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Metus comments on Open thread, Dec. 8 - Dec. 15, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Gondolinian 08 December 2014 12:06AM

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Comment author: Metus 08 December 2014 12:19:59PM 11 points [-]

Physics: "what is energy?"

I am a graduate student of physics and I am inclined to say that I now know even less about what energy is.

Comment author: gjm 08 December 2014 08:49:46PM 4 points [-]

Oh, that's easy. It's just another word for wakalixes.

(Two irrelevant remarks: 1. Sorry, that webpage is eyeball-bleedingly ugly. 2. I conjecture that the last two words in the excerpt are why HPMOR!Harry chose to give his army a name that enabled him to call himself General Chaos. I suspect, more precisely, that at some point Eliezer read that bit of Surely you're joking... and thought "hmm, General Chaos would be a good name for a supervillain or something".)

Comment author: Manfred 08 December 2014 05:06:26PM 3 points [-]

Hm. If I had to give an answer, I'd say it's the stuff that's conserved because the laws of physics don't change over time. But that's pretty theoretical - maybe an extensional definition would be better.

Comment author: Emile 08 December 2014 04:03:19PM 0 points [-]

Maybe completely blanking on that question is a sign of having studied some physics?

Comment author: bramflakes 08 December 2014 07:01:27PM 4 points [-]

The difference is that the guy who studies physics can explain why the question is difficult.