Abdullah Khalid @abdullahkhalids@anarchism.space

The mathematical "reason" is that at low energies all potentials are linear or quadratic, or the inverse square of planetary motion.

But that doesn't explain why at a very wide variety of length scales, all human-sense-observable phenomena settled down to such energies.

A curious fact about Newtonian Mechanics: It explains and accurately models pretty much all mechanical motion observable by unaided human senses. But soon as you build some sophisticated experimental appratus it breaks down. eg. Mercury precession or double slit.

@smari Thank you. I am glad you recommended a recent book, which are usually aware of the impacts of modern high-technology on the feasibility of political and economic theories.

@smari What would you recommend someone read to understand mutualist anarchism?

@michael_nielsen Debt: The First 5000 Years has a chapter on middle ages that discusses the history of debt relations as they developed in that era's Islamic and Christian empires, etc.

But the book is biased because the author is trying to promote anarchism. So a fascinating book but not for everyone.

An interesting critique of certain economic systems based on money. The question, why is our economic system so prone to short term behavior. Ans:

Risk is a monotonically (rapidly) increasing function of time, which determines the optimization behavior of agents in the game.

@michael_nielsen The quote, "one doesn't understand math, only gets used to it" comes to mind. I posit this is partly because math is often taught without exploration or why certain design choices were made. Students later explore the side paths and make the mistakes that helps them see how all the pieces fit together. That's when they understand.

@paulg @Balaji Quote tweeting was just a formalization of linking to tweets, screenshotting and subtweeting, that happened before QT. So, QTs formalized mockery too, and escalated it. Once Mastodon becomes big enough, it would be interesting to do sentiment analysis research on how QTs change mockery levels.

@automatid @paulg @Balaji QTs move the discussion into a different segment of the social networks. If A tweets and B QTs, then the QT is not visible to As followers who don't follow B. But visible to all Bs followers. So B has a safer place to mock.

If B replies to A, then they have to deal with As followers.

@viktorbir @johncarlosbaez @tao I think what he is saying is easier to imagine with large n. Drop n balls connected by long strings simultaneously from the same height. Terminal velocity of the collection will be the terminal velocity of one ball. Now reduce string height to zero. Now the balls basically form a sheet. And terminal velocity will be of a sheet of that dimension.