Asked today if the Titanic II could sink, Mr Palmer told reporters: “Of course it will sink if you put a hole in it.”
http://www.smh.com.au/business/clive-palmer-plans-to-build-titanic-ii-20120430-1xtrc.html
Mark_Eichenlaub
Karma: 638
If you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.
Paul Graham “What You’ll Wish You’d Known” http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
I don’t think we can get much more specific without starting to be mistaken.
Paul Graham, “Is It Worth Being Wise?” http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html
I like the idea. Perhaps we should start a periodic discussion thread where people post midrange goals and get feedback.
thanks for the catch
If calorie restriction works in humans, should we have observed it already?
And Aubrey de Grey doesn’t take any. (http://www.quora.com/What-supplements-does-Aubrey-de-Grey-take-to-stay-young-if-any/answer/Aubrey-de-Grey)
The last sentence is patronizing, and especially inappropriate in a thread about asking stupid questions.
wait, that was easier to search than I thought. http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/
Yes, it is Knuth’s arrow notation.
What’s 3^^^3?
Is this Knuth’s arrow notation?
Okay, thanks. I have only read the first few posts. On those, the karma score was higher and there was positive feedback from readers saying it was helpful to them. I should have read further in the series before characterizing it as a whole.
Good point, thanks. Konkvistador indicates it was too verbose for him/her.
Thanks for letting me know—John’s point about selection effects is well taken.
It would have been better for me to say that because many LessWrongers enjoyed the sequence, it wasn’t too verbose for everyone, though clearly it was for some readers.
I’m pretty familiar with Ron Maimon, since I use Physics.Stackexchange heavily.
He seems to have other things going on in his life that prevent him from being accepted by the physics community at large, but in terms of pure knowledge of physics he’s really, really good. Every time I’ve read an answer from him that I’m competent to judge, it’s been right, or else if it has a mistake (which is rare) and someone points it out, he thanks them for noticing and corrects his answer.
When crackpots answer physics questions, they consistently steer away from the topic towards whatever their crackpot ideas are. Ron doesn’t do that. Crackpots tend to claim things that are pretty much known to be impossible, and display little depth of understanding or willingness to talk about anything other than their theories. Ron doesn’t do that. He also doesn’t claim that he’s being repressed by the physics establishment. He’ll call professional physicists idiots, but he doesn’t say that they’re trying to hide the truth or suppress his ideas. And when he sees a professional physicist who comes on the site and writes good answers, he generally treats them with respect. He leaves positive feedback on good answers of all sorts. None of this fits in with being a crackpot.
He does get into fights with people about more advanced theoretical stuff that’s over my head. But when he talks about physics that I know, he does it extremely well, and I’ve learned a lot from him. He’s more knowledgeable and insightful than most professional physicists.
The stuff other users mentioned about his bible interests and his profile description is ad hominem.
Anyway, if you are interested in what a professional physicist would say, I’m quasi-professional in that I’m a graduate student. My opinion is that the sequence, so far as I read it, is fine. I haven’t finished reading it, so I didn’t offer a comment before, but so far I haven’t found any significant mistakes (beyond those real but relatively minor ones pointed out on the thread on Phys.SE) The fact that many LessWrongers have read and enjoyed it indicates it’s not too verbose for the target audience.
Edit several people gave feedback indicating that the sequence isn’t as well-received as I indicated. I should have read more of it before commenting.
Ah, thank you.
I think LessWrongers would like Victor Weisskopf’s series of articles called “The Search for Simplicity”, published in the American Journal of Physics in 1985 and 1986. They are The Simple Math of Everything applied to physics (specifically condensed matter).
They’re accessible, using only simple algebraic calculations. Their goal is to connect different phenomena with just a few simple experiments and the right way of thinking about it. For example, the first article discusses how measuring the surface tension and energy to boil a liquid gives us a good estimate of the size of atoms.
A later article uses very similar ideas about the energy in atomic bonds to explain the connection between the height of the tallest mountains, the size of drops of water on a ceiling, and the wind speed needed to make ocean waves.
You can find them here, but they’re unfortunately behind a pay wall, so you’ll need somebody at university library to get them.
Should “latest insights” appear in the front page blurb?
Did you find anything useful?
Can you describe how else one would test a nursing theory for correctness?
As I understand it, a nursing theory says, “If the nurse follows procedure A, the reaction in the patient will be X. If the nurse doesn’t follow procedure A, the reaction in the patient will be Y.”
If the theory is accurate in those predictions, it’s a correct theory, even if it sounds crazy. To tell whether it’s a correct theory, we have to test it. That’s what I was driving at.
Why do I fantasize about being angry?
I’m breaking the rule a bit by asking about myself here.
Sometimes when I have down time and am daydreaming, especially if I’m walking somewhere or going for a run, I fantasize about someone wronging me (say with a traffic violation), then imagine myself getting angry, yelling at them, and physically beating them up. I think about knocking them down, screaming at them, challenging them to get up, and knocking them down again.
I’ve never acted on such a fantasy. I have no idea how to actually fight someone if I wanted to. It’s very rare that I show anger, and I don’t think I’ve ever punched someone as an adult. But I think about it pretty regularly, and the thoughts disturb me. I have no idea where they come from or why I take pleasure in these sorts of fantasies.
Is this a common thought pattern? Why do people have it?