The h Bar

7:00 PM

@DanielSank I voted your this question up long ago.

@DanielSank Ok, but they can't do that, they will probably leave. Kyle Kanos produced a lot of very HQ content and useful answers, but I estimate the probabily of the "leave open" of his 10000 VtC votes to around 5%.

@DanielSank As I can see, you vote for "leave open" around 20% of your VtC reviews, what makes you a nicehearted reviewer.

@DanielSank ...compared to the mean.

@0celo7 ...which also results, that many curious laymen gets an answer to his physics question. Maybe not very HQ answers, but it is still surely better, as you asks a question about physics, and it is closed because they say it is offtopic.

user54412

I think there's a lot of subjective judgement being made as though it were objective here. Why is closing questions inherently "bad"? Why is being "top 5" a "good" thing?

user54412

You're often free to choose your own moral axioms/utility functions/whatever, but it should be recognized that these are choices.

peterh

@ChrisWhite ...and these questions lead to another questions: "What is the PSE for?" "Why are we here?"

@ChrisWhite Closing a question is bad, if a curious layman comes here and ask something, then closing his question with an unacceptable reason is clearly like spitting in his face.

user54412

@peterh I think a lot of people would very much disagree with that analogy.

user54412

Besides, if you go by just counting members, the community here is probably not really a reflection of the founders' goals. The experts are outnumbered by the laymen, and I'm guessing that's not the original intent, but rather just a result of being kinder and more inviting to laymen than was called for.

peterh

7:11 PM

@ChrisWhite "unacceptable" means here the viewpoint of a layman, who doesn't even know that a meta site exists, but have a relative accurate opinion, what is physics and what is not. If he asks the 34523542. question about that the observable universe is in a black hole, and then his question will be closed as off-topic, he will leave the site and won't have a really friendly opinion about it.

user54412

Then again, as old as I am, I wasn't here for the founding.

David Z

@ChrisWhite As one of those founders, I believe that's accurate. It was never intended to exclude laypeople entirely, but the site was supposed to be primarily for experts.

user54412

The mods and John Rennie did all join the site before me, so they can always chime in.

peterh

@ChrisWhite I am sorry, I would like to edit it into a more acceptable version but it is too late.

GPhys

That makes it official cds.cern.ch/record/2205245

John Rennie

7:16 PM

@GPhys Booh :-( Though the news had already leaked.

GPhys

Yeah it's hard to keep 6000 people quiet

peterh

@DavidZ A purely MO-like PSE would be for me O.K. I would contribute that, as I don't contribute the MO, because I can't. But I would be a regular visitor. I think the PSE now wants to be both of an MO and a MathSE, and these are contradicting goals.

0celo7

What happened

GPhys

CMS made public results on (lack of) 750 GeV diphoton excess

0celo7

I'm not a physician, what does that mean

peterh

7:18 PM

It is the sad non-existence of the 750GeV big brother of the Higgs?

:-(

user54412

were we expecting a 750 GeV particle?

David Z

@peterh that was the intent of the now-defunct Theoretical Physics SE site.

@ChrisWhite no

GPhys

@ChrisWhite Dreaming, maybe

David Z

Nothing specific is expected at this point. The standard model is complete; all the predicted particles have been discovered.

peterh

This is why I asked this. Unfortunately, it was too broad. Well, it was really too broad, but it was also interesting.

@DavidZ Ok, but it also means, we won't ever fly to the stars.

user54412

7:21 PM

well, one thing I would expect (in principle) beyond SM is a neutrino mass

Emilio Pisanty

Dear TeXMaker: ... wait, what?

GPhys

@ChrisWhite You just have to use the "Nu Standard Model" ;)

David Z

@ChrisWhite oh, of course, there's certainly stuff to be discovered, but not new particles. Well, not specific new particles. There are theoretical reasons to believe that there are undiscovered particles, but it's anybody's guess what they might be.

Emilio Pisanty

@DavidZ So there aren't any fancy new combinations of quarks at higher energies that we haven't been able to probe?

peterh

@DavidZ I am thinking on the nuclear energy. The lasers. The semiconductors. The spaceships. I can't believe, why should it all stop now. Why should the humanity 1000 year long live in the todays technical level.

John Rennie

7:23 PM

And the Xenon expt failed to find any dark matter, so the world of particle physics is looking altogether less exciting than we thought it might be :-(

David Z

@EmilioPisanty Well combinations of existing particles (quarks) is a different story. I believe there are new tetraquarks being discovered every few months now, and the spectrum probably goes up to higher energies than we know about.

peterh

@JohnRennie What makes accelerating particles with focused laser beams, instead of radio waves, so hard?

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie Is this the experiment where they set this huge accelerator in vacuum and thought they had discovered a new particle but it turned out to be a xenon atom that snuck in?

John Rennie

XENON

The XENON dark matter research project operated at the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory is a deep underground research facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to finally detect long sought after dark matter particles. These particles in the form of Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are believed to be found by looking for rare interactions via nuclear recoils in a liquid xenon target chamber. The current detector consists of a dual phase Time projection chamber (TPC). The experiment detects scintillation and ionization produced when particles interact in the liquid xenon...

@peterh turning an idea into something that actually works can be a long and painful trek. After all, consider fusion reactors.

Sanya

@vzn no idea what you're talking about :o

Emilio Pisanty

7:26 PM

@DavidZ OK, sure. I guess the question was sort of - do our QCD (+rest of SM) chops allow us to predict the sort of stuff that will presumably crop up at the new energy ranges?

@JohnRennie You're too easy to bait =P. Presumably you've never received the attentions of prolific Hungarian email writers.

David Z

@EmilioPisanty Theoretically yes, but the calculations are computationally demanding. That's the domain of lattice QCD and supercomputers.

John Rennie

@EmilioPisanty damn, fell for it :-)

@EmilioPisanty but none of this is very exciting except possibly for the completer-finishers amongst us. Yet more confirmations of the standard model.

No dark matter, no supersymmetry, no axions, no large extra dimensions - it's all looking a bit, well, boring.

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie Sure. But that's some way away from 'no predicted particles remain undiscovered'.

More of a 'no interesting, nontrivial particles remain undiscovered'.

But then nuance is such a drag =P

John Rennie

@EmilioPisanty well yes!

peterh

@JohnRennie Science was in a similar situation until the 1600s. There was a static Universe, finite in space and in time, with different laws for the sky and for the Earth. Flying to the sky (even flying) was impossible, mainly because it required unreachable energy levels.

@JohnRennie The physicists were essentially phylosophers, nobody thought they could (or should) produce any useful. It was deep theory in ivory towers.

0celo7

7:39 PM

@JohnRennie Want to learn cohomology

::de-glazes eyes::

It's fun, I promise

DanielSank

@peterh I worded that poorly. I meant that you think that Physics.SE users in general do not communicate effectively with new users who produce low quality content.

@peterh That is a totally unsubstantiated claim and I think also incorrect. There has been large interest in reworking the homework policy, which demonstrates that we are in fact interested in improving our communication with new users.

@peterh What's your point? If you hand me 1000 bad questions I will vote to close 1000 times.

@peterh: I have noticed a pattern in your comments which I think requires your attention. You have referred several times to users in "good standing". I would encourage you to stop thinking about. A user's history is completely irrelevant to whether or not their question should be closed. The only thing that matters is the content of the question itself.

You, and others, seem to view the issue of closing questions as a somewhat personal issue. It is not. We vote to close questions which violate quality standards, and that's it.

I think what needs improvement is how we communicate what is wrong to the user who posted the question.

peterh

8:00 PM

@DanielSank It is a personal issue in the sense, that a goodstanding newbie getting an unfair treatment will be an unfairly treated person.

DanielSank

@peterh Again, "good standing" has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a question should be closed.

3

peterh

@DanielSank The result is a site with many LQ content and with many disappointed people leaving it.

DanielSank

Anyway, if you have ideas for improvement, I encourage you to post in the meta and give examples. If you go around saying "this site is messed up" but provide no information on what is messed up or how to fix it then all the comments made in the chat room are of no value.

peterh

@DanielSank Nothing to do in the rules, but yes, they are closely related things in the context of ethics.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh How does closing low-quality answers decrease the quality of the site? I'm honestly confused at what you mean there.

DanielSank

8:06 PM

@EmilioPisanty I think he thinks that if a user is a good person (i.e. "in good standing") then a post made by that user with good intentions should not be closed.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty A significant part of the closed questions can have an useful answer, but they don't get it. What a layman actually feels in the system, that you randomly pick out questions and close them.

0celo7

What is the issue here?

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh That's sort of the point of closing - that in the opinion of the closevoter the answers won't be useful to a large population. (Among other things, like an imbalance in the amount of work required from answerers vs the amount of effort put in by the asker.) If you disagree with that, then the onus is on you to provide examples.

DanielSank

@peterh catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

peterh

@DanielSank Exactly. It requires a friendly treatment and not bullying. If the site won't give it, it would be an acceptable reason. Closing questions massively as "offtopic", despite that they are very clearly about physics in the common sense, makes a lot of people feeling themselfes unfairly treated. And many of them are right.

DanielSank

8:09 PM

^ Read that

@peterh Show me an example of bullying.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh Examples?

DanielSank

@peterh Show me any example of what you're talking about. Until you do that, this is all just words. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the statements you're making are very typical of people who refuse to learn how the site works and put in the effort required to conform to our quality standards.

Emilio Pisanty

@DanielSank Yeah. Also (to repeat) this one meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/882/… .

DanielSank

@EmilioPisanty Hadn't seen that before.

Is there some way to turbo-link that on the front page?

peterh

@EmilioPisanty @DanielSank physics.stackexchange.com/questions/272508/…

DanielSank

8:12 PM

@peterh That post is blatantly against site policy.

It's not a good post.

Why do you think that should not be closed?

peterh

@EmilioPisanty @DanielSank physics.stackexchange.com/questions/271482/…

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh How is that, at all, a physics question?

peterh

@EmilioPisanty @DanielSank physics.stackexchange.com/questions/271342/…

Physics Meta

1

Q: Flagging low quality answers: an experiment

The handling of low-quality answers has been a point of contention and friction, on and off, for a fairly long time in this site. For low-quality questions, it happens that every so often someone sees a terrible answer, flags it as low quality, and finds out that it gets declined with the message...

Emilio Pisanty

And how is that person being unfairly treated, or even particularly interacted with at all?

@PhysicsMeta btw @DavidZ, got round to posting it.

DanielSank

8:14 PM

@peterh That question is really badly written. I can't even tell what the person is asking.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty @DanielSank physics.stackexchange.com/questions/270302/…

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh That certainly requires a lot of work to get to the quality standards of the site.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty @DanielSank All of these questions could have answers. If they had remained open, and they had got the answers, it had made the site better.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh And it's certainly not something I'd call bullying.

DanielSank

@peterh The first two are terrible.

The second two are hard for me to judge because 1) I don't know about the physics they ask about, and 2) They're very hard to understand because the wording is so convoluted.

peterh

8:18 PM

@DanielSank In my opinion, incomprehensibility because lack of the required English skills could be also an acceptable reason to close. But I am sure, there is enough people here to fix their spelling/grammar for +2.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh I disagree. Several of those could become useful contributions to the site, but in their current state they would only serve to confuse future visitors about what was being asked. They would also work as broken windows, signalling that it's OK to just ask away really muddled and confused stuff that's well short of the clarity standards of the site.

For improvable questions, they're closed precisely to make the posters improve them up to a state where they're useful.

peterh

@DanielSank It is always hard and unsafe to make assumptions on others motive. I don't do this very happyly also now. But, I think, simply the reason is, that 1) after you get the 3k, the first some hundred of VtC decisions are interesting. After that, we will be bored and things become a little bit automatic. 2) You simply won't a site, where questions like this are common.

@DanielSank 1) is a structural problem of the SE model. 2) You are physicist and it is the PSE, which is an obvious argument that your opinion is more important as the common sense.

@EmilioPisanty A quick visit of my reopen history shows, that the chance of a successful reopen try is around 10%. And it is yet a quite good probability, for example on the serverfault SE it is around 1-2%. The possibility, that a question get fixed by the OP, and then it will be reopened and answered, which would be the goal of the whole reopen queue, is only a theoretical one.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh Apologies, but I fail to see how those statistics are at all useful. If people ask a question, get told it's not up to standards, and then perform the most minor of edits on the question (example) then of course it's a Leave Closed.

The probability of success in a reopen is the product of (the probability that a fix will be accepted) × (the probability that the question has actually been fixed). You're trying to talk about the first factor without saying anything about the second. How does that work at all?

John Duffield

@peterh : this is exacerbated because the people who do this think they're the experts when they're not.

peterh

8:33 PM

@EmilioPisanty The first probabily is close to 1. The closed questions are edited mostly by the OP who doesn't require to pass the edit queue to edit his own question, even if he is 2k-. Thus, only the second matters.

John Duffield

@peterh : I utterly share your sentiments. I've recently written something called the Future isn't what it used to be

@peterh : the people who have left aren't just the disappointed laymen. The experts have left too.

DanielSank

@peterh Oh ok so I would strongly advise that if you are not a native English speaker, not that in the comments of your question and ask for help.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty I see also a second significant difference in our viewpoints. My arguments centered around ethics and the site development. Your arguments use mainly policies and rules.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh Is that last bit a fact? see the recent reopens.

DanielSank

@peterh Ethics has nothing to do with it. To me, site development and education of the users are the important things.

Part of that education is how to ask a good question.

You'll notice that I write rather long comments to users indicating how to improve their questions. Someone even pointed this out in the chat room once.

Emilio Pisanty

8:41 PM

@peterh ... so, by your argument (largely unsubstantiated, though), posters are very unlikely to fix their posts?

peterh

@DanielSank I never wanted special treatment on this reason, I do every possible to formulate as good as possible, and if anybody fixed my spelling/grammar I was always thankful. Having fewer ups and more downs in this reason is also not a problem to me. It is fair that not enough well English means lower quality content, thus people needs to work more for the same result.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh If you want to see it that way. I honestly still don't see that you're providing anything like a coherent argument at all, but to the extent that I understand your position, you're arguing that we should sacrifice site quality in the pursuit of being kind to people who can't be bothered to fix their posts.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty On my arguments, in most cases it doesn't really matter, how hardly the OP works for the reopen question, he hasn't a real chance for that.

Emilio Pisanty

I disagree.

@peterh Oh, OK. I guess the reopened posts I linked to don't exist.

DanielSank

@peterh Oh I totally disagree. If someone actually fixes the problems with the post it will be re-opened.

peterh

8:45 PM

@EmilioPisanty No, because the list of the recently reopened questions doesn't matter. What matters, is the probability of a successful reopen. It would require a more complex query, but not very complex. I didn't run the query, I only checked my own reopen vote history.

Emilio Pisanty

@DanielSank And, @peterh, if you disagree with that, then it's on you to provide the examples: posts that were rightfully closed, fixed, and then never reopened.

DanielSank

In my experience, there are many cases in which users get upset and refuse to fix the post, and then it is not reopened. However, there are also many cases where I comment on a question saying to fix a few things so that it doesn't get closed; in these cases I see much success.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh Nope. What matters is the fraction of successful reopens on the cases where the post was fixed. Nothing you've said provides any evidence on that range.

DanielSank

@peterh Raw probability is irrelevant. If posts are correctly closed, and the updates don't fix the problem, those posts should not be reopened.

To be fair, @EmilioPisanty, I think there are posts wrongfully closed, and in particular closed with the wrong reason.

This is bad because it doesn't tell OP what to do to fix the post.

Emilio Pisanty

@DanielSank Sure.

DanielSank

8:47 PM

I strongly dislike using "off topic" because it doesn't help OP fix the post.

peterh

@DanielSank The sad truth is, that if you simply try to edit the post into the acceptability, it won't have a chance. It doesn't really matter, how hard are you working on it. If you go to the meta, starts mod flagging, try to talk with the commenters nicely, then it has a small chance. It is not only a PSE problem, it is an SE-wide problem, and not the PSE is the worst SE site in this sense, but it is also bad. 10% is too few.

@DanielSank What PSE site would you like at most? If there would be a MO-like PSE site, would you enjoy it?

John Duffield

@DanielSank : I can show you examples of bullying.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh Sorry to break this to you, but that claim is pretty much completely unsubstantiated. You do need to provide examples of this, because to me at the moment it mostly looks like grandstanding, to be honest.

DanielSank

@peterh I like this site just fine, although I wish there were more experimentalist users and more people who know about noise.

@peterh Yes provide examples.

When I campaigned about allowing applied physics questions I had to show examples.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty It is my own experience based on years on many SE sites. As an objective evidence, anyone can easily check the probability of a successful reopen try. I said the 10% based on my reopen history (not being 10k+, I can't see others reviews, but I can see the current state of the questions in my own reopen vote history). If you would run a query for that on the data SE, you will probably get a similar result.

DanielSank

8:55 PM

@peterh Ok great. So you've said that we have problems, but since you haven't offered a solution or even shown specific examples of what you're complaining about, I have no idea what to do about it.

I do think that two of the questions you linked should be re-considered for re-opening, particularly if they are clarified.

I'll edit one of them to fix the English.

John Duffield

@peterh : Here's an example. User Lucas asked a question, his question got seven downvotes and closed, Lubos Motl was abusive in his answer but got six upvotes, and I gave a factual answer and got eleven downvotes. You can give examples like this until the cows comes home, and some "expert" will say that claim is pretty much completely unsubstantiated.

peterh

@DanielSank Yes. And you are yet a friendly, cooperative reviewer. You understand the concept of "probability" and "statistics" and admit them as arguments. The sysadmins of the ServerFault gone angry as I initiated a discussion about their <2% reopen result, and caged me for a year on a bullshit reason.

DanielSank

@peterh Don't argue based on % of reopened questions. Instead, collect examples where the post really should be re-opened, and present an argument that the policies should be adjusted to allow those posts to be re-opened.

Emilio Pisanty

Yeah, you lost me. I can't really say anything at this point beyond repeating myself. Essentially, what Daniel just said.

peterh

@EmilioPisanty I've shown 4 example questions which shouldn't have been closed on an enthusiast physics site which at least wants to be popular and successful. I've also shown reasonable evidence that the probability of a reopen try to success is around 10%.

@JohnDuffield This -10 answers seems very hardcore to me. :-( I can't imagine how could it get them without a simple comment. Normally if I answer something and get downs, I get also explanations here on the PSE.

@EmilioPisanty Sorry, currently I am communication with 3 people and many of my comments require to check links and references. But you are in the top of my priority list!

DanielSank

9:05 PM

@peterh The first two at least definitely should have been closed. They make no sense!

John Duffield

@peterh : that used to be the situation for me too until my reputation started to get near 3000.

DanielSank

@peterh Oh, come on let's all be nice to each other.

Emilio Pisanty

@peterh See, the core disagreement is that I don't think this is or would be a site for enthusiasts, and that's been the community position for a long time. If a layman can ask a good question by the existing standards then it's welcome, but I don't think the site needs to cater to everyone (and, indeed, it would do a lot to throw off the existing population of experts).

peterh

@DanielSank Yes, I've experienced long ago, that the GR isn't a popular topic if a newbie asks for it. But one of these question had long, beautiful GR tensor formulas. You think they weren't about physics?

John Duffield

@peterh : make sure this is top of your priority list too. Read the following comments.

Emilio Pisanty

9:08 PM

You're welcome to argue for a broader scope, but this is something that's come up repeatedly with very few consistent good posters backing a broader scope.

John Duffield

See Gresham's Law.

DanielSank

@peterh I didn't say it wasn't about physics. That GR problem is basically a "check my work" problem, and we explicitly do not support those. That's all. It's not a judgement against the user, it's just simply what we decided a while ago.

@EmilioPisanty I strongly dislike any discussion of "who" this site is for. This site is for physics questions and answers. Anyone posting physics questions and answers within the rather small set of site rules is welcome to use the site.

@peterh The beauty of the formulas is completely irrelevant.

peterh

@JohnDuffield You are saying interesting things and I am very surprised on your -9 answer without a single comment. What is going there?

John Duffield

@peterh : bullying and harassment. And envy from "the experts".

DanielSank

@peterh The down votes come because while John Duffield may say some interesting things, they don't answer the question.

2

peterh

9:12 PM

@JohnDuffield Ok, but it is not really clear to me, what is the reason. My answers don't get this, although I am far from being capable to produce HQ ones.

John Duffield

@DanielSank : I answered the question step by step, point by point.

@peterh : the reason is a bad attitude from some of the people who think of themselves as "the experts" round here. They aren't just unfriendly to people who ask questions. They're unfriendly to people who answer them. Keep up your criticism, and you too will find yourself with eleven downvotes on every answer.

peterh

@JohnDuffield A researcher physicist is an expert and I won't debate with him on factual questions. How the newbies should be treated, it is another thing. Your -9 answer looks to me a little bit phylosophical, but being a layman I can't really understand why would it be factually wrong, and I particularly can't understand why you got 10 downs without explanation. If people had thought it is pseudoscience, it had been long deleted. If it was wrong, you should have got also comments, not only downs.

DanielSank

@peterh Some answers appear to be interesting but are actually total nonsense. This is particularly dangerous as it can fill a new user's head with misinformation. JD does this a lot, and so some users have learned to pay extra attention to him so that when he does post nonsense those posts get down voted as fast as possible.

We do this to help prevent new users from learning too much false information.

@peterh Dude, we used to comment, but after six months, one year, two years, you get sick of commenting the same thing over and over to the same user. So in the end, many of us just down-vote and move on.

Do you really think there is value in us sitting here and indicating why JD's posts are wrong over and over and over...?

John Duffield

@peterh : my answers are not dangerous, and nor do they contain misinformation. If they did, people like DanielSank would be able to explain what's wrong. They can't, and won't. Because there isn't anything wrong. That's why he won't comment on this answer to say what's wrong with it. And that's why I get all the downvotes.

peterh

@DanielSank Uhm, it is harder as I've ever thought.

DanielSank

9:25 PM

@peterh What is harder?

peterh

@JohnDuffield I am now checking your first downvoted answers.

John Duffield

@peterh : I hope you will notice that they contain references to peer-reviewed papers and hard scientific evidence.

I'm not the one giving the false information.

peterh

@DanielSank To understand, why we aren't simply happy. The newbies could here ask (342134. time), if the Universe is in black hole. I could here ask, if the Higgs field is maybe different in neutron stars. You could have a funny extraordinary contact with other physicists while enjoying interesting questions. Why it can't go as it was intended? This is harder as I thought.

DanielSank

@peterh What is your native language? If I know it we could try to communicate in that language, since I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding some of your sentences.

I know Spanish, Russian, and Greek.

Although my Russian and Greek aren't that good any more :(

John Duffield

But not Hungarian.

DanielSank

9:30 PM

@peterh Maybe we can think of the chat room for fun interaction with other physicists, and we can think of the main site as just for getting answers. In that case, if someone asks a question that has been asked before, it's best to just direct to the original question and close the new one.

GPhys

(!)

peterh

@DanielSank I use Hungarian, German and English every day, and now I am after a lot of caffee... but mostly I don't have communication problems...

GPhys

CMS edited their note showing no diphoton excess at 750 GeV to remove the result

it must have been made public by mistake

It will probably be put back up in the next day anyway, I'd guess

peterh

@DanielSank Wow, it is a quite extraordinary portfolio :-)

DanielSank

@peterh Well, like I said, my Russian and Greek are pretty bad now...

I will admit that all three languages were motivated at least in part by women I know at various times in my life ;)

peterh

9:34 PM

@DanielSank Unfortunately, I've forgot most of the Russian I've learned as child. And also the Italian. English is your first language?

DanielSank

@peterh Yes, English is my first.

Russian is the most beautiful though.

peterh

@DanielSank I've learned English only on the Internet, from English RPG books and while programming. I've learned nearly nothing in schools. Maybe it was a mistake, but somehow it was enough. I could talk on English with native-level English speaking customers as part of my job (although probably not my English skill was my main advantage in their eyes). Maybe I am here not in my best form, and I am bored.

@DanielSank Yeah :-) Weren't it hard its pagelong spelling tables? The 7 cases, complex context-depended verbs, isn't it hard with English native language?

John Duffield

@peterh : sometimes somebody asks a question that has scant resemblance to one that's been asked before, whereupon some posters close it as a duplicate, and redirect the questioner to a question they've answered incorrectly. And downvote a correct answer.

DanielSank

@peterh The spelling was never a problem for me because I don't care much about learning to write foreign languages; my interest is in speaking.

The cases were a bit difficult. The context-dependent verbs were the hardest part.

I had a good teacher :)

peterh

@DanielSank :-) Russian women :-) She had a nice accent on English, I think :-)

DanielSank

9:43 PM

@peterh She grew up mostly in the USA, so no accent.

The Greek had a lovely accent.

peterh

@JohnDuffield You are a physicist?

@DanielSank How my English sound, really? It is a quite surprising thing to me, in most cases I can understand everything perfectly well, but reproducing it gives contradictory results. Sometimes they say, it is okay, sometimes say, it is incomprehensible. If people fixes the spelling my posts, mostly they don't need to make major changes.

John Duffield

@peterh : no. I work in IT. I developed a deeper interest in physics and the lack of scientific progress in recent decades when our teenage children gave up all their science subjects. I have read the Einstein digital papers and much else. See this answer.

And trust your instincts. If somebody here claims something, ask for the evidence and examples. When it is not forthcoming, judge that claim accordingly.

peterh

@JohnDuffield My instincts say, there is not too many people doing bad things here, but they do this quite effectively.

DanielSank

@peterh I understand most of what you write with no problem.

However, with more complex sentences, as the ones written above in our discussion, there are cases where I'm not sure what you mean.

peterh

@DanielSank But it sounds quite hard? No native speaker would ever say things so as I do?

DanielSank

9:53 PM

@peterh In fact, that sentence is a good example: I don't know what you mean by "But it sounds quite hard?".

> No native speaker would ever say things so as I do?

In some cases, your wording is unusual.

John Duffield

@peterh : perhaps some of them have friends.

@DanielSank: please provide Peter with an example of "we used to comment, but after six months, one year, two years, you get sick of commenting the same thing over and over to the same user". There's no need to provide any examples of "many of us just down-vote ".

peterh

@DanielSank Huhh, you are right! If I am bored, I start one-to-one translation un-intentionally :-) I tried to ask: "Does it sound too alien", "Does it sound nearly incomprehensible", "Does it sound as if it would be hard to understand", "Does it sound as no native speaker would say"

@JohnDuffield Ok, but they are physicists. We aren't. It is a significantly harder & deeper thing as the IT. Unfortunately, as I understood it, it was too late.

2

@DanielSank Aha. Most of the words haven't a direct one-to-one assignment between English and the other languages. Thus, if there is a sentence where nearly all of the words have a little bit different meaning as I think, the result will be... at least, exotic.

@JohnDuffield Did you play with QFT?

John Duffield

@peterh : but we can read. And when we read something written by Einstein and refer to it in an answer, we find we've got ten downvotes from the self-professed "experts" who couldn't answer the question.

peterh

@JohnDuffield In your this answer this event horizon growing thing seems to me exotic

John Duffield

@peterh : I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. I know something about QFT.

peterh

10:07 PM

@JohnDuffield People playing with GR metric say the following: 1) from outer observer, you won't ever fall into the BH. 2) for you, you simply fall into the BH and there is nothing special as you falls through the EH. Later, nearing the singularity, the tidal forces make spaghetti from you and you die. But in the eyes of the outer observer, it won't happen.

John Duffield

@peterh : It isn't exotic, it's Oppenheimer's original frozen star interpretation. Kevin Brown refers to it in the formation and growth of black holes.

peterh

@JohnDuffield The Higgs field couples to the weak field, manipulating the weak field couldn't be a way to manipulate the Higgs field as well?

John Duffield

@peterh : I'm afraid some people have never read the Einstein digital papers and don't really understand GR.

@peterh : I'm sorry Peter, I just can't empathize with that. According to Einstein a field is a state of space. At any one location it has one state only.

peterh

@JohnDuffield As I create answers, I try to find the questions which make them bored, and I answer them fast, before they close them.

John Duffield

"The two types of field are causally linked in this theory, but still not fused to an identity. It can, however, scarcely be imagined that empty space has conditions or states of two essentially different kinds, and it is natural to suspect that this only appears to be so because the structure of the physical continuum is not completely described by the Riemannian metric.".

@Peterh : I have to go now I'm afraid. Good night.

peterh

10:13 PM

@JohnDuffield I too. Good night!

DanielSank

@peterh Please beware that many users of this site find JD's answers to be "nonsense that sounds good".

3

Just... be careful.

peterh

@DanielSank I am. Good night! Well, you are in the US. Then have a nice day :-)

DanielSank

@peterh good night

Physics Meta

10:40 PM

-1

Q: List type questions in the re-open queue

So, I know there have been several questions asked about this, but I wanted to see what the current viewpoint was. The two questions in question are What are the next generation physics experiments? Accidental, unplanned breakthroughs in physics I was going through the re-open review queue a...

discussion

vzn

10:54 PM

@ChrisWhite hey cmon lets not start a (status of) theory vs experimental debate here. look at all the nobel prizes awarded for experiments. and often theory nobels are delayed until experiments confirm them. many cases of this. eg famous case: einstein/ relativity and the measurement of mercury precession by Eddington!

0celo7

What kind of ~~human~~ being defines the Riemann tensor with an extra negative

rob

@vzn Einstein's Nobel was awarded for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, not for relativity. The only relativity Nobel so far went to Hulse and Taylor in 1993 (though if there's not a second one for LIGO this fall I'll eat a hat).

vzn

11:11 PM

@rob good pt but not sure of any contradiction. the eddington experiment was 1919. it launched/ propelled einstein into massive worldwide "pop sci" fame. his nobel for photoelectric effect nobel was awarded ~2yr later, 1921. dont think thats a mere coincidence. actually it seems to show that nobels favor experimentalists even to the point of not awarding a prize for relativity, one of the big "oversights" in science history...

vzn

11:24 PM

wow, googling around on this topic, just found this! substantial bkg, a bit shocking o_O nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/…

0celo7

Einstein always looks so smug

vzn

another remarkable article on topic! discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/einstein-nobel-prize

> After years of sifting through letters and diaries of the Scandinavian archives, science historian Robert Marc Friedman says it was an intentional snub fueled by the biases of the day—a prejudice against pacifists, Jews, and, most of all, theoretical physics.

0celo7

11:47 PM

Hey @Danu , do you know anything about generalized Mayer-Vietoris sequences in de Rham cohomology?

i.e. MV with a countable number of sets

not just two

@obe stop changing your damn name

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