Mathematics

6:00 AM

It’s kinda mysterious and vague

Well, my impression on it is it makes a lot of pretty pictures, is very important in complex systems and also very hard to solve even numerically

Zee

One thing I noticed is the use of computers in the subject , do you have the impression that’s an essential tool ?

Secret

I guess computers are essential (especially more powerful ones). The ODE systems in dynamical systems are generally have no closed form solutions, with complicated boundary conditions (e.g. weather forcasts and climate models), so you pretty much have to churn them with computers

It might be possible for the theory part to be done by people, but the actual number crunching is way beyond of doing it manually

Zee

Mmmm I don’t like technology, so I suppose I wouldn’t like that subject

Secret

yeah, its quite applied for most of its branches

Zee

6:05 AM

I don’t mind applied , I just don’t like to use any tools except my brain , nothing wrong with using other things , but I always have this paranoia that I may potentially end up in prison or an isolated island

And I would like to continoue my work there

Secret

yeah, dynamical systems is definitely not something that can be done easily without computers because so many things are interacting at the same time except for the simplest systems

Zee

How old are you ?

Secret

26

Zee

For some reason I always thought you were much older...

Secret

well.. many think the opposite

Zee

6:14 AM

That’s alright , people of science tend to resist creativity

Science always fights new ideas

Secret

well its more like: Science creates a lot of ideas, then send them into the gladier pit and only few survives

(cf theoretical physics)

Zee

Yes but that process is continoues

So when new ideas come along they go into the arena , but they won’t have a chance since the other theories are more familiar to people and usually have more backing

Secret

well, that depends, some new ideas are so awesome sounding that a lot of people support them, others just fade easily if they cannot show they are competative

Secret

8:59 AM

imgur.com/gallery/Lu6DW

I wonder how we can model that...

Abcd

9:47 AM

@Secret what's the difference between a weird and a non weird according to you :p ?

Secret

The core difference is whether they can withstood my super weird personality

since I am Patient Zero of The Weirdness

Abcd

@Secret what is that?

Secret

It's a metaphor, you now how I am somewhat insane right, and people can only understood my ideas if they are somewhat in tune with my thinking and patient enough

Abcd

4 hours ago, by Secret

You are lucky that you managed to find one of the achilles heels of our operations, so you win for now and we cannot do anything about it without destabilising this timeline, but let me warn you, your reign will not last and you will be erased just like most of the social problems by the end of the Promised Year

Secret

O, I like to wrap my frustrations into narrative format so that they look like folklore stuff

Abcd

9:50 AM

Are you angry? And it seems like you are warning him that you'll be back?

Secret

That message is not really directed to Kasmir, for he is just one of the many nonweirds

I rarely have interest in individuals, and only the events and phenomenon they caused

Abcd

@Secret tell me if I am a weird or a non weird :P ...

Secret

Well, you are part of the weird, otherwise you won't be so interested in what I think anyway

and also:

You don't annoy chat rooms with volley of boring questions like Kasimir does recently like a help vampire

Silent also felt like a help vampire at times, but at least he does not ask trivial questions that drags out the chat room that frequently

I do not have enough data to determine whether Silent is weird or not, however

Meanwhile, Tobias is definitely not weird because:

Feb 20 at 11:09, by Tobias Kildetoft

@Secret Or maybe I just ignore random questions that happen to be addressed to me

Weirdness generally decreases with age, thus I expect by the end of my PhD, all the people I met will be predominantly non weird

(o, and this age thing is a lot more complicated, it does not just involve the biological age, but also the underlying culture of the workplace or whatever the person is in)

In particular, the 40-50s are often the most boring group, where reality have crushed all their ability to dream and thus all that left is a hollow shell acting as a cog of the society

I have been taking measures throughout my life in order to not become like those groups

zeal

10:35 AM

@Secret I am in my late 20s and already feel so. But reading your comment gives me some encouragement. I would be very much interested to know what kind of measures. Speaking broadly, I believe such measures would, of course, be on a individual to individual basis.

Silent

10:56 AM

Let $f(x)=0$ if $x$ irrational and $f(x)=1/n$ if $x$ rational, $f(0)=1$. I have a proof that $\lim\limits{t\to x}f(t)=0$ for all $x$. But I can't 'feel' that, i mean, after all $f$ touches arbitrary large numbers, for integers right? so how come limit is $0$?

Secret

@zeal Try to keep an active social life of people from diverse backgrounds (outside your field of study), met more undergrads, go to conferences, art galleries, block off a section to go to gym every one a while, always think critically, do a lot of cross checking and above all, be curious and up to date with the world

Balarka Sen

@zeal Keep doing what you want to do. Read books, watch movies. Don't let academic pressure destroy creativity or imagination.

Secret

that also, Try your best to do things you like. I also like to go hands on in helping out instead of donating in order to take money completely out of the equation

Balarka Sen

I think you're making "imaginativeness" more grandiose a quality than it is

Certainly I think it's crucial to my lifestyle. But you're making a bigger deal out of it than it really is

Really the right suggestion here is to interact and expose yourself with artistic creations and not just scientific expositions. The purpose of art has always been to maximize imaginative freedom

Secret

Art also has a calming and relaxing effect for the mentally insane like me for example

btw, I do really hate spending money, thus e.g. my uni don't have good food thus I can choose to not eat lunch for a week in order to save the money for something more meaningful

Balarka Sen

11:09 AM

You need a fair amount of creativity in science too, but it's the scientific community that's really crushing for individuals involved. It straddles the boundary between "work" and "leisurely endeavors", where by work I mean something that puts you in a dominance hierarchy and you automatically get obsessed with climbing through that hierarchy (that's why publishing research in science is more of a big deal than the research itself)

all the arguments about publishing being a way to communalize scientific development notwithstanding: deep down one really thinks about abstract concepts like success and recognition when you publish stuff ...

Secret

yeah, and that is terribly unhealthy, the community itself is aware of that but progress on a reform is sluggish and funding agency are still looking for one dimensional metrics instead of the actual capabilities and passion of the research groups

Balarka Sen

Right.

Secret

open source and citizen science does help a bit in encouraging scientists to be more collaborative instead of competitive, and there are also industry programs that encourage cross collaborations between academia and industry, but I think until they find a more human way to do the metrics, I don't think that "publish or perish" will be gone very soon

Balarka Sen

Given that that's how human society has worked in pretty much any context in the last couple centuries, it's unlikely it has a very easy solution, yes

Pretty much everything's a big fucking race

Some will blame the wage system for it (eg, academia works in this way because funding mumble mumble). I think it's just a symptom of how we inherently think, not the reason.

Secret

11:24 AM

I sometimes wonder, am I always too naive to say that most of our social problems is due to power being spontaneously centralised to a few individuals, it does seemed this is even more complicated than I thought

Balarka Sen

It's a good observation but surely it's completely biological.

I "expect" we'd come up with a solution but I also "expect" a few couple hundred thousand years of evolution is needed for us to grow out of this in-built biological artifact :P

Unless we all die sooner

In which case fucking fantastic

Secret

(Huge block of Antihuman comments censored) Well, I felt like the coming summit between north korea and the US would be important, but like the critics, we have no idea what will happen on that day

Balarka Sen

I also expect that we'll live for a few more millennia :P

The worst scenario is not that the worst will happen sooner, but it's that it will happen much later, but soon enough that it happens before the good thing happens :P

Silent

12:27 PM

Let $f(x)=0$ if $x$ irrational and $f(x)=1/n$ if $x$ rational, $f(0)=1$. I have a proof that $\lim\limits{t\to x}f(t)=0$ for all $x$. But I can't 'feel' that, i mean, after all $f$ touches arbitrary large numbers, for integers right? so how come limit is $0$?

Secret