Relativity ...

I believe I understand the usual calculations for time dilation and length contraction using the concepts of an inertial frame of reference and watching a "clock" that consists of light bouncing between two mirrors.

I'm pretty sure I've got that.

So ... are there are similarly elegant thought experiments to show:

* why clocks run slower when they are in a gravity well?

* why clocks run slower when accelerating?

What should I be reading?

Assume I know nothing about tensors, but am happy with complex numbers, calculus, and matrices.

Do you know how fast the Speed of Light is? If there is a hypothetical Train that travels at the speed of light & runs around the Earth's circumference at the equator, then if you are waiting for that train on the platform, it will pass by that platform approximately 7 times in 1 second.

An Impossible Thought Experiment:

"Design a spaceship that carries Humans to a Neutron Star. Land on its surface safely. Drill through it to reach its core and come back safely to Earth. This is a reply to those people who literally say "Nothing is Impossible". Even a Type-VII Alien Civilization can never do it".

#alife #ai #reflection #BDI #crows for my #commonLisp #emacs #slime #eepitch #caisor #softwareIndividuals #programming (I guess this is particularly #softwareEngineering ).

https://screwlisp.small-web.org/complex/after-alife-talk-practical-thoughts/

I consider the scenario where one vehicle tells another one where to get food, and run a #thoughtExperiment with crow tool use. I find programs want to alternate autonomous action with human-in-the-loop interpretive collaboration.

@ksaj @shizamura

Unsung heroes @dougmerritt @mdhughes & everyone.

New Essay

"The Intelligent AI Coin: A Thought Experiment"

Open Access here: https://seanfobbe.com/posts/2025-02-21_intelligent-ai-coin-thought-experiment/

Recent years have seen a concerning trend towards normalizing decisionmaking by Large Language Models (LLM), including in the adoption of legislation, the writing of judicial opinions and the routine administration of the rule of law. AI agents acting on behalf of human principals are supposed to lead us into a new age of productivity and convenience. The eloquence of AI-generated text and the narrative of super-human intelligence invite us to trust these systems more than we have trusted any human or algorithm ever before.

It is difficult to know whether a machine is actually intelligent because of problems with construct validity, plagiarism, reproducibility and transferability in AI benchmarks. Most people will either have to personally evaluate the usefulness of AI tools against the benchmark of their own lived experience or be forced to trust an expert.

To explain this conundrum I propose the Intelligent AI Coin Thought Experiment and discuss four objections: the restriction of agents to low-value decisions, making AI decisionmakers open source, adding a human-in-the-loop and the general limits of trust in human agents.

@histodons @politicalscience

#thoughtexperiment
Trading places:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy becomes the president of the United States

Donald Trump Jr becomes the president of Ukraine

What happens next?

Are class traitors equivalent or worse than race traitors?

Personally I'm a race-abolitionist but I know that some people are really only willing to work with people of their own race or ethnic designation. As for class traitors it's sadly all too common, it makes it difficult to be rightfully maddened, it's all too normalized for working class people to completely alter their personality to fit into bourgeois society.

(When I do these polls the options below do not reflect my opinions and I don't mean to offend anyone, I respect all living people of good spirit.)

My kind of #ThoughtExperiment
https://beige.party/@laprice/113536776667646800

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @TomWellborn
#ThoughtExperiment: what if JFK and RFK were #AmericanGracchi of the #American Republic?

@tadbithuman @Sir_Osis_of_Liver @Remittancegirl

#ThoughtExperiment: What do you imagine is the hypothetical limit, in tons, of what the #AmericanNetanyahu would authorize to drop on any American city (defined as more than 50,000 population)?

Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o

Thought experiment on the legal & judicial system as the source code for society, with lawyers as the engineers:

https://www.superversive.co/blog/legal-system-as-societys-source-code

@YakyuNightOwl @ezeeE @ErictheCerise @grrrr_shark @aredridel

#ThoughtExperiment: If a red flag is raised and nobody else seems to see or care about it, was the red flag raised?

Scenario: There is a village. It's had a famine and food is scarce. There is one farmer on the edge of town with a large, full grainery.

He owns it outright, and came by it legally and ethically.

He decides to burn the grainery down to set a record for largest bonfire.

Remeber, it's fairly and ethically his.

Is his action moral or immoral? Ethical or not? Right or wrong?

How you answer this question says a lot about your character and ethics.

Which is worse? #ThoughtExperiment #USpol

New thought experiment just dropped: the Brandolini Maximizer.

https://www.vox.com/technology/352849/openai-chatgpt-google-meta-artificial-intelligence-vox-media-chatbots