Peter Hill Explains

We look at Artificial Intelligence to protect children from cyber-bullying. At this point I would venture to say people are using this a purely an assembly of buzz words The use of gravity waves to act as Tractor beams is verging on madness, the sort of thing I would think of if I were totally deranged. The mentioning of different genes being expressed at different stages of pregnancy is disturbing in that I have an overwhelming feeling of So What. If I drink milk, lactose stimulates the expression in my genes of lactase the enzyme that breaks down this binary sugar. Isn't this kind of how life operates or have I missed something here. The no cars in cities article was like listening to a fanatic. I hate cars, traffic and pollution but the arguments are shot gun, uncoordinated and not measured. Lets see how we go from here/ MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

By the vagaries of mail, this one arrived after the last podcast-ed. There is a bit of a production story here. I worked on synthetic quizzes and lessons for which a podcast is broken up and re-spliced into the various products. In this one I am experimenting with the summary of what's coming made at the end of the Podcast, and then spliced on the front. I really have to do this any way for cognitive rehab. The coding to prototype this really took 60 seconds so lets hope it works. If it does I will have to spend a little time tagging what is the introduction for a cluster of podcasts. In the real world out here domestic job pop up and all are best tackled with immediate professional attention, rarely mates drop by and it a sign of madness to keep talking. Thus podcasts can be fragmented. Even more rarely, I get attacked by variously brightly coloured parrots or there is some snake or spider moving very quietly, but not quietly enough near by. In this section there is the predictable amazement at Trump nuking up like a right idiot, but also we are treated to actually quite vulgar pseudo scientific investigation of would you sacrifice a pregnant doctor who had some sort of criminal record or was actually a deranged killer. My observation is they were sampling people stupid enough to answer their survey. There is an odd article that talks about computing with cytoskeletons. This is down a knowledge rabbit hole, as we pretend in Australian schools at least that cell skeletons don't exist. They do and are also intensely interesting. However, I can't but feel some of the science here is lost in translation. These guys are like support wires and come in a variety of gauges not just one as the article suggests. I think they must transmit information as the article suggests but if they do this is really big scientific news. It is really confusing as we know how cells use the tubulin and robotic walkers that travel along them for precision timing. The idea is that there is another way is fascinating. I understand the point that silicon has hit a power consumption wall but it seems disconnected to pick out how this is going to operate at lower over all power. Let's hope this experiment with a spliced introduction actually works! Good news it does, but now I will have to unjam my upload engine which has become clogged with too much to unload. If it isn't found it is re-submitted which is okay for my appalling upload rate, but you can imagine it is not intelligent MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

Another podcast of while I drive off to rehab of the cardiac neuro kind. I set out transitioning from a Quantum description of the world (last episode on this topic) to how this is really the end of small and we really have to start playing with what we accept as reality. I get on to the description of atoms. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

As you knock around various corners of science, you capture glimpses of this character. It is a bit like a movie were you find out who is a really important character upon which that plot hinges and others that are just there as colourful sentimental distractions. Electrons that are millimeters across, that stretch out to thin down and dive through holes. Electrons that sense the order of silicon and are tamed to power our civilization. They bulk up proteins giving them axial joints, splints, chemical centers and antenna. You are a stunning example of biology's mastery of the electron. I reflect on the gentle life of understanding in a world hell bent on propping up a clumsy fiction of classical particles. They are killing Quantum Physicists. It is a phrase used by Jacklyn Kennedy, about Kennedys that captures the need to size up the evident reality as it is unfolding and get on with life. I must admit I have felt the practicality of this. It is only the impracticality of building science understanding for our supercharged quantum world based on a culture of denial that enshrines Bohr from 1917. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

The article on brain tingles, seem very interesting. The detail of whether it serves and evolutionary purpose seems that evolution had evolved from being the subject of skepticism to a necessary dogma. I actually experience the related feeling of music induced fissles or some word similar to that. This is when there is a key change. I read with interest the article trying to reason its way about the impossibility of the amount of earths water. It is refreshing to have something authored by a scientist rather than a science journalist. In the latter you look for the quote to come up in around paragraph 5 and the structure is so formulaic. This I feel didn't cut through to the different types of isotopes in water, and what the meaning is. I felt the major possibility is that the impact on of Thea carried a large amount of water. The last word on recycle battery dump spontaneous shorting wasn't very challenging. I also didn't get that much out of the discussion of the adhesion of water. I did find the letter on intellectual contamination of knotting culture and incredible left field wake up call in examining these ideas. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

There is a report in here which seems actually some good science. It is about bone growth hormone and memory. A least they seem to track down relevant genes and proteins. There seems something in it. There is an artful comment about the disaster which is going to befall Britain with Brexit, and how science is the darling of the rich a privileged. I think we have to accept gravity waves like we have to accept the mass of neutrinos. I must admit the fact that the Physical Review Paper had enhanced pedagogical features actually made me feel sick. I think we are managing politics and egos in science, but it is such an exhausting exercise. The number of really straight forward scientist I have known is probably about 10, the rest are distracted by reputation and status. I did find the explanation of the numerical, analytical and constructive analysis fascinating. The book by the sociologist called "Gravity's Kiss" really digs through this work and is a truly significant analysis in its own right. I would argue that we are seeing a transition from play science to a more measure application of intelligence. I just don't get the feeling that the team at New Scientist gets what is going on. It some how wouldn't fit the formulae of the stories they churn out. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

What starts out as a standard podcast while walking, evolves in moving away from the folk science of the Bohr atom and Classical absurdities towards Quantum appreciation. Few among us get how the Newton franchise launched key concepts into our civilization. Fewer still understand their structure, their power and their flaws. They are held together with a quasi religious mind set and the politics that goes with it. Newton sees the hand of God operating in 'angelic' time. He has a vision of a disciple in worship and in this state 'feins' no hypothesis. We have grown up, we now do reality using the abstract. Ours is a space of algebraic functions: All that is, all that you can see, all that you choose to love and to hate, you yourself is made of functions that stretch to the edge of the universe and majestically and humbly coexist through the same points in space. All of them quantized. In shape so complex but described as a sequence of unique numbers, simple counting numbers as would be used to count cutlery or pebbles. These are the quantum numbers. You might tell, I do hours of typing practice a day on a site that allows users to up and down vote quotes. If I had an infinitely long bucket list, and I had all the time in the universe to do absolutely everything I am afraid I would go back and try out something I had done before rather than up or down vote a quote. However, we do know that people who do vote like the flowery language, that has little clauses sticking on to the end of sentences to extend the number of key strokes. It must sound really wise in their heads. Or, alternatively, I am one of the wretches who doesn't connect with font of wisdom. I think is a real irony, though, that be up voting drivel this infects the brains of others and the type quote monotony catches on like a hideous virus. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

I think busy people encounter collectors and easily see the create a universe around themselves with their collections. If you have the quiet disposition to connect with these people you can see that no, it is not their universe but indeed the actual universe and there collection is just a language they have fostered to describe it. It then challenges you to adopt the literacy and try out ideas and phrases in this language to illuminate the nooks and crannies of your world and at the same time the language. From robots, our new age science dolls we have the 'uncanny valley'. My friend had a 1848 wax doll that has soaked up the eerie depths of a young and deeply conflicted early Australia. Listen for some other passing stories. Listen to pick up the idle and incidental chance meeting in an Op shop, and then ponder what at the invisible social currents at play here. I muse through the intricacies of mirror neurons and the developmental windows that open up in childhood play, but we don't see through them back into the child as we are convinced there is nothing to see. Insight leads to perceiving a landscape of dolls quietly selling us this or that, ignoring us until we come to the party and buy a certain product. These dolls seen enmasse are silent inanimate sentinels at times reassuring at times censoring souls that are capable of so much more. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

I suppose listening to this Podcast you will get some insight into how a scientist views speculative conclusions based on poor data. I think the trap is to think my initial response nails the major problems with a lot of this work. Like the gravity wave doubts: If I had written it I would start out bringing 1969 to the first sentence knowing that people often skim read these things. The boarder AI control seems so flawed from the outset. The tiny study says it has a 69 % hit rate or there about distinguishing between people telling the truth and faking telling lies in a small artificial sample where you have 50 % of the people fake lying. The deployment of this where I would hope it would be down a 1% is just mindbogglingly awful. Then there is the 6 vole study in China, where these cute cuddly creatures are chilled and killed and then used for fecal transplants. The chain of logic is really hard to capture here. Touching on rehab, I really yawn a lot towards the end and this, may I explain is nothing to do with the articles. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

You might want to listen as I walk to a shuttle bus and promise interviews with key figures in this remembrance day march. Then thankfully the sense that this would be truly intrusive kicked in, and I listened, sensed and marched. It was a surprisingly emotional thing to march with the veterans and other former soldiers and have the crowd clap and cheer in appreciation. The ceremony was really broad in scope and inclusive and I feel genuine in its respect by the intelligence with which the themes were interwoven. After my job of moving chairs and counting them, and supporting a few others was done (lets face it that was the real reason I was there). I walked through the streets of Penrith and you can sense the sound scape of traffic and the audible traffic lights as I make my way to the station. I continue for a few minutes whilst on the platform. You will hear the platform announcements, find out about the amazing transport card that tracks all your movements, and also the details of the ceremony. The train arrives and beside looking as if I were fully mad, I have to stop podcasting anyway as it is in a "Quiet Carriage" that means no music, talking or conversation. Practically though it meant that I could teach some Quantum Mechanics to someone on crutches, and had an African drum. I assure you they were the ones asking questions about the music or waves in matter. On arrival in Glenbrook we are greeted by the Mountain cicadas that generally are a little harder for the kookaburras to catch. I finish on reflection that remembrance is a collective creation which conventions slowly burning in as people slowly pass away. Authenticity seems to be the central concept but also the central paradox. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.