knzhou

60 ms·

541.
by knzhou 7y ago
It can't be much worse than being under the blue sky.
542.
by knzhou 7y ago
There's a scandal every month about some politician eating wrong -- whether it's them being too messy, or not messy enough. It's especially bad in UK politics.
543.
by knzhou 7y ago
The author says he's clever, and I believe him. It's easy to believe, because I've heard this story a hundred times before. I grew up with lots of clever people, met through math and science competitions and camps. Easily 80%
544.
by knzhou 7y ago
The electromagnetic field configuration does contribute energy/momentum. In general, every field that interacts with the election field contributes: an “electron” stands for a complicated joint excitation of the electron, photon, W&#x2
545.
by knzhou 7y ago
Not only that, but mass is a matrix for electrons moving in a crystal lattice, even for normal coordinate systems. It's also true if you want F = ma to continue to hold in special relativity, then m is a velocity-dependent matrix.
546.
by knzhou 7y ago
> Putting it in somewhat fuzzier terms, and at the risk of repeating myself: F = ma derives its power from the (implicit) assertion that there is a simple unversal force law that lets us figure out F for a particular configuration of mat
547.
by knzhou 7y ago
Your question could deserve a book-length treatment, but one quick thing I can say is that the system is self-correcting. The more bells and whistles you add onto the Standard Model, the less anybody else will want to build upon it. And com
548.
by knzhou 7y ago
You can call anything a fudge factor. One person's fudge factor is another's elegant explanation.
549.
by knzhou 7y ago
That's a witty quip, but it's witty because it's unfair. We don't grade theories based on what fraction of the stuff is obviously visible. If that were true, even electromagnetism would be a terrible theory because the v
550.
by knzhou 7y ago
Let's also add the PVLAS anomaly, the white dwarf cooling hint, the 'too big to fail' problem, the cusp/core problem, missing satellites, the DAMA/LIBRA anomaly, the MiniBooNE excess, the Valentine's day monopo
551.
by knzhou 7y ago
You can go straight to review articles, which are generally available for free on the arXiv. Or if you want the firehose, you can scan for papers whose abstracts contain words like 'hint', 'anomaly', 'excess',
552.
by knzhou 7y ago
Lots of reasons. Statistical fluctuation. Equipment malfunction. Misunderstanding of setup. Underestimation of systematic errors. Improper data analysis. Sometimes, new effects that were previously unknown but don't involve new physics
553.
by knzhou 7y ago
You can go straight to review articles, which are generally available for free on the arXiv. Or if you want the firehose, you can scan for papers whose abstracts contain words like 'hint', 'anomaly', 'excess',
554.
by knzhou 7y ago
Duplicate of this post. [0] I have the same comment as over there: > It's important to keep in mind that there are always plenty of outstanding experimental anomalies in physics. At the moment, this is one of ~40 roughly equally c
555.
by knzhou 7y ago
It's important to keep in mind that there are always plenty of outstanding experimental anomalies in physics. At the moment, this is one of ~40 roughly equally credible hints towards new physics, and it's more likely than not th
556.
by knzhou 7y ago
I thought the point of the essay is that the obsessed will be obsessed, with possibly great results, regardless of whatever the lucrative career path of the moment is. It's not about anybody "optimizing" anything.
557.
by knzhou 7y ago
> In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Really! That's news to me. Are you aware of how much scie
558.
by knzhou 7y ago
This is exactly it. Earlier this year there was a hyped up paper [0] going around claiming that they could derive physics with AI. On inspection I found that what they actually did was this: 1. Take one simple physics equation, such as F =
559.
by knzhou 7y ago
A threshold is a good thing, because if you can be entirely selective in your reporting, then you can convince people of any narrative you want. This is the Chinese robber fallacy [0]. 0: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015&#x
560.
by knzhou 7y ago
There already is. In tech reporting, the criterion whether it can be fit into the pre-existing narrative of Big Tech being evil. There are similar numbers of people thanking Google for new features every day, but you won't hear about t
561.
by knzhou 7y ago
When covering Huygen's principle: the wavelets always give a backwards-moving wave in addition to the forwards-moving wave. In other words, Huygen's principle is time symmetric. So in real life, why don't you get the backward
562.
by knzhou 7y ago
Nah, I would argue that empathy has never been anything more than that. We have existing names for the “real” empathy you being up too — people call it being two-faced, practicing whataboutism, being callously analytical, being too unempat
563.
by knzhou 7y ago
Empathy has always been morally neutral. Feeling what others do allows you to help them, but it also allows you to manipulate them, or better hurt them. Most of the time it only acts as a way to strengthen existing tribal affiliations.
564.
by knzhou 7y ago
Sorry, but this is idealistic to the extreme. You are completely dismissing the results of education research by saying that every educator is incompetent, despite almost all of these people having far more education experience than both of
565.
by knzhou 7y ago
I've taught at the U.S. Physics Olympiad's training camp, and also tutor high school students who want to learn a ton of physics quickly. (These kids usually find me themselves, through Google.) My most obnoxiously smart student w
566.
by knzhou 7y ago
These days, you use Google. I personally have a list of books for intro physics [0] and help maintain a meta-list of books up to graduate level [1], and there are hundreds more lists out there. Heck, when I was a kid I learned from just che
567.
by knzhou 7y ago
Sure, Tao's an outlier among outliers, but in general nurturing a prodigy does not require a lot of parental time or money. I've met a number of such prodigies in the course of my work, and generally their parental involvement a
568.
by knzhou 7y ago
This is an unsolvable problem. There already is plenty of expository content about what Tao actually does, e.g. his excellent blog. It's just that it can't get popular because it's technical; that's the iron law of STEM
569.
by knzhou 7y ago
A closed curve could be the boundary of something, but it has no boundary itself. The boundary of an open curve is its endpoints, a closed curve has no endpoints. It's important to distinguish having a boundary vs. being the bounda
570.
by knzhou 7y ago
You should be specific about who you’re calling out. I’m sure this is good advice for journalists making infographics for the public, but it isn’t for scientists talking to other scientists. I design my plots for readability and in the proc

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