@ACuriousMind I recommend studying economics before disparaging it. Economists do indeed study bounded rationality, and there’s a whole subfield called behavioral economics.
@abhas_RewCie I don't lol. No one knows how to come up with genius ideas. I think it's more important to pinpoint customer pains and needs and then come up with a solution.
@ACuriousMind Hmm, I did some research and it's true that there's the inequality of rich kids being able to start companies much easier than poor kids but I'd say they are as blessed as they are cursed. When you start poor, you're forced and pushed to your limits. You learn more and gain valuable insights and experience that a rich kid cannot get.
@user76284 Yes, of course all of this is much more nuanced than I put it in those few messages. I'm sorry if that was insulting, if it's any consolation, I also talk about generic "physicists" like that when I really mean "many physicists, which I disagree with" ;)
@Slereah I concur!
LotR might still be "worth" reading because it's a touch stone for much of modern fantasy - most common fantasy tropes can be traced back either to it or to D&D :P
On the other hand, reading some of the more unconventional modern stuff without always comparing it to LotR internally might not be a bad thing, either
If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist. --An Indian economist, quoted by Paul Krugman
@SirCumference I personally wouldn't read them for enjoyment, but many people (at least claim they) enjoy the worldbuilding so much they're not bothered by the poor pacing of the story itself
I read TNOTW and enjoyed but though that Kvoth was a bit of an idiot who seemed expert at getting himself into trouble through his own stupid mistakes.
It's not that it's bad, it's that it's very unlike most of the later entries in the series
@JohnRennie Something like Strata or the weird ones about the boy getting sucked into a video game might have come first but it was the first Discworld novel
@JohnRennie It's extremely...slapstick-y, for lack of a better word, compared to the later books that still poke fun at cliches but at the same time are also interested in telling a coherent story about something
@ACuriousMind Agreed, but lots of Goodreads members will be wrinklies like me who have fond memories of the book because it was the first Pratchett book they read.
Dave Langford reviewed The Colour of Magic for White Dwarf #64, and stated that "It's one of those horrible, antisocial books which impel the reader to buttonhole friends and quote bits at them. My ceiling is covered with brown spots from when I tried to read Pratchett's jokes and drink beer at the same time. Only native sadism makes me recommend this disgraceful work."
See, at least the Silmarillion is honest about being a lore dump
LotR is a lore dump dressed as a story :P
@JingleBells That phrase was coined by Nietzsche as part of his philosophy and isn't actually true in many cases: Starvation doesn't make you stronger, it just leaves you with stunted growth. Lack of education doesn't make you smarter or more resourceful, you just know less. Lack of medicine doesn't make you magically resistant to disease, it just kills you sooner.
I am for capitalism (with government intervention where there needs to be) and I agree that being born into a wealthy family unfairly gives you the advantage of starting a business easier and faster than someone who has to take loans and work his ass off. I'm totally FOR wealth and income inequality but against babies being born and having a business advantage without working for it but by simply being born into a wealthy family.
@ACuriousMind Don't interpret it literally lol, I just said it like that
@ACuriousMind By saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" I reflect on my bad experiences and what I've learned from them. What mistakes to not repeat... not literally starve and then be proud about it
But "making mistakes and learning from them" wasn't what we were talking about, it was people with less advantageous starting positions just having it harder even before having the chance to make any mistakes!
Well, then I apologize for that context-irrational saying. What I'm trying to say is sure, it's unfair (as I said above) but the poor kid will make more mistakes and generally learn more how to start a business from the ground than a rich kid that just gets money from Dad, hires people and starts the business. The poor kid will experience first working for someone, seeing what the business culture is from inside a company, will have to learn to build relationships, etc.
I have stated only a few reasons why the poor kid will gain insights about the world that the rich kid won't. I believe you get the idea. There are so many things that the poor kid will experience that the rich kid will not.
@JingleBells Oh, I fully get the idea - I just think that you're mistaken that these "insights" confer a significant advantage or are even insights they should gain. (E.g. there's plenty of states of affairs they shouldn't have to learn about because it shouldn't be like that in the first place)
Okay, instead of sitting around and complaining about how unfair it is for rich kids to have an opportunity that I don't, I decided to see what opportunities do I have that the rich kid does not and that I can turn into something positive and strong, that can help me forward. Sure, it's unfair, but I chose to not pitty myself and fight through it.
Some people are prettier, some are more athletic, others are smarter, others are born into rich families. People are difference and the world is unfair. People have different opportunities at different times. Some get the greatest ideas, others do the greatest executions. The world is inherently unfair and unequal. Nevertheless, I've decided to focus on what I can do, rather than what someone else can or can't.
@ACuriousMind Yes, I know, it's nothing personal. I'm just expressing my motivation to achieve my goals despite unfairness and inequality.
@JingleBells I just don't believe that all these inequalities and injustices are inherent qualities of the world. They're features of a human-made system that has evolved and changed over time, not eternal and unchanging. Sure, there is little chance of one single person changing them on their own, but there is no chance of ever changing anything if we all acquiesce and just accept that the world will always be like that,
so I try to be wary of rhetoric that presents very particular aspects of human systems like natural law.
@ACuriousMind I respect your views on socialism and communism and I'm not anti-socialist nor anti-communist. I'm also not here to start a debate on capitalism vs socialism, there's plenty of that on the net already. Let's agree to disagree. No hard feelings from me.
@JingleBells It's fine if you disagree with me :) But if you come here and start asking questions about how to make a great business or how to be successful I can't help but reflect on the nature of business or success, just like I start to reflect on the nature of knowledge and science when someone starts asking which quantum interpretation is true ;)
@JMac Works when entry barrier is low... When there are lesser companies in the market, then Entry Barrier is unnecessarily high... example, I can't come up with a Search Engine that competes google.
@abhas_RewCie It all depends on what you're doing. You're going to have a hard time competing directly with leading multi-million dollar international tech companies; but starting small local businesses can be very viable in some fields if you can manage the company well.
@abhas_RewCie Local companies need a lot less capital than starting a large international company... Growth potential also starts low, but if you make a place for yourself and are able to both operate and scale well, you can grow a small business over time; and it's actually possible for "regular" people without pre-existing wealth. If you want to do something very big, you basically either need to work your way up to it, or start off rich to begin with.
Just saying, sometimes thinking you need to come up with some special unique idea to make a big company seems like the wrong way to look at it. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and you need a lot more factors than just the good idea to actually make something huge and successful. It seems a lot easier and less risky to take something proven to work and show that you can run even a small company before you try to compete with major companies.
> Fortunately, there are a few persistent localized (PL) microseismic sources on the Earth that continuously radiate strong seismic signals and which are useful for synchronizing seismic networks (the 26 s PL source in the Gulf of Guinea,the 7–15 s PL source on Kyushu Island, and the 26 s PL source near the Vanuatu Islands).
> The PL microseismic sources are similar to the Omega navigation stations in having fixed locations and a monochromatic signal, narrow frequency band, and strongly radiated signals that can be identified at very distant receivers.
high melting point (1845 °C) and low neutron cross section (0.185 barn)
so it's nice for fuel cladding
Magnesium alloys were used in early gas-cooled reactor types because of the low cross section (0.063 barn), but the lower melting point of 650 °C doesn't give much safety margin, especially if cooling water leaks in.
Zirconium alloys are passivated in water, so they can be used for reactors that are cooled and moderated with water.
But the fun thing about uranium zirconium hydride is that it has a big negative fuel temperature reactivity coefficient and that you can have fuel and moderator in one material.
So you can make fast and strong pulses.
You can make a reactor safely go prompt critical with that.
user434058
6:40 PM
@ACuriousMind That's not really a positive statement, but idk why, it's eye candy to me. I find it really beautiful... Maybe I am too dark... ::resumes watching Breaking Bad::
An argument for $R_{33} = \sin^2 \theta R_{22}$ in Schwarzschild I haven't seen is from $R_{22} - \frac{1}{2} r^2 R = 0$ and $R_{33} - \frac{1}{2} r^2 \sin^2 \theta R = 0$ we have $R_{33} = \sin^2 \theta [\frac{1}{2} r^2 R] = \sin^2 R_{22}$
Can we always reach every element of a lie group through the left/right translation maps? I feel like this has to be related to it being connected in the topological sense but I can't see this explicitely stated anywhere
I was actually also wondering earlier why we go to the trouble of defining a connection in order to map between different tangent spaces if all we need to do is define the push-forward map
It's still a bit confusing to me that we can define the Lie derivative without a connection by defining the flow of vector fields and using the push-forward map
I guess I don't see what advantage there is to using a connection based derivative as opposed to one that just uses the push-forward/pull-back maps to connect tangent spaces
I still see the push/pull maps as literally just "moving" a (co-)vector to another (co-)tangent space, maybe naively
I guess what's strange to me then is that we can even define a push/pull map that puts "the same" vector/covector at another point if we don't have a connection to define what we mean by "the same"
The notion of parallel transport/connection does not require any additional choice - I can hand you a vector and a path and say "please transport this vector along this path" and you can just do it
maybe push/pull operator is more accurate, I'm not sure how to be super precise about what I mean there
but when we transport the vector along the path, we have no notion of whether it is "the same" vector at the end point?
Maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that defining the push-forward of a vector along a map "maintains" the vector in some sense at the resulting tangent spaces we're moving it through
There is no requirement that this action be bijective, or that it should preserve anything
Parallel transport, on the other hand, is an isomorphism between the tangent spaces
Just take, for example, the map that maps every point on a manifold to a single fixed point. Since it's "constant", its derivatives are all zero and its action by pushforward on vectors is just to map every vector to the zero vector
Because the action on vectors is the Jacobian matrix, and the derivatives of this map are zero because it's constant, so the Jacobian is the zero matrix
Just do it on $\mathbb{R}^n$ if you have trouble thinking abstractly: The map $\mathbb{R}^3\to\mathbb{R}^3, (x,y,z)\mapsto (3,4,5)$ acts like I said, you can just explicitly compute that it does.
And what I just said is also just the definition of the pushforward. We just usually use "Jacobian" for the concrete matrix on some $\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^m$ and "pushforward" for the abstract map $TM\to TN$, but they're really the same thing semantically
yeah I definitely remember seeing it in the definition, I didn't give enough thought to how important the jacobian is as a map I guess
push-forward wasn't explicitely done "with" the Jacobian it was done in coordinates using the chain rule and the big reveal was that the jacobian appears
