analog31

The place where quantum and gravitational effects are thought to become significant to one another is at energy levels that cannot be obtained in our experiments, either in the lab or through astronomical observation.

In addition to knowing how much stuff is released by one particle, we have a decent handle on how much is needed in order to be dangerous, due to us being constantly bombarded by various cosmic rays. That's how we can say that it's not dangerous.

The article is behind a paywall, but it seems likely that the bigger safety concern is whatever produced the large quantity of particles needed to have a chance of trapping just one. And those kinds of experiments are conducted in regulated facilities for good reason.

Granted I don't stay in the most expensive hotels. But the "professional crews" may very well be overworked and understaffed, and not managed with sufficient attention to quality.

>>> I would argue that this is probably a western-classical view of music. Music can be quantified/measured, but those numbers are just a tiny part of the listening experience.

Actually in practice, stuff that goes outside the "list of numbers" is a huge part of learning to play western music, including classical. It was emphasized by my teachers, going practically all the way back to my first lesson.

It's interesting how Airbnb has diverged from its original vibe of "staying at somebody's house." When I "stay at somebody's house" I wash the dishes, take out the trash, etc. Essentially, leave it as I found it, if not a bit better. I also expect "somebody's house" to be cleaner than a hotel.

Granted, Airbnb has taken on the hotel industry, and so I'm not surprised that their rules have evolved.

It's interesting to see different perspectives on this.

For me, calculus was the first math I learned, where symbols represented something other than pure numbers or tangible points on a plane, and we proved things about higher level abstractions. Of course many of the topics had tangible applications, but it was a launching point towards further abstraction in the higher level math courses.

A friend of mine in grad school was a student in medieval church history, but was assigned to teach a freshman course in modern history. For one class session, he asked a math teacher to give a guest lecture on calculus. Then he lectured on its impact on society.

It's true that most people, including managers and engineers, forget their school math not long after school. Their software tools, such as Excel and CAD, can do the math that they need. One can hope without proof that a little bit of mathematical thinking rubbed off on them.

I wonder if this means there are giant balls of dark matter hurtling around the universe.

I'm not a cosmologist, but the Wikipedia article on dark matter has a pleasantly readable summary of the main sources of evidence for dark matter at this time.

I've learned to boil stuff for managers down to just a few bullets.

Er, I mean bullet points.

And no equations.

The ethics of academic research weren't idyllic, but they were the devil known. It was at least informally accepted that a student should have a fair chance of finishing their project. Cherry picking student projects and publishing them ahead of the student was considered unethical. I got my graduate degree under those conditions, as did my parents.

In math, proofs are "the coin of the realm," and could be devalued to zero. This leaves no answer as to how someone will earn a graduate degree. For instance, what kind of work will be accepted by a thesis committee in five years? The professoriat can only say "we will need to change some things." That's not good enough when the deadline for grad school applications is a few months away.

This was already why people went to grad school. I think people weigh a complex bag of known and perceived motivations and risks. One of the risks is that your project gets "scooped." There were some weak ethical and practical safeguards around that. But completely rearranging the risk equation will change peoples minds about whether graduate study is worth it.

Disclosure: PhD, early 1990s. In my case, replicating my project would have required a sizable investment in equipment, much of it was purpose-built, among other things.

Interestingly we're a few months away from a data point on what happens to grad school applications.

The rug being pulled is the expectation of a reasonably high-trust ethical environment. The question to be asked is: What will graduate study look like in an utterly zero trust ethical environment?

Insulin... to children.

The tradeoff for consumers is that convenient returns are cheaper to implement than quality control.

Okay, that makes sense. I play bass in a Big-Band, and some of our newer charts are this way, including some Metheny arrangements.

I'm fine with it, and might even lean towards saying it's easier to sight read, but on the other hand, I've spent decades reading traditional, so I'm used to that too. And on a jazz chart, I can ad-lib if needed to keep the show going if I get confused by something. My hands will usually gravitate to the right place even if my brain is wrong.

Does modern notation just mean no key signature and all accidentals?

Sure, it was called Novell. There was also AppleShare PC, which connected you to a Mac network. It was how I laser printed my dissertation. ;-)

Area Man has them.

Until we design fittings and fixtures that just snap together. This has already happened to some extent in the construction trades. It doesn't outright replace labor but it reduces the labor content of trade work. It's a myth that automation can't replace labor.

Indeed, I left academia immediately after finishing my degree. Now in my 60s, I'm at the "senior staff" level of a F500 company that makes measurement equipment, so I've done OK even if others have done better.

One thing that helped me a lot is that both of my parents were industrial scientists, so the idea of life beyond academia wasn't foreign to me.

I'm not a mathematician. I was a college math major, got a PhD in physics, and still enjoy math.

It's not like "should I get a PhD" is a new question. It's not unheard of for unpredictable events to drastically affect the career prospects of PhDs in my field. During my lifetime:

1. Mandatory retirement of professors was ruled illegal. While good for civil rights, it created a 10+ year gap in faculty retirements.

2. End of the cold war.

3. Transition of college teaching from tenured professors to gig workers, aka "adjuncts."

The one constant during this time was the perpetual optimism of the faculty for the employment prospects of PhDs. "There will always be a need for physicists." My dad, also a PhD, confirmed that this goes back as early as the 1950s.

I would add one question to the student's letter: What are the ethics of AI and its owners?

More useful to us because we know more about how it works. This is why I was specific about the time period.

It might have been a matter of taste in the 17th century. The Church was willing to accept a model where the sun goes around the earth, and the planets around the sun. This model agreed with observations, and was in good taste as well, as it avoided the problem of why it doesn't feel like we're in motion, and why we don't get flung off the earth.

Then Newton came along and blew all of the models out of the water. Nobody's at the center of the universe [0]. A single theory of gravity models both planetary motion and why we don't get flung off the earth. And we can "feel" the rotation of the earth by experiments which came along later such as Foucault's pendulum and the Coriolis force.

[0] A puzzle I like to taunt my friends with: The earth is in fact equidistant from the edges of the observable universe in all directions, so we must be in the center after all. ;-)

... or 15 milli-tunnels. -)

Among other things this ice is super transparent.

I got a rechargeable headlamp for close work.

I got 3 of those for my workplace. They're nice. I assume Honeywell is just a brand.

We didn't demand software safety or data safety. The prognosis for AI safety is poor.

I definitely want a code editor with a setting to number the lines by 10s.

First came proprietary file formats, and they were evil. Now, un-find-able files in proprietary formats.