Humans Think Like Quantum Particles

Italian mathematical physicist Gavriel Segre suggests that a similar trick could prevent voting deadlock without having to install a dictator. He says he became interested in the subject in the summer of 2008, when he read an interview of his compatriot Odifreddi in the newspaper La Stampa. Citing Arrow's theorem, Odifreddi asserted that representative democracy was obsolescent. “I didn't agree with this fact, and I began to think of a way to overcome the Arrow theorem,” Segre says.

Segre argues that quantum physics enriches the possibilities of voting. Like Schrödinger's cat, a citizen can be of two minds, voting both yes and no—a so-called superposition. When aggregated, votes can either add up or negate one another. They can become entangled with one another, representing a kind of pact among citizens to vote in a coordinated way, like the binding contract in the quantum Prisoner's Dilemma. In this case, unlike the classical one Arrow considered, the will of the people can be perfectly consistent.

Unfortunately, Segre's proof is very abstract, and several experts on voting theory consulted for this article doubt whether it is correct, let alone whether it could be written into a 21st-century constitution. Yet physicist Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford and the Center for Quantum Technologies in Singapore says that Segre may be on to something. Because quantum physics is probabilistic, a quantum voting system may avoid inconsistencies without an absolute dictator—just a ruler whose say-so carries the day on average and can be overruled from time to time. “We will have a dictator but a much weaker one,” Ekert says.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.

- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

Solitude and privacy are not just privileges. They are also compensations. People didn’t have modern selves in traditional society, but they didn’t need them, because they had family and community: extended families, face-to-face communities. They had an intricate structure of relationships, traditions, roles, and expectations to give content to their lives and direction to their efforts, to orient themselves in space and time. They didn’t need to go it alone or make up the world for themselves, so they didn’t need the equipment that enables modern individuals (if they’re lucky) to do so.

Now all we have is ourselves. The modern self is a consolation prize; it’s what we have to cling to—that and friendship, modernity’s central relationship. Intimacy is also a modern phenomenon, because it rests on privacy. When E. M. Forster said “Only connect,” he didn’t mean that’s all we need to do; he meant that’s all we could do: forge our horizontal bonds, because the roots are gone.

- The Loss of Solitude

Wisdom Of The Week

We’ve nationalized so many of the events over the last few decades that the federal government is involved in virtually every disaster that happens. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It stresses FEMA unnecessarily. And it allows states to shift costs from themselves to other states, while defunding their own emergency management because Uncle Sam is going to pay. That’s not good for anyone.

When FEMA’s operational tempo is 100-plus disasters a year, it’s always having to do stuff. There’s not enough time to truly prepare for a catastrophic event. Time is a finite quantity. And when you’re spending time and money on 100-plus declarations, or over 200 last year, that taxes the system. It takes away time you could be spending getting ready for the big stuff.

Nobody is taking the position, that I know of, saying get rid of FEMA, the federal government should have no role responding to disasters. The position is, no no, we need to save FEMA and the Federal Government for the big stuff: Sandy, Katrina, Northridge. But states should be charged to take care of the other, more routine stuff that happens every year. There are always going to be Tornadoes in Oklahoma and Arkansas. There are always going to be floods in northwest Ohio and Iowa. There are always to be snowstorms in the Northeast. There are always going to be rain storms, fires in Colorado. They happen every year. There’s no surprise here. And they don’t have national or regional implications, economically or otherwise. If they do, that’s a different question.

- Very good points on FEMA

Quote of the Day

If a man objects to truths that are all too evident, it is no easy task finding arguments that will change his mind. This is proof neither of his own strength nor of his teacher's weakness. When someone caught in an argument hardens to stone, there is just no more reasoning with them.

- Epictetus

Quote of the Day

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.

- Charlie Munger

Power After 72 Hours !!

Civilization is back and thriving at-least at home - I guess this is what heaven feels like !!

Drug-Sniffing Dogs, Sense-Enhancing Technology & Fourth Amendment Search

Interesting through out; read the whole thing - here:

Having attended the oral argument (transcript; audio forthcoming), my sense is that a majority on the Court thinks dog-sniffs at front doors (absent a warrant) go too far. But few of the justices know why. The one who does is Justice Kagan.

“As I understand the law,” he said, “the police are entitled to use binoculars to look into the house if—if the residents leave the blinds open, right?”

Florida’s counsel agreed.

“But if they can’t see clearly enough from a distance, they’re not entitled to go onto the curtilage of the house, inside the gate, and use the binoculars from that vantage point, are they?”

“They’re not, Your Honor.”

“Why isn’t it the same thing with the dog?”

Justice Kagan knows that it is. And she used Justice Scalia’s reasoning in Kyllo v. United States, the precedent that is on all fours with this case.

She recited from Kyllo: “‘We think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a search, at least where, as here, the technology in question is not in general public use.’” And she asked Florida’s counsel, “[W]hat part of that language does not apply in this case?”

“Franky’s nose is not technology,” he replied, referring to the dog. “It’s—he’s using—he’s availing himself of God-given senses in the way that dogs have helped mankind for centuries.”

w/o Power 60 Hours Now...

It's not that bad except standing queue for hours (2.5 hours to be precise) for gas but trying to be conscientious to remember these words of wisdom on the fragility of our civilization - excerpts from Robbery Under Law by Evelyn Waugh:

Barbarism is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of error left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. … The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls, we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history. 

Quote of the Day

And who shows greater reverence for mystery, the scientist who devotes himself to discovering it step by step, always ready to submit to facts, and always aware that even his boldest achievement will never be more than a stepping-stone for those who come after him, or the mystic who is free to maintain anything because he need not fear any test?

-  Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies