Elias Devos

I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a wave of mass psychosis rolling through tech Twitter, very similar to what we experienced in spring 2023 and spring 2020 (interesting that the periodicity is exactly 3 years) But the vibes are much darker now than they were last time

Maybe the "male masculinity crisis" is just the sensitive young men, the visionaries, intuïting that the world is going to shit? @theralkia

@isjuustadream @theralkia go for it

Can someone normal explain why true science is spiritual and true spirituality is scientific

@greenstanion @carl_feynman @sarah_cone I had the same problem in understanding. AsI understand, in the two electrode version, the steady state is not equal concentration inside and outside. It is less concentration inside than outside, so that's the difference between the two situations. "distance" to equil. Is diff.

@carl_feynman @sarah_cone I don't get it. In the two electrode version, if you go from fresh air and dip it into something, the fresh oxygen can diffuse out of the compartment instead of waiting to be consumed. It is two gradients that will combine.

My dad (Richard Feynman) had a side hustle doing industrial consulting. He'd spend a few hours visiting a company, talking to the engineers, looking at stuff, and then maybe have a good suggestion. Sometimes he would bring his son along. I only recall one of his suggestions, but it made the company he was consulting for way better off, so I guess his exorbitant consulting fees were worth it. We could have been wealthier if he had done it systematically, but he didn't want to be organized about looking for jobs, so it just happened when someone asked.

When I was about 14, we went to a company that manufactured oxygen sensors. You dip this probe into beer, sewage, or canned food a-stewing, and it tells you how much oxygen is in the slurry. It's got two electrodes, and there's some kind of electrochemical reaction that releases exactly one electron for each oxygen molecule consumed. Measuring the electric current lets you measure the oxygen concentration. However, the electrodes are delicate, and don't work if they're not clean. So they're inside a tiny compartment covered with a membrane of oxygen-porous but everything-else-proof plastic. The oxygen has to diffuse through the plastic before it can be consumed at the electrodes. The current is determined by the rate of diffusion. Gunk on the membrane can slow down diffusion, causing it to read an incorrect low concentration. And when you take the sensor from fresh air and dip it into something, it can take a long time to consume all the oxygen in the compartment and start reading the actual flow. So my dad suggested the following. Put a third electrode in the compartment, that regenerates one O2 molecule for each one consumed. Now the speed of diffusion doesn't matter because the oxygen isn't getting consumed. You're reading the concentration at the electrodes directly without affecting it. If the concentration around the sensor drops, oxygen can diffuse out of the compartment, instead of waiting for the oxygen to be consumed. And gunk on the membrane will slow down the reading, but it's still perfectly accurate. We went back next year and saw them manufacturing the three-electrode sensors. IIRC, my father didn't have any good ideas that year.

@carl_feynman A.I. Alignment: what about "a firewall" of less intelligent A.I.'s that control more intelligent A.I.'s as a sort of "social control" based on game theory in some way. People can control the less intelligent A.I.'s a sort of bridge to the more intelligent A.I.

Thought experiment: Imagine a world in which everyone could build their own nuclear weapon. It is obvious that in such a world, "mutually assured destruction" would cease to work. This is what we are up against w.r.t. A.I.

@KillaMinga needle -> amplifier -> woofer, the needle just takes up the pattern of oscillation that eventually - via the amplifier - drives the speakers in the same oscillation.

i will never comprehend how this translates to music

@ThomasVanRiet2 Ik vind het raar dat nooit wordt uitgelegd dat "het problem solving algoritme" nooit wordt uitgelegd. (Er wordt zelfs nooit uitgelegd dat er enerzijds problemen zijn en anderzijds oplossingen).

Wallonië verplicht Latijn in 2de middelbaar. 😢 Je merkt aan studenten 1ste bach dat ze 6 jaar lang vooral hebben geleerd regels van buiten te kennen. Logisch nadenken&creatief problemen oplossen zijn ze niet zo gewend. Het is nochtans wat we nodig hebben. Dat en techniek.

@halflawless @getjonwithit uhm no

@Voselideas @getjonwithit Do you believe that you are capable of being just as good at basketball as LeBron James, given enough practice?

I remember this moment very vividly. Apologies in advance for the arrogant and self-indulgent personal anecdote... I originally went to university with the intention of becoming a pure mathematician, and for the first couple of years this dream seemed to be pretty safe. (1/10)

@Martlu12 @getjonwithit I agree.

@Voselideas @getjonwithit Ability to work consistently (even at a modest pace) is one of the most undervalued qualities that a child could learn. In my experience most people dont work consistently on anything, at all. Ive seen people with slightly above average talent be top 0.01% with consistent work.

@DananTwit @getjonwithit Yes but the mind is different

@Voselideas @getjonwithit "What do you mean, 'your legs don't move like Usain Bolt's?' He just has the physiology and motor control to run like that!"

@Martlu12 @getjonwithit Well, if that's your experience, I'll remember it and add it to my own experiences to see what is the truth.

@Voselideas @getjonwithit You can try and train your kid to be the next Mozart, but the likelyhood of success is extremely low. Some people have it in them, others dont. Ive been lucky enough to meet people who are statistical outliers, I mean people who are REALLY 1 in a million. It's something else.

@Martlu12 @getjonwithit Maybe those people you met are more interested in learning than putting other people down?

@Voselideas @getjonwithit It's fine and natural to feel some envy, to feel like you dont measure up. You dont and probably never will. You work hard and get somewhere in life, but just like you will probably never be an olympic athlete you will probably also not be top level at mental performance.

@NoiseesoiN @Martlu12 @getjonwithit You say "just competent" another guy says wow that's as good as Mozart!

There are legions of children who were "trained" by talented parents in a field, but who never became anything more than competent. Parents who were sure they were going to have "the next Mozart." If tutoring and hard work sufficed, we'd have hundreds of Mozart-equivalents by now, instead of... one. If you relax it to "create an all time top-ten composer," you'd have a long list of Beethovens and Bachs and the like. This is not happening. You have hordes of "guys who wrote a pretty good theme song for a TV show" or "that gal who wrote a soundtrack for a popular B movie once."

@MeanestMan @getjonwithit To me it connotes a difference, imagine you see a movie one evening and then the next day you have a task: write an essay about it. Another guy sees another movie and writes a "better" essay. Imagine saying "My mind just didn't work that way". Maybe it was just the movie?

@Voselideas @getjonwithit Genuinely curious - How is happening to have the right mathematical tool in one's subconscious any different than saying "my brain just didn't work that way"? Seems to me that "just happening" to have something in your subconscious is similar to a magical quality in the brain.

@Martlu12 @getjonwithit You mean Mozart that was tutored extensively from age 0 by his father the classical musician?

@Voselideas @getjonwithit Try to listen to Mozart's symphony no 1 that he wrote when he was 8 years old. Yes, some people's brains have magic stuff inside.

@ECDenFan @getjonwithit To give an analogy: it's kind of like saying that some people's tongue anatomy are better suited for certain languages than other. That's basically false. Everyone's tongue can speak any human language. Maybe with a little bit more effort (interest/intuition)

@ECDenFan @getjonwithit Because "the mind" and "a specific subject" are on vastly different levels of abstraction. Do you believe someone "has a mind for gardening"? vs someone who has "a mind for cooking"? I don't.

@getjonwithit this seems to me to be at odds with your proven problem solving inclination. The moment you saw his solution, you understood it. Then what makes you think he hadn't already seen this problem or a very similar one?

@getjonwithit I'm surprised that someone like you would say "my brain just didn't work that way", come on man! As if there is some magical quality in his brain that allows him to solve that specific problem in that way. He just happened to have the right mathematical tool in his subconscious.