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[Amperzand]

Good question.

[Putnam]

Also unutterably stupid.

*returns to reading RationalWiki to restore their faith in humanity*

hey aren't those the guys who make shit up about roko's basilisk so they can more efficiently make fun of yudkowsky and his whole follower group

[Starver]

(Hence why I think he's 'learnt' the basics about fission and now refuses to consider learning the basics about fusion, because "he now understands everything!", and doesn't need to learn any more.)

So, wait, theoretically, doesn't that mean that the universes "true" equilibrium would be when all matter is iron? Then there would be no way to release any more energy.

I'm sure that was postulated, at least several decades ago.  i.e. that at the heat-death of the universe all the regular matter that is left (which is not degenerate, or lost within singularities - which arguably is more so) is the iron-rich corpses of all the final stars, cooled and 'useless'.  (Though, with imagination, one could image some form of 'life' that continues to eke out a continued existence by a vastly slowed entropy-farming method - c.f. the Neutron Star inhabitants of Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, but probably thematically more like lichens, and living at a crawl, not (by human terms) super-speed...)

But then we've developed theories such as the Big Rip, which might make this speculative end impossible from the sheer meaningless of the concept even of atomic nuclei, in the future that is distant enough to have reduced everything to just one or other of singularities, neutrons or impure and cooling iron...

[TheBiggerFish]

Also unutterably stupid.

*returns to reading RationalWiki to restore their faith in humanity*

hey aren't those the guys who make shit up about roko's basilisk so they can more efficiently make fun of yudkowsky and his whole follower group

Uh, no?
I don't think they make anything up about the basilisk.  As far as I know.

[Amperzand]

(Hence why I think he's 'learnt' the basics about fission and now refuses to consider learning the basics about fusion, because "he now understands everything!", and doesn't need to learn any more.)

I can certainly assure you he's either never been to a college physics course, or didn't pay attention.

[Sensei]

Rational wiki is, iirc, notorious for being chock full of crazies.

[TheBiggerFish]

Rational wiki is, iirc, notorious for being chock full of crazies.

Is this a Poe's Law moment?  I think this is a Poe's Law moment...  They're pretty much the anticrazies.  Or so I gathered.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Rationalwiki was started as an opposite of Conservapedia, a goal which they have succeeded at much more than they relaize.

Inb4 PoH posts snarky comments about the SJW conspiracy

[Starver]

(Hence why I think he's 'learnt' the basics about fission and now refuses to consider learning the basics about fusion, because "he now understands everything!", and doesn't need to learn any more.)

I can certainly assure you he's either never been to a college physics course, or didn't pay attention.

I don't think it's even college level, at least not in UK terms.  I think I was taught¹ about fission (and fusion) in secondary school (tops out at age 16), and at Sixth Form College (the usually two years of pre-university non-compulsory education) the Physics probably went more into the maths and details, but didn't vastly change my basic impressions.

But I have difficulty enough working out how my 'old-style' year-of-school designations compare with the various numbers in the "K-12"-ish form now being used, over here, and the US form of "College" seems to be an entirely different span of ages.

But "not paying attention" covers a multitude of sins and (willingly or not) I assume that's what happened in this case.


¹ This being a different time from having learnt about the subject.  I'm sure I'd been to nuclear power-station visitor centres² even before I attained a double-figure age, certainly before I got to secondary school.
² Always fun, with loads of 'interactive' exhibits demonstrating things in button-activated back-lit diagramatical form...  Much more fun than stately homes full of boring old furniture that you're not even supposed to touch.  Although a good largely-ruined castle with enough spiral staircases and rebuilt stone stairways to make the crenelated battlements accessible (with just the bare amount of modern safety barriers) is good, too.

[Amperzand]

I think you experienced a better educational system than many.

[TheBiggerFish]

I think you experienced a better educational system than many.

Indeed.

[Putnam]

Also unutterably stupid.

*returns to reading RationalWiki to restore their faith in humanity*

hey aren't those the guys who make shit up about roko's basilisk so they can more efficiently make fun of yudkowsky and his whole follower group

Uh, no?
I don't think they make anything up about the basilisk.  As far as I know.

here, found it

[Starver]

I think you experienced a better educational system than many.

Indeed.

I think I just listened more in these subjects.  (And/or read more of the text-books than anyone asked me to, at a push.)  I'm not sure I was hot-housed to know this stuff.

Spoiler: Ramble (click to show/hide)

It was not a particularly privileged or well-funded school, in a not particularly well-off area (I witnessed a regional down-turn, in which a major industry was basically shut down and many people's family's wage-earners lost their expected 'job for life').  My family wasn't particularly well-off, but definitely a little bit more financially secure, and were perhaps a little less insular than others - I think I travelled further and wider on holidays (barring jet-assisted 'package holidays' overseas, which we never did) than many of the others did - hence visiting the handful or more of power-stations (and more castles, and occasional boring stately home that my parents wanted to visit), and maybe that helped me pick up the diversity of knowledge that I picked up.

(But I wasn't as good at History as I was at Geography, lessons in Music (very little 'playing', mostly just reading and re-writing in our textbooks the 'theory', starting with monastic plainsong and getting not much further) largely went over my head and I never really excelled at Art, unlike some classmates I recall for whom the sciences may instead have been their particular Achilles Heals.)

Maybe this is why I was bullied as a swot...  And then I went to University and found that I knew so little...

[Amperzand]

Some places do just have better schools, though being interested and intelligent also goes a long way.

[TheBiggerFish]

Also unutterably stupid.

*returns to reading RationalWiki to restore their faith in humanity*

hey aren't those the guys who make shit up about roko's basilisk so they can more efficiently make fun of yudkowsky and his whole follower group

Uh, no?
I don't think they make anything up about the basilisk.  As far as I know.

here, found it

*reads ALL the comments*
Yeah, still not sure there's anything particularly made up **in the current version**.  Feel free to disprove me here.