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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: March 3rd, 2024

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  • Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information

    This literally is the basis of science that I think a lot of people misunderstand. Science doesn’t prove anything conclusively. What scientists try to do is disprove the leading theory and when they can’t, it adds to the pile of evidence that increases the likelyhood of the leading theory being correct. Even things that we’re very, very, very sure are correct are still like 99.99999999999…% confirmed.

    A good example that’s often used to show how it’s more important to try to disprove a theory rather than trying to prove it is the existence of black swans. It was long thought that all swans were white and every time someone saw a white swan, that idea was reinforced. But when someone actually went out of their way to go looking for a black swan, they found a bunch of them!







  • Reminds me of an early application of AI where scientists were training an AI to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog. It got really good at it in the training data, but it wasn’t working correctly in actual application. So they got the AI to give them a heatmap of which pixels it was using more than any other to determine if a canine is a dog or a wolf and they discovered that the AI wasn’t even looking at the animal, it was looking at the surrounding environment. If there was snow on the ground, it said “wolf”, otherwise it said “dog”.



  • Vf = Vi + at

    Means final velocity equals initial velocity plus the product of acceleration and time of acceleration.

    F = m(ΔV / ΔT) or F = ma

    The second equation is much simpler and means force is equal to the product of mass and acceleration.

    This can basically be broken down to be “it’s not the speed that kills you, it’s the sudden deceleration” which is usually attributed to Eddie Rickenbacker who was an American WWI pilot.

    “It’s not the speed that kills you, it’s the sudden stop” - Eddie Rickenbacker

    It was also famously paraphrased by Jeremy Clarkson:

    “Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you.” - Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear




  • I think sarcasm usually has more of a negative tone to it. Like “oh yeah, sure, uh huh /s” whereas light hearted is more like “omg stop picking on me! /lh” conveying that they understand that the other people are also interacting with them in jest.