When is butter no longer butter?

In Steven Pollock's TTC course on "particle physics for non-physicists" he asks: how many times can I cut a piece of putter and still have butter?

If I take a package of Bregott (the typical swedish brand of butter) and cut it once I think that most people would agree that I will get two pieces of butter. But what happens if I cut it again and again and again - after a certain number of division I may have a piece that is a couple of nanometers in width - is that butter? I can make it even smaller and I will end up with a piece that is one angstrom across - the size of an atom and as far as I know butter is not in the periodic table...

The point I guess is that everything around us that we can touch is made up of protons, neurtrons and electrons - or if we go further down the reductionist tree - quarks and leptons. Butter is simply quarks and leptons arranged in a certain pattern with certain forces acting on it, and the same is true for us - we are also just quarks and leptons arranged in a particular pattern. In other words we are made out of the same building blocks as butter. Since our quarks and leptons respond to the forces of nature the same way leptons and quarks in butter does - we should have as much free will as my package of Bregott in the fridge...

More Teaching Company Reviews

"Imagine how much you could learn if you spent just 30 minutes a day for the next year in the best college classrooms in the world".

I have written quite a lot about the Teaching Company which is a company that I genuinely love. They have completely revolutionized my life and the amount I have learned by listening to these lectures is absolutely staggering, no doubt about it. Forget about boring high-school teachers who cannot explain their subject and who have no desire to give you knowledge and wisdom, the teachers recruited by the teaching company are absolutely top-notch.

Here I thought I would just add a few reviews of courses that I have been listening to since last time:

Wisdom of History 5: I am currently listening to this course taught by Rufus Fears. In it he goes through many episodes in history in a very entertaining fashion and he tells us about the lessons that can be drawn from history such as "Freedom is not a universal value, power is".

Famous Greeks 4: If you get one of the courses taught by Rufus Fears you can expect terrific entertainment as well as many moral lessons. His story telling ability is marvelous and he even makes voices to some of the characters. In this course you will learn about many fascinating ancient Greeks

Famous Romans 5: This course is very similar to the one about famous Greeks and it is also taught by Rufus Fears. For some reason I think that this one is even better, perhaps because I find Ceasar, Cicero, Hannibal, Scipio and the like even more fascinating than the Greek personalities, fantastic course!

Sensation and perception 5: I may be somewhat biased in judging this course since I have been using it when I am myself teaching – reviewing different sensory systems. Professor Coalvita turns a subject that I recall as not very interesting into a subject that is extremely interesting. Perfect for me as a researcher in neuroscience.

New Testament 5: I could not have asked for a better book about the New testament. The professor goes into depth about the content of the New testament as well as other sources of historical evidence. Highly recommended

Great ideas of Psychology 5: Great Great course! Daniel Robinson is one of the very best teachers in the teaching company series and this course goes through pretty much everything you learn in an introductory psychology course.

Foundations of Western civilization P1 3: Although this is a very good series of lectures with a lot of content, the teachers was unable to hold my attention for some reason, perhaps it is just me…

Foundations of Western civilization P2 5: This course which covers the period from 1500-2000 approximately is truly great. Unlike the teacher in the first part of this series, the teacher here never loses my attention, highly recommended course if you want to understand why the world looks the way it does today!

Free will vs determinism 5: I am also currently listening to this one and the first few lecture have been great so I will go ahead and just recommend it. It may be however, that I am biased here since the topic is one that I find very interesting.

Positive psychology and the hedonic treadmill

How happy are you on a scale from 1-10, with 5 being the average individual? If you are like most people you think that you are happier than most people (7-8 is the average answer you get). But what factors affect your life satisfaction?

This post has been inspired by yet another fantastic professor that everyone with an internet connection can (and should), listen to. His name is Paul Bloom and his course in introductory psychology can be found at Yale's open courses site. In the last lecture of this series Bloom discusses "The Good life: Happiness". The first 15min or so is about therapy and whether it really works, an interesting topic on its own, however, it is with happiness that I will be concerned here.

A few years ago (summer 2004) I went to summer school in Cambridge UK. I attended a wealth of different lectures on everything from astronomy and climate change to genetics and ladybird sexuality. One of the most memorable lectures was one held by Nick Baylis which was on the just born branch of psychology called "positive psychology". The general outline of the lecture was something like the following. Since psychology was born in the 19^th century it has merely been focused on the sick and abnormal. How do we deal with crazy and depressed individuals? Now does that seem a bit skewed to you? Should we also not study happy people and see how they differ. What makes them happy? Or is happiness simply not being abnormal or insane (not to far from the truth perhaps…)? What Nick said was basically that we should investigate happy people to see if there are any lessons to be drawn from them, and that I think seems to make an awful lot of sense.

Since this lecture which positive psychology has become a very hyped subject and vast sums of money are being pumped into this field of research with highly variable gains. Some experiments which I will share here are however, highly interesting and also hilarious. In what is perhaps my favorite experiment, random people at work were asked to go to the photocopier and make some copies of whatever. For half of the participants a dime had been planted on the photocopier, as if someone had forgotten it. Now we all know what a great feeling it is to find money on the street but I think that what happens next will surprise you. After having done the photocopies the participants were approached and asked something like the following: "how happy would you say you are with your whole life". What happens? The group that found the dime on the photocopier reported significantly better life satisfaction!!! Conclusion: when we estimate how happy we are we are extremely susceptible to factors in out immediate environment. In a similar experiment participants were asked when the weather was sunny or rainy, and like in the previous experiment, bad weather caused people to say that they were just not particularly happy with their entire life!!!

In fact, the picture that has emerged from research in positive psychology is that our life satisfaction goes up and down. We have some sort of average happiness which we basically stick to, whatever happens, throughout or lives. The nice thing about this is that whatever happens in your life you are not likely to become less satisfied with your life. Even people who have been paralyzed neck down tend to recover, after about a year, in terms of overall life satisfaction.

The more depressing conclusion from this research is that there is nothing you can do to increase your overall life satisfaction. This is where the term "hedonic treadmill" comes from. You can fulfill all your dreams and fantasies, jump from an airplane, win the nobel prize, become a karate champion, become a Mormon and have sex with ten partners simultaneously, buy your dream house, visit exotic places, etc, etc. Whatever you do, your life satisfaction will stay the same. Of course all of the above may give you temporary happiness and some people suggest that this is how to proceed in life, always do new things that make you happy and don't stick to one because the happiness will disappear. The fact of the matter is that we are able to adapt to even the most luxurious lifestyle.

So is there really nothing that will make you happier? There is actually one interesting exception that I want to end with. Individuals who have undergone plastic surgery report that they have greater life satisfaction after the surgery, and amazingly the gain remains. In other words plastic surgeons have done what no-one else in history have ever managed to do, make people happier (I don't know if this statistical conclusion is true for the woman in the picture who want's to become a cat)…

The New Testament and “Russian scandal”

There are many ways in which The New Testament is a great book. It has been read by many people (to say the least), it gives many people guidance in their lives and has done so for many years, and it also serves as historical evidence for the character named Jesus.

It is on this last point that I want to expand here. Having recently listened to two different courses from the always fabulous "Teaching Company", one exclusively about The New Testament, and one on "The foundations of western civilization P1", I have been fueled in my skepticism towards these books as any more than a fiction which one can interpret and then depending on who you are, help you do good things or bad things. (By the way, feel free to send comments and point out if I make any blatant mistakes – I have never read the book in their entirety)

Jesus was never famous during his lifetime it seems. Apart from the bible he is barely mentioned in any historical documents. So what we know about Jesus we know mainly from the gospels in The New Testament.

Mark, which is generally regarded as the earliest of these gospels was written, according to most historians, about 70AD, that is almost 40 years after the death of Christ (the exact year of this event is also very uncertain). 40 years in an age where very few people had access to any written sources and where perhaps even fewer could read. This means that the story of Jesus must have been passed on verbally for about 30 years or so.

Anyone who have ever played Chinese whispers (I just saw that this game also goes under the name of "Arab phone" or "Russian scandal" =)), knows that this is a problem. In Chinese whispers a message is passed along in a ring eventually coming back to the person who formulated the message. The final message is compared to the original message and there is invariably an astounding difference between the two.

The normal way to play this game is to have a group of children passing along a short message, say ten words or so, with little personal significance and hence little motive amongst the children to change the message in any way. In contrast, The New Testament is a rather long message, and the people who have passed it along have had every reason to alter the story to make Jesus sound better and greater than he actually was (does anyone seriously believe that he can turn water into wine?). What would 30 years of Chinese whispers with people who would have a strong interest in changing the story do to tales about Jesus? Well, let's just say that it would be no less of a miracle should the story be accurate and precise.

How to square any number between 1 and 100

In my post on magic mathematical tricks I claimed to be able to easily square any number between 1-100. Later I got a comment enquiring about this claim, according to my reader there is only a calculation "fast track" for numbers ending with 5, i.e. 5, 15, 25, 35, 45, 55 etc, and not for all the other numbers between 1-100.

The fact of the matter is that numbers ending with 5 are particularly easy to square, but there is a more general rule which works for all numbers. Here is how you do it…

Take any number between 1-100… 67, ok, lets square 67. First you find a number close to 67 that is easy to multiply such as 70. Next you move the same number of steps (there are 3 steps from 67 to 70) in the opposite direction giving you 64. Multiply 70 and 64 (4200 + 280= 4480). Then add the square of the number of steps that you took in either direction i.e. 3, giving you 9. Now simply add these two numbers to get 4489, which is the square of 67.

Ok sure, multiplying 64 and 70 does require some mathematical skull but is not that hard and most people can do it with a little bit of training I think. The trick is much easier for smaller numbers such as 18. For 18 you would multiply 20 and 16, giving you 320, plus the square of 2, which is 4, giving you a total of 324. Here is an illustration of the method taken from the teaching company course "The joy of mathematics".

The very easiest cases are numbers ending with 5. Take the number 45 and apply the previous rule. You go five steps in either direction giving you 40 and 50. Multiplying these gives you 2000. Add the square of the number of steps that you took i.e. 5, giving you 25. So the square of 45 is 2000 + 25 = 2025. For numbers ending with five you can simply multiply the number below and above the first number and then write 25 behind that number i.e. 4*5 = 20, and with 25 behind that gives you 2025. For 65 it would be 6*7 = 42 and then 25 behind that giving you 4225, for 15 it would be 1*2 = 2, and then 25 behind giving you 225.

This trick seems to work well with higher numbers as well. The only limitation is your multiplication skills. So go out and impress your friends. Next time I write about math I will explain how you can pull of the almost autistic feat of telling what day of the week it was or will be at any date in history or future

Magical mathematical tricks

Parallell to working on forthcoming articles I have been listening to the Teaching Company series called "The joy of mathematics", taught by professor Arthur T. Benjamin (see picture).

It is a truly great series of lectures which has allowed me to fresh up my math as well as to learn som impressive new skills. For example I can now square any number between 1-100 very fast (perhaps I will reveal the trick in a subsequent post). The lecturer has also perfomed two "magical tricks". The first one I think most people will be familiar with, I recall hearing it in 3rd grade, it goes as follows:

1. Think of a number between 1-10
2. Double that number
3. Add 10
4. Divide that number by 2
5. Subtract the number that you first thought about

Ok, now concentrate on the number that you are left with, a little bit more... I think I am getting... wait for it... yes, I almost have it... 5! Was that the number that you were left with? If not, it is because you did an error. Some simple algebra will prove why you are always left with 5.

x*2 = 2x,
2x+10 = 2x+10,
(2x+10)/2 = x+5,
x+5-x = 5

If you want to end up with a different number you can merely swap out the 10 with something else. Your answer will always be half of the number that is added in the second step.

The second magical trick is somewhat more complicated and also more impressive if you ask me. It goes as follows:

1. Think of a number between 1-10
2. Triple that number
3. Add 6
4. Triple the number again
5. Now add the individual digits in your numer
6. If you still have a two digit number, add the individual digits again

Now, concentrate again. Unless you have done a mistake you are thinking about the number 9. The following algebra plus some explanation shows why this trick works.

x*3 = 3x
3x+6 = 3x + 6
(3x+6)*3= 9x+18

Now 18 is a multiple of 9 and adding x number of nines to that will always result in a multiple of 9. Multiples of nine always consists of digits that add up to 9, or to another multiple of 9 which will then add up to 9. You can check this out for yourself. The multiples of 9 are 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90, 99, 108, 117, 126 etc

Adding the individual digits of any of these number will give 9 except 99, which gives 18 which you then add again and get 9.

MIT open courses

Nobody could have missed that I love to listen to audio and video lectures on my spare time. In particular when I am doing something where I do not have to concentrate (such as doing dishes or walking the dog). I recently wrote about The Teaching Company which is probably my favorite company in the world. I have also mentioned Berkeley webcast and in particular the lecture series called physics for future presidents taught by professor Richard A Muller.

When reading Lunkens blog I saw some really good news. MIT, one of the most prominent Universities in the world (particularly in physics, technology, and computer science), have been inspired by Berkeley and have now made a good deal of their courses available online for free, hurray for that! For example, here is a lecture series on introductory biology taught by Eric Lander (see picture above), a key figure in the human genome project.


So, make use of these fantastic resources. With a few clicks on your mouse you can enrich your life by learning about anything you wish from world leading experts, who are also in my experience fantastic teachers.

The Teaching Company – My Favorite courses

This is my second post in a short time when I am going to help a commercial business. Last time it was Nokia, because of their brilliant software "Nokia sports tracker". This time I want to take my hat off for The Teaching Company. I have mentioned them in previous posts here and here, but now I want to dedicate an entire post to this wonderful company.

Their concept is easy. They hunt down University professors who excel in their subject and in teaching skills. Then they ask these professors to record a series of 30-45min long lectures (on average about 30 lectures in each course) on their subject. Then they sell these lectures over the internet. You can download them as mp3's, have CD's with audio sent to you, or buy video recordings of the lectures. I normally prefer the first alternative since I can convert the files to the Nokia audiobooks (another terrific application from Nokia) format which use up very little space on my mobile phone, however, sometimes it is nice to have video also.

The lectures are normally equivalent to what you would expect from an introductory university course - rather detailed in other words. When do I have time to listen to these lectures? Well, on the top of my head, here are a few situations in which I normally put in my earphones and broaden my universe a little bit.

1. When I am riding my bike to work

2. When I am doing the dishes

3. When I am vacuum cleaning

4. When I am out jogging

5. When I am walking the dog

These situations actually correspond to a few hours a day, which adds up to a great many hours per year. Since I discovered The teaching company little more than a year ago I have been listening to an estimated 240 hours of lectures (a modest estimation, in reality it is probably more than that). It has really enriched my life.

If any of my readers are also fans of The teaching company then I am very interested in hearing which courses you liked and which ones you did not like, so that I know which courses I should get in the future. Here are a list of the courses that I have completed as well as my rating of them (5= Brilliant, 1=Not worth buying)...

Classical mythology: 3 - The teacher does everything you would expect, but not more. Mythology is exotic and interesting which makes this course very attractive

Second world war: 5 - I may be a bit biased because I think wars are interesting to study. I think that I finished this 30 lecture course in three days or so. Teacher is brilliant.

First world war: 5- Same rating as for the second world war

History of Russia: 4 - One of the first courses I listened to, very good lecturer, unfortunately I have forgotten a lot of what was said in this course

Argumentation: 3 - I remember this course as being engaging, but for some reason I don't remember so much of this course, and in addition I retoric has always been a little bit too abstract an inconcrete for my taste

Philosophy of Science: 3 - Good course which can get a bit complex every now and then, and that can make you loose focus

Books that have made history: 5 - Probably the most entertaining course of all, like listening to engaging stories. The professor even makes voices for the characters in the book which makes it even more entertaining

Biology and human behavior: 5 - Robert Sapolsky from Stanford (see above), may simplify a lot, however, a more entertaining course on human behavior will be extremely hard to find. Great, great course!

Science and religion: 3 - Seemed to me that the professor was very biased, and that he wanted to defend religion, however, you will learn a lot about interesting historical events

Biology: 3 - 80 lectures long course going through a huge amount of biology, works well to fresh up your memory, and the lecturer manages to put in a lot of details to, however, I would have liked some more jokes and stuff from him

Economics 3rd ed: 5 - Also a fantastic series from a lectures from a great professor. I thought economics would be boring but now I know it isn't so

Contemporary economic issues: 4 - Very similar to the course above, same lecturer, great stuff.

Utopia and terror in the 20th century: 4 - Takes you through genocides and massacres in the 20th century which is always interesting, greatly recommended.

Philosophy of the mind: 5 - John Searle's course on the human mind is simply brilliant. Many good illustrative jokes.

History of the United States: 5 - A massive 84 lectures on the history of the united states. Loved the part about the civil war, but everything was great in this course.

United State and the middle east: 5 - Manages to guide you through a century of conflicts. Gives you the facts without taking sides which is an impressive feat in an on itself.

Here are a few other blogs that have written about The teaching company as well.

Creative think

Cool tools

Learn out loud

Free will and determinism

Do we have free will, or are all our thoughts and actions a result of the physical forces in our universe?

After having taken part in a discussion about consciousness on Furiku's blog I decided to learn a little bit more about the philosophy of the mind which discusses such things as the nature of the mind, consciousness, and free will versus determinism. The audio-course, which I warmly recommend, is from the teaching company (see my previous post about the the teaching company here), and it is called "philosophy of the mind". Teacher is John Searle (see picture) from the University of California, Berkeley.

My experience is that the question of free will versus determinism is a question that many people ask themselves occasionally. Are we free agents in the world or does everything, and I mean everything have a preceding cause. I cannot speak for anyone else of course, but for me it sure feels like I have free will. When I write these words I feel as if I am deciding to write these words, and I can even erase them again if I want to! On the other hand, dwelling further into this I can think of situations in which I have felt as if I had no free will, where I acted contrary to the way I wanted to act. One of my stepchildren exemplifies this point well. In the process of doing something violent to her younger sibling she sometimes says "I just could not control myself", which effectively eliminates the possibility of telling her that "that was wrong!".

I should state here what I believe; I believe that we live in a determined universe, that free will is an illusion (that we are determined to have), and I will now explain why.

We have physical laws which can, with some small exceptions, explain more or less everything that goes on around us. In most chemical and physical systems we can, if we know the current state of the molecules in the system, predict how the same system will look in the future. Our brain is a chemical/physical system (a very complex one), and therefore it should be theoretically possible to predict what our brain will look like in the future, and if we had more knowledge about the relation between the physical and mental state of the brain we would be able to predict exactly, the mental states and behaviors of the individual.

Some people will object to my view by saying that, if I don't have free will, then everything is determined and it doesn't matter what I do. I could go out and rape and kill people and that would have been inevitable. However, if the deterministic hypothesis is true, then you could obviously not decide to go out and kill and rape. If you did go out to kill and rape, it would be because of something, maybe these words (caused by processes in my brain) have had an influence of your brain which makes you go and do this, or maybe you have gotten a tumor in your amygdala, messing up your emotions. A similar objection that I sometimes hear is the following. "How can you (referring to me), believe in such a depressing thing?" Life is meaningless without free will! Of course the answer is the same, if the deterministic hypothesis is true I cannot decide to believe or not believe in free will, my beliefs were determined by the state of the universe when it began. Besides, I don't really feel sad when I think that I have no free will, rather, I think, I am a little bit amused by this thought.

Another objection is that research in quantum mechanics have shown that there is uncertainty in the universe. We cannot tell the exact location of the electron when it is orbiting the nucleus of the atom, hence free will. To me this argument sounds rather far fetched and desperate. There is no plausible reason to suggest that we would be able to control, through our mental activity, where the electron is located, and there is also no good reason (as I see it), why the location of an electron in the orbital cloud should give rise to different actions.

Summing up, I just cannot see anyway around the conclusion that there is no such thing as free will. It free will did exist it would be a big problem for science which rests on the assumption that every process in the universe have a cause. I would love to hear comments on this post, especially from people who do believe in free will...

Get smart! Two great resources for people with "learning hunger"

Except for a weak period that I had during my teens I have always been a very curious person who loves learning. However, never before have I learned at a rate that is comparable to my current learning pace. What is this all about? I will tell you!



About two months ago I discovered two fantastic knowledge resources and since then I have been listening or watching lectures when I am on the bus, taking a walk, doing the dishes, cooking, running, playing soccer etc (OK, that last one was not true, but its close). I really really recommend both of these websites to anyone who likes to learn things.

The two sources are:
1. Berkeley webcast
2. The Teaching Company

The first one is University of California, Berkeley's webcast (see picture). Here you can watch or listen to lectures in many different field ranging from biology, physics and chemistry, to philosophy economics and non-violence. I am currently watching "physics for future presidents", which is a great great great (I don´t know how else to describe it) lecture series by professor Robert Muller. He goes through pretty much all of physics in a very interesting and intriguing way. One guy commented on Google video that "I would listen to this guy (Robert Muller) even if he had his pants down while talking". I have also been watching introduction to chemistry to try to really understand quantum mechanics, which is still difficult though...

The second resource is perhaps even better. The teaching company hand picks the best professors in the world and asks them to make a series of lectures in their field of expertise. You can order the lecture from their website, or if you are the hacker type the courses are sometimes available for download. The quality is consistently top class. I have already taken 24 or 36 lecture courses in the following fields.

(1) Neurobiology of behavior, by Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University
(2) Introduction to economics, by Timothy Taylor at Macalester College (this guy actually made me realize that economics can be interesting)
(3) Argumentation, by David Zarefsky at Northwestern University
(4) History of Russia, by Mark Steinberg at University of Illinois
(5) Understanding the Human Body, by Anthony Goodman at Montana State University (he used to be the general surgeon)

As the teaching company says in the introduction to their courses "Imagine how much you could learn if you spent 30min everyday in the best classrooms in the world".