Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

[The_Doctor]

But that's just a physical effect. It can be explained with waves, no intelligence needed.
Even if a photon does have intelligence, how do you explain that? Where is its intelligence stored? Can such a small particle even store enough intelligence to make a decision?
Why does a star, which has a massive amount of photons, not show any sign of intelligence, while a human brain does?

I'll need lots of sleep before I look at the whole post, but I'll try this bit for now.. First, what is 'intelligence'. We, humans, set the parameters on that term. But we can at least state that the existence that gives rise to us supports our attributes. So whatever we call 'intelligence' derives from the existence that supports us.

Now, wave behaviour doesn't explain the fringes. It models them! That's an important distinction because what science shows is that electrons, photons, are NOT waves, or particles, but can appear as either according to context. What they actually ARE is anyone's guess. All kinds of new models may be made to 'explain' them, and we may never be sure if we have reached the bottom of the rabbit-hole either. What we do already know is that links beyond those modelled in previous theory exist, quantum entanglement being a current name for such. Given that almost every atom, if not EVERY atom entirely, in our bodies has been put through a star at some point, the residuum of past entanglements and interactions is so profoundly widespread that there is no certainty of a local 'store' for intelligence or any other manfestation of pattern. The fact that one tiny photon can be assumed to pass from source to interference fringe on screen at light speed means it has NO time to pick up info about the other slit, any 'normal' way to do this means something must delay, or go out of its way! So we already know that the photon itself either does not store this patter internally, OR that its extent in existence is vastly greater (and nonlocal in the wierd-physics sense of the word) than previously thought, and that we haven't modelled them well at all yet. Nothing new there though, most people can feel that fact deeply, even if they don't know the science.

Btw, given that we define 'intelligence' on our terms, I can't use that word about a star, but I bet that if humans live long enough, stars will be found to have a much more complex nature than anything yet discovered about them. We already know they're not nearly as inert as most humans in history thought they were, even up to last month. They get more surprising the more we know. Really dumb things usually get more boring when we do that.

EDIT: I read the rest of your post where it answered me, and I think my bit just now deals with my take on 'intelligence' about as well as I can do it right now. About probability, I'll use Samuel R Delany's words, from Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones. Awesome story, with the longest title I think I ever saw... He said (attributed to Edna Silem in the story) that "Probability is an expression of our ignorance, not of our wisdom".

Got to sleep now. After which this many-headed hydra of a thread will likely have mutated again beyond easy recognition. Viva thread...

[Galvonaut]

Hah! I knew you had something to do with plants!

Sh*t! You've rotovated the truth from the plot!

[Galvonaut]

........
Btw, given that we define 'intelligence' on our terms, I can't use that word about a star, but I bet that if humans live long enough, stars will be found to have a much more complex nature than anything yet discovered. We already know they're not nearly as inert as most humans in history thought they were, even up to last month. They get more surprising the more we know. Really dumb things usually get more boring when we do that.

Intelligence and/or knowledge, is a strange thing - It can be and often is innate. Have you ever seen the documentary My Life as a Turkey? It shows that Turkeys are born knowing which snakes are dangerous and which aren't and even change their behaviour to suit particular snakes.

I don't think intelligence at a human level is unique to us. We only see our intelligence because we are us. From the outside I bet we look pretty bloody stupid!

I certainly think we are. On the Channel 4 News which is on at present, there are people walking hip high in water IN their houses. All they are doing is blaming government, blaming the Environment Agency, talking finances and the problem, as any scientist worth their weight knows that this is likely caused by climate change.

Maybe our intelligence is quantum and the macroscopic reality is the opposite.

Keith

[Laserman532]

What do you want from life? The Tubes

[Galvonaut]

Hehe, I'd never heard that track - it's great!

It reminds me, on the way through France I overtook (carefully) a car transporter full of brand new Maseratis, all wrapped up in soft-looking branded covers. It's amazing the money that was on that truck. It wonder what damage was done to create it all.

[heroic]

Guys, stop thinking of NIF as "a hopeless fusion energy plant idea" and start thinking of it as what it is: it's a machine to test hydrogen bomb secondaries without breaking the comprehensive test ban treaty. That's what it was intended for, and it's what they're using it for.

ITER is a much more hopeful fusion energy testbed, though I think that companies like LPP and Tri-Alpha are more likely to succeed on that score.

[Laserman532]

Guys, stop thinking of NIF as "a hopeless fusion energy plant idea" and start thinking of it as what it is: it's a machine to test hydrogen bomb secondaries without breaking the comprehensive test ban treaty. That's what it was intended for, and it's what they're using it for.

ITER is a much more hopeful fusion energy testbed, though I think that companies like LPP and Tri-Alpha are more likely to succeed on that score.

sounds like a good use of tax payers money for the last 40 years Hopefully it works! Im afraid to study the sites you mentioned.

[The_Doctor]

Intelligence and/or knowledge, is a strange thing - It can be and often is innate. Have you ever seen the documentary My Life as a Turkey? It shows that Turkeys are born knowing which snakes are dangerous and which aren't and even change their behaviour to suit particular snakes.

I don't think intelligence at a human level is unique to us. We only see our intelligence because we are us. From the outside I bet we look pretty bloody stupid!

I certainly think we are. On the Channel 4 News which is on at present, there are people walking hip high in water IN their houses. All they are doing is blaming government, blaming the Environment Agency, talking finances and the problem, as any scientist worth their weight knows that this is likely caused by climate change.

Maybe our intelligence is quantum and the macroscopic reality is the opposite.

Keith

Maybe too early in the morning for this, but I'll try.
I am careful with the term 'intelligence' partly because of the 'intelligent design' business, it's amazing what murky water we can land in just by seeming to use a term similar to one used elsewhere. I'm a lot more careful in the inferences I draw, and I do not use them to bypass or deny other more obviously useful ones either. (It's the 'design'' part that bothers me anyway, I think existence is learning as it goes along, just like we do, but it's safe to assume it knows a lot more than we ever will alone before each of us gets born into it).

So, when it comes to intelligence in other life, I agree, crows learn to use tools like cars at crossings to break nuts they can't open themselves, deliberately placing them in a dangerous location at their own risk to do this. When a human uses a tool and balances risk and reward that way it's considered a fine use of strong intelligence, so even given our own definitions it would be mean spirited and stupid to deny that other animals can do it too. I think the whole awareness thing runs deep too, I think that every awareness behind an eye is part of existence looking at itself. There is an old silliness about God and a tree in a quad, the question it asks is whether the tree is in the quad when no-one else is looking at it. But of course it is, unless something hacked it down very discreetly when no-one was looking. This 'common sense' answer is actually the right one, understood by all regardless of strength of intellect, because it's easier for it to stay there, and pattern is such that trees vanishing from quads usually do so with some indirect sign that someone nearby would notice anyway. The whole thing is a kind of mindgame, but like Schroedinger's Cat, all it tells us personally, is "We don't know". Pretty much like probability, but of course (a probabilistic statement in itself), we can reasonably say that on balance, the tree is still there given no signs contrary.

That thing about macroscopic events has interested me a lot in the past. I read that in quantum physics position can't be known in detail if momentum is known closely. CMB's location text says it very well. It occured to me that quantum-type phenomena may exist in the macroscopc scale, and just not be recognised for what it is. I imagined a dancer on a stage (my younger sisters were into ballet, so I got taken to see ballets as a kid, probably too many of them). This dancer appears to have a position and a momentum in mid leap, and we can tell ourselves that there is no loss od meaningful detail about that in either case. But there IS. If we look at a photograph of a dancer in mid leap there are many postures that leave us a clear view of location but not of momentum. We can deduce it based on knowledge of the dancer's strength, the choregraphy, the tempo of the music, if we know it, but this is all after the fact. We now have quantum physics itself saying that both CAN be known in detail, after the fact, but not at the time! Note that I deduced this TWENTY YEARS ago, and it wasn't saying that then... At least, nowhere close in anything I ever read... What I also realised was that if the camera took a longer exposure, the detail about momentum increased while the location began to blur. If you apply the dancer event to thought about time and energy involved in the event, the same thing is shown to happen as with position and momentum. So I came up with the term 'temporal bandwidth'. Our moment of 'NOW' does not have a constant 'width'. Many things such as adrenaline, tiredness, interest or stimulus, pattern recognition, concentration, contemplation, distraction, can all vary this temporal bandwidth. This implies that not only do we sense quantum behaviour in the macroscopic world, but that we are highly evolved to do so. Our bodies and minds adjust temporal bandwidth as fluently as they adjust the iris of an eye. What lets us down more often than not is the intellectual models we make to try to understand it! Which is why you won't see me write about this very often. But it's good to have the chance to really get into it, at times..

One of the real difficulties in understanding quantum physics apprears to be that we are told it is different from all past perceptions and conceptions, so we struggle to find anything else other than those. No wonder most people balk at it! Instead, what it should be doing is re-evaluating the perceptions we do have, then the conceptions will gradually take care of themselves. After all, quantum physics started out saying the doors of perception were closed, we could no longer expect to see a whole universal truth at once the way previous theory suggested we could. And I don't see how we can say it was wrong either, people still struggle in vain for a total truth, a theory of everything, and I doubt they'll get one. But while they struggle in vain, the theory that denied them what they wanted is opening more doors of perception than have ever been opened before, and we can see deep into the sun, our bodies, rocks to great depth, metal grain, all kinds of stuff.

I think that singular, simple quantum interactions writ large are the exception to the rule, things like coherence in lasers, the weird stuff that goes on in Bose-Einstein condensates, but the reality was always inherently there. Like Planters says, lasers are just well trained light.


EDIT:
ITER is the big toroid, no? I hope that works too. I think it will, fitfully and disappointing to many at first, but I think some business will result there. Mainly because it is what it says on the tin, not a charade for something else. But I reckon that thorium will get there first. All that takes is for India to do it well a couple of times, and people will copy it. It may even make India's poverty change a lot because of the scale of wealth that will happen over it. ITER will be a money-pit for far longer.

[Galvonaut]

Haha, indeed it is dangerous territory!

Yes, I think you could be right on what we perceive as macroscopic having quantum effects. However what I was getting at is that from outside of our perception we look (and are) pretty dumb, destroying our host.

On an indidual level we do have the intelligence and ability to continue living on our host but as a species we may not have. Saying that, I keep mentioning spawning. Maybe destroying our ability to live on Earth is HOW we spawn. After all, the military industrial complex is why we have the ISS!

Keith

[The_Doctor]

Haha, indeed it is dangerous territory!

Yes, I think you could be right on what we perceive as macroscopic having quantum effects. However what I was getting at is that from outside of our perception we look (and are) pretty dumb, destroying our host.

On an indidual level we do have the intelligence and ability to continue living on our host but as a species we may not have. Saying that, I keep mentioning spawning. Maybe destroying our ability to live on Earth is HOW we spawn. After all, the military industrial complex is why we have the ISS!

Keith

Maybe. I hope that we're not limited to one shot at seeding like an annual plant. Perrenial would be nice. The internet may help, along with all the other telemetry, television, etc. So much noise, but with a long-term adjustment it may change humans to some kind of gestalt, which may or may not be desirable. Current reaction against that is huge, I think that suicide bombing may be driven as much by fear of that as by any of the ostensible reasons. It really is enough to drive humans nuts, and I hope we'll get through it somehow. If we do it will likely go a long way to solving the general self-regulation needed on population growth, but I think at least two or three generations of a net-savvy world will pass before anyone knows if it's working well.

By that time there may be many ways for individuals to get a taste of space, even if it's just a one-night stop in an orbiting hotel. Even so we might take dumbness with us. Douglas Adams was probably right.

EDIT:
One thought I often have is that a plant gives a great deal in its effort to seed, sometimes its life. I think it prefers not to, and I doubt Earth is limited to one shot, but I suspect its tolerance of us is high, at least while we appear to be its best shot, because it might wait thousands or millions of years for another, if it is to be very different from us.