In any case, I think the objective behind a good definition is that it should make obvious things true, and I think that this is completely in line with mathematical thinking on this stuff (I have some examples in mind that are due to Grothendieck, who was renowned for really thinking through his definitions, and giving really good ones when he did...
Some things he came up with haven't even been defined because nobody has been able to properly axiomatize something that fulfills the view that he had for it (which emphasizes again my point about how it's all about what should be true, not about finding new surprises, which is more of a bonus IMO)
@vzn Dude, you're contorting things. People want to know that they have prospects. If you tell a young person "scientists don't make money", that's plain discouraging. Someone being discouraged by that does not mean they're a money grubbing person.
@DanielSank science is one of the most important endeavors in human existence! thats exactly my point. the culture generally fails to recognize that in many ways, pay being only one of them. my own opinion is at odds with so called "collective wisdom" (which sometimes equates with stupidity). see the weird nuance of my position? :P
@DanielSank I suppose we agree but I would put considerably more down to luck than you: I agree that you can make a career out of anything if you just work hard enough. This though is not enough to become "successful" (obviously depends on the definition of success, thus the quotes both here and earlier). Look at musicians, or academics for that matter: The top (with some metric) probably don't work harder than many of the ones "merely" making a career out of it but the rewards are very different.
I, for one, would take pride in pursuing a degree that does not optimize my economic prospects in life (not saying that it doesn't) because it reflects my passion for the subject.
@DanielSank but I will add a caveat - it is not and never has been the goal to make money, but the developments I have helped make have been profitable. I do get my fair share of people stating that I am either not a scientist and 'less of a scientist' - I know that nonsense to be rubbish
@DanielSank there are many scientists here who have said they are not making great money. its ok to do stuff not merely for the money. just dont get into science thinking it pays well in general!
ofc there are many great/ famous/ legendary examples of highly successful scientific entrepreneurs, but my feeling is that its a major uphill battle. & agreed that is one way for there to be big $$$ in science. but its also lottery-like.
@NeuroFuzzy Well if your build is good, you should be able to just basically turn off the cpu fan anyway when idling. I haven't done a build in years, so not sure of the current state of things.
@0celo7 Decoding at least should have hardware support and not be very intensive. Encoding though is probably considerably more intensive. Anyway, don't know, and depends.
@DanielSank Yes, most people (that I tend to find myself talking to) overestimate the median wealth level. On the other hand, I suspect the median hourly earnings are not as different between higher-education-required jobs and other jobs.
user54412
That is, a lot of the people I know making good money in science spend a lot of time earning it. And to be honest it's hard to imagine how so many people are making so little given that there exists a minimum wage -- they aren't working 60-80 hours per week.
@DavidZ Is there a procedure for getting changes into the help center? I'd like to notify people via the mathjax page that you can use \renewecommand to make complicated TeX a lot easier to type / edit / read.
Why do we have $R_{ijkl} = g_{ik} g_{jl} - g_{il} g_{jk}$ in $S^n$? I have as an example the computation of sectional curvature of $S^n$ and it starts with this formula, but I've never seen it before. Is this a special case of the more general formula for $R_{ijk}^l$ expressed by Christoffel symbols which simplifies on $S^n$?
@Slereah: I'm not very experienced with Killing vectors and also don't know what the definition of a maximally symmetric manifold is (and what the property implies). Is there a more elementary way to see it?
@santiago It comes up less, and gets less (up)votes. Historically (up to 6 months ago or so) there was a reasonably strong tendency for experimental physics-related questions to get closed as "engineering", but I think this has improved now. @DanielSank probably still feels that he's being undervalued, judging by his expectations about people's opinions of experimental science.
And maybe he's right. But I think that it's a lot better than before, and no huge improvements can easily be made.
I know that most of us are "paper theorists," but I think we need to remember that experimental physics is physics too! We have several tags for experimental physics (with tag excerpts):
experimental-technology
Use this tag for questions pertaining to the limits, management, and operation ...
So we have a close reason for engineering questions because selection of materials for building that ultralight in the garage are off-topic. But where is the line drawn between engineering and experimental design? The question I'm thinking of specifically is:
Pressure applied to flat plate
With...
Because when it comes to real practical advice on specialist experimental techniques I may as well be talking to myself. It seems to be singularly useless.
Often we get questions of the form
"How to build this particular device?" or
"Why was this design implemented in such-and-such product?"
Are these questions appropriate for Physics Stackexchange?
I know that most of us are "paper theorists," but I think we need to remember that experimental physics is physics too! We have several tags for experimental physics (with tag excerpts):
experimental-technology
Use this tag for questions pertaining to the limits, management, and operation ...
Because when it comes to real practical advice on specialist experimental techniques I may as well be talking to myself. It seems to be singularly useless.
Often we get questions of the form
"How to build this particular device?" or
"Why was this design implemented in such-and-such product?"
Are these questions appropriate for Physics Stackexchange?
