nyc111

I think the Wikipedia system of learning mentioned in the article would work. I call it "just in time learning". You click the link, you read it, if you decide that it is useful then you learn it by repeating it and understanding its relation to what you already know.

That's so true :) I think this world is absurd so the best one can do is contribute to the absurdness. Absurd is its own utility.

Cannot read it, behind paywall.

True. Where there is teaching there is no learning.

I don't think mathematics is a tool invented by humans. We see that who ever designed the shell of the snail knew about math and used it. The more interesting question for me is, did the designer of the snail shell use the mathematics like humans are using mathematics, or if that designer also invented the rules of mathematics.

It's interesting that he used a plain notebook not a square ruled notbook. Mathematicians mostly use squared notebooks I guess.

Does anyone know how the validity of a linear extrapolation is determined? I mean is there a standard way of measuring an extrapolation, like sigma? The only way I can think of is to take the ratio of the sample with the population. For instance, if sample = 24 and population = 200 billion, their ratio is 0.00000012. How do we know if this is a valid linear extrapolation? In this case, sample is the number of galaxies Hubble observed in 1929 for his famous paper and the population is the number of known galaxies. Is there a rigorous way to evaluate an extrapolation in statistics?

I have a 14” M1 Pro. I cannot look at the screen of this machine more than a few minutes before my eyes starts to give alarms. I have no problem with my Macbook Air.

I see that no one mention a similar complaints in comments.

Can you share your Displays settings?

I have

automatically adjust brightness, checked

True Tone, checked

Presets: Apple XDR Display (P3-1600 nits)

Refresh Rate: 48 Hertz

I'm happy for physics that finally someone from their ranks is trying, at least trying, to say that cosmology is a hoax. I've been writing this for ages. Here's one article I dug: https://notlar3.blogspot.com/search/label/Big%20Bang

He has other great essays, https://archive.org/details/indiscretethough0000rota/mode/2u...

"Why is it that no one has undertaken the task of cleaning the Augean stables of elementary differential equations? I will hazard an answer: for the same reason why we see so little change anywhere today, whether in society, in politics, or in science. Vested interests dominate every nook and cranny of our society, even the society of mathematicians."

How true! I wonder why humans are unable to devise a society where useful change occur swiftly when necessary.

"And cells, in turn, are made of molecules and molecules are made of atoms. Dig even deeper and pretty soon you’ll find yourself at the level of electrons and quarks. These are the particles that have traditionally been considered to be the end of the line, the fundamental building blocks of matter."

To me, the so-called "the end of the line" is a philosophical question not a physics question. For the simple reason that, we can never know, if something is really indivisible, or if we are unable to divide it because of our insufficient technology. We can never know this. The story of physics makes this clear. Each generation of physicists with new techology available to them take pride in showing that the previous generetion was lying, and that it is their atoms which are the real "end of the road". Then comes the next generation with a better technology...

I have a M1 Macbook Pro. I’m sure it’s a great computer but as soon as I look at the screen a few moments my eyes hurt. I can work with my Macbook Air for hours with no problem. I read all the comments here and no one mentions a problem with the screen. There must be something wrong with mine.

Why not practice "Just in Time Mathematics"? Start studying Machine Learning and only study the minimum mathematics necessary to understand particular problems. In other words learn by doing. Do we memorize the entire C library before starting to code in C?

> So, if you hold the mass fixed and compress an object into a smaller and smaller radius, then the gravitational pull gets stronger. Eventually, it becomes so strong that not even light can escape. You’ve made a black hole.

In Newtonian doctrine, a spherical object, like earth, attracts -as if- all its mass is concentrated at its center. So, if her reasoning is correct, the earth must already be a black hole, because all its mass is supposed to be concentrated at its center.

Isn't this true for all animals? How does a cat know that he is a cat? He never sees himself in a mirror but somehow knows that he is like other cats. I understand that they observe other cats' behavior, but how does he know initially that he is like other cats without seeing himself. This must be something innate. Also for birds mentioned in the article, they must know innately that they are cowbirds.

Matt Strassler: «The details of the reconstructed image depend on exactly what assumptions are made.» https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/05/12/in-our-galaxys-cent...

What does this mean? If they assembled an image to fit their assumptions, that would be circular reasoning. I don't understand.

> A constant implied that it had identified two proportional quantities — in this case, period squared and distance cubed. In other words, it stopped when it found an equation.

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.

I've been thinking about the physics equation and its relation to proportionality. Not all physics equations are proportionalities because in physics the equality sign is loaded.

To me, proportionality is fundamental not the physics equation. So I would have written the last sentence of the quote as "...it stopped when it found [a proportionality].

> Those physicists who said otherwise were either incompetent or lying or both, the rest knew it but kept their mouth shut, and now they hope you’ll forget about this and give them money for a bigger collider.

This, coming from a physicist, shows how corrupt aademic physics has become. Academic physics is nothing more than old school scholasticism.

> Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science.

Another sign of scholasticism. You just write commentary on commentary to earn academic points.

> They never admitted to having made false statements, accidentally or deliberately, and they never gave us any reason to think it wouldn’t happen again. I quite simply don’t trust them.

> I will hold regular 1:1 meetings and create an open-door policy...

That's the only best practice he mentions: have weekly one on one meetings.

> (Unambiguity) Every well-formed expression in the notation should have a unique mathematical interpretation in 𝑋

This is never the case in physics because the equality sign "=" is loaded and can mean equality, definition, proportionality, identity and equivalence. Physicists read the equality sign case by case, as the case may be, with one of these meanings. In scholasticism this used to be called casuistry.

> You’re probably thinking of how a proton has a mass of 938 MeV/c^2.

Yes, that’s what I was thinking. But it seems that there is a problem with the definition of the word “mass”. Clearly there are at least two definitions. First, the weight of an object. Here weight is measured and weight is called “mass”. There is no equivalence, same thing is called weight and mass. Weight and mass are synonyms. This mass has nothing to do with electricity and has nothing to do with motion.

The second definiton of mass is related to electricity and motion. It has no meaning outside electricity. In this case, they accelerate an electric current and measure its kinetic energy and call this kinetic energy “mass”. Again these words are synonyms. Why do physicists like these silly word plays so much, I have no idea.

Do we actually know how physicists define "mass" in this context? Because, in physics many words have technical meanings that only physicists can know. For instance, as a layman when I see the word "particle" I imagine a spherical thing with an extension in space. But a physicist would laugh at me because in physics a particle is not a particle, it can be a statistical bump in data, it can be a field, it can be a wave, anything but a spherical particle. But a physicist would call a wave a particle and see nothing wrong with it. The same goes for mass, what physicists call mass can be voltage for instance. So does anyone know what "mass" means in this context?

> that we call the ruliad—and that our physical laws arise in an inexorable way from the particular samples we take of this structure.

What is a physical law? To me a physical law is a proportionality, that is, an equality of ratios. When we find something that stays constant while something else is changing, we call this a law. But it is really a proportonality. So, mathematics and physics is tied by proportionality. They have proportionality in common.

> When we do physics, the traditional approach has been to start from our basic sensory experience of the physical world, and of concepts like space, time and motion—and then to try to formalize our descriptions of these things, and build on these formalizations. And in its early development—for example by Euclid—mathematics took the same basic approach.

I don’t think Euclid started from “basic sensory experience”. Euclid based his mathematics on non-existent things, neither point nor line exist in this world as defined by Euclid: A point is that which has no part. A line is breadthless length.

Also, in physics “space” does not exist as a quantity, only distance exists. Space is an abstraction.

I don't agree with this article, it as off-putting as the usual math eduacation it criticizes. I wonder how one can propose a curriculum to study math and not mention Euclid. One learns more mathematics from this article https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Russell_Euclid/ by B. Russell where he harshly criticizes Euclid than 2 years of calculus. Newton did not know calculus but he knew Euclid's Book 5, the book about ratios and proportions. Euclid's 5th Book must be the starting point for the study of math. When we say "math is the language of nature" we really mean that nature is proportional. Ratios and proportions are fundamental.

Thanks for the reference to Dismal Arithmetic, I found it very interesting. By the way, according to Wikipedia, Dismal Arithmetic is now called Lunar Arithmetic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_arithmetic

Nice article but who is "you" here? It's very difficult to define who is addicted. In the case of sugar addiction, it is the sugar loving microorganisms that live inside the body. It is not the conscious mind who is addicted. And these microorganisms can control the behavior of the host, that is, the body, like making you go to where sweets are sold without you knowing it. I don't know how but these organisms have direct access to the motor nerveous system and can do things and make decisions without (or before) conscious mind realizes it. So the way we become aware of the hot surface we touched accidentally only after we retract our arm, we become aware of some decisions only after executing them to satisfy the desires of the microorganisms, our symbionts. So I'm sure addiction is not a mind issue but a gut issue.

She explains it nicely. She mentions "Quantum Mechanics" several times, physicsts like to talk about these tehories as if they were a single intelligible theory, but they are not, there are as many Quantum Mechanics as there are physicsts. At the end of the talk she mentions an experiment, but in physics the meaning of the word "experiment" has changed too, if the experiment contradicts existing Quantum Mechanics, physicists will simply create a new flavor of it.

> For some reason—whether a sense that there was some mistake, or someone copied something down wrong, or because it was so absurd—the manuscripts we have show that Heron ignored the minus sign and gave the answer as √63 instead.

I wonder if the minus sign was in use in the time of Heron (First century AD). I couldn't tell from this Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_and_minus_signs