Hi everyone, is it generally considered fine to solicit an explanation from an anonymous downvoter in the comments? I have always felt a bit weird about it because it feels a bit confrontational but also, I sometimes really can't see what's potentially wrong/controversial with my answer and so I do leave a comment asking the downvoter to explain the reason behind their vote.

How it started:

How it's going:

Only took me 5 years!

congratulations!!!

Thanks! By the way, I saw you're now attending Berkeley @AudenYoung?!

@BernardoMeurer yep, gonna study engineering physics i think

i'm only in my first semester though so we'll see how it goes

@AudenYoung Are you here physically yet or are your classes online?

Because I live in Berkeley :D

oh really?? yeah i'm physically in berkeley

Let's get coffee someday! I'm here till December-ish, then I move to SB :)

sure, i'd be down :)

Do you use Signal?

i do not, sorry

Kewl, can you email me at bernardo at meurer dot org

sounds good, i'll email and we can figure out a good time

Sweet, talk to you there!

@bolbteppa you might be better able to appreciate this than me: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/59179009#59179009

what is happening

@RyanUnger email me dawg

@RyanUnger Actually, I think you know my number, text me dawg

510-something-something, not the 805 one

@Semiclassical I'm not even sure what is meant by a global coordinate :p

@DvijD.C. I didn't down-vote your answer but I'm not sure it makes sense, e.g. nobody is claiming the process is somehow deterministic

@bolbteppa yeah, he elaborates on that further below

though "elaborate" might be putting it too strongly

@bolbteppa The OP is claiming that it is just an ordinary quantum mechanical process which is, of course, supposed to be deterministic.

@DvijD.C. to answer your question directly, I wouldn't think there's a problem with doing so on answers to active questions, such as the HNQ in question. You will seldom receive a response from the actual downvoter, however there is the occasional "not the downvoter, but...". I specifically restrict to active questions here because I think there is a consensus that doing this on inactive questions is a lot more pointless and only introduces unnecessary noise for future viewers.

@DvijD.C. We'll usually delete these comments as noise - if the downvoter had wanted to explain themselves, they would have already done so! When you leave a comment on your own answer, no one else gets notified, so what you'll usually get at best is explanations of other people why someone else might have downvoted

@BernardoMeurer whoa, congrats!

@ACuriousMind Fair enough, but I think sometimes the downvoter has a considerable chance of coming across the comment if the question is still active.

@DvijD.C. But that is not at all what the OP was claiming, indeed there is no implication of determinism either way regarding whether 'collapse' makes sense or not, your answer just answers another question.

@bolbteppa OP explicitly said that the collapse can simply be modeled as an interaction of quantum mechanics. This directly means unitary time evolution and thus, determinism. I seriously don't get what you are trying to convey. Are you saying that the interactions in quantum mechanics are not unitary? Or are you saying that the OP wasn't proposing to model collapse as just another interaction process in quantum mechanics? An affirmative answer to neither is defensible.

@SnoopyKid there's an implicit assumption there that the clothesline is a perfectly rigid body, which is how you'd have the two ends moving instantaneously. But once you consider relativity, you can't actually have a perfectly rigid body

Some of the answers here may be of some interest physics.stackexchange.com/questions/48392/…

The OP didn't say "collapse can simply be modeled as an interaction", the OP said they don't even think 'collapse' exists in the first place: "So there's no special phenomenon like a "wave function collapse".The measurement is just an example of an interaction...", Measurement literally does involve an interaction. The question is about what happens to the wave function, this is of course commonly debated, nobody even hints at this being deterministic...

Hey guys, do you know a site which gives you regular updates about recent advances in high energy physics? Theoretical, experimental anything..

there's no lack of blogs I guess?

Name some?

Well

The big blogs that come to mind are the ones that are run by the maypoles of controversy

Sabine Hossenfelder and Lubos Motl

I'm not sure I would recommend them

Baez and Woit both have blogs that I've looked at occasionally, though not sure how they compare to others

I mean I know how they compare to Motl, but that's not saying much

Guys

Someone here could help me?

I am having problem with experimental datas. It was given to us (the class i am) a folder with a lot of values of x and y. We need to adjust/fix a curve using this double upla.

The problem is about the uncertainty...

If the uncertainty for the measurements is not given

What should i use?

are the instruments used listed?

Usually those have uncertainties listed in their specs

It is used a spectrophotometer to get the results, but nothing is said about the specificaiton of what spectrophotometer is used.

If you really can't find out maybe keep the uncertainty as an abstract value?

can i post a homework related question, show my effort so far, and ask for help if i am not getting any further?

I was thinking, could i guess the uncertaints while i fix the curve? i mean, it is well know that chi 2 and degree of freedom is approximatelly one, so could i guess the uncertainty until these both values be next? or this is like a ad hoc approach not allowed?

@Slereah what you mean with abstract value?

ops

chi two/degree of freedom

the ratio

is approx one

The $x$ value has uncertainty $\Delta x$

Although I guess that won't help for making graphs

Maybe ask the professor if it's a class? Depending on the level/purpose of the class, I suppose there's a chance that they're sweeping it under the rug for now

The second equation including $ \ddot y $ have a similiar form but slightly variant

Doesn't seem extremely trivial, but you can try your luck here : amazon.com/Handbook-Solutions-Ordinary-Differential-Equations/…

I am guessing then my derivation is false since i dont think my professor wants us to study such complicated DGL

From the looks of it I'm guessing trig functions and logarithms are involved

Are you interested? i can cite you the question and tell me where i went wrong

i am not looking for complete solutions.. just hints and tips

You know what i mean?

I'm not a big differential equation person

Alrighty.

But you can look here for inspiration : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

although that's first order I guess

Well thanks anyways..i will take a look.