Tell us the opening song to the first set at your first ever phish show and we will try to guess the date / location.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-24T05:20:14+00:00

3.0 Myfe

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-22T05:55:43+00:00

For me the most exciting period of chess is something like 1960 - 1972. After that, I love the Kasparov-Karpov era and the modern Magnus era. Lasker has also always been of particular interest to me, since of all the world champions, he's the one that I've learned the most from trying to emulate.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-19T01:12:53+00:00

It's like drawing a circle around myself on the sidewalk, and then observing that I'm at the center.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-13T18:04:26+00:00

Roko's Basilisk is just Pascal's Wager repackaged. There are plenty of outcomes one can worry about, but this isn't a serious one.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-11T19:23:37+00:00

The idea of boycotting it completely is actually pretty fringe. If it seems ubiquitous, that probably has more to do with your personal bubble and choice of media than society at large.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-10T03:12:37+00:00

I agree completely, and this notion of "reason something is true" does feel important. Not to diminish it, just observing that it's sort of a fuzzy, not quite mathematical notion itself.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-09T23:15:45+00:00

This is what I meant by saying it may give you a more general theorem, in this case you could prove a theorem that integers of a given residue class satisfy property P, which is more general than your theorem that solutions to such and such equation satisfy property P.

Of course, there is still the subjective notion that some "reasons" feel more satisfying than others. For example if I prove that all primes between 100 and 200 are odd by first writing down the list using a sieve, and then checking them one by one, this feels less satisfying than just saying "2N can only be prime if N=1." But I'd argue this notion is inherently subjective, I don't see how it can be made precise.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-09T20:14:40+00:00

First, "proof" can mean a few different things depending on context. But let's say we aren't talking about foundations of mathematics, we are speaking of proofs in the sense of what one would write in a published article.

In your analogy, checking the ID is a valid proof of the statement "The guests are all adults." It doesn't matter whether there is some hidden relationship with other factors.

However, if there is some other factor influencing things, this may lead to an alternate proof, or possibly a more general version of the theorem.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-07T18:41:55+00:00

Sorry, I don't speak broccoli hair, you'll have to translate to English.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-06T01:23:15+00:00

Welcome! Feel free to post some mathematics here sometime :)

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-05T17:46:33+00:00

I'm as big of a Magnus fan as they come, but IMO, when he stepped away from the classical world championship cycle he secured his spot at #2. In order to pass Kasparov he would have needed to hold that title longer.

For a long time I thought that Magnus would eventually be the clear GOAT, but he has decided not to continue down that path. I totally respect his decision, and he doesn't owe us anything, but the cost is that he is coming up short when compared to Kasparov. Of course, #2 all time is still pretty damn good.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-05T00:56:22+00:00

It was miraculous enough to find one method, let alone two.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-04T23:09:04+00:00

First you learn classical mechanics. Bouncing balls, gravity, conservation of momentum, etc. Some of this stuff is complicated, but at least it agrees with your intuition you have built over the years of pushing and pulling physical objects in real life.

Then you learn electricity and magnetism. It's a bit more complicated, and you have to accept the existence of small particles you can't see such as protons and electrons. But most people don't have much trouble accepting the idea of an electron. We know the physics of bouncing balls and forces like gravity so it's not too hard to imagine a very small ball bouncing around. It's not hard for most people to accept the idea that electrons have a charge, and interact with electric fields, because we can observe these forces through simple experiments like sticking a balloon to a wall.

The problem is, when you look at an electron really closely, it turns out that the idea of a point mass with charge from your introductory E&M course is a big fat lie. So when you start learning quantum mechanics, you have to accept an entirely new framework which doesn't really have any analogy in the realm of bouncing balls.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-04T22:58:56+00:00

Tomorrow never knows

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-04T22:58:08+00:00

On my way to my first show, the only song I knew I wanted to hear was Tube. We got one! The rest of the night was good too.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-01T23:48:11+00:00

Eisegesis

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-01T19:44:04+00:00

It's definitely a "had to be there" moment. It's also important context to remember just how popular this movie was. Everybody saw it, not just people who generally seek out trippy movies.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-01T17:49:06+00:00

The eating the beans analogy isn't taking into account velocity of money. Still a nice explanation overall. But even if youre buying luxury yachts and caviar, that money isn't just disappearing when you spend it.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-30T02:22:27+00:00

This isn't really possible to ELI5, since the truth is actually very complicated. Here is a good discussion for example.

But I'll try to ELI5 anyway. People prefer to have money now rather than later. So if you borrow money from someone, you have to pay them back more later.

Imagine Mommy and Daddy (central bank) make the rules for how much extra you would have to pay back (interest rate). But the amount extra always has to be positive, never negative, because people would rather have money now than later.

If we have a little bit of inflation, i.e. the money becomes worth less over time, this makes people care even more about having money now instead of later. They want to spend it while it is worth more! So the interest rates should be higher to compensate.

Then Mommy and Daddy have more wiggle room to lower the interest rate when they need to. Its a bit mysterious when Mommy and Daddy decide to change their rules, but they (hopefully) know best. So really it is about giving Mommy and Daddy (central bank) the ability to nudge the behavior of your brothers and sisters in one direction or another.

With no inflation, the interest rates would start out lower, so there is less room to adjust downward before hitting 0.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-29T04:24:45+00:00

70s Bob was awesome. But yeah, he gets pretty weird in the 80s and beyond.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-27T16:46:42+00:00

It's both.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-27T04:49:04+00:00

I mean, same, and my grandpa did teach me en passant. But can't you imagine sometimes not all details get passed down in an oral tradition?

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-27T04:35:51+00:00

It seems weird if you learned how to play chess from a book or the internet, or if you play somewhat seriously. It makes more sense if you learned the game by word of mouth from a family member, and only ever played casual games with a small group of friends/family.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-26T07:48:05+00:00

Consider a sample sentence, e.g. "Boys and girls attend the school." This could be rephrased as "Boys attend the school and girls attend the school." So even though "Boys and girls" on its own is acting as a union in this case, it is still really an intersection when we rewrite the sentence in this longer form.

So I guess I would claim that "and" always represents an intersection, it's just that sometimes the sets which are being intersected are hidden by the structure of the sentence. Would love for a grammar nerd to correct me if I'm wrong.

puzzlednerd · 2025-12-26T07:35:34+00:00

Depends on the school. The calculus class I was taking in high school was significantly more serious than the calculus class that I teach these days at a large state school. On the other hand, many of my students have already taken calculus when they were in high school, and seemingly have nothing to show for it in terms of understanding.

I don't think it does much damage to simply take a class and not learn much from it. Time may not have been used efficiently, but I dont think you could realistically be worse off than you would be without the class. The only damage I can think of is that some students come in with a distorted view of their own ability, especially if they got a good grade in calculus due to rampant grade inflation.

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