• 12 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 14th, 2023

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  • GPS satellites have to correct for his equations or your phone would send you to the wrong address. The energy released by splitting an atom is accounted for by his equations. Our entire picture of space and time is his.

    While Einstein’s value is incalculable, the author’s attempt to put a monetary value is bad.

    Without Einstein, GPS would have a mystery fudge factor built in like so many other engineering projects.

    The association between Einstein and the atom bomb is historical, not based on his work. E=mc^2 applies just as much to a flashlight as the atom bomb. In Einstein’s own book he uses the example of a flashlight. The energy from splitting the atom is from the experimentally discovered binding energy. There is no way to theoretically predict that binding energy from relativity.



  • I’d say the Gaga was for pandering to fans of a celebrity to get them to watch. Making a Gaga centric episode at the height of Gaga’s popularity is pandering. As compared to having a few lines by George Harrison or Paul McCartney which were at their height of popularity 20 years earlier. When contemporary celebrities were used like Smashing Pumpkins is was as a cameo, not the focus of the entire episode.

    The all woman Itchy Scratchy episode would be panned because it’s punching down on the feminist movie remakes.






  • You said this:

    “This necessarily includes the results of that coin flip and the Geiger counter readings.”

    The premise states the computer sets up the boxes BEFORE you enter the room. The OP states he flips the coin AFTER he enters the room.

    The computer cannot change the boxes after he entered the room. The computer cannot know the results of how you will respond to the coin flip because it happens AFTER it has fixed the boxes.



  • There’s the possibility that there’s something else at play that we don’t know, and maybe cannot fathom.

    The possibility that there is something hidden that we are not aware of is why Bell’s Theorem was such a revolution in physics. The experimental proof of Bell’s theorem won the nobel prize. There are no hidden variables. Probability is fundamental, not a result of some unknown process.

    The premise wasn’t that the computer was 100% perfect. It was 99.9% perfect. That is its good enough such that you should assume its correct. The premise could have said 75% and it wouldn’t change anything. Saying 99% makes it simpler for the reader to assume that the computer is correct.

    The computer is not supernatural. The premise does not say the computer is 100% accurate. The premise does not say that the computer can violate known laws of physics. The premise is that the computer knows your behavior.









  • If it’s not an all in one PC, those USB ports on the back of the monitor aren’t likely to be connected to anything.

    I’ve never used the monitor USB ports because they require another USB cable to go back to the PC so the monitor can act as a hub. So it’s not saving much clutter and isn’t easily accessible like a desktop USB hub.

    Furthermore, if the IT department has any security, it will have USB completely disabled. My wife worked in HR for a regular consumer brand and even those laptops were so locked down such that you couldn’t plug in a different mouse without IT approval. You couldn’t even boot to Linux to bypass because the bios was locked and the drive was Bitlockered.