Invariably, STEM types make the most mind-numbingly idiotic kindergarten-level philosophical and epistemological errors because “philosophy is useless” that then hamper their advancement and progress — and the progress of their fields — by decades.
Knowing what questions to ask, why you’re asking them, and what it means to ask and to answer them is extremely important. Without that, you have nothing. And that is what philosophy grants to you.
What’s your worst “horrible coincidence” experience?
Oh, shit, I had forgotten that it’s been so many years. I’ve made that mistake too, but luckily it was not a prod system (yet).
Women: Men are bad and evil for liking attractive women!
Also women: This unemployed meth fiend who will definitely smack me around and steal from me is the hottest thing EVER.
And don’t even act like tons of women aren’t that way. We all know they are.
I like how you can ascertain who the low-IQ people are very quickly now because they complain AI “doesn’t work” and “can’t do anything.”
Meanwhile, I performed a complex analysis on part of my company’s infrastructure that would’ve taken me 4-5 full work days in 4-5 hours with AI.
And we should name a crater “Elizabeth Rose Halligan is a Poopypants.” Just because as the only indigenous people of the moon, we fucking can.
Physicists think they’ve resolved the proton size puzzle.
This story. Oof. They should have someone who understands quantum mechanics write about it. So many problems.
But quantum mechanics gives us a much more precise (albeit weirder) description. The electrons aren’t really orbiting the nucleus; they are technically waves that take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment to determine their position. While orbiting an atom, they exist in a superposition of states, both particle and wave, with a wave function encompassing all the probabilities of its position at once. A measurement will collapse the wave function, giving us the electron’s position. Make a series of such measurements and plot the various positions that result, and it will yield something akin to a fuzzy orbit-like pattern.
“They are technically waves….”
Nope. Electrons are not ordinary classical waves like ripples in water. They are quantum objects described by a wavefunction. That is a totally different thing. There is a quantum state in Hilbert space, represented in position space by a wavefunction, whose squared magnitude gives the probability density for finding the electron at different locations.
“Take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment….”
This is way too crude to be accurate. That suggests the electron was truly a wave and then becomes a particle only because we took a look at it. Quantum mechanics does not work that way. What it predicts is that measurements yield discrete, localized outcomes. That is different from saying the electron was previously just a classical wave. (It wasn’t.)
“While orbiting an atom….”
In modern quantum mechanics the whole point is that atomic electrons are not moving on definite classical orbits. They occupy orbitals, which are stationary quantum states with definite energy, angular momentum properties, and spatial probability distributions. Quantum state, not orbit.
“They exist in a superposition of states, both particle and wave….”
Not conceptually sound. “Particle” and “wave” are not usually the two states in a superposition. Superposition refers to combinations of quantum states such as different energy eigenstates, angular momentum states, spin states, or position states. Wave-particle duality is really not well described as “being in a superposition of wave and particle.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“With a wave function encompassing all the probabilities of its position at once….”
That is imprecise. The wavefunction does not directly list probabilities. Its squared magnitude gives the probability density for position. More generally, the wavefunction encodes the probabilities for many possible measurement results, not just position.
“Make a series of such measurements and plot the various positions that result, and it will yield something akin to a fuzzy orbit-like pattern….”
This is misleading in two ways. First, repeated position measurements on the same electron do not reveal some hidden orbit. That’s just not how reality is, unfortunately. The measurements disturb the state. Second, what you recover from many measurements on many identically prepared atoms is the orbital probability distribution, not an orbit-like path. It is not revealing of a blurred trajectory around the nucleus. It is a cloud-like spatial distribution characteristic of the quantum state.
My corrected, accurate version of that portion would read:
“Quantum mechanics replaces the antiquated picture of electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun. In the quantum way of doing things, an electron in an atom is described by a wavefunction, which encodes the possible outcomes of measurements and their probabilities. Bound electrons occupy orbitals, which are standing-wave-like quantum states with discrete energies. These orbitals are not paths through space. They are stationary state descriptions whose squared magnitude gives the probability density for finding the electron at different locations. When a position measurement is performed, the electron is detected at a particular place as a localized event. Repeating the experiment across many identically prepared systems does not reveal a smeared-out orbit, but rather the characteristic spatial probability pattern of the orbital. The electron therefore does not fit neatly into the classical categories of either a tiny orbiting particle or a literal extended wave. Instead, it is a quantum object with behavior that shows aspects of both, depending on how it is probed.
If you measure position across many identically-prepared atoms and plot the results, you recover the orbital’s probability distribution, which looks like a cloud or density pattern, not a fuzzy track traced out by an electron in orbit.”
Have you met Gen Z? I’d say that’s accurate. They are terrified of everything, including the outside, sex, each other, and any form of confrontation.
They only thing they don’t seem petrified of is being giant loser weak-ass dipshits. At that, they excel.
No fencing!?!?!
You can have my rapier or épée when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
(Yes, I know what “fencing” means here. I’m just goofin’.)
It’s always been odd when people have told me that I can’t be as good as I am at reading comprehension, processing and integrating information quickly and just general language stuff because I am terrible at operational math.
And then I totally mog them them by taking a four-hour 150-question exam with a migraine and passing it — again, with a fucking bad migraine — in 43 minutes1. In fact when I came out the proctor asked if I needed a break. I said, “No, all done.” Then she said, “But that’s the long test!” And then something about how she didn’t think I’d be done for another couple of hours. Don’t remember her exact words there because I was both very nauseous and near keeling over.
Trust me, bro, you can put me up against 10,000 randomly-selected people in those areas I mentioned in my first paragraph and I will tear them all apart like they are made of tissue paper. But I still cannot solve a quadratic equation and never will be able to do so.
The use of tanks will change, but they are not obsolete. Things are just evolving and there will be a new equilibrium.
I think there is something to that. Epstein was a scumbag, but that doesn’t explain the extreme focus on him. There are tons of other louts and criminals out there, some far worse.
For many women, Epstein is a dark fantasy figure — Christian Grey in the real world. It’s related to the “belief” that many women have that they are always on the verge of being kidnapped from the Target parking lot and then sex-trafficked. It’s a dream of being so alluring, so gorgeous, that a man or group of men just cannot help but do horrible things to you. And before you criticize me, take a look at how many women admit to having rape fantasies1. And then realize that many people lie on surveys, so it’s probably a lot more than that who actually do.
That said, some of the dancing is decent.
Where I grew up, the biggest thugs got with the most women by far. It wasn’t even close. Hell, I got with more women after I broke bad.
It’s just a fact of life.
This is not really (heh) correct. At the least, it’s lazy thinking. But truly, it’s just wrong enough to seem pat and true to Mastodon types but is even more misleading than the supposedly-confusing ideas it’s attempting to illuminate.
The problem is that complex numbers are not secretly just real numbers. Though they are a larger algebraic system that can be faithfully represented using real pairs or special real matrices, the posts above confuse the fact that you can represent complex numbers using real-number machinery with the incorrect idea that complex numbers are truly nothing but ordinary real numbers. A metaphor that perhaps this doof could understand: GPS coordinates are not the city. You can encode every place in a city with two numbers, but the city is not secretly just a system of coordinates. The coordinates are a way of keeping track of something else. And the same is the case here. A real pair or matrix model is a way of (only) encoding complex numbers, not a proof that complex numbers were ordinary reals all along. I mean, duh. If you’re not a dipshit.
So that part of the posts is 100% wrong. A representation is not the same thing as an identification. Encoding complex numbers as pairs or matrices does not somehow convert them back into the real numbers. All it shows is that the complex numbers can be realized as a structured extension built from real components.
And I know this at least partially because standard quantum mechanics requires complex numbers. There are indeed physics-equivalent reformulations using only real quantities, but these work only if you add extra structure that is basically smuggling in complex numbers by the back door (that don’t correspond to the world as it apparently is), so just reals is not enough.
I hate this typical Mastodon intellectual clownishness. So fucking worthless.
That’s the same as clowns screaming, “Climate change is fake!” as they die in a climate-change-caused natural disaster.
It is amazing to witness the BlueSky screechers caterwaul — meanwhile, we have AIs finding solutions to previously-unsolved math problems, discovering so many zero-days the results couldn’t even be released, and just generally doing all manner of useful shit.
There’s being a bit behind the times and there’s being a complete clown idiot. For some reason, the left has chosen the latter and then doubled down every day since.