Comments on: My God, it's full of squeaky toys

My God, it's full of squeaky toys

moonbird — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:14:55 -0800

Two nice conversations between a man and his dog on the subject of quantum physics.
[many worlds interpretation, uncertainty principle]

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:35:34 -0800

Holy fuck. A quantum singularity just swallowed two comments. *backs away slowly*

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:51:09 -0800

Cool links! I love this sort of thing; it makes my widdwe bwain huwt. The first link reminds me of a short story I read once, but cannot recall its title / author. A detective is investigating a string of odd suicides by famous/successful people. During the exposition it becomes clear that a recent invention allows wealthy people to explore parallel realities that are created by our 'negative decisions.' [Ex: if I decided not to come to work today, a different reality would be created wherein I stayed home] The detective tries the machine (I think), and realises that there is a more desirable universe waiting for him elsewhere... Ring any bells?

By: Baby_Balrog

Baby_Balrog — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:09:46 -0800

THIS IS AWESOME. I would buy a book of this.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:21:54 -0800

That dog reads books when alone? My dog writes books when alone, which at least has a profit potential.

By: edd

edd — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:25:04 -0800

chuckdarwin: 'Of Missing Persons', Jack Finney?

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:40:41 -0800

My dog and I have these conversations all the time. Really. ; )

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:46:43 -0800

"Maybe you can only perceive one branch. I have a very good nose. I can sniff into extra dimensions."

By: duende

duende — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:15:20 -0800

This is great. Personally, at least, this is twice as great because these dialogues are mentally performed by the voices of Jake the Dog and Ben the Human.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:19:47 -0800

aww, those were both charming blog entries. Loved the pic of the dog on the guy's lap. A wuvvable face, those eyes and that big doggie schnozz. Nice post and fun thread too. I just read this Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney [pdf] but I don't think that's the story chuckdarwin's referring to. Hope somebody comes up with the name of that story, my curiosity is piqued. It is interesting how human beings project their own inner lives onto dogs' wagginess, part of the mirror neuron experience and the tenderness of empathy, which dogs' limpid-pools-for-eyes trigger so well. This site uses the term "empathy neurons" and then deliciously misspells an alternate name for these as "Dalai Llama" neurons. Somebody did make a Dalai Llama site. This quantum theory discussing blog dog reminded me of the super-intelligent dog, Einstein, in Dean Koontz' very readable book, Watchers.

By: edd

edd — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:25:46 -0800

Yeah, that's not the one chuckdarwin's thinking of - I do recall one more like chuck's description. I'll have to do more digging.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:47:01 -0800

You're thinking of "All the Myriad Ways," by Larry Niven. At least, that's the title of the story in my dimension.

By: Phanx

Phanx — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:54:41 -0800

My dog sticks rigidly to the Copenhagen interpretation, but I suspect it's because Bohr is the only physicist whose name he can pronounce.

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:03:15 -0800

Thanks for the feeback, edd... it's definitely more of a 'cop' story.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:30:31 -0800

Regardless of whether or not the dog could sniff extraneous smelly steak particles that may have zigged into that reality when they should have zagged, this would not have helped the dog get to the steak unless she could go back to a point before the steak fell on the floor and then navigate through the timestream to the tributary that contained the fallen bite of steak. It'd be a lot easier on the dog if she just ankle bites her master until he gives her a steak in the future.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:39:53 -0800

Oh. And then even IF she could get to that alternate reality, she'd probably have to contend with the dog in that reality which may have already eaten the fallen steak almost as soon as it hit the floor.

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:16:30 -0800

Hugh Everett, of the Many Worlds Interpretation fame, is the grandfather of Mark Oliver Everett, who is better known as E from Eels. Of course, in some other universes, Eels never hit it big, so you'dve never heard of him.

By: pemungkah

pemungkah — Mon, 14 May 2007 13:23:58 -0800

Faint of Butt is correct. All The Myriad Ways is it. It's essentially an exploration of the social and personal effect of an interpretation of many-worlds in which all of them are proven to actually exist. Just remembering the last paragraphs of that story sends a shiver down my back.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:28:33 -0800

What entertaining science blog entries! I bookmarked the list of blogs on the network, as it looks to be very useful. Thanks!

By: edd

edd — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:40:24 -0800

'All The Myriad Ways' isn't the (other) story I was thinking of. I think I must be in a different universe to the rest of you and my comments are only appearing thanks to some quantum variant on a ColdFusion error.

By: edd

edd — Tue, 15 May 2007 06:07:26 -0800

With thanks to Phil Jones on rec.arts.sf.written for the story ID - 'The Store of the Worlds', aka 'The World of Heart's Desire' by Robert Sheckley, although I've not been able to find it to confirm it.

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Tue, 15 May 2007 08:12:07 -0800

Thanks, edd! You rock! I'll post a link if I find it...