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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#251

Post by zawerf »

platz wrote: post #193
debt wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they look terrible" Well then don't do a shitty job? I mean if the budget is there, then yeah, just build me some stairs.

Are you a product manager?

You might be saying this in jest but his statement is totally valid if he is a manager.

The level of abstraction you are working on matters. A manager can't just build a great business either. But for example if he encounters legal trouble, he can just hire lawyers to fix it.

His interface to the world is via delegation to people who can solve his subproblems competently and consistently. There's still a "surprising amount of detail" but at a higher abstraction level and solved with different tools(a really strong "biological" AI that can resolve and prevent the details from bubbling up :P).

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#252

Post by lisper »

falcolas wrote: post #249
lisper wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. Next you're probably going to tell me that Santa Claus isn't real either. :-(

Well, we do still have a couple of good burger joints from which you can admire some classical turn-of-the-century masonry from...

Whew! ;-)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#253

Post by pwinnski »

cosmotron wrote: post #223
jasode wrote: post #53

>Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? The author mentioned bicycles and inadvertently missed an opportunity to show another "unknown reality" that beautifully illustrates his point. Consider typical adults (not physicists) with 20+ years of bicycle riding. If you ask them, "how does a bicycle turn?" , they'd respond that "you just lean into the direction of the turn and…

There's another neat example of this: asking someone with years of car-driving experience to hold their hands out as if gripping a steering wheel and mime the motions necessary to change lanes. [1] The steps are: 1. Turn the steering wheel towards the lane you wish to enter, 2. Re-center the steering wheel, 3. Counter-steer the same amount as in step 1. Step 3 is what people tend to forget about. [1] https://99percen…

For step 3, I almost always loosen my grip on the wheel and let it mostly straighten myself. So miming wouldn't include nearly as much counter-steering, even if I did remember to mime the whole process.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#254

Post by rocqua »

logfromblammo wrote: post #143
dekhn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long part of my scientific career has been unpacking simple statements about things like bike riding, and finding the underlying process is subtle, and reveals many interesting things. When I was a kid, I had a teacher who said that cutting paper wasn't a chemical change- no bonds were broken. That seemed odd to me, but after I had a PhD, I understood a few things better. That when you cut paper, mostly hydrogen bo…

If you smash a salt crystal with a hammer, all the resulting pieces end up with equal charges of anions and cations, so were any ionic bonds really broken? That covalent bonds are broken seems obvious if you ditch the paper and cut through a sheet of long-chain polyethylene. The scissors don't just stop if they're about to break a polymer chain.

How tiny of a charge is so small as to be unnoticable?

Certainly, if an object millimeters across has a charge of 1 electron that isn't noticeable.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#255

Post by [deleted] »

codingdave wrote: post #39
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

Why would I jump into a thread, on any site, just to say I don't know? There are thousands of threads just on HN that I just let scroll by without participating because I don't know enough to add to the discussion. Explicitly calling out my lack of knowledge on every thread would serve no purpose to anybody. Online written communications will never follow the same patterns as direct communication, and that is a good…

[deleted]

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#256

Post by rocqua »

tome wrote: post #80
jasode wrote: post #53

>Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? The author mentioned bicycles and inadvertently missed an opportunity to show another "unknown reality" that beautifully illustrates his point. Consider typical adults (not physicists) with 20+ years of bicycle riding. If you ask them, "how does a bicycle turn?" , they'd respond that "you just lean into the direction of the turn and…

Have you actually tried turning a bicycle without countersteering? I have, the last time the topic was discussed on HN. I found I was able to turn without any perceptible countersteer. It's technically possible that I do have to countersteer for a small number of miliseconds over a small number of milimeters, but my experience leads me to doubt it.

Based on live TV illustrations I've seen, using paint on a wheel, the counter steer can amount to as little as 1cm. I'm not sure if that is perceptible without the paint trick.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#257

Post by rocqua »

mbrock wrote: post #133
cicero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perception of reality is not the same for everybody, but there is a single objective reality that we all perceive in our imperfect ways.

Is this "subjective perception" part of the "objective reality" or somehow outside of it?

Subjective perception is part of objective reality. Or rather, it arises inside objective reality.

Not that I could conclusively proof that statement.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#258

Post by krick »

zzzeek wrote: post #125

Here's what I think the most chilling takeaway is. People who have no appreciation for details do not know anything . They are dangerous people who will conclude incorrect things with certainty on a regular basis.

I would love to agree, because I always cared for details deeply. How can it be a bad personality trait? But later I started to reconsider that. The most effective high-level managers I know outrageously little care for details, as it seemed to me. When I was their subordinate it caused me a great deal of a problem.

But then it dawned on me. Things somehow play out well in the end. Why? Well, because there I was, to care for details, to find solutions for what it seemed like an impossible problem to solve. If they cared for details as much as I did — we wouldn't even begin anything, because the amount of detail was so overwhelming. The general plan wouldn't be born in the first place.

Now I sometimes wish I could care less for details and try to be... well, easier, I guess.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#259

Post by aaronblohowiak »

nlawalker wrote: post #176

This is such a good explanation of why I have a hard time working with folks who always approach technical problems with the attitude of "why don't we just do this?" It's the just that gets me. They are too action-oriented to think about the details or ask someone who's done it before, so they start down the path of (to use the author's metaphor) buying cheap lumber and calculating the angles for cutting the stair bo…

https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-a...

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#260

Post by aaronblohowiak »

twothamendment wrote: post #174
larrik wrote: post #98

I've actually built a few staircases, and it's a ton harder than it even sounds here. In fact, there's apparently carpentry competitions and building a stairway to code is the grand finale. The way he does it, with the angle brackets? That's the easiest way, and by far the weakest. The strongest way is to notch out 2x12's (ideally at least 3, with one in the middle). Oh, and no step can be more than 1/8" difference i…

Don't forget stairs that land on surface that is sloped from one side of the stairs to the other. What height should that bottom step be? Will the inspector measure both sides? Do you shoot for the middle being right on and each side being a bit too high and a bit too low? Watch the height on the first and last steps. The middle ones are the "easy" ones. In bigger cities there are companies that only frame stairs. It…

I've heard the "real fun" in stairmaking is spiral staircases where the radius changes throughout the staircase...
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