thoughts from a restless mind.

stealyrcarbon:

You should send me anonymous confessions about anything and everything, because I think that would be neat.

Oooh; anybody want to send me some too?

j-o-y-f-u-l-h-e-a-r-t:

PLEASE.

(via spockandsex)

I’ll check back periodically while studying.

(via fairyonacidbanging)

A predictable enigma: calcified and chirpy. Amongst other things.

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(Source: blainedevon)

Anonymous asked: Why can a table feel hot and cold at the same time if you have one hand in cold water and the other in hot and then you touch the table with both hands? It really doens't make sense to me and it would be embarrassing to ask my teacher.

We usually find it intuitive to think of hot and cold as properties inherent in some object. We usually think that ice (solid water) is cold. And that’s a useful thing to know. It’s a pragmatic simplification— it’s not entirely correct, but it gives us an easy way to remember something useful (that’s the pragmatic part) about the world.

The downside of these simplifications is that they remove some of the subtleties and cause certain types of results to be unexpected. For example, what do you think would happen if you dropped (and by ‘dropped’ I do mean ‘using proper safety devices gently placed’) ice into a cup full of liquid nitrogen? The nitrogen would actually very quickly begin to boil. From the perspective of the liquid nitrogen, the ice is really pretty hot.

This gives us a suggestion: maybe it’s not just about one object, but instead should depend on both of the objects involved. Our ideas of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ aren’t really absolute notions, but rather comparisons. Given any two objects, we can compare their relative kinetic energies and say that one is hotter and one is colder (or maybe they’re about the same).

So this feeling of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ actually comes from what I would call a temperature gradient— the difference between the two temperatures gives rise to the idea that from our perspective, ‘hot’ things are ‘hotter’ than we are and ‘cold’ things are colder than we are.

So let’s walk through an extreme version of your example (which I recommend not trying because danger):

• Put your left hand in ice water; call it approx. 0°C
• Put your right hand in hot water; call it approx. 40°C
• Let your hands acclimate to these temperatures. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the system for each hand will spontaneously move towards equilibrium— each hand will move toward the temperature of the surrounding water and each pool of water will move toward the temperature of the respective hand.
• So now your left hand is cold and your right hand is hot.
• You place them both on a table that is 20°C.
• Your left hand is colder than this, so the table is hotter than this hand. You perceive this as ‘hot’.
• Your right hand is hotter than this, so the table is colder than this hand. You perceive this as ‘cold’.

So even though the table is a constant temperature, each hand has it’s own temperature gradient that is the difference in temperature between that hand and the table.

If you want a little bit more, the direction of the temperature gradient also tells you which way energy will flow— spontaneously from high to low energy; ‘hot’ to ‘cold’ so both become the same kind of ‘warm’. So if you think of energy as heat, it goes away from the hotter thing and toward the colder thing.

Really, that’s what we technically mean by ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. We, as a species, tend to be egocentric (for reasonable reasons, more or less) so we just implicitly compare things to our own temperature.

Hopefully that makes some sort of sense. If not, feel totally free to ask any sort of clarifying question. Science! [:

Anonymous asked: I've noticed you tend to get "philosophical" over things. I don't know what it is but there is something about me that feels as if I am too shallow. i.e. I can't find reasons why I don't like things so it's not like I can participate with my classmates in conversational debates; I just have no arguments nearly as intellectual as theirs to join in. I've tried reading more world news to keep up with current events but... still. Perhaps it is a skill that comes with age. Any advice or insight?

I’m terrible with curent events. Politics is way over my head and around the corner. Parts of economics that relate to game theory are pretty cool, but don’t ask me what I think we should do to fix the federal budget. I would have very little substance to add to any conversation on these topics.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that what I like is structure. Not that I need things to be structured, but I like to study the structure of things that people bring up. It began with mathematical structure, manifested in the structure (and interpretation) of computer programs (SICP [x]), and abstracted itself to logic in general.

This happens to be lucky in the sense that I can critique arguments on things that I know nothing substantial about simply because I know about arguments. But that’s enough about me. Back to you.

If we’re discussing a particular branch of mathematics and I want to talk about an (n-1)-dimensional substructure of an n-dimensional topological space that is locally Euclidean, or in general, any codimension-1 subobject in an object (like a Banach space or an infinite-dimensional manifold), there’s a lot of technical jargon there that ideally should convey a specific set of information to someone who happens to be aware of the definitions. [x] and [y]

Taking a lesson (diminishing marginal utility) from economics, it would probably be more useful to be shallow and actually get something useful done. A ‘surface’ is a surface. This is far less precise than the paragraph above. You could even argue that the statement is pretty pointless since it seems true a priori (by definition). But it’s useful. It picks out an essential quality of the thing.

My advice is to say what you can say. If possible, say something even simpler. Find something so simple that everybody takes it for granted. Think about it for a while. Question it. Think about the essential quality of the thing. Sometimes, all it takes is getting clear of the technicalities to remember what’s actually important about something.

Anonymous asked: Some people aren't destined for greatness.

That claim is meaningless without first clarifying your conception of ‘destiny’ and convincing any parties involved in the discussion that such a concept corresponds to their notions of reality. (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [x] comes to mind as sort of tangentially relevant.)

Please note that the following are NOT things I am saying:

• the claim is worthless.
• the claim is not worth considering.
• the claim is stupid.

I think it very well could be an interesting point for discussion, but I don’t know what the statement is trying to convey. For example, some people need a deity to assign their destiny. Others deify Nature as having some conception of Karma and balancing things. Still other people personify the idea of Fate as arbitrarily choosing some irrevocable innate quality assigned at/before birth.

And all of these raise questions about the interplay of choice, free will, determinism, the notion of a mind and/or soul, and the nature of the universe. There’s a lot of groundwork to agree upon before discussing such a claim.

If you really want to jump right in on it, at least give me your premises and we can work under the assumption that they are true, for the sake of argument. Then we get some valid deductions and discussions going and come back later to critique the soundness of the argument based on the truthiness of your chosen premises.

Anonymous asked: tmi tuesdays?

Today is tuesday! Since classes started back up, days and dates have been rather indistinct. Apparently part of this week is already in February. I’ve got a feeling this semester is going to blur by. For now though, I am here to fulfill your deepest inquisitive desires (especially those about the nature of the physical universe).

Anonymous asked: I always wonder what crosses your mind when your eyes meet mine.

Your eyes were covered in sunglasses when they first met mine.
I sat there and stared at you; you didn’t seem to mind.

—

A (non-exhaustive) list of possible things related to eyes:

• their color; iris pigmentation; chlorophyll in plants; additive and subtractive colors; CMYK; true cyan; wavelengths of the visible spectrum; the propagation of oscillating orthogonal electric and magnetic fields.
• their shape; near- and far-sightedness; refraction; snell’s law; total internal reflection; triple reflectors; lasers; population inversion; coherency.
• their purpose; the optic nerve; sensory perception; consciousness.

Those are mostly empirical concepts. Also possible are:

• Their symbolism as being expressive of true intent. This would lead to wondering about your purpose, your desires, the way you see the world, the way your mind works.
• Their use as a focal point; one outward manifestation of the ‘self’ and our unique individuality. As something to know the intimate details of, that most people miss. If you trust me that much to be close to you and meet your eyes with my own, I want to know them deeply— even more than you know them.

—

When I’m with you,
Nothing else matters;
It’s about here and now.

Anonymous asked: is there a side of you you keep hidden from people? has anyone ever seen it?

Yes. Yes.

In general, I am rather transparent (almost to a fault, at times). Simplicity and alignment is beautiful in my mind. I strive to be mentally faithful to myself [x]. Life just flows so much more easily when things are concise and efficient (in my opinion).

If someone takes the time to inquire about anything specifically, it’s more than likely that I would share whatever it is they’d like to know. There are just certain parts of life that most people consider extraneous to a supermajority of interpersonal relations.

Anonymous asked: What are some life changing events that have happened to you in the past year? Chance encounters? New/recently ended friendships? How do you think they've changed you as a person? I've recently pondered my life and I feel as if there are actual key moments that have lead me to this moment (not this as in questioning you but an event in my life).

So Kuhn had this perceptual framework [x] for the growth pattern of science: short periods of radical change, filled in between by long periods of development and making things as precise as possible. From this perspective, there are two main types of scientists.

• The more stable and secure job was to calibrate and perform the same experiments repeatedly to get more precise values for fundamental constants and such. This is respectable, but a bit tedious.
• The much less stable and often less respected position was held by those scientists who tried something so unexpected that they were often mocked by their eminent contemporaries. But it is these people who brought about these huge, revolutionary shifts in our basic understanding of how the world works. Unfortunately, many of them spent most of their lives being ridiculed and were often not appreciated until long after their death. That they performed their work despite this is admirable in my eyes.

I still think of my recent fundamental shift as being almost exactly two years ago. It was precipitated by my first exposure to basic philosophy, and the ‘enzyme’ (as it were) of a bounty of free time after getting out of an unhealthy relationship. That semester I demolished essentially my entire world view and started building it up as efficiently as possible (that is, excluding redundancies and things which I had accumulated, but didn’t actually have strong enough support for or belief in). In some ways, it was not dissimilar from the Cartesian tradition of doubt.

Skepticism, and doubt, and uncertainty were the basic principles I centered myself around. So the past two years have been ..somewhat volatile (at a first derivative), but have at least been more or less constant in doing so (at a second derivative).

There are some really awesome and terribly interesting people that I’ve had the great fortune to encounter at university. People who also enjoy sitting and talking; people who want to see the world; people who have seen the world; people— real people.

Chance encounters: only a few that I would consider using that term for. Most were of the sort that made me sit and think about how connected we all are. How easy it is to keep our head down and walk right by each other.

Friendships: keeping in touch after high school hasn’t been as good as we had hoped/planned, but that doesn’t really mean they’ve ended. Some have, and that’s just how things happen; we grow in our own directions and sometimes they don’t fit together as well. But mostly, they just get put on hold while away, and brought up when returning home.

New friendships have been really really nice [: Tumblr has actually been really useful in bringing many of us together despite the size of campus, our varied interests, and fields of interest.

Overall though, I don’t think there have been many key moments. These two years have been mostly defined by a refinement of doubting and my thoughts on which beliefs are tenable. I think this aligns with my personality— sort of a restless curiosity and ongoing turmoil, rather than fits and jumps of great magnitude. That’s just me and my experience~

(Source: benedictsmith)

(Source: ir0nycunt, via logicianmagician)

Anonymous asked: I find you intriguing not because I am unable to predict your actions/thoughts, but because perhaps 90% of the time I can predict them. But then there are the times I get thrown off, and I must find a way to fit the "surprise" into my picture of you. What intrigues me is the way you write and think so eloquently, which is so unlike others but - I have found - to be so very you.

I’ll have a hamburger, for which I will gladly pay you Tuesday. [x]

Is my choice random? Pseudorandom? I would argue that it’s neither.

There are no coincidences.. only the illusion of coincidence. [x]

My choice of allusion was for a specific reason, it just wasn’t so predictable. Well, you could probably predict that I might allude, but the specific choice might elude you. This isn’t terribly out of my style, though, I think.

In any case, thank you for returning and further divulging your thoughts; I’m flattered you think I think eloquently, I think. I like that you like that I’m unlike others you like. I’m still finding my way to write a passage; it’s sort of a rite of passage for me to be more self-reliant in my writing— in that sense perhaps I might be right for the model for right-libertarianism [x] since I’m working under individualism (which has traditionally been right-wing, right?)

All in all, I am what I am and that’s all what I am. [x] (on a related note, you can watch the rest of that episode and play a game called ‘how many politically incorrect stereotypes can we find in five minutes?’)