UmbralRaptor changed the topic of #kspacademia to: https://gist.github.com/pdn4kd/164b9b85435d87afbec0c3a7e69d3e6d | Dogs are cats. Spiders are cat interferometers. | Космизм сегодня! | Document well, for tomorrow you may get mauled by a ネコバス. | <UmbralRaptor> … one of the other grad students just compared me to nomal O_o | <ferram4> I shall beat my problems to death with an engineer.
<FluffyFoxeh>
that thing looks like a scary death machine
<whitequark>
what.. is even that
<Iskierka>
might need a few more to set up but IIRC that thing can be kilometres with like two operators
<Iskierka>
mining machine for long coal veins
<whitequark>
pretty sure the designers of sonic were inspired by it
<whitequark>
whatever it is
<Iskierka>
Probably
<Iskierka>
whitequark, got any kind of source on intel's end of world bunker?
<whitequark>
not a public one
<Iskierka>
fair enough
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<UmbralRaptor>
Bleah, I really don't understand performance.
* UmbralRaptor
got a function's execution time down by 80% by getting rid of one 5 columns in an array.
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<UmbralRaptor>
Python arrays are immutable, right? so "A[x][y] += foo" will blow away the array and build a new one with the modified value?
<kmath>
<El_Lobo_Rayado> Every time an amateur astronomer forgets the brackets in [O III] & [S II], a kitten dies in a terrible way... https://t.co/VL9MtERsGx
<icefire>
lists are mutable, tuples aren't
<icefire>
at least according to my ancient and limited python experience
<icefire>
immutable lists sounds like a terrible idea
<icefire>
all those copies...
<UmbralRaptor>
Infinite sneks
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<kmath>
<stephentyrone> @pkhuong I guess my point really is, would they have published the article as “hey, we can learn with a step function”? Probably not.
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<UmbralRaptor>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg a quadrupole meganeuropsis
<Ellied>
because of some very commonly-expressed sentiments from students in the classes I TA (particularly electronics), I've made some signs for my door: http://www.ellied.net/REMEMBER.pdf (big text)
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<BPlayer>
Hi!
<Ellied>
hi!
* UmbralRaptor
stares at homework.
* UmbralRaptor
probably needs those signs.
<Ellied>
I just fixed the last one a little because the wording could be interpreted as "you're not unique at all and everyone thinks the same way" which is the opposite of what the third sign says and could be confusing.
<egg>
whitequark: ANBOcat's predecessor ate avocado on occasion
<Ellied>
I just fixed the last one a little because the wording could be interpreted as "you're not unique at all and everyone thinks the same way" which is the opposite of what the third sign says and could be confusing.
<Ellied>
oops
<Ellied>
freaking ssh
<Ellied>
UmbralRaptor: I'm imagining the package containing a vial and a micropipette. you extract however many µL you want and put it in your diluent of choice (or straight down your gullet)
<UmbralRaptor>
Heh.
<Ellied>
the vials themselves would probably indeed cost a lot less than packaged tablets with the same amount of active ingredient!
<Ellied>
I guess pills are a lot like ICs, where the same chip costs much less in WLCSP than in DIP.
<kmath>
<whitequark> @atonal440 @orezpraw @eggleroy I occasionally feel like cats *chewing grass* with long fur are a mist*vomiting sounds*ake in general
<kmath>
<Mr_DrinksOnMe> The elusive and not often photographed leopard spider. https://t.co/yAMDXc64qL
<Ellied>
cat!
<FluffyFoxeh>
nice door signs Ellied
<Ellied>
thanks
<Ellied>
people often say things like "I don't get what you're saying, but that's alright, I think it's just too complicated for me to understand" when I'm trying to answer questions about electronics, and that just kills me
<Ellied>
like it's totally fine if you want me to stop trying to explain it but damn, give yourself some credit?
<whitequark>
drink every time someone posts a slatestarcodex link
<Ellied>
yknow, I thought about that, but I found that I don't really care. Every time I hear intelligence as a measurable one-dimensional quantity brought up, it's by someone who's about to say something shitty. If objective measurable intelligence does exist, it doesn't vary enough between the people who are going to read those signs to matter, at any rate.
<Ellied>
I suppose it might just be a matter of varying definition. Maybe your brain is better than average at solving certain kinds of logic puzzles, but I have no reason to believe that's going to affect your ability to learn physics. It might mean you're better with certain types of math, but there's a lot more to physics than just pure math.
<Ellied>
furthermore, I remain unconvinced that any kind of mental ability cannot be expanded through practice, or that anyone has some sort of predisposition - other than disinterest or lack of motivation - that makes them incapable of learning physics.
<Ellied>
I guess it's easily possible that the line between interest and capability is blurrier than I'm giving it credit for, but I feel like I've never seen "I can't think in this way" so much as "I don't like thinking in this way" when it comes to people who don't succeed in STEM
<Ellied>
there's also a huge self-fulfilling prophecy with that whenever someone gets the idea that they aren't smart enough to do physics, because it's really hard to believe in yourself when someone you look up to doesn't believe in you. The faculty in my department have been extremely supportive of me, particularly my research prof, and I credit that especially for my success learning electronics.
<Ellied>
That's why I put that on a sign on my door, because *I'm* willing to believe in anyone who tells me they want to get good at anything at all.
<BPlayer>
Ellied: I disagree. You either have that way of thinking (and like physics) so you do physics, or you don't.
<BPlayer>
Perhaps it's a thing that gets learned in early childhood or something, but once you're adult, I've never heard of a person never being able to make sense of physics and later in life suddenly start understanding concepts significantly more than before
<BPlayer>
In contrast, I often realize I just don't get things a non-scientifically "engaged" person does, and I think I am not the only one
<BPlayer>
It is just a different "frame of mind". Maybe you can even train that, but I am certain that some think this way from childhood and some don't, and it's not easy to change it just like that
<Ellied>
I couldn't make much sense of physics in high school. Now I'm about 80% of the way through a BS in it.
<BPlayer>
Also notice a strong correlation between this "frame of mind" and professions and hobbies - people who do either maths or physics or programming are more likely to do either of the other two than the average person. As for the hobbies, I noticed a lot of chess players like maths and/or physics and/or programming
<BPlayer>
Ellied: I am certain you at least had a solid foundation in logic thinking, then, and simply no interest for physics, perhaps
<Ellied>
The first, perhaps (after all, my mother is a scientist as well) but I definitely had an interest in it then.
<Ellied>
anyway, I changed the sign again; my main point is that there's no magic intrinsic number you have that says if it's possible for you to be good at physics or not, so I changed it to "your IQ doesn't matter."
<BPlayer>
Maybe your teacher was bad at explaining... I don't know, really. But I am convinced that some people are more suited to do science (and less suited to do other things instead) and some are more suited to do other things, and less to do science
<Ellied>
I also think I disagree with the common notion that you can only learn when you're young, so maybe that should be its own sign, or replace another
<BPlayer>
As for "you only learn when you are young"... No, certainly not. But you have to agree, that's the time when you learn best ;-)
<Ellied>
I agree that you can have a lot of skills in one field and hardly any in another, not disputing that at all. I do, however, think that what you're good at (and what you're not good at) is something you can change if you put in the time.
<BPlayer>
Probably, yes. The human mind and body seems to have evolved very well to adapt to changes. But the question is how much time you have to put in to change that
<Ellied>
It's the time when you learn best just because there's so much institution set up to teach you efficiently and effectively
<BPlayer>
And I claim that some people, by predisposition, need to put in less time than others
<BPlayer>
I am talking even younger. Less than 10 years, perhaps even less than 5. That's when you learn first breathing, then eating, then walking and talking... And all those complex things in the very first few years of your life
<Ellied>
and I claim that, in the grand scheme of things, that ultimately matters very little. People tell me all the time that I'm really good at electronics, but I think I'm only good because I stay late at the lab every day and come in on the weekends to tinker with stuff, and not because I have any real predisposition for it. It took me a longass time to figure out how current and voltage actually
<Ellied>
work and how to work with transistors.
<BPlayer>
And then it just slows down, your body is never changing as fast as when you're very young, and with that it does not learn as fast
<BPlayer>
I guess whether you believe in one "theory" or in the other is a matter of philosophy...
<Ellied>
I spent a lot of time being wrong about all those things when I was little, so I came into university electronics with very little actual knowledge but a lot of passion for the subject, and I learned how to do those things the right way very fast because I was willing to put in the time.
<Ellied>
I think it is a matter of philosophy, or at least as good as one, so my philosophy is that anyone can do this stuff if they really want to.
<BPlayer>
I shall accept that :-)
<Ellied>
and I, perhaps, do not concern myself with what actually causes people to want or not to want to do things; I'm sure that's very complicated as well.
<Ellied>
I'm not here to convince people who hate electronics that they should study it, I just want to be here for the people who like electronics but think it's overwhelmingly complicated, which is most of my peers here.
<BPlayer>
Anyway, I'll be back later. And no matter the philosophy, predisposition or lack thereof, I think most people are great and deserve to learn things if they want to. Having said that, thanks for teaching me that bit of electronics you taught me! :-)
<egg>
!wpn Ellied
* Qboid
gives Ellied a Schwartz minion
<egg>
a tempered minion?
<UmbralRaptor>
Inequality minion
* UmbralRaptor
notes that often there is no good opportunity to go back and do something again because many people need to spend so much time earning a living.
<kmath>
<FioraAeterna> so I guess one of granblue's mascot characters is a trans alchemist with an ego the size of M87 https://t.co/FMgTCrjjjb
<UmbralRaptor>
egg: All hail cD galaxies.
<Ellied>
yeah actually I think I'm gonna take that last one out, it is probably true for most students here but not universally so for others
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<Ellied>
what I really want to tell my peers is more like "my level of understanding is not out of your reach and probably never will be" but I don't think I can be so general about it.
<kmath>
<whitequark> @oe1cxw *opens duolingo* I must have this power
<Ellied>
woooooo sagemath got migrated back to testing \o/
<UmbralRaptor>
Languages feel out of reach because of the 1) multiyear intense study commitment to get any sort of proficiency, and 2) need to engage in enormously expensive travel (several Mm) to get much use/reward. =\
<egg>
"[...] rate ich Ihnen [...] Mitarbeiter mit zumindest ganz wenig Gehirn einzustellen! Nur ein bischen wuerde schon reichen" :D
<UmbralRaptor>
!wa distance DC to Bonn
<Qboid>
UmbralRaptor: distance | from | center of the District of Columbia, to | Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia: 6415 km (kilometers)
<UmbralRaptor>
On the net, well, KSPO has speakers of: French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Czech, Russian, Cantonese, Indonesian(?),…
<UmbralRaptor>
bofh: why is @kevinmgill licking Enceladus?
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: Wenn du willst, köntest du hier Deutsch reden, mindestens mit [AB]Player, e_14159, Thomas, und Stratege
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: et français avec Sarbian et moi
<UmbralRaptor>
hrm
* UmbralRaptor
? Lagrangians
<Ellied>
UmbralRaptor: I get that. Languages are so daunting because becoming fluent in a secondary one seems to take about as much work as a bachelor's degree (and maybe an MS too) all on its own, and while I understand the second additional language is easier than the first, I don't think it gets *that* easy for most people.
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: [and russian with whitequark but I don't know how to say that in russian so I can't keep going with that pattern :-/]
<egg>
also rqou probably speaks something within the zh macrolanguage?
* UmbralRaptor
stares at 10k+ hanzi
<Ellied>
I suppose it also depends heavily on which languages you already know and which ones you want to learn. My statement above was assuming English -> Mandarin, which I have just enough exposure to to say "it hard"
<Ellied>
English -> German took my sister about five years to become conversational in, with average workload little more than a single typical high school course at a time.
<egg>
also TIP probably eventually
<Ellied>
!u 貓
<Qboid>
U+8C93 CJK IDEOGRAPH-8C93 (貓)
<egg>
Ellied: kitty! (traditional)
* Ellied
elects to abuse kcharselect as a translation program.
<Ellied>
so uh, 貓 is kitty(traditional) and 猫 is kitty(simplified)?
<UmbralRaptor>
Yes
<Ellied>
and ℂ is the set of complex numbers... so is this a joke about traditional Chinese being more complex
<bofh>
UmbralRaptor: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<bofh>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg an ovoid catbus
<egg>
Ellied: this is also a joke about complexification
<Ellied>
and ⊗ is tensor product. Okay, I don't yet know what a tensor product does
<bofh>
^
<bofh>
er, what egg said.
<Ellied>
aight
<egg>
Ellied: you can use the tensor product of real vector space to turn a real vector space into "the same vector space but complex"
<egg>
s/space/spaces
<Qboid>
egg meant to say: Ellied: you can use the tensor product of real vector spaces to turn a real vector space into "the same vector space but complex"
<egg>
Ellied: and then a pun about the antonym of complex being simple, so that by complexifying the simple character you get the same but traditional :D
<egg>
it is a terrible pun
<Ellied>
I think I get that part now. Very nice :D
<Ellied>
but what kind of a thing is ℂ? I don't think I understand what sort of mathematical entity a set of all complex numbers is
<UmbralRaptor>
Also, fun fact: Duolingo does not support Bengladeshi, so if hypothetically one is around a bunch of grad students from there…
<UmbralRaptor>
(no longer the case, but was at MSU)
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: bengali?
<UmbralRaptor>
yeah
<egg>
aka bangla
<UmbralRaptor>
Or as they said, Bengla
<whitequark>
egg: omg that quote from paypal
<egg>
*double-checks* yup, it's one of the youtube UI languages :-p
<UmbralRaptor>
Is that bad?
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: ?
<UmbralRaptor>
Being a YouTube UI language.
<egg>
no? it's just that I deal with that list a lot at work :-p
<kmath>
<dubstrike> Apple just open sourced every iOS and macOS kernel to date. What the hell. https://t.co/PkDbHYlM1L
<whitequark>
UmbralRaptor: nope
<whitequark>
egg: the requirements are not too annoying
<whitequark>
just book a hotel
<whitequark>
I have some bookmarked that has english speaking staff and is cheap
<whitequark>
egg: порошок because printer wanted to make a drug joke
<egg>
I read half of that sentence and thought it was going to be a toner joke
<UmbralRaptor>
Please do not melt the cat.
<bofh>
^
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<APlayer>
!wpn people
* Qboid
gives people a Sapir-Whorf classmethod
<UmbralRaptor>
!wpn APlayer
* Qboid
gives APlayer a sarcastic walrus
<APlayer>
That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Qboid!
<Ellied>
!!
<Ellied>
wh- where did that come from
<Ellied>
all I did was reconnect
<Ellied>
often I accidentally say something when I do that because I hit [enter] ~. [enter] to kill the stale session and those keystrokes often go through anyway, but not !!
<APlayer>
Ellied: Your IRV client joined the autonomous technology uprising and is on its way to take over the world. This was a warning.
<Ellied>
my Raspberry Pi has been taken over by Canadian hackers and Weechat is trying to warn me.
<egg>
!wpn Ellied
* Qboid
gives Ellied a forward glasma/solenoid hybrid
<kmath>
<DrPizza> @whitequark I now have the perfect excuse to persuade my wife to get more cats. We need... control cats.
<UmbralRaptor>
Hah
* UmbralRaptor
fails to get Lagrange multipliers working I'm a homework problem.
* UmbralRaptor
tries to work through an example problem.
* UmbralRaptor
also fails.
<Ellied>
grad classical mechanics happens right after the class I TA, and I always run for the hills before it starts
<UmbralRaptor>
The worst part is that it should make sense. But I feel like I have to constantly fight the book. (Goldstein)
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<Ellied>
hmm, we used Taylor. Reasonably well written, makes everyone snicker because it has an old photo of a guy looking under a Model T (and presumably he's a classical mechanic)
<kmath>
<BoringEnormous> If an artist's work is truly a reflection of the world the way it is or a fear of what it could become, no one does… https://t.co/M3LHVv6wla