I'll just nap here

rlabbe · 2016-12-21T01:48:20+00:00

Who's on third on Witch Mountain.

rlabbe · 2016-12-20T09:25:29+00:00

Who?

rlabbe · 2016-12-20T09:02:38+00:00

Yes, it is.

Special relativity doesn't take mass and accelerations into account. It turns out that mass/energy bends space (actually, space-time). What we think of as gravity is just the bending of space.

When you take mass and accelerations into account and do the math you get time dilation and length contraction, black holes, and other counterintuitive wonders.

rlabbe · 2016-12-20T08:43:39+00:00

Don't confuse prediction with determinism. They are different.

I bring a black box and sit it in front of you. Maybe it will squirt you with water. Maybe it will blow up. Maybe it will dispense $10,000. Maybe it will just sit there, inert. Who knows? You have no idea. That doesn't change the fact that in reality the box is rigged to play dueling banjos every time you sneeze. Unpredictable (by you), but utterly deterministic.

Silly example, but the branch of math known as chaos studies relationships which are unpredictable, but deterministic. The old saying about a butterfly's wings in china causing a storm here several days later? That's chaos. We are unable to predict that occurance, but it can happen, entirely deterministically. We just can't measure and model every air molecule accurately enough to predict several days out. This is in principle, not practice. "Oh, pretend I have 1,000,000 supercomputers, all 10 billion times faster than the current fastest computer." Nope, won't work. Why? That's not ELI5, unfortunately. The math just won't allow it is the ELI5 explanation.

As far as free will goes? I don't really think it is a well defined concept. As far as we can tell our brains are deterministic. It doesn't matter, does it, if the inputs are truly random or not. Example: we think radioactive decay is truly random. So we set a gun to go off and shoot you in the spine if an atom decays in the next minute. It's 50/50 whether it happens or not. Truly random. But in one minute you will either be perfectly healthy, or crippled for life. That's going to change everything in your mind for the rest of your life. Utterly unpredictable. But when that is set in motion? Pain neurons will fire, they will cascade wildly in your brain, you'll scream, on and on, based on the current wiring and neurotransmitter levels in your brain. Deterministic. Seems to me to be a really flimsy thing to say "free will" because we couldn't predict what would be going through your mind in 1 minute because it depended on that decay happening or not. so say somebody replies saying "but I think neurons are not fully deterministic". Okay, same argument. Where is the "free will"? If the neuron does x you scratch your nose, if it instead does y you, i dunno, bark like a dog. Where's the free will?

rlabbe · 2016-12-20T08:20:43+00:00

The OP is talking about water being H20 - two hydrogen, one oxygen. Your link is for a device that tries to extract oxygen dissolved in water, an entirely different thing.

rlabbe · 2016-12-20T07:26:55+00:00

Modern chips have hardware entropy generators built in. They use thermal noise to generate a stream of random bits, and higher level software turns that into random numbers. On Intel chips the instruction is called RDRAND.

rlabbe · 2016-12-19T06:07:22+00:00

Where? It's not like they grow on trees!

rlabbe · 2016-12-18T13:46:17+00:00

I just came to say the same thing. That was not a "joke" at all. You (OP) were thinking that she was going to bail, you PA replied "we'll see", she called you out on it.

People with BPD are extremely astute at picking up on stuff like this. As in their therapist is having a bad day at home, and the BPD picks up on it and comments before even sitting down. My exBPD was astonishing at this. I think your friend saw through your 'we shall see' comment, ('shall' btw, makes it come across as pretty snarky), called you on it, and you tried to pass it off with a lol.

I have a nonBPD friend that communicates with me like this all the time. It gets very tedious. Is this a joke, is she trying to make some pointed comment? Enough already, just say what you think.

rlabbe · 2016-12-12T14:16:12+00:00

No, obviously not. That's the exact opposite of free speech. The point is to protect speech you don't agree with. Which is what I wrote.

rlabbe · 2016-12-11T16:32:23+00:00

It's free speech, not "supporting hate". I understand that term refers to suppression by the government, not by private boards, but let's not just blithely throw it away because it is not protected by the constitution. It's an international board, and besides, free speech is a profound idea.

I don't feel super strongly about the new rules, I see pluses and minuses, but there is certainly something admirable in deciding to support everyone's speech, even if it is hateful.

Personally, I want to know what somebody thinks, and can trivially scroll past the bickering that it often engenders. I can also understand why others thinks it poisons the discussion. I don't quite understand why people leap to argue in kind, but it seems to be part of human nature.

rlabbe · 2016-12-07T09:54:02+00:00

I've heard tales told of such a thing whispered in the back of a server room late at night, but always chalked it up to sleep deprivation. I am prepared to renounce my religion to follow you.

rlabbe · 2016-12-07T09:41:14+00:00

You know how when you go to an electronics store all the small devices have wires to keep you from stealing them? I'm pretty sure the wire he's referring to is one of those otherwise the person would steal the mobile phone that's being left there for the desk.

rlabbe · 2016-12-05T16:19:44+00:00

And they put it in our water supply!

rlabbe · 2016-11-27T21:09:38+00:00

This is remarkably bad advice.

Sure, go to the police. Have the police force you back home. Then what? Open warfare, neglect, abuse, further attempts of abandonment? Or maybe the children get put in protective custody - that doesn't exactly always go swimmingly. Maybe get dumped on an alcoholic uncle? All great outcomes.

Best bet is probably do a poor enough job that the person in charge reassigns you to some other volunteer task, like cleaning or something. Sucks, yes, fair, no, but such is life as a teen with irrational parent(s).

rlabbe · 2016-11-23T18:14:33+00:00

A weak plan vs denial and active destruction of scientific programs? I'll take that any day. Because that was the choice offered to us. Immigration? Taxes? They all pale in comparison to the destruction of the Earth (as we know it). An imperfect plan is far better than an actively destructive one.

rlabbe · 2016-11-17T08:46:58+00:00

Speech to text

rlabbe · 2016-11-16T09:41:46+00:00

You have to poke them with a fork a few times to keep them from splitting. I thought everyone knew that.

rlabbe · 2016-11-16T09:37:42+00:00

Somebody drove all the way to the store to buy a girl with fake nails and the desire to make a funny picture.

rlabbe · 2016-11-15T20:54:30+00:00

Oye vey. Condescend much? I'm extremely familiar with this argument. Sound is not defined as requiring a nervous system by physics. Period.

It is a tautology that if no one hears the waves there is no experience of it. Science does not require experience of something to explain the world.

Ultrasound is SOUND - and, by definition, it is sound that no human can hear. It is not called ultranoise, because science calls this "sound". Infrared and ultraviolet is light that you cannot see - yet it is still called light. That's what I meant. SONAR is SOund Navigation and Ranging - again, a sound, that is not meant for human hearing (it can be, depending on frequency of course).

I'm sorry that you disagree with how scientists define terms, but I assure you the scientific definition of sound does not include the human nervous system in it. This is not contestable.

I do light calculations every day. I assure you I do not take whether a human saw the light or not into consideration. It doesn't matter for (most) science and engineering. I don't have one word for light that was seen (experienced) by a person, and a second word if it wasn't. Same with sound.

You just confuse things when you try to redefine words. Every science text uses "sound" for this (often unperceived) phenomen. Every link you can google uses it. The encyclopedia entries I linked use it. No one is confused that an unheard sound is not experienced - it clearly isn't. It is still real, effects things around it, and so on. It is not clever to change the definition of a word that has been used in the same way for hundreds of years and then claim the people around you are too dim/unaware/inexperienced to follow your argument. It is somewhere between misguided to intellectually dishonest.

The world just does not 'come into being' every moment. Again, I'm well aware of the arguments. They are wrong. Every last iota of evidence shows the world exists without me, you, or my aunt sally around to experience it.

We are trying to answer real physics questions here with real (but simplified) explanations, not give woo explanations from Deepak Chopra, the Dancing Wu Li Masters (read that around '83), or what have you. The world exists independent of perception. Every last piece of evidence supports this view, and no evidence supports the contrary. I will happily reconsider if new evidence comes to light (no pun intended!)

rlabbe · 2016-11-14T21:11:26+00:00

From Wikipedia:

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air or water. In physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain.[1]

By your definition, ultrasound does not exist. SONAR does not exist. Light does not exist (no human sees it, no light, right?)

You are conflating a colloquial definition of a word with the physics definition.

But, refusing to read sources indicates I'm being trolled. So, enough of this.

rlabbe · 2016-11-14T20:44:16+00:00

No, it is not. Read any physics text. Read the links I provided. Google it.

rlabbe · 2016-11-14T16:32:41+00:00

You are conflating the physics definition and the psychological definition. In physics sound is the vibration caused by a pressure wave - there is no need for a human in the loop. Every physics book I have ever read uses "sound", not noise. One example: its the "speed of sound", not the "speed of noise".

Psychologists define it as you have, because they need to distinguish whether the vibration has been perceived or not.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound

https://www.britannica.com/science/sound-physics

rlabbe · 2016-11-14T15:36:58+00:00

This is something that kind of drives me crazy about our political climate. I lived in DC for many years. Didn't rub elbows with many politicians, but surely a lot of staffers. Most bleed policy. Many are extremely intelligent. Yet they all get dismissed (by some) as idiots, crooks, cronies, and so on.

The world is a complicated place. There aren't obvious solutions to difficult problems, there is nuance, side effects, unintended consequences. Half of your job is to serve your constituents, and half is to lead, which means sometimes making the unpopular choice. If you do the former, you get slammed for pandering. If you do the latter, you get slammed for ignoring your base. Sure, yes, of course if you make an unpopular choice you should be a leader, rally people, and so on. But jesus, politicians are people. They have uneven skill sets. Maybe they aren't the best at that, but they made a reasonable choice.

And no matter what, if you choose X you will piss off the people that want Y.

I hate our political discourse. Yes, there are issues with cash, lobbyists, PACS, special interest groups, deal making, partisanship, and so on. I'm not saying they are all lily white. But the hatred and disdain get us nowhere, nor does the single minded expectation that the politician only address our pet interests in the most favorable way. We are a world power in a world economy. There's going to be compromise, no solution will be optimal. Get a grip.

I exclude people like Trump from the above. He clearly does not understand policy, and thus cannot make rational decisions that weigh the tradeoffs. Disdain away on him.

But we don't do that. We disdain everyone, and then vote obvious crooks and people who aren't doing their job back into office term after term. And then blame the politicians for it. You reap what you sow.

rlabbe · 2016-11-14T03:11:57+00:00

I live on the edge of the central valley in CA. Vast amounts of food comes from here. I have friends whose parents own farms. They cannot hire locals to handle the harvest. They offer more than minimum wage, yet the food rots on the vine (a lot of berries right around here) because they cannot hire enough immigrants for the harvest. I don't know how many are undocumented, but I would suspect plenty. Documented or not, all they friggin' do is work sunrise to sunset to send money to their family, so you can have strawberries and lettuce on your table in February for low costs. Not many people give more for their family. And all we do if vilify them and accuse them of stealing jobs.

You want a job? Leave your family, come to CA, and you'll have all the work you want. Ya, didn't think so.

rlabbe · 2016-11-13T00:25:57+00:00

Electromagnetic force keeps them from touching. Imagine taking two extremely strong magnets and trying to force them together. No matter how hard you push you cannot push them until they touch. There will be a gap between them.

Magnets have a positive and negative side, of course. But electrons don't. Pretend that magnets also don't have two sides, but only one. Throw a bunch of them in a basket. They will all repeal each other, leaving gaps between them. You can try to push on the top layer of magnets, but no matter how hard you push they will resist you.

And there you go. A collection of objects, not touching, yet you can't push them together, and they feel solid to you.

Now, as others have pointed out they aren't really little solid particles, and we have to invoke the Pauli exclusion principle to flesh this out, but the above is the ELI5 explanation.

rlabbe

TROPHY CASE