tbabb

47 ms·

211.
by tbabb 8y ago
Oops, my mistake on the gender- Sabine is not a super familiar name. (Still dislike the tone, though; don't care how famous she is). I also think the taboo has lifted a bit, as it's now possible for mainstream physicists like Davi
212.
by tbabb 8y ago
While I don't like this ~guy's~ woman's disdainful, superior tone, I do think his complaint has merit. Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas. I just finished readin
213.
by tbabb 8y ago
I used to use it daily, but now basically do not interact with it at all. I left because a year ago I spent a week away from it, and when I logged back in it was insanely spammy and clingy with irrelevant "your friend liked this post&q
214.
by tbabb 8y ago
Quantum immortality says something concretely different than what you're describing; it says that you always have a subjectively high probability of continued existence. By quantum immortality's reasoning, that is not the case u
215.
by tbabb 8y ago
Or an infinity of worlds, with two thirds of them with heads, and one third with tails.
216.
by tbabb 8y ago
Why, then, don't we find ourselves in universes where the atom bomb was never invented?
217.
by tbabb 8y ago
I think there is a still more straightforward and robust argument against quantum immortality: The same reasoning predicts you can never fall asleep. If futures where you are not conscious are inaccessible by the anthropic principle, then d
218.
by tbabb 8y ago
> The disclosure when you pay for it is very clear. IMO their marketing probably leads customers to be more optimistic about the expected payout of their $x,000 investment than is justified. Though that is not necessarily deliberate dece
219.
by tbabb 8y ago
Federal incentives cut in half in January. If I am not mistaken, the order deadline for a guaranteed delivery before Jan 1 passed a few days ago. It is possibly misleading to incorporate the full $7500 savings into the price, because they m
220.
by tbabb 8y ago
Quite sensibly. It seemed pretty shady to me to charge customers for a feature that wasn't delivered or legally approved or likely even finished. I suspect they're finding the shipped hardware isn't enough to accomplish what
221.
by tbabb 8y ago
Video games and anywhere you need a rigid body collision simulation. So TV & film visual effects is another common use.
222.
by tbabb 8y ago
The Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi convex shape intersection algorithm. It can take any two convex sets and tell you if they overlap, while converging on a separating axis or a penetration point, if it exists. All you need is a support function th
223.
by tbabb 8y ago
Buried lede: Major pharmaceuticals are giving up on Alzheimer's research...?!
224.
by tbabb 8y ago
So why would a piston train be better than, say, a cable car?
225.
by tbabb 8y ago
I have a hard time seeing arguments against the SEC taking action-- especially here-- as anything but overcomplicated rationalizations rooted in a personal adoration of Elon Musk. Basically, "I like Elon Musk and so I don't want a
226.
by tbabb 8y ago
Agree. I want Elon's companies to succeed. I don't care if Elon himself is part of the equation, and it's starting to look like they might be better off if he is not. Either way, he committed something between gross negligenc
227.
by tbabb 8y ago
> Is there anyone who actually thinks that what some random YouTuber says is the official word of YouTube? If the government tells YouTube which YouTube videos to suppress, no matter how "unimportant" the "random YouTuber&
228.
by tbabb 8y ago
Fox news is what you describe-- a huge corporate power with control over the views accessible to millions of people. I hate Fox news and wish for them to stop existing, but you won't catch me arguing that the government should shut the
229.
by tbabb 8y ago
Unlike the post office, both a newspaper and Google's primary competitive service is organizing and prioritizing information. Would you suggest that the government mandate how they do that? The post office is more analogous to the tran
230.
by tbabb 8y ago
In your view, is a newspaper obligated to publish a racist screed every time someone sends one in?
231.
by tbabb 8y ago
There is a big philosophical and legal difference between a population of companies each executing editorial/moderating power over content published on their own platforms and a central government doing the same thing over arbitrary co
232.
by tbabb 8y ago
"Say more conservative things or else we'll take regulatory action against your company" sounds to me like an extremely first amendment-violating abuse of government power.
233.
by tbabb 8y ago
Since when does the government get to police ideological speech, or complain about "bias"? Google could in principle make its results insanely left-leaning and the first amendment should protect them. Are we going to let the gover
234.
by tbabb 8y ago
If I have two bases |O_up> and |O_down>, representing the observer in the state of having measured an up spin and a down spin respectively, what is wrong with taking <O_up|psi> and <O_down|psi> to find the fraction of Hilb
235.
by tbabb 8y ago
I still either don't see why you say that, or don't follow what you are trying to say. The Born rule is a fundamental feature of all quantum theories, and I don't see why Everett is an exception. If you want an intuitive pict
236.
by tbabb 8y ago
> For one, the information content of the multiverse expands exponentially towards infinity. I don't agree. I would say that the biggest difference-- really, the fundamental difference-- between Everett and Copenhagen is that Ever
237.
by tbabb 8y ago
I am not sure what you mean by "experiments do not have results." A measurement in Everett is the environment becoming entangled with the measured system, and a "result" is a particular basis of the combined wavefunction
238.
by tbabb 8y ago
De Broglie-Bohm is probably not the correct theory, since (if I am not mistaken) it's not reconcilable with relativity, and has a host of other problems which led its original proponents to abandon it. Copenhagen is also probably not c
239.
by tbabb 8y ago
That's rather a pointless nitpick. If we want to get from point A to point B, we can do it faster by travelling faster. The reference frame of either the origin or destination is a perfectly good/useful reference frame to choose.
240.
by tbabb 8y ago
Arguably the story doesn't change if you look at it that way. No one would fault a newspaper stand for choosing not to carry the Weekly World News, or, say, the newsletter of the KKK.

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