The h Bar

Emilio Pisanty

12:11 AM

¬¬ c'mon, arXiv

send out the mailing already

Emilio Pisanty

12:21 AM

bam

there we go

arXiv:1808.05193

5

@ACuriousMind @Slereah @Danu @Semiclassical you might recognize multiple aspects I've brought up here previously discussed in that preprint.

Semiclassical

those are some cool figures

Emilio Pisanty

thx =)

hold that thought

hmmmm

apparently chat avatars take a bit to refresh

Yellow

springer.com/la/book/9783642146473

interesting book

i need a pdf :D

danielunderwood

1:36 AM

wow those are cool figures

Secret

2:29 AM

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22338040

Why are there no Journals on Human Mistakes?

I mean, surely having a literature that documents every instrumental and human error will be very useful if someone want to double check their results?

Akash. B

4:31 AM

Hi

Avnish Kabaj

6:50 AM

Scientist’s start up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time (2010) 9gag.com/gag/aOrWRLD?ref=android

3

John Rennie

7:08 AM

@AvnishKabaj with Dyson fans? Cool, I hadn't seen that before :-)

Avnish Kabaj

7:19 AM

:P

Emilio Pisanty

8:27 AM

@danielunderwood ::grin::

That's a lot of work right there

In the several workdays per figure range

Captain Bohemian

10:20 AM

today I dreamt I applied for position in my previous supervisor's lab, and after a public selection among me and the other 3 applicants, I was not selected. Nevertheless, I still joined the meeting in that lab and went dining with the members of the lab. It's a jovial gathering. But I waked before we arrived the dining restaurant.

CooperCape

11:14 AM

@JohnRennie I’ll be joining you up North soon - got a place in Manchester for physics :)

John Rennie

@CooperCape Congratulations! :-)

Manchester is a really great city to be a student (or so I'm told).

It's as lively as London but less expensive.

CooperCape

Yeah hopefully it’ll be really good

Only issue for me is that I’m still 17 but I’m sure there are ways to bypass that... right...?

Captain Bohemian

how nice to move!

John Rennie

You mean getting served in pubs?

CooperCape

11:43 AM

That kinda thing

But it’s only a few months idm

Avnish Kabaj

11:59 AM

Lol

danielunderwood

1:44 PM

@EmilioPisanty were you able to use existing packages to put them together? Or was it kind of a manual process?

Emilio Pisanty

2:02 PM

@danielunderwood for the figures?

It's all custom Mathematica code

The link to the code is at the end

If you mean the TeX, the source is available from arXiv as usual

danielunderwood

2:49 PM

Ahh I don't know how I missed that link at the end

danielunderwood

3:04 PM

Is there anything like distill.pub for physics or other sciences?

uhoh

4

Q: The formation of new stars as depicted in Feynman's lectures

I've stumbled upon this curious passage addressing the formation of stars in Feynman's lectures on physics: Whether we have ever seen a star form or not is still debatable. Figure 7–12 shows the one piece of evidence which suggests that we have. At the left is a picture of a region of gas...

Bounty expires in three days!

vzn

in theory salon, 3 mins ago, by vzn

Carbon nanospheres overcome quantum computer, spintronics hurdles / EPFL

@AvnishKabaj coincidentally was looking into the new dyson humidifiers, very high tech, cool stuff, not cheap, hes sort of like the Elon Musk of vacuum cleaners o_O :P dyson.com/air-treatment/dyson-humidifier-overview.html

danielunderwood

I've been curious about dyson stuff, but so far "it's neat" hasn't outweighed the price

Semiclassical

But it's cutting edge!!! therefore it's gotta be worth it, right

right?!?

(no, no it doesn't)

danielunderwood

3:19 PM

The bladeless fans though

It may be more interesting to build a bladeless fan now that I think about it

Semiclassical

per the wikipedia page on bladeless fans: "There are no visible moving (or fast-spinning) blades in this fan. The blades are hidden inside the pedestal (or base) of the fan."

danielunderwood

Oh well that's sad. My thought was some sort of electric magic

Semiclassical

yeah. still cool, of course

danielunderwood

My design would probably either not work or shock someone lol

Semiclassical

"In consumer terms, a bladeless fan blows air from a ring with no external blades. Its vanes are hidden in its base and directs the collected airflow through a hollow tube or toroid, blowing a thin high-velocity smooth airflow from holes or a continuous slot across the surface of the tube or toroid."

danielunderwood

3:25 PM

So obviously the solution is to turn the toroid into a magnet

Semiclassical

sure, why not

danielunderwood

A toroid had the same magnetic field regardless of cross-sectional shape, right?

(provided you wrap it in wire and the usual assumptions are there...I don't mean to say that you create a toroid and it magically has a magnetic field)

Sir Cumference

Morning

Semiclassical

the field inside / outside is independent of any particular cross-section, yeah

as you note, though, it of course only applies to an ideal toroid

and, well, not many ideal objects in everyday life

danielunderwood

You mean the world isn't ideal? I thought there was no air resistance unless an object is spherical and that strings have no mass

Semiclassical

3:34 PM

i know, what a shock

danielunderwood

Maybe I should try to model a non-ideal toroid. I've always found that independence of cross-section a bit odd and I wonder how fast it changes once you start to get rid of those assumptions

Another random question, is there a good example of a function that's $C^1$ but not $C^2$? Do those sorts of things ever appear in physics?

Semiclassical

the easiest non-ideal toroid I've managed to model is when you replace with a set of current loops

danielunderwood

Isn't that exactly what the assumption of an ideal toroid is?

That there are enough loops that each one lies in a single plane?

Semiclassical

a finite set

Lozansky

@Semiclassical I don't think it was necessary to invoke IBP, if we realize $p$ is hermitian then $\int \psi^{\star} p^2 \psi = \int \psi^{\star} p p \psi = \int p^{\star} \psi^{\star} p \psi = \int |p \psi|^2$

Semiclassical

3:38 PM

i.e. not arbitrarily many

danielunderwood

ahhh

Lozansky

Does the $^{*}$ not render?

Semiclassical

* is used to do bolding/italics in html, so it can create some annoyances in mathjax

Lozansky

Yeah...

Semiclassical

if it's being annoying, try using \star instead

either that or \overline i.e. $\overline{\psi}$

Lozansky

3:40 PM

Thanks

Semiclassical

Is $*$ supposed to be complex conjugation or hermitian transpose?

The problem I have is that you somehow need to get one of the $p$ to go from acting on $\psi$ to acting on $\psi^*$

Lozansky

In this case, it does not matter but it is cc.

Semiclassical

however, while it might be appealing to say that $p$ is Hermitian and therefore you can make $p=-i\hbar d/dx$ acting on the right into $p^\dagger=i\hbar d/dx$ acting on the left

danielunderwood

Hmmm so when you go to higher derivatives, you pick up adjacent terms in the limit definition. Like $\frac{f(x + h) - f(x)}{h} \to \frac{f(x + h) - 2 f(x) + f(x-h)}{h^2}$. Is this what people mean by higher derivatives causing issues with locality?

Semiclassical

that's not a great idea mathematically, since $p$ is only a self-adjoint operator when it acts on normalizable states

And it's a self-adjoint operator in that case precisely because you can do IBP and ignore the boundary term

in other words, IBP is what justifies $p = -i\hbar (d/dx)$ acting on the right $=p^\dagger=i\hbar (d/dx)$ acting on the left

Lozansky

3:47 PM

But I only care about normalizable states, no?

Semiclassical

typically, yes. But it's worth being aware about these distinctions. in particular, wikipedida notes: "In certain artificial situations, such as the quantum states on the semi-infinite interval [0,∞), there is no way to make the momentum operator Hermitian."

Lozansky

This is strictly in the case of $\langle Q^2 \rangle$ for hermitian $Q$

Hmm

Semiclassical

iirc, the failure of the momentum operator to be naively hermitian comes up when you talk about the uncertainty relation for particle in a box states

or maybe it's for particles on a ring? I know that case is problematic when it comes to uncertainty

Lozansky

No, not on a ring

Fawad

How newton used matrices?

Lozansky

3:52 PM

Or maybe yes, for momentum

But not for stuff like $L_z$

Semiclassical

Well, for particles on a ring, you end up getting momentum eigenstates as energy eigenstates

and thus seemingly get zero momentum uncertainty, despite having finite uncertainty in the conjugate coordinate

the trick is that the usual version of the uncertainty relation one proves for wavefunctions doesn't apply when you have periodic boundary conditions

c.f. ACM's answer here: physics.stackexchange.com/a/233311/55641

note in particular the sentence in there which states that $p$ isn't self-adjoint on functions which fail to satisfy periodic boundary conditions

danielunderwood

@Fawad I thought I heard somewhere that physicists didn't really use matrices until the early 1900s?

Semiclassical

from wikipedia:

"Matrices have a long history of application in solving linear equations but they were known as arrays until the 1800s. The Chinese text The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art written in 10th–2nd century BCE is the first example of the use of array methods to solve simultaneous equations, including the concept of determinants. In 1545 Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano brought the method to Europe when he published Ars Magna.
The Japanese mathematician Seki used the same array methods to solve simultaneous equations in 1683. The Dutch Mathematician Jan de Witt represented transformat…

So matrices as arrays have existed for a long time, and it's not absurd to think Newton would've known of them.

danielunderwood

Ahh maybe what I heard was about modern vector notation or something

Semiclassical

on the other hand, I don't think matrix multiplication came about until Cayley in the mid 1800s

and matrix multiplication doesn't really show up in physics until you get to Heisenberg's invention of matrix mechanics in the 1920s

danielunderwood

4:03 PM

I can't really think of using matrices without multiplication. I mean you can add them or set them equal, but then you're just using convenient notation for a set of quantities

Lozansky

@Semiclassical Thanks, that is useful

Semiclassical

So I think it's plausible to say that Newton would've known of matrices as a way of solving simultaneous linear equations, but he wouldn't have known of them as objects you can add/multiply

@danielunderwood well, when I think of how I initially ran into matrices in high school

I mostly think about doing Gaussian elimination on them

which is to say, a matrix as simply an array for organizing the coefficients of a simultaneous system of linear equations, and row operations as rules for manipulating those arrays consistently

danielunderwood

Hmmm I know they were introduced to me when dealing with systems of equations, so I may have had the same introduction. It seems like so long ago

Semiclassical

That viewpoint can of course be expressed quite elegantly in the language of matrix multiplication: An elementary row operation is just what you get by multiplying on the left by certain simple matrices

And if you multiply both sides of $Ax=y$ with a nonsingular matrix $M$, you don't lose any information

But that's not how you'd typically talk about them in a high school class

rather, you'd point out that such operations represent simple/obvious manipulations of your system of equations

e.g. subtract one multiple of one equation from another equation

danielunderwood

So people were doing the same thing all along and just didn't realize that there was a better way

Semiclassical

4:10 PM

Sounds right.

Hence why introduction of matrix multiplication proved such a big deal.

danielunderwood

Row transformations seem a lot more ad-hoc to me than $MA$, but I suppose that could just be due to the fact that I know of matrix multiplication

Semiclassical

"[Cayley] was instrumental in proposing a matrix concept independent of equation systems."

that's why Cayley is credited with inventing matrices, despite matrices-as-arrays being a much older concept

vzn

gauss worked a lot with matrices apparently in early 1800s (the key method of gaussian elimination named after him) but dont think newton did. also the (more widespread) use in physics probably was much later than in math.

Semiclassical

googling that is a bit tricky since you get "newton's method" in connection with matrix problems

some discussion on the history of Gaussian elimination here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_elimination#History

vzn

generalizations of newtons method are quite sophisticated but not sure if he used it even in multivariate cases.

Semiclassical

4:15 PM

and, huh, it credits Newton for the appearance of Gaussian elimination in Europe

@vzn yeah, so lots of false positives in that search

"The algorithm that is taught in high school was named for Gauss only in the 1950s as a result of confusion over the history of the subject."

lol, a good example of Arnold's principle right there

wow, even more history here: ams.org/notices/201106/rtx110600782p.pdf

vzn

@Semiclassical a bit surprised reading that, apparently newton had something close to gaussian elimination. so maybe he had something matrix-like. by the way, it was probably "rediscovered" more than once ie just because say early chinese were aware of it, there is not necessarily a straight line to later uses.

Semiclassical

"And you are to know, that by each Æquation one unknown Quantity may be taken away, and consequently, when there are as many Æquations and unknown Quantities, all at length may be reduc’d into one, in which there shall be only one Quantity unknown." Newton 1720

Given that statement, it sounds more like a strategy for algebra rather than a manipulation scheme for arrays

vzn

@Semiclassical anyway there is a key idea of abstracting coefficients of polynomial eqns into a matrix without carrying around all the eqns, not sure if Newton had something like that. carrying around multivariate eqns is conceptually not exactly the same as matrix manipulation.

Semiclassical

it looks like the matrix interpretation really did take quite a bit longer to take effect

vzn

modern math has a lot of powerful abstraction machinery and it literally took centuries to evolve. linear algebra is like that, it didnt really arrive until 20th century, modern statistics drove a lot of it.

Semiclassical

4:22 PM

yeah, the article touches on that a bit

vzn

math history is a fascinating subj, one of my fave college elective classes, although we didnt get into this in particular :)

Semiclassical

I suppose the overall driver for it was solving simultaneous systems of many many variables/equations rather than just a few, and the subsequent need to make such calculations efficient and manageable

Semiclassical

4:35 PM

hmm

what's the best way to sign off on an email to a prof you don't know?

i'm emailing a question re: a paper they wrote

enumaris

best regards,

Dr. Semiclassical

Semiclassical

riiight

though I'm suddenly stunned by the fact that omg I now could actually do [Name, PhD]

thats...huh

enumaris

snap fingers

I default to Dr.

Semiclassical

yeah, I'm not ready for that yet

I'm happy to address someone else as Dr. whatever

but referring to myself as such is just kinda wtf in my own head

enumaris

I demand to be called Dr. Enumaris wherever I go

Semiclassical

4:42 PM

Dr. N, got it

Lozansky

Dr. Acula

3

John Rennie

I got my driving licence changed to Dr Rennie when I got the PhD. I thought it might help if I ever got pulled for speeding. But I haven't been pulled for speeding since so I've never tested the theory.

Semiclassical

lol

enumaris

And in formal events, Dr. Enumaris, Ph.D., C.Phil., M.Sc., B.Sc.

John Rennie

For some reason at Cambridge you drop the BA as soon as you have the MA, so I'm just John Rennie, PhD, MA.

enumaris

4:44 PM

Is it MA not MS?

So physics is considered an "art" in England? o.O

John Rennie

No MA at Cambridge - not that it makes any difference.

Lot's of UK universities do award MSc and BSc, while others award MA and BA. As far as I can see it's mainly down to tradition.

enumaris

hmmm...

Interesting

I think here in the states it would be very weird to get a MA or BA in physics

there's a clear divide between the Sciences and the Arts

Semiclassical

ehhh

not really

I could've done a BA in physics or math if I had wanted to

enumaris

huh...that's interesting :O

Semiclassical

But that would've meant taking a language credit, so I went for the BS

enumaris

4:47 PM

Maybe I'm just so old I forgot the process lol

I only remember there being BS and MS

John Rennie

This is the Cambridge course

Definitely a BA, though they now mention an MSci that didn't exist in my day.

enumaris

hmmm...

what's a "course" in your jargon?

Cus a course to me is one single class

John Rennie

Course leading to a degree.

enumaris

like Physics 101 is "a course"

So...like a major?

o.O

John Rennie

I don't think the term has any such precise definition in the UK

And as far as I know we have no concept of majors and minors at university.

enumaris

4:50 PM

:O

culture shock

is shocked

Lozansky

We don't have majors/minors in sweden either

enumaris

shock intensifies

You mean there are places in the world that aren't just a reflection of the U.S.A.? Color me purple and call me mama.

danielunderwood

Yeah we had a BA program at my school too. Those took liberal arts electives and had 1 semester each of upper level CM, EM, and QM instead of 2 each

I think I've even seen somewhere that awards you a ScD instead of a PhD if you request it

enumaris

Supposedly there's a D.Sc. that's supposed to be "higher" than a PhD at some places?

Lozansky

And my programme (engineering physics) has no electives outside math/physics

John Rennie

4:53 PM

This is jogging my memory. I'm sure I've heard before that in the US universities sometimes offer both BA and BSc in a science (like physics) and the BA is a more general course.

enumaris

Sheldon COoper has one of those iirc

A D.Sc. that is

John Rennie

@enumaris I vaguely recall Oxford award DSc rather than PhD, though it's effectively the same thing.

danielunderwood

I think it was encouraged for us to do a BA and take teaching electives for the ones interested in teaching. I think some of the older colleges only offer a BA in physics

enumaris

I see...

danielunderwood

Why is it DSc and not ScD? Or DPh?

enumaris

4:55 PM

AFAIK, a DSc here in the states is supposed to be like 1 year longer than the PhD and so is a "higher degree" or something like that...

my knowledge is limited...

danielunderwood

1 year longer than something that doesn't have a set time? lol

Loong

@danielunderwood I just wanted to ask about that.

enumaris

@danielunderwood like I think you get it after you get your PhD

and it takes 1 year to get

something like that

danielunderwood

Ahh

"Well I spent 10 years for my PhD"

enumaris

so someone with a D.Sc. would also have a PhD

it would just be like

instead of doing a post-doc that wouldn't award a degree, they did a post doc that awarded a degree

but I mean...I researched this like 10 years ago so I could be completely wrong lol

danielunderwood

4:59 PM

This is completely off topic, but @enumaris is a NN that does grammar correction a far jump from spelling?

enumaris

yes

Grammar is much harder I think...

danielunderwood

Alright that's what I figured. Someone just asked me and I figured I'd check to make sure

John Rennie

A neural net that corrects my grammar? Another reason to hate computers!

enumaris

spelling is like - there are X number of words and the neural net has to learn the statistics on what combination of characters is more likely given those X set words...grammatical structure is muuuuuuch more complicated

you can construct, for example, a 100 word sentence that is not a run on sentence.

like a grammatically correct 100 word sentence...

or longer

danielunderwood

hmmm sounds like quite the challenge

enumaris

5:03 PM

at that stage I feel like end-to-end deep learning isn't really going to work since there's just no way to define a set of "all correct grammars"

all correct spellings is a known and well defined set

danielunderwood

Also I learned last night that a network of perceptrons can form logic gates...I suppose that should have been obvious in retrospect. Well I don't know that they're technically perceptrons anymore, but layers of two nodes and a bias.

Semiclassical

went with
"Thank you for your time,
[Name], Phd."

enumaris

yeah..Andrew goes over how you can do that as an example of the strength of NNs

he constructs a XOR gate from a 2 layer NN

danielunderwood

I have been really curious of how to do things without end to end deep learning. Well more of how to solve business problems that involve N classification problems or something

And yep that's exactly where I got it from!

enumaris

ah, you're taking the course?

nice

danielunderwood

5:06 PM

Think of it...we can use a NN to make gates to form a computer that is run on a computer formed from gates

enumaris

infinite regress?

danielunderwood

Yeah I'm slowly working through it. I started it a year or two ago, but just restarted the whole thing this itme

I could make a business out of if. "Neural computers"

They're slower than an actual computer, but DEEP LEARNING

enumaris

makes sense

The move is towards more end-to-end not less

Sir Cumference

@danielunderwood As opposed to PhD?

enumaris

more data = more ability to do end to end

danielunderwood

5:09 PM

@SirCumference Well the D and Sc/Ph parts are reversed

enumaris

I think the PhD is the one that is reversed

cus tradition

Sir Cumference

@danielunderwood It stands for philosophiae doctor, which is Latin for doctor of philosophy

At least if I recall from Wikipedia

enumaris

The degree is abbreviated PhD (sometimes Ph.D. in North America), from the Latin Philosophiae Doctor

danielunderwood

@enumaris even for complex/unrelated tasks? Like if you wanted to correct someone's writing, wouldn't it make more sense to spell correct it then grammar correct? Though I suppose the correct spellings may be more apparent if you examine the grammar

Akash. B

Hi

Anonymous

5:11 PM

@danielunderwood I don't think current day grammar correction applications make much use of neural networks at all. They seem to more or less have some inbuilt specified set of rules. However, Grammarly recently has begun with the "personalization" feature which I suspect makes some use of NNs

danielunderwood

Or say I wanted to convert something handwritten to a formatted document. Wouldn't it make more sense to handle OCR and formatting separately? Instead of a network that took in an image and did everything

Akash. B

🤔🤔

b_jonas

So I'm re-reading Leon Lenderman's popsci book (you know the one), and as he describes the progress of physics research, it really reminds me of Asimov's essay "The tragedy of the moon" in which he explains how lucky it was for those scientists (Ticho Brache, Kepler, Gallilei, and Newton) to have the huge moon causing tides and the four moons around Jupiter.

Sir Cumference

Pretty sure MD is also latin, for Medicinae Doctor

danielunderwood

So DSc is different because it isn't from latin?

Akash. B

5:14 PM

forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/08/16/…

enumaris

@danielunderwood yeah, correct someone's writing is one of those things that probably wouldn't work end to end

my point is only the trend it towards more end to end

not everything is there yet

b_jonas

And I thought of how it's similarly lucky, but for probably everyone in the universe, not just on Earth, that we have all these low mass atoms with only one common isotope and their simple spectrum, which helped figure out chemistry.

danielunderwood

Ahh I see

Akash. B

What are those concentric circles?in the link

b_jonas

At least if they have suitable enough eyes to notice the spectrum as easily as our scientists.

enumaris

5:15 PM

DSc is doctor of science

distinct from doctor of philosophy

it's a newer degree

Doctor of Science

For the degree granted by Soviet institutions, see Doctor of Sciences.Doctor of Science (Latin: Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the title used for the standard doctorate in the sciences; elsewhere the Sc.D. is a "higher doctorate" awarded in recognition of a substantial and sustained contribution to scientific knowledge beyond that required for a PhD. It may also be awarded as an honorary degree. == Africa == === Algeria and...

Sir Cumference

JD is Latin too. I guess it's some tradition

enumaris

Juris Doctor or something I think

Sir Cumference

@enumaris Honestly PhD should've been called ScD. Some people assume I want to be a philosopher

Anonymous

@enumaris Eh? DSc got replaced by PhD and "post-doc" here, around 50 years ago. It's obsolete now :P

enumaris

@SirCumference lol yeah that does happen...

Anonymous

5:19 PM

@SirCumference Be happy that you won't be awarded a Master of Arts degree :P

Anonymous

Unless you are in the UK

Loong

@enumaris The entry for Germany is not quite correct. The abbreviation of my degree is "Dr. rer. nat." and not "Dr rer. nat.".

enumaris

It's what you get when your degree is so old everything science was called "philosophy"

@Loong dem periods

vzn

@b_jonas am an asimov fan myself, did a autobio of him for highschool english class. in some ways humans were "lucky" to have "simple" laws but from another pov, it took many millenia to figure them out, and they really arent simple except in 2020 hindsight. you might enjoy this essay "relativity of wrong" chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

Sir Cumference

@enumaris I know the "philosophy" part comes from the original Greek meaning, i.e. "love of wisdom", but it's dated...

enumaris

5:24 PM

very dated :D

b_jonas

But also we have eventually found at least a few reasonably collectible natural samples of all the elements that have a non-radioactive isotope, mostly in undergreound mines.

And also a few radioactive isotopes that are stable enough to have remained but not so stable that we don't notice the radioactivity.

enumaris

does that mean I can call myself a sophisphile

b_jonas

Because how would you figure that out otherwise.

vzn

@Akash.B amusing article but omits mention of QM/ photons, a rather gaping conceptual/ historical hole. to borrow japanese aphorism, sometimes wrong and right are like a rope twisted...

Sir Cumference

@Blue I'll never understand why "arts and sciences" are related...

Semiclassical

5:27 PM

because historically they were a lot more related than they are now

Secret

because art is pretty and maths is pretty

enumaris

some maths

b_jonas

Helium near underground oil deposits, the rest of the noble gases in the air I think, many of the other precious metals in gold mines.

Semiclassical

the notion of art as individual creativity is also a fairly modern one

Sir Cumference

I see. Etymology is weird :P

Semiclassical

5:29 PM

yup

my favorite bit of etymology is that the words patient and passion come from the same roots

Sir Cumference

Huh. One that surprised me was that "several" and "seven" have very different roots

Semiclassical

the word which always surprises me for how little we understand its etymology is "strawberry"

the "berry" part is easy enough to understand, given that there are other berries

b_jonas

They even found rhenium, which was already pretty rare because the Dark Lord confiscated everything availble for forging the One Ring and presumably experiments before that, and we can't recover any of that from Angband.

Semiclassical

it's the "straw" part that no one gets

enumaris

etymology trolls

Lozansky

5:32 PM

You put 'em on a straw

Semiclassical

sure, let's go with taht

Secret

Day 4: S888 is not working

Lozansky

@Semiclassical Didn't you do this with wild strawberries when you were a kid? static.beta.pixgallery.com/images/detail/X/S/R/PIX-XSRTMK.jpg

vzn

@Secret what is S888? btw was wondering about your musings on this subj, meant to ask you sometime...

Semiclassical

not really, but then we didn't really have wild strawberries at hand

grocery-store strawberries, sure

Lozansky

5:36 PM

Uhmm that is cheating

Secret

@vzn well, replace 8 with *, I somtimes don't type asterisks because chat like to do something funny to it

As for that musing, let me have a look again first

vzn

@Secret lol ok phd work?

danielunderwood

oh no strawberries again

Wild strawberries seems like an odd concept to me. We do plant a lot, but they aren't wild here

Secret

need to do another code upgrade to do 2D surface scans (as doing tht manually is annoying when you need to repeat that for 100 something molecules)

Calculation itself is ok, there are no major errors in last week.

Lozansky

Wild strawberries are super common here

Secret

5:41 PM

4

Q: Is there any neuroscience research on the emotion of feeling nothing?

When people entering anechoic chambers, logically there is a sensation of silence because relatively speaking, the sound levels are much lower compared to some normal baseline Likewise, when there is emotional numbness there isn't a feeling of emotions nor there is an awareness that there isn't ...

cognitive-neuroscience emotion sensation

Those paragraphs talked about a very strange emotion experienced in two dreams which you felt you are on the brink of losing consciousness

vzn

@Secret ok what about the illuminati ref?

Secret

It's very strange emotions, more powerful than anechoic chambers and emptiness

The Illuminati is one of the red herring rants I use to clog Slereah

(well that was back when I have issues with him)

vzn

@Secret reminds me of this key buddhist concept, there is much religious analysis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81

@Secret have you read anything on the subj?

Secret

oh yeah, my buddist friend said i probably entered some kind of meditative state

while artists said nowhere artworks seemed to have a very profound but not well understood effect on me

The neuroscientists said they have not came across such state before

All 3 of them agree on one thing though: It is a very strong emotion

So basically, that paragraph (except the words "The Illuminati" and "The Plan" which exists solely to f888 Slereah) describes in a semi poetic fashion about the 1st dream where I felt that emotion

Semiclassical

reminds me of a random line of dialogue from a Mass Effect game

vzn

5:52 PM

@Secret that reminds me, found this interesting too & wonder how apathy (inter)relates to nothingness

Semiclassical

'Upon arriving at the dig site, EDI asks "Dr. T'Soni, have you ever encountered dinosaur fossils during your digs?" When [Dr. T'Soni] realizes that it was a joke, EDI responds with "No, jokes have specific structures. That was messing with you."'

Secret

I like nothingness and related concepts a lot, spend quite a lot of time on and off studying them in the gaps of my research (e.g. on trains, in classes I sit through with undergrads)

1

Q: What branch of metaphysics studies things like "Nowhere", "Limbo", "Non-being", "Neither dead nor alive", "neither present nor absent"?

Recently, when thinking about metaphysics and in particular the notion of abstract concepts, while also reading various settings of movies, games and books, I noticed that usually, entities that are often branded as mysterious and unknown have the terms similar to what is described in the title. ...

metaphysics ontology concept

Some of my most intense emotions felt are often not any of the standard 27 types of happy, sad, mad etc. It's like tranquility on steroids

Transcript for