lutusp

59 ms·

631.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Mathematica isn't magic and the source code for your mathematica program is perfectly readable text. Yes, but the user's program only tells Mathematica what to do, not how to do it. How Mathematica does it is proprietary, and
632.
by lutusp 11y ago
I agree completely, but by 1915, Einstein had reshaped himself into exactly the multidisciplinary person required to write the general theory. The real tragedy in science are those with only physical intuition and little mathematical founda
633.
by lutusp 11y ago
> In other words, his contributions to science arose from his exceptional physical insights, and not his mathematical brilliance. True about special relativity, certainly false about general relativity. Between 1905 and 1915, Einstein le
634.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Special relativity is pretty much math-free though (in Einstein's formulation, not in Minkowski's). True, but only because Einstein hadn't yet acquired the essential mathematical background. Instructive in this connectio
635.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Nah, advanced physics still requires a strong physical intuition. True, but without mathematics, physical intuition can become a dead end, because it doesn't lead to theories expressed clearly enough to forge consensus among pract
636.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Is great science done anymore? Yes. The problem is not a lack of excellent scientific results, the problem is the sheer number of mediocre people in the field and the amount of trash that's published as though it was either signif
637.
by lutusp 11y ago
> But let us not make the mistake of closing the scientific doors on the so-called 'mathematically illiterate.' Fair enough, but it can lead to a very serious problem -- how do we compare the results of different studies? Day-t
638.
by lutusp 11y ago
Quote: "The other thing to keep in mind is that an over-reliance on math can also seriously hinder progress in certain fields and even lead to great financial and personal losses. Finance is a great example; the highly sophisticated mo
639.
by lutusp 11y ago
> The thing about Mathematica (and any other math product) is that it lets you increase the abstraction level of your thinking. The difference between Mathematica and other environments is that in the latter, you ascend from the trivial
640.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Any stats showing they are hurt by the closed nature of their software? No reliable statistics, only the conjecture that Sage, sympy and other such environments allow people to produce a significant percentage of the results Mathematic
641.
by lutusp 11y ago
> I don't really see sympy and the like surpassing Mathematica. Given enough time, it will happen. There are several reasons. One, people who publish mathematics academically are reluctant to use a closed-source tool to create their
642.
by lutusp 11y ago
> It seems like TTS technology hasn't evolved much over the years and I was wondering if any startups are working on making it sound more realistic? It's not true that TTS hasn't improved (see below). Many people are worki
643.
by lutusp 11y ago
A classic psychology tract, constructed on the default premise: 1. Here's how things are . 2. Here's how things should be , if only people would listen to psychologists. In this way, psychology has occupied the vacuum created by
644.
by lutusp 11y ago
> You can't gather empirical data about 'the mind' because it is a category you made up to describe a set of symptoms but which you are confusing for an entity. No, I'm not doing that, psychologists are. And psycholog
645.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Assuming that the instruction set is backward compatible as always has been, how's possible that an older Windows doesn't work with those new CPUs? That's easy to answer -- because of the increasing interdependence betwe
646.
by lutusp 11y ago
I doubt the headline literally means what it implies, but if it were true, it would be Microsoft's perfect answer to Linux and Android.
647.
by lutusp 11y ago
> ... "Scientists link coffee drinking to smart gene!" Complete agreement, especially with respect to the word "link", which seems ideally suited to exploit public ignorance of the fact that a link means a correlati
648.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Why isn’t anyone holding universities accountable for their press releases? It's about time. Maybe in the future, universities will adopt ethics guidelines that will oblige them to say, "Here's another social science stu
649.
by lutusp 11y ago
> This isn't really a legit distinction. Describing "the mind" as separate from the body because we don't know how it works is like describing cancer or AIDS as separate from the body because we don't know precis
650.
by lutusp 11y ago
> This shouldn't come as a surprise; "mental" and "physical" aren't distinct entities ... In one critical sense, the mind and body are distinct. The body can be scientifically investigated because it yields
651.
by lutusp 11y ago
> I have said exactly the same thing the entire time This is a lie -- you keep changing your claim to keep up with the facts other people provide you with. Examples below. > What I said, over and over, is you can not turn velocity int
652.
by lutusp 11y ago
Before: > Kinetic energy does not become heat and light. Now: > "To make heat and light you need some other process." Translation: "You were right." Apart from the fact that heat and light are kinetic energy. Fur
653.
by lutusp 11y ago
> The LHC collides TWO protons! The net velocity between them is zero. Yes, but only because their original velocity has been converted into other forms of kinetic energy, like heat and light, among other things like Higgs bosons. Here i
654.
by lutusp 11y ago
> If, us, that distant observer, never see the black holes merge, then what does that mean for the gravity waves? The black holes don't need to merge to create gravity waves, they only need to orbit each other. It turns out that all
655.
by lutusp 11y ago
>> it's converted to kinetic energy, it becomes heat and light. > Kinetic energy does not become heat and light. So have you told the LHC people that they're misguided for thinking they can produce the Higgs Boson by coll
656.
by lutusp 11y ago
> What use would it even have? During my solo around-the-world sail ( http://arachnoid.com/sailbook ) ( http://i.imgur.com/v6zyW.jpg ), I had one of these Toshibas on board for log entries and celestial navi
657.
by lutusp 11y ago
> ... I still have a sense that the false positive rate is just too high. That might be true in principle, but considering what's at stake, I think the investigators will bend over backward to avoid making a claim that isn't ir
658.
by lutusp 11y ago
> But they will take infinite time to actually merge though. Yes, from the perspective of a distant observer. From the perspective of an observer falling into the BH, time will pass in the usual way, indeed it must. > The closer they
659.
by lutusp 11y ago
>> But they do -- the evidence is copious: > The evidence is non-existent. If you're familiar with Occam's razor, you know that, for a given phenomenon, the simplest explanation is to be preferred. There certainly are mas
660.
by lutusp 11y ago
> If a black hole can never form, as viewed by me, then black holes don't exist. But they do -- the evidence is copious: http://www.galacticcenter.astro.ucla.edu/animations.html Arguing that, because the event horiz

More ›