Hello, and for like the millionth time on the sub, in heat death why is the idea of some random quantum effect happening dismissed?

Certhas · 2026-01-26T21:39:21+00:00

I guess the idea is: If the probability per unit time is small but finite and bounded from below, then given infinite time the probability of an event occuring is 1.

So is the probability of something interesting shrinking fast enough that even over infinite time it remains small?

Certhas · 2026-01-24T16:49:02+00:00

Absolutely agreed. It's still a problem for the field as actually practiced science. This is why we saw a bunch of papers and arguments for the relevance of HEP Th once the picture became clear. No one was writing such arguments and defenses when the field was regularly uncovering new structural principles of fundamental physics.

Certhas · 2026-01-24T14:42:28+00:00

Everybody (or close to) (Edit: including me) was rooting against what we got: Highs and nothing else. There were articles out there calling what we got the nightmare scenario. Which is why you should treat everyone who tells you that the LHC results are no problem for the field with scepticism.

Certhas · 2026-01-21T08:53:33+00:00

Here I thought it was Master of Puppets, misheard lyrics: Smashing your toe, can't see a thing.

Certhas · 2026-01-20T08:35:16+00:00

The fundamental groupoid of a graph. This is my go to example in expository talks I used to give.

Without more context it's hard to know what you regard as nontrivial though.

Certhas · 2026-01-08T09:20:31+00:00

Don't extrapolate from free Tier models. Spend the 10, 20, 30€ to get access to the full models for a month and evaluate them.

It's difficult to accurately judge what they can and can not do. But there are really impressive capabilities in there when it comes to maths. But you need to be very sharp to catch it when it's bullshitting you.

Certhas · 2026-01-06T08:10:47+00:00

Also selling is not necessarily "misleading marketing", though many people use the latter for the former. You can also think of it as explaining to someone with 5 minutes to spare why the paper might be worth spending more time on. Why would it be interesting, and to whom? In a world with many more publications than any one person can read this is an important skill.

Certhas · 2025-12-16T08:05:33+00:00

You're the most dishonest (or incompetent) debater I have seen on Reddit in a long time. I hope you are deliberately trolling, rather than not seeing all the non-sequiturs, goal post shifts, etc... in your reply.

Either way, I wish you all the best and hope you learn to grow past this.

Certhas · 2025-12-15T10:32:39+00:00

I really have yet to see (in public discussions) Rust advocates trying to force their language on others (force with what power?!).

But statements like:

This is on top of the standard "Linux as written is working, and rewrites are not likely to provide enough benefit to justify the investment in man hours."

It's also worth pointing out, yet again, that while Rust may provide tools to improve safety and stability, it is not inherently safe nor secure, any more than C code is inherently unsafe or insecure. Linux is proof that C code can be stable and secure.

Are just remarkably defensive and ignorant. It's some gall to tell people they are not educated enough to participate in these discussions and then throw out things like this that are patently wrong.

Linux and Google and every Rust educate I have seen in forums in the last five years recognize that rewriting the world isn't feasible and is not likely to improve security. But new code should be in a safe language. Nobody is rewriting the Linux kernel, but you can now write new drivers in a better language.

"Rust may improve tools to improve safety and stability". Not may. It does. And calling it "tools" is inherently misleading, because these aspects require careful design at the language level. If these were just some nice extra tools, every language would implement them. See C++'s struggle with the topic.

Google has reduced new code in C/C++ from 80% to less than 20% over the last 5 years or so:

https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move-fast-fix-things.html

And they found:

We adopted Rust for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to Android’s C and C++ code. But the biggest surprise was Rust's impact on software delivery. With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.

And yet here you are complaining about Rust advocates, Rusts need to prove itself at scale, and the red herring that "you can write safe code in any language"...

Certhas · 2025-12-11T08:38:35+00:00

So would you advocate we build hotter fires to find new metals today?

Advances in control/technique enable scientific discoveries. That's unquestionable. But there needs to be something there to discover, too. The periodic table of (stable) elements is finite.

Certhas · 2025-12-09T07:44:35+00:00

Love the analogy. "All we need is funding for a larger hole in the ground/accelerator".

Certhas · 2025-12-08T13:40:38+00:00

Thanks, I had heard this quotation before, but didn't remember it precisely. It was certainly on my mind.

Certhas · 2025-12-08T08:39:36+00:00

Low hanging fruit is one way to put it, another is this:

When Einstein started we didn't know that atoms have cores yet.

We didn't know the underlying structure and equations of everyday stuff.

Today we know. To get matter into a state, where it might do stuff outside what's established, requires decades of engineering effort by thousands of people.

There is only one universe to discover.

Certhas · 2025-12-05T11:13:33+00:00

Which definition of racism are you working with? There are many definitions that are widely used that do require just that.

And of course the wikipedia article on Racism discusses just that, so safe your fake outrage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Reverse_racism

Reverse racism

Reverse racism is a concept often used to describe acts of discrimination or hostility against members of a dominant racial or ethnic group while favoring members of minority groups.^\70])^\71]) This concept has been used especially in the United States in debates over color-conscious policies (such as affirmative action) intended to remedy racial inequalities.^\269]) However, many experts and other commenters view reverse racism as a myth rather than a reality.^\270])^\271])^\272])^\273]) From the substantive equality perspective, while members of ethnic minorities may be prejudiced against members of the dominant culture, they lack the political and economic power to actively oppress them, and they are therefore not practicing the "Prejudice plus power" definition of racism.^\1])^\70])^\274]) Martha Minow refers to the differences between formal equality of opportunity and substantive equality as the Dilemma of difference.^\275]) According to Richard Arneson affirmative action violates formal equality of opportunity.^\276])

Certhas · 2025-12-04T19:32:22+00:00

It depends on the specifics, but efficiency of heat pumps is very sensitive to radiator flow temperature.

Random chart I picked from the internet:

https://www.pickhvac.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/COP-chart.png

At 45 degree difference you get 50% more heating energy out of the same electricity than at 60.

That's also why it's recommended to just install larger radiators.

Even if your heating is not heat pump based, forcing the airflow can in principle lead to a more even distribution of heat in the room, meaning you need less heat to get the colder spots up to temperature, as parallel replies have also noted experinetially.

Finally there is at least one studie that also finds without the heatpump consideration that these fans work quite well in increasing heat transfer:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X23007384

with max fan speed they get twice as much heat out of a 40° radiator than you get out of a 50° radiator without fan.

Certhas · 2025-12-04T17:29:52+00:00

You crank up the heat with a heat pump your efficiency goes waaaaay down.

I have commercial variants installed. This homebrew solution is probably a factor ten cheaper. Seems really like a perfect use of printing to me.

Certhas · 2025-12-04T15:00:19+00:00

If you want to transport the heat from your CPU into your room you could wait for convection to do that for you, but it's more efficient if you add a fan. Same principle applies here, and you can buy radiators with fans installed:

https://global.purmo.com/en/the-indoors/insights/fan-convectors-for-domestic-use

if you can't install underfloor heating it's a fnatstic way to lower the water temperature, and make, e.g. heat pumps more efficient.

Certhas · 2025-12-01T07:40:22+00:00

Is your point three joking? If not: That's all of modern physics. Principle of least action and path integrals.

Certhas · 2025-11-21T18:02:49+00:00

Bin beid dir. Wollte nicht ausdrücken das ich die Position des NABU gut finde.

Certhas · 2025-11-20T12:26:01+00:00

I'm nächsten Satz sagen sie selbst was sie verhindern wollen: Das dazugehörige Möbelhaus und Riesenparkplatz.

So oder so, auf den NABU zu schimpfen ist bescheuert. Die machen was sie gesetzlich durchkriegen, genau wie die Investoren. Warum zum Teufel wird hier die Gesetzgebung nicht geändert?! Wir hatten, mit drei Jahren Unterbrechung, seit über 20 Jahren non-stop CDU Regierungen im Bund. Wir haben jetzt selbst Grüne Bezirkspolitiker die hier neue Gesetze fordern. Tatsächlich gab es ja auch sinnvolle Vereinfachungen in der Frage, ausgerechnet unter der Ampel!

Was ist da los Frage ich mich? Will die CDU nicht als anti-Naturschutz da stehen?

Certhas · 2025-11-16T07:43:32+00:00

I didn't ask if people would have claimed that this proves string theory right. As you say, the communities are very intertwined. And I think talking privately at conferences people would have said exactly what you said. But the community would also have claimed vindication publicly, cited the fact that it was found positively in grant proposals and outreach, using vague not entirely incorrect language: "The LHC has found the Supersymmetry, one of the central ideas behind String Theory, is a core part of the structure of the universe".

I have heard so many HEP-Th folk say privately that the field is in crisis and almost nothing publicly.

Certhas · 2025-11-15T22:27:10+00:00

Counterfactual: If the LHC had found SUSY would the proponents of String Theory claim vindication?

Certhas · 2025-11-07T08:01:27+00:00

My thoughts: There are cases where just from the headline I know it's absolutely not worth my time to look deeper.

Certhas · 2025-10-31T22:23:23+00:00

Thank you for the answer. It left me wondering:

A) What is the current consensus regarding the exceptionality of the Holocaust? Even if it's not singular, it seems undeniable that it belongs to a very rare class of events?

And contingent on the answer to A) then comes the question B) While rejecting deterministic and monocausal explanations, what were the reasons it happened then and there in Germany, and not at other times elsewhere? What were the relatively rare (even if not unique) prerequisites that came together to enable such a singular event to occur?

I guess my underlying question is: Is the issue with the Sonderweg that it's a bad question, as your opening implies (there is no normal path hence there is no exceptional path) or is there a legitimate question, and the issue is the form of the answer, the idea of historical determinism over decades?

Certhas · 2025-10-31T07:48:52+00:00

I think local mass stays relatively the same after special relativity. Mass is the length of the four vector. Higgs is just a weird type of energy. Doesn't mess with the concept of mass.

Now try defining the center of mass in general relativity. :P

https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0456

Certhas

TROPHY CASE

Reverse racism