General > General Technical Chat
Sick of ridiculous KVL infighting
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on January 14, 2022, 12:08:06 am ---Did I miss something? :o
--- End quote ---
Perhaps? The OP is using a newly created account to call others nerds just because their own opinion is not gaining traction.
(That opinion being "this subject should be clear to everyone, so stop discussing it, it scares me".)
It is a social tactic that happens to push one of my buttons. I absolutely hate it.
(No, I'm not drunk/high/angry, just very sensitive to these kinds of social-based attacks when someones opinion is not gaining traction. Others do not care, but I do: I've had enough of them.)
bdunham7:
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 14, 2022, 12:19:13 am ---Perhaps? The OP is using a newly created account to call others nerds just because their own opinion is not gaining traction.
--- End quote ---
I don't know whether the OP is a sockpuppet or a longtime lurker that finally wanted to say something. I'll presume the latter unless the mods bounce him.
Ordinarily I might agree with you but the thread in question is so vile and polluted I don't think it is even possible to have a sane conversation within it. I tried to point out a few things that I thought would lead to some agreement, but I regret even wasting the time.
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on January 14, 2022, 12:26:46 am ---Ordinarily I might agree with you but the thread in question is so vile and polluted I don't think it is even possible to have a sane conversation within it. I tried to point out a few things that I thought would lead to some agreement, but I regret even wasting the time.
--- End quote ---
I avoided that thread for the same reason. However, starting a new thread with an insult is not a valid way to start a conversation, is it?
(I understand that to some, it is not an insult. But to me, the entire pattern [of starting a new thread with an insult, claiming that no-discussion is the "professional approach", with their own opinion as "the obviously correct answer, case closed"] is a very sore button.)
I really, really hate such detestable attempts at social manipulation.
To me, the entire discussion is a bit funky, because as nctnico said,
--- Quote from: nctnico on January 13, 2022, 05:57:59 pm ---IMHO the whole point is to understand when a simplification works and when not.
--- End quote ---
and this observation should also be extended to the model used to describe a situation.
One thing I absolutely love about physics simulations is that no matter what you do, the first step when you get some results is to analyze whether it makes any sense. A part of that is to guesstimate the various factors (say, to within a few orders of magnitude), whether the model includes everything that should be included, and so on. Only a small part of that is estimating the approximations used; it is the appropriateness of the model used that is the key.
I do find it interesting that the skill of shifting ones mind across model complexity levels is relatively rare. In programming, I've seen flamewars between top-down (starting with an overall plan, and finishing with actual code) and bottom-up (starting with actual code, then connecting them together, to build a larger more complex whole) approaches, that completely baffles me: I proceed with the hardest problems first, until I can build a reliable model of the end result, happily skipping between complexity levels as needed.
I can see exactly why the same would happen with those who are used to treating everything as a field, and those who work with circuits.
Perhaps it is too hard for most humans to encompass both at the same time –– it is to me, that's why I have had to learn to skip and switch as needed ––, but assuming ones favourite model suffices everywhere is ... well, insufficient/wrong/silly. In physics simulations, one would trip on it immediately, and fail.
Molecular dynamics is an excellent example. If we take only the outermost interacting electrons in atoms, and model the rest of the atoms (both nucleus and the rest of the electrons) as a single point charge, and only consider the rest states of each atom, we can model all chemical bonds to a very high degree. (The charges themselves are modeled as quantum mechanical waves, see e.g. Hartree-Fock method; this is why these simulations are called "quantum mechanical" or "ab initio", starting from the simplest possible interaction model.)
However, the math is so onerous, that even the largest supercomputers have issues with more than some thousands of electrons. Simplify the interaction model, for example via Embedded Atom Model for metals (albeit you need multi-band EAM for some metals like ferrochrome), and you can model millions to billions of atoms, and get essentially the same results.
Which one is correct? Well, neither, because both are approximations. For some systems, both are precise enough to yield useful information, and are used every day in materials research (even in now-mundane things like thin film tech, ion implantation, and so on).
(And yes, there are lots of QM/ab initio simulators using VASP or Dalton, and scoffing on those who use classical potential models or force fields (naming varies between physics, chemistry, and biology, even though they all do more or less similar simulations). It, too, is horribly silly. And very often leads to someone, usually an established professor, making an argument from authority, which is even more disgraceful.)
Simon:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on January 14, 2022, 12:06:08 am ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on January 13, 2022, 05:01:23 pm ---In reality, the fact is there is no large dispute.
--- End quote ---
Once I figured that out I tried--rather clumsily I suppose--to point out what I saw as the primary issue leading to the disagreement and later the misdirection of attention as to which 'path' was important--it took me a bit longer than I'd like to admit to catch onto this--that sort of made it look like a much more noteworthy issue than it really is. But the main contestants weren't interested in any of that, just proving that they were superior and engineers are stupid. And then along came some additional contestants to confirm that.
The OP in this thread has a reasonable, short explanation for those that don't want to read 39 pages of name calling and drivel. However, I would replace
--- Quote ---So, any time we have a changing field or current (e.g. AC at any frequency), we can no longer define voltage.
--- End quote ---
with "there are multiple possible definitions of voltage" or something like that. Proving that we can't define voltage by measuring something with voltmeters seems a bit silly.
--- End quote ---
The problem is that thanks to certain not as prolific as the masses think and misguided public figures ventures, engineering is now "cool" and the bar for interest has dropped down very low and suddenly every idiot that usually would be more interested in posing down the local pub to attract girls thinks he is an expert because he saw a video made by someone as dumb as them that explained it for them.
Siwastaja:
I don't think it's a sock puppet account, the writing style does not seem to match with anyone. OTOH, I'm not an expert in analysing human communication, so could be wrong. It could be a sockpuppet with careful change in writing style. Maybe an actual expert can chime in, if we have one.
The fact that the poster has 1 post is not surprising. Because the matter is discussed outside of EEVBlog forum, it brings people in when they notice it's being discussed here. Has happened before.
In any case, it's up to Nominal Animal to prove his claim that this is a sockpuppet account. Do you actually have some information we others don't? Or are you just participating in these name calling social games you so much hate? Calling one a sockpuppet is no different from any other name calling that's going on. And don't get me wrong, I totally see the point, I hate social games too, but you must admit they sometimes just suck you in - and it doesn't make you feel good about yourself.
Regarding social manipulation, this is what I hate above all, and having had about three years to think about this, I'm becoming more and more certain that social manipulation is exactly what Mehdi originally did, and did it really really well. This is difficult to say for me because I have been quite entertained with Mehdi's videos, admired his down to earth style of teaching basic electronics and related physics, and always thought he's a very decent human being, and the last person to play such social games.
On the other hand, worst social manipulators tend to be among those who appear very positive, appear to hear everybody out and have a balanced discussion, appear easily approachable. This isn't a surprise, because if you are nasty and call others with names, who's going to believe you and fall into your social trap? No one. Successful social manipulation needs to be hidden. What we see in the current thread of 40+ pages, isn't social manipulation; it's just gang membership, namecalling, generally behaving like little kids, with some physics education thrown in. However, we can assume that social manipulation is what started it, not a coincidence. This is a fair assumption because the Lewin's experiment has been widely known for decades; nothing changed. What suddenly made it controversial? So who manipulated people into this? There are not too many options. Maybe Lewin, by posting thousands of hours of physics teaching videos from 1990's - early 2000's, hiding a manipulation attempt in one, to have it triggered two decades later? Is this realistic? So I think, if successful, actual social manipulation is part of this, there are no other viable perpetrators than Mehdi. He has to be at the root, and if not, no one is, it is then "just happening".
I also think another massive contributing factor was Lewin's initial response to Mehdi. This reponse was, IIRC, quite nasty and totally unhelpful, and something a good teacher should never let slip. It sure helped create the impression that "Mehdi has to be right", and strengthen the Mehdi followers, initially me included (until I finally got over it, and started thinking about the experiments and physics itself. Again, the eye opening moment was when I admired the amount of effort put in to the exact layout of the experiments (think Mabilde), and then bang, I realized that circuit layout is different from "good probing"; and "good probing" alone didn't provide the expected results. And that layout wasn't described in the equivalent circuit diagrams).
In other words, Mehdi's behavior, at least on surface, was better than Lewin's. Which is also exactly why, if I have to place bets on who's the social manipulator, I will vote Mehdi. And now, this is getting a bit far-fetched, but if Mehdi's a real social manipulator, then he has also known beforehand Lewin's personality (which is all over his videos), and knew that: "buahaha, I will win if I keep my head cool, make my opponent angry by pulling the right knobs, so that he slips out insults; then I only have to ask a few professors to assess my claims, and get a report I can quote out of context."
This is still not to say I'm 100% sure Mehdi is a social manipulator. I'm still 50-60% about this, and I will never be sure about this. Maybe things just went the way they did, with no bad intentions. But think about it!
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