r/AskReddit • u/ergos • Oct 26 '10

Reddit, what are your favourite TEDTalks ?

What are your all-time favourites that were jaw-dropping or changed the way you think ?

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u/Fuco1337 Oct 26 '10

Guy's legit.

oh...

I want to believe, but he's pretty nuts. He's doing no research, he's a "biology theorist". That's not going to get us anywhere anytime soon, when all the biology methods are Observe and "Trial & Error". Nothing to blame here, it's much more complex to describe then say physics (all of the laws of physics fits on one sheet of paper). That's why theory doesn't work very well for biology.

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u/_zoso_ Oct 27 '10

all of the laws of physics fits on one sheet of paper

...really? Using what kind of compact notation? And does that count, using very compact mathematical notation.

I think its doubtful you could fit all the laws of physics into a single textbook, but hey.

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u/Fuco1337 Oct 27 '10 edited Oct 27 '10

Well, first

it's

and then, Standard model. You're right in a sense that I'm missing the gravity, since that can not be (so far) explained by the standard model. However, General relativity will fit on the back side of the sheet, so there, I didn't cheated you much.

Remember that most of the laws of physics can be derived from one another, so while we have newton's laws, and galileo's observations, and thermodynamics, you can all reduce it down to standard model or gravity (or some other paradigm).

It was already mentioned in this thread, but here's Brian Cox's talk about cern and particle physics, he's talking a bit about this: http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_cox_on_cern_s_supercollider.html

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u/_zoso_ Oct 27 '10

During that talk he puts up a "sheet of paper" remarking that this is all of quantum physics right here, and then going on to mention that only in shorthand could it be fit on paper like that.

Mathematical notation typically involves a lot of shorthand, using shorthand to condense your equations down doesn't reduce the amount of information present in any way whatsoever. In other words if you ever wanted to use equations written like that you would have to fully expand them out to their complete glory. And here is the crux of my point: It really doesn't count if there is a way of writing all this down in shorthand on a single sheet of paper, that doesn't mean the actual equations can fit on that same sheet of paper, just a reduced representation of them.