On the socialization of children

[Cosine 5]

Many of us are, but it's an incorrect assumption.

How old is everyone, if you don't mind telling me?

Closing them works just as well.

But no. Clarification - I can normally protect myself by not thinking about things at an atomic level.

Protect yourself from what?

The confusion afflicted upon my poor quasi-educated mind by the concepts manifest in quantum mechanics.
Quantum entanglement is cool, just... mind-boggling.
Probably because I learned Einstein's stuff first.

Sorry, then you aren't qualified to be a Doktor at this time.

Of course not; I don't want to be a Doktor. If I am to have a title, I don't want somebody else's.
And I wouldn't be up to it. Must finish some education first... everyone here seems to be much older than me.

It isn't a title, it's a profession.

Specifically, the profession of grabbing the bull by the tail and facing the facts in the face, no matter how awful they may be.  It's about The Truth, instead of comforting lies.  If the universe is really that weird, it does no good to pretend that it isn't.

In that case, nevermind about what I said before. I'll consider it.
(Like I'll ever qualify.)

Truth and I have gotten into some drunken brawls before, though. But I think Dishonesty was supplying the beer.

[Doktor Howl]

Truth and I have gotten into some drunken brawls before, though. But I think Dishonesty was supplying the beer.

Self-deception and Wishful Thinking were holding the funnel.

[LMNO]

Many of us are, but it's an incorrect assumption.

How old is everyone, if you don't mind telling me?

I'm 15 years old.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm 28.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Many of us are, but it's an incorrect assumption.

How old is everyone, if you don't mind telling me?

I'm 15 years old.

Truth. Just like every FBI agent online.

[Freeky]

  LMNO.

[Doktor Howl]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

[Freeky]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

Well, if you didn't eat ccactus all the time, you'd remember where you put them, Doktor.

[Cosine 5]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

*throws DMT*

[Doktor Howl]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

*throws DMT*

No, not your pansified modern drugs.  REAL drugs.  I want drugs that will make me feel 10' tall with the libido of a rutting bull and the strength of 5 men, and that will make me feel 6 times as smart as Stephen Hawking and make me shit like a goddamn dumptruck.

A DUMP TRUCK!  DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME, YOU YOUNG PUNK?  ARE YOU MISERABLE LITTLE FUCKERS EVEN BORN WITH EARS ANYMORE?  PICS OF YOUR FUCKING HEAD, OR YOU HAVE NO GODDAMN EARS!

[Kai]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

*throws DMT*

No, not your pansified modern drugs.  REAL drugs.  I want drugs that will make me feel 10' tall with the libido of a rutting bull and the strength of 5 men, and that will make me feel 6 times as smart as Stephen Hawking and make me shit like a goddamn dumptruck.

A DUMP TRUCK!  DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME, YOU YOUNG PUNK?  ARE YOU MISERABLE LITTLE FUCKERS EVEN BORN WITH EARS ANYMORE?  PICS OF YOUR FUCKING HEAD, OR YOU HAVE NO GODDAMN EARS!

So, amphetamines?

[Doktor Howl]

I am 123 years old.  I am a collection of surgical tubes, heart monitors, and pumps, and all my organs are made of glass.  AND I NEED PILLS, DAMMIT!  YOUR FUCKING VOODOO HOMEOPATHIC SHIT CANNOT HELP ME!  I NEED DRUGS!

*throws DMT*

No, not your pansified modern drugs.  REAL drugs.  I want drugs that will make me feel 10' tall with the libido of a rutting bull and the strength of 5 men, and that will make me feel 6 times as smart as Stephen Hawking and make me shit like a goddamn dumptruck.

A DUMP TRUCK!  DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME, YOU YOUNG PUNK?  ARE YOU MISERABLE LITTLE FUCKERS EVEN BORN WITH EARS ANYMORE?  PICS OF YOUR FUCKING HEAD, OR YOU HAVE NO GODDAMN EARS!

So, amphetamines?

JUST LIKE MAMA USED TO MAKE.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

How old is everyone, if you don't mind telling me?

I'll be 70 next Spring.

[Triple Zero]

As far as the knot in the rope question, it's semantic.  We use the word "knot" to describe a configuration of rope.

No, it wasn't. Well I didn't mean it that way.

You can call it "configuration", but that was not what I was talking about. Yes the configuration is part of it, and so is the physical rope. But put those two together and they attain an emergent property which we call a knot.

Easiest example is to take two circular pieces of string. One is a circle, the other is the trefoil knot. Physically they are equivalent, their configurations are different. But there is more to it than that. You can fiddle with both pieces of string and make them into diferent configurations, but you can never turn one into the other.
That is a new property, it emerges from the knot and its configuration as more than the exact sum of its parts.

Another example. In space, floating a flat triangle. It has the property of two-sidedness. You can move and stretch and bend the triangle, but it remains two-sided. Now add another triangle. Put them together, stretch and form a strip, bend, flip and attach and you just made yourself a Moebius strip which has a new property: one-sidedness (and if you don't flip, this space still has the property of two-sidedness as well).

This is the simplest example I've come across that shows that Emergence is in fact a real phenomenon and not just semantics. This new property of one-sidedness is explicitly more than the sum of its parts, neither of which had that property before.

[Doktor Howl]

Sounds like topology.

God hates topology, and he'll punish us for it, one fine day.