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Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

newscientist.com

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Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#11
post #8

[flagged]

From the FAQ: > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

Being in FAQ doesn't make it right.

Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#12
post #7

I was immediately reminded of the anti-twist mechanism, perhaps unrelated but "reset rotation, twice/half" comes up there as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-twister_mechanism

It's not related. The recent result states that you can pick any integer m > 1 and find a scaling factor λ for a given path such that after m repeats of that path you will return to the starting point (except for some infinitesimal number of paths that have a specific structure).

Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#14
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

Being in FAQ doesn't make it right.

Especially the comments about how “we’re not Reddit, it’s a semi-noob illusion.”

If we actually did turn into Reddit, or start acting like Reddit, we can’t say that, because the FAQ is in denial?

Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in FAQ doesn't make it right.

Especially the comments about how “we’re not Reddit, it’s a semi-noob illusion.” If we actually did turn into Reddit, or start acting like Reddit, we can’t say that, because the FAQ is in denial?

Complaining about how it used to be better is itself a particularly annoying Reddit-ism, so I can see why they’d want to keep that sort of thing out of here.

Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#19

Doesn’t this sound like a sneaky way for a mathematician to work on time travel?

Baby steps, first is the roulette table.

Kardashev Type III civilization:

Reverse the light cone, resimulate all moments of the past down to the neurotransmitter level. The thoughts, feelings, and memories locked inside your head.

From Neanderthal to Shakespeare to you, we could bring back everyone who has ever lived and put them in a theme park without any of them ever even knowing.

Some simulation instances might be completely accurate. For historians or as a kind of theme park or zoo.

Maybe that's us right now.

Some simulation instances might be for entertainment. They might resemble plain and ordinary, mundane day to day life (like this very moment), and then all of a sudden dramatically morph into a zombie monster outbreak tornado asteroid alien invasion simulator.

Or maybe it's obvious when a group of future gamer nerds log into an instance to role play Musk and Zuckerberg and Altman and speed run "winning". Or try to get a "high score".

Maybe it'll be eternal heaven - just gifted to us without reason or cause. That'd be nice.

Or perhaps and seemingly more likely, a bunch of sadomasochistic hell sims for psychopaths. Where some future quadrillionaire beams up into the matrix to torture poor people that used to live just for fun. It's not like we would have any rights or protections or defense against it.

Who knows.

Re: Mathematicians have found a hidden 'reset button' for undoing rotation

#20
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

Being in FAQ doesn't make it right.

Likewise something being a law doesn't make it right either, but one should still follow the law of the land for the most part.
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