LastThursday

Programming can be quite lucrative if you're interested in money. Working in the industry, at least for a year or two will give you decent experience and cash. Then you'll have a good grounding for working for yourself and your own projects. You don't need a degree for coding, I don't use mine for my day job at all. If you're interested in simulating physics for moving bodies with gravity in three dimensions, it's actually relatively simple to set up. Probably ChatGPT could do a decent job of it in the language of your choice.

I've do have an engineering degree and I develop web projects for my day job, so, yes to both. But I'm into in many many things. Scientists simulate whole galaxies, and indeed the universe, so I'm sure it's been investigated. Off the top of my head (although I don't know for sure), I'd say three bodies lying on a circle the same distance apart will follow each around - as long as the three bodies are identical and you start them off with the same velocities. That's because all the forces will be equal and unchanging on each body. Since force = mass x acceleration then the acceleration will also be unchanging (all bodies in circular motion are under constant acceleration).

Interesting. I think the Three Body Problem simply put is that there is no closed form solution to the equations, so no final equation you can plug numbers into to predict the motion. You can predict the motion with numerical methods (i.e. an algorithmic simulation), but this could diverge from reality over time due to inaccuracies in the initial numbers and resolution of the simulation. An external body C's trajectory also may not pass through the space between the bodies A and B, but some way off to the side. Two bodies will revolve around a barycentre, which is a centre of mass of the A and B system. So it may not have a figure eight configuration if this happens. Exponential growth and decay (damping), is closely linked to oscillation, in that they're both instances of solutions to differential equations: essentially equations that feedback into themselves. This comes from the infinite series expansion of the exponential function, from which can derive both the exponential function and trigonometric functions. Basically any oscillation is the tug of war between two opposing exponential actions/forces. Circles and ellipses arise out of the motions because these are oscillatory motions, the opposing forces being inertia and gravity. The case of gravity is interesting, because bodies must somehow "communicate" their presence to each other. Since the force between two bodies is dependent on their distance to each other, this distance must somehow be communicated between bodies (i.e. force or warping of spacetime). But no communication can happen instantly, and so there is always a lag dependent on distance. The upshot is that the force felt between two bodies is not the instantaneous force, but a delayed one. For example if the Sun suddenly disappeared, it would take 8 minutes for that gravitational effect on Earth to "update". Ultimately, this is the cause of gravitational waves and frame dragging. If you want to simulate things correctly, this effect needs to be taken into account. Gravity can also not be shielded from (that we know of), so it has infinite reach - everything tugs on everything else in the universe. So there are no instances of an isolated system, and any simulation can only ever be an approximation, even if you had infinite precision. I'd say there isn't much difference between a two body problem and three body problem. Both will suffer from numerical precision problems. You can't know initial conditions with complete accuracy and you can't compute most functions with complete accuracy either, even with a closed form solution. The exponential function is an infinite series of computations. But there will be solutions to the three body problem which are closed form and so form stable orbits.

Reminds me of this:

I seem to have entered another "chatty" phase in my never ending journal. Anyway. When my mum passed away - now four years, yikes - I took the stuff that had some sort of sentimental value or attachment from my childhood home. I knew at the time that whatever I didn't take would be lost forever. Whilst clearing her place, there were one or two things that I expected to see, which were missing. Maybe my mum gave them to my sister years earlier. Mostly it was jewellery, and especially my gold baby bracelet inscribed with my name. I also did manage to displace my first school satchel and first school books in the clear out, and so lost them forever, which makes me kind of sad. She had a bunch of photos (2000 odd), which I wanted to share with my family, so I began the never ending process of scanning them and uploading them on Google Photos to share. It did strike me as a bit odd at the time that I was saving something tangible and long lasting, by "saving" them in an intangible ephemeral way - and which would succumb to time first? the digital or the analogue. As well as sharing and archiving for posterity, it was a kind of personal archaeology. I was able to connect back to the events and people that had made me who I am now, and got reminded of who I used to be. That youthful me is still inside me, both in a sense of being a kind of separate entity, but also how he still influences the me now. I'm a chimera of the old and the new. Surrounding myself with those memories makes that younger me "come back" to an extent and I also see a number of similarities in circumstances between my teenaged self and myself nearly forty years later. I do wonder what my dad and sister experience when looking at those same photos. Most of it feels like a very familiar but now foreign land, both in memory and in culture and in my identity. There were also books and magazines. These also make me remember what I was into when I was a kid. The usual boy stuff I suppose, dinosaurs and planets, ancient history, computers, maths and adventure books; the famous five, and sci-fi, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Br'er Rabbit and Rupert the Bear. I scan through them occasionally to get glimpse of my old self again, and compare how different I am now to him. But some of those same interests never really waned. I also found a load of cassette tapes which have been gathering dust the past four years (and probably decades more than that!). I had to buy a new cassette recorder to play them - I had an old cassette Walkman, but it was inconvenient to use. On them were a mix of music mostly recorded from radio, which my sister had done in the early nineties. And I also found a copy of a tape that I'd remembered but had been lost, it made me kind of laugh to play it, it's so ridiculous: Klaus Wunderlich on his organ - look it up. There were plenty of computer tapes too. I still have a working computer that I could load them on to, but not an appropriate cable, and I don't like to fire it up too often now for fear of something unfixable breaking on it. I use an emulator on my PC instead. But what to do about scanning the tapes so I could play them on the emulator instead? I wrote a program on the PC to convert the sound waves on the cassette into digital bits and bytes, it mostly works ok - how does linear regression and standard deviation sound, maths, I love it. I was reminded of what I was doing probably forty years ago now. In one of the files I found a diary I'd kept for about two weeks, with very quick and short entries: Fri, went swimming at school, Mon, met up with John - that sort of thing. I worked out I would have written that in January 1984, blimey. My grammar and syntax were so different then, very "London" - I'm so much posher now, lmao. I don't know why I'm so intrigued by this sort of personal archaeology. It's perhaps because soon after I went to university, there was an abrupt disconnection from my childhood, and despite just still being a teenager at 19, I very quickly became an adult and closer to the current version of me. I wasn't aware enough at the time what had happened, and was just happy to be someone new. Now all this time later I can reconnect and patch over that abruptness in my life. It's an ongoing process, so I can become whole again.

Relationships are complicated. There's definitely unconditional love: giving each other time, care and attention freely. Just the fact that you're both in a relationship is love itself. But there's also conditional love - showing love in the right way to each other, keeping an account of how much each person does for each other, and how much each act is worth - i.e. reciprocation. And there's also nearly always an underlying expectation about who your partner should be, how they should be acting and whether they fit the archetype in your head - and they're constantly being assessed against this template. True unconditional love is hard, and probably unreasonable.

People are flaky all the time for all sorts of reasons. Just hold yourself to your own standards and use yourself as an example to others. Learning to detach from expecting other people to be like you, will make your happier. You should always have a plan B knowing that people might flake on you.

Of course you will. It is if you've got no charisma or personality or nothing going for you. It's more a game of being in the right place at the right time. Increase your chances by being more social, going out, and improving yourself overall. Most importantly seizing the opportunity when it arises, most times you only get one chance to strike! You'll be friendzoned if you don't take the initiative quickly. Yes. Is there someone for everyone? No. The pool of potentials can be too small for many many reasons. In my case, I find most women lacklustre, fickle, dumb and they hurt my head, and I also don't put in the effort. But, they're still fun. (Boy if the women in my life heard me say this they'd crucify me, long live anonymity.)

Majorly procrastinating today. I have zero interest in doing work. Just want to listen to music, potter around, walk, talk. Anyway, occasional poetry, ha! Inspiration from on old cassette tape I found: Barely a woman, I fell in love, With a man from heaven, He spoke sweetly, Said he would meet me, Said he would call me, Sometime, somewhere. Barely a woman, I fell in love, I couldn't care even, Called him weekly, Said he would court me, Said he would marry me, Someplace, somewhen. Hope, hope, hope. Barely a woman, I fell in love, Said I would leave him! Why wouldn't he meet me? Said he's just friendly, Said he'd married already, Yesterday, yesterday.

Class. Reminds me of somewhere I've been to... nope it's gone.

Killing time, slowly and quickly. Floating above and on. Seeing everything, and nothing. Living with purpose and aimlessly. It's funny really. The body lives with purpose and forces that upon our other self. This other self works completely differently, it's not innately anything and so is constructed out of nothing, like a sand castle. Try as it might this other self cannot overcome the body, it needs sleep, it needs food, it gets ill, it gets old and fragile, it needs warmth, it needs to be used, it gets tired, it needs to reproduce. The other self is in complete thrall to body. The other self, can be so blind that it doesn't know why it feels bad, but the body always knows. The other self tries to subdue and control and modify the body to its own ends, and those ends of other selves. It's mostly in vain. Should the sand castle be kicked over and exposed for what it is? This self says no, it has an iron grip on its own existence. Instead it likes to get lost in itself and weave ever more complex threads into its fabric just so that it can justify itself: but it's always just a butler, a gardener, a major domo to the body's whims. When the body dies, all those machinations were for naught.

Don't underestimate the effect of flying on your health (or travel in general). Being in close proximity to a few hundred people in an enclosed space will increase your chances of getting sick. Many times I've got sick after flying, and I hardly ever get ill myself. Also look at potential vitamin deficiency, especially vitamin D in more northerly latitudes and in winter. Maintaining a base level of fitness (i.e. exercising regularly), will help a lot against getting ill.

Two things spring to mind. Eternity requires existence. Is eternity enough to permute an infinite number of things? If there are only a finite number of things to permute, then clearly only a finite number of scenarios can play out.

The fine tuning arises because of Unity. If Unity is a cake then it's whole. If you cut the cake in half, it doesn't seem so amazing that the two halves fit together, right? even though the two halves are different from each other. So it is with reality, it's like a cake with an infinite number of cuts. From that point of view it isn't surprising that there are so many happy coincidences and so many bits fit together so well. If we could work out where/what every single cut was, then it would seem a lot less like fine tuning.

Interesting stuff. From my understanding the guy's created some sort of new polymer that goes in the soil under the plant. The polymer soaks up free electrons created during photosynthesis and turns it into electricity. My engineering brain thinks it's too good to be true though. Firstly, nature isn't generally wasteful, so energy in the form of free electrons shouldn't be there, and if they are then they'll be used for some other biological process: i.e. you're stealing energy away from the plants. Secondly, it's very easy to create a battery nearly out of nothing (think potato battery using some metal strips). It could be the polymer is simply acting like the metal strips in the potato and creating a battery. In that case the energy isn't coming from the plant at all, but simply the breakdown of the soil and the polymer: so like a battery all the energy will be used up eventually. You never get something for nothing. Lastly, what's the cost of this polymer and what's the environmental cost of producing it?

@Flowerfaeiry it seems like you're looking for certainty (or Truth) and wanting to be guided by others into it. Largely truth as most people have it is in beliefs, hope and faith. The fact that you're undecided yourself shows that those three things can change over time, and so are not an absolute kind of truth, but just a temporary stepping stone and that's ok. Other people are just imperfect mirrors of truth and not the source of it. I'd say your direct experiences with Ayahuasca are closer to truth, although I'm just guessing. Truth often hides in plain sight, and sometimes it reveals itself directly to you, you just have to prepare the way and be receptive and patient.

I've come to realise that even when I'm dreaming (asleep) I'm still me. It is the same me as from waking life in the dream. This is curious as my dreamscapes are not a carbon copy of waking life. What I dream doesn't match, but who I am when I dream does. There is a strong sense of continuity there from sleeping to waking. Whenever I awake however, at some point it's like a switch is thrown and waking life comes flooding in: all the concerns minor and major and I realise I'm back "here". So in that sense some part of me is lost or inactive when I'm dreaming. But I'm still often embodied in dreams, albeit occasionally with another person's body (or anatomy!). That isn't to say that my dreams are not sensible, in that they mimic waking life, populated with characters and places and generally not fantastical in appearance, just fantastical situationally: walking in railway tunnels or hovering or hanging off a balcony ledge or exploring brooding rooms. I often wish I could switch off that part of me that switches on when I wake up. I do remember being a child and feeling much more like I do in my dreams; there isn't a running commentary and anxiety about every little thing, I just was, and integrated into my surroundings, rather than being a separate thing that doesn't quite fit, or at least has to work at fitting into my existence. It's that integrated seamlessness that I experience in dreams that I want permanently when I'm awake. A kind of non-fragmented unity, a sense that I belong in waking life and everything "just works". There are of course moments when this does happen, in social situations, or when drunk, or walking or driving, where time and inhibition disappear and I become one with my environment, but even then there is still contrivance and effort involved. Being that I at some time transitioned from being permanently in a dreamlike reality when I was a child, to the state I experience now, I wonder what it was that triggered the change? Did I really "wake up" when I hit puberty, or did I just become fractured and divorced from the comfort of "the waking dream"? I have successively woken up more times since then, and into my current state, each time having more clarity and seeing further. But, each time I somehow got pushed farther away from whatever it was I am actually supposed to be. Now I can't get back there easily, I have to sleep and go into another world entirely. So it looks like I will have to keep awakening just so that I can live a dream. What a merry-go-round.

Thanks! It's a mix of symbology and AI. It's a symbol of potential rebirth. Or possibly a symbol that I could crack at any moment. Probably the latter.

@Juns Everything is real because, as you say, it's all consciousness. But. Imagine you walk past a restaurant, and displayed on a table outside is a beautiful huge freshly made pizza. It looks so good with the cheese perfectly melted on the tomato base. You go up to it and then realise it's made of plastic (this has happened to me in Japan, but there it was noodles). Was the pizza real? This shows that a "pizza" is a thing of the imagination, a concept. The direct experience of a pizza is actually the red of the tomato, the yellow of the cheese, the smell of the bread - and you choose to call that combination of experiences a pizza.

Why not just call it what it is?: sharing. It's the primary way people bond. By opening up you also encourage others to open up and we can help each other out and become less like strangers. But bear in mind that sharing difficult things could be hard for others to handle especially if they're inexperienced: it involves a certain level of commitment others may not want to get into. You have to be able to discern if someone is "ready" to hear what you have to say, and to not get emotionally triggered if they're not interested. If you're not good at that, then be wary of sharing. I'd say sharing on the internet is far far different from sharing with close friends and family however. The audience is much larger and the range of responses you'll get much wider - so it's more difficult to work out what is good and useful advice. And if you don't get much of a response, you may feel downhearted that nobody cares about what you care about. What's also lost on the internet is context. People who know you directly have access to your circumstances and history. We on the internet have none of that, so it's much harder to give you relevant advice. On the flip-side we don't have an emotional attachment or an axe to grind, so we might be more detached and objective, and we might notice things you don't. Also, if you're not reasonable at language (on a forum say), it may be difficult for people to understand your problems. It's certainly possible to make an identity out of trauma, as a way to make people love you or notice you. I'd say that trauma can be extremely difficult to resolve and a lot of the time it's nearly impossible to do without some outside intervention of some sort - just discussing and thinking doesn't help that much - going on a forum may not be best way to resolve trauma. But, it depends greatly on what the trauma was and your response to it. Trauma is often very visceral and ingrained as part of your makeup.

It's about contrast. If you're just like everyone else, then you won't be noticed. But if you're unique then you'll stand out. Why stand out though? Simple, to get attention. Why get attention? Simple, to feel loved. Thing is, to get attention you have to be unique in very narrow ways, to the detriment of all your other qualities. The reality is that every single one of us is unique in an infinite number of ways: and we should love everyone for their unique mix of qualities.

It's unfortunate, but I have no answer. My instinct is to go meta, but I wouldn't know what that was exactly. Maybe start by asking: "Am I truly a nihilist or do I just like scaring myself?". Maybe look for an absolute that you can rely on: the experience of existing or consciousness itself - but that doesn't give much to hold on to. And life isn't as bleak as floating in the ocean, there is actually a lot of stuff to get lost in and distracted with (i.e. kicking is more fun than drowning).

@rachMiel by your own definition, Nihilism is complete relativity. The despair comes out of naively believing in absolutes and then through some process having to reject all absolutes, it's a form of grief. Then comes the realisation: how does anything get built, if there is no base to start from? Or the flipside: there's all this stuff, but it's completely arbitrary and absurd. It's like treading water in the ocean, you're only held up as long as you keep kicking - and whether you stop or not, it's despair both ways.

I suppose an absolute is a truth that is unchanging and eternal, everything else is finite and relative. An absolute isn't relative because nothing can affect it. So to know an absolute, you must know with certainty that it is unchanging and eternal. But how can you know something is eternal without experiencing its entirety? How can you know an absolute never changes, again, without waiting for it to change? If you do anything else it's blind faith. No, we only ever experience relativity.