Hello friends, i wanted to discuss an issue i am facing and i want all of your different opinions and insights and advices. i am studying physics in my first semester and i am also studying mathematics.
Me being a perfectionist and trying to understand everything i learn about and not just learn the importnat and the end results, is turning out to be almost an impossible task with the immense Pensum i am required to reach.
Personally i think it is an error of this system we have. But now i am at crossroads. i either force myself to not focus on everything and just have to ignore or jump over some points i do not understand in order to actually pass the beurocracy of the univresity and the learning system.
Or just go made and let my grades sink deep and might even fail just because i am taking things seriously and as they should be taken. If i do the first choice, will i ever at some point feel fullfilment and those gaps and questions that i once had in the feutre will be answered? or is it literally impossible for us humans now adays to understand everything in the physics and keep a good overview and not forget everything? what should I do?
@PM2Ring being an Englishman I always feel slightly distrustful of flamboyance, though in Villani's case no-one can dispute his credentials as a mathematician. Whether he does equally well as a politician is another question.
@JohnRennie That cravat is a bit over the top, but hey, he's French. ;) Scientists & mathematicians tend to do ok in politics, if they don't get trampled by the other politicians. Unlike rock stars...
@AbhasKumarSinha I agree that not demonizing each other is generally the best approach; but there are some instances where you have to call things out to actually make change happen. Climate change is really tricky in that regard, because there are legitimate concerns that we wont be able to fix the problems if they go too far. You also have to be aggressive when you're working against industries that have a lot of money to spend to influence people against you.
@JMac I think the way India, and some of EU (germany) are working the way on Climate change, it'd be a no problem to us in few coming decades. Ofcourse, I can't say that part for US. They have tiny fraction of population and 60% of emissions, because that's helping them in economy.
same for Australia
More and more countries are ditching Fossil fuels which is major contributor to climate change...
@AbhasKumarSinha USA and China are two major contributors, and most people still buy things from them. The places that most need to change have high incentives to remain the same due to profits. Basically, they need to get Chinese residents and US residents to listen, or at very least would need their governments to start putting penalties on dealing with them. If not, you're basically just outsourcing the pollution, which doesn't remove the problem at all.
@JMac I'd not compare China with USA, the efforts china has put in climate change in recent years, no other country is capable of that! Sometimes I'm amazed with the tremendous efforts they put!
@AbhasKumarSinha China still has very high greenhouse gas emissions. I'm not even sure what you mean about efforts in recent years. As far as I'm aware, they haven't had much push towards renewable resources as much as they've been pushing to reduce particulate in the air.
@JMac China has put incredible efforts to combact Climate Change in recent years. Well I'm impressed. That's a proof that monarchy is sometimes better than democracy!
@AbhasKumarSinha I would be very reluctant to paint the Chinese government in a positive light right now. They do some pretty awful things to their citizens. They also aren't even a monarchy.
@JMac see, their citizens are happy with it, I don't see a problem. If you understand a bit of geopolitics, then Dr Xi is someone who's very smart and they are doing good. The changes the China has brought in last decade, no country can bring even in 5 decades...
@AbhasKumarSinha Well yeah, that's the obvious example of people being unhappy. Other things would be like all the restrictions on what people are able to do on the internet and stuff. People get in trouble for friggin Winnie the Pooh pictures. It's absurd.
@AbhasKumarSinha A single example of why the bill could be useful doesn't mean that it couldn't also be detrimental. Literally millions of citizens protested it. It seems pretty obvious that all the citizens aren't all happy. Just because they had a reason to introduce the bill, doesn't mean the bill also couldn't be bad for them (which is what concerned people and led to the protests).
@AbhasKumarSinha Why is CO2 emissions per capita a useful metric? It seems pretty misleading to me. Eg, that graph makes Australia look almost as bad as the USA, even though they (the USA) have more than 12 times our population.
@PM2Ring Australia is as bad as USA. Why? Infrastrastructre problem. Well I neither see Australia getting better unlike USA. But, for the case of NZ - they are definitely improved a lot.
@AbhasKumarSinha If that was the only reason, then it makes perfect sense that people would protest... Why would they want a bill that puts many at risk if all it's doing is solving a problem with a single person.
@AbhasKumarSinha About a decade ago, our then left-wing federal government tried to introduce an emissions trading scheme, but that caused them to be kicked out, and we've had a right-wing federal government ever since. :(
@PM2Ring Yeah, I had to look that up and just was about to ask about that. They're called "Liberal" but from everything I heard they are fairly conservative.
@JMac Yes, it's conservative, with religious elements, but not like US "Bible belt" religious. It's a fairly secular country, although there is a minor religious party with enough power to have an influence on the balance of power between the two main parties, but that's mostly at the state level, not federal
@AbhasKumarSinha Australia is very multicultural, with a pretty good record of religious tolerance.
@PM2Ring I guess I was thinking more along the lines of "religious undertones". I heard that a lot of the conservative nature of the government seemed fairly religious. Though yeah, not like the "Bible belt" religious. US is so religious that if you're not Christian you can't become president, essentially.
Fifty years ago there were pretty strong ties between Christian denominations and the main parties. Eg, there was a strong Irish Catholic link to the left-wing Labor Party, mostly through its connections with the trade unions. But that's just a minor concern these days.
@AbhasKumarSinha There are quite a few candidates for US president right now. Just because someone running isn't Christian, it doesn't really change my point about their likelihood of winning. US vote is heavily influenced by religion.
@AbhasKumarSinha I wouldn't say every conservative has to be opposed to multi-culturalism. I also wouldn't say every politician actually means what they say.
@AbhasKumarSinha Why is it contradictory? What do you expect him to say? "All you non-Anglo people can go back where you came from"? Some of our top right-wing politicians in the past have had that sort of attitude, but it's frankly ridiculous, since Australia has been a cultural melting pot since the end of World War 2.
The conservatives don't want ethnic / religious tensions. It's bad for business. And they want good immigrants to come here & do the low grade jobs boost the workforce.
@AbhasKumarSinha I'm not claiming there are no ethnic tensions here. FWIW, over the last 30 years I've lived in a couple of areas with high Indian populations, and things were mostly fine.
@AbhasKumarSinha I still don't see the relevance. You were saying Trump needs foreign governments to win, then pointed to a recent video of Trump from after the election saying he "secured the election that way".
@AbhasKumarSinha Ah, no. Most of the Aussies of British heritage (like me) don't have a connection with the British Raj. And there are now plenty of places in Australia where those of Anglo-Irish ancestry are in the minority. Eg, the suburb I live in is now very Asian, mostly Chinese, but also some Thai & Vietnamese.
I've lived in Sydney most of my life, but from 2010 to 2017 I lived outside Coffs Harbour. We'd sometimes get kangaroos in our yard in the early morning, grazing on the lawn. And in the nearby town of Woolgoolga, it was common to see kangaroos on the football field, and other green areas. It wasn't unusual to see one hop across the road.
@AbhasKumarSinha I used to hand-feed "tame" kangaroos when I was a kid. You can't pat wild kangaroos: if people get too close they hop away. But you don't want to corner them: they can get aggressive if they feel trapped
@AbhasKumarSinha The ones I used to feed were sort-of pets. But these days it's not legal to keep them as pets. OTOH, people who work in wildlife rescue & rehab can have them as temporary pets.
@AbhasKumarSinha No. Like most marsupials, kangaroos are native to Australia. There are some marsupial species in Papua-New Guinea, including small relatives of kangaroos.
@AbhasKumarSinha The boxing thing is a bit of a myth. Over 100 years ago some people trained some kangaroos to box, but they aren't very good at it. They certainly don't fight by boxing...
We do have glow-worm caves in Oz too, but I've never seen them myself. But I have seen fireflies. We used to get them from time to time in our garden in Coffs Harbour. But just small numbers, not a whole bush covered in them
@AbhasKumarSinha If a kangaroo is cornered by a human, they defend themselves with their feet, while balancing on their tail. You really don't want to get kicked by feet wirh sharp claws... especially by an animal that can jump a 3 metre fence.
Another nice glowing thing is bioluminescent micro-organisms in the water. I've only seen them once, on a full moon summer night when I was a kid, where a lagoon meets the sea. It was a very magical experience to swim through water that sparkled as you moved through it.
@SirCumference lol, I live in a small town away from cities, silence everywhere, I can wander through forest whenever I like. I've spent most of my life here roaming through forest, climbing hills and trees before moving here which is pretty much a town covered all way between forest... :)
I think this likely comes down to the following expression,
$$g’^{ab}e’_a e’_b = \delta ^a_b $$
Is this in agreement with the Einstein summation convention? Because even though the two indices are summed over, they still appear on the right.
This leads to issues when trying to rearrange for $g...
I may win a Nobel prize one day (though that would be one hell of alternate universe)
I don't have a problem with 't Hooft working on those sorts of theories. He's quite open that he thinks it's a long shot and he's only doing it because he's old and venerable enough that he can get away with it.
He isn't preaching it to the masses, so it's far from a crackpot approach. I get the impression he's doing it just for his own interest.
Whereas Smolin seems firmly convinced he is right and is happy to write books to prove it.
