Hacker News: importantstuff

New comment by importantstuff in "Astrophysicists find no 'hair' on black holes"

importantstuff — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 19:44:00 +0000

You might want to consider the article more carefully, especially the section "Short Hair, Long Hair". The predictions of string theory are in no way falsified by the analysis conducted by these researchers.

New comment by importantstuff in "Claude can now search the web"

importantstuff — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 07:51:07 +0000

Do you mean Kessler syndrome by any chance?

New comment by importantstuff in "Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’"

importantstuff — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:26:11 +0000

The top answer has multiple reasons. The one I am referring to in particular is this section: "I should point out that if you believe that the standard model matter is complete, then anomaly cancellation requires that the charge of the proton is equal to the charge of the positron, because there is instanton mediated proton decay as discovered by t'Hooft, and this is something we might concievable soon observe in accelerators. So in order to make the charge of the proton slightly different from the electron, you can't modify parameters in the standard model, you need to add a heck of a lot of unobserved nearly massless fermions with tiny U(1) charge." It makes no reference to quantum gravity.

New comment by importantstuff in "Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’"

importantstuff — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 07:06:26 +0000

No one who has replied to your question has got the right answer. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/21753/why-do-ele... has the right answer. There are multiple aspects to this argument, but essentially, the symmetries of your system force the charges in the Standard Model (quarks and leptons) to be the way they are due to gauge anomaly cancellation. If you believe in quark confinement, which is extremely well motivated, computationally, theoretically and experimentally, then the fact that the proton has exactly charge +1 follows naturally.

"Is Zero a Number?": Interviews with a Whole Class of Kindergartners

importantstuff — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 06:56:51 +0000

Article URL: https://jennalaib.wordpress.com/2023/09/19/is-zero-a-number-interviews-with-a-whole-class-of-kindergartners/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047772

Points: 61

# Comments: 91

The Sokal Affair

importantstuff — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:42:50 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37892766

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

The Letter of Columbus to Luis De Sant Angel Announcing His Discovery

importantstuff — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 14:47:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37715944

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Flip a biased coin for 10 minutes

importantstuff — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 07:54:39 +0000

Article URL: https://elmwealth.com/coin-flip/game/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37631007

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by importantstuff in "Profile of Sabine Hossenfelder"

importantstuff — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 14:58:58 +0000

I don't have a quick explanation, but rather a quick anectode. The incompatibility of MOND with relativity used to be called "Bekenstein's Theorem", based on the idea that Bekenstein had tried to write down such a theory but failed to do so. Since Bekenstein was a very smart guy, if he couldn't do it, it couldn't be done. When he heard about this, he proceeded to write down an incredibly ugly theory called TeVeS, but, well, that theory's got fields too (Tensor, Vector, Scalar), so in the end it's just dark matter all the way down.