On Sat, 13 Jul 2013 23:18:19 -0500, Tom Roberts
wrote:

On 7/13/13 7/13/13 5:39 PM, George Hammond wrote:
Adult mental speed is about 16 bits/sec [...]

My estimate for me playing the piano is an order of magnitude greater than that.
While I am a semi-professional pianist (i.e. I earn money by playing, but don't
make my living at it), I am by no means a virtuoso.


Tom Roberts



[George Hammond]
In the history of intelligence measurements IQs less than
70 or greater than 210 have rarely been observed. This is
only a factor of three which is far, far less than an "order
of magnitude".
And as a matter of fact it has been well-known for many
decades that an IQ of 100 corresponds to a mental speed of
16 bits per second. This is been confirmed by many diverse
methods of experimental measurement, and it never ceases to
amaze me how many scientists are totally unfamiliar with
this fact!
The most elegant measurement is something called the
Picture Fusion Frequency (PFF) test. The subject is given
a movie projector with a variable speed knob on it and told
to slowly increase the speed until the flashing pictures
begin to " move" ( i.e. it becomes a movie). A century ago
it was discovered that a half grown child of nine will crank
up the speed to about eight frames per second while a full
grown adult will have to increase it to 16 frames per
second.
The reason for this is that recognizing that a frame is
"the same or different" than the previous frame constitutes
one bit of information. Hence 16 frames per second = 16
bits per second of mental comprehension speed.
Moreover it is well-known today that the PFF correlates
directly with one’s IQ, that is, it is well-known that the
predominant correlate of intelligence is in fact mental
speed. It is actually quite easily possible to measure a
person’s IQ by measuring his PFF.
__________________________________________________ __-

The upshot of all this then, is clearly that the world
APPEARS to become "smaller and slower" as we grow to be
"larger and faster". This is hardly rocket science!
__________________________________________________ ___

Where it does become rocket science is when we take the
following step:
Body size and mental speed follow directly the human growth
curve which I will call a(t). So what I am proposing is
that there is a METRIC OF REALITY that can be created by
simply taking the ordinary flat Lorentz metric and changing
it into a Robertson -- Walker type of expanding ( actually
contracting) metric by simply substituting adt for dt and
adx for dx:

ds^2 = a(t)^2 [-c^2 dt^2 + dx^2]

In other words I am simply substituting the person’s foot
size and his mental speed for the standard ruler and clock
of the physics laboratory. Then I am saying that personally
speaking, reality looks as if we are staying the same and it
is the WORLD that is getting smaller and slower!

Now obvioussly this metric is not called pay the
dynamical equations of physics such as Newton’s laws or the
Einstein field equation etc.. however I am of the opinion
that this "conformal metric of reality" actually does obey
the kinematics of special relativity. In particular we note
the following:

1. The speed of light is always ONE in a conformal metric
so that this metric causes no problem for SR.

2. Even though a(t) is decreasing and causing a
"contraction" of the Universe, we DO NOT SEE a
"Hubble Blue Shift" because the clock is speeding up
as the Universe contracts canceling out the frequency
shift.. So this is in accord with observational
experience also.

3, There is no mass in this universe, it is only an IMAGE
that is moving, therefore we don't have to worry about
violating dynamical properties such as E=mc^2, energy
or momentum continuity equations etc.

4. I believe that this "conformal contracting universe" is
not only a true description of reality, it appears to
me that this metric does not violate any KINEMATICAL
property of SR.

Would you disagree with any of these 4 assertions?

George Hammond