The h Bar

Michael

00:42

What is everyone's profession?

naturallyInconsistent

01:19

@ACuriousMind thanks; that makes it much clearer

naturallyInconsistent

02:44

@qwerty That's very annoying and scary. Miao miao just watched a YT video trying to work out the history of the movie Wizard of Oz and it cited the daughter of Judy Garland that Judy was such a great storyteller that most of of the "historical" anecdotes that were so believably delivered, arent anywhere near true. Personal communications is barely tolerable when a trustworthy source is approached, but how can that be relevant to maths?

@ACuriousMind Actually myow position on this is mostly a cringe-based rejection of what some other people exhibit. It is the whole, I look at the behaviour of people who are routinely proudly ignorant of who did what in science, and how brazenly they sprout nonsense, and the horror and disgust fuels a realignment towards the opposite side.

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent well Weber was a very interesting (and controversial) character and interesting in his contributions to gravitational wave physics. I'm at work and can't dig up the article I read on him but I'll try to find it later.

I felt that his name dropping of widely celebrated people was his way to make himself/his claims seem less "fringe".

I suppose since he was working at the cutting edge, perhaps it was a bit more understandable, but after a few times, one wonders...

naturallyInconsistent

03:06

@ACuriousMind I think that there is a simpler and much less nefarious explanation for this phenomenon. People gravitate towards attributing stuff to famous people, if only just doing so allows them to remember fewer names; but more relevant to your particular claim here, people also tend to give more credit to suffering. Just like how some people argue that Beethoven's music is superior because almost all of them are born out of incessant rewrites.

@qwerty That is a very ugly trait. In fact, just a few years ago, miao miao was unfortunately in the audience of someone who tried to name-drop and bolster his credentials so as to make himself appear less fringe when trying to suggest a modification of Schrödinger's equation, and the audience couldn't hold it in after half an hour of that. It is always very scary to get on the bad side of a polite audience!

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent well, yes, but only by the most uncharitable reading. one doesn't really know what someone's motivations are, and I didn't read his book that closely... only noticed the citations

naturallyInconsistent

Anyway, Einstein spent years attacking the GR problem and making many mistakes, whereas Hilbert simply guessed an appropriate action, churned the EL equation, and obtained correct answers. On top of the effort mismatch, it would also be difficult to motivate and explain why Hilbert's action is the only choice to make, whereas following Einstein, one can see all the physical insights being introduced, and so it is easier to judge whether one likes the theory or not.

@qwerty oh no no no no nooooo nooo no no

I do, however, think that "Einstein's relativity" simply shouldn't be a phrase at all. I mean, I have always found myowself needing to distinguish between Galilean relativity, SR and GR. Saying Einstein's relativity alone, how would one know if it is SR that is meant or GR?

qwerty

06:17

@naturallyInconsistent I think the wiki section on his legacy with the quotes from misner and wheeler are part of what I remembered en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weber#Legacy

@naturallyInconsistent mea culpa for using a loaded phrase: I meant something much more limited.

in regards to weber, he sort of fell heavily from grace because of his attitude. he took his pet project very personally. maybe his rejection was warranted but it also meant people are still hesitant to give him credit for the things he did do because he was so controversial - it could be interpreted as supporting his claims

or giving him a platform for them

(I guess people maybe feel ok about it now he's passed)

Tobias Fünke

06:39

morning

qwerty

guten tag :)

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty I think it is nice when big names are willing to vouch for smaller names.

@qwerty err...

M I A O ~

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent i'm a little nervous to ask what you mean...

Ryder Rude

hi

@TobiasFünke i have a way to reconcile probabilities as beliefs with probabilities as predictors

imagine a Bayesian person who uses frequencies to form beliefs

e.g. this person experiences that coins tend to land heads half the time in a large number of trials. so this person assigns the belief/probability 0.5 to Heads

now this person also believes in the principle of induction, because, from experience, it seems to work. suppose they assign a belief 0.99 to the principle of induction

using this, the person can use beliefs to make predictions about the future. e.g. for the future tosses of a coin, the person predicts that it would land Heads about half the time

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty just don't know how "victors write history" could have a sibling phrase that is "much more limited"

qwerty

07:00

@naturallyInconsistent something like the sources of history are biased, by a number of factors. as one example, recounts that make it to us are those that reside in libraries that didn't get burned to the ground for instance. as another, populations which were literate tend to be the ones whose histories are more traceable.

Slereah

Baby Cakes - Role Play Tournament (Be Aggressive)

►

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty sure, but that aint that close to that accursed phrase

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent mhmm, it's what I understood by it. I hadn't realised it was so loaded

naturallyInconsistent

07:22

@qwerty people are invested in corrupting stuff~

qwerty

08:42

@naturallyInconsistent the prod on that wiki page got removed. maybe I should put my concerns directly on the talk page :/

qwerty

08:58

it seems like a next possible step is putting it on articles for deletion

Ryder Rude

Weinberg proposed an objective collapse theory to solve the measurement problem arxiv.org/abs/1109.6462

the wavefunction evolves stochaistically in this theory according to a Schrodinger-like eqution

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty I'm confused? Arent those quotes cited properly?

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent no no I mean the brews ohare page from earlier

mechanics of planar particle motion

naturallyInconsistent

ah, I can put it back

qwerty

really? I thought it can only be tagged PROD once

naturallyInconsistent

09:11

You should read the history. It says that instead of tagging for deletion directly, it should be sent to AfD.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion

Articles for deletion (AfD) is where Wikipedians discuss whether an article should be deleted. Articles listed are normally discussed for at least seven days, after which the deletion process proceeds based on community consensus. Common outcomes are that the article is kept, merged, redirected, incubated, renamed/moved to another title, userfied to a user subpage, or deleted per the deletion policy. Disambiguation pages are also nominated for deletion at AfD. This page explains what you should consider before nominating, the steps for nominating, and how to discuss an AfD. It also links to the...

It says steps II and III require login

qwerty

ah. I missed the history of the main page as I was looking at history on the talk page.

naturallyInconsistent

I also had the same mistake lol

qwerty

I just created a wiki account. Should one of us follow the steps for putting it on AfD, and the other second it? Is that good form?

naturallyInconsistent

I dont know. not there enough...

qwerty

09:48

welp. that's my first wiki contribution!

naturallyInconsistent

yay~

Growing Mind

Hello Everyone...

Mr. Feynman

10:19

My tattoo message will soon disappear from the starboard

Although it wasn't a wise move to star ACM's message mentioning it

qwerty

you should commit

Mr. Feynman

I don't see the condition being fulfilled :P

Slereah

@Mr.Feynman This too shall pass

Mr. Feynman

Hopefully with a long enough chain of messages mentioning this "tattooo message", users will be to lazy to read it all and know the truth

Slereah

@ACuriousMind In the Cahier topos, is the inf. point on the site meant to be the dual of any Weyl algebra?

ACuriousMind

10:34

@Slereah you have entered realms beyond my comprehension, I don't know what a Cahier Topos is

Slereah

It's like a smooth set but the site is like $\mathbb{R}^k \times D$, for some infinitesimal point $D$

I'm not sure if it's meant to be a specific infinitesimal point or all of them

Can I just pick the Weil algebra to all orders???

Topos theory is very French really

The shadow of Grothendiecke looms large

ACuriousMind

Ah, the idea of that site is that by taking the Cartesian product with a generic infinitesimally thickened point, you effectively thicken each point in R^k

Slereah

Yeah

I believe the nlab will occasionally call it a formal smooth set

Slereah

11:13

Nice setting to have since apparently all the geometry is done using the principle bundles which interact appropriately with the infinitesimal neighbourhood

Ryder Rude

Benkenstein bound says the entropy of black hole is finite. But string theory has infinite dimensional Hilbert space. How to reconcile these two

is string theory expected to hav constraints on states

Slereah

Why would that matter

Ryder Rude

I was reading a paper by Smolin (the paper is not about string theory). I think the argument is something like : for a given energy of black hole, the number of microstates must be finite cuz entropy is finite. But I think string theory has a continuous spectrum of energy eigenstates, which would mean the number of microstates would be infinite @Slereah

Smolin does conclude that the QG theory has a finite dimensional Hilbert space whose dimension is proportional to area of boundary divided by black area

But string theory, on the surface, does not have a finite dimensional Hilbert space

@Slereah it is in this paper arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9508064 . Page 10 titled : consequences of Benkenstein bound

Tobias Fünke

11:42

@Mr.Feynman nov 10; never forget

Ryder Rude

Is B-H entropy the entropy of the event horizon or the entropy of the entire black hole? can one encode the whole information about the interior geometry (say, excluding the singularity) in a finite number of bits?

Mr. Feynman

11:58

@TobiasFünke I'm afraid that's Oct 3

qwerty

just learned about "short maps" and the first link I found was to nlab. i feel like this chat is somehow influential

Ryder Rude

Sabine says that the interpretation of B-H entropy is upto speculation backreaction.blogspot.com/2012/07/…

is this correct

she talks about a strong interpretation and a weak interpretation

but most sources like wiki tend to state the strong interpretation that the B-H entropy is the entropy of the entire black hole

is Sabine writing non standard ideas

qwerty

this is not intuitive ncatlab.org/nlab/show/short+map#justification

Ryder Rude

i think, in GR, the entropy of most systems should diverge cuz it is a classical theory with continuum of energies

but when we couple it to QFT, the entropy becomes finite??

qwerty

12:17

> Symplectic geometry is the basis of the modern formulation of analytical mechanics, and symplectomorphisms are (I think?) the same as what is called ``canonical transformations" in physics books.

is this true?

Ryder Rude

@qwerty yes

A symplectomorphism preserves the symplectic form. A canonical transform preserves the Poisson bracket

imbAF

If I have attempted to solve an exercise. May I ask here for additional info regarding the meaning and consequence of what is taking place in that exercise ?

Ryder Rude

a symplectic manifold is like a generalisation of phase space

phase space has co ordinates on it. symplectic manifold is more abstract and co ordinate independent

also, phase space is always $R^{2n}$ while symplectic manifolds need to be $R^{2n}$ only locally, i think

Slereah

12:34

@ACuriousMind Is it me or is the "simplex category" a scam

There ain't no simplex in this category, it's the sheaf of it that produces them

The humble G-structure

Mr. Feynman

Approaching language learning in the same way I approach physics is fun and funny

Slereah

@Mr.Feynman golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2018/02/…

Mr. Feynman

Oh, that's some brain-tickling shit

Slereah

I have been using the Duolingo for language learning lately

It is better than nothing but it has a lot of blindspots

Not really good at teaching patterns

Nothing to make you practice your tenses or conjugations

There's no youtu.be/IIAdHEwiAy8

qwerty

@Slereah i feel like 90% of the time I see an interesting maths blog post there's Baez's name attached to it somewhere

Slereah

12:47

He is prolific

Mr. Feynman

@Slereah Not my stuff. I prefer to teach myself grammar step by step with a book and use apps to talk to natives

Slereah

Both are useful I think

Lots of rote learning

qwerty

how many languages do you two speak?

Mr. Feynman

I only speak Italian fluently

Slereah

@qwerty two and a few, depending on what you count :p

Mr. Feynman

12:57

English is a life-long learning journey and I'm currently teaching myself Japanese

Slereah

I am getting on okay with the German on the duolingo lately but far from fluent

@Mr.Feynman weeb

Mr. Feynman

Now you can be ACM's buddy

@Slereah keep using your Latin alphabet, then!

I'm ascending

Slereah

I wouldn't trade the latin alphabet for Japanese tbh

Horrible system

qwerty

the koreans are apparently very proud of their system

Slereah

Korean has a pretty good system

All the more shining for being surrounded by neighbours with terrible ones

Mr. Feynman

13:01

@Slereah I thought it was inefficient too, but on the long run I think it makes more sense than I originally thought

Slereah

@Mr.Feynman Not a high bar!

Most of them won't even use spaces in text

An innovation the latin alphabet got in the low medieval era

Time to get on with the program

Mr. Feynman

What I like the most is that with our phonetic alphabet you may be able to read something and not understand it (e.g. you don't know the word or you're sleepy etc.), with sinograms, if you have read it you also know the meaning

@Slereah Can't speak for Chinese, but in the case of Japanese, complements are marked by particles (written in hiragana, not kanji) after them, so you can clearly see the piecese of the sentence

Slereah

@Mr.Feynman I'm aware and also switching script

Which is a horrible system for learning

Mr. Feynman

switching script (if you mean using the other phonetic alphabet, katakana), is like our italic

When you really want to make a word stand out, you can use a $\cdot$

Slereah

Clearly the best compromise between Latin and Chinese/Japanese is to use the latin alphabet, but as a determinative we use emojis at the end of words

Mr. Feynman

13:05

Well, they considered that

First they considered abandoning kanji and using just phonetic alphabets and then even using romaji (Latin alphabet) but it turned out that it was inefficient for the way the language is built and also for cultural reasons

Japanese has tons of homophones, so using our alphabet is not really suitable

Slereah

It is a bit unfortunate that language reforms mostly got out of style

Mr. Feynman

And you can't get away like we do in Italian and French with an accent :P

Slereah

Anything can be solved with an accent

qwerty

I used to wonder why we didn't all just learn and use IPA. i was informed that transcriptions of speech are actually not uniquely recorded in IPA (can't find the link from a quick search) amongst other things linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/14845

Mr. Feynman

Your accents are the spawn of the devil

Slereah

13:08

Ḯ̶̡̢̭̞͇̮͓̼́͜͜t̸̢̨̧̩̻̺̹͕̹͎̳̮̖̘̰͆̈́̄̋͒̀́̓̓͝ ̶͓͖̩̤͎̦͕̻̤̻̓̀̑͂̈̎͂̽̈́͜͝j̸̧̢̡̛͔͎̝͙͔̹͙͇̺͙͇̯͓̗͔̪̈́̒̂̓͑̓̋̓̋͊̽͛̈́̅̿̈́͂̚u̶̧͙̠̺͎̣̣͎̟͚̯̺̺͔̱̦̦͍͋̇̀͒͐̋̂̎̾͒̈́̕͘ͅṡ̶̢̨̡͖͓̼̲̳͜ͅţ̷͚̫͍̺͎͚̊̓̍̓̀̅̓̚͘͜͜͝ ̸̢̳̰̪̞̀̋̓̀́̕͘͜͠ẅ̶̨̨͎̹͈̘̩̼́͑̒͂̈̔̉̈̐̾̕͝o̴̢̱̲̟̳̞̭̦͚̥̰͖͛̂̓͋̿̉̆͊̾̊͘r̵̡̧̧̛͖̪̘͕̪͔̥̫͙̣̰͋̄̂̃k̷̢͎͈̻͚̜̠̺͉͉͍̜̙̩̊̇͛̒́̂̍̌̈͛̿͒̉́̈́̋̆̚͜͝͝ͅs̶̫̆̑͌̈́̕͠

Mr. Feynman

And here we go again. How many times have we told you that ancient demonic language is not allowed in the hBar?

3

qwerty

@Slereah you are a mainstream frenchman after all

Slereah

Oh it's out of fashion in France too

qwerty

replace mainstream with conservative, then

Mr. Feynman

I'm more into an immutable order :P

Slereah

13:10

Last time was in... uuuuh 1990 I guess? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Nothing major tho

Mr. Feynman

Those kind of things happen in Japan too :P

Slereah

The funniest thing about language reform is that all regimes everywhere decided that they hated Esperanto

I've met Esperanto enthusiasts and I can understand why

Mr. Feynman

For example more recently, it's allowed to use a です with an i-adjective, even if it's not a copula. Or also, they are starting to use ? and !

qwerty

lol. esperanto is very much why

Slereah

@Mr.Feynman Lame and boring reform imo

Go bold i say

Throw out entire bits of the language

Go full on Ataturk

Mr. Feynman

13:13

I don't know if there has been an official reform but sure as hell it has changed

Slereah

just make a whole new alphabet

Mr. Feynman

That being said, I'm barely at a (not-so-solid) N5 level, which is merely between A2 and A1, so I can't provide good examples yet

Slereah

Unfortunately major language reform is one of those thing that requires some pretty strong political goodwill but also would probably be the biggest waste of that goodwill

Tobias Fünke

@imbAF "Don't ask about asking, just ask"

imbAF

Essentially I have the following setup:

And I did the following:

So essentially I have to atoms in two different positions, in both atoms I consider the p_x orbital expressed as a real harmonic $p_x=const. \frac x r$

And I want to construct the matrix element $R_1(x)p_{x1}HR_2(x)p_{x2}$

Then I did the graphic solution as you can see

But my setup is such that the x axis does not contain both orbitals. So I do a rotation so that the x' of the rotated coordinate system contains both orbitals

then one can decompose the orbitals of each atom as a cos and sin part

This was my reasoning

What I fail to explain

is what do I do with the rotation that I did

there is a hint given, but I don't understand the point of it

so if you are familiar with Slater-Koster tables

perhaps you can help me?

Silly Goose

13:35

is quantum cloning only a thing of consideration in a QFT framework?

Tobias Fünke

@imbAF sorry, I have never worked with these things, I cannot help you. perhaps someone else in here

Silly Goose

seemingly to clone a quantum system as it is described in say Wootters' and Zurek's paper you need to create systems, which normal QM is not equipped to do.

Slereah

@SillyGoose What do you mean, it's famously done in QM

and the proof for it is independent from the Hilbert space you're using

It's just a theorem on Hilbert spaces and unitary operators

imbAF

If I have a grassman number, and also it's complex conjugate, should I consider it's complex conjugate an entirely different nr. such that they anticommute?

In similar fashion that two different grassman numbers anti commute ?

Silly Goose

well The W&Z paper defines ideal amplification (copying) as $\lvert A_0 \rangle \otimes \lvert s \rangle \mapsto \lvert A_s \rangle \otimes \lvert s \rangle \otimes \lvert s \rangle$.

Where they consider the apparatus as a quantum system as well and are not turning some ancilla into the wanted state, but are actually creating the wanted state.

Slereah

13:41

That is one of those nasty shorthands

You're not magically producing an extra dimension to your Hilbert space

It's common in quantum information to drop a Hilbert space if it's boring

Typically the zero states

Silly Goose

Hm but i mean they are actually considering single mode photon modes in the paper so isn’t it possibly appropriate in this circumstance

Slereah

I'm not a big expert in QFT but doesn't the Hilbert space split into tensor products if you separate its regions

You are presumably copying that single photon mode somewhere

I know photons aren't localized but in practice that's what you do

Silly Goose

oh i guess i was imagining more like a xerox machine scenario where a single person is making copies of their state in one place

Slereah

How would that work

imbAF

If the following is true: $M_1f(x_1,x_2,x_3)= f(-x_1,x_2,x_3)=\pm f(x)$. then in case the function is odd after a mirror transformation $M_1f(x_1,x_2,x_3)= f(-x_1,x_2,x_3)=- f(\vec x)$, is it true that $\int f(\vec x)d\vec x=0$ ?

Silly Goose

13:54

@Slereah what is the problem with that?

Slereah

@SillyGoose What's a "copy of the state" in the same place?

Do you mean maybe going into the Fock space

$$| 0, s, 0, 0, 0, \ldots \rangle \to | 0, 0, s \otimes s, 0, 0, \ldots \rangle$$

up to symetrization whatever

Silly Goose

Or i guess i should not have said in the same place

Slereah

You could do the Fock space case I guess, though I'm guessing the proof is gonna be much the same

qwerty

14:10

@naturallyInconsistent I had a bit more of a read and hung around a bit: I think what happens is that other users vote to delete or not. so should be fine in the case you wanted to contribute I think.

Slereah

No cloning theorems are basically showing the absence of a unitary operation with the desired properties really

Tobias Fünke

@Slereah or even more, linear operators, no?

Slereah

@TobiasFünke Also good

As long as it forbids any reasonable physical operation

If you want to be extra good you should look at all POVM :p

Silly Goose

14:38

@TobiasFünke yeah it seems really it’s the linearity

i think people just specialize to unitaries as they describe closed system dynamics

Slereah

15:38

Is the mass of a system given by something like the square of the Lie bracket of the boost and translation

Like for the Killing form $B$, something like $$B([K, P], [K, P])$$

With some projection of $[K,P]$ to a vector or something

[using the central extension of the group]

Would work for Poincaré, Carrollian, Galilean

But the static kinematic has [K, P] = 0

Does that make sense to describe it as massless

"The static group correspond to situations where translations and boosts are small with respect to some scale. The result is that boosts do not act on spacetime
in this case, the effect of a boost can only be seen in its central extension, which is the same as the Bargmann one discussed below. "

I guess not necessarily

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty yay then miao miao can stay off the matter

Slereah

15:55

arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0509025

tis indeed given a mass by central extension, even if trivial

Relativisticcucumber

18:23

is there a rationale for why electric fields 'dont care' about motion? e.g. consider a spherical shell of a certain charge that is spinning. so i can compute the B field and then say the E field looks like it would for a point charge, but i have some reservations about saying the motion of the shell truly has no effect on the electric field, even if we restrict ourselves to magnetostatics

Vincent Thacker

18:39

@Relativisticcucumber Because the charge density is constant?

qwerty

20:22

@Relativisticcucumber where's "electric fields don't care about motion" from?

Mr. Feynman

20:37

@qwerty From my Professor's lecture three years ago that elequently explained the EM tensor transformation law by saying that "The field... he doesn't know if we're moving, but..."

If that makes no sense to you, you're on the right track :P

ACuriousMind

@Mr.Feynman is "field" grammatically masculine in the professor's native language?

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber What generates an electric field is electric charge. If the charge distribution is unchanging, then the field is unchanging too

So even if the carriers of the charge are moving, it won't matter as long as the overall distribution of charge stays constant

Mr. Feynman

@ACuriousMind So, well, in Italian (Italian lecture and lecturer) we have only masculine and feminine and "field" is masculine. The way to go is to use masculine adjectives, of course. That being said, no one would use the pronoun "he" for a field :P

You just omit it

ACuriousMind

@Mr.Feynman but you can't omit the pronoun in English

so choosing "he" makes perfect sense to me

Mr. Feynman

The lecture was in Italian

ACuriousMind

20:41

oh

Mr. Feynman

Or - if you really want to use the pronoun - you have an Italian word for "it", which is technically masculine grammatically but used for non-living things too :P

qwerty

what sir cumference says makes perfect sense but the quote by itself was a bit huh-inducing

Mr. Feynman

So ultimately, his choice of words was as weird as using "he" in English, which is why I adapted like that

ACuriousMind

alright, alright; I just know that choosing the correct English pronoun consistently is pretty hard if you're coming from a language with grammatical gender :P

Mr. Feynman

But really, even if I used bold font for "he", the point was that it was funny to explain Lorentz transformation with that mysterious sentence about a "field not knowing"

My friend looked at me horrified and I was like "Huh? What happened?" because I was reading something else, probably Landau

ACuriousMind

20:45

dunno, it's pretty common for people to explain the independence of some thing A from some other thing B by saying "now, A doesn't know about B"

qwerty

yes. look, when I asked what a tensor was I was given two choices. some profs would say "an object that transforms like one " and the Russian profs would say "a tensor is like a watermelon"

Mr. Feynman

I agree, but really that was all we got :P

@qwerty I read it with a strong Russian accent

qwerty

truly between a rock and a hard place

@Mr.Feynman lol. correct

ACuriousMind

"tensor is like watermelon" is a top tier phrase to say in a Russian accent

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber By the way, here's an excellent example of what I'm talking about from Griffiths, which ties into everyday life

Mr. Feynman

20:46

@ACuriousMind LMAO I was about to point out that I didn't mentally read the articles "a" either

Sir Cumference

Man Griffiths is a good book

well i've heard not as great things about his QM book tho

Mr. Feynman

@ACuriousMind Incidentally, it's probably more difficult since Italian has only feminine and masculine. If you have a neuter word in German, in most situations you know you have to use "it". I don't have such privilege :P

Physics is feminine

Dang, decontextualized that sounds horribly sexist

Sir Cumference

Curious, how does Italian grammatical gender apply to loan words?

E.g. is Bremsstrahlung masculine or feminine

qwerty

@SirCumference really? I learned from Griffiths in undergrad and was always under the vague impression that Jackson (never read or followed it closely) was supposed to be better

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference The original German word is feminine

Sir Cumference

20:52

@qwerty I've only used Griffiths, but it's probably my all-time favorite textbook

got a 9.5/10 on my weird textbook rating scheme

Mr. Feynman

@SirCumference mhhh, it depends on the word. For example "computer" is masculine, "chat" is feminine

qwerty

@SirCumference that is truly high praise

ACuriousMind

@Mr.Feynman somewhat (at least we have the concept of the neuter gender), but German grammatical gender doesn't correlate with "natural" gender at all - many words for inanimate things are still masculine or feminine, and many words for persons are neuter!

Mr. Feynman

Oh my, that sounds horrible

If I remember correctly, Latin - except few words - was mostly regular with genders

ACuriousMind

well, not that many person words are neuter, actually, but the default way to form a diminutive turns words neuter

@Mr.Feynman what do you mean by "regular"?

Latin also has many masculine or feminine words for inanimate things

Mr. Feynman

20:56

I think my Latin vocabulary has been wiped by time

Sir Cumference

It is kind of surprising English doesn't have grammatical gender, considering how most of its parent languages (German, French, Greek, etc.) do have it

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference it used to have it, it just lost it along with most of the grammatical cases

cf. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Sir Cumference

huh, interesting

Mr. Feynman

Japanese brought that to a different level: they don't have singular and plural either

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