words.  If we remembered the both we'd never learn anything, we'd just exist.  If we didn't remember anything, either past of future, then we wouldn't exist.

Brent



I don't thinks so.

All of Price's "models" involve stochasticity. They are not deterministic.

I don't see how that counters my point.

Brent


As in the case of the interrogators of Ypiaria in his book.

@philipthrift
-

"If we remembered the both we'd never learn anything, we'd just exist."



See the Ypiaria chapter in Times Arrow,


Because the influences (backwards and forward updates of knowledge) are probabilistic, we always will learn something new.

@philipthrift

Brent Meeker

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Nov 30, 2019, 5:00:03 PM11/30/19
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It doesn't matter whether the events are random or not.  If we remember the future we know what random values occurred.  They are only new to someone who didn't know them.   Knowing them doesn't make them any less random.

Brent

Philip Thrift

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Nov 30, 2019, 7:05:01 PM11/30/19
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I think Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone could get glimpses of the future, but they were stochastic. 

@philipthrift

George Levy

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Dec 23, 2019, 10:11:39 PM12/23/19
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Hi everyone

I do not post often, but now is an opportune time to post on perpetual motion machines and the second law.

John Clark posted

"The other type of Perpetual Motion Machine would violate the second law of thermodynamics, you couldn't create energy from nothing but you could keep recycling the same energy and keep extracting work out of it forever. That would violate not just a law of physics but a law of logic too. If you could do that then you could also make entropy decrease, but that would be illogical because there is no getting around the fact that there are just more ways something can be disorganized than organized.

and quoting Hawking:

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. — Stephen W. Hawking

https://todayinsci.com/QuotationsCategories/A_Cat/ArrowOfTime-Quotations.htm

In other words systems are more likely to change from organized to disorganized.  There is an arrow of time and the second law as currently understood supervenes on it.

The problem with this approach is that relying on time asymmetry alone is narrow-focused and very much 19th century thinking. Physics of the 20th and 21st century taught us that time symmetry must be considered in combination with charge and parity. Therefore, to be accurate, one must consider the second law in the context of full-fledged CPT symmetry.

I just published a paper discussing this very topic.

Loschmidt’s Paradox, Extended to CPT Symmetry, Bypasses Second Law

(The html version at the site does not render the drawings properly, you will need to download the pdf version to display the drawings)

The original Loschmidt's paradox states:

if all physical processes are truly microscopically time-reversible, then any entropy increasing process is as probable as a corresponding entropy decreasing process. Therefore, according to physical laws the change in entropy must be zero.

However, as proven by Boltzmann in his H-Theorem, entropy must increase with time.

This paper extends Loschmidt's paradox to CPT symmetry: if the laws of nature are truly CPT symmetrical and reversible, then a system could return to a previous state even in the presence of an arrow of time, thereby restoring its entropy to its original value. This version of the paradox renders moot the arrow of time assumption and bypasses the H-Theorem.

The paper includes a theoretical discussion, simulation and experimental data.

George Levy

Irvine California
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Lawrence Crowell

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Dec 24, 2019, 7:01:57 PM12/24/19
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Quantum entropy is constant. Standard thermal entropy increases because it is difficult to localize all information about a system. If that were possible, say there are perfectly reflecting walls or the space were a torus the systems would exhibit a poincaré recurrence.

LC

spudb...@aol.com

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Dec 29, 2019, 7:34:38 PM12/29/19
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George,
Does your interpretation of Boltzmann's view on the conservation of energy invoke any observer like Boltzmann's Brain or Wigner's Friend?
You know, we need all the Friends we can get? ;-D



George Levy

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Dec 30, 2019, 8:44:08 PM12/30/19
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On 12/29/2019 4:34 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
George,
Does your interpretation of Boltzmann's view on the conservation of energy invoke any observer like Boltzmann's Brain or Wigner's Friend?
You know, we need all the Friends we can get? ;-D

We are all Wigner’s friends, aren’t we?

Except that Wigner still had some objectivism left in him, which led him to ask a friend to act as an intermediary between him and Schrodinger’s cat when he could have stepped into Schrodinger’s chamber and conducted the experiment himself.

Writing the paper “Loschmidt’s paradox, extended to CPT symmetry…”  led me to question how natural laws such as forces, conservation, quantization and the second law emerge from Quantum Mechanics. The following thought experiments involve Dr. Katz, a very dear, close and nonfactual colleague of Schrodinger and Wigner. You could call him Schrodinger’s Katz.

Dr. Katz has a PhD in physics. As a a pure subjectivist, he volunteers in experiments conducted in the famous Schrodinger’s chamber which contains a radium sample, near a Geiger counter, connected to a detonator set to trigger one ton of TNT (replacing, a la Tegmark, the original vial of cyanide envisaged by Schrodinger.)  

These experiments involve the first and second laws of thermodynamics. I do not have any firm answer to any of these experiments, but I think they are worth sharing.

1)      First Law - These experiments aim at determining whether the forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces) are constant from the point of view of an observer.

a)      Dr. Katz measures the radioactivity of the radium sample near the Geiger counter. Does the measurement show that radium is not radioactive?

b)      He then measures the radioactivity of a second radium sample far away from the counter. Is it radioactive? Is there a difference between the radioactivity of the two samples? Why or why not?

c)       Dr. Katz may conclude that radium is simply not radioactive and, therefore, the radium-counter-explosive link is not operational. He turns off the inoperational counter and again measures the radioactivity of both radium samples (near and far from the counter) Is there any change in the measurements?

d)      He then measures the radioactivity of a polonium sample far from the counter. What does he find?

e)      Finally, he opens (from the inside) the door of the chamber, steps outside, and repeat radioactivity measurement on radium and polonium samples located outside. What does he find? The same as or different from the inside?

How does Dr. Katz explain his findings? Are the (electromagnetic, strong, weak) forces the same inside and outside the chamber? Is energy conserved?

2)      Second Law. (These experiments attempt to link quantization to the second law)

Dr. Schrodinger replaces the radium sample and Geiger counter by a heat flow device comprised of a metal bar, hot at one end and cold at the other, and a differential thermometer that measures the temperature difference between the two ends of the bar. When the difference falls below a predetermined value, the thermometer triggers the explosive. Dr. Katz is willing to conduct experiments in this new chamber.

a)      Dr. Katz measures the temperature difference of the bar. Again, following Tegmark’s cue, one may believe that the temperature difference never falls below the predetermined value.

b)      Dr. Katz measures heat flow in a metal bar far away from the thermometer. Does he observe the same kind of anomaly as close to the thermometer?  How does Katz explain what he measures?  Does his explanation involve quantization of thermal energy?

c)       What if he opens the door and steps outside the chamber? Does he observe any difference in heat flow?

I do not have any firm answers to any of these thought experiments - just guesses. Do you know the answers?

George

 

Brent Meeker

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Dec 30, 2019, 11:02:15 PM12/30/19
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On 12/30/2019 5:44 PM, George Levy wrote:
On 12/29/2019 4:34 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
George,
Does your interpretation of Boltzmann's view on the conservation of energy invoke any observer like Boltzmann's Brain or Wigner's Friend?
You know, we need all the Friends we can get? ;-D

We are all Wigner’s friends, aren’t we?

Except that Wigner still had some objectivism left in him, which led him to ask a friend to act as an intermediary between him and Schrodinger’s cat when he could have stepped into Schrodinger’s chamber and conducted the experiment himself.

Writing the paper “Loschmidt’s paradox, extended to CPT symmetry…”  led me to question how natural laws such as forces, conservation, quantization and the second law emerge from Quantum Mechanics. The following thought experiments involve Dr. Katz, a very dear, close and nonfactual colleague of Schrodinger and Wigner. You could call him Schrodinger’s Katz.

Dr. Katz has a PhD in physics. As a a pure subjectivist, he volunteers in experiments conducted in the famous Schrodinger’s chamber which contains a radium sample, near a Geiger counter, connected to a detonator set to trigger one ton of TNT (replacing, a la Tegmark, the original vial of cyanide envisaged by Schrodinger.)  

These experiments involve the first and second laws of thermodynamics. I do not have any firm answer to any of these experiments, but I think they are worth sharing.

1)      First Law - These experiments aim at determining whether the forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces) are constant from the point of view of an observer.

a)      Dr. Katz measures the radioactivity of the radium sample near the Geiger counter. Does the measurement show that radium is not radioactive?

b)      He then measures the radioactivity of a second radium sample far away from the counter. Is it radioactive? Is there a difference between the radioactivity of the two samples? Why or why not?

c)       Dr. Katz may conclude that radium is simply not radioactive and, therefore, the radium-counter-explosive link is not operational. He turns off the inoperational counter and again measures the radioactivity of both radium samples (near and far from the counter) Is there any change in the measurements?

d)      He then measures the radioactivity of a polonium sample far from the counter. What does he find?

e)      Finally, he opens (from the inside) the door of the chamber, steps outside, and repeat radioactivity measurement on radium and polonium samples located outside. What does he find? The same as or different from the inside?

How does Dr. Katz explain his findings? Are the (electromagnetic, strong, weak) forces the same inside and outside the chamber? Is energy conserved?

2)      Second Law. (These experiments attempt to link quantization to the second law)

Dr. Schrodinger replaces the radium sample and Geiger counter by a heat flow device comprised of a metal bar, hot at one end and cold at the other, and a differential thermometer that measures the temperature difference between the two ends of the bar. When the difference falls below a predetermined value, the thermometer triggers the explosive. Dr. Katz is willing to conduct experiments in this new chamber.

a)      Dr. Katz measures the temperature difference of the bar. Again, following Tegmark’s cue, one may believe that the temperature difference never falls below the predetermined value.

b)      Dr. Katz measures heat flow in a metal bar far away from the thermometer. Does he observe the same kind of anomaly as close to the thermometer?  How does Katz explain what he measures?  Does his explanation involve quantization of thermal energy?

c)       What if he opens the door and steps outside the chamber? Does he observe any difference in heat flow?

I do not have any firm answers to any of these thought experiments - just guesses. Do you know the answers?


My fairly confident guess is that Dr. Katz is killed in the first experiment and never gets to the second one.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 31, 2019, 10:20:06 AM12/31/19
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That’s why most friends of Dr Katz will say, and perceive. 

Obviously, that is not what Dr Katz can ever feel, here or there, whichever computational history he might be living after the experiences. 

Now, in between being far away from the radioactive source, or being close, will involved intermediary realities where Dr Katz wills survive with some illness due to the radio-activity. 

The cat experience always suggest a perfect kill, for the sake of the argument, but with Everett, or with Mechanism, that simply cannot make sense in the first person view. No 1p-diary can contain the statement “I did not survive”.

Bruno




spudb...@aol.com

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Dec 31, 2019, 2:35:22 PM12/31/19
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Eugene Wigner sat with Schrodinger's Cat in his lap, Wigner asks the Cat, "will you be my friend?" The Cat replies, "dead or alive, you'll always be my friend, Eugene." Suddenly, Ludwig Boltzmann pops back into existence and says to them, "You will always be on my mind!" 




George Levy

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Dec 31, 2019, 10:23:15 PM12/31/19
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Brent,

You are ignoring the fact that Dr. Katz is in a superposition of states. 

Bruno, one can assume that he wears a lead apron to protect him from radioactivity - but not from the explosion. But I agree with you with regards Everett, or Mechanism cannot make sense in the first person view. No 1p-diary can contain the statement “I did not survive”.

In my post I am trying to lead to this question: Are the laws of physics anthropically and independently determined by each observer? 

From Katz's point of view he is conducting a quantum Zeno experiment (well known effect that suppresses quantum transitions when measurements are performed very frequently). From the point of view of a person outside the chamber, he is conducting a Tegmark style suicide experiment.

We may take for granted that from his point of view the radium near the counter is not radioactive. We are faced with a counterfactual:  since the radium is not radioactive, turning off the counter would not make any difference from Katz's point of view. 

Another question is whether identical radium samples far away from the counter would have the same radioactivity as the one near the counter, (even though the counter is not operative.) Why or why not?

In other words are the fundamental forces that control radioactivity affected throughout Katz's lab?

The second part of my post had to do with the second law. What would Katz perceive if the radium source was replaced by a heat flow device designed to trigger the explosive? Would he perceive heat quantization as an anthropically determined phenomenon (in analogy to the quantization of electron's orbit in our world)?

George

Bruno Marchal

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Jan 6, 2020, 6:27:12 AM1/6/20
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On 1 Jan 2020, at 04:23, George Levy <gl...@quantics.net> wrote:

Brent,

You are ignoring the fact that Dr. Katz is in a superposition of states. 

Bruno, one can assume that he wears a lead apron to protect him from radioactivity - but not from the explosion. But I agree with you with regards Everett, or Mechanism cannot make sense in the first person view. No 1p-diary can contain the statement “I did not survive”.

In my post I am trying to lead to this question: Are the laws of physics anthropically and independently determined by each observer? 


Normally it is “Turing-thropically dependent. Somehow, the physical reality is determined by all computations going through the consistent relative state of machines (relative numbers).



From Katz's point of view he is conducting a quantum Zeno experiment (well known effect that suppresses quantum transitions when measurements are performed very frequently). From the point of view of a person outside the chamber, he is conducting a Tegmark style suicide experiment.


OK.


We may take for granted that from his point of view the radium near the counter is not radioactive. We are faced with a counterfactual:  since the radium is not radioactive, turning off the counter would not make any difference from Katz's point of view. 

Another question is whether identical radium samples far away from the counter would have the same radioactivity as the one near the counter, (even though the counter is not operative.) Why or why not?

In other words are the fundamental forces that control radioactivity affected throughout Katz's lab?



I would say no.


The second part of my post had to do with the second law. What would Katz perceive if the radium source was replaced by a heat flow device designed to trigger the explosive? Would he perceive heat quantization as an anthropically determined phenomenon (in analogy to the quantization of electron's orbit in our world)?


Normally, the second law should be entirely related to the classical probability  laws of big numbers, but they re^present only the unavoidable ignorance on which computations run “us” (us, the Turing Numbers).

Bruno




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