pavelrub

28 ms·

271.
by pavelrub 13y ago
I think you have missed the point of the analogy.
272.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Does the possibility of a bomb exploding in a nuclear reactor also seems to you as an example for why we can't have nuclear reactors, while in practice we have hundreds of nuclear reactors and zero bomb explosions? Seriously, of all th
273.
by pavelrub 13y ago
> Just because we prefer one arbitrary kind of reference frame above others here on earth (ie. euclidean) doesn't make it any more real. You got it all backwards. Our preference for a certain reference frame is exactly what makes
274.
by pavelrub 13y ago
There is so much wrong with this comment I don't even know where to begin. It will suffice to say that this is a huge conceptual muddle, and a great example of where conceptual confusion can lead us if we are not careful. You are confu
275.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Thanks for your input on what's required to climb Everest. I will pass that on to Ed Viesturs [1] from RMI Expeditions so that he will change the requirements listed on their website, based on your superior experience of actually takin
276.
by pavelrub 13y ago
I think you are making several incorrect and unfair generalizations. Calling those climbers "rich idiots" is unnecessary, and hugely inaccurate. Nearly all guided Everest expeditions require previous high-peak mountaineering exper
277.
by pavelrub 13y ago
The mathematical notations here are really bad.
278.
by pavelrub 13y ago
If it's apparently so difficult to learn how to use it 'properly', maybe it's just a shitty language.
279.
by pavelrub 13y ago
What? This is horrible advice - exactly the opposite of what we should be encouraging. This is like saying women shouldn't resist if their boss sexually harasses them, because it might damage their careers. I seriously hope nobody here
280.
by pavelrub 13y ago
I think you are wildly misinterpreting merrit. The point is not that blogging about it is bad, but that calling people out on the spot is even better, and people should do it more. Of course it's frightening, and of course it's ha
281.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Wow, what a disgusting comment.
282.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Tarkovsky made films about what he cared about and what interested him. His Solaris wasn't really meant to be about Lem's book, just as his Stalker isn't about Roadside Picnic. Those books simply offer a setting where he coul
283.
by pavelrub 13y ago
But it can't.
284.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Currently 90% of the comments here are meaningless guesses and opinions written by people who haven't read anything and/or know nothing about the mentioned theory, the new findings or the physics involved. I wish there was somebod
285.
by pavelrub 13y ago
This is very misleading even after your "correction". Penrose's theories on consciousness and QM might be eccentric, but he is one of the better known physicists of our time, with integral contributions to the mathematics of
286.
by pavelrub 13y ago
This has nothing to do with mathematics or with your MSc, this is a a philosophical discussion about the meaning of words.
287.
by pavelrub 13y ago
If a process can be represented as such and such, and then this in turn can be represented as something else, and then eventually after this possibly-long chain of transformations we reach something mathematical, then it is that someth
288.
by pavelrub 13y ago
If you don't usually bother with this kind of thing, it means that you don't usually do this kind of math when you program.
289.
by pavelrub 13y ago
If the question of the poll was "My son eats carrots, what level of piano-playing does it equal to?", would you then say that eating carrots and playing the piano are fundamentally the same, because they are both reducible to phys
290.
by pavelrub 13y ago
This is philosophical mumbo-jumbo. When people program, they (usually) don't do math. And that's it. The fact that you can view a programming language as a formal system, and the fact that computer programs can be viewed as math
291.
by pavelrub 13y ago
The new information (common knowledge) is added immediately to everybody, not after 2 days. Using this information (that everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows...), it is then possible to decide whether you have blue eyes
292.
by pavelrub 13y ago
This is not a variant of the puzzle above. This is a variant of the hat puzzle, and the solution requires some set-theory.
293.
by pavelrub 13y ago
No. There is nothing wrong with the induction and the second argument is the correct one. This is a well known puzzle that became very popular on Terrence Tao's blog ( http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/02/05&
294.
by pavelrub 13y ago
Of course it's not unfair . He doesn't owe you anything. He collected the coconuts, and he can do whatever he wants with them. Unfair would be if you collected the coconuts, and then somebody else came and took them from you just
295.
by pavelrub 13y ago
The fact that wealthy people use tax loopholes is a bad thing. Making in possible for everybody to use tax loopholes is a really horrible idea.
296.
by pavelrub 13y ago
There is nothing absurd about any of those scenarios. Those are perfectly valid questions, and to answer them might be difficult - that's why it's not at all obvious that 40 year olds are more morally "important" than 80
297.
by pavelrub 13y ago
I agree, but what you are saying is "assuming the status-quo, let's see if we can find something good about it". Whereas I'm saying: you might be right, but the status quo is still wrong, and we shouldn't be happy
298.
by pavelrub 13y ago
No, it doesn't mean they're irrelevant, it just means your previous analogy is irrelevant.
299.
by pavelrub 13y ago
I think we will learn MUCH quicker and MUCH more and about the history of Mars once we'll get serious about colonizing it, and not "exploring" it at the the crawling pace it's currently happening at.
300.
by pavelrub 13y ago
That's just begging the question. The whole point here is that we shouldn't need "science" to somehow "justify" the colonization of Mars. Saying that it's a good thing because it "justifies" expe

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