Posts by wistahe@im-in.space
(DIR) Post #AcDpDFwkhp2zEgpK0e by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-11-27T05:27:29Z
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@Rasp
(DIR) Post #AcpFxqQS5eJHx1LvHs by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-12-15T06:51:40Z
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@pry νvuμ
(DIR) Post #AcvgpM63wf4Wlr4ItM by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-12-18T09:20:57Z
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@pry I'm getting "You Will Be Able to Draw By the End of this Book" and hoping to do a bit each day. I don't think I could give art at the moment the type of trial and error approach I took to learn programming as a teenager. I feel like some type of guided activity makes more sense with life being so much more busy...
(DIR) Post #AcxUGeJRPvIRzrvkEy by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-12-19T06:09:39Z
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@pry Why? I'm not too fond of how it ignores a lot about how common reasoning works like metaphors, but I like its dedication to formalism.
(DIR) Post #AcxVgHeCPN5vBYQXNw by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-12-19T06:25:29Z
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@pry For sure, form is itself a way of strengthening an argument. All it takes is nine moderately weak reasons structured into three paragraphs to create a strong argument for anything. Or a logical system that can explain some tricky features and conveniently does not address those it cannot handle. But I don't think that means we should give up on formalism entirely, instead there's the much harder task of figuring out better formalisms. But that can't be taken for granted since it requires creating something truly new and better than what came before, which is not easy.Although often it's good to try to figure stuff out before starting on formalism. It's useless to solve a problem that isn't well understood. So in that case continental philosophy is definitely worth studying too.
(DIR) Post #AdKPRr5KWYxmlP4ZxQ by wistahe@im-in.space
2023-12-30T07:33:57Z
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@pry My answers now are pretty different than a few months ago which are pretty different from a few years ago. I think, overall, things are getting much better!
(DIR) Post #ApjZNmhHNp95eqHzu4 by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-01-04T05:40:54Z
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(DIR) Post #AtLKwK4ZFY7Zxbwo3U by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-22T07:08:29Z
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Any book recommendations? I want to gain a deeper understanding of something in math that not many people might know. Please boost.
(DIR) Post #AtNd4BmK9soq2nEc4G by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-23T05:52:37Z
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@fiore Well, at the moment I am just asking if anyone has any suggestions for books about interesting, but overlooked math subjects. I'd like to learn more things like that!Subjects I like that I believe fit that description would be combinatorial games and especially argumentation theory. I would like to learn about new subjects though!
(DIR) Post #AtPVLYJTDZ1jXWQX6u by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-24T08:11:26Z
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I feel like it's pretty confusing for a new physics student when they learn about light in undergrad. Like a photon is a wave in two separate ways! It's a wave in the sense that it's a moving point with a changing phase for its electric and magnetic fields at that point. But it's also a wave in the same way that every particle is a wave, it is represented by a probability wave where the exact orientation of propagating phases cannot be measured and only the differences matter between them. It has two phases, one whose value has physical significance and the other where it doesn't, and they are not at all the same thing! And what we often refer to as light aren't photons, but phase planes which are planes of photons where all photons in a plane have constant electromagnetic phase. Correct me if I've gotten anything wrong.
(DIR) Post #AtQNxRz0b110R7NOFc by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-24T18:39:12Z
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@wolf480pl It's just the probability amplitude from quantum mechanics. Like how all particle have a wave associated with them. If you were to shoot one photon at a time through a double slit, you should see that interference pattern. The interference pattern in classical EM is not due to individual photons, but the EM field of many different photons at the same time.
(DIR) Post #AtQOzUxCca4MBS4WFU by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-24T18:50:48Z
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@wolf480pl That's a really interesting question! But if I understand things correctly, then yes you can. Technically what causes the wave dispersion in classical waves is the medium it travels through. Light that hits say an air molecule will be remitted in a random spherical direction. It's just that with many photons, phases cancel out so we still see wavefronts. If the medium was vacuum, with classical EM waves the two slits should just produce two beams of light that do not interfere. But in quantum mechanics, with one particle at a time, you would still see an interference pattern. So in a vacuum, the intensity would shift from an interference pattern to just two beams.
(DIR) Post #AtRGN0wr806Ddy0ZDk by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-25T04:48:53Z
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@wolf480pl Wait, I was very wrong. Photons do not have an EM phase. In fact, it wouldn't make any sense because that would mean they change over time which they can't since they move at the speed of light. EM wave phase is a collective property of the photons.Does the inference pattern from single photons match the interference pattern of a classical beam? It must, right?
(DIR) Post #AtRXHVsytA1P4t9sum by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-25T07:58:24Z
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@wolf480pl I don't really know enough to answer the question at the moment confidently. I'm learning about spinors and tensor calculus at the moment, so I haven't gotten to quantum field theory. But as I understand it, EM phase is a collective property of photons. Individual photons do not have an EM phase, but their wavefunctions do interact in order to produce one.What I don't understand though is that the electric field is a vector field. As I understand it, the phase of an EM wave is very much physical since it determines the direction of that vector. But the exact angles of wavefunction phases do not matter and only the differences matter, so how do they determine where the electric field vector points?Is it that light is always in a superposition between spin up and spin down, but when we put photons together their wavefunctions interfere giving us the electric field vector as a probability weighted average of their spins?
(DIR) Post #AtcrA9jxf0LWX7p8Zk by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-04-30T18:44:38Z
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Wish I knew about partial order planning earlier. Very interesting way to approach planning!
(DIR) Post #Atsc2XkhvjuTmT4zfk by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-05-08T08:09:04Z
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I'm obsessed with time. What is it physically? What is it psychologically? It's just so fascinating. It's ALWAYS been fascinating!
(DIR) Post #AvsjJwKciLRXuIhYWm by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-07-07T06:34:40Z
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@wolf480pl Do everything correctly then make changes until we do everything we should.
(DIR) Post #AxowbpVJv2igFqgK4e by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-09-03T04:10:53Z
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I'm 26. What advice should I know or ask me anything.
(DIR) Post #Ay5AgVOgbxU5EH3r2u by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-09-11T02:22:03Z
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@wolf480pl Yes, I had to negotiate with my job to get health insurance. But I go a pretty good plan so things are working out.
(DIR) Post #B0Oe4nE2Dm7QVzTEBM by wistahe@im-in.space
2025-11-19T03:58:51Z
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It's strange to see time pass and things change. Some things fizzle out and you wonder if they ever had the meaning you thought they did. Others grow and you get a sense of the peculiar intricacies that were once mysteries. There's an odd sort of acceptance to it and a weathered beauty to the things that change very slowly. You finally understand more of what was fleeting and what was there before you and will be there after you.