analog31

Oddly enough, I got a physics degree, and then happened to teach the engineering course for one semester many years ago while in between jobs. I'm sure this varies from one college to the next. My impressions at the time were:

The physics version was much more mathematical, and did things like solving everything in spherical coordinates. It also kind of served as a preparation for solving corresponding problems in quantum mechanics.

The engineering version was more nuts-and-bolts, covering things like transformers, motors, and transmission lines. (Antennas were for a later course).

As a consequence, teaching the engineering course required me to quickly learn a whole bunch of stuff that we glossed over or ignored in the physics course. While also teaching it. Fortunately I was an experimental physicist and had also done some work in industry, so the topics weren't utterly unfamiliar.

In addition, a lot of first time mothers died, as did their babies.

>>> lactation consultants...

In my experience, weekly trips to the lactation consultant had no effect except for a growing sense of shame.

This makes it a perpetual challenge for me, and I've never mastered it. Doing something sensible on double bass is hard enough without it always having to be at some unmusical tempo.

On more straightforward changes, I can usually internalize the melody and harmonic motion well enough to form a sensible solo, but I've got my limits. Fortunately the era of "Giant Steps" getting called on every gig has more or less passed.

Moby Dick. I'm further through then I've ever gotten before thanks to a long airplane ride.

The first thing that came to my mind was: Tetris with periodic boundary conditions.

Indeed, power over one person is different than power distributed over an entire country. Good to point that out.

I think there's a balance that needs to be struck, in proportion to actual power. A senator or cabinet member deserves more scrutiny than a small town city clerk. Also, there are private individuals who knowingly exercise more power than that clerk.

The other version of this joke:

Customer: $500 for 10 minutes of work? That's more than I make as a brain surgeon.

Plumber: It's more than I made as a brain surgeon too.

Processes like this are where "boot" comes from. The machine was pulling itself up by its bootstraps. The ROM was sometimes called the "bootstrap loader."

I do some optical engineering, and once took a course on lighting design. Indeed, bike lights are unregulated, and therefore, un-engineered. During the winter on my commute home from work, I usually have to cover my eyes on the bike path to avoid being blinded by oncoming cyclists.

I think Germany has regulations on this. I've bought lights on AliExpress that have a cut-off.

Amazon has the Shimano dynohub for $125. Then you have to build a wheel. You might be able to re-use your rim if it's got 36 holes.

I explored dynohubs in the past, but LEDs and LiPo batteries have really narrowed the gap. In my garage, I've got a super long USB cable that we all use for charging our lights. I've used cheap lights from AliExpress, and they are actually quite durable.

Learning and understanding were always and option, and still are.

This works at the office too.

Indeed, and some countries have whole word writing.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, it was common to walk your kids to school, then let them play in the playground while chatting with the other parents, until the bell rang.

One mom told me: "I like the American school. It's like Singapore, but with fewer beatings."

To me, "domain knowledge" seems to resemble a primitive form of "slop filter" to use the modern parlance. In any field, the majority of possible ideas are slop. This has always been the case. People somehow learn to navigate through the slop, to find things that are worth working on.

Even before the AI era, we were flooded with a veritable DDOS attack of slop, in our in-boxes, meetings, etc. Managers believed that innovation was held back by quantity of ideas, or by the domain experts being "resistant to change." This led to day-long group brainstorming sessions that yielded nothing. Part of the transition from student to junior to senior is learning to filter your own ideas, and to guide others in the search for ideas that are likely to be fruitful.

The criteria for slop filtering have always been subjective, arbitrary, or driven by institutional culture. That's what we've got. Any means of generating ideas produces slop in the absence of filtering.

What will slop filtering look like when the AI can generate tera-proofs per second? What does it look like already for our e-mail inboxes? We are asymptotically trending towards slop filters that look more and more like "ignore everything." I already read none of the business memoranda that I receive. I don't answer my phone. The number of workers needed to read and assess business memoranda is zero.

The slop filter still functions in math. Problems are pre-filtered for being of interest. Somebody expressed enough interest in the Navier-Stokes problem to give it a name and attach a prize to it. There are still plenty of "prize problems." Here are some:

* Quantum gravity

* Improvement of superconductors that don't need helium

* Practical generation of power from fusion

This is cool, but I've noticed that an idea of a "holographic universe" makes the news roughly once a decade.

Maybe fifth time's the charm. ;-)

Waiting 10 weeks for an MRI is consistent with my experience in the US. This could be a regional thing. When my mom lived in her home state, she had nearly same-month or even same-week access to specialists. Now, living in my state, most appointments are booked more than a year out. She has talked about flying back to her home state every year to have her annual appointments. This is medical tourism within the country.

Not only did I have to wait for my MRI, but as the date approached, I got a call saying that they had canceled it because the insurance refused to cover it. I offered to pay out of pocket. Nope, they simply canceled it.

Of course if you can pay for quicker care in another country, it will seem like care in that country is quicker, but the people living in that country might not have the same privilege. Most of the people I know who move here from outside the US think our system is insane.

There's a billboard on my way to work for a private medical imaging service that offers shorter wait times.

They can move to Afghanistan. I'm not sure the wealth leaving the state, or the country, is such a bad thing.

Meanwhile, when you're in an "already too late" situation, it's already too late. You still have to deal with it.

This time around, AI being able to do student homework means that AI is replacing students not teachers.

Are fossil fuels net profitable after subsidies, wars, and externalities are considered?

Well if nothing else, idiocy that's as old as time started on day zero.

There might be a paradox here. We need closed communities to weed out slop. But we need open communities to weed out corruption.

Even rats. They are supported by our food and garbage.

I've repaired all kinds of stuff in my house, including appliances. Calling someone to fix something could cost me more time than fixing it myself. Also, I can time-shift when I do it myself, for instance working during hours when I'm unlikely to get paid to do something.

An example is bike repair. If something breaks, getting it fixed would mean driving it to the shop and back again. Doing it on my own terms and schedule, I can fix it at night, often in a few minutes. If it needs a part, I ride a spare bike until the part arrives.

I decide on a case by case basis. I don't change the oil in my car because I can drop it off on my way to work, and in that case, I am getting paid while the car is being serviced. Also, some kinds of work involve more tools and space than I want to own. And mess.

The home furnace, in the middle of winter while my elderly parents are vising... yeah call the guy.

But there will be fewer of them, because we generate their food.

In my observation, most programmers and engineers lose their math chops over time. The math they need is mostly baked into their tools, such as CAD. If a problem requires more advanced math, it's given to a "math person" in the department. Often, the "math person" is also not allowed to touch the production code.

In a sense all experimental science has an element of engineering. For instance the first problem, "the origins of life" is framed to require an experiment to show that any proposed mechanism actually works.

Fortunately proofs were still part of the curriculum when I was in school. Typically, geometry focused on proofs. When my kids took geometry, proofs took a back seat to problems. This also got us to the point where the college math curriculum has to include a class on how to do proofs.