hugh

113 ms·

991.
by hugh 19y ago
I agree. Moreover, at any point in time I have three options. 1. Make a booking now, and run the risk that I might pay too much, 2. Wait a little longer, and run the risk that I might miss out altogether, or 3. Say "sod this" and make a boo
992.
by hugh 19y ago
Like so many other things in mathematics, I suspect it goes back to Euler (18th century). He invented the capital-sigma notation for sums, although I'm not sure what letters he used for his indices. The use of x, y and z as unknown reals go
993.
by hugh 19y ago
Am I the only one who harbors a secret (and shameful?) yearning to wear a nice snazzy suit to work every day, instead of jeans and a t-shirt? I'm a physicist rather than a programmer per se, but I'm sure there must be others like me out the
994.
by hugh 19y ago
Reasons why this may not be such a big deal: 1. Diesel-electric submarines from various countries (including, I think, Germany and Australia) have been known to lurk near US aircraft carriers before. It's not that surprising that a Chinese
995.
by hugh 19y ago
Can't it be both? A grassroots conspiracy? Just because a smallish-yet-largish (hundreds? thousands?) community of people has got together and decided to show their support for a particular candidate by overparticipating in online polls and
996.
by hugh 19y ago
Wow, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair! That's, like, a hundred billion times smaller than a football field! If you stacked twelve double-decker buses on top of one another, the pile would be 43 billion times larger than one of these r
997.
by hugh 19y ago
Another way to think about it: let $x be the salary you could earn elsewhere, and N be the number of years you'd wind up working for free. It doesn't matter who you are, $Nx is a pretty substantial amount of money. You're basically being as
998.
by hugh 19y ago
That's not quite the right analogy -- it misses the point a bit. In that analogy the two numbers have definite values right from the start -- they're just ordinary boxes with ordinary numbers written in them. In a more quantum mechanical an
999.
by hugh 19y ago
Oh, and by the way, the MWI FAQ you posted actually contradicts you on this point, it seems: "Q19 Do worlds differentiate or split?... Worlds do not exist in a quantum superposition independently of each other before they decohere or split
1000.
by hugh 19y ago
My point is that there are other many-worlds interpretations apart from Deutsch's, which differ somewhat on philosophical issues like whether words really "split", as described above. The main problem with them is that they're all a bit va
1001.
by hugh 19y ago
<i>That is incorrect. Many Worlds does not say universes are created all the time, it says they already exist and become differentiated.</i> Actually there's no real consensus on that point, even among many-worlds theorists.
1002.
by hugh 19y ago
For the most part though, I suspect that for most non-US-citizen entrepreneurs, the question "Should I move to Silicon Valley?" is a bit like the questions "Should I grow a pair of wings on my back?" or "Should I enlist the Loch Ness Monste
1003.
by hugh 19y ago
27, PhD in Physics
1004.
by hugh 19y ago
Very nice. But it doesn't have one of my favourite google calculator features: built-in physical constants -- things like "speed of light", "electron mass", "permittivity of free space", "planck's constant" and so forth. I realize I'm in a