Sounds like a good read, maybe I’ll check it out :)

Bit of a mixed bag here: Reading about some of Fridtjof Nansens expeditions is absolutely wild. These are people that wintered in the arctic without support, where no local population exists.

The story I think is the wildest is when two guys got stuck on Franz Joseph’s land for an entire winter, with minimal supplies. The following summer they began travelling towards land using kayaks they built, and were found by a British expedition.

Besides being some awesome stories, I’m pointing this out to emphasise just how extremely resourceful and resilient some people can be. These guys survived for months, with very little resources, in conditions that can literally kill you in hours.

Of course, in general, the best survival tactic is probably to try to find local populations and hope for help.

It you only rarely eat bread: Cut it up at put it in the freezer. Whenever you need a couple slices it’s easy to break off however many you need and pop them in a toaster for a couple minutes. If you’re packing a lunch you don’t even need the toaster, just make the lunch with frozen slices and they’ll be thawed in a couple hours :)

One might even say that dampening is making things damp!

I second this! I was in the US for a while and quickly realised that doing constant conversions was a PITA, so I learned some rough reference points in imperial.

I think it’s good to get some small and some large reference points, which make it easy to guesstimate other things based on what you know. Mine were (given in metric here):

• A glass of beer is 0.5 L.
• A big barrel is about 200L (0.2 m^3).
• My walk to work is 3 km, a long hike is 25 km.
• A very short person is about 150 cm, a very tall one is about 2 m.
• I can deadlift about 100 kg, and bicep curl around 15 kg.
• A potato is on the order of 100g, while a watermelon is around 2kg.
• 70 C is a nice sauna, 25 C is a nice summer day, 10 C is chilly, 0 C is sleet-temperature, -10 C is powder snow cold (depending on where you live the colder temps might be more or less relevant)

Figure out some similar things for yourself, and it’ll be relatively easy to think along lines like “That walk was a bit further than my way to work, so it’s probably about 4km”, or “that box was heavy, but far from 100 kg, so it’s maybe around 30 kg.”

Bonus points if you try some guessing like that and double check afterwards to tune in your feeling for different measurements.

I didn’t mean to come off as disagreeing with you, I think we generally agree. My point was that I think there can be such a thing as a “perfect relationship”, as long as we have a realistic idea of what that entails. I definitely agree that the idea of a “perfect relationship” that a lot of media tries to sell us is completely unrealistic though.

Your english is great btw :)

Hey… are you 100% sure she isn’t playing both of us? I was with her all of last week, but she’s on a business trip this week, that doesn’t happen to match up with when you’ve been with her I hope?

_jk

I second you on the point about a “perfect partner”. However I still think a relationship can be “perfect”, because a relationship is much more than just the two people involved.

As long as we accept that no realistic relationship is completely without conflict, I would say that a “perfect relationship” involves being able to work through the issues that inevitably show up. It’s something you build together, not something you just have.

My impression is that the current “dating economy” breaks this perception a bit, to the point where a lot of people end up looking for the “perfect partner” that they automatically form the “perfect relationship” with, and aren’t willing to do much hard work to build that relationship. I don’t think that kind of “perfect relationship” (without any work) exists.

Wrong is a bit hard for me, maybe because “every happy couple is the same, while every unhappy one is unhappy in their own unique way” (para-quote from Tolstoy I think).

To me, I know what I have is right because I honestly feel like every joy we share is doubled, while every problem we share is halved. It’s a cliche, but I honestly mean it. When I’m happy with her, it makes me twice as happy just to see that she is happy. I honestly feel like the greatest joy in the world to me is to see her be happy. Likewise, if something is wrong, I want to help her in a way I’ve never experienced with anyone else, and can feel in my whole body that we’re in this together.

This doesn’t mean that we never get mad at each other, but when we do, we’ve always ended up remembering that, at the end of the day, we’re the most important thing in the world to each other. Whatever issues we’ve had, we’re in it together to solve them.

To round off with Tolstoy: I guess “wrong” would be if any of the above didn’t apply for whatever reason, that reason being unique in every case.

I think you’re missing my point: I opened by saying that I definitely believe the world is deterministic. I then went on to problematise the extremely unpredictable nature of the human mind. To the point where an immeasurable amount of historical input goes into determining what number I will say if you ask me to think of one.

Then, I used the argument of a chaotic system to reconcile the determinism of the universe with the apparent impossibility of predicting another persons next thought. A highly chaotic system can be deterministic but still remain functionally unpredictable.

Finally, I floated the idea that what we interpret as free will is in fact our mind justifying the outcome of a highly chaotic process after the fact. I seem to remember there was some research on split-brain patients regarding this.

By and large, I agree with you: I cannot see how free will fits into a deterministic universe. I still want to make some points for the case that there is some form of free will.

Think about scratching your nose right now, and decide whether or not to do it. It’s banal, but I can’t help being convinced by that simple act that I do have some form of choice. I can’t fathom how someone, even given a perfect model of every cell in my body, could predict whether or not I will scratch my nose within the next minute.

This brings up the second point: We don’t need to invoke quantum mechanics to get large-scale uncertainty. It’s enough to assume that our mind is a complex, chaotic system. In that case, minute changes in initial conditions or input stimuli can massively change the state of our mind only a short time later. This allows for our mind to be deterministic but functionally impossible to predict (if immeasurably small changes in conditions can cascade to large changes in outcome).

I seem to remember reading that what we interpret as free will is usually our mind justifying our actions after the fact, which would fit well with the “chaotic but deterministic” theory.

I wouldn’t be too worried if you have ordinary cardiovascular health. If your heart has to put in non-trivial work to get the blood up from your legs, I would recommend more exercise.

I usually make a point to take off my hood if I have one on, and generally lift my head and maybe give them a nod/smile, or otherwise indicate that “I’ve seen you, and I’m letting you see my face clearly”. If we’re alone in a dark, empty place at night, I’ll also make a point to cross the street away from them.

I’ve talked to some women about how they prefer men to act, and they generally said they think what I do is decent. Of course, that’s reliant on the whole “make eye-contact, nod, smile, and wave”-thing being done in a disarming and “I’m friendly and I see you, and I’m going to mind my own business”-way, and not a creepy way.

Thanks! I very much enjoy my profession, but I can also clearly understand that it’s not for everyone. My major impression after lecturing for different engineering courses is that chemistry differs from most in that you need (even) more basics before things start getting cool. Most of the other engineers can start doing actual cool projects in first or second year, while the chemists don’t really get to the good stuff before third or fourth year. On the other hand, I’m very glad I pulled through to the cool stuff at the other side :D

I seem to remember reading that the guy who invented the Rubik’s cube (Rubik?) thought for quite a while that it was impossible to solve until he uncovered the first algorithms for solving it by essentially just messing around.

EXACTLY! I can’t believe that I’ve basically forgotten how the function of “social media” at a point in the not-too-distant past was actually to help real people stay in touch and organise real social events… how did we even end up where we are now? There was a golden age for a couple years where stuff like facebook brought a net positive to the world. Just makes me sad to think about where we ended up…

Tbh, to me, a replacement for facebook is what I’m looking most for. I used to use facebook a lot to organise stuff with different friend-groups, and now that most people don’t ever use it, that’s a lot harder.

Facebook was the de-facto primary communication channel for organising events or coordinating hobby groups. It honestly makes me sad that they broke it to the point where I have a hard time inviting old friends that live out of town to a summer party or something. Likewise, I have a hard time being invited to stuff because I practically never check facebook.

Friendica may take over facebooks role at some point, but it’s nowhere close yet. I made an account just to be on there for if/when it starts taking off. I hope the gap is filled sooner rather than later.

“Wisdom”: You’re a sorcerer with a long beard. “Intelligence”: You’re the annoying engineering type that breaks the DM’s beta in creative ways.

I’m a chemist, and I lecture in some engineering-related courses (mostly thermodynamics and mathematics)

It can be legitimate to ask “why do you want to do X” so that you can help find a solution to the underlying problem. Saying “you shouldn’t do X” without knowing what the underlying problem is is the epitome of unhelpful and overbearing.

It’s literally a meme that devs have some obscure problem, and the only online resource they find is a forum post with one of

• nvm, I fixed it (no further explanation)
• Marked as duplicate (link to question about something different but related)
• “You shouldn’t do this, here’s how to do something else” (cannot do Y, that’s why I’m trying to do X)

I remember as a student when I couldn’t understand how professors could “just see” the solutions to problems. I’ve been reflecting after teaching a bit that I’m becoming that person, and how it just feels natural now, and that it’s really just because once you’ve seen enough problems in your field everything kind of just fits together, so new problems don’t really look that new anymore. It feels good to be honest, but I have a hard time thinking of it as wisdom, more just accumulated experience (then again, what is really “wisdom”?)