OT: Being Helpful

[mansr]

1 hour ago, 4est said:

Would that not be the first step in getting everyone to cooperate?

Provide a common enemy. If there is no enemy, invent one.

[Samuel T Cogley]

4 hours ago, 4est said:

And yet you say there is no room for civility? Would that not be the first step in getting everyone to cooperate?

 

I'm trying to be nice.  You should too.

[Jud]

Anyone have additional helpful resources for auto-didacts, particularly (but not exclusively) free and web- or app-based?

[4est]

5 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

I'm trying to be nice.  You should too.

I meant this as a legitimate question. I am not sure how I was not being nice, I simply asked about what seems like a change of heart from you. I appreciate that change. I'd prefer everyone to be nicer here. That is how the whole civility thing came about in the first place. If we are going to cooperate, one of the first steps is being accepting of differing opinions.

[Allan F]

21 hours ago, Jud said:

It certainly seems to follow the Internet Law of Misquoting.

 

"The problem with quotes on the internet is that you never know if they are genuine."

-Abraham Lincoln

[Samuel T Cogley]

16 minutes ago, 4est said:

I meant this as a legitimate question. I am not sure how I was not being nice, I simply asked about what seems like a change of heart from you. I appreciate that change. I'd prefer everyone to be nicer here. That is how the whole civility thing came about in the first place. If we are going to cooperate, one of the first steps is being accepting of differing opinions.

 

Past is past.  Let's move on please.

[Ralf11]

6 hours ago, Jud said:

Anyone have additional helpful resources for auto-didacts, particularly (but not exclusively) free and web- or app-based?

 

on what topic?

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Jud said:

Anyone have additional helpful resources for auto-didacts, particularly (but not exclusively) free and web- or app-based?

 

You probably are aware of these, but just to mention them ...

 

https://archive.org/, of course

 

Fascinating to roam around here, plenty of stuff is accessible, https://scholar.google.com/

 

And, the "naughty" site started by Russian scientists - I won't state the link here, but there's an entry in Wikipedia for it, if you want to hunt it down ...

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

on what topic?

Life, the universe, and everything.

[Jud]

Well, for one (or actually everything) - there's a browser extension called Unpaywall, that can find if there are any free versions available of academic journal articles that you initially find behind a paywall. Let's say you see something fascinating in the latest issue of "Nature" - this will point you to the free version on, for example, arxiv.org if it exists.

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpaywall/iplffkdpngmdjhlpjmppncnlhomiipha?hl=en

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unpaywall/

[fas42]

Note there is also a "naughty" site that, ummm, everyone uses for accessing scientific research ... Google "Who's downloading pirated papers" if interested ...

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Note there is also a "naughty" site that, ummm, everyone uses for accessing scientific research ... Google "Who's downloading pirated papers" if interested ...

Let's not beat around the bush: https://sci-hub.tw/

The only ones "suffering" from this are the scumbags at Elsevier, and they deserve far worse.

[Superdad]

On 1/8/2020 at 2:36 PM, mansr said:

It's a manufacturer of overpriced audio accessories named after snakes.

 

Strange that you say that. On the Shunyata website I don't see a single product named after a snake. 

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Strange that you say that. On the Shunyata website I don't see a single product named after a snake. 

 

They used to have a power cords named "Python" and others. Now, they only have a line of power cords named "Venom", the product of poisonous snakes.

[biosailor]

21 hours ago, Jud said:

Loved sailing on Lake Pend Orielle in the Rocky Mountains in Idaho. We had Nutella so it was just like Switzerland! 😉

Nutella was first produced by an Italian company! On Swiss boats we tend to take (cautiously, of course) Swiss white wine.

[mansr]

7 hours ago, Allan F said:

They used to have a power cords named "Python" and others. Now, they only have a line of power cords named "Venom", the product of poisonous snakes.

Here's what their website looked like a while back:

 

There was also a "Viper" cable in another category.

[Richard Dale]

19 hours ago, Jud said:

Anyone have additional helpful resources for auto-didacts, particularly (but not exclusively) free and web- or app-based?

I’m interested in learning about the de Broglie/Bohm Pilot Wave theory, and I find this series of lectures by Mike Towler to be an excellent introduction:

 

https://casinoqmc.net/PWT/lectures/bohm7.pdf
 

https://casinoqmc.net/pilot_waves.html

I can’t say I understand the mathematical parts, but the way the story is told is quite accessible to non-experts.

 

The theory gives the same results in all cases as the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, but the underlying physical reality depicted is very different. That doesn’t matter if you are a logical positivist who would just go for the most convenient maths, but I personally believe it matters.

[darkmass]

On ‎1‎/‎9‎/‎2020 at 8:43 AM, Jud said:

Anyone have additional helpful resources for auto-didacts, particularly (but not exclusively) free and web- or app-based?

 

Jud, the link in your OP is a worthwhile one; however, in my view the contents only brush up against the region of Pure Mathematics.  True, within the "ADVANCED MATHEMATICS" subheading it makes an approach (my coursework in Hilbert Spaces was among the Pure Mathematics courses in my educational background), but the links provided under Advanced Mathematics are to a significant degree either broken...or really much more applicable to Applied Mathematics.

 

So, some links.  (They may or may not be considered "helpful resources")...

 

1) https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/02/24/why-do-we-pay-mathematicians/

 

2) https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Pure_mathematics

 

And, well, a little bit different twist on things--if not entirely related to Pure Mathematics.  Example: "A mathematician, a physicist, an engineer went again to the races and laid their money down. Commiserating in the bar after the race, the engineer says, 'I don't understand why I lost all my money. I measured all the horses and calculated their strength and mechanical advantage and figured out how fast they could run...'

 

The physicist interrupted him: '...but you didn't take individual variations into account. I did a statistical analysis of their previous performances and bet on the horses with the highest probability of winning...'

 

'...so if you're so hot why are you broke?' asked the engineer. But before the argument can grow, the mathematician takes out his pipe and they get a glimpse of his well-fattened wallet. Obviously here was a man who knows something about horses. They both demanded to know his secret.

 

'Well,' he says, 'first I assumed all the horses were identical and spherical...'"

 

Okay, 3) http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html

[Jud]

By the way, an approachable blog on subjects including computational complexity and quantum computing, with the author’s textbook, “Quantum Computing Since Democritus,” is here: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/