Comments on: Scale

By: The Intelligent Party » Blog Archive » Moral Reasoning vs. Moral Behavior

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 03:20:10 +0000

[...] At any rate, to my mind the strongest argument for the necessity of moral reasoning is the fact that without a mechanism for generating moral conclusions, we are potentially at a loss for ways to deal with new situations in human interaction. No matter how extensive and well-planned a rule-based moral system may be, without a strong consciousness of the reasoning and the principles behind the rules, it will likely fall short when confronted with situations its designers didn’t anticipate. This is not only true in the sense of changing understandings of social realities (see the Three-Fifths Compromise) but is also relevant when we’re placed in new and challenging situations about which our given moral codes don’t have much to say, simply because the authors of the codes couldn’t foresee the changes that centuries would bring. Human society is massive and ever-changing, even if it’s dwarfed by the universe, and it’s necessary for us to have ways of dealing with these changes in reality and understanding. To that end, it would behoove us all to have a better understanding of moral reasoning and how it works/should work, so that we are more able to deal with both new situations and lack of foresight (or intelligence, or honesty, or consistency) on the part of those who generate the moral codes upon which we base our laws. [...]

By: marek

marek — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 19:10:38 +0000

And this is the whole solar system at a scale of one pixel to about 10,000 km. That makes for the widest GIF you will ever have seen, but really does bring home the relative scale.

By: p m

p m — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 13:16:31 +0000

here you go. also: this.

By: emmineb

emmineb — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:51:37 +0000

You can watch the "Powers movie of ten" movie at YouTube. I saw it lying on the floor at my friend's, who has a 102 inches projector. Definetely the best way to see it. Or any movie for that matter. Then you have the double slit experiment cartoon; quantum mechanics made as simple yet as fantastic as kids' magic.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:59:41 +0000

“You do know the book and film Powers of Ten, right?”

Well, I do now. The whole point of posts like this is to get pointed to stuff like that. Thanks v much, Matt, I’ll chase it up.

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:25:59 +0000

12 – the point is, that in some sense logarithmic scales are what’s relevant for comparisons like this. There are basically only four non-overalpping ranges possible for beings with a range of experience like ours. I was also quite impressed at seeing just how much of the universe we might comprehend that way. Of course, this still means that there’s three whole ranges from as big to as small as we can really comprehend, which are beyond our possibility of understanding in this physical sense at all.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:55:53 +0000

A whole quarter on a logirithmic scale. On a linear scale, an infintesimal fraction.

By: Matt Austern

Matt Austern — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:16:27 +0000

You do know the book and film Powers of Ten, right?

By: Martin James

Martin James — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:51:06 +0000

But how big is an idea?

Its curious to me how many people don’t believe ideas exist in space and time and that the few that do believe they must exist in space and time haven’t figured out a way to measure them.

By: joel turnipseed

joel turnipseed — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:41:48 +0000

The American Museum of Natural History has a fantastic exhibit on this.

Of course, as Thoreau said: “I have traveled a great deal in Concord.” With our imaginative abilities to do things like put together the Rose Center exhibit (or this post), not to mention to do the kind of roaming into other lives we do with the various arts—no need to feel entirely cooped up (or small).

By: Santorum's Little Helper

Santorum's Little Helper — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:19:06 +0000

Here is some more info, if you are interested.

Excerpt from the link:
Some interesting facts illustrated in the model
The Sun is roughly the size of a grapefruit (14 cm diameter), while the planets range in size from dust-speck-size Pluto to marble-size Jupiter. Earth is about the size of a pinhead (1.3 mm diameter).

The inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) are all located within a couple dozen steps of the sun, with the Earth located 15 meters from the Sun. The outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) are spread much farther apart with Pluto located about 600 meters (just over 1/3 mile) from the Sun. Walking the full length of the model would take about ten minutes, not including stops.

You can fit the Earth and the entire orbit of the Moon in the palm of your hand—which represents the farthest humans have ever traveled.

On this same scale, the nearest stars besides the Sun are more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) away—roughly the distance from Boulder to the Panama Canal.

By: Santorum's Little Helper

Santorum's Little Helper — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:12:11 +0000

Somewhat related:
At the University of Colorado they have a to scale model of the solar system. I consider myself somewhat numerate, but is a very different sense you get walking around the model and observing the scaled size and distances in lengths and sizes we understand at such an intuitive level.

By: Nada

Nada — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:15:52 +0000

A whole QUARTER? Does anyone else find that astonishingly large? I feel like I live comfortably in the universe now, in addition to occupying a vanishingly small portion of it.

By: Charly

Charly — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:21:20 +0000

10-18 is the diameter of a proton. Electron is much smaller than that if it even has a diameter

By: Sirocco

Sirocco — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:50:21 +0000

Here is a scale reduction I like: if observable space is compressed by a factor of 10 billion, Earth is the size of a 1.3 millimeter grain of sand and the Sun that of a 14 centimeter orange 15 meters away. On this scale the distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4,300 kilometers—roughly that of Oslo to the Canary Islands.

Add the estimate that observable space contains more stars than there are grains of sand in the Sahara, or on all the planet’s beaches combined, and one may begin to feel slightly provincial.