A chance thought

[Zeno]

I was reading an article about some science stuff and read this line, "Richard Feynman......could not work out why, when a strand of dried spaghetti is snapped, it almost never breaks in half but instead fragments into three or more pieces." I then stopped reading the article to think about the problem and it took me five seconds to figure out why. Waves (energy or dispersive waves are set up in solid objects when they are hit or fracture). I was positive that was the solution. Turns out I was right. Flexural waves to be precise Flexual waves (http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/Dispersion/Flexural.html).

Does this make me smarter than Feymann? Not at all.

The important point is that just about anybody could have done the same thing and just by guessing. In addition, only a small minority of people (I'm certainly not in this group) could work out the solution accurately with mathematical equations.

What was strange, however, is that I was 100% certain my instinctive (educated) guess was the correct one. Just like I'm 100% sure God (as humans define Him) is a human invention, which means Pascal's wager is meaningless, at least to me.

-Zeno

[PairTheBoard]

I just broke a strand of dried spagetti into two pieces with no problem. Does that mean I win Pascal's wager?

PairTheBoard

[usmhot]

There's two things about this ...

1. Richard Feynman would have said he could not work out why only if he could not work out all the details and prove it fully. (He probably could have, if he had spent some time on it anyway - sorry to gush, but he's one of my inspirations)

2. There are probably thousands of people who have considered this problem (either in passing or in some detail) and of all of those thousands, some number were bound to think of an answer (not all the details, but the general point) that eventually would be proven to be the right one. In this case you thought of it. But, it's just the odds - deal 1326 pairs of cards and you're bound to get AA a few times.

In fact, point 2, for me, is the one reason I am completely skeptical about eg psychics. So many people after an occurrence say (correctly) that they 'knew' it would happen - but I believe that our brains are constantly forming models of the near future in an attempt to predict the situation sufficiently to allow us to react appropriately if it arises and many people remember only the times when the models proved correct and allow it to convince them that they have prescience.

The thrust if what I?m getting at is that a feeling that one is 100% correct about something in many cases doesn?t mean one is 100% correct. It?s a trick of the mind that one often only remembers those times when it turns out one is correct and so believes that such a feeling is always valid.

neh?

[ QUOTE ]

2. There are probably thousands of people who have considered this problem (either in passing or in some detail) and of all of those thousands, some number were bound to think of an answer (not all the details, but the general point) that eventually would be proven to be the right one. In this case you thought of it. But, it's just the odds - deal 1326 pairs of cards and you're bound to get AA a few times.


[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree, I think that anyone who figures this out does so using reasoning and not "chance"

I also think that there has to be more to the story. Maybe he couldnt figure the exact equation or something but the concept seems far too obvious for him to miss it. Even if he couldnt figure waves out just in his head, a couple experiments adjusting variables like length or brittleness seems more than sufficient to draw the correct general conclusion.

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
I just broke a strand of dried spagetti into two pieces with no problem. Does that mean I win Pascal's wager?


[/ QUOTE ]

If you have enough faith PTB, you can make it mean anything you want. Have fun.

-Zeno

Zeno, I like your style, please post more

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
I also think that there has to be more to the story.

[/ QUOTE ]

The quote was from the lead part of the article and was just a tease to draw you in to read the whole thing. Feymann and Daniel Hillis became obsessed about this problem over dinner and spent a long evening trying to figure it out leaving piles of broken pasta everywhere. So it wasn't something he spent a substantial amount of time on. Anyway, the supposed solution will be out in the science journal Physical Review Letters, in a paper by Basile Audoly and Sébastien Newkirch, University of Paris. Or so the article informs.

-Zeno

[Zeno]

You are essentially 'preaching to the choir' on this one. Here is one of my favorite magazines Skeptical Inquirer (http://www.csicop.org/si/)

It is very rare for me to be 100% certain. In fact, I'm almost always uncertain about just about everything. Except the God question and waves causing multiple fracturing of pasta strands. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Oh yeah, and one more thing - Beer is Good and so are chance thoughts. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

-Zeno

[Zygote]

You're a good new addition yourself, HotPants, and i'd like to see more of your posts too!

BTW, if you haven't already, i suggest you search under Zeno's name and read some of his post to enjoy a lot of interesting reads.

[ThinkQuick]

[ QUOTE ]

In fact, point 2, for me, is the one reason I am completely skeptical about eg psychics. So many people after an occurrence say (correctly) that they 'knew' it would happen - but I believe that our brains are constantly forming models of the near future in an attempt to predict the situation sufficiently to allow us to react appropriately if it arises and many people remember only the times when the models proved correct and allow it to convince them that they have prescience.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never heard of a theory like this, but it's interesting- is it real? (Obviously I mean 'postulated by at least one academic')

[usmhot]

Sorry, I didn't quite express that clearly.
I wasn't saying that Zeno didn't figure it out logically. What I was saying was that while Zeno and maybe a few others did figure it out (in a general sense), there are probably lots of others who figured it out but came up with wrong answers and its just that fact that because lots of people thought about it and came up with answers that there was a chance some of them would have been right.
And, there are probably other problems that Zeno reasoned out but came up with incorrect solutions to, but he remembers this one particularly because it turns out his solution was right, and I think the human brain has a tendency to reinforce such memories.

[usmhot]

I'm afraid I'm not aware explicitly of such a theory being postulated by any academic.
However, I did some postgrad work myself on neural networks and as part of that I studied both neurophysiology and psychology and came across comparable ideas. I'm afraid its so long ago now I couldn't give you any useful references.

[usmhot]

Great link!!! Thanks.

I'm with you 100% on the beer and random thoughts /images/graemlins/smile.gif