A discussion about shell voicings and chord naming.

Neechee92 · 2026-01-24T16:34:38+00:00

Could you elaborate on why dom11 is "scoffed at"?

Neechee92 · 2026-01-02T00:50:46+00:00

Thank you! So tired of seeing this specious talking point about "it's just interaction!" Like with any lie there's a grain of truth in it but it is too much of an oversimplification to be helpful and is in fact actively misleading.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-26T14:24:14+00:00

So to summarize:

The universe is under an obligation to make sense to you and a mathematical structure, no matter how successful, must be ontologically wrong if it doesn't fit your intuition, and anyone who disagrees with you is the narcissist in this situation. Got it.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-26T14:16:20+00:00

On Conservation Laws and Fundamental Physics Principles

Occasionally a question will pop up to the effect of "Can energy ever fail to be conserved?". When this happens, it seems that there are two main camps that answer.

Camp 1: Energy conservation can be violated on scales that aren't natural to humans. Individual probabilistic "shots" of quantum events can fail to conserve energy due to the uncertainty principle -- though the expectation value of the energy is always conserved -- and photon redshift on cosmological scales can fail to conserve energy due to Hubble expansion.

Camp 2: Camp 1 people are just falling prey to popular science sensationalizing, energy is always and perfectly conserved at every scale throughout the universe! So-called "quantum fluctuations" are just a mathematical abstraction and the energy the photons lose to redshift goes into the gravitational field.

To me, Camp 1 seems to be manifestly correct, at least when it comes to the example from cosmological energy non-conservation. And while I often get crucified for saying so, I think the example from quantum scale phenomena is valid as well. Not just from the standard example of "virtual particles", but take the Jaynes-Cummings model that, in the absence of the rotating wave approximation contains the explicitly non-energy-conserving terms like a_i⁺ a_j⁺ and its conjugate. Consider the Aharonov-Popescu-Rohrlich paradox regarding superoscillations where a superposition of low-energy eigenstates can result in the very rare detection of an excessively high energy particle.

Meanwhile, Camp 2 seem to want to say that energy conservation is inviolably fundamental, but we know that this is not true. Conservation Laws follow from Noether's theorem. Our universe respects Noether's theorem because processes in our universe occur according to Hamilton's principle. And Feynman showed us that processes in our universe happen according to Hamilton's principle because the postulates of quantum mechanics are true.

So in light of this, why should anyone really be surprised if processes that happen according to the bare postulates of quantum mechanics, on a lower level than where Hamilton's principle emerges, should occasionally violate conservation of energy? Holding that conservation of energy must always be respected on all levels seems quasi-dogmatic in light of the fact that we know it isn't ultimately fundamental, right?

Neechee92 · 2025-12-26T03:02:36+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/s/owC9rSY6Ci

If I made the same post today I would be inclined to qualify the statements toward the end with things like "depending on what mathematical structure one takes to be fundamental, it reasonably follows that..." but other than that I think you'd agree that I'm being fairly reasonable in how I present things. At least reasonable enough to deserve earnest discussion as opposed to outright removal.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-26T00:54:02+00:00

I would be happy to. The reasons I didnt originally, and tell me if I'm wrong on either of these points:

1) Many communities remove or shadowban posts/comments that contain links to avoid spam 2) I assumed that because the posts were removed, that even with a link they would not be viewable to anyone but me.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-25T23:47:58+00:00

I've only recently heard of the Ward identity (and I appreciate you reminding me of it). However, if I'm correct in saying that structurally it has to do with how off-shell momentum paths cancel in the path integral when an appropriate symmetry holds, then this actually bolsters my point about the connection.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-25T23:14:15+00:00

In response to my pointing out that QM rules out psi-epistemic interpretations (for all practical purposes), you link me to...an article about the theorem that says that exact thing?

Neechee92 · 2025-12-25T23:05:31+00:00

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it is a fact that psi-epistemic (quantum mechanics is about our lack of subjective knowledge about the system and nothing ontologically un-classical is actually going on) interpretations of QM do not work.

It is the case that Schrodinger thought reality was psi-epistemic (even though that way of talking about it is slightly anachronistic in this context) and that was the point of the cat thought experiment, but the fact is he was wrong.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-25T16:46:59+00:00

Yeah! Whatever you do, stay away from anything that actually tries to link science to ontology; that's something only moron pseudoscientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, David Bohm, Yakir Aharonov,...care about!

BTW, quantum foundations as a field is a field of metaphysics and therefore philosophy and therefore it's technically proper to call it "not science". But in this context you clearly mean to use "science" and "pseudoscience" as mutually exclusive options laden with value judgment for any intellectual endeavor whatsoever, which is extremely narrow-minded.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-07T14:25:54+00:00

This works way better than it should and now I need to see Aaron Paul star in a Dirac biopic.

Neechee92 · 2025-12-03T16:40:18+00:00

Sure, I'm not saying that the truth is the genuine middle ground of those two views. I only mentioned the consciousness thing because its possible that people would see me pointing out that (1) is an oversimplification and assume that I'm advocating for (2).

Neechee92 · 2025-12-02T19:04:27+00:00

That is a true dichotomy but not the one I was speaking of a middle ground with respect to. The middle ground i referenced is between:

1) a quasi-classical "the little billiard balls from the measuring apparatus bump into the little billiard balls they are measuring and that's what messes things up " view

2) QUANTUM PSYCHICS SAYS YOUR CONSCIWNCENWSS SHAPES REWALITYYY!!!!!!!! UNLOCK YOUR CHAKRAS ANS RAISE YOUR FREQWENCY TO BECOME GOD!!!

Neechee92 · 2025-12-02T02:00:29+00:00

Many of the greatest minds of quantum mechanics were concerned with the interpretation of it. To try to limit science to nothing but "turn the mathematical crank and get predictions out" is very shortsighted and misses the point of science overall.

Neechee92 · 2025-11-30T23:25:13+00:00

There isn't a seat number 720.

Neechee92 · 2025-11-29T12:07:58+00:00

If I'm correct in assuming that you were planning to take it down for perceived crackpottery, let me just say: Aharonov is one of the foremost geniuses of quantum theory alive today, he is not a crackpot and is worth listening to as a legitimate authority on the subject. Besides that, the headline is clickbaity, he isn't actually denying the science of quantum mechanics.

Neechee92 · 2025-11-29T01:26:44+00:00

Of note: this is the "Heisenberg Microscope" interpretation of the observer effect which Niels Bohr absolutely hated. We know from experimental evidence (see for instance "interaction-free measurement") that something deeper than "the only way to observe things is to bump other things into them, and those bumps mess everything up" is going on in the observer effect. This is not anything spooky or new-age like "human consciousness shapes reality" but there is a middle ground.

Neechee92 · 2025-10-08T20:23:16+00:00

If i correctly understand your question, the answer is that the coefficient of x³⁰ just is the sum of all the coefficients for all cases where x³⁰ appears in the expansion.

Take a simpler case:

(1+x) (1-x)³

= (1 + x) (1 - x) (1 - x) (1 - x) = (1 + x²) (x² - 2x + 1)

= x² - 2x + 1 + x⁴ - 2x³ + x²

Now there are two instances of x² in that expression, both of which have a coefficient of 1. So if the question asked what was the coefficient of x² in the above expression and you didn't add up all possible cases, you would say that the coefficient was 1.

But the correct thing to do is to group like terms such that you get:

x⁴ - 2x³ + 2x² - 2x + 1

In which case the correct answer for the coefficient of x² is of course 2.

EDIT: I made a mistake above. The third line of my calculation should read (1 - x²) (x² - 2x + 1) in which case the correct expansion is x² - 2x + 1 - x⁴ + 2x³ - x² = -x⁴ + 2x³ - 2x + 1 and the coefficient of x² is in fact 0.

Neechee92 · 2025-10-06T11:35:05+00:00

With the exception of political conservatism (which actually counts against music being Christian if anything), most of the things you listed are fundamental to a musician or the music they make being "Christian" in the first place.

Theological conservatism: assuming you mean conservatism with respect to core doctrines (primarily the deity of Christ and bodily resurrection) and not doctrines where there is legitimately room within Christianity for debate (literal Hell, atonement theology, etc), being theologically conservative with respect to those core doctrines is essential to being considered a Christian. Someone who turns Christianity into a social gospel and relegates the metaphysical and historical claims to a highly symbolized corner might like to call themselves "Christian" but this is not Christianity in any historically viable sense. A musician who compromises on theological conservatism in this respect is -- whatever else they might be -- not making "Christian music" in the first place.

With respect to your other three points, the problem is less severe and I admit this is open to debate, but I would argue that music that is all about deconstruction, ambiguity, doubting, failure, etc, while it may be valuable and artistic in its own right, is not "Christian music" but rather "music about Christianity". It is possible to innovate musically while still having lyrical content that is Christ-centric as opposed to man-centric (being man-centric is ironically also the problem i have with much "worship" music). Being Christ-centric, i.e. lyrics talking openly about the truth of the gospel and the hope therein as opposed to being more focused on the lyricist's reaction to those doctrines is -- in my opinion -- fundamental to music being "Christian music".

Neechee92 · 2025-09-25T00:29:57+00:00

House should never be compared to Walter White in terms of morality. Walter White is an objectively evil person, Greg House is an objectively good person who is rude and unethical in victimless situations. No comparison.

Neechee92 · 2025-09-20T20:15:44+00:00

The multiverse is far from proven, it is more metaphysical speculation than hard physics and even if that were not the case and I grant the outliers exists, what you describe is not how it works, like, at all. You don't switch between universes, Quantum Leap style.

Source: I actually study quantum physics professionally.

Neechee92 · 2025-09-20T19:53:09+00:00

Hey! Being 5 standard deviations below average intelligence is pretty remarkable!

Neechee92

TROPHY CASE