The h Bar

In the even section, they have: "For a complete description of these (n+6)/2 irreducible representations, refer linear representation theory of dihedral groups#the linear representation theory of dihedral groups of even degree."

which is fine, but then in the odd section they have: "For a complete description of these (n+6)/2 irreducible representations, refer linear representation theory of dihedral groups#the linear representation theory of dihedral groups of odd degree."

they correctly changed even to odd at the end of the sentence, but they forgot to change (n+6)/2 to (n+3)/2

0celo7

yeah

Semiclassical

4:22 AM

(which in an earlier sentence is what they said was the number of irreps for the odd case)

0celo7

I was able to get all of the reps except for the "forgetful" rep which makes $b$ real

I could do the character table using row orthogonality but they have the actual rep which is nice

or you can figure out that it must be 2D and use column Hermitian-orthogonality (easier)

Semiclassical

my knowledge of character tables is basically limited to

characters are traces

and the rows are orthogonal

you don't need much more to find tables of small groups, if memory serves

but, uh, small means really small

0celo7

@BalarkaSen I want to appear smart. How do I show a 7-subgroup is normal in an order 21 group using abstract nonsense?

Semiclassical

lol

@0celo7 oh hey: math.stackexchange.com/q/2399780/137524

0celo7

Not worth it. Proof: Direct computation. Done.

Balarka Sen

4:27 AM

Sylow's 3rd theorem

Semiclassical

i like that the argument given by the first person works if the group is of order <= 48 but has an explicit counterexmple at |G|=49

Balarka Sen

groups are very unstable under perturbation of order.

ok, gotta run to school

0celo7

cheerio

0celo7

4:46 AM

@Semiclassical the final product is slighly longer than a page -.-

Semiclassical

lol

here's a problem which I think takes longer than a page

Suppose some depraved individual gave you the Schrodinger equation with the potential $V(x)=x-x^3$.

this potential is unbounded below and so doesn't have bound states

However, if you pick an initial wavefunction at time $t=0$, then you can still ask about how this wavefunction would evolve in time subject to this potential

0celo7

@Semiclassical [citation needed]

@Semiclassical sure

Semiclassical

@0celo7 eh, in this particular case it's clear cut: any energy one picks will have $E-V(x)\to +\infty$ as $x\to\infty$

so necessarily none of the solutions of the time-independent would be normalizable.

anyways. the question I'm grappling right now is: How would one implement this on a computer?

my usual attempt assumes that the wavefunction remains localized in some region of space for a certain amount of time. not sure I can assume that here...

0celo7

@Semiclassical I'm afraid I don't see what that has to do with $E-V(x)\to\infty$

@Semiclassical eek. I don't know anything about PDE numerics

Semiclassical

lol

i'm pretty sure I don't either

one thought I had was to transform to momentum space

on the one hand, that makes the kinetic energy p^2/2m behave like a potential energy---that's a good thing

on the other hand, the potential energy x-x^3 becomes (up to signs and constants) D+D^3

which bodes...poorly

0celo7

5:02 AM

yep

Semiclassical

plus i have no idea wtf the boundary conditions would be

0celo7

None!

It's an L^2 Cauchy problem

Good luck

Semiclassical

yup

0celo7

I'm going to bed, cheerio

Semiclassical

I probably should pick a different example, one which isn't so crazy

maybe an asymmetric double well

0celo7

5:06 AM

That potential probably isn't ultracontractive or whatever the condition is for the L^2 Cauchy problem to be solvable

Semiclassical

the x^3-x one?

would not shock me

0celo7

@Semiclassical I'm obliged to refer you to Volumes 2 and 3 of Reed and Simon

Semiclassical

lol

0celo7

Not a page, mind you

Not even a section.

Just read the whole thing and you might get an idea

Semiclassical

haha

i'm not particularly wedded to this example, tbh

the fact that the particle would have an infinite amount of potential energy at infinity bodes poorly

but is not really necessary to what i want

which is to have a potential with metastable states

Secret

10:11 AM

link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjc%2Fs10052-017-5253-3

Why must flux tubes be one dimensional. Can we have flux sheets which are 2D versions of flux tubes hence allowing knots to be stable at higher dimensions?

Slereah

Check out this fancy letter

John Rennie

@Secret field lines are fundamentally one dimensional, and that's the reason flux tubes are 1D objects. A flux sheet can break up into separate flux lines, but a flux tube can only break by creating new quarks or gluons.

Secret

10:39 AM

hmm I see, and I guess flux tubes in quantum chromodynamics don't bundle into sheets (I wish I have enough background to instantly understand why, but my guess it might had something to do with how the strong force is represented group theorically), hence they cannot form 2D structures that can form higher dimensional knots hence making them stable in 4 macroscopic spatial dimensions

> in non-Abelian gauge theories analogous to QCD, chromoelectric flux tends to become confined and the resulting tube-like structures can be treated as effective one-dimensional objects or strings

some other thoughts: I think in order to have higher dimensional field like structures, it will need to be consists of tensors or some exterior geometry stuff

> A knotted/linked flux tube network formed in a QCD-like phase transition can provide a natural source of inflation and is one of the few scenarios not requiring a fundamental scalar field. Furthermore, this model may explain why we live in three large spatial dimensions, since knotted/linked tubes are topologically unstable in higher-dimensional space-times. This picture may also be applied to a model of dark energy, which would eliminate the need for an ultra-light scalar field.

hmm, does it explain the fact that dark energy seemed to be accelerating :?

Otherwise, an interesting and simple model.

There are also other excitnig things going on in the solar system exploration and quantum physics in the recent week, to be discussed later...

Secret

11:08 AM

[Comic of today]

user685252

Tickets for Stephen Hawking public lecture on 27 Oct are sold out @OxUniMaths but you can follow live here #Hawking http://ow.ly/9dIE30fVCIr

Tweeted by TheOxfordTrust on October 20, 2017 at 4:00 PM

ACuriousMind

11:36 AM

@Secret cc @JohnRennie The premise of the question (and John's answer) is false - a QCD flux tube is a vaguely cylindrical two-dimensional object (or even a three-dimensional object, depending on whether or not you count the interior as belonging to the tube) with a classical width determined by its classical field profile (i.e. the functional forms of the expectation values of the chromoelectric and -magnetic fields).

Only in the limit where the separation of the quarks is large against this width is it well-described by a one-dimensional non-critical string.

John Rennie

@ACuriousMind it's the limit that is relevant. This relates to a publication suggesting that knotted flux tubes may have determined the (spatial) dimensionality of the universe because strings can only be knotted in 3D.

ACuriousMind

@JohnRennie Yeah, I didn't read the paper. Just saying that the notion of flux tube is not inherently one-dimensional and its treatment as one-dimensional does not relate to field lines being one-dimensional, but simply to this limit. I have no opinion on weirdo cosmology ;)

John Rennie

I remember being impressed by the revelation that knots were only possible in three spatial dimensions, and wondering if that was related to the dimensionality of our universe. But I was young and impressionable at the time :-)

Secret

and my question is wondering why a flux tube is cyllindrical and what prevent us from having flux sheets in QCD since if you have a 2D surface, 4D knots can be formed (an example of a 4D knot is shown here: http://www.askamathematician.com/2016/02/q-can-planes-sheets-be-tied-in-knots-in-higher-dimensions-the-way-lines-strings-can-be-tied-in-knots-in-3-dimensions/)

If flux tubes are the only (insert suitable word) structures possible in QCD, then I can see why 4D or higher D knots are ruled out, but I am not very certain if QCD forbid flux sheets like structures, which can then bend in 4D t…

ACuriousMind

@JohnRennie Many geometric questions - like whether a knot is the unknot or not - are only interesting in three or four dimensions. I tend to favour the explanation that our brains, having been formed in our four-dimensional world, simply don't know how to ask the interesting geometric questions in higher dimensions over the explanation that three/four dimensions must be absolutely special ;)

John Rennie

11:48 AM

Experiment suggests three spatial dimensions are special ...

Secret

Therefore, my only guess given my current background is that the group structure of QCD results the only shape possible for chromoelectic fields are cylindrical, hence rulling out the possibility of flux sheets

ACuriousMind

@Secret But that question doesn't make sense. What do you mean by a "flux sheet"?

A flux tube is what you get when do you QCD between two static quarks. That's simply what it is. Where's the "sheet" supposed to come from?

Secret

uh, just as a flux tube in the limit of large separation of two quarks is like a 1D string, would it be possible in QCD for 4 or more quarks in the limit of large separation the field connecting them form a 2D sheet like structure. (But again I think I am missing a whole lot of knowledge on QCD here, so perhaps QCD already rule such things out)

If QCD actually allows such structures, then we can run the same argument as in the paper and these will coil into 4D knots hence resulting in 4 large spatial dimensions instead of 3, so I think they has to be already ruled out to give the conclusion of the paper that 3 dimension is the answer

ACuriousMind

@Secret That just gives you two flux tubes between the quarks that are nearest/bound to each other.

Secret

I see

ACuriousMind

11:58 AM

@Secret No, you cannot. The argument for why flux tubes are a good concept is not merely "this looks like a string so we can act as if string theory describes it" but that one can actually show that a modified version of the Nambu-Goto action for strings yields the correct dynamics and degrees of freedom in the limit of large quark separation, therefore it is meaningful to model flux tubes are one-dimensional dynamical objects.

Slereah

Henneaux says that the EL equation $$\frac{d}{dt} (\frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot q_n}) - \frac{\partial L}{\partial q_n} = 0$$ can be rewritten as $$\ddot q^{n'} \frac{\partial^2 L}{\partial \dot q^{n'} \partial \dot q^{n}} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial q^n} - \dot q^{n'} \frac{\partial^2 L}{\partial q^{n'} \partial \dot q^n}$$

But how

ACuriousMind

@Slereah Chain rule: $\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} = \partial_t + \dot{q}\partial_q + \ddot{q}\partial_{\dot{q}}$.

Secret

I see, so the degrees of freedom present in the limit of large quark separation is best fit by a string dynamics model, hence the dynamical structures are best described as one dimensional

Slereah

Ah yes

I forgot the whole explicit vs implicit derivative thing

You don't see it a lot outside of thermodynamics

ACuriousMind

@Slereah It's there in a lot of classical mechanics, but people are abysmal at explaining it, cf. all the "Why are $q$ and $\dot{q}$ independent?" questions.

Slereah

12:05 PM

Why is there no $\dot L$ term, does he just assume time invariance?

ACuriousMind

@Slereah Yes

Slereah

Fair

Secret

Some random thought: I wonder what a universe where second time derivative terms in the lagrangian is important is like. I guess we will need both the initial position and initial velocity to solve any equation of motions

If I recall my classical dyanamics properly, the lagrangian is often only as a function of position, velocity and time

ACuriousMind

@Secret We already need initial position and velocity to solve most equations of motion.

0celo7

It's raining

Rip life

Getting out the seppuku blade

Sid

12:08 PM

@0celo7 Great. Enjoy the rain. :-)

Secret

I think I misremebered things on the number of initial conditions needed in relation to the order of a PDE

In that case, a hypothetical $L(q,\dot{q},\ddot{q},t)$ will need initial postion, velocity and acceleration

64

Q: Why are there only derivatives to the first order in the Lagrangian?

Why is the Lagrangian a function of the position and velocity (possibly also of time) and why are dependences on higher order derivatives (acceleration, jerk,...) excluded? Is there a good reason for this or is it simply "because it works".

> n an interacting system this means that we can excite positive energy modes by transferring energy from the negative energy modes, and in doing so we would increase the entropy — there would simply be more particles, and so a need to put them somewhere. Thus such a system could never reach equilibrium, exploding instantly in an orgy of particle creation.

Ooooops...

EzWin

Hello guys, can you help with some second quantization?

1

Q: XXh model for $1/2$-spin chain

I'm looking for correlation function (i.e. $\langle g \rvert \hat{S}_i^z \hat{S}_{i+n}^z\lvert g \rangle$, where $g$ stands for ground state) for given Hamiltonian($\hat{S}^z_i = \hat{c}^+_{j} \hat{c}^-_{j} - \frac{1}{2}$): $$\hat{H} = \frac{-J}{2} \sum_{j} \left(\hat{c}^+_{j+1} \hat{c}^-_{j}+ ...

statistical-mechanics integrable-systems

Context

I got the answer there but I'm confused on correlation function evalution coz I dont fully understand how c->a change works

user84215

Hello.

Secret

12:55 PM

nature.com/articles/nchem.2295

(It's a 2 years old paper, but that is because I need this to discuss the more recent one)

Hmm, reaction pathways with same start and endpoint can actually interfere as if they are paths in quantum processes. I have heard of this many times in QFT but I am amazed that it can also occur in chemistry

nature.com/articles/nphys4289

This is the more recent paper that I want to discuss. It seems just a single electron is enough to excite molecules into some coherent state, which can then make products to be ejected at certain directions. I wonder if I can put some more quantum in my research molecules...

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I spend too much time here. Is 3-fold a physicist term or both?

Secret

depends on 3-fold what

e.g. 3-fold symmetry is valid in both physics and mathematical communities

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Every mathematician will understand what you mean.

@Secret He's talking about "n-fold" as a shorthand for "n-dimensional manifold".

Secret

Ah I see, in that case I am not familar wth 3-fold, since I and most of the resources I read, tend to write 3-manifold in full

journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.160401

This experiment proposal may be interesting in terms of fundemental quantum research: To measure the phase impart by the exchange symmetry

I don't see many fundemental quantum researches in random google searches or various science magazine links recently, as most people are quite focus on the applied side of things such as quantum simulators and quantum computer components

Judging from the recent progresses in both quantum computing and quantum simulators, it seems that in the coming years will be exciting for materials, medicinal and computational chemists

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Every?

ACuriousMind

1:11 PM

@0celo7 I struggle to think of an occasion where they wouldn't unless you purposefully obscure the context :P

0celo7

@ACuriousMind does every mathematician even know what a manifold is?

Secret

e.g. a 3-fold with 3-fold symmetry which its volume is increased by 3-fold

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Slereah

@0celo7 they probably have the vague notion of it, at least

Secret

[Still thinking about relativistic statistical mechanics of a cloud of debris from an explosion] The number of possible inertial reference frame to choose is (insert suitable word)

and also which light cone should be used as the frontier on the causal impacts to future events

Slereah

1:18 PM

Just the union of all light cones

it's not rocket science

Secret

hmm, that union would probably be (slightly(?)) wider than just one light cone, covering a lot of region of spacetime that are towards the spacelike directions

Semiclassical

hi chat

Slereah

1:36 PM

hello

Slereah

1:56 PM

DEFCON 19: And That's How I Lost My Eye: Exploring Emergency Data Destruction (w speaker)

►

heh

Secret

2:07 PM

Joe Nickell

Joe Nickell (born December 1, 1944) is an American prominent skeptic and investigator of the paranormal. He has helped expose such famous forgeries as the purported diary of Jack the Ripper. In 2002 he was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to evaluate the authenticity of the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman. At the request of document dealer and historian, Seth Keller, Nickell analyzed documentation in the dispute over the authorship of "The Night Before Christmas", ultimately...

The only paranormal investigator that is not a pseudoscientist

ACuriousMind

@Secret What? Try en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wiseman for a start.

Semiclassical

bah, sniped on Randi

Secret

Ok I am being mislead by a Vox video that talks about the science of seeing ghosts

Semiclassical

brief rant: As much as I'm willing to be open-minded about various quantum interpretations, I have very little patience at all for people who try to link that to ESP/parapsychology/what have you

which makes the stuff physicists were willing to put up with in the 1970's quite frustrating to me

Slereah

I have a great paper from COMMUNIST CHINA about a science experiment with MIND TELEPORTATION

Semiclassical

2:16 PM

oh lawd

Slereah

"Research into paranormal ability to break through spatial barriers"

Semiclassical

aghhh

Secret

quantum mysticism is one of those things that you can show it does not work even if you consider everything that is allowed by quantum mechanics

Slereah

By Song Kongzhi, Li Xianggao and Zhou Liangzhong

The "subject with paranormal abilities" was Zhang Baosheng

Secret

I have once wrote about a debunk in this chat using a pile of neurons as a model

Slereah

2:17 PM

I wonder what he's up to these days

Semiclassical

depends on what you mean by mysticism, of course. but any reading of quantum mechanics which implies telekinesis or faster-than-light-signalling is out

Slereah

Zhang Baosheng

Zhang Baosheng (simplified Chinese: 张宝胜; traditional Chinese: 張寶勝) (born 1958) was one of the most famous qigong Grandmasters during the period of qigong's immense popularity (so called "qigong fever") in the People's Republic of China. Along with Yan Xin, he played a key role in bringing the body technologies of qigong practice, and the supernatural abilities that can be putatively developed through it, into the Chinese public consciousness. A miner from Benxi, Liaoning, Zhang was 'discovered' as being able to read with his nose, able to see through people's bodies, and to be able to place objects...

That guy, apparently

"A miner from Benxi, Liaoning, Zhang was 'discovered' as being able to read with his nose"

A great skill

Secret

Mysticism by itself is ok and actually quite fun to learn about. Just don't mix it with science and posing it as a science like most (insert word) does

e.g. kabbah has religious connections to both muslisms and christianit

Semiclassical

Well, again, I don't think there's any physical way to disprove a 'conscioueness causes collapse' interpretation as such.

Slereah

"The supernatural powers of Zhang Baosheng (arrested for fraud in 1995)"

Woops

I guess it didn't end too well for old Baosheng

Semiclassical

2:20 PM

by that I mean: if it doesn't modify the predictions of quantum mechanics, it can't be experimentally disproven.

Secret

You will need to first show that consciousness is an entity that exists but has no physical form, which I strongly doublt

Semiclassical

i may find it philosophically unsatisfactory, but it can't be invalidated in that way

@Secret eh, or you accept it as axiomatic in your worldview.

you may not find that persuasive, but I suspect it's internally inconsistent.

Secret

Well, I am agnostic, and mostly default to science for explaining the physical world, and the esoterics for all worldbuilding, what-if ponderings and philosophy.

I recall I once talked with a philosopher in the NewScientist panal on discussion abotu consciousness (where neuroscientists were also present) about what happens if there really exists consciousness as a separate entity. He said its probably not very different from suddenly having more people to interact with and that one has to be careful that ones action will affect the other side of the globe

Semiclassical

I guess I'd distinguish between 'naive' and 'philosophical' quantum mysticism.

Secret

So what I gather from that is, if consciousness is a separate nonphysical entity, then suddenly all our laws of physics have highly nonlocal things need to worry about

Semiclassical

2:25 PM

ugh

Secret

so yeah, I think consciousness is mostly a brain thing, and neuroscience will eventually crack it

Semiclassical

i feel like the word 'naive' is too nice a word, though

'vulgar' quantum mysticism, maybe

but this is splitting hairs over terminology

Secret

One thing that is common to all forms of quantum mysticism is a notion of nonlocal signalling with thought, but nonlocal signalling is precisely the thing that is forbid by relativity and quantum mechanics by itself as well

Semiclassical

I'm not sure that's true.

But that's me quibbling with the definition of quantum mysticism.

0celo7

@Semiclassical we have a colloquium on topological methods in GPS on Friday

Should I troll by asking about GR?

Secret

2:29 PM

at least most, given how they misuse the notion of entanglement alot thinking that the correlation is a form of signalling

Semiclassical

@Secret aye

Secret

(and it is muh worse in the eastern cultures, including Hong Kong)

Semiclassical

that's what I mean as far as vulgar vs. philosophical

i'd firmly place 'clairvoyance' in the vulgar category

Secret

Is a philosophical (non vulgar) quantum mysticism even possible? I always thought that combining quantum with mysticism will always lead to trouble that is far from the physical reality?

Semiclassical

It might be a bit of a "no-true-scotsman" issue

Secret

2:32 PM

(NB I don't count quantum interpretations mentioned in physics circles as mysticism)

Semiclassical

i.e. who gets to decide what counts as 'mysticism'

Secret

I guess that's true, mysticism is a very vague concept, it is all about the notion of hidden knowledge and reality, but those concepts are also quite vague

Semiclassical

right.

i guess what I have in mind is more generally "consciousness causes collapse" interpretations

e.g. Wigner's 1961 paper

and stuff written by von Neumann

Secret

I tend to counter that by replacing a human experiment with an equivalent experiment where all humans are replaced by mechanical sensors or computers, that way, nobody is going to put consciousness into the equation

Semiclassical

I'm not much of a fan of it, to be clear.

but to the extent that it predicts the same things as standard QM it's not possible to falsify it

Secret

2:35 PM

so do I, I prefer psi ontic interpretations, or in general, any interpretations that does not involve anything human

(probabilities and summary of knowledge don't count, interestingly (psi-epistemic))

Semiclassical

I have sympathies towards the pilot-wave approach, especially if we're doing non-relativistic QM

Secret

The Bohm mechanics guys have to figure out how to extend their model to relativistic conditions to have a better chance to be at the same level as more popular interpretations

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I have updated my psycho list

Semiclassical

there's been some work on that, e.g. Ward Struyve

but I dunno

I do feel like the right question is not non-relativistic QM but full-fledged QFT

0celo7

@ACuriousMind so now it's short people + people with large backpacks + people who hold back sneezes + old people taking college classes who are smart asses

Secret

2:38 PM

there are, there's one work that talks about how peak intensity in cophehagen and bohm in the double slit experiment actually slightly differs, but as far I know, nobody had done that experiment suggested by that paper yet

Semiclassical

just to check, how much do you know about pilot wave stuff?

I can give a short precis

Secret

QFT is a mathematical mystery.. What are the mathematical objects that corresponds to interacting quantum fields

I won't say I knew alot, given I learn haphazard concepts and examples from popsci and wikipedia and occasionally journals, but if you said thing in full technical, I might be able to understand ok

Balarka Sen

@0celo7 armchair psychologist intensifies

Semiclassical

eh, my summary is pretty simple

0celo7

@BalarkaSen I have a theory

Semiclassical

2:41 PM

(of pilot wave stuff, i mean. not qft no way)

0celo7

People who are short (say <5'5" for men) have evolved as psychos to survive in the wild

It lines up perfectly with the data

Semiclassical

@0celo7 something something Napoleon complex?

Balarka Sen

Quite Darwinian

0celo7

@Semiclassical Roughly.

People who hold back sneezes were more efficient and ruthless hunters

Also good at raiding enemy camps and wiping them out

Semiclassical

eh, evolutionary psychology is something I have a hard time taking seriously

it's just too easy for it to fall into the pit of just-so stories

0celo7

2:46 PM

I'm not claiming anything here is scientifically valid. Modulo reality it's feasible.

These are personal theories.

Semiclassical

fair enough

there's a line out of Kierkegaard which I've always liked

0celo7

@Semiclassical there's also something about people who always have baseball hats that I can't quite put my finger on

Secret

@0celo7 correlation does not imply causation, you will need to do something more to show a causation (if any)

It will be interesting if there is a weak causation, though

Semiclassical

"If Hegel had written the whole of his Logic and then said in the preface that it was merely a thought-experiment in which he had even begged the question in many places then he would have certainly been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is he is comical."

(quite what Kierkegaard means by 'comical' requires some further interpretation, but ehhhh that's too tedious)

Balarka Sen

Semiclassical

2:52 PM

lol

yeah, kierkegaard definitely had daddy issues

Balarka Sen

kirke-dawg's attributes all apply to kafka tbh

Semiclassical

one way to interpret Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, for instance, is with his father playing the role of Abraham and Kierkegaard himself as Isaac

(another one is Kierkegaard as Abraham and his engagement to his fiancee as the 'Isaac' he was called to sacrifice. so he was kinda f'd up in other ways)

Balarka Sen

i havent read kierkegaard

Semiclassical

I've read more about him than him directly if I'm honest

The big difference between him and Kafka, I suspect, is that Kierkegaard's writings always have a Christian context

Balarka Sen

Eh I think they are different in many many ways

Semiclassical

2:57 PM

the alienation in Kierkegaard is from God, not from other humans as such

Balarka Sen

Kafka is very different from classical flavors of existentialism

Semiclassical

I don't know a lot of Kafka tbh

beyond the obvious ones

Balarka Sen

were even

Semiclassical

lol

And for that matter I know Eliot way more than I know Camus or Sartre

Balarka Sen

I do not like Sartre

Semiclassical

2:59 PM

one thing I've always found interesting

Famous line from Sartre: "Hell is other people."

Balarka Sen

i dont really see whats interesting about that. that's a pretty old and beaten horse in existentialism

Semiclassical

by contrast, a few lines from one of TS Eliot's plays:

Balarka Sen

starting w/ dostoyevsky

Semiclassical

"What is hell? Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."

sure. it's the contrast I find interesting

Secret

hell is other people -> is why almost everything physics that occurred in direct association to the human scale don't interested me

Balarka Sen

3:01 PM

I guess I don't really find the angsty and edgy flavors of existentialism enjoyable anymore

It's just too well explored

Semiclassical

I tend to follow Eliot's line far more than Sartre's

Balarka Sen

I have grown to find J Alfred Prufrock to be droll over time

eg

Semiclassical

yeah

I mean, there's lines I like out of Prufrock

but i find it less inherently interesting than his later works

Balarka Sen

For sure, I remember verses out of it. But... it boils down to cheap angst

I think I rank Ash Wednesday above Prufrock

Semiclassical

The one which I have a tricky time 'ranking' is "The Hollow Men"

Balarka Sen

3:10 PM

Definitely right next to The Waste Land to me

Semiclassical

you can potentially lay a charge of angst against it as well, but I find that I respond quite viscerally to it

The Waste Land is weird for me as well because there's parts of it which I really like

What the Thunder Said is really really good

and The Burial of the Dead is also great

Balarka Sen

Well, I find the hellishly surreal depiction to be quite far from having anything to do with $\exists$-ism

Semiclassical

A Game of Chess and The Fire Sermon, by contrast...

there's parts of that which I just don't find interesting

Balarka Sen

I enjoyed A Game of Chess

Semiclassical

I'd put it over The Fire Sermon

though there are some lines out of that which I do like a lot

Balarka Sen

3:13 PM

I think the reason I don't appreciate Fire Sermon is because there's way too many allusions going on in there

Semiclassical

quite possibly, yeah

i mean, there's a bit of that throughout

for instance, there's a section out of A Game of Chess which is basically an extended homage to a bit of Shakespeare's Cleopatra

Balarka Sen

Ah yes right I remember

Semiclassical

but i think you can appreciate that part even without knowing about Cleopatra

harder to say that about The Fire Sermon

Balarka Sen

Right

Semiclassical

what I like about The Fire Sermon is the stuff at the end

after the river song

plus, the ending is just great

"To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning"

one doesn't need to know about the St Augustine allusion implicit in that to get the effect

Balarka Sen

3:19 PM

I thought the last bit of Fire Sermon was rather visceral

Semiclassical

yeah

and there are some lyrical bits which come before it which I rather like

the Tiresias part of it, by contrast, I never got much enjoyment out of

Balarka Sen

I always found the Tiresias segment rather repelling and disturbing

Semiclassical

yeah

I mean, I think it's intended to be so

Balarka Sen

"I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins."

@Semiclassical Of course. I think that's why I appreciate it, kinda

Semiclassical

I wouldn't call that section to be 'angsty' per se but it reflects more Eliot's own neuroticism towards intimacy and his prejudices re: the under class

Eliot was kinda f'd up in those regards.

Balarka Sen

3:24 PM

well, I see where it originates from

Semiclassical

yeah

To the extent that one can detect TS Eliot the person in his writings, I appreciate his later work more than his earlier.

Balarka Sen

I felt like Fire Sermon is like a miniature lyrical version of The Garden of Earthly Delights

Semiclassical

How much of Four Quartets have you read?

Balarka Sen