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228 comments on The One Sentence Challenge...

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Leanan on December 26, 2006 - 10:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

LOL! When I was in engineering school, they used to say:

1. F=ma
2. pV=nRT
3. You can't push on a rope.

Learn any two of those three, and you graduate.

My degree is in mechanical engineering, and here's how I would sum up the field:

"If all else fails, try kicking it."

But my favorite is probably the Laws of Thermodynamics, a la Ginsberg:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even, either.
3. You can't get out of the game.

And perhaps most apropos, Freeman's corollary:

Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem.

1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.

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Leanan on December 26, 2006 - 10:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Another of my favorites is this description of physics:

F=ma. The rest can be derived.

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Leanan on December 26, 2006 - 11:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Oh, and I also like this summation of genetics, by British scientist Robert May:

"We share half our genes with the banana. This is a fact more evident in some of my acquaintances than others."

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andyh on December 27, 2006 - 5:39am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

He's actually originally Australian, although he may have taken UK citizenship. I remember him giving a guest lecture 20 odd years ago and being mightily impressed. His erstwhile collaborator Roy Anderson was also great value for a good quote.

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panarchist on December 27, 2006 - 2:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Leanan, you forgot H.T. Odum's, A. J. Lotka's, etc. proposals for the 4th Law of Thermodynamics:

4. You can't play for long unless you steal your opponents game pieces.

Or since, my pea brain can't state it as soundly as the experts...

The maximum power principle can be stated: During self organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency.

— H.T.Odum 1995

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

— A.J.Lotka 1922

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panarchist on December 27, 2006 - 2:24am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I'm also partial to these wise words from my all-time favorite quote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot 1942 (Little Gidding No. 4)

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Arch Stanton on December 27, 2006 - 2:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential -- God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning slowly that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

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PeakPlus on December 28, 2006 - 3:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is the way the World Ends,
Not with a bang but a wimper.
- TS Eliot

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panarchist on December 27, 2006 - 2:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Keeping with Leanan's great reference to Ginsberg and since they haven't been proposed yet, maybe we should include the 5th and 6th Laws of Thermodynamics (in my humble and yet to be fully rationalized opinion):

5. You shorten the cumulative length of the game the more you steal.

6. The object of the game is to make it last as long as possible.

Or my concise way of summarizing the 3 (or is it 6?) Laws of Thermodynamics:

Collective adversity mandates collaborative adaptation.

- Hal Knowles

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PeakPlus on December 28, 2006 - 3:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

4. Technology: Move to the next level before you lose the game.

Btw, I think we are still playing at a very low level. Our limits are not defined by fossil fuels, although we might hit "game over" before moving past them. I think the sun's limits define the boundries to the next level. And I'm not talking about putting photovoltaic on top of your house..

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khaos3 on December 27, 2006 - 10:07am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Another way of putting the 3 laws of thermodynamics:

1. You can't get something for nothing
2. You can't get everything for something except at absolute zero
3. You can't get to absolute zero

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Kevembuangga on December 27, 2006 - 10:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"If all else fails, try kicking it."

Yup! Kicking or RESET : "There is nothing that a kick in the balls or a pressure on reset won't solve."

I am afraid that's gonna be some "reset"...

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capslock on December 27, 2006 - 1:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.

"Quit the world. Quit the next world. Quit quitting."
--Ram Dass

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ET on December 27, 2006 - 1:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Before I was a construction contractor and then a computer software geek, I was a 'rat' psychologist. My experiences and experiments led me to the maxim:

"Under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, the rat does as he damn well pleases."

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step back on December 27, 2006 - 2:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

A number of years after you left the business, researchers stopped using rats and instead began using lawyers

... because there are some things even a rat will refuse to do :-)

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228 comments on The One Sentence Challenge...

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