Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 November 12

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November 12

High technology, neurons

Sorry for the inconvenience, I would like to know if my essay posted here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieuc3ABCMMA can work , please ? 2A01:CB0C:38C:9F00:353A:F859:81D1:E460 (talk) 19:08, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

To be honest, it is unclear what you are proposing and what you aim to achieve. Reconstructing the connections of a (human?) brain in a computer simulation so as to achieve (or inflict) consciousness, similar to the notion of a brain in a vat? What do children have to do with it? Should they understand the essay? Or should the brains to be dismantled be children's brains? Are you aware that "nerve cell" and "neuron" mean the same thing? Removing the outer membrane is an effective method of destroying it. The connections are made through the synapses; they are not like electrical connections; knowing which neurons connect to which neurons does not give enough information to simulate the activity of the network formed by the neurons.  --Lambiam 23:49, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

2A01:CB0C:38C:9F00:353A:F859:81D1:E460—Why are you even posting to YouTube? Can't you directly ask a question at the Reference desk/Science? Is it important that YouTube serve as an intermediary? Bus stop (talk) 03:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

In fact, I hoped that my essay will be able to be read by all, including children. I would like to use the simulation in order to re-inflict the consciousness function to the real original set of neurons,please ?2A01:CB0C:38C:9F00:E450:3436:FE14:781F (talk) 00:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

In fact, I would like to know if there is a way to extract the entire data ?

Not with current technology.  --Lambiam 11:07, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

And what we do, about my process ? Do we talk about it to the autorities ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.166.33.181 (talk) 14:03, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

To this same question I told you some weeks ago on the French oracle that in order to emulate the function of a specific brain you need not only to know which of the 100 billion neurons is connected to which other, but also to know the specific excitability threshold of every one of some 10,000 synapses belonging to every one neuron. And it is completely possible that the excitability state of the synapses gets lost at death.

Your explanation in the video is completely missing the practical side of the procedure, but even if you ever succeed in measuring every single neuron from a frozen brain to see how they are wired, this will not help you to reconstruct or re-establish or even emulate the consciousness of the dead person regardless which technology you are able to use. And so long no autority would be interested in realizing your idea.

But if you can first develop a concrete process and show that 1) it is practicable and 2) it works, here you can find some suggestions about the financial side: Funding_of_science. 2003:F5:6F0B:1E00:C990:B89E:5A87:5709 (talk) 21:49, 14 November 2020 (UTC) Marco PB

The video, for those who have not clicked, consists of 69 sec of looking at a paragraph of text. I wonder whether there are more efficient ways to publish such content. —Tamfang (talk) 03:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Weather forecasting

Why is it that the weather forecast shows chance of precipitation over the weekend as relatively low (around 20-30%) yet the symbol shows rain? What does this actually mean? [1] 90.194.52.17 (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

That there is a possibility of rain, followed by the percentage possibility of it happening. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 15:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Briefly summarized, the BBC website has editorial control and they may choose how they want to display a forecast: they get to pick the logos, the icons, and other user-facing content to reflect their editorial view of the weather. They are probably trying to make the weather forecast easy, fun, fast, and simple - which is totally reasonable for the audience that they expect. Various professionals who consume weather data often view the same data in one or more standardized formats.

It is important to contrast the nice "logo" format you see on consumer-grade weather websites to certain other formats that professionals often use to consume weather data: for example, a METAR or a TAF does not editorialize: it is consumed (frequently in monospaced font) in a manner that leaves the interpretation to the professional who consumes it. This is, in my estimation, a very important consideration when viewed through the lens of cognitive human-factors or "design": making things easy-to-consume by adding logos and pictures and color-schemes does not necessarily make things better or more correct.

The BBC has its own FAQ about their weather reporting:

• Questions about weather forecasting information.

The web- and television/radio- weather broadcasts by BBC are primarily sourced through the BBC Weather Centre, with many of the specific forecasts (and especially the weather warnings) originating from the government's Met Office:

• How weather forecasts are created, from the Met Office

The translation of technical weather data into a "logo" or "symbol", and an easy-to-consume "percent chance", is somewhat of an editorial decision that is largely governed by a standardized, science-driven methodology. There is frequently a human meteorologist overseeing the process, making sure that the predictions are sensible and accurate, and interpreting or adjusting them when there is a need.

• How a weather forecast is made - In 60 seconds, from the Met Office.

In the United States, our National Weather Service provides technical weather information and analysis, including a full-length Handbook on how to format weather reports: Federal Meteorological Handbook 1: Surface Weather Observations and Reports. They also train and publish information about probabilistic forecasting. Here's a great website on the topic:

• Probabilistic Forecasting - A Primer, put out by the National Severe Storms Laboratory. It's a little bit technical, but if you're mathematically inclined, this is a huge help to understanding exactly what it means when the weather forecaster says "20% chance," or something like that. It is subtle, but it's important: there is a closed-loop process to verify forecasts: we can look at all the times over the last ten years that any specific professional or computer-program speculated a 20% chance for an event, and compare against what actually happened; and what we seek is that 20% of the time, they should have speculated correctly. This ensemble nature is the exact conceptual development that allows us to bridge from a single event (a "probability"), to the behavior across an ensemble of many events (the "statistics").

This is the academic guidance that American weather professionals follow; and it should be "similar" in the UK, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I don't know very much about the UK Met Office policies or training.

Incidentally, the use of repeated events to collect statistics, and perform post-fact methodological verification, is the exact reason why reported probabilities are pretty useless when we evaluate preditions for a one-time event - like an election! If our oracle predicts some specific outcome with a 75% probability, we do not have the ability to repeat that prediction many more times: there is no way to verify the oracle's methodological accuracy.

With the heightened awareness about "data science" creeping across every aspect of our lives, from politics to weather to climate to health to finance... there has never been a better day than today to crack open your old Statistics and Probability textbook and review the basics of numerical predictions for event likelihoods!

For the enthusiast, here is a long-form class from MIT's OpenCourseWare: Introduction to Probability and Statistics, with video lectures presented by Jeremey Orloff and Jonathan Bloom - all available online at no cost!

Long story short: there are people who care a lot about the numbers and symbols in those weather forecasts - they just aren't necessarily the same people who read the main BBC Weather webpage!

Nimur (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The BBC decided to dispense with the services of the Meteorological Office (they thought they could get better service elsewhere) and signed a contract with a private company. However there were logistical problems and the changeover has yet to happen. 95.145.0.52 (talk) 10:26, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

They encountered difficulties while replacing a British public utility with a purportedly better-cheaper-faster private-sector alternative? How could they possibly have predicted?! Nimur (talk) 16:56, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

This discussion confuses me. All evidence I can see including from our articles MeteoGroup and BBC Weather which uses this source [2], along with the FAQ linked above [3], and other sources like [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] suggests the transition to Meteogroup happened in 2018 rather than there being logistical problems so the changeover has yet to happen or the BBC is still getting data direct from the Met Office. Per some of the sources, they still get the warnings from the Met Office, as I understand it that was always the plan although it seems they may not always feature them for whatever reason [9]. From that source, I'm not actually sure if they even get the warnings directly from the Met Office, or instead MeteoGroup provides them in their data feed, although the FAQ does mention they come from the Met Office. MeteoGroup is getting nearly all of their data from the Met Office and other generally government providers for world data [10], as with all? private forecasters. But AFAICT, the data you see on BBC nowadays is from MeteoGroup with their own analysis on top, not direct from the Met Office. Interesting this news article [11] found that the BBC forecasts were more accurate since the changeover, although as said it's just a news article analysis. Nil Einne (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Aging

What is the evolutionary purpose of male pattern baldness and also of going grey. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.170.71.103 (talk) 14:59, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Why does there have to be an "evolutionary purpose"? This is a common misconception when it comes to evolution. It doesn't have "purposes" or "goals". As long as people are still surviving to reproduction while carrying a trait, that trait will be passed on. On the "going grey" example, consider that most people start going grey long after the age at which they generally are having kids. Thus, it isn't really negatively impacting their ability to reproduce, and so there isn't a strong selective pressure against "going grey." As to why it happens at all, check this section on hair color, but basically, as we age a lot of cellular processes stop working so well. Among them, our cells that produce pigments at the base of hair follicles... stop producing pigments. It isn't so much that your hair is turning grey, rather it's that your hair stops turning some other color, like blond or brown. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 15:23, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Is the silver in a silverback a greying process? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 15:35, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The right question could be, "What is the evolutionary advantage (if any)" for those traits. As to baldness, there's this old saying: "God is great / God is fair / To some men He gave brains / To other men, hair." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The point is, as OuroborosCobra explained above, that not every trait needs to provide evolutionary advantages. They can be neutral, or they can even create a disadvantage, so long as it doesn't prevent the trait from being passed on reproductively, it will persist. --Jayron32 16:17, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, the "bad trait" that appears later in life may be tied to a "good trait" that appears earlier in life. Anything that selects for the latter will also be selecting for the former. --Khajidha (talk) 17:17, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Is there an evolutionary benefit to baldness quotes studies suggesting that it may be a signal of maturity or a means of increasing absorption of vitamin D. Alansplodge (talk) 09:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

This article writes: "It is fascinating to consider what possible evolutionary advantage might be conferred by stress-induced greying. Because grey hair is most often linked to age, it could be associated with experience, leadership and trust." They cite: Cunningham, M. R., Druen, P. B. & Barbee, A. P., "Angels, mentors, and friends: Tradeoffs among evolutionary, social, and individual variables in physical appearance", in Evolutionary Social Psychology (eds Simpson, J. A. & Kenrick, D.) Ch. 5 (Erlbaum, 1997), pp. 109–141.^[12]  --Lambiam 09:57, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

If there was a significant advantage wouldn't we be seeing many more bad men. Richard Avery (talk) 10:26, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Khajidha's comment explains why bad genes which cause death do not disappear from the genome. 95.145.0.52 (talk) 10:32, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Some info in our article at Human_hair_color. Matt Deres (talk) 17:21, 13 November 2020 (UTC)