Neuroscientists today seem to be finding evidence that individual humans have a relatively-advanced "public-relations module", which speaks (often after the fact) for the reasons behind the ways that they behaviorally react to developments in the world around. Unfortunately, like the automatic neural-systems that more-directly impact our behaviors, that PR-module is not always kept abreast of developments in those other subsystems.
Historically, of course, folks often thought of themselves as organisms under the control of a single "thinker", represented by the voice of that PR-module. Moreover, they are often blissfully unaware of the effects of concept-choice on the world that their PR module sees.
This illusion of the "knower in charge", of course, has consequences for policy. It might lead, for example, to the presumption that if we armed "good knowers" with weapons and took weapons away from "bad knowers" then such a weaponization process would serve as the foundation of neverending social bliss.
Of course if all "knowers in charge" are really just partially-informed PR-modules, which mainly after-the-fact explain behaviors by "muscle-memory modules" capable of much more rapid-response, then weaponization might mainly just give all those PR-modules more in the way of "unintended consequences" to explain after the fact. In this context, can we risk assuming that "folks who think they are infallible in this way" are less likely to fail than those who don't?
Ideas are only a pale shadow of the world around, but it's fun nonetheless to look for ideas that reflect reality as simply as possible. What can do this better than a reflective sphere?
various energies
We encounter energy in many applications with different units. The quantities in the first units menu of this widget provide clues to how they relate. Are the first menu list entries all in order of increasing energy? Which entry corresponds to the thermal noise in an unpowered RC loop? What quantities would you add to the list?
one-gee constant proper-acceleration
Plot proper (traveler) and map times elapsed, as well as proper and coordinate speeds, as a function of map distance traveled for one acceleration-leg of a constant proper acceleration round trip.
historical and natural units for information
Note: Changes in Wolfram's widget-engine after the fact began obfuscating the simple log-relationship (s=k ln[W]) between bits, nats, & bans as well as J/K, with the result that the two widgets below were not working reliably. The problem may now have been fixed.
This first information units widget was inspired by the Information Storage Unit Converter widget, and allows conversion from a wide variety of information units including historical thermodynamic units like J/K.
bits of reciprocal temperature
The widget below calculates the coldness of the environment relative to the human basal value in natural units (about 175 ZB/Cal absolute) given the temperature in historical units (degrees Fahrenheit). This quantity relates to the information value of available work, as well as to the thermodynamic value of a cool place to dump excess heat. Just as the Fahrenheit scale was designed to go negative at the bottom range comfortable for human habitation, so this coldness scale goes negative near the top of that range.
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