Hacker News: quantum_mcts

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Position: LLMs Can't Jump"

quantum_mcts — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:30:59 +0000

The popular retelling of how Einstein created Special Relativity to "Resolve the contradictions of Michelson-Morly experiments" is very reductive to the history of the question. The epitome is the quote from the paper:

> From the two postulates, Einstein derived the Lorentz trans- formation ...

If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"?

The groundwork for Special Relativity was the study of electrodynamics and symmetries of Maxwell equations. The Einsteins paper was literally called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" and never cites Michelson and Morley.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "The Sling: Humanity's Forgotten Power"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 20:13:01 +0000

Around 2018 I got obsessed with slings - I've made a couple from paracord and was practicing almost every day. After about a year I only managed to consistently launch stones in the rough desired direction. Another (COVID) year and got to the level where my spread was about 5 degrees. Systematically hitting a reasonably sized target was still beyond my ability. Plus early symptoms of tennis elbow...

Slinging is hard, requires a lot of dedication and systematic practice. Stil, the feeling when the rock hits a target and "explodes" is worth it.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Some Republicans Warn of Government Overreach on Free Speech"

quantum_mcts — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:45:04 +0000

“Oh it’s about ME now?!..”

New comment by quantum_mcts in "EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 17:56:32 +0000

Total amount of reactor*years so far is roughly 20000. 3 core meltdowns amounts for 0.015% per reactor per year.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Lessons I learned working at an art gallery"

quantum_mcts — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 08:58:11 +0000

0. There's money laundering.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Crypto Mixer Samourai Wallet's Co-Founders Arrested for Money Laundering"

quantum_mcts — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:59:16 +0000

It is sort of like saying that crypto is less money-laundery than banks because more money gets laundered through banks than through crypto.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Crypto Mixer Samourai Wallet's Co-Founders Arrested for Money Laundering"

quantum_mcts — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 15:13:08 +0000

Here’s an exercise. Go to Wikipedia for “Money Laundering” -> “Notable cases” and sum the amounts laundered by all famous banks for the last 10 or 5 years.

Then try to say again that “crypto is for money laundering” with a straight face.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Philosophy is an art"

quantum_mcts — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:10:51 +0000

Yes

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Anomalous contribution to galactic rotation curves due to stochastic spacetime"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:21:02 +0000

Yes it can. https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.7438

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Anomalous contribution to galactic rotation curves due to stochastic spacetime"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 18:00:30 +0000

Cold dark matter made of weakly interacting massive particles can.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Anomalous contribution to galactic rotation curves due to stochastic spacetime"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 11:55:16 +0000

Good. Now explain the Bullet Cluster.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "The Intellectual We Deserve (2018)"

quantum_mcts — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 13:04:44 +0000

> First, take some extremely obvious platitude or truism. Then, try to restate your platitude using as many words as possible, as unintelligibly as possible, while never repeating yourself exactly. Use highly technical language drawn from many different academic disciplines, so that no one person will ever have adequate training to fully evaluate your work. Construct elaborate theories with many parts. Draw diagrams. Use italics liberally to indicate that you are using words in a highly specific and idiosyncratic sense. Never say anything too specific, and if you do, qualify it heavily so that you can always insist you meant the opposite. Then evangelize: speak as confidently as possible, as if you are sharing God’s own truth. Accept no criticisms: insist that any skeptic has either misinterpreted you or has actually already admitted that you are correct. Talk as much as possible and listen as little as possible.

Sounds like an LLM prompt...

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Why not punish families? A challenge for consequentialists"

quantum_mcts — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 06:58:32 +0000

Really weird post and discussion around it. The "family" is not some abstract entity / offender's property. The "family" is made of other humans. "Not punishing people that didn't do anything wrong" is pretty high at the list of my consequentialist morals.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "All of Physics in 9 Lines"

quantum_mcts — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 17:12:03 +0000

Similar stuff by this guy already posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32367085 It is a crackpot pseudoscience.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Experiencing decreased performance with ChatGPT-4"

quantum_mcts — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 16:59:16 +0000

Sampling temperature.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "We don’t trade with ants"

quantum_mcts — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 06:53:18 +0000

We trade with bees though.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Heavy particles don’t explain gravitational lensing oddities"

quantum_mcts — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:54:58 +0000

I've long noticed that this idea - that scientists just "jumped to conclusion" that there must be some dark matter to resolve some observational inconsistencies - is very prevalent among non-specialists. It could not be further from the truth, of course - as soon as the rigorous statistical study of galaxy rotation curves was provided by Vera Rubin et. al. in the 80s, the MOND classes of alternatives to gravity started to appear.

I tried to understand why this narrative is so prevalent, and it looks like it is due to its very appealing nature - both to the listener and to the speaker: "all those egghead scientists can't see an obvious solution to a problem they are fighting with for decades". I also noticed that when you get deeper into it, then you find that the source - the "speaker" part in the whole narrative - is some kind of science popularizer. Who at the same time (surprise) is a proponent of his own flavor of modified gravity theory.

Truth is - everyone, including me, had this idea as soon as they first heard about the DM. If you actually study all the evidence and discussions around the subject, you'll see that introducing an extra "dark" particle is the most obvious solution to the whole collection of observational inconsistencies. Modifying gravity in such a way so that it is self-consistent and consistent with all the observations... I actually don't think anyone completely finished that project so far.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes"

quantum_mcts — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 22:04:10 +0000

> You can stop reading right there as this immediately identifies this piece as disingenuous at best

Or you can keep reading it and see that it literally says "It is a misnomer to say renewables are carbon-free compared to nuclear power." And discusses the very things you stated was disingenuously discounted.

New comment by quantum_mcts in "Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness"

quantum_mcts — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 16:28:20 +0000

Couldn’t it be that people become more aware of mental health problems because of social media?

New comment by quantum_mcts in "And yet It Understands"

quantum_mcts — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 21:54:30 +0000

Euclid’s proof in form of a poem. In style of Shakespeare.