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1:00 PM
As opposed to now where there is no continual debates
 
@ACuriousMind Well, not ACM.
I just stole your example and now it says "Ryan was right."
:)
 
@Slereah Well, right now we can gripe about it, but we know that the ratio is fixed network-wide and there's nothing we can directly do about it. If we actually knew it is up to us as a site to determine the ratio, there would be blood, I'm sure
 
Oh well
 
Strangely, I cannot find any newer meta.SE post about increasing downvote weight
 
I'm guessing reopening the debate isn't encouraged
 
1:03 PM
@ACuriousMind On it!
 
Then I should at least find a bunch of duplicates, but all I find are ill-formed rants about "better voting" from users who didn't really think it through
 
I suspect that this is partly because SE is at its core centered around computer related questions
Which are usually somewhat easy to check for validity
It's hard to be a crank engineer
 
Correct
The free market has a way of filtering out the cranks
 
@Slereah True that. I also don't find anyone suggesting the thing with adjusting the ratio per community, which given that both you and @ChrisWhite have mentioned it recently, seems strange to me
Did no one ever ask about that because they somehow knew it would get shot down?
 
Wtf amazon, why are you recommending Harthshorne now
@Slereah Visser is "expected by Mar 29"
wtf
 
1:08 PM
@ACuriousMind possibly nobody ever thought of it
 
Most website give you late expected date
So that clients don't call if it's late
 
I agree with you that it'd just lead to messy debates, and is not worth the effort of implementation
 
@Slereah Normally amazon says "guaranteed by X date"
 
@DavidZ Possible...still, that's very strange too
But yeah, not going to ask it because it would really just proliferate the recurring "downvotes are mean" discussion.
 
Downvotes are mean? o.O
 
1:11 PM
Well yes, that's why I joined
I want to be mean on the internet
HE ADMITTED IT
HE'S THE EVIL GANG OF TROLLS
 
We don't really need to dwell on that :-/
 
Hm, well, I guess I don't have any ideas about preventing reputation increase for people whose posts are negatively scored on average that I'd actually want to see implemented
 
Maybe heavier weights from moderators?
 
That's been considered, I'm pretty sure
I don't support that
Heavier weights from high-rep users has definitely been considered
which is more or less the same thing
 
1:17 PM
@Slereah Moderators are janitors, not overlords ;)
 
I always pictured it more along those lines
 
Meh, adjusting the vote weight just for some users seems wrong.
It also skews anonymity of voting because people then can tell if a high-rep or a low-rep user voted on their post
Which would actually be an interesting statistic.
 
Oh, yeah, it would definitely be interesting
 
could JR wipe out people with like 10 rep?
 
In principle it'd be fun to see what happens if you apply a PageRank-like algorithm to votes and reputation
 
1:20 PM
I don't think SE will implement that for us just to "see what happens", though :/
 
Inertia is a powerful force
 
...since when is inertia a force?
 
@ACuriousMind yeah, it would take a lot of computational effort too. It'd be more like something to run on a data dump augmented with voters' reputations
 
@ACuriousMind Colloquial meaning
 
@ACuriousMind define force
 
1:23 PM
$\frac{\partial \mathcal L}{\partial\varphi}$
Well, force density I guess
 
@0celo7 The l.h.s. of $F=m\ddot{x}$.
 
$\int_\Sigma d^3x \frac{\partial \mathcal L}{\partial\varphi}$
 
Is there a Big Guy of Physics SE, by the way?
Or are local mods all at the same level
 
FFS Kasich, you need 106% of the remaining electorate to win, just give it up and stop shilling for the establishment.
 
1:29 PM
He's going to invade Canada to get more votes
So @0celo7
Are you pumped for Trump
 
@Slereah not quite sure what you mean, but there's no particular ranking among the mods
 
not that we recognize anyway
 
Qmechanic is the Lord of the Tags, though ;)
 
I think of Qmechanic as the boss
 
1:32 PM
@DavidZ Well if there is like an admin or such
A head honcho
 
Manish as the absentee landlord
dmcknee next because of age
 
@ACuriousMind Yeah, it happened to work out that we each have our own "pet projects" - certain tasks that we specialize in
 
then poor little DZ :)
like banning me?
@Slereah Dude
 
@Slereah not really. Not among the site mods, anyway. Of course the SE team outranks us all.
 
He'll either be the greatest thing since sliced bread or he'll ruin everything and will be hilarious. It's a win-win!
 
1:33 PM
Shog9 is the effective head of "mod operations", you might say
 
And if he gets Christie to prosecute Clinton, oh the salt will be amazing.
> Although the ad was produced by anti-Trump Super PAC “Make America Awesome,”
Haha
@JohnRennie Still working on a proof btw.
I think I can now use the mean value theorem, somehow.
(in 1+1 dimensions)
 
By the way
Would you agree with this statement
 
@JohnRennie Yeah, if I have a curve going outside of the light cone
 
Every two points on a null hypersurface can be joined by a geodesic
(a null geodesic)
 
no
 
1:42 PM
(Lying in the null hypersurface)
 
nope
 
Hm
Why not
 
Take two points on the null cone with spacelike separation
@JohnRennie if I have a curve $(t(\lambda),x(\lambda))$
 
True I s'ppose
Hm
 
then I should be able to find $t(x)$
and look at the slope of this
 
1:44 PM
I'm trying to justify the chronology protection theorem
 
and make sure it never exceeds 45 degress
or something
 
I am wondering if the "fountain" closed null curve is always a geodesic
 
I know nothing about that theorem
is it explained in Visser?
 
It is
It's the one about the divergence of the SET for fields on the Cauchy horizon
But as far as I can tell, part of the proof relies on closed causal geodesics
I am wondering what happens if there are no closed geodesics
But I don't know if it's possible
 
what
 
1:49 PM
Well the basic notion is that in curved spaces, the Green function can be expressed via a sum of a certain quantity over all geodesics linking two points
The so called Hadamard form
 
proof?
 
The proof is in an old ass book by Hadamard
It's one of Those Proofs
graveyard proof
I think I can even link it here because I think it's public domain by now
Yep, 1923
"Lectures on Cauchy’s Problem in Linear Partial Differential Equations"
 
link?
 
Came here to ask about a declined flag, but now discovered from chat logs that ACM had already brought it up:
1 hour ago, by ACuriousMind
@DavidZ @dmckee @Qmechanic Can whoever of you declined my flag on this "answer" elaborate on how that answers the question "Do tachyons move faster than light?". It says "If tachyons move faster than light, then Einstein was wrong". It doesn't say at all whether or not they actually move faster than light.
 
1:54 PM
@Slereah ok, what about it
 
Well, the decline logic makes sense after that explanation, but it is surprising that after all this time, and all these flags, I can still misinterpret NAA.
 
What about what
 
It is comforting to realize that ACM's in the same boat though :)
@Slereah and @0celo7 - you really had to interrupt my text flow with your whats!
 
what?
 
what?
 
1:58 PM
 
huh?
 
@TheDarkSide and FWIW there is often a bit of ambiguity in how we handle these flags. An isolated declined flag could be a mistake, or could have something to do with which mod happened to handle it. I'd say you only need to perk up and pay attention if you get a run of similar flags declined for the same reason.
 
Reading old timey analysis is a bit tough
For some reason the Hadamard form seems to be only used for QFT on curved spacetime
I suspect that there's a book in between about it
Possibly Dewitt
 
@DavidZ Nope sir, it is fine and I'm not worked up/ perked up. Your explanation, which is a reiteration of what we kinda knew before, makes sense. But a declined flag felt a little odd, for now.
@0celo7 Explanation:
 
@TheDarkSide Cool... not that I thought you really needed to be told.
 
@ChrisWhite Yeah.
So, what's the right way to answer my question? :-)
 
I should probably get out of bed...
 
Apparently the result to look out for in Hadamard is page 100
 
@ACuriousMind So you didn't want to help me with my problem, now I'm in trouble
 
Hadamard is the kind of book I want to see rewritten by a modern guy
I suspect it has not been done, though
 
2:29 PM
@Slereah Proof?
 
why does picking the only reasonable one take me to a Disney website
 
He knows all
Basically all answers funnel you to the same place
(JESUS)
Hm
The questions used to be longer
I guess he caught some flak for some of them
 
I picked "I don't care"
And it took me to a Disney website
 
Yeah basically when you pick a philosophical position he has no answers for
Straight to Disneyland
 
2:38 PM
> The proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything!
Haha
Hahahaha
Nice one @Slereah :^)
He didn't even define "God" anywhere, did he?
 
Just ask Jesus for the proof of the Hadamard form
Click on "continue" for more
 
All it asked me is if I believe in God.
He never defined "God" so this is rather useless.
 
One does not simply define God ;)
 
Say yes you fool
Else the Inquisition arrives
 
> 8. If God is all powerful and all good, why is there evil and suffering in this world?
The Bible teaches that God IS all powerful and all good. There is evil in this world. The only answer to the question of why there is evil and suffering then is:

“For a reason which is perfectly sufficient for God.”
Lol
 
2:41 PM
Replace God with Einstein
 
> 9. But I am suffering now. Why doesn't God stop it?
I don’t know why. God may stop it, He may not.
 
@0celo7 Very commital ;)
 
@Danu It's like the central limit theorem
Correct no matter what happens
 
I like that comparison.
And both apply especially if you have no clue what's going on :)
Btw @DanielSank I think your earlier thing is actually not an instance of the CLT at work, since you're just summing $N$ terms
Where $N$ may be small, whereas the CLT is about the limit $N\to \infty$, no?
 
Wait
Hm
No nvm
 
2:54 PM
WARNING: Crazy diagram from a maths doodling to be posted alert
(PS, do not rage/facepalm/freakout/whatever, it has been ages since I post a diagram)
 
vzn
3:09 PM
@user507974 it takes very careful study of the math to isolate the assumptions. this is a rough outline. new experiments are thought to close "nearly all" loopholes. some still remain. as in the original derivation of SR, a counterintuitive yet valid assumption is that those are exactly the "shape" of an underlying hidden variable theory. mainstream/ conventional physics currently does not see/ acknowledge this.
In Bell test experiments, there may be problems of experimental design or set-up that affect the validity of the experimental findings. These problems are often referred to as "loopholes". See the article on Bell's theorem for the theoretical background to these experimental efforts (see also J.S. Bell). The purpose of the experiment is to test whether nature is best described using a local hidden variable theory or by the quantum entanglement theory of quantum mechanics. The "detection efficiency", or "fair sampling" problem is the most prevalent loophole in optical experiments. Another loophole...
to summarize, it appears to me that researchers may be mixing up the "efficiency" and "fair sampling" assumptions/ conditions. while often or maybe "mostly" overlapping, they are not exactly the same thing in all potential local hidden variable theories (LHVs)
an interesting (near-philosophical) pov that is also rarely considered: quantum mechanics itself is literally a "hidden variable theory" on top of classical mechanics...
 
@vzn How so?
 
vzn
@ACuriousMind think about the way it treats position and momentum and complementarity principles etc... it restricts previously-thought continuous quantities into discrete values etc.
 
A "hidden variable" for a theory is something that is lacking from the notion of "state" in that theory for it to actually completely describe the state. How is quantum mechanics a "hidden variable theory" for classical mechanics.
 
vzn
it restricts energy into quantized packets, etc... there are many ways to "interpret" it as a sort of "hidden variable" theory that revises classical physics...
 
@vzn Quantum mechanics does not, generically, "restrict energy into quantized packets". E.g. the energy for a free particle, or generally a scattered state can take a continuous range of values
 
3:17 PM
It's really only bound states that go all discrete
 
You are just repeating pop-sci phrases that get thrown around but that do not reflect the actual theoretical structure of quantum mechanics.
 
WOO
 
@vzn What about the "way it treats position and momentum"? It makes them operators, as it does with many other classical observables. What about that has anything to do with it being a "hidden variable theory" for classical mechanics?
 
@ vzn there's also the issue of heisenberg uncertainty principle. I don't recall anything classical that will result in noncommutativity between conjugate observables (e.g. momentum and position
Thus I don't see how a hidden variable can produce this
 
3:32 PM
BTW, @DavidZ: The policy of declining flags on answers that "try" to answer the question is another of those policies that is not enforced consistently - it's probably enforced when the mods handle the flags, but the review queue tends to delete answers that are just crap.
 
Maybe we should run an experiment
Let's all post terrible answers
 
...and what would be the aim of that experiment?
Flood the site with enough garbage that the moderators start to delete it? :P
 
To determine the application of the rules!
Nothing but terrible but relevant answers
 
I don't want to try that because I fear what might come of it. Some sleeping dragons should not be woken.
 
Why are women so damn expensive?
 
3:43 PM
Buying a wife?
 
Don't know
@ACuriousMind the issue has resolved itself
@Slereah you know what's weird
SW has more physics than the other GR books
 
@0celo7 what issue?
 
they talk about fluids, gasses, photons
 
Should I give it a looksie?
 
stuff like that
@ACuriousMind the issue I wanted to discuss with you and Bernardo last night!
I didn't even need his advice
@Slereah maybe, but beware
the notation is dreadful
it's weird 1970s diff geo notation
no indices
but not the clean modern stuff either
 
3:47 PM
I can deal with coordinate free
 
Wald is coordinate free but he uses indices
I really see no reason to use "index free" notation
especially in GR
 
Because it is what the superior math master race uses
 
And when they refuse to use Einstein notation (when they do a calc in coordinates)...that boils my blood
 
$X^\flat (Y) = \langle X, Y \rangle$
 
vzn
@ACuriousMind (sorry offline conversation here) am well aware that QM is not typically regarded as a "hidden variable theory" & it would take an entire essay (at least) to expand on that pov.
 
3:49 PM
@Slereah what about that
 
vzn
it takes a lot of historical pov/ bkg to realize it has some validity.
 
I don't see how that conveys understanding any better than $X_a=g_{ab}X^b$
 
vzn
@Slereah full agreement there is a lot of "popsci WOO" about QM.
 
@0celo7 Superior Notation
Indices are for children
 
@0celo7 : Concerning your comment during the last biweekly phys chat session. You and I know that you are just joking when saying screw you. But how do you know if everyone gets it? I noticed that e.g. Terry Bollinger left shortly afterwards‌​. Please try to make the hbar a friendly place for everyone.
4
 
3:53 PM
Hm, what would be Einstein's equation in Proper Notation
Let's see
 
@Qmechanic Or maybe he wasn't interested in talking about GR and the homework policy.
 
I like to work with index free stuff
In fact, I even prefer to solve PDEs as if it is one object rather than a system of equations

The good thing about index free stuff is that it get rid of everything that has nothing to do with the geometry of the object in question, thus allow one to see the full picture
 
@Slereah easy
 
Yes, but
I want to make it look awful
 
$$\operatorname{Ric}-\frac{1}{2}Rg+\Lambda g=8\pi T$$
 
3:55 PM
Would you say that in that notation, $R = \textrm{Tr}(Ric)$
 
Rightmost brace should be a )
 
vzn
@Secret the analogy has to be fleshed out. but basically, high level pov, classical mechanics gives an approximation for the behavior of particles acceptable for some cases. QM gives more fidelity/ resolution. it does so based on "hidden variables" so to speak. for some calculations of particle interactions, electron clouds have no effect on the calculation and can be "averaged out". in others, more finetuned, they matter/ count. etc.
so electron clouds are in some sense a "hidden variable". QED. and there are numerous other examples in QM.
 
what is the Riemann tensor in Proper Math
Riem?
 
@Slereah Yes, and @ACuriousMind and I have discussed (at length) how to define $\mathrm{tr}$ invariantly.
At least on a finite dimensional vector space.
@Slereah I've seen $\mathrm{Riem}$, but also $R$ and $\tilde R$.
Usually $\tilde R$ means $R_{abcd}$.
And $R$ means $R^a{}_{bcd}$.
Let us see how SW does it
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_curvature_tensor
I see a bunch of covarient derivatives...
 
3:58 PM
Hm, I'm not too sure how you're supposed to write the musical isomorphisms on specific indexes in indexless notation
 
@Slereah You don't.
You make something up and tell the reader, there isn't a standard.
 
Well how do you write the relation between Riem and Ric then
 
@Slereah There is a way to do that.
 
What may it be
 
For one, you could write $$\mathrm{Ric}(X,Y)=\sum_{i=1}^n\langle E_i,\mathrm{Riem}(E_i,X)Y\rangle$$
(I don't know if I have the order of stuff correct there)
Where $\{E_i\}$ is a frame
 
4:00 PM
Well, that is certainly ugly :p
 
Yes
 
But then you picked a frame!
 
It does not depend on the frame!
It's well-defined.
 
Oh well
I suppose
Wikipedia suggests
$\operatorname{ric}(X,Y) = \operatorname{tr}(Z\mapsto R(Z,X)Y)$
 
Yes, that's how e.g. Petersen defines it.
 
4:08 PM
@ACuriousMind yeah, I figured. I'm not too concerned about that. This is kind of a protection against moderator power creep; we want to keep ourselves away from effectively being "gatekeepers" to the site, except in really obvious cases. So there are a lot of posts that are fine to delete if it happens by community action, but that I'd be hesitant to use mod power on.
 
@DavidZ That's understandable.
 
As a linear map, what is the geometric meaning if a matrix is block diagonal. Is it that it means it can be decomposed into a direct sum of vector spaces of smaller dimensions?
 
@Secret If it is block-diagonal, there are subspaces (of the size of the blocks) that are invariant under the operation - the map maps vectors in those subspaces into the same subspace again.
And indeed, the block diagonal matrix can be written as the direct sum of the maps on those subspaces
 
Ah I see, now I am starting to understand the molecular symmetry group matrix representations...
 
4:29 PM
For instance IIRC in 3x3 matrces you can split the trace
M - Tr(M)I and Tr(M)I
If block diagonal
 
what do you mean? You can always do that, what has being block-diagonal to do with it?
 
It is what I recall for decomposition of SU(3) spinors
Antisymmetric part, symmetric traceless and trace
 
That decomposition works for all matrices and dimensions, and has nothing to do with block diagonality
 
@DavidZ once power creep starts its almost impossible to stop ;)
Case in point the ownership of chatrooms.
 
@ACuriousMind i know
Just that block diagonal has no antisymmetric part
Hm, does it work for 2x2 matrices tho?
 
4:42 PM
@Slereah What? $\begin{pmatrix}1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 2 & -3 \\ 0 & 3 & 2 \end{pmatrix}$ is block diagonal and has an antisymmetric part.
 
@ACuriousMind guess I misunderstood block diagonal!
 
Block diagonal means that there are two (or more) square matrices $A,B$ such that you can write the matrix as $\begin{pmatrix} A & 0 \\ 0 & B\end{pmatrix}$.
 
what else would it mean?
@ACuriousMind Did you play Far Cry 3?
 
Is it worth $5?
On sale right now...
i.e. was it good?
How long is it?
 
4:49 PM
I think I also bought it in a sale, for 5 bucks I'd buy it
@0celo7 I thought it was fun
 
vzn
@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ what about ownership of chat rooms?
 
Why have a mod as one?
::prepares for another suspension::
 
vzn
@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ are you talking about this room or others?
you got suspended in here? or elsewhere? didnt notice
 
It's an old issue
-23
Q: Don't let moderators be chatroom owners

skill patrolI would like to suggest the following, network wide, change in policy concerning the ownership of chatrooms: No moderator should be a chatroom owner. This, I believe, would be a more efficient use of the experienced members of the community who frequently use the rooms and therefore, have mo...

 
4:59 PM
^note the votes
 

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