Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 839 posts

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#731

Post by madhadron »

lisper wrote: post #706
petargyurov wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> madhadron doens't know what he's talking about. Not sure why you're saying this when you end up saying pretty much what madhadron said, i.e.: "To be excruciatingly precise, it's a ray in Hilbert space" I get that madhadron doesn't explain themselves but still... There's some irony here.

Because the difference between a ray and a vector is so minor that the words are effectively interchangeable, and in actual practice the word "vector" is invariably used. No one ever talks about the "quantum state ray." It is always the "quantum state vector." Also, simply saying "no it isn't" with no further explanation in response to any comment just obnoxious. It's essentially saying, "You're wrong, and I know why…

> anyone who does it deserves to be smacked down hard

I was trying to hint that there was something you were overlooking in your explanation. Probably not an effective tactic in this medium.

But thanks to your fine example, I will in future make sure to lay out things in exquisite detail while belittling the person I am replying to.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#732

Post by alphydan »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #710
aazaa wrote: post #236

Sort of meta, but I always shudder when someone says that science has "proven" something. What sets science apart from most other methods of seeking answers is its focus on disproof . Your goal as a scientist is to devise experiments that can disprove a claim about the natural world. This misconception rears its head most prominently in discussions at the intersection between science and public policy. Climate change…

> Your goal as a scientist is to devise experiments that can disprove a claim about the natural world. If this claim was true, it would disallow science to make true claims, because no experiments can disprove such claims. Truth is a delicate matter and can't be handled by simple methods. Questions may not be settled, but they can be difficult to challenge.

> it would disallow science to make true claims

Isn't that exactly how science work? It does not make true claims. It produces statements with disclaimers. If this and this then Y is true, as long as we don't observe Y.

You cannot use the scientific method to definitely say: "X is true".

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#733

Post by marcosdumay »

Hongwei wrote: post #670
rsp1984 wrote: post #603

Macroeconomics. Central banks are "creating" a trillion here, a trillion there, like nobody's business. But what are the consequences? What is the thought process that central bankers have gone through to make these decisions? Also why, exactly, are they buying the exact assets that they are buying (govt. debt, high-yield bonds, etc..) and why not others (e.g. stocks or put money into startups)? And then, what happen…

The consequences are supposed to be inflation. Instead, we seem to only get asset inflation (houses, stocks) and not consumer goods inflation (flour). From a former econ prof who I spoke to recently: the central bankers aren't thinking about inequality or inflation right now, they're just trying to avoid the apocalypse. The liquidity injected is supposed to be taken out later, thus removing the inflationary distortio…

> the central bankers aren't thinking about inequality or inflation right now, they're just trying to avoid the apocalypse.

The bad news is that by ignoring inequality, they may be just causing it.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#734

Post by vmception »

rsync wrote: post #440
vmception wrote: post #202

Has someone that thought they were taking LSD ever turned into a permanent schizophrenic zombie or in a mental institution, or is it all urban legend. If someone that didn't know they were predisposed to mental illness, is it applicable to dismiss their experience in order to maintain how safe LSD is? If any of this is true, are there any sources aside from "my friend's friend's brother took too much and now he is...…

"Has someone that thought they were taking LSD ever turned into a permanent schizophrenic zombie or in a mental institution, or is it all urban legend." Tangential, and not an answer to your question, but if you're like me, you will be fascinated to learn that there is a drug (MPPP, synthetic opiate) that if cooked incorrectly yields "MPTP"[1] which will give you Parkinsons. As in, forever. You take this drug (at any…

so therefore it stands to reason that other substances can exist that rewrite your mind to make you ineffective at other behaviors

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#735

Post by marcosdumay »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #683
mikorym wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing to realise, along these lines, is that economic theories try to explain the world's economy, not dictate it. I would say that some mathematicians went into economics to win Nobel prizes (which they did win) and I guess they would probably be quick to point this out at well.

Economics is a branch of moral philosophy and very consciously uses persuasive rhetoric to dictate policy. One of the tools used is hand-waving hidden inside differential equations to produce models that would be useless in any other discipline. I don't think I've ever seen a mainstream economic prediction that was actually correct. It's not hard to understand why. Reducing all the sectors of a complex economy to cra…

There are two branches of economics. One of them is a science, the other is (politically, economically, and culturally) successful.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#736

Post by ajkjk »

hoseja wrote: post #581
ajkjk wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an amateur, but I have been investigating this for myself for a long time and mean to write up a blog post when I have it all settled to my satisfaction. That's not ready yet, but I think I can give you an explanation that is more acceptable than the usual ones (including the other comments here: because it appears to have angular momentum, because it appears to have a two-component complex number that is affecte…

Interesting you mention "knot". What do you think of an utterly unfounded intuition that elementary particles are "knots", actually topological ones, on fields?

I think that's widely understood to be 'sort of true'. Not necessarily a literal knot, but a geometric property - like what I mentioned, where integrating around sees a net divergence/curl/etc in any reference frame. That's the reason that QM doesn't predict exact locations for particles: the discontinuity doesn't have a location, it just exists in a region.

(I don't exactly understand if this 'is' a knot, in a sense. I guess it is.)

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#737

Post by marcosdumay »

sideshowb wrote: post #677
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I would think of that: Suppose I'm a bank, and I lend you $10 to buy apple tree seedlings. You spend all $10 on seedlings as promised. The person who sold you the seedlings has $10. You have the seedlings. I have an expectation of getting $10 in the future, presumably from your sales of apples. Because most people repay their loans, I'm confident I'll get the $10 back, and being a bank, my business is lend…

So in this case the business did not create as much wealth as intended (it produced apples which turned out not to be needed as much they had originally planned). The default is a side effect of that outcome, not its cause.

Could you not see the $4 disappearing on the GP scenario?

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#738

Post by johnmorrison »

madhadron wrote: post #730
lisper wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A spinor is a vector. It's not a vector in 3-D space, but that's true of all quantum state vectors, not just spinors.

The way the OP was using vector implied a 3D Gibbs-Heaviside vector, not an element of an arbitrary vector space.

How? Take people's word. If they say vector, assume they just mean some element of a vector space. No need to be rude to somebody based on an assumption.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#739

Post by marcosdumay »

dnautics wrote: post #516
mncharity wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my that facepalm dreadful. Thank you! That gives me a new high-water mark for misleading biomolecular visualization computer graphics content. Snagged a copy. When most everything is unmoving, it's "obvious"... well no, not to students, but... there's no pretense of doing anything other than stitching together an extremely selective set of "snapshots", to tell a completely bogus narrative of smooth motion. Here it…

you might like this render better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8 here's the artistic director for the inner life of the cell (the worse one) going on and on about how "beautiful" the science of biology is: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_visualizing_the_won...

At least there is some water there. But what strange force is that holding proteins together when they are completely out of alignment, and keeping the water away from everything else?

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#740

Post by cambalache »

yters wrote: post #693
cambalache wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know if you are being serious, but if you are, Dawkins books are pretty good (The blind watchmaker,or the Ancestors tale).

I will have to check them out, but I remember being unimpressed with the table of contents. Looks like it will be more handwaving.

Ah OK, you are not being serious, fair enough. Magic god did it all.
Post reply on HN