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Wouldn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics mean that transferring entropy this way would, in turn, generate entropy in its own right? You might be able to make the universe last longer, but I don't think you'd be able to make it last forever. Even if you could, though, you'd still run into the problem of proton decay eventually.
In response to
Information Hazards
Wasn't this on the Singularity Institute's website before? I could swear I've already read this paper somewhere else.
In response to
Conjoined twins who share a brain/experience?
That is fascinating; the doctors in question should definitely apply for a research grant to help decrease the medical costs involved; they're an invaluable source of medical information. The potential benefits to DNI technologies would be staggering.
(chapter 57)
Did Harry just Transfigure a shotgun?
I stated elsewhere that the shield isn't omnipotent. It also won't prevent injury that isn't mind-threatening. For instance, if she were broken into pieces and not set on fire, this wouldn't be immediately life-threatening, so nothing would happen. Then, by the time she'd be in danger of death by starvation due to being unable to eat while in fragments, she wouldn't have enough energy left that the shield could draw power. She can be killed by anyone who's paying attention. It's just harder for her to be killed accidentally or carelessly.
So, "If they can hurt me, they'll rip me apart and set me on fire until I die" won't work to make herself nigh-invulnerable?
Or, for that matter, "I need allies if I am going to survive the Volturi, therefore I need to join the still-free pack's hivemind"?
In response to
Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
Is it just me, or does it look like Bella's true power is that she can do anything so long as she can imagine it and honestly justify it as necessary to maintain the integrity of her mind?
If so, when she inevitably goes for revenge for Edward's death against the Volturri, she could very possibly just deprogram the werewolves and splatter the vampires because if she doesn't, they'll rip her to bits and then light her on fire and not stop until she's properly ashes.
At the very least, she should be able to think "If my body is damaged, my mind will be destroyed when I inevitably lose the fight; therefore, my body cannot be damaged" and become nigh-invulnerable physically.
If I'm understanding the chronophone correctly, the thing is that what comes out cannot be anachronistic. Maybe I'm not. If I'm understanding it as a strategy-conveying phone, then it would just tell Archimedes that you're trying to trick him into believing an anachronism.
Personally I'd eagerly chirp about awesome technology like nanobots and solar power and high-speed trains that so many countries seem to be ignoring right now, and hope that it would pick up the kind of stuff Hero of Alexandria was doing with steam and such. (Although this might not work. It's such a shame that he came after Archimedes). It would be very interesting to see how this would turn out in conjunction with the whole space travel --> naval expansion idea...
No, it'd tell him that you're arguing against the local belief structure regarding slavery. In his time, it'd be an argument against slavery.
Does anyone else find ROT13 spoilers as annoying as I do?
Every time I come across one, it annoys me. I have to copy the text, open a new tab to the ROT13 site, paste the text, and click the translate button.
Compare this to something like a collapsable spoiler button-box where you press a button and it expands and expands a box with the appropriate text underneath it. Even making a [spoiler][/spoiler] tag that gave a black background and equally black text would be better than the current ROT13 solution.
Was there actually a reason for doing things this way? If so, why not just include the ROT13 translation in the javascript that'd open and close the textbox? Comments? Criticism?
In response to
The Sword of Good
In writing it's even simpler - the author gets to create the whole social universe, and the readers are immersed in the hero's own internal perspective. And so anything the heroes do, which no character notices as wrong, won't be noticed by the readers as unheroic. Genocide, mind-rape, eternal torture, anything.
Not true. If you've got some time to kill, read this thread on The Fanfiction Forum; long story short, a guy who's quite possibly psychopathic writes a story wherein Naruto is turned into a self-centered, hypocritical bastard who happily mindrapes every woman around him, and the people on the forum spend 60-odd pages lambasting him.
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I'm a little surprised nobody has commented on the sex difference yet. Any ideas about its significance? We can only speculate, of course, but when has that ever stopped anyone?
I agree with Relsqui that, absent any reason to believe I have better-than-average ability to judge the length of lines, it would be quite rational to doubt myself in this situation, or to suspect (accurately) that I was being tricked. Still, it seems like the most helpful thing would not be to agree with everyone else, but to say "I am confused, because to me this line looks longer."
That's assuming we really wanted to determine which line was longer, though. If it's a test and I'll be rewarded for giving the correct answer, it becomes much trickier.
Probably because they didn't want to get negative karma for appearing misogynistic.