Large Hardon Collider

[Kaylia]

So, I turned on the TV to an ufologue talking about Hawking's comments. I almost choked.

I swear..if one of you tell me there was no issue with the way Hawking formulated his comment, I'm going to hunt you down. Going for sensationalism in sciences is just plain wrong, and that's exactly what he did. Media are already bad enough at reporting information, if you open yourself like this, you know it won't end well.

Of course, an argument about the meaning of life or its value was never about science. And i assume that any human civilization advanced enough to bring back the dead should have probably already delt with overpopulation (which is not really the real crux of the issue, as i've argued with you before), and jocularly, they would probably only bring back the best and brightest, so you have some motivation in making sure you're valuable now.

And one thing i didn't mention is that you didn't really provide for why life or the preservation of the species is meaningless. It would seem that I assumed your stance that your point was valid and proven on its substance rather than calling out whether you have provided sufficient reason to doubt that that preserving the species has value. Considering the long list of reasons i can make up as to why making sure the human species continues to exist is the right thing to do, we should have questioned why i would even need to prove that in the first place.

If it's not about science, what is it about? When I put my physicist's hat, I can't juggle with morality and beliefs. I don't want to, and I don't need to.

Why future people would need my brain anyway? Unless they want to put it in a brain museum, I doubt that I would be able to match the computing power of human in 5000 years, They don't need me, they have better. Plus, is it really going to be me that come back, or some sort of clone? Anyway, I would rather put my money on Zeus waiting for me in afterlife, than mankind bringing me back. Some stuff are just not going to happen.

I can't provide you with a proof that life is meaningless, but I can tell you we haven't found any meaning in the nature. No matter how long is your list, all the reason you posted are based on beliefs, and these beliefs are very debatable.

Very interesting... especially after seeing this:

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010...tory25874.html

What this picture tell me is that your eyes are in front of the brain, your ears are on the side, and that you use your ears, eyes and computing power when you're working!

But seriously, how can they compare their 300 neurones computers to the brain, and associate something like "seeing", "earring", I'm curious.

[Kaylia]

I only finished two exam questions and got them both wrong. I'll be very lucky if I get over 35% D:

Your teacher don't give pity points? Scoring under 35% is hard if you actually wrote a complete solution that isnt completely bad.


I'm sure it won't be that bad ;s

your pointless touting of "in science" is embarrassing. this is just good old reason. and no, the 3rd possibility (aliens want planet but can't travel in space) does not lower the probability. we're stipulating contact with these aliens. that's the whole fucking point. you don't say "what would happen if A? would B happen?" "no, B wouldn't happen if A because not A." that doesn't make sense. when estimating probability, if you have no reason to favor one outcome over another, raw number of distinct outcomes does determine probability.

your what ifs do not matter (unless they REFUTE in principle one of the claims the probability of which we're trying to determine, or there's tons of them). what matters is what you know. this is how you project probability about vague things. "but in SCIENCE we only quantify probability when--" no. no. stop. there's a stop light outside my house. it might be red or green. the chances, given my epistemological stance toward the stoplight (equivalent to true randomness) are 50% each way. if i know more, they skew. you don't need to take a single science class for this. "but hawking is a SCIENTIST so he should know better than to talk about--" no, he said obvious shit. yes, you can skew the likelihood of hostile aliens with speculative considerations, but in the whole context of estimating chances regarding aliens in the first place, the likelihood is high. 50% high? 20% high (given the risk, 20% is pretty high)? 90% high? i don't know. but it's obviously high for the broad, layman-accessible reasons that hawking noted (as layman accessible as the rough proof of alien life is in the first place).

no, I'm actually pretty certain that when you do sciences, you gather data through experiments. I'm also certain that you make a list of every possibilities, and if you remove any due to approximation, you have to state it and explain why. If your objective is to inform people, you won't jump directly to the conclusion, you will give them the whole reasoning process, and include the incertitude/error.

That's how it works. That's not what you're doing.

The stop light in front of your house might be 50% red and 50% green. However, you make this reasoning based on your knowledege of how stop light works and previous experience. You werent doing physics, but you took an educated guess. It's not the case here, because Hawking didn't give a good picture of situation, and he said it to people who don't even understand the topic. While I'm sure his guesses are educated, people who listen will accept it for the wrong reason.

His points is very defendable. However, it relieves from the domain that isn't related to science. Considering his status and why people listen to him, not making his stance clear create confusion, because people can't distinguish philosophy from sciences.


[edit]

Also, it's not the first time he talk out of his ass. He is by far my least favorite physicist of the recents era. He isn't stupid, but he often use his status to pass his opinion, instead of trying to keep some distance from his works.

it's fine that you think you know more than people because of your experience with physics. you probably do, and i'm sure you enjoy the rage you get when people don't know what you know, or stephen hawking talks about the predator. but not everything is caught in the net of stuff you know from education that others do not. not everything a physicist might say, even about physics, is caught in that net. with your constant "here in science we do real probability exercise" nonsense you're committing the same error about yourself that people were ridiculing a few pages ago re: the public's reception of hawking (or any respected intellectual). you expect the idiot public to misinterpret hawking's comment as scary predator stuff, but you're idiotically misinterpreting a very simple set of remarks ("good chance of hostile alien contact given [shit in previous posts]") as strong, contentious claims. you should take one minute and think about it, because it's not a very deep thing that's going on here, at least in terms of semantic content (certainly nowhere as deep and difficult as most physics, nor most philosophy or logic). re: attitude and forum dynamics, maybe there's more, but that's immediately boring

Nuclear energy killed thousand of people in the past (tchernobyl, hiroshima, etc), and we shouldn't mess with it. The high risk might not be worth it.


There we go. A beautiful statement on par with Hawking's comment. Yet, I don't think I could disagree more with it.

[Woozie]

Your teacher don't give pity points? Scoring under 35% is hard if you actually wrote a complete solution that isnt completely bad.


I'm sure it won't be that bad ;s

Even if I had wrote both questions up perfectly it would only be a 50% since there were four questions on the exam. And since I got them both wrong answer, I can be sure that I didn't write them up perfectly.

[Kaylia]

Even if I had wrote both questions up perfectly it would only be a 50% since there were four questions on the exam. And since I got them both wrong answer, I can be sure that I didn't write them up perfectly.

If you have no pride, finish the last 2 questions now and tell your teacher you gave him the wrong document!


What was the exam about anyway?

[Eliseos]

I only finished two exam questions and got them both wrong. I'll be very lucky if I get over 35% D:

Ouch >: This is why I hate procrastinating but I do it all the time. Were you doing good in the class before this?

[Woozie]

Electromagnetism (magnetic fields in matter).

And I got above 90% on every single homework and exam before this one.

[Eliseos]

Maybe your professor will just throw this exam out, or not count so heavily on it, if he knows you're doing well otherwise. You can also hope that everyone else in the class did relatively bad also.

[Woozie]

Everyone else in the class always does bad, but they usually get over a 60%. I doubt they'll do bad enough so that my grade is no longer an F.

[Kaelan?]

no, that *exactly is* how it works if all you know is that God can exist or cannot exist.

No, it's not. If that was all you knew, the correct answer is: "I have no idea and I can't give you a number. If I were to give you a number, I'd be pulling it out of my ass".

If you don't have enough information to know how probable it is that it's true nor enough information on how probable it is that it's false, then you can't assign a number to it. The moment you say it's 50/50, you have to explain why it isn't 30/70, or 40/60. If two outcomes can happen, and you have little to no information on why one outcome would happen over the other, then you've no business assigning a probability to either outcome. Otherwise you're just making shit up.

There is not a 50/50 chance there is currently a race of invisible space monkeys in the core of Europa, despite the fact that we're in no position to verify that statement directly (or indirectly).

You could make an argument for what is and isn't reasonable to believe, but that's a different argument and it isn't science.

[Melchiah]

raw number of distinct outcomes does determine probability.

Why, no. No it doesn't. And yet you just said that if you only know two outcomes, God can or cannot exist, then you have a 50/50 chance of either outcome.

Know how I know you're a moron?

Spoiler: show

Because you're arguing both sides and you don't know which is right.

[Eliseos]

I think this is the reason why no one except a small few ever reads this thread.

[Kaylia]

Electromagnetism (magnetic fields in matter).

And I got above 90% on every single homework and exam before this one.

I won't lie, i didnt understood anything in electromagnetism in the 2nd part of the semester. I thought it was one of the hardest class I had, aside quantum mechanics II maybe.

I think this is the reason why no one except a small few ever reads this thread.

What do you mean? Too many angry people? too many pointless debate?

[Woozie]

The class overall is kind of easy because I've done this before. He purposely made this exam really hard because we had like two weeks to do it and we were supposed to consult outside sources.

I personally think thermal was the hardest so far by a long shot. But I guess it depends on your teacher and book.

If you were to give me any problem right now related to thermal, I probably couldn't do it no matter how easy it is. Our book really really really sucked and our professor was more concerned with teaching us how inferior Americans are than teaching us physics.

[Eliseos]

You could make an argument for what is and isn't reasonable to believe, but that's a different argument and it isn't science.

What do you mean? Too many angry people? too many pointless debate?

Pretty much the last part of what Kaelan said. People come in this thread expecting to read about science, then someone comes in with some idea that we try at first to show isn't science, they take offense, and then it just gets out of hand. This usually happens when religion is involved. We just simply can't say whether there is a god or not (I know you know this Kaylia, this is just in general). People take offense either way when it's involved, and the thread goes to shit for a while. Random people come in, see the bitching, and leave, just like how the politics threads end up with the same people after a few pages.

Then when the thread gets fun again, when we're talking about actual science, it's only us left and we don't really get to share it besides with a small few.

[Eliseos]

And yeah, thermo has been the hardest by far for me also. I haven't taken E&M yet, nor QM though, I have two semesters of them next year. Mechanics has been really easy so far, but like you said Woozie, I'm positive that has to do with my teacher and the book we're using, just like thermo.

[Woozie]

Out of curiosity, what book did you use? At least I'll know to avoid it when I inevitably have to re-study this stuff due to not learning it the first time around.

[Kuya]

Perhaps thread should be renamed Happy Science Fun Time Thread

[Eliseos]

For thermo? http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Stat...2421460&sr=8-5

For mechanics we're using http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mech...2421483&sr=1-1

I really really like Taylor's examples that he gives in the mechanics book. Unless if it's some trivial calculation or variable manipulation, he goes through every detail about a problem. The problems themselves are the usual either prove this or calculate that, but (at least from what our professor picks out) they are challenging problems, but not so difficult that you get frustrated and give up on them. This is one of the few science texts that actually understand a student are the biggest group reading them, and not someone who is teaching the class.

[Woozie]

I was asking about thermo.

That's actually the same book we used for classical. And I agree, it is a pretty good book.

Edit: Here's the book we used, in case you ever need to avoid it

http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physic...2422047&sr=1-1

Here are two of the reviews I most agree with

Spoiler: show

The textbook is little to no help when it comes to learning physics. The language is simpler, but it tells you very little about wear equations come from, how they are derived, what the constant values are, and the homework practically leaves you hanging. There are almost no example problems to help you understand actual numerical calculations. Not to mention the Index is completely useless. Even things that the book defines and names are hard to find using the index. I had to use a bunch of tabs to mark where things were. Also, the homework problems are poorly worded. Towards the later chapters, I honestly had the hardest time trying to figure out what the problem was asking for. I learned more online and through wikipedia and other sites than using this book. Also, the overlap in the use of certain variables does not help to comprehend equations and relationships. Simply terrible book.

I would not recommend spending that kind of money on this text. I suggest checking the school library or borrowing from a friend or even the professor himself. BTW, don't even try to look for homework help online or even trying to type in keywords from the problem. You aren't going to find anything that is similar to the problems this book asks you to solve.

The book physical properties are good. Nice cover finish for a paperback. Pages are solid and well bounded.

Baierlein is chatty and presents the material in a friendly manner, however too often the material is simply glossed over and the results presented in a purely qualitative manner.

In particular, his development of the early quantum theory has gaps in it, or rather, it is presented in a convoluted manner that does more harm than good.

Also, the last chapter, on critical phemonena covers a difficult subject in a totally unacceptable manner.

[Eliseos]

Main issues with that thermo book are how short the chapters are (each chapter takes like 20 minutes tops to read, and there are only 8-10 problems per chapter), and the lack of examples in each chapter, especially once the stat mech section starts. There are so many things to remember in thermo, and this book throws random variables in there without telling you where the substitution occured, and forcing you to search back through the book to find it.

Also don't take thermo at 8AM MWF, it makes it 10 times worse lol.