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wolframhydroxide

@ wolframhydroxide @sh.itjust.works

Posts
3
Comments
582
Joined
2 yr. ago

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  • I'm personally far more concerned that the universe is a simulation stuffed in the closet of some higher-dimensional flunkie, and our universe is nothing more than a practice piece. That the answer to "why" could be so mundane as to make all effort in our universe entirely meaningless. It's one thing to say that the universe as we know it will end in heat death, or some false vacuum decay event, and that all effort is therefore meaningless. It's very different, on an emotional level, to consider the possibility that the universe is a mistake, some Petri dish left in the incubator too long and overgrown with contaminating flora. Even more unsettling, then, that such a possibility is fundamentally unknowable from within the universe.

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  • The universe is a simulation, and not only is it impossible to disprove (non-falsifiable), but it would imply that you could be the only thinking consciousness here (Cartesian Solipsism)

    Consider:

    1. the universe has rendering rules, treating objects differently when they are observed, to the point where objects do not have set properties when unobserved (Bell Inequality)
    2. this holds for even arbitrarily large objects, as scientists have been able to demonstrate molecules containing thousands of atoms demonstrating wave-particle duality
    3. The Universe has a frame rate (Planck time)
    4. the Universe has a resolution (Planck length)
    5. The most basic level of the universe is discrete (energy quanta)

    While I choose not to go for the solipsism, I am becoming increasingly persuaded of the simulation theory's likelihood.

  • The latest skincare fad is rubbing salmon sperm on your face

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  • To be fair, they didn't know that ambergris was an excretion of the whale until long after they started using it for these purposes. It was just "that waxy thing we find floating in the ocean." Also, it's apparently not vomited, but defecated.

  • No More Neutral ⚛

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  • "Wish granted. Electrons, being a human construct, have now always been defined slightly differently. Just as Franklin got the polarity wrong and you still use his labeling system, J.J. Thompson will now have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the electron, leading to a cascading assumption by later scientists that the number of electrons in a neutral atom is one greater than the number of protons. Even though this completely breaks the math of quantum mechanics, everyone is just used to subtracting one at this point. This is a minutely worse world, but as a bonus, every physicist who sees you will now be preternaturally certain that you are personally to blame. You're welcome."

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  • Science didn't give us the guillotine, no matter which scientific method or forbear you're using to determine scientific nature. At best, engineering gave us the guillotine, but I rather doubt there was any actual engineering design going on when they first made the Halifax Gibbet, except insofar as "I need a simpler and more consistent way to lazily kill petty criminals" was "defining a need".

  • FCC asks stations for "pro-America" programming, like daily Pledge of Allegiance

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  • Wouldn't that be a face turn? Not a wrestling fan, but I'm pretty sure a heel turn is when a "heroic" character turns villainous.

  • Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days

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  • Haha, fair!

  • Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days

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  • I have one, and while the actual hardware features are nice, the constant overheating and incredibly slow responses on the phone are reminiscent of a brick laptop from the early '00s. I am instead just running e/OS on an old pixel 4a (since it still has a headphone jack)

  • Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days

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  • Sounds like you should invest in additional pockets. They're pretty great.

    Honestly, even if you weren't going to use the extra space for a second phone, you should invest in less-limited pocket space.

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  • I believe that they contribute to understanding, because human minds are wired to engage with stories. If your chemistry teacher was worth their salt, they'd teach you Gay-Lussac's law by telling you about how, when the hot air balloon was first invented, Gay-Lussac was seen as a mad young upstart by all of the older scientists for wanting to go up in one. Well, not only did he nearly die making measurements, he also showed that, at higher altitudes, there was lower pressure and lower temperature. Then, your chemistry teacher should pull out a spray-can of keyboard cleaner, invert it, spray the liquid into a beaker, and let everyone feel the adiabatic temperature depression from expansion (of course, most of the endothermicity is from the boiling of the liquid, but the point stands) they can explain that any compressed gas gets colder when you release it, whether the keyboard cleaner, spray paint, or the compressed coolant in the coils of your refrigerator. Lower pressure, lower temperature. Gay-Lussac's law. Now, all of those students will, when they think about the relationship of pressure and temperature, remember Gay-Lussac in a hot air balloon, at low air pressure, and low temperature.

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  • Quality shitpost, but the naming thing is true of virtually everything in mathematics, with good reason, because otherwise you'd just be talking about "that slightly different combination of arbitrary letters by which we do something very similar to, but measurably distinct from, the use cases of the other three equations like it".

    See:

    • Pythagorean theorem (geometry)
    • Dijkstra's Algorithm (graph theory)
    • Fermat's last theorem (number theory)
    • Peano axioms (formal logic)
    • For that matter, the word "Algorithm" comes from the Latinised name of the dude who invented algebra, and the word "algebra" is just an overly truncated version of the title of that dude's book.

    This is also doubly true in science, where there are 5000 different "laws" and "theorems" surrounding something like gas behaviour, so at some point, you have to differentiate them based on their history, rather than what they do. Hence "Charles' law", "Boyle's law", "Gay-Lussac's law", "Bernoulli's principle", the "navier-stokes theorem", "rayleigh-benard convection", etc...

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  • The moon isn't in this image. You're looking at mercury. Easiest way to tell is the lack of the lunar maria.

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  • Neptune's great dark spot is clearly visible, and thus immediately identifies it as such.

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  • Well, all you need to do is travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. That will let you fast-forward the rest of non-relativistic reality. Then it's just a matter of slowing down again.

  • The sun is a deadly laser...

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  • Indeed! Good point! For some reason, I was under the impression that the CMB was monochromatic (corresponding to a red shifted equivalent of the precise energy of W and Z boson annihilation to produce photons). Thanks!!

  • The sun is a deadly laser...

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  • More weird to me is that, at some point before the first stars, the entire universe glowed through the entire rainbow, so there is a moment when, were you to travel back in time, the entire universe would glow blindingly green.

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    XXX

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  • More like "vaster than empires, and more slow"