The h Bar

7:39 AM

silence

Sid

@Blue dude, at home. The best I can do, is drink coffee. :P

bolbteppa

@vzn From the blurb:
"A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy... physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics"
This is clearly childish haha, how can you read a ~ 400 page book that actually assumes QM is based on solipsism and poor reasoning and not feel completely misled?

amazon.com/What-Real-Unfinished-Meaning-Quantum/dp/0465096050

@danielunderwood one is usually told not to want books on things like ads-cft and instead to want normal things :p

Captain Bohemian

8:59 AM

I am sure today is not a holiday--as I just went out, I saw postoffice is on business.

in the past Dec. 25 was a holiday for Constitution Practice Memorization Day. I don't know when this holiday convention has been changed.

Come on, a new kind of room called trashcan is created.

Anonymous

9:24 AM

→ 7 messages moved to Room for Blue and Secret

12:05 PM

@danielunderwood Why would they fail if you just told them which books you want?

Regardless, I got no books, just whisky and socks

Loong

12:21 PM

Oh socks! I am envious.

@ACuriousMind btw, do you want this thing: chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/107046/7951

@Loong Looks on-topic for us to me, send it over

Loong

okay, thanks

Secret

1:19 PM

@vzn Vzn, Blue: Lol, there are journal articles on these things!

definitely useful for studying he history of magic as a cultural phenomenon

i am always worried about there are no academic studies on these as random websites on such subjects always try to scam people money

danielunderwood

2:15 PM

@ACuriousMind ahh right I forget that's an option

I too got socks. No whisky though :(

And Merry Christmas/Happy Boxing Day Eve all!

3:30 PM

@bolbteppa well written, captures remarkable hidden history. can you believe the copenhagen interpretation (usage/ acceptance) has anything to do with manhattan project + US-Russia cold war? amazing! you already dont like it? after reading flap blurb? surprise! whatever :P

user381184

hamka to samajh hi nahi aavat hai ka bol rahe

Anonymous

@TheBroly Hi. It's preferable that you restrict your conversations to English in this chat room. Not many understand Hindi.

3

user381184

just kidding

GodotMisogi

3:52 PM

Happy Halloween!

Kentucker_Filled_Turkey

so it's not the 1st time I see that, but someone posted the same question within a few days

he accepted no answer the 1st time

so I cannot flag it as a duplicate

what can we do to merge the 2 questions?

@Kentucker_Filled_Turkey Raise a moderator flag, I think mods can mark all questions as duplicates.

Sir Cumference

Morning

Morning

What is this event about?

Sir Cumference

4:09 PM

Christmas?

@MohammadZuhairKhan The chat session? Nothing, really, just talk about whatever you want

Oh okay

Christmas is just not a big deal over my place

The only difference is my mom got a day off

We experimented with a stricter schedule/agenda for a few times but it turns out there's not enough topics around the site to fill a biweekly session

I can kind of agree with that

And people got bored of discussing the homework policy for the umpteenth time :P

4:12 PM

So, I am really interested in theoretical physics. Grade XI

Is that a whole branch or is it a subset?

What's the difference? Also, there's lots of different kinds of theory. The more useful way I think is to think of physics as a bunch of subfields (topics like material science, quantum field theory, fluid dynamics,...) each of which has a theoretical and an experimental aspect.

Hmmm

But isn't the experiment one generally earning more?

Like if you get the grant

Earning more what?

Money

Like how do people working in theoretical physics earn that money

Teaching as a professor?

I'm not aware of a general difference in theorists' and experimentalists' income. The grants in experiments tend to be much more costly than in theory because building a collider or an optical lab or whatever is just more expensive than giving the theorist an office and a blackboard :P

4:16 PM

Oh

What are you into?

I just checked your profile

Nice

In an alternate universe, I'm a theoretician interested in (algebraic and differential) geometric aspects of physics, gauge theories, non-perturbative quantum field theory, string theory/M-theory, and the application of representation theory to physics.

You might notice the irony that I'm not earing any money with that :P

Well, 70k rep is good enough

Anonymous

@MohammadZuhairKhan I'm not sure whether professional theoretical physicists earn more than professional experimental physicists on average. However, getting a funded PhD is tougher in some of the exotic areas in theoretical physics, compared to the areas in experiment physics which are receiving lot of government funding these days. But you can always make up for that by becoming a programmer later. :P

@MohammadZuhairKhan Heh. In that case @JohnRennie is the richest of us all, but he'll probably tell you that rep can buy neither cake nor laptops

Do you need to know programming to work as a theoretical physicist?

Anonymous

4:26 PM

@MohammadZuhairKhan Oh, definitely not (in most cases).

Well thank god

But does it play a factor?

Like would it be helpful?

@MohammadZuhairKhan No, but it helps - there's lots of theory closely connected to computer simulations

What is the preferred language?

Completely depends on what you're doing and what the group you're working in has always used

Anmol Grover

How did Einstein's magnet,conductor thought experiment show that ether does not exist?

Q: What is problematic about the Moving magnet and conductor problem?

4:31 PM

4

The problem is posed as follows: There is a conductor and a magnet in relative motion. This motion induces emf in the conductor. The value of the induced emf is independent of whether it's the conductor or the magnet that is moving. This phenomenon has two different explanations depending on t...

Anonymous

@MohammadZuhairKhan Depends on what you do. Say people working on quantum algorithms often work in quantum programming too - there are even languages for that like Qiskit and Q#.

C, Fortran, Python, R, ::shudder: IDL, I've seen many languages used

Thanks a lot mate

Anmol Grover

Thank you :)

You are welcome

Anonymous

4:35 PM

Most theoretical physicists I know in real life suck at programming. There's that. :P

What about you?

Anonymous

@MohammadZuhairKhan Umm, I'm an engineering student.

No about your programming skillz

Curio

Merry Christmas, I thank you all for all the help you've always given me

And a merry christmas to you too

4:55 PM

@MohammadZuhairKhan hi so are you a student? what major?

Lol grade 11

Trying to figure out what I am stepping into

@MohammadZuhairKhan so what are your favorite subj(s)? thinking of going to a university?

I do plan on going to a university, though the specifics are not fixed yet. Physics and math happens to be two things I am interested in @vzn

Though the entire field of quantum mechanics intrigues me

@MohammadZuhairKhan good combination and advise you not to avoid Computer Science, many physicists have gone that direction incl in this room. QM/ QC is an excellent/ thriving area of study.

Thanks for the excellent advice.

5:00 PM

@MohammadZuhairKhan yikes, advice? more a suggestion wink :)

I am not avoiding computer science, just trying to figure out how to get started

Like I am self-studying till 12th grade with only some coaching centres powering me

have been interested in the interface between Computer Science + Physics for quite awhile, it seems to be strengthening in key ways. have some blogs on that, have to write some more...

@MohammadZuhairKhan it really helps to be self-motivated/ independent no matter what you study :)

That is true tho :)

@MohammadZuhairKhan If you want advice, I'll give you this: Don't specialize too early. Look at everything that's on offer, don't get locked into a path you'll regret down the road. Life will happen and it's okay not to have everything figured out from the beginning.

I know, so I have only physics and maths figured out, not even if I will combine them.

That is why I am looking into all those options, trying to figure out what I am compatible with.

Thanks @ACuriousMind

5:08 PM

@MohammadZuhairKhan physics + math are always combined :) :P

But math has other companions too :)

Anonymous

@MohammadZuhairKhan Not sure how to answer that. :P I do code from time to time.

A rhetorical question, if you will

Anything in physics like that?

I remember seeing one that went E=mc^2 and c^2=a^2+b^2

That looks very close to some of the math I've seen physicists do ;P

Now that is racial profiling ;)

5:12 PM

...what?

Another bad attempt at humour

Though still better than what I used to do in the past

@Blue HEY!

Shhh. No shouting indoors :)

@Blue YOU TALKING TO ME?..I DONT GET IT

LOL!

5:16 PM

@Blue maybe I get it

wELL aT lEAST hE dIDN'T cAPITALISE "bLUE"

@Blue what are you doing?

@MohammadZuhairKhan STILL BAD

Do you want to know my past ways to get a chatroom active?

@MohammadZuhairKhan Probably only because the autocompletion wrote it that way :P

@MohammadZuhairKhan not really

but Im jobless ..go ahead

5:19 PM

@ayc You where this close to picking the correct answer

But you know what, let's do this

Anonymous

@ayc Sorry, I am only intermittently present in chat. Packing my bags for a family trip.

Cannibalism would solve both world hunger and overpopulation.

@Blue cool where are you headed?

And murdering your child is just a late abortion.

@Blue intermittently?...nice word....

5:20 PM

So eat your children

Anonymous

@vzn A nearby hill station - Darjeeling. It's gonna be a 14 hour drive. :P

@Blue do you have family there

@Blue pretty cool place

@Blue nice place that

@MohammadZuhairKhan Ummm...let's not be quite so morbid, shall we?

On the other hand, you're by no means the first to mention cannibalism here:

Nov 8 '14 at 1:32, by ACuriousMind

So, today I discussed cannibalism, philosophy, and I reached 10k. Today was a good day.

Sid

5:22 PM

@Blue Darjeeling in December?!

Anonymous

@vzn Not really. But we have some old acquaintances there (it's my birthplace). Anyway, we're mainly going for the nice scenery, food and snowfall.

@Blue I am imagining Darjeeling as one giant tea farm.

(...does tea even grow on farms?)

@Blue a little exotic! high elevation! near the himalayas!

It grows on hill sides

@ACuriousMind lol...I think so.....but surely it grows there

Anonymous

5:25 PM

@ACuriousMind Well, they're called tea gardens. And indeed, Darjeeling tea is famous. :P

Well, that it is

Same here at Sylhet in Bangladesh

There are some very exclusive varieties that I haven't found anywhere else in Bangladesh so far (not that I have journeyed a lot)

@ayc NDGT seems to be in some hot water lately :o o_O forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/12/10/…

Anonymous

@MohammadZuhairKhan My father's family is from Sylhet. :)

NDGT seems to be have turned into a pop culture

@Blue that is nice :)

@vzn So,you were there during that conversation?...cool....I've heard that too...

5:28 PM

Which one?

Anonymous

@Sid ...yes, lesser visitors during this period and hotels are easily available. ;)

@ayc what/ huh? "cool"? am just following news events.

@vzn No,what I mean to say is that since you have tagged me specifically talking about NDGT I thought you were there when I recently had a conversation about one of his video.That's why I asked if you were there.......

So I have a fairly weird idea

@ayc sometimes look thru old chat transcripts to track topics/ users etc

5:32 PM

At what velocity must a sphere be accelerating upwards such that his weight remains constant?

@Blue Its around 5 degrees over there now....you will be shivering like hell unless you are used to such low temp

@vzn Forget the NDGT topic...you gave any thoughts about my theory to support nihilism...not really mine..but I will take credit for putting the thought

Anonymous

@ayc Carrying tons of sweaters and blankets! And they have room heaters. ;)

We have $F=\frac {GM_1M_2}{r^2}$ and $M_2=\frac {M_0}{\sqrt {1-\frac {v^2}{c^2}}}$

How do I proceed from here?

@Blue It will be a cool experience...I mean cool

@ayc its hard to forget the NDGT topic right now. what about nihilism? it does seem to be a popular philosophy among jaded chat denizens :P

5:38 PM

@vzn If the universe is governed by laws,laws of science,then the same laws determine the future.even though you may never know the future but you should surely accept that the future will be according to those laws.Don't you think life has no meaning from this perspective?

you could say I live to eat..just like john rennie,blue and me...but thats just a reason to feel better..that doesn tadd any meaning to life

@ayc trying to remember which scientist(s) thinks that free choice is an illusion. maybe just was reading about this... what country are you in anyway? student?

Nihilism means that life has no purpose? Wrong every living thing has only one purpose: increasing the entropy of the universe

@vzn India,,,,and a student ..yes

@MohammadZuhairKhan lol life decreases entropy. life is anti-entropy.

@ayc high school? university?

@vzn high school

@MohammadZuhairKhan entropy!......thats a law of nature......entropy increase implies unidirectional flow of time......no matter what you do entropy increases..i.e universe moves in a direction as to increase entropy....where does this add meaning to life other than just being a robot

5:42 PM

@ayc ok a cohort at work was just telling me about a remarkable debate between JBP and SH. then looked up SH. check out section on "free will" o_O en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Free_will

> Harris says the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent.[46][47] According to Harris, science "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet."[48] People's thoughts and intentions, Harris says, "emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." Every choice we make is made as a result of preceding causes. These choices we make are determined by those causes, and are therefore not really choices at all.

he wrote a whole book Free Will maybe of some interest to "serious" nihilists (an oxymoron?)... :P en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Will_(book)

@vzn Think of it from Charles darwins perspective.what this statement: "it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life."implies is basically evolution.Your act of questioning the free will and realization that there isn't one was predetermined by the laws and this predetermined thought just gave you a new way of thinking(evolution).

Even if you change your way of thinking..it just doesnt add meaning to life...its just as meaningless as ever

NDGT accuser blog. wow lol media seems to be omitting some detail... check out the recent astrology post o_O tchiya.wordpress.com/about tchiya.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/coming-out-of-a-cave

@vzn What's your profession?..you a student?

@ayc software engineer finance industry work with java + dbs + big data etc

5:57 PM

@vzn where do you work?

@ayc fortune 250 company

See you later folks

@vzn whats the companys name

@ayc lets just say its a world recognized brand

@vzn Alright!..........

6:01 PM

@ayc lol so are you serious about your nihilism or not? :P (there was another "influential" one in here for a long time who didnt fare well in the end... 0celo7)

@vzn serious?...I dont have another thought....whatever I look at I just say it was predetermined....useless existence

@ayc did read some Camus in high school AP english class... the Stranger... you might like it o_O en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(Camus_novel)

@vzn I see that he had claims against nihilism....what were his opposing reasons to nihilism?

what are you referring to? see eg this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Confusion_with_nihilism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_nihilism

you say you have read his stuff....he was against nihilism,as far as wikipedia says.im just asking the ways,reasons he used to oppoese nihilism,since you've read his stuuf

6:16 PM

@ayc not sure what you are cfing "he was against nihilism" it would be helpful to cite it. reviewing this (havent thought about it carefully in decades) one might say the existentialists "flirted with nihilism". it seems to be a subtle distinction at times. where do you get your nihilism from?

@vzn what do you mean by asking where do I get my nihilism from?

@ayc you were probably not born a nihilist, children do not seem to express the idea.

@vzn those were my original thoughts......They just striked me ...well you could say I was influenced by stephen hawking.In his book "A brief history of time"...he has mentioned that If there really is a there of everything ,why should it determine that we find it one day......I just used that concept....if there is really a theory of everything then that theory is supreme and governs everyhting.....Moreover,I think Theory of everyhting is esentially a undisputable proof for nihilism

@ayc dont think hawking was a nihilist although he had some extreme views at times. but anyway it seems to be a trend that nihilism requires some somewhat sophisticated knowledge to formulate... therefore suspect sometimes, somewhat paradoxically, "anthropocentric bias"... why is a "theory of everything undisputable proof for nihilism"? (can anticipate your idea here some...)

6:40 PM

@vzn Let's say that A is the thoery of everything I give,but later you diprove it.tomorrow somegives a thoery B and calls it a theory of everything and lets say it gets disproved after 100 years.But one day we might find the actual theory of everything.A theory that explains anything you name .Let's say we find it and it is Z...

Now Z governs the universe i.e Z explains why an apple falls,explains all fundamental forces,explains anything you name.So you could explain why an apple falls using newton's theory or relativity now.after I find z I will explain it using Z.**Z** governs our universe.Universe is deterministic .we,humans, cannot determine the future but Z can.It knows whats gonna happen next.Its like everything is written in abook you can never read.

If I find a thoery of everything I just preove that universe works on basic laws and we are just robots operating on those laws.SO thoery of everyhting is an undisputable proof to nihilism

@ayc its not a bad argument but gets (in)determinism mixed in with it. many deep physics theories are already indeterministic & eg copenhagen interpretation says it will always be that way.

@vzn What's the porblem if it comes in?

@vzn What do you mean by:"many deep physics theories are already indeterministic & eg copenhagen interpretation says it will always be that way."

@ayc try studying QM.

@vzn I know the basics.Just explain what you meant by that line

see also "Laplace demon" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon

6:46 PM

@vzn I know that...still I cant relate this to your statement

@ayc see "quantum mechanical indeterminacy" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

@vzn You want to say that determinism isn't possible..right?

@ayc am somewhat "agnostic" so to speak (some irony in that word choice) on these issues. can "empathize with the nihilists" at times :P this has a lot to say about meaning in life, urge you to check it out, read up on it last summer, was impressed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

@vzn You are providing references.Alright.But whats your argument here.You talked about determinism but now you've gone somewhere else?.....put it simply :what is it that you want to say

@ayc think nihilism can be compelling to consider but that it can be a trap. and even some highly intellectual ppl can fall into it.

6:59 PM

@vzn How can it be a trap?

@ayc maybe because it can interfere wilh fulfilling your full potential...

@vzn I'm assuming "will" was a typo and its "with".......what do you mean by 'fulfulling your full potential"

oops

@ayc do you think your life has potential?

@vzn what do you mean by potential?

lol thought you might say that :P dictionary.com/browse/potential

Anonymous

7:03 PM

@ayc 1. There's no reason why a "theory of everything" should be deterministic. 2. Even if a deterministic "theory of everything" exists, it doesn't necessarily mean that we can compute the future using it, given a set of initial conditions.

@vzn I know its meaning..what do you mean by life having potential...you could ask do you have potential to get a A grade..I would then say Yes or no...but what do you mean by life has potential

@ayc a man has the potential to "amount to something"... think of heroes of ages, do you have any? how about hawking? :)

@Blue Yes, you're here!

I'm back onto trying to compile my bibliography.

Anonymous

@Avantgarde Yay!

Anonymous

I'm around for a while. :)

7:05 PM

@vzn Ohk,Yes my life has potential..what now?

@Blue Thanks. Ok so, I do have .bib file of old references that I need to append.

@ayc it seems that nihilism "at heart" denies that life has much potential... (one might say it has no heart!) o_O

Is the bib file useful?

Anonymous

@Avantgarde Yes, of course. Whenever you use \cite{} in the main TeX file, it invokes the corresponding entry in the .bib file.

Anonymous

What do you mean by "append"?

Anonymous

7:07 PM

You don't want to use a .bib file and want to instead place the references in the main TeX file itself?

@Blue You can't compute.You can't at all.It would violate uncertainity principle....But you can agree that there is a certain way in which world works.a way that can be determined,not by you,using thoery of everything..If the theory of everything was a person then that person would know the future with 100% certainity

Anonymous

> It would violate uncertainity principle

Anonymous

Eeeh.

@Blue Add to old refs.

@Blue How I used to do it: place refs in main tex file. How I want to do it: whatever you suggest is faster. And I suspect this Bibtex thing is faster, but I've never used it before. Don't really know what it is. Currently reading its website.

@vzn Yes it does.It depends on how you've evoloved .If you've evolved to think that life has no meaning thats alright..but whats next?..if you decide to suicide then thats just how you evolved.if you chose to live then thatas how you eveolved

Anonymous

7:09 PM

@Avantgarde You want to add more references?

@Blue Yes

In a prettier way.

Anonymous

Okay, cool. Let's take an example:

@Blue you agree?..I think you do.....and why do we live and rather not die?...food!.....that was our reason.....:)

Last time you suggested to look at a tex file where there's already a nice format for refs. I do have that. Then what?

Anonymous

@article{malarz_galam,
title = {Square-lattice site percolation at increasing ranges of neighbor bonds},
author = {Malarz and Galam},
journal = {Phys. Rev. E},
volume = {71},
issue = {1},
pages = {016125},
numpages = {4},
year = {2005},
month = {Jan},
publisher = {American Physical Society},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.71.016125},
url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.71.016125}
}

@article{menshikov_mikhail,
title = {Coincidence of critical points in percolation problems},
author = {Menshikov and Mikhail},

Anonymous

7:11 PM

@Avantgarde Say the .bib file currently has these entries ^. Do you already have a file like this in your project?

@ayc re suicide it seems to be the ultimate logical end of extreme nihilism... camus said something similar...

@Blue Well, I mean I know the paper whose reference styling I like. I just download its tex version from Arxiv.

Anonymous

@Avantgarde Can you give me the link to the arXiv paper? It would be easier to explain with an example.

@vzn suicide is one of the possible ways a person can act after realising that life has no meaning.What you choose is dependent on how you've eveolved.If your parents have taught you to be strong and no matter what never suicide you wouldnt suicide then.But if you've been living lonely and havent been taught any lessons then after realising that your life has no meaning you might suicide, by giving yourself a reason that even if I suicide it doesnt matter

@Blue Ok so this recent paper has nicely laid out refs.

arxiv.org/abs/1812.08910

7:17 PM

@vzn @Blue I should sleep.Bye!..cu tomorrow

Huh, seems like I can't open its tex version..

@ayc parents are one source of teaching/ learning. do not think suicide is "evolved"... one "basic meaning of life" is "to stay alive"...

Anonymous

@Avantgarde That paper doesn't have any .bib file. It's using the revtex format.

Anonymous

@Avantgarde What OS are you using?

@Blue Mac

Anonymous

7:19 PM

@Avantgarde Try renaming to add the .tar.gz extension to the downloaded source file. I'm not exactly sure if that'll work on Mac though.

@ayc lol yeah maybe get a good sleep & then see how you feel after that bye :P

@Blue It did. I see a couple of files. No .bib though.

Actually there's a bbl. Is that it?

pdf, bst, tex and bbl files

Anonymous

@Avantgarde Yep, they are using a .bbl file. You can use that also. Or use a .bib file and later convert it to .bbl!

Anonymous

arXiv doesn't accept .bib files btw.

@Blue Fine by me

I see

Anonymous

7:24 PM

So, basically the bbl file contains "bibitems".

Anonymous

\bibitem [{\citenamefont {Ozel}\ \emph {et~al.}(2010)\citenamefont {Ozel},
  \citenamefont {Baym},\ and\ \citenamefont {Guver}}]{ozel-baym-guver}%
  \BibitemOpen
  \bibfield  {author} {\bibinfo {author} {\bibfnamefont {F.}~\bibnamefont
  {Ozel}}, \bibinfo {author} {\bibfnamefont {G.}~\bibnamefont {Baym}}, \ and\
  \bibinfo {author} {\bibfnamefont {T.}~\bibnamefont {Guver}},\ }\href
  {\doibase 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.101301} {\bibfield  {journal} {\bibinfo
  {journal} {Phys.Rev.}\ }\textbf {\bibinfo {volume} {D82}},\ \bibinfo {pages}

Yes

Anonymous

One problem if you use .bbl directly is that bibitems are not easily available from online versions of papers. You'll have to manually type it in.

Anonymous

However, .bib entries are available readymade for all arXiv papers and also for papers in most popular physics journals.

Alright..

Anonymous

7:27 PM

I personally prefer using .bib then converting to .bbl. :)

The more I read the tutorials, the more I feel like copy-pasting refs in the main tex file is way easier lol.

I sound like an old man

Anonymous

@Avantgarde If you have an Overleaf account, come on here!

@Blue I don't..

Anonymous

@Avantgarde You can use a Google account to sign in. But it's okay if you don't want to. It's just easier to discuss this stuff using an example. It's really not hard at all.