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"Veritasium" (YT) - "The Big Misconception About Electricity" ?

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TimFox:

--- Quote from: adx on April 10, 2022, 02:04:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on April 10, 2022, 01:14:11 pm ---You, half-baked engineers, are always puzzled, bewildered, perplexed. Any insight is over your heads. If you had spent the time and effort in rejecting the staples of electronics engineering that you employed with this thread in actually learning electromagnetism and complex numbers you'd be standing in awe of how easy it would be to solve all these things that puzzle you.

--- End quote ---

I'll buy it, to a degree. Timfox said "Stupidity, however, is being proud of one's ignorance." a page back. I tend to think stupidity is more being unaware of one's ignorance (actually I haven't thought that through properly, but it sounds good). I'd rather be perplexed than ignorant. I'd rather remain perplexed about something kind of trivial (like complex numbers) if it means I can fit concepts of multiple inheritance into my mind if needed for some software job (I don't, don't know what it means and proud of that if I'd be better off "learning complex numbers").

--- End quote ---

I like my definition of stupidity.  Being unaware of one's ignorance is another form of ignorance.
However, yesterday I started reading a very short book:  C M Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Doubleday, 2019 (original version 1976), where the author discusses (axiomatically) the nature of stupid people, rather than stupidity itself. 
Looking ahead past my present bookmark is his Third Law:  "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
The author is describing harmful stupidity, worse than in my definition.

adx:

--- Quote from: HuronKing on April 09, 2022, 03:32:13 pm ---You are now discussing in extremely bad-faith. Once again, you're ignoring every application manual from industrial manufacturers that I've posted for the sake of being 'contrarian.'

--- End quote ---

No! That makes no logical sense. And I was going to say something else but went away to do other things and thought more things. Now it has been replaced with sensible things, more boring.

Apologies if I implied that you believe in the power of engineering ignorance in the 21st century - I was responding to bsfeechannel's challenge "show us more how your belief in the power of ignorance can help engineering in the 21st century". That link you provided does that, I know you provided it for the opposite purpose.

I had already been over the Keysight manual and at your suggestion that I was ignoring it, which also provided some support for my claim. In any case it is not up to me to seek out references that might support your suggestions, my claim related to absent sqrt(-1) and trivial or undefined use of j with the application remaining functional. The fact is, the evidence you provided to refute my claim, inadvertently proved it. You reacted as if I was attacking the information, or refusing to read it.

One thing I have found curious and initially was confusing, is you (and some others) keep plying me with references or explanations showing how phasors and vectors and 'j notation' is relevant to electrical engineering, in spite of my repeated assurances that I know, along with the total expectation that this should prove an innate physical meaning of sqrt(-1) for me (while flicking between that and 'it's all imaginary so I don't care' vibe which I have a hard time believing). I appreciate that you are trying to help me understand, but it has no relevance to what I wanted to know. You are so unable and unwilling to decouple the concepts of sqrt(-1), i, and then j (in engineering), that you are unable to understand my question.

Your belief system precludes the question and any answers other than "THEY ARE THE SAME, THEY CANNOT BE DECOUPLED!". That's fine, and is why I said "There are unlikely to be any solutions beyond this point.".

"But maybe I'm just being contrarian for the sake of it now" was an appreciation that bsfeechannel's 'method trolling' many soon end up converging with mine, which might now have occurred 'bar the shouting' so I view that as a lucky escape. I still believe I am right, but in basic terms, I don't have to believe shit that isn't real.

TimFox:
By the way, the five basic laws of C M Cipolla, discussed in the book I mentioned, are

    (1) Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
    (2) The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
    (3) A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
    (4) Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
    (5) A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
    (Corollary)  A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

The book has a strange publication history:  originally privately printed (in English) in 1976, then translated into Italian in 1988, finally published in English in 2011 by an Italian publisher, then by a British publisher in 2019.  Only 81 pages.  The author, a serious professof of economic history, died in 2000.

bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: adx on April 10, 2022, 02:04:51 pm ---I'll buy it, to a degree. Timfox said "Stupidity, however, is being proud of one's ignorance." a page back.

--- End quote ---

You go a step further. You are proud of your own stupidity.


--- Quote ---I tend to think stupidity is more being unaware of one's ignorance (actually I haven't thought that through properly, but it sounds good).

--- End quote ---

Stupidity, as I said in other threads, is a moral issue. We offered you insight, you outright rejected it. So it is not a cognitive problem. You're not mentally incapacitated. You made the conscious choice of remaining ignorant.


--- Quote from: penfold on April 10, 2022, 02:48:18 pm ---Perhaps you could provide some kind of public service announcement and a set of approved reading materials just to make sure nobody else is having an independent thought.

--- End quote ---

You're not having "independent" thoughts. You're resisting understanding. You're saying that math and physics do harm to engineering. And when in front of an engineering problem that requires insight about math and physics you balk like a mule.

You're like the aetherist: "duznt" know jack shit about physics or math, is proud of it, rejects learning it, but is remarkably an independent "thinker" who came up with an "alternative" theory. You, adx and he, should meet and have a beer together.

penfold:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on April 10, 2022, 06:57:55 pm ---[...]

--- Quote from: penfold on April 10, 2022, 02:48:18 pm ---Perhaps you could provide some kind of public service announcement and a set of approved reading materials just to make sure nobody else is having an independent thought.

--- End quote ---
You're not having "independent" thoughts. You're resisting understanding. You're saying that math and physics do harm to engineering. And when in front of an engineering problem that requires insight about math and physics you balk like a mule.

You're like the aetherist: "duznt" know jack shit about physics or math, is proud of it, rejects learning it, but is remarkably an independent "thinker" who came up with an "alternative" theory. You, adx and he, should meet and have a beer together.

--- End quote ---

Yeah... I think you misinterpreted the discussion. It's an interesting authority with which you question my knowledge of maths and physics, my pride of (allegedly) never having studied, and my (alleged) rejection of future study: it's certainly a brave stance to assume that level of knowledge about me and make such an assertion... in a discussion where the phrase "Stupidity, however, is being proud of one's ignorance" is being banded about.
Given that (as far as I know) I am the only one here who is aware of which qualifications I've earned, perhaps you're considering the fact I'm unlikely to reveal my identity as a victory... kudos, you earned it. But likewise, you seem rather fond of anonymity yourself, to the extent you cannot be possibly gaining anything personally from issuing such putdowns as you have... Cipolla's 3rd law.

My actual stance on the argument was that the teaching of maths and physics to engineers is often done without regard to the philosophy behind it. It is clearly something that would be very difficult to fit in around the normal EEE undergrad timetable and it is clear to me why it is not done routinely. The lack of the rigor behind the maths and physics isn't at all a problem in undergraduate degrees for those who go on to solve problems that have already been solved but that's not everyone and not all engineering problems are built of the same bricks. But, alas, maybe one day in the future shall I shed the lack of education and venture forth to solve prroblems using phasors, phasors alone and nothing by phasors, everywhere, absolutely nothing but phasors - for that day I shall dream and dream only of imaginary numbers, discussing never of my doubts, lest they become real.

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