The h Bar

Silly Goose

00:08

@Allie For what it’s worth i don’t find classical mechanics illuminating at all for statistical mechanics

the ideas that are illuminating are independent of classical/quantum physics

imbAF

00:25

For the Compton scattering, what is the $\mathcal{L}_I$ ?

imbAF

00:49

In the context of langrangian density and action, when is a symmetry transformation, classified as a gauge one?

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty well, considering what you were writing, maybe you should have been more precise about that. lol. But it is obvious: if I were you, I'd say: "It is never the case that the professor or teacher needs the rigour. It is for the sake of the poor student that the presentation needs some rigour."

@DIRAC1930 What was there to be anxious about? There are Poisson brackets and Lagrange brackets; whichever it was, Dirac would have been able to get his version working, just with different names.

@Allie pat pat

qwerty

01:05

@naturallyInconsistent I have no idea what "it is never the case that the teacher needs the rigour" means

DIRAC1930

The exact quote is “ I didn’t’ learn it very thoroughly because I remember it was on a Sunday that the idea first occurred to me that ab- ba might correspond. to a Poisson bracket. But at that time I didn’t’ know exactly what a Poisson bracket was, so I wasn’t able to check whether it was right. I didn’t have any book at home which dealt with Poisson brackets. I had to wait until the next Monday and go to the library and look up Poisson brackets there and check to see if it was right.”

This interview was from 1962

I believe there was another interview where he also talks about it

Allie

@SillyGoose yeah but also my reasoning for learning it goes beyond just statistical mechanics

and since all of this is self-motivated, i guess another part is i just want to understand it lol

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent and once again if you want to criticise, please constructively point out exactly what you mean

Allie

@naturallyInconsistent it is true

naturallyInconsistent

01:25

@qwerty I'm not criticising this time. I'm supporting you. You can just use my quote against them. I'm quite sure your situation would be one of the few I'm helping

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent hugs

I think I might understand. there were a couple of ways to interpret your statement

naturallyInconsistent

Yeah, it is just about "professors and teachers should not be so lazy as to directly cause the confusion of the students by frequent sloppy statements"

qwerty

did you star the light clock comment? it felt like it came out of left field and missed my point about illustrating local frames versus global ones

@naturallyInconsistent indeed. I also find that if you teach that way you also start to think that way yourself. this is one of the reasons I get scared by teaching :P confidently incorrect is a big scary sin to me

naturallyInconsistent

Yes, but it was not starred in context with your conversation. It was starred as a general statement because seriously, there are so many people getting utterly confused by that. But there is also a little bit of connection, because a light clock would have been an extremely mini local frame

@qwerty Well, people still need to teach, and with things as complicated as QFT, one has no choice but to teach broken pieces. Don't be too hard on yourself.

However, yes, when teaching, it helps a lot to have some level of rigour

Sir Cumference

01:42

Is it just me or does this definition in the New Oxford American dictionary read like it's written by a pseudoscience proponent?

Even setting aside how "complementary medicine" just sounds like a euphemism for pseudoscience

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference i think it's just u

Sir Cumference

maybe it is

Relativisticcucumber

i mean i take it to mean complement in the literal sense of the word so i dont sense pseudoscience

Sir Cumference

well then the definition here is just bad

complementary medicine is considered pseudoscience elsewhere, e.g.

Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in s...

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference I think it's a definition that very carefully tries not to take any stance - note that it just says it's "therapies...that are used" but nothing about the efficacy

Relativisticcucumber

01:45

erm i mean

ACuriousMind

which is kinda what I would expect from a dictionary :P

qwerty

@SirCumference if it's "may be used alongside" then yeah some alt medicines are relatively harmless or positive due to placebo effect whilst others carry risk

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind frankly not taking a stance here just feels dangerous

Relativisticcucumber

i feel like saying it's pseudoscience requires carefully defining science

naturallyInconsistent

@SirCumference same

Sir Cumference

01:45

imagine if the definition of vaccines sounded iffy on their safety

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference I don't disagree but again, I don't expect a dictionary to fight the fight here

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber no, I think simply checking for the lack of efficacy is sufficient

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber actual scientific backing

i.e. rigorous research demonstrate its effectiveness

Relativisticcucumber

some things that i learned about in china have deep roots in history and usage that id say could qualify as science but some people think that biomedicine is the real medicine so idk

Sir Cumference

this is the norm for physics, but medicine (which I'd argue is the most important field to have this for) often has people normalizing pseudoscience

if there's one instance where that shouldn't be the case, it's people's health imo

qwerty

01:47

@ACuriousMind a GP once told me to take some supplement for a minor complaint and I was like "but I looked it up and it's no better than placebo!" and she was like "but placebo is like 30%!"

Relativisticcucumber

but do we really need lab research to tell us smth works? idk

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber ???

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber Astrology has extremely deep roots in history.

Relativisticcucumber

here i go lol down the rabbit hole

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference the demarcation problem is a famous issue in philosophy of science and does not deserve this kind of dismissal; you and @Relativisticcucumber are simply talking at two completely different levels about the issue

Silly Goose

01:49

medicine is also not really that successful if you measure success with respect to the ratio of curable diseases to not

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty and now this kind of reasoning would crosspollinate with AI. shudders

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Frankly, I wouldn't worry too much if we were talking about the scientific backing behind e.g. music theory or color theory

ACuriousMind

I believe when SirCumference says this is "pseudoscience" he doesn't mean this as a statement about epistemology, he means it as a statement about effectiveness, i.e. "those are sham treatments that don't work"

Sir Cumference

But medicine is extremely important to get correct

even more so than physics, I would say

Relativisticcucumber

when the doctor cant make me feel better but the ayi can then idk that makes me wonder xD

ACuriousMind

01:50

but what @Relativisticcucumber heard was "anything not rubber-stamped by Western academia is nonsense"

Sir Cumference

people can get killed by these "treatments"

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference erm im not advocating for like lobotomies

Sir Cumference

And every time I hear a doctor throw his hands in the air and say "maybe you could consider this alternative treatment", it sends alarm bells ringing in my head

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose I dont know what you are talking about. Have you considered that we live in a bubble of "antibiotics work for way too many diseases" before it all crashes down by careless prescribing, so much so that we are figuring out new maladies that used to not have been considered?

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent honestly I'm ok with the probability of no effect or positive effect as long as there aren't major risks. when it's you in pain you'll take what you can get

Silly Goose

01:52

@naturallyInconsistent almost all cancers and neurodegenerative disorders?

Sir Cumference

@SillyGoose this reads to me like "physics is not successful because we still have open questions"

ACuriousMind

@SillyGoose obligatory xkcd

Silly Goose

@ACuriousMind this is why i qualified the statement i made with a definition of success

ACuriousMind

but why would you define "success" in a way that doesn't reflect success :P

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty no, I'm discerning even when in pain. But it is not about "no effect or positive effect" either. Most of the time, we already have good medicine that had been proven to work. New medicine should be compared to existing known-good medicine and its cheaper alternatives, you know, a good cost-benefit analysis, rather than "no effect"

Relativisticcucumber

01:54

@SillyGoose to be fair u gotta consider the diseases u hear about and are worried ab are the ones that still exist and plague our existence

Allie

medicine works very well lol

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose these are the illnesses that surfaced because people aren't just dying at 40 to all kinds of serious dangers, not just a century ago.

ACuriousMind

@SillyGoose that people even get old enough to die so much of cancer and old age degeneration is already part of the success

2

Relativisticcucumber

look i believe in medicine. i take a medication that allows me to have a quality of life. but i also believe in things people have honed and studied for centuries in a less academic sense that also increase quality of life and i dont believe in this notion of alternative medicine as lacking in any credibility. that's all i mean to say. @SirCumference

Sir Cumference

@SillyGoose from prehistoric times up through antiquity, the average lifespan for a man was 25

modern medicine has more than tripled that

naturallyInconsistent

01:56

@Relativisticcucumber Do you check your horoscopes every day?

Relativisticcucumber

i also think people go overboard in things needing to be certified by scientists and academia to be correct.

@naturallyInconsistent is this an insult

no i dont believe in that stuff but more power to those who do

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber Are you gonna say bloodletting is valid given that it's been used for thousands of years?

Allie

if im taking a drug then i would kind of want it to be scientifically demonstrated to be safe and effective

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber the alternative is a lot of death!

Allie

thats just me though

chemicals can be SCARY!

Sir Cumference

01:57

@naturallyInconsistent I don't understand how people don't realize this

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference if u think ur right why ask for opinions? u came here and asked for thoughts. do you only want thoughts that validate your prior beliefs?

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber it is not an insult. I'm using your own argument. You had used "honed and studied for centuries" and "deep roots in history". Astrology is very very very ancient

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber I was asking my opinions on a dictionary definition

ACuriousMind

@Relativisticcucumber This whole discussion depends very much on what kinds of "alternative medicine" you mean here. Are we talking about natural remedies or some kind of massages or whatever or are we talking about homopathy and crystal healing?

Allie

i was gonna say speaking of, i really need a massage

Sir Cumference

01:58

I really don't care what people think of my opinion on the applicability of pseudoscience

Allie

my body is so tense

naturallyInconsistent

@ACuriousMind what would be an acceptable "natural remedy"?

Relativisticcucumber

@ACuriousMind no not crystal healing like things like herbal medicine for one example

Sir Cumference

In my eyes it should be incredibly obvious to any scientist that pseudoscience is worthless

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent standard medicines often come with nasty side effects. this was true for my case. particular supplements often dont

ACuriousMind

01:59

@naturallyInconsistent chewing willow bark instead of aspirin, for instance

Sir Cumference

it's literally junk research that should be thrown out and tested properly

Allie

@qwerty could you give an example? if thats ok

ACuriousMind

(the chemical in aspirin was originally isolated from willow bark)

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference this is just rude

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber I genuinely don't see how so

the entire field of physics is built on rigorous testing

anyone involved in the field should understand its importance, as far as I can tell

Allie

02:00

i think my issue with herbal remedies, again, is that you have hundreds of different possible compounds, at varying dosages that cant be controlled

Silly Goose

@SirCumference i would say this is pretty false

Allie

i think in a society where purification, testing, and all that exists, why not wait for that?

Relativisticcucumber

im assuming your being genuine, so from my perspective saying "it should be incredibly obvious to any scientist that..." is condescending especially when the thing after "..." is smth that the person ur talking to doesnt believe

@SirCumference

@SillyGoose agreed

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber well, maybe I should say "I wish it were incredibly obvious"

Silly Goose

all science is built on faith (a supposed method that is supposed to work to provide supposed support for something one defines as reflecting supposed objective reality) and that i think is an obvious truth

Sir Cumference

02:01

but you're not wrong that some people don't see it that way

Relativisticcucumber

@SillyGoose oh boy pls dont use the word faith

Sir Cumference

in my eyes that can lead to a lot of death, at least in medicine

Allie

@SillyGoose isnt there an its always sunny episode where mac says this

Sir Cumference

not directing this as an attack toward you personally

qwerty

@Allie sorry what I know is just from personal example

Sir Cumference

02:02

but rather people who offer that stuff

Allie

have YOU looked at the fossil records, Dennis?

Relativisticcucumber

thats fine i dont have a problem when people disagree but i have a problem when people discussing with me speak in a way that i think is condescending or disrespectful

Silly Goose

i am not sure how one can prove that science is based on rigorous testing. if you can provide a proof, then i would like to hear it

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber Well, that's a difference in what we consider condescending. If it came off that way, I apologize

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference thanks

Sir Cumference

02:03

but if it's a question on my opinions on pseudoscience, I think it is extremely dangerous

naturallyInconsistent

@ACuriousMind so, like, more expensive and unprescribed random sampling of inferior efficacy rather than something extremely cheap and well-studied?

Sir Cumference

@SillyGoose This is a matter of what you define as "rigorous". But it should generally follow the scientific method and receive peer review from others who devote their lives to the field

Pseudoscience generally does not follow that, by definition

@ACuriousMind Usually "alternative medicine" refers to the latter

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty but the supplements, do they do any good? I mean, if the standard medicine is not doing anything, you should be attacking that, rather than taking an alternative

Silly Goose

@SirCumference science back then was rich people spending their free time, no?

Allie

@naturallyInconsistent exactly

Sir Cumference

02:05

Back when?

@SillyGoose I don't know where you're getting the idea that modern medicine is unreliable and not rigorous

Silly Goose

i don't think that moder medicine is unreliable OR not rigorous

Sir Cumference

If you've ever gotten a surgery and not died of infection, that's a sign we're living in a different era than almost all of human history

ACuriousMind

@naturallyInconsistent I'm not saying I would recommend it! But using something like that (which even the science would agree has some effect) is conceptually very different from using something that doesn't work at all and is based on falsified theories about nature or the human body. The latter is pseudoscience, preferring to chew willow bark is a bit weird but not, in and of itself, unscientific.

Allie

@ACuriousMind i would say its unscientific

ACuriousMind

(you might still have unscientific reasons for that preference but that's neither here nor there)

Allie

02:06

how do you measure that?

Silly Goose

i think your claim that science is based on rigorous testing is unfounded (an example of my own claim!)

Allie

how do you do any analysis of the effects?

you cant control for any variables

Sir Cumference

@SillyGoose I do not see how you can come to that conclusion unless you haven't been involved in scientific research yourself

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose you'd have to look at experiments. Physics is an experimental science. You keep harping on the mathematical quirks, when those quirks are irrelevant for the determination of whether physics is being done rigorously or not

Sir Cumference

but if you try to be lazy about the results you're publishing, you're not going to go far

Relativisticcucumber

02:08

@naturallyInconsistent oh no not again

naturallyInconsistent

@ACuriousMind Well, i'd not accept such an cop-out when we are discussing the extremely dangerous topic of pseudoscience

Allie

the reason i believe in science is because it works

if it didnt work we wouldnt have computers, surgery, cars, anything

Silly Goose

i mean why does what is today called empirical evidence support a claim? you cannot prove that there is a relationship between empirical evidence and the truth of a claim (you cannot even, i imagine, provide a good definition of truth)

Sir Cumference

@Allie That's what makes it science, i.e. it's been tested to work

Allie

@SillyGoose yeah and i cant prove that this isnt all a simulation and i am the only real person

@SirCumference exactly!

ACuriousMind

02:09

@SirCumference Yeah, see, that's part of the problem - for you it does, but at least relativisticcucumber replied that they were thinking of herbal remedies and not stuff like crystal healing. Especially when the discussion becomes so unsurprisingly contentious, I think it's important to be very specific about what we mean

Silly Goose

i am just saying rigorous to me means irrefutable proof

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Well, that's just a matter of how "alternative medicine" is constantly being used as a euphemism for pseudoscience

Allie

@SillyGoose ok then what is osmething that can be irrefutably proved?

it sounds like for your standard of proof, nothing at all can be said with certainty

Silly Goose

@Allie exactly

Allie

which is a valid claim in some sense but not by any means useful

Sir Cumference

02:10

The fact that this term has become popular is a sign that these scam artists are trying to pass their treatments off as comparable to real medicine

Silly Goose

all beliefs are based on arbitrary choices

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose That's not even what is being tested for. The statistical inference does not flow that way. Oh, now I'm thinking that our new stats fellow would love to be involved in this discussion

Allie

yesssss user is awesome

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference scam artists? ummm the US health care system

Allie

@Relativisticcucumber yeah but this isnt the scientists fault

naturallyInconsistent

02:11

@SillyGoose If that is the case, I'd like you to live as if you really believe that nothing is certain.

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber Hoo boy, that catastrophe

Allie

its the capitalists fault

Relativisticcucumber

i think they scam worse than the pseudos

and that kills too

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent i do operate on two levels. day-to-day as per usual. but philosophically, nothing is certain indeed.

Allie

ehhhhh i disagree

Sir Cumference

02:12

@naturallyInconsistent I genuinely came in here expecting everyone to agree on the importance of scientific testing

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent its not the the standard treatment "doesn't do anything" it's that the side effects are severe. as an extreme example, chemotherapy works but the side effects are devastating. when people want to seek out alternatives, especially for non life threatening issues, it's not completely irrational

Sir Cumference

I am genuinely stunned by how divided it is

Allie

@SirCumference lol yeah crazy

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber but see, your view on these topics are very much colored by the absurdities of the US way of life. It is not the norm in the world today, at least not in the developed world.

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference academia is kind of a shithole lately i mean the data is not even trustable every other week theres a new falsification report

Sir Cumference

02:13

How do you even enter a physics chat if you're this skeptical on its backing

Allie

c a p i t a l i s m

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber Do you understand that checking for accuracy is part of science?

Thank god we have people making sure published research is done correctly

That's what leads to progress

Silly Goose

I mean have you ever experienced peer-review?

peer-reviewers do not give a shit XD

Sir Cumference

Human error will always be part of research

Relativisticcucumber

ITS NOT HUMAN ERROR

naturallyInconsistent

02:15

@qwerty But look, doctors are only supposed to provide treatments with severe side effects after cost-benefit analyses--- you all know about how doctors would sometimes just tell children of elderly patients to just go for palliative care. They are almost always for life-threatening issues. If you don't take the treatment, it will almost always have consequences.

Relativisticcucumber

its literally manufactured data

Sir Cumference

What's important is we stomp it out when we see it

Silly Goose

I feel like you have had a very privileged experience with the academic environments you've been a part of--if you truly believe in what you are saying.

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber If you seriously don't believe academia is trustworthy, I don't know what to tell you

Very confused how you ended up here when you doubt the backing of physics

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber What are you even reading, that would keep running into falsification issues, in physics?

Allie

02:16

yeah maybe in psychology lul

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent high temperature superconductors?

Sir Cumference

@qwerty This is such a bad reasoning it makes me wonder if it's satire

Relativisticcucumber

ok this is just not worth my time

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose And do you think that that will impact the correctness of the standard model?

Sir Cumference

@Relativisticcucumber probably true for both of us

Silly Goose

02:17

@naturallyInconsistent im just answering your q

qwerty

@SirCumference I am talking about a minor complaint for a personal thing that I am not disclosing

Sir Cumference

I'm going to ask you to disclose, but this is purely anecdotal logic

qwerty

you do not have enough information to know whether or not it is bad reasoning or not

Allie

lol

ACuriousMind

I'm not sure why everyone in the New Year here seems to have suddenly decided to get into fights all the time, but can we please all add a little more good faith to the discourse instead of immediately jumping to the worst conclusions about the other people after a few ambiguous chat messages?

Allie

02:19

internet moment

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind I know you're right. But man, it's just frightening to see pseudoscience get propped up sometimes

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose First of all, high temp SC is not running into falsification issues all the time. That is high-stakes, and highly scrutinised. Which means that any hoax will resolve itself in a few years. That is not like an ignored hidden cancer that will lurk for decades. And whatever hoax it is, it is not going to upend physics as we know it. It is not the kind of uncertainty that you can just ignore the progress that had already been ascertained

Sir Cumference

It's a matter of life and death for some people

We don't live in the age where we can get away with just thinking on a chair for a while and calling it "true"

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent i gave an example of where someone can expect to run into falsification in physics. the fact that high-Tc superconductivity is highly scrutinized suggests that in less scrutinized fields there is even more falsification.

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference Yes, I get it, you run into people who believe the worst kind of nonsense all the time and you have a defense reaction to it, but I would suggest that you shouldn't immediately assume that people who start to disagree with you on what might be a technicality are all the same

Relativisticcucumber

02:21

@ACuriousMind i really tried acm. i also things its completely inappropriate for someone to say "im going to ask you to disclose" regarding a medical issue that a person already said they aren't comfortable doing.

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Fair enough

@Relativisticcucumber Who said this?

Oh shit

I meant "I'm not going to ask you"

ACuriousMind

@Relativisticcucumber Come on, I'm like 90% sure that's a missed "not" there, because the 'but' makes no sense if it's meant like you're reading it

Sir Cumference

goddamn that is a bad instance of typing too quickly

Relativisticcucumber

@SirCumference ok thank you

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose But where fields are less scrutinised, the importance is also much less. It is not a problem either. And I also rejected that it is a field of physics that is highly falsified.

Sir Cumference

02:22

I guess that's what happens when I get too worked up

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent who said anything about the importance? the claim being discussed (i believe) was about falsification in physics generally

Relativisticcucumber

@ACuriousMind i mean it was still said so people are responsible for what they actually say. but now that it's clarified it's ok

Allie

meow

i think we all just need to meow

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose Well, if you are taking any falsification as justification that all of physics is unreliable, then it says a lot more about you than about physics.

Allie

right guys?

Silly Goose

02:24

@naturallyInconsistent i didn't ever say all of physics was unreliable. im not sure that claim was even brought up by anyone in this discussion

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose errm, you?

Silly Goose

i recall someone bringing up the idea that academia was untrustworthy, which I think is an a priori reasonable speculation. the pressures driving academia is not "searching for the truth".

yes the cucumber brought it up

how is all of physics being unreliable = data is not trustable [in academic papers]?

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose How can you trust that physics is reliable when it is routinely the subject of academic papers, and you don't trust the data in academic papers?

Silly Goose

i have met one professor who i could conceive of as having a moral compass

ACuriousMind

Okay, time-out for this discussion people, if you can't be civil to each other then we won't have this discussion at all.

naturallyInconsistent

02:29

@SillyGoose just to be sure, are you saying that you only met one with moral compass, or are you saying that you have met one without?

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Well, I probably should be getting back to work instead of this, so I guess I'll take that as my cue

ACuriousMind

8 messages deleted

Sir Cumference

But yeah, I do have to say it's easy to get passionate on this topic

Allie

mew

Silly Goose

I take as "axioms" that people are generally (1) irrational and (2) self-serving. this is what my experience in life suggests. not everyone is (1) and (2), but I think the average person is.

naturallyInconsistent

02:30

@ACuriousMind why did you delete the quotation post?

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent i have only met one prof that i think might have a moral compass

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose Then I dont know what kind of shithole you have found yourself in, but that is not anywhere near the kind of impression I got in the many universities I had been to.

@Relativisticcucumber I suppose this is a good time to cue the cumber lol

ACuriousMind

@naturallyInconsistent To be honest the mass message deletion interface is not terribly user-friendly :P I agree that was not necessary to delete, my bad

naturallyInconsistent

@ACuriousMind sus barely tolerated

Relativisticcucumber

@HerrFeinmann you got ur wish -- ur finally father's favorite

qwerty

02:35

@Relativisticcucumber lmao

not getting into a hbar brawl

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent it's the world (on average) ~

naturallyInconsistent

@Relativisticcucumber there was no announcement of a change in rankings???

ACuriousMind

Dec 8, 2024 at 20:17, by ACuriousMind

@HerrFeinmann no I love you all equally

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose Again, I'm not sure how that is the case. Which parts of the world are you taking into your average? I'm thinking that enough people live in the developed world that there is a tolerable average. Like, I'm not denying that there would be various sexist allegations, but that is nowhere near the same thing as saying that academia is dominated by people without moral compasses

Silly Goose

i am not sure who dominates academia today

naturallyInconsistent

02:39

just this morning youtube was sending meow meow a video about yet another whistleblowing event of some consequence; you don't get whistleblowers when most people are without moral compasses

Silly Goose

but as an example, i do not have the impression that the "dominant minds" of the feynman-von Neumann-etc. era are the greatest moral role models

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose still a lot of nepotism, to be fair, but its not a black hole

qwerty

@naturallyInconsistent I got distracted from replying to this: yes, which is why my gp suggested what she did ;)

naturallyInconsistent

@qwerty just to be clear, you might want to state if you think your GP is wrong or bad or something, or something else

(also if the GP is giving you medication with severe side effects, maybe get the GP to refer you to a specialist. If you can afford it. IIRC you dont live in USA and need to suffer their medical malfunction)

qwerty

mhm. apologies for the confusion

naturallyInconsistent

02:44

its ok, mild confusion is par for the convo

Silly Goose

i mean i can give concrete examples

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose yes plz

Silly Goose

Ehrenfest at the end of his life. anyone's contribution to the Manhatten project (which is a lot of people).

in particular, von Neumann wanting to (and he did) compute the optimal height to detonate a nuclear bomb to cause the most destruction (cf. dangerousworld.soe.ucsc.edu/2017/12/18/john-r-von-neuman)

Relativisticcucumber

03:01

how can a QPC sensor measure a probability? i thought it should measure charges or voltages but unsure how this can be converted into a probability

maybe too ill defined a q but one can hope

Silly Goose

As a data point two out of three institutions I have spent time at have had data falsification scandals. One institution is University of Southern California (when I was a high school student) the other is my current institution (high-Tc superconductivity). The one at USC is quite bad as the data falsification probably played a role in supporting a clinical trial for treatment for a neurodegenerative disorder that actually was on-going.

And the person I worked under at USC is Berislav Zlokovic (formerly considered a monumental figure in Alzheimer's research) science.org/content/article/…

from the science report "Several of the studies questioned in the dossier involved the experimental drug 3K3A-APC. Zlokovic and others postulated that it would reduce brain damage in people who suffered ischemic strokes, caused by blood clots. But the dossier described signs that 3K3A-APC might have increased the risk of death among participants in a clinical trial."

naturallyInconsistent

@SillyGoose Ehrenfest's EoL was plagued by depression. I dont know how you can assert that that had anything to do with moral compass. The people who worked on Manhatten project mostly were of the impression that the nazis would get to the bomb first, not least due to the monsters that were Heisenberg and Weizsäcker seemingly giving Bohr the impression that they were close to getting nukes. I dont know how you can assert that they dont have moral compasses in that scenario

@SillyGoose yes, it is known that von Neumann is a monster too

@Relativisticcucumber wayyyy too ill-defined

But it should be doable: just like how intensities can be converted to probabilities

Relativisticcucumber

@naturallyInconsistent im referring to how it is done in fig 3b of this paper science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1116955

@naturallyInconsistent yeah but im specifically confused here bc the two options both give rise to a voltage (two options being singlet or triplet) so how can we say how much of a readout is from singlet?

oh oh wait

maybe they do this lots of times and take one measurement each time?

then if its the voltage corresponding to singlet it's singlet, if its voltage corresponding to triplet, triplet

that is nifty wow

this paper has many idea gems

ok thats a wrap time to read

naturallyInconsistent

03:19

@Relativisticcucumber the caption seems to say that they projected the state to the singlet state before measuring the data that makes up the graph you are considering. I'm not sure what the paper is saying because it seems to take 3 pages and many references to many parts of Figure 2 just to describe Figure 3A, let alone discuss Figure 3B.

but I think you are seeing a way forward now so meowth

@SillyGoose thou hath mine condolences. But yeah, it is far more likely for medical trials to have weird things going on: unlike easier-to-do physics where fraud is easy to detect, medical trials tend to be easier to fudge and harder to detect, and much more immediate benefit money at stake, leading to it being a lot harder to stamp out scandals.

I'm not denying your lived reality, but it takes much more than that to assert that academia as a whole is having crises of the type you are discussing. Like, maybe a systematic review of the bulk would be more like it. I mean, this is not a useless standard: we know that academia is sexist, for example, with many entire institutions having scandals, or you can talk about entire fields like psychology, business schools, under fire. But it is not like fundamental physics being flamed as-is.

Speaking of Manhattan project, Leo Szilard is a shining beacon of morality. Really, really, going out of the way to be morally upright.

Allie

03:39

hi

naturallyInconsistent

hi hi mew mew

I'm so holding back from stabbing the person who recommended a paper for meow meow to read. They noted that they found a factor of $4\pi$ difference between the standard literature and what they were doing, and they werent using SI units. Which means meow meow has to work everything out by hand to verify any expression being discussed.

Allie

pls dont stab

naturallyInconsistent

stabs effigy miehehehe

we are cats. its ok

Allie

meow

naturallyInconsistent

m e o w ~

Allie

03:48

reading about lagrangian

the grangian

naturallyInconsistent

lol

Allie

im such a physics noob

i need to level up

naturallyInconsistent

level up is fun when it is on your own pace

Allie

yeah i mean i feel some pressure

to get my research project on the road

nI, do you know anywhere that explains the derivation of the von Weiszacker gradient correction to the KE density functional?

the original paper is in german and... i dont know german

naturallyInconsistent

are you talking about the stuff leading up to GGA?

Allie

03:56

i mean yeah, i believe that it led to GGA but also in OFDFT the von Weiszacker correction is used on its own

naturallyInconsistent

AFAIK, that is just explained as if it were merely a functional version of Taylor's expansion, and nothing really properly explained

Allie

humm

so uhh

what youre talking about is where they represent the wavefunction as a homogeneous electron gas with an added inhomogeneity term? or something else

naturallyInconsistent

Well, somewhat, yes

Allie

what about the other-what

i want to know all-what

naturallyInconsistent

04:13

miao miao just flipped through myow copy of Fetter & Walecka to find it. On a superbly cursory reading, there is a bit discussing when the density is varied, hence having a gradient in density. That might be the proper way to derive the result you are looking for. If it is in Fetter & Walecka, then it would also be in Bruus & Flensberg. However, you should completely avoid these, because it will be very much a confusing mess for you right now.

Allie

lol. thank you :3

naturallyInconsistent

I mean, those are QFT textbooks, and you havent gotten to grips with stat therm yet, and will just be utterly confused. Instead, just take the stuff that they have given you as gospel and run with it.

You can always come back to fill in this gigantic hole later on. It is probably not worth your attention right now

Silly Goose

@naturallyInconsistent were u the one who suggested duncan qft before

naturallyInconsistent

04:39

@SillyGoose yes

though I'm not sure if that is to your liking

Allie

05:12

its too god damn cold

Tobias Fünke

06:21

morning

Allie

hi tobias

Tobias Fünke

@ACuriousMind this.

Allie

:c

Tobias Fünke

lately the chat escalates quite quickly, and (some, few) people become unfriendly or even rude

John Rennie

To be fair I think it's at least partly because people here feel they have got to know each other well so they are willing to say things that you would never say to strangers but you would say to friends.

It seems to me that in the last few months we've developed a good community spirit here. There have been times over the last ten years when the chat could get a bit toxic, but I don't think that's the case at the moment.

Tobias Fünke

06:36

Hi John, Hi Allie

Yes, that sounds plausible

John Rennie

Hi :-)

Allie

oh hi john

Tobias Fünke

I did not mean many or most members here

John Rennie

Hi Allie :-)

Allie

im doing a bit of lagrangian mechanics

John Rennie

06:37

Haven't you got a train to catch in a few hours?

Allie

kinda neat :3 slightly boring but also a cool technique

yes i do

in 5.5 hours to be exact

:3

you have good memory

John Rennie

What it is to be young and sleep is optional :-)

Allie

oh im gonna be very tired, but if i tried to go to sleep now i would just lay there and think for hours

so im tiring my brain out with physics

qwerty

hey 5pm crew ✌️

John Rennie

Where is it 5 p.m.? Australia?

qwerty

06:41

yes

well its past 5 now

John Rennie

It's 06:40 a.m. here, though not cold since the UK weather appears to have gone completely mad at the moment.

Allie

ok i got the problem right

maybe i should go to bed

but at least i learned something new

qwerty

have a good sleep allie

John Rennie

👍

Tobias Fünke

see you, and bon voyage :)

Allie

06:51

thanks besties

im not looking forward to waking up early

naturallyInconsistent

@TobiasFünke oh, this is far smaller a conflict than is usual, lol

@Allie daylight be dayumed

Kenshin

07:54

anyone know special relativity here?

naturallyInconsistent

it would be more difficult to find someone who does not know

Kenshin

can you please help

First do we agree that if we have a force F_x along the x-axis and forces and velocities in y and z directions are zero, then F_x = F'_x where F'_x is the force viewed from some other frame moving at a constant velocity along the x-axis

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