Note: My question assumes a conceptual distinction between minds and the external world, regardless of whether they're actually two different kinds of substances.  There seems to be widespread agreement that the universe we currently inhabit is considered physical, but what about hypothetical worlds that behave completely differently? To illustrate my point, imagine that there are several other inhabited worlds, each in their own isolated space:   World A is completely different from ours, but it still follows the same set of laws that we call physics. By sheer coincidence, there's an Earth-like planet in which a tomato-like species has evolved. World B follows a completely different set of laws. For some reason, it still has something that resembles tomatoes. World C is collectively formed and manipulated by the minds of its inhabitants, and it follows no other laws. Tomatoes can be found here too, because people like tomatoes.   All three worlds are conceptually distinct from minds (and mental properties) in exactly the same way, so they deserve a common adjective. Obviously, World A is physical, but I'm not sure whether the other two qualify. Does the adjective physical apply only to worlds that obey the laws of physics?   If the answer is yes, then what would be the proper adjective to describe all three worlds? Terms like objective or non-mental seem too broad, because they could also encompass certain abstract concepts (e.g. numbers). If the answer is no, then what would be the proper adjective to describe only World A, or at least only World A and World B?
A childish question (literally) -    My 8 year old asked me this morning: "Dad, what does 'physical' mean?" - and I found myself at loss for an ordinary language answer.   Every answer I could come up with ended up sounding like a definition of empiricism: "physical things are those things that can be observed", "physical means something that can be measured", "whatever can be verified and tested", etc....   Claiming that things that are physical are those things which are material or things that are described by physics seems circular.   Google:     phys·i·cal   ˈfizik(ə)l/   adjective   1.   relating to the body as opposed to the mind.   "a whole range of physical and mental challenges"   synonyms:   bodily, corporeal, corporal, somatic; More   2.   relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.   "pleasant physical environments"   synonyms:   material, concrete, tangible, palpable, solid, substantial, real, actual, visible   "the physical universe"   And various dictionaries (here Merriam-Webster):      Definition of physical   1   a :  of or relating to natural science   b (1) :  of or relating to physics (2) :  characterized or produced by the forces and operations of physics   2   a :  having material existence :  perceptible especially through the senses and subject to the laws of nature   everything physical is measurable by weight, motion, and resistance — Thomas De Quincey   b :  of or relating to material things     lead to similar definitions.   How can one define "physical" in ordinary language terms? Is there a way of defining "physical" that doesn't presuppose empiricism? What is the rationalist definition of 'physical'?   Is there a definition that doesn't commit to either dualism or empiricism or to any epistemology?
Puzzling Enumerable.Cast InvalidCastException The following throws an InvalidCastException.  IEnumerable&lt;int&gt; list = new List&lt;int&gt;() { 1 }; IEnumerable&lt;long&gt; castedList = list.Cast&lt;long&gt;(); Console.WriteLine(castedList.First());   Why?  I'm using Visual Studio 2008 SP1. How to set BibTeX bibliography title? Currently my bibliography says "Literatur" (german). But I want something completely different there. How can I achieve that? How can I define a mathematical function as a LaTeX macro? All Stack Exchange data dumps The original ClearBits link to the September 2011 data dump has broken. How can I access it and other previous data dumps? The Internet Archive only has . Can polymorphing monsters spam their ability to effectively give themselves a massive health pool? Some creatures have an ability that lets them polymorph, such as the Couatl's Change Shape action. I am wondering if this ability could be used again whenever the form is dropped to give the creature a massive effective health pool.  For example, if the Couatl used their action to Change Shape and become a Veteran, then was hit for enough damage to kill the polymorphed form, could it then re-use the Change Shape ability to transform into a fully healed Veteran once more? Maximum value of $\sin A+\sin B+\sin C$? What is the maximum value of $\sin A+\sin B+\sin C$ in a triangle $ABC$. My book says its $3\sqrt3/2$ but I have no idea how to prove it.   I can see that if $A=B=C=\frac\pi3$ then I get $\sin A+\sin B+\sin C=\frac{3\sqrt3}2$. And also  maximum is attained for $a=b=c$. But this does not give me any idea for the proof.  Can anyone help? In "Tasksel" how do I select a package? I found a video on YouTube that shows someone using the command tasksel from the server's boot menu after a fresh install of Ubuntu Server. Simple enough it looked like, but when I go to the options I want to choose for installation it has no information on how to select them, and when I click Enter on one of them it takes me back to the command prompt.  So how do I make a selection of the items listed under tasksel?  I have tried Shift++ to add, but no luck. Anyone know?  I want to install Ubuntu Desktop, as Ubuntu GNOME GUI is not an option in the listing for Ubuntu 17.10 Server. Does the Dueling Fighting Style prevent using a shield? The Dueling fighting style doesn't seem to state anything about shields, stating that the character can only wield one weapon while fighting to gain the benefit. Does a shield count as a weapon or otherwise stop the damage bonus from occurring? Is there canon info on shelf life of various potions in Harry Potter? Do we know how long potions (in general, or at least specific ones) are potent (no pun intended) in Harry Potter canon?  E.g. do they last a couple of hours? Minutes? Years?   I seem to vaguely remember some comments of Snape's about Wolfesbane potion therfore I think at least some information exists. Homotopic maps have homotopy equivalent mapping cones How can I export object's field schema information to excel? How can I export the fields of an object from Salesforce into an Excel sheet? I'm only looking for the field schema information, not the objects records. Does magic jack work on Ubuntu? Does magic jack work with Ubuntu? I originally had my magic jack on a computer with windows XP and I decided to switch to Ubuntu but I still want Magic jack. How can I fix a geoTiff with an incorrect CRS? Trying to load and plot a raster (it's a DEM) in R, but having problems.    Using R I read in a raster file:  library(raster)  dem &lt;- raster("DEM_Victoria.tif")  # &gt;70 MB print(dem)  class       : RasterLayer  band        : 1  (of  3  bands) dimensions  : 5444, 6007, 32702108  (nrow, ncol, ncell) resolution  : 100, 100  (x, y) extent      : 176615.6, 777315.6, 5650397, 6194797  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax) coord. ref. : +proj=longlat +ellps=WGS84 +no_defs  data source : DEM_Victoria.tif names       : DEM_Victoria values      : 0, 255  (min, max)   My confusion here is the extent vs the CRS. The extent shows coordinates from a UTM Zone 55S system, while the CRS reports it as longlat.   Similarly, gdalinfo reports:  Driver: GTiff/GeoTIFF Files:  DEM_Victoria.tif Size is 6007, 5444 Coordinate System is: GEOGCS["GDA94",     DATUM["unknown",         SPHEROID["unretrievable - using WGS84",6378137,298.257223563]],     PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],     UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]] Origin = (176615.587999997427687,6194797.138000000268221) Pixel Size = (100.000000000000000,-100.000000000000000) Metadata:   AREA_OR_POINT=Area Image Structure Metadata:   COMPRESSION=LZW   INTERLEAVE=BAND Corner Coordinates: Upper Left  (  176615.588, 6194797.138) (Invalid angle,Invalid angle) Lower Left  (  176615.588, 5650397.138) (Invalid angle,Invalid angle) Upper Right (  777315.588, 6194797.138) (Invalid angle,Invalid angle) Lower Right (  777315.588, 5650397.138) (Invalid angle,Invalid angle) Center      (  476965.588, 5922597.138) (Invalid angle,Invalid angle) Band 1 Block=6007x1 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Red Band 2 Block=6007x1 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Green Band 3 Block=6007x1 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Blue   Is this real? A problem? (well it is to me, but perhaps because I don't understand something) Fixable?  I tried 'Assign projection' in QGIS, which uses this command:  gdalwarp -t_srs EPSG:28355 -srcnodata -32768  DEM_Victoria.tif DEM_Victoria.tif.tmp   but it failed with:     ERROR 1: Too many points (12100 out of 12100) failed to transform,   unable to compute output bounds. Stopping all automatic updates Windows 10 We've upgraded some machines to Windows 10 and realized there were some updates which updated as required. However, I realized there was no option available to stop the download similar to that on Windows 7 and 8.1. The only way I could stop the download was to stop the Windows Update service.  My question is does anyone know of a way to stop auto updates or is stopping the service is the only solution? Negative probabilities in quantum physics Check for column name in a SqlDataReader object How do I check to see if a column exists in a SqlDataReader object?  In my data access layer, I have create a method that builds the same object for multiple stored procedures calls.  One of the stored procedures has an additional column that is not used by the other stored procedures.  I want to modified the method to accommodate for every scenario.  My application is written in C#. Rack Mount Servers - Build them or Buy them? This is the  for "Should I build coomputing hardware myself?" questions.   I have put together countless PCs, but never a large server. The geek in me says build it, but the realist in me says let the manufacturer handle it when there is a problem. Ignoring the time penalty involved with the initial assembly time of a built one, which is a better solution? Have you ever run into a problem with a home build server that would have been solved easier/quicker/cheaper by going with a manufacturer? Are there any features that manufacturers give that aren't easily attainable with a home built server? Is there a word for one side in a pair? Is there a word for one side in a pair? In a conversation it would the the interlocutor, but I'm looking for a generic term. Determine group G as cyclic If $G$ has no proper subgroup, prove that $G$ is cyclic of order $p$, where $p$ is a prime number.     I know that since $G $is a group with no proper subgroups, $g \in G$ is not just the identity. I don't know where to go from there. (A kind soul at  suggested I post here as well, sorry if out of bounds.)  I'm trying to programmatically model a damped harmonic spring for use in mobile UI animations (physics mathematics isn't my background, please pardon any misconceptions).  Having derived the parameters for the general case equation, I can iteratively calculate values until I reach a suitable threshold, though because this is bound to "simple" trigonometric and $e^{x}$ functions on the CPU, the 4000-some-odd steps can cause about 0.25 seconds lag on slow devices while it calculates. I'd like to speed this up using my platform's super-optimized vector and BLAS/LAPACK variants.  The requirement for doing this is precalculating the number of steps necessary to reach my threshold value.    In the underdamped case, where the roots of the characteristic function of the differential equation are non-real, I can use algebraic tricks to get my values:  $$x(t) = c_{1}e^{r_{1}}\cos(i_{1}t) + c_{2}e^{r_{2}}\sin(i_{2}t)$$  (Given $r_{1}$, $i_{1}$, $r_{2}$, and $i_{2}$ are the real and irrational components of my two roots, respectively.)  Knowing that $r_{1} = r_{2}$ and $i_{1} = -i_{2}$, I can simplify to:  $$x(t) = c_{1}e^{r_{1}}\cos(i_{1}t)$$  And get my desired value of $t$ for my threshold $a$:  $$t = \arccos(a / c_{1} / e^{r_{1}}) / i_{1}$$    When the roots are real, the equation looks a lot simpler:  $$x(t) = c_{1}e^{r_{1}} + c_{2}e^{r_{2}}$$  However, I don't have my trig functions floating around to help me solve it (even if I did, the irrational components being 0 would cause problems, of course).  Take the concrete example on pages 3-4 of  (my bible during this process), since they at least solve cleanly:  $$x(t) = 1.5e^{-t} - 0.5e^{-3t}$$  I know how I would solve for $t$ to get my for when $x(t) = a$ on paper, by setting $x=e^{t}$, solving, and back substituting, but I don't have that luxury here.  I can make a few assumptions: the roots and constants are all real. I'm always going to be looking for the smallest, first, positive value of $t$. Obviously, the iterative solution is the simplest for this case, but in the end that would involve more steps and therefore be slower no matter what my other optimizations would be. How, then, would I go about solving for my threshold value algorithmically in this (supposedly) simplified case?  Addendum  The underdamped solution presents an extra requirement. The motion curve will oscillate back and forth a few times across the endpoint. Therefore, "first and lowest" $t$ requirement is not necessarily true. In my current, iterative code, the threshold value is both checked against the distance from the current $x(t)$ to the endpoint, as well as to the distance from the previous $x(t)$ as well to allow for a number of oscillations. This might make a more efficient solution nearly impossible.