The h Bar

Curious Fish

2:43 AM

does any1 here still exist or is everyone gone

Avantgarde

3:12 AM

Gone.

Anonymous

5:46 AM

@Semiclassical Are you acquainted with the Graph Utilities package on Mathematica?

Anonymous

I'm trying to generate some graphs with certain constraints

Anonymous

I don't know if such a feature is built in, but I'd like to say generate a graph using n = 5 with distinct edge weights (governed by the nodes the edges are connected to). Output in some ASCII format is acceptable

Sir Cumference

6:14 AM

Ugh...sore throat. If I'm actually sick before right midterms imma cry ;-;

AnotherJohnDoe

6:57 AM

Hi! I am looking for a text to accompany Landau Lifshitz Volume 1 (Mechanics). Many thanks!

user3613025

8:27 AM

guys quick question if I sum up a single Spherical Harmonics from l = 0 to infinity and m = -l to l would it converge to something?

tried to do it on mathematica but it doesn't output anything

Slereah

@user3613025 There is a specific series of spherical harmonics like that I think

Although I may be thinking of the one showing that it's orthogonal

So maybe not

user3613025

yea those are the only ones that i can find

it always ever involves the sum of spherical harmonics and its conjugate pair

but i can't find an expression for the summation of only 1 spherical harmonics alone

Slereah

Well do they converge to 0 as $l \to \infty$?

user3613025

haha that's the thing idk and idk how to work it out

Slereah

Let's see

The non-Legendre part has a $\sqrt{l}$ growth

What's the Legendre asymptotic behaviour

Hm, it is Complicated

user3613025

8:40 AM

yea

basically i've some initial conditions that i've to put into my spherical harmonics and sum it up

Slereah

Might have to break out the holy book

zulfahmed.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/…

user3613025

haven't decided on the initial conditions yet but i'm just looking to see if the summation produces a useful explicit expression

ooh what's this holy book

looks fancy

Slereah

tables of integrals series and products

Oh wait

Spherical harmonics

In mathematics and physical science, spherical harmonics are special functions defined on the surface of a sphere. They are often employed in solving partial differential equations that commonly occur in science. The spherical harmonics are a complete set of orthogonal functions on the sphere, and thus may be used to represent functions defined on the surface of a sphere, just as circular functions (sines and cosines) are used to represent functions on a circle via Fourier series. Like the sines and cosines in Fourier series, the spherical harmonics may be organized by (spatial) angular frequency...

getting closer

user3613025

hmm i don't see it on wikipedia i had a look

Slereah

It's not quiiiite what you want

There's a bunch of factors

Which makes me suspect it doesn't converge

Since the factors are $\approx \ell (\ell!)^2$ to give an exponential function

I'm guessing if you have to damp its growth that much to get an exponential it's probably not convergent by itself

user3613025

8:49 AM

is there some sort of convergent tests that can be applied here

not with my undergrad knowledge lol

Slereah

I'm guessing it's probably not too hard to check if it converges to zero or not, at least

just fairly tedious

user3613025

mathematica doesn't show anything when i tried to do the sum

ah well i've got my meeting with my supervisor in half an hour anyway

but thanks for trying!

Captain Bohemian

9:57 AM

I just dreamt of classmate reunion; it's so vivid.

the most meritorious function of school is that it collects people of the similar interests.

otherwise it's difficult to find a person with similar interests with you in the expanse of people.

Secret

11:19 AM

O that is pretty common for me, and since I was very little, I already knew how unforgivining adulthood is, thus since then I have done heaps of safeguards that effectively anchors the past into the present, so these reunions still took place til the present day

put it simply, I froze many of my friendships in time so like an entangled state, they become independent of time itself

Anonymous

@CaptainBohemian "collects people of similar interests" I wish I could agree with that :P

Anonymous

"collects people of similar age" sounds more appropriate

Secret

well, sometimes it is also good at collecting people with opposite interests

Anonymous

@user3613025 True. A bit of diversity is healthy

Anonymous

@Secret Ah. And I just got rid of those. Not that I wouldn't greet them if we met, but just that I don't usually remember them in my day to day life.

Anonymous

11:29 AM

I'm not really good at maintaining long term friendships in real life.

Secret

For those cases similar to yours, what usually happens for me is that we don't even remember who each other are and just passed by as if total strangers

My friendships are very weird:

1. If they are long lasting, they are practically independent of time
2. If they break, they never recover
3. For friendships that fizzles out, oblivion kicks in a lot more rapidly than the norm

Most of my high school connections are pretty much dead ever since a series of ghostings occured in the past

which the cause is still unknown up to this date

My primary school connections are the strongest of my social networks, followed by uni level stuff

actually typo: never known to recover

Anonymous

@Secret I have this one (bad or good, I don't know) habit: I almost never initiate a conversation unless I need something which benefits me (in real life). I guess that's what drives people away, but that's sort of intentional on my part, and I'm okay with it so far. And yes, your first point is similar to mine: I do have a couple of childhood friends both of whom I get to meet very very rarely, but we almost instantly patch up and start talking whenever we do meet.

Anonymous

I have a few counter-examples for your point 2 though

Anonymous

And 3 is true for almost everyone I guess :P

Secret

@Blue that's good

2 is one of the main reason why I am a lot more cynical than my peers when it comes to trusting people with emotions, and why I tend to get antagonistic a lot more severely after the friendship breakup (unless the breakup occurs naturally like how some relationships just cannot continue and both parties knew that and acknowledge that. I have 2 such cases)

it is kinda like fatalism really, if you knew something is fated to be a certain outcome, you just lost all the motivation to try to change it

and for me, because I am a perfectionist, I have this attitude that makes it more dangerous:

Accelerationism

In political and social theory, accelerationism is the idea that either the prevailing system of capitalism, or certain technosocial processes that have historically characterised it, should be expanded, repurposed, or accelerated in order to generate radical social change. Some contemporary accelerationist philosophy takes as its starting point the Deleuzo-Guattarian theory of deterritorialisation, aiming to identify, deepen, and radicalise the forces of deterritorialisation with a view to overcoming the countervailing tendencies that suppress the possibility of far-reaching social transformation...

I am that kind of person who is so fed up with cliche, meaning that if something is proven to be inevitable, I will accelerate its arrival because it is simply too pointless to wait for one's doom so to speak

The upshot of this is that I don't tend to make conclusions easily unless I am absolutely certain

Anonymous

11:44 AM

@Secret I can understand. I'm sort of like you

Anonymous

I've gotten over the cynicism somewhat though. I just appear selfish now. And I'm totally aware when I'm repelling someone. Just that I don't care much anymore...which is something I should try to change. Solitude is certainly not healthy.

Secret

As for how I speak in both real life and in cyberspace, well I only participate in a conversation if it interests me, and I prefer deep conversations rather than small talks. It is only recently that I found some value in small talks that helps me to learn more about culture and hence ways of thinking, that i become a little bit tolerant on it, but not much (as evidenced whenever peopel do small talks too long, I check my watch)

Anonymous

"It is only recently that I found some value in small talks that helps me to learn more about culture and hence ways of thinking, that i become a little bit tolerant on it, but not much"....lol, you took the words out of my mouth. :)

Secret

Almost everything can interest me nowadays as long it is not cliche, because each of these streams of conversations contains new ways of thinking. Thus you can say, because of a scifi wiki project, almost every topic I can benefit from it

As for the class of people who like to small talk alot, it is usually political party members. They like to bullshit everything from their lives to society things. They are very interesting, however when they talk the actual politics, because there you get to see how ideologies interact with the facts to give you an idea how politics flow in society

These people like to spend on average 30 mins small talking however, which also irritates me because I am on a tight schedule

As for politicians themselves, well they differ from people to people. Some of them actually are like ordinary people talking in ordinary way, while others are very bureaucratic and pretentious

I was actually surprised in such a messy environment that is politics, there are still some original souls in there

But then, compared to all other types of people, they are still very frustrating to relate to

Pretty sure the only class of people that is worse to interact with compared to politicians, are spies

Because it is a job necessary for spies to be highly pretentious

and I don't like pretentious people

user 2646

that's a hard judgement to make in here

Anonymous

11:58 AM

I don't get to meet political members so I wouldn't know. :P Anyhow, most of the people I meet in real life enjoy small talks. You don't need to go too far. XD I wouldn't correlate small talk directly with pretentiousness anyway. For the average human small talk is as natural as eating or breathing.

Secret

nah, small talk is not necessary pretentious, but I get bored of them easily because they usually contain few new pieces of knowledge I can upgrade my thinking with.

I am not the kind of person who is very interested in what other people are doing, but then that might be because of my cynicism

Anonymous

I consider small talks essential to good mental health btw. It like vitamins.

Anonymous

Continuously injecting your brain with knowledge will make it crash.

Secret

If there is one thing I am very certain about myself: I love knowledge to the point I call it my purpose of life. In fact, I won't even bother engaging with political people if not simply because I become curious on how they think

Anonymous

I consider small talks essential to good mental health btw. It's like vitamins. You need it in small amounts but it is absolutely necessary.

Anonymous

12:02 PM

Late edit but anyway

Anonymous

@Secret I would'nt quite approve of that kind of a goal...

Secret

and combined with my aspergic traits, I like things efficient, and thus I can get <insert person looking at watch and making footsteps animation> when people are saying things that are in a way "inefficient"

Anonymous

That's a bit of an obsessive disorder then :P

Secret

@Blue Well, that is really the primary reason I end up reaching out to fine arts, other sciences, history, politics, some cultures etc., so it may be a very bad thing to call a life goal, it is very good at exploding the knowledge coverage

It has a cost of sort however: In the last 3 months I attended so many political, artistics, cultural, you name it events that I end up burning up myself and now I have to cut them all out in order to not let my PhD fell out of place

Anonymous

Heh. Anyway, gotta go now. It was nice talking! :)

user 2646

12:07 PM

cya

Secret

bye

Captain Bohemian

12:32 PM

@Blue I think friendship can only be maintained when people can meet in person often; keeping contact through internet never works.

I find it's quite hard to tell people's tone on web talk.

Anonymous

@CaptainBohemian Hmm, I doubt that the medium of conversation matters. That may be more of a confirmation bias i.e. those whom you get to meet regularly in person are usually of some (regular) use to you. Similarly, if you're a regular participant in an online chat channel for several years, it can be said that those online friendships last as long.

Anonymous

By "long-term" what I really meant was those where you can immediately identity with the other person involved even after a conversation gap of say 10 years.

Secret

12:49 PM

One of the key indicator of my friendships except the closest ones (whose mechanisms I still yet to elucidate) is consistency:

Captain Bohemian

@Blue no, people seldom bother to meet me ad hoc from a distance. People meet for common environment, like going to common courses, research in the same lab. Once the commom environent disappears, noboy bothers to meet because everyone lives far from each other, then friendship dwindles naturally.

Anonymous

@CaptainBohemian Sure. I don't see how that contradicts what I said.

Secret

1. For netizens, rarely do we met in real life
2. For real lifers, if we are not close, their facebook response is almost zero and chat replies will take at least 1-2 days delay or longer (or even just read and no response)

I pay attention to my friendship and have trust issues so much that I quantified a lot of things about my friendships, to the point in theory I can develop a model to predict which of those will die off in the coming 10 years

Captain Bohemian

I have tried to keep contact with a foreign postdoctor through email after he left the common environment, but that doesn't persist for long.

Secret

"Once the commom environent disappears, noboy bothers to meet because everyone lives far from each other, then friendship dwindles naturally."

For me I summarise this in the following sentence:

> One the collaboration is over, we are no longer related

I have at least 200 such documented cases

Anonymous

12:53 PM

@CaptainBohemian I think we need to distinguish between online acquaintances whom we almost never meet and the real-life people we try to keep in touch with over the internet. The fact that "long-term friendships cannot be maintained over the internet" applies to the latter but not the former. In fact there's nothing special about the internet in that context. The same thing can be said of handwritten letters and phone calls of the past.

Secret

in fact, that feeling of alienation is so strong that I sometimes contemplate that they will be killed some way or another randomly because I am sooooooooooooo <insert emotions>

I do have some "long term acquaintances", there exists people who only saw me once in a conference and then 2-5 years later, instantly recognised me and we chatted a bit like classmates without any selling or name card exchange going on

It is still not very clear how that arises other than it has all the properties of entanglement: Extremely long lasting but otherwise extremely fragile

I think it is safe to say my life is basically quantum mechanics

2

Anonymous

Star that hard ^ :P

Secret

Protip: You only knew they are aquitances and not friends when you measure the probability of them saying random excuses to walk away after a conversation stream finishes, or more diagonistically, when they friends passed by and they will always give them a priority, result in so many conversations to be interrupted in the process

The probability of my friends will walk away with excuse is less than 0.001

Anonymous

I guess at this rate of philosophical chatter, most of the other members will flee. Probably we should move these to another room the next time XD

Secret

And when the venue is very busy, those interrupted conversations never get a chance to continue, it's like you are suddenly booted from one timeline to another and never be able to access that timeline again

digging up my notes

> The difference between long distance friendship like acquaintances and good friends:

> Unlike good friends, you don’t know as much about them, including their possible pathways of betrayal. You might be fooled by the extreme long distance correlation as if there is entanglement (can be as long as lasting for years), but like entanglement and pre-dating, it is fragile and can end at any time

> The most important difference between these two categories is their probability of betrayal. Long distance friendship like acquaintances are often not as pure as good friends, and thus should a rare but suitable conflict of interest came by, they will shatter very quickly.

> Another difference is that they are not really as friendly when interacting with them in the presence of older friends and they are more likely to hastily avoid the interaction, or to quickly end the discussion so that they can quickly head to their old friends. That is not to say they are bad or impolite, but that they are less likely to reject in a smooth fashion.

> But again, there is an advantage in that they are direct rather than being fake, even though the result is also quite awkward

> One can also notice there’s still a gap between the closiness as good friends of them will took priority in a conversation when present.

> Another major difference is that friendship like acquaintance can often only sustain 1-2 topics before they will be heading elsewhere and excuse themselves

(and yeah, I do count them, I am so curious about what distinguish between my friends and my close friends that I record almost every conversation in the last 8 years for all non friends and mental note for all my close friends)

which brought me to the next point:

> I only respect and treat my friends as human beings. Anyone else do not deserve my kindness if I don't trust them

-> I am that cynical about human trust

anyway, under most conditions, my long term aquitances are indistinguishable from my friends and in some rare cases, good friends as well

Now... on the opposite end of the spectrum, it is still a mystery on how I will interact with my future spouse

because when topicwise everything from total strangers to close friends are indistinguishable, and only very tentative hints and signs that can measure closiness, it is very hard to predict what happens when I engage in relationships closer than friendship

Most of my friends tend to think that I will probably did something I never dreamt to have done before, or know about secrets that even I personally don't know about

The subconscious is a hard nut to crack, and I still don't fully understood mine

2

"indistinguishable", well... not quite. I don't give my personal info to random people met outside for example. But then the classes of social groups applied is so large that this is the same as saying nothing

Emilio Pisanty

2:02 PM

@JohnRennie is it me, or is the CPA Q&A doing way better than you'd expect?

I mean, I was expecting some large numbers if/when it hit the HNQ list

but 140+200 in 48 hours seems more than you'd normally get

not that I'm complaining (but also not that it increases the rep shower, either)

danielunderwood

2:32 PM

I expected it to be the question, but that is a large number of upvotes

Also why does it say 104k rep in here, but on the site it has 78k?

Captain Bohemian

2:58 PM

are there people who really prefer internet interaction than face-to-face interaction? Even professors prefer the latter. When I emailed a professor in my alma mater, writing a long mail, he said it's a good idea for me to come to see him the following week if I can manage.

danielunderwood

I work on software projects with mainly internet communication and it's a lot better when we actually meet to discuss things

John Rennie

@EmilioPisanty I have to say I think you have done a remarkable job is explaining what the work is and why it matters. I have seen few articles as well written as that even from experienced science writers. You deserve every upvote and damn the rep cap! :-)

Emilio Pisanty

3:25 PM

@JohnRennie =) thanks

John Rennie

You're welcome :-)

Emilio Pisanty

@danielunderwood that's the network-wide rep

John Rennie

It's exactly the sort of answer that I think makes the SE a great place. The sort of answers I aim to write :-)

danielunderwood

Ahh I thought it just picked out your main site

Also that answer looks excellent. I'm planning to take a bit to read it when I get a chance

Physics Meta

0

Q: Is my question off topic? If not, how to get more attention?

I recently asked this question regarding simulation of Diffuse Interstellar Bands for molecules. So far it had only 12 views and any interaction, is it off topic? If not, How do I get more attention?

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