People seemed to like my post from yesterday about infinite summations and how to rationally react to a mathematical argument you're not equipped to validate, so here's another in the same vein that highlights a different way your reasoning can go. (It's probably not quite as juicy of an example...
You may have seen that Numberphile video that circulated the social media world a few years ago. It showed the 'astounding' mathematical result: 1+2+3+4+5+… = -1/12 (quote: "the answer to this sum is, remarkably, minus a twelfth") Then they tell you that this result is used in many areas of...
I've just come back from the latest post on revitalizing LW as a conversational locus in the larger Rational-Sphere community and I'm personally still very into the idea. This post is directed at you if you're also into the idea. If you're not, that's okay; I'd still like to give...
Just want to echo: thanks for doing this. This is awesome.
Your post got me thinking about some stuff I've been dealing with, and I think helped me make some progress on it almost instantly. I don't think the mechanisms are quite the same, but thinking about your experience induced me to have useful realizations about myself. I'll share in case it's useful to someone else:
It sounds like your self-concept issue was rooted in "having a negative model of yourself deeply ingrained", which induced neuroses in your thoughts/behaviors that attempted to compensate for it / search around for ways to convince yourself it wasn't true. And that the 'fix', sorta, was revisiting where that model came from and studying it and realizing that... (read 888 more words →)
Yeah, that's the exact same conclusion I'm pushing here. That and "you should feel equipped to come to this conclusion even if you're not an expert." I know.. several people, and have seen more online (including in this comment section) who seem okay with "yeah, it's negative one twelfth, isn't that crazy?" and I think that's really not ok.
My friend who's in a physics grad program promised me that it does eventually show up in QFT, and apparently also in nonlinear dynamics. Good enough for me, for now.
The assumed opinions I'm talking about are not the substance of your argument; they're things like "I think that most of these reactions are not only stupid, but they also show that American liberals inhabit a parallel universe", and what is implied in the use of phrases like 'completely hysterical', 'ridiculous', 'nonsensical', 'proposterous', 'deranged', 'which any moron could have done', 'basically a religion', 'disconnected from reality', 'save the pillar of their faith', etc. You're clearly not interested in discussion of your condemnation of liberals, and certainly not rational discussion. You take it as an obvious fact that they are all stupid, deranged morons.
So when you write "I’m also under no... (read more)
It's true that politics is generally discouraged around here. But, also -- I'm the person who commented negatively on your post, and I want to point out that it wasn't going to be well-received, even if politics was okay here. You wrote in a style that assumed a lot of opinions are held by your readers, without justification, and that tends to alienate anyone who disagrees with you. Moreover, you write about those opinions as if they are not just true but obviously true, which tends to additionally infuriate anyone who disagrees with you. So I think your post's style was a specific example of the kind of 'mind-killing' that should be... (read more)
With an opening like
The idea that liberal elites are disconnected from reality has been a major theme of post-election reflections. Nowhere is this more obvious than in academia, where Trump’s victory resulted in completely hysterical reactions.
It's clear that this is written for people who already believe these things. The rest, unsurprisingly, confirms that. I thought LW tried to avoid politics? And, especially, pointless politically-motivated negativity. "liberal-bashing" isn't very interesting, and I don't think there's a point in linking it on this site. Unfortunately downvoting is still disabled here.
I would like to remind people of some basic facts, which hopefully will bring them back to reality, although it probably won’t.
Either the... (read more)
It doesn't count in the discussions of coloring graphs, such as in the four color map theorem, and that's the kind of math this is most similar to. So you really need to specify.
Are you just wondering what 'pushing' means in this context? Or speculating about the existence of anti-gravity?
I'm pretty sure that this is just interpreting as region of low density as 'pushing' because it 'pulls less' than a region of average density would.
This is similar to how electron 'holes' in a metal's atomic lattice can be treated as positive particles.
Don't you think there's some value of doing a more controlled study of it?
People seemed to like my post from yesterday about infinite summations and how to rationally react to a mathematical argument you're not equipped to validate, so here's another in the same vein that highlights a different way your reasoning can go.
(It's probably not quite as juicy of an example as yesterday's, but it is one that I'm equipped to write about today so I figure it's worth it.)
This example is somewhat more widely known and a bit more elementary. I won't be surprised if most people already know the 'solution'. But the point of writing about it is not to explain the math - it's to talk about "how you should feel" about... (read 1999 more words →)
You may have seen that Numberphile video that circulated the social media world a few years ago. It showed the 'astounding' mathematical result:
1+2+3+4+5+… = -1/12
(quote: "the answer to this sum is, remarkably, minus a twelfth")
Then they tell you that this result is used in many areas of physics, and show you a page of a string theory textbook (oooo) that states it as a theorem.
The video caused quite an uproar at the time, since it was many people's first introduction to the rather outrageous idea and they had all sorts of very reasonable objections.
Here's the 'proof' from the video:
First, consider P = 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1…
Clearly the... (read 1247 more words →)
I've just come back from the latest post on revitalizing LW as a conversational locus in the larger Rational-Sphere community and I'm personally still very into the idea. This post is directed at you if you're also into the idea. If you're not, that's okay; I'd still like to give it a try.
A number of people in the comments mentioned that the Discussion forum mostly gets Link posts, these days, and that those aren't particularly rewarding. But there's also not a lot of people investing time in making quality text posts; certainly nothing like the 'old days'.
This also means that the volume of text posts is low enough that writing one (to me)... (read 557 more words →)
I don't think this is quite right. In my experience, the sensation that someone is higher status than me induces a desperate desire to be validated by them, abstractly. It's not the same as 'gratitude' or anything like that; it's the desire to associate with them in order to acquire a specific pleasurable sensation -- one of group membership, acceptance, and worth.