Questions you want answered.

RawkGWJ wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Reagan? The gun-grabber?!

Today we have the p*ssy grabber. And we live in a world where when a guy laughs nervously about the p*ssy grabbing story he gets fired, but the teller of the story who is also the grabber of the pussies gets elected to the highest office in the land. Can someone explain the math to me on that one. I can’t get it to add up.

Conservative + power != morality

270 = Win at all cost

RawkGWJ wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Reagan? The gun-grabber?!

Today we have the p*ssy grabber. And we live in a world where when a guy laughs nervously about the p*ssy grabbing story he gets fired, but the teller of the story who is also the grabber of the pussies gets elected to the highest office in the land. Can someone explain the math to me on that one. I can’t get it to add up.

The electorate decided they want the inalienable right to be an asshole to anyone at any time and not suffer consequences for it. The person who gets fired for laughing at a p*ssy grabbing story is somehow the victim to 40+% of the country and the slow erosion of protections against Demogaguery have finally collapsed.

Mixolyde wrote:

The electorate decided they want the inalienable right to be an asshole to anyone at any time and not suffer consequences for it. The person who gets fired for laughing at a p*ssy grabbing story is somehow the victim to 40+% of the country and the slow erosion of protections against Demogaguery have finally collapsed.

This is the part that infuriates the hell out of me. The First Amendment protects our right to free speech, but it doesn’t protect us from the consequences of our actions. The act of saying something is an action. We’re all free to behave like assholes, but we are not at all guaranteed protection from the consequences of that behavior.

Just to clarify, I don’t think of the man who laughed as a victim. But the vast difference in the consequences that the laughing man and the story teller/p*ssy grabber received for their actions is baffling and infinitely frustrating to me.

So this is a medical question, but I'm not really sure what vein of medicine it falls into, but it's something I've been living with for well over a decade now and I'm not really phased by it, but I had to disclose any possible information for a procedure I'm having (colonoscopy, they're putting me under for this), and I told them that I have this weird thing where every now and then I have this need to basically make my hands tremor for about 5-10 seconds but there's some other stuff going on. They were a bit concerned, and I think but I'm not certain that it causes it a heart flutter, based on how I've heard heart flutters described, but talking to family they don't think that's the case. I can consciously cause my hands to tremor, and what happens is as follows: I will at some point, usually 3-4 times a week, get a... sensation (really the only way to describe it, not pain, not quite tension nor tightness, just a sensation) in my upper chest about right above where the 1st rib is to my shoulders, both sides on the front only, and the sensation only goes away after making my hands tremor for 5-10 seconds, after which I can feel my heart beat faster for about 5-10 seconds and during that time frame I get a little light headed and almost feel manic before everything goes back to normal. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to when it happens, but this only started after I began taking some psych medications (bi-polar disorder) as an adolescent (about ~13) and nothing ever happens of it after I stop. I'm hoping someone knows what this is as the person I was on the phone with going over stuff pre-procedure was very concerned but it's never really bothered me since it started happening. Should I be concerned or is this just a weird medicine quirk? I haven't been on the same medications since this started so I'm not quite sure if that's it either. I mean it's been going on for at least 13 years at this point and so far it doesn't seem to be doing anything other than making me feel weird temporarily. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

It sounds like it might be something along the lines of paresthesia/frisson/ASMR ? I figured out I could trigger the ASMR response in myself at-will back in the 80's, over 20 years before it was even given a name. It sometimes includes a shudder starting from the chest, down the arms, occasionally reaching the hands. It doesn't sound exactly the same, but maybe it's something similar or the description will get you closer. (Usual disclaimer: I'm not any kind of medical professional, etc.)

Childhood me figured this ability would give one the ability to pass a lie detector test by planting false negatives by willfully raising the heart rate, in an otherwise undetectable fashion.

I’m NOT a doctor nor do I play one on TV. I have a tick that’s attributed to Tourette’s syndrome. My wife calls it “the hand jive” because it almost resembles “jazz hands” or something like it. Most of the time I don’t realize that I’m doing it. Mine is triggered when I’m under stress, rather than something I do that causes stress. Not sure if that made sense.

It’s more of an example of something different than what’s going on with you, Doctor. Sometimes knowing what something isn’t can help you understand what it is.

Those both sound really similar, I’ll look into them. Thanks Deftly, Rawk.

Deftly, you put words to something I've been able to do all my life. Very interesting. Thank you.

Can anyone recommend a good free or cheap flow chart program?
I am hoping to use it to write an outline for a book. A key feature would be "infinite" depth where each node can be a network of other nodes that can be networks, etc.
The Idea is that you have the basic outline and then draw down when you want to ad more detail. If you draw down again, you end up writing the first draft.

If there is a writing software that does this, that would be helpful to know too. Thanks GWJer hivemind.

fangblackbone wrote:

If there is a writing software that does this, that would be helpful to know too. Thanks GWJer hivemind.

Scrivener does exactly this. It's paid, but I can't recall how much (in any case I bought my license years ago).
scrivener.

fangblackbone wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good free or cheap flow chart program?.

Draw.io is free.

MikeSands wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

If there is a writing software that does this, that would be helpful to know too. Thanks GWJer hivemind.

Scrivener does exactly this. It's paid, but I can't recall how much (in any case I bought my license years ago).
scrivener.

I use Scrivener and like it for the most part. I don't dig the search function. When searching for stuff it will go to the folder or text the word is in but not to word within the folder or text. I can then do another search to find the word within the text or folder.

Yeah Scrivener is the go to for book outlines and other writing tasks.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll should pick up scrivener soon. I will also look into draw.io

If the Flying Spaghetti Monster is our Lord and Savior, who is Strega Nona?

Robear wrote:

Deftly, you put words to something I've been able to do all my life. Very interesting. Thank you.

You're welcome! I could never describe it or put it into words very well either. After ASMR became a fad and I read descriptions of it, I realized it sounded almost exactly like what I had been trying to describe for a long time. When I learned that some people could trigger the sensation at will, I was positive. I'll rarely watch ASMR videos, because the sensation is slightly different when it's involuntary.

I saw a t-shirt that really rubbed me the wrong way. I am assuming it is pro-military (we have a coast guard station in my home town) but I was wondering if someone could explain it to me.
It read "Sometimes violence is the answer"
and had an extensive mathematical formula on one side and = VIOLENCE on the other side.
I'd link to the shirt but I don't want to contribute to jingoistic yahoos
Looking at it again, it appears bullsh*t math where you can simplify it to read VIOLENCE.
IMAGE(https://meangreenmath.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/violence.jpg)

Can confirm, the math is gibberish. And judging from the URL with "tactical" in it, I reckon you're not missing anything

I’m a pacifist first, above all else. I believe that non violence is the answer almost every time. I disagree that Sometimes, violence is the answer. Sometimes insinuates that often violence is the answer. I would agree that, Hardly ever is violence the answer.

I fear that this might be some kind of campaign for enabling police violence. In any case it’s an attempt to normalize violence, and I think that’s disgusting.

The math checks out in the sense that yes, the starting line does validly compose into the subsequent lines.

This may be the most literal example of confirmation bias that has ever existed, in that you could do this for any "answer". You could make a little applet that took the answer as input and generate a math garbled "question".

It also is an example of one of the larger stumbling blocks in math education: that there are questions and answers, and the questions come first and the answers come later, and getting the right answer is Good. No, there are patterns and we sometimes use math language to explore those patterns. That you can then use the language to "say" anything you want isn't really an observation about anything, but kind of navel-gazing through miscomprehension of language.

The funny thing is that I have often mused that E=mc^2 is confirmation bias though I have never used those words ;P

Thanks gwjers. I came to the same conclusions after finding the pic and looking at it a few times. It is basically saying that (violence^0.5)^2 = violence and thinking it is profound. I also found on that website something to the effect that good men need to hurt/punish bad men and just about puked. I had the same reaction from watching the hilarious movie Team America when they said that while dicks f*ck pussies, they are necessary because they also f*ck assholes. (to which I always reply that dicks aren't necessary because pussies can wear strap ons to f*ck assholes)

You could also categorize it as symbolic masturbation. Also inverted pretension. It is anathema. Thanks for sharing!

Fang, I don’t think confirmation *bias* - the *repeated* fitting of new evidence into a framework that “confirms” a hypothesis, even if it’s not accurate - is the same as laying out the math to support a hypothesis, which is what Einstein was doing. (The next step, of course, is experimentation, and both the math and the data have to support the hypothesis for it to be even provisionally accepted.)

Forgive me if I misunderstood your comment.

You didn't. It is just a musing that itches my craw every now and then.
I have been told time and again it isn't the equation that is important. Its the relationship between mass and energy.

fangblackbone wrote:

You didn't. It is just a musing that itches my craw every now and then.
I have been told time and again it isn't the equation that is important. Its the relationship between mass and energy.

Are you saying you’re skeptical off the validity of the equation? Are you skeptical of the time dilation aspects? Is it something else entirely?

I admit that I only understand Einstein’s theory of relativity and special ToR in the crudest form, but it’s been proven to be accurate and even necessary in a practical sense. The GPS satellite grid didn’t work until time dilation was taken into account.

It's useful to keep in mind that scientific theories tend to have two parts - the mathematical bit, sometimes called the formalism, and the explanatory bit or "interpretation". E.g. for gravitation, the interpretation might be "planets exert an attractive force on one another", while the formalism is the "g = -GmM/r²" part.

The thing to remember is: the formalism is the only part we can test, and hence the only bit where we have any idea whether it's correct. Interpretations are optional, and they're basically hand-waving - they may provide insight into this or that, but we can't do experiments on them. And once you get into the spookier bits of physics like GR and QM, you quickly get into areas where the formalisms are ridiculously well confirmed, but the interpretations are a clear blue sky full of imagination and dreams.

My rule of thumb is: if someone's talking about GR or QM, and what they're saying is all interpretation and no formalism, just assume it's gibberish.

fenomas wrote:

My rule of thumb is: if someone's talking about GR or QM, and what they're saying is all interpretation and no formalism, just assume it's gibberish.

*cough* Deepak Chopra *cough*

BadKen wrote:
fenomas wrote:

My rule of thumb is: if someone's talking about GR or QM, and what they're saying is all interpretation and no formalism, just assume it's gibberish.

*cough* Deepak Chopra *cough*

That clown needs to stick to what he knows. He’s like trump posing for photos in front of a church with a bible held up in the air.