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[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think the physics "theories" come from a desire to see that scientists are wrong.  Some people seem really attached to the idea that scientists are lying to them or that current scientific knowledge is easily disproven.

Sad folk they be.

I think there's an anti-intellectual undercurrent in general - the idea that formal education is a sham and anyone who has a serious degree is in on it, perpetuating the lies. When you see an interview with a pseudoscientist, check out their credentials: it tends to be something like expert on Ufology, many years of research work, a document hoarder's living room, and an AA in a social science from the University of Santa Cruz. Frequently you'll see no formal degree at all, but a certificate in eastern medicine or spiritual energy or something.

Chiropractors in the US must complete a very short Masters-equivalent tech school experience and that's it before being allowed to practice; conversely a medical doctor goes through double the schooling, long internships and residency, and consequently will acquire skills commensurate with calling him a "doctor". Of course the American Chiropractic Association website makes it sound like chiropractors are even more skilled and knowledgeable than medical doctors - again with the "we know better than the professionals."

This "get one over on the experts" is part of the fuel for the diet books that claim to know the real answers, homeopathic remedies that can't possibly do anything at all, and unregulated herbal supplements that could actually do some harm. It's inconceivable to these people that if something actually worked well, real medical professionals would adopt the practice or medicine and it wouldn't be on the fringe anymore.

Some of this mistrust is virtually ancestral, like lawyer-hatred and expecting the mechanic to screw you, and probably stems from being in a bad situation and needing professional help but finding that the whole experience is going to cost a lot of money. Rather than the very sensible approach to this expense, to learn from your mistakes and avoid the harm in the future, and to understand that sometimes a thing will happen to you that is bad and costs money, the pseudoscientist mindset says, "they're all just trying to rip me off, I can probably fix this just fine by peeing on a turtle or rubbing dirt on it."

Some of the mistrust comes from a professional telling you that there is no alternative. Desperation. If a doctor says your cancer is terminal, you might just start eating all the fruit to see if the whacko you found on late-night public access really has found a cure for cancer. It's a sailor's superstition, trying everything because you lack control of your situation and latching on to anything that correlated to any improvement.

There's also a mistrust of any large organizations and a preference for a smaller, grassroots approach to anything regardless of the values and history of the organization. Almost an "if I didn't bake it myself, the cookie is probably poisoned" attitude. Again, this speaks to a desire for control of one's situation even if that control doesn't result in better outcomes.

Then there's the fortune-teller's fallacy where you remember all of your "hits" and forget your "misses". If you take ginkgo for memory and energy, you're going to remember that one time when you did really great stuff right after taking it - forgetting all the times it didn't help at all. And that's ignoring your placebo effect where peeing on a turtle can improve whatever you believe it might improve, which isn't an indictment of medicine so much as it is a testament to humans' ability to fool ourselves.

There is also a credulity in pseudoscience, a failure to validate your sources. But when the pseudoscientist is himself not a great source, and mistrusts authorities, it makes sense why he references writers like Von Daniken et. al. But part of it is an issue present in anyone doing research: you can't start with your conclusion and then gather all the evidence that supports you. You'll never learn anything and you'll frequently be wrong! Instead you research everything and from that material draw your conclusions, which may be totally opposite what you expected in the first place.

The last thing I can think of is a sense of punking the establishment, of making others appear foolish and the pseudoscientist appear superior and triumphant. But that's present in a lot of different people, and especially real scientists. In fact I think that's one of the core values that drive science.

[cerapa]

I just...

spent 2 or 3 hours

on fixing this.


Why the fuck can't things break in a way that makes some kind of sense? I apparently set a surface to be too small, so I wrote a few(thousand) pixels outside of the assigned area. Instead of crashing right then like something that makes sense, it instead crashes when I am converting an entirely different surface into a texture.

[Akura]

Got shorted again on my paycheck. Second time in a row they did this. They were supposed to give me the money they missed last time on this paycheck, but only gave me half of that. I tried calling the college, but nobody was there.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Probably won't be anyone there until next week. And then you better get lucky because you're nearing winter break, meaning you won't get satisfaction until next year.

Are you in a union? Might wanna call up your rep and get some value out of those dues you pay. If not ... no idea :/ But people generally respond when you send something in writing - not just email, actually send a letter with postage. It's like we have some kind of spiritual belief in the power of ink on paper (see: contracts, constitutions, receipts, published scientific work, diaries, affirmations on bathroom mirror post-its).

[Aseaheru]

The hoops I have to jump thru to get a job in a factory. Three professional references from businesses that I have been dealing with for a year? Fuck, I dont even know one.

[Bauglir]

A friend of mine just showed me a copy of an absurd assignment she's been given. The actual coding exercise that's supposed to demonstrate knowledge doesn't look so bad, but the situation they're using to set up an example is unintelligible. And, of course, when your specifications make no sense, you can't actually write the code, no matter how much you know about how it works.

Just a fun little example (the easiest to convey without the complete context): while setting up their definitions, they mention to assume P divides N evenly. Later, their example uses P = 2 and N = 7. CAN YOU FUCKERS EVEN INTO PRIMES

[da_nang]

A friend of mine just showed me a copy of an absurd assignment she's been given. The actual coding exercise that's supposed to demonstrate knowledge doesn't look so bad, but the situation they're using to set up an example is unintelligible. And, of course, when your specifications make no sense, you can't actually write the code, no matter how much you know about how it works.

Just a fun little example (the easiest to convey without the complete context): while setting up their definitions, they mention to assume P divides N evenly. Later, their example uses P = 2 and N = 7. CAN YOU FUCKERS EVEN INTO PRIMES

Reminds me how my DSP teacher asked us to prove that

which isn't true for k = N-m.

[MaximumZero]

I think the physics "theories" come from a desire to see that scientists are wrong.  Some people seem really attached to the idea that scientists are lying to them or that current scientific knowledge is easily disproven.

Sad, stupid folk they be.

Fixed that for you.

[Sergarr]

why is combat in DF so hard to frikking balance

I have a one part creature, with a single attack, fighting itself, with no pain, exhaustion, blood...

And it still managed to variate between "there is no force behind the attack" to "the attack glances away" to "fracturing" with instant death result.

There is quite literally no middle ground between lol-noping an attack and instant death. What the hell.

EDIT: The instant death proc is also fucking random. It can happen on the 1st attack, on the 10th attack, or on the 100th attack. It's competely random and there is no accumulation of damage going on.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Is it maybe because the creature has no skin or other protective layers, meaning an attack is a destructive hit on either a non-vital or a vital? I'm not into modding DF but it sounds like there should be another layer of damage mitigation in there that's missing.

[Putnam]

why is combat in DF so hard to frikking balance

I have a one part creature, with a single attack, fighting itself, with no pain, exhaustion, blood...

And it still managed to variate between "there is no force behind the attack" to "the attack glances away" to "fracturing" with instant death result.

There is quite literally no middle ground between lol-noping an attack and instant death. What the hell.

EDIT: The instant death proc is also fucking random. It can happen on the 1st attack, on the 10th attack, or on the 100th attack. It's competely random and there is no accumulation of damage going on.

You put too much force in the attack or strength on the creature or both, so it's overflowing sometimes.

[Sergarr]

It's basically two balls of stuff made out of the same material crashing into each other. There are no vitals there, except for the ball itself.

It's not overflowing, since the behavior keep the same even if I lower the velocity modifier to 1 (from default 1000).

[BlackFlyme]

Did my communications presentation today. I don't think we did that well. Lots of forgotten lines and 'umm'ing and 'uhh'ing. The foreign partner didn't seem to know what we were supposed to do. Talked during the wrong sections, and about the wrong things. There was one part where she was supposed to talk and then I was supposed to, where we would alternate between lines. She spoke all of her lines in a single sentence.

I couldn't properly fill out my peer evaluation form because one of my partners was hovering over my shoulder, telling me what to put down. Told me if I didn't, the rest of the group would fail me. I was told to give two of my partners perfect and to completely fail the foreign partner, because the bossy partner doesn't like her. The foreign partner did try to help, and was actually very helpful at times, despite all of our gripes about her. We did have to backtrack and waste time a bit because of her, but she did honestly try to help.

[Descan]

Sounds like something you talk to the professor about, that second paragraph.

[timferius]

Did my communications presentation today. I don't think we did that well. Lots of forgotten lines and 'umm'ing and 'uhh'ing. The foreign partner didn't seem to know what we were supposed to do. Talked during the wrong sections, and about the wrong things. There was one part where she was supposed to talk and then I was supposed to, where we would alternate between lines. She spoke all of her lines in a single sentence.

I couldn't properly fill out my peer evaluation form because one of my partners was hovering over my shoulder, telling me what to put down. Told me if I didn't, the rest of the group would fail me. I was told to give two of my partners perfect and to completely fail the foreign partner, because the bossy partner doesn't like her. The foreign partner did try to help, and was actually very helpful at times, despite all of our gripes about her. We did have to backtrack and waste time a bit because of her, but she did honestly try to help.

Two things.
First. Talk to you Prof/teacher/whatever privately, that's just 100% not right.

Second. Let me tell you a tale, a tale of terrifying group presentations from my first year at college.
The class was Sociology 101 essentially, and the project subject was prejudice in Disney movies and how they represented the times the movies were in etc. etc. If I remember correctly, we had British voiced villains going back to the war of independence, how the villains are always a different skin colour (and often darker. Best example? Alladin. Main character modeled after Tom Cruise, and the most Arabic looking characters are the guards and even more so Jafar, BAM), the "why is the red man red" song in Peter Pan (oh god it's terrribbblleeeeee), and... those damn crows in Dumbo... Now, we divied up the points, one each between the four of us, and the girl who got the last point was rather sheltered, rather rural, and quite Baptist (basically, extremly sheltered life).
We talked about the basic points and fleshed them out as a group, but left each persons section to themselves to write. We dind't review each others parts before the presentation. Then, in a dim room in front of all of our peers, we're on our final point. The rest of us are standing up front silently, and I kid you not, the poor sheltered girl presenting drops an N-bomb, right there (the classic form of the word, not the street slang at least). She sounded like some Southern Bell on a plantation, talking about her personal slaves or something. Just like, so matter of fact. Which led to us explainigng to her, in front of our class. Most mortifying expereince of my life.