* Q-BASIC, when I was in kindergarten.
* Lisp, then all over again with Haskell.
* Anarchocapitalism.
* The proof of Turing's undecidability theorem.
* Positivism (even though I'm a Platonist).
* How compilers work.
* RSA.
Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#52Girls like sex too.
On this tangent. I think that the moment I realized that nobody thinks as complicated as we think they do. Basically it boiled down to this thought, "If that girl came up to me right now, how would I feel?" "I'd feel great thats what!". And then I get up the balls to go and talk to her. The idea of putting myself in other's shoes really changed my attitude on a lot of things.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#53Basically anything by Greg Egan, particularly Permutation City.
Also nanotechnology, the singularity, and friendly AI, in order of learning about them.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#54That a single photon can pass through two slits at once, and interfere with itself.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#55Social psychology was a big one for me too. Cialdini's book Influence gave me a lot to think about. The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to realize ( http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html ) I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I realized that abandon…
If you guys like Munger, pick up his book, "Poor charlie's almanac"
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#56Being smart and working hard only mildly correlates with success.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#57"... What have you learned that rocked your world? ..." Mostly about empirical observations about the natural world. One very simple idea while in High School studying physics & chemistry that "the iron in your blood flowing through your arteries is composed of left over bits of exploded starts (Iron)" . Another is how little we really observe and notice things. Every week I make a habit of exploring & looking for ne…
To take it up a notch, everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars.
"... everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars ..."
Sort of.
It is Iron with Atomic #26, the 6th most commonly abundant element, that in massive stars where stellar nucleosynthesis occurs is the point where the energy generated through fusion. The binding energy to add a neutron or proton, releases energy. After Iron (Fe56) the binding energy required to add a neutron or proton requires extra energy and can result in a collapse with heavier than Iron elements being generated in a super nova.
While stars up to our sun convert H->He and heavier elements it is Carbon, Nitrogen & Oxygen cycle (especially Carbon) that allows larger stars to create energy and finally the advanced fusion stages required for elements up to Iron. So you could probably argue that the existence of Carbon in humans is the just as significant.
Elements heavier than Iron requires explosive nucleosynthesis or a super nova to be created. These elements have unstable half lives. Hence the importance of Iron. [0]
[0] I've butchered a lot of physics here. Feel free to pick me up on the finer points.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
To take it up a notch, everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars.
"... everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars ..." Sort of. It is Iron with Atomic #26, the 6th most commonly abundant element, that in massive stars where stellar nucleosynthesis occurs is the point where the energy generated through fusion. The binding energy to add a neutron or proton, releases energy. After Iron (Fe56) the binding energy required to add a neutron or proton requires…
Carl Sagan's Cosmos - Star Stuff
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#59Differential calculus. Lisp. The circle of fifths.
For sure on the Circle of Fifths, and the whole "music theory is stacks of thirds, fourths, or fifths all the way down" thing is pretty neat.
But what blew my mind even more in music is that our 12 tone even-tempered scale is arbitrary and only firmed up a few hundred years ago. Everything before that (and for many years after, and in many non-western musical cultures) was written assuming just intonation. Modern electronic instruments have brought just intonation (and all sorts of weird stuff) back into reasonable usage.
Re: Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
To take it up a notch, everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars.
"... everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars ..." Sort of. It is Iron with Atomic #26, the 6th most commonly abundant element, that in massive stars where stellar nucleosynthesis occurs is the point where the energy generated through fusion. The binding energy to add a neutron or proton, releases energy. After Iron (Fe56) the binding energy required to add a neutron or proton requires…
Okay, true, but I'll stand by a "nearly everything" since a very large subset of organic molecules are composed entirely of atoms lighter than Fe. We're probably safe to say that only small parts of your body require more exotic cosmological phenomena for their base material.