October bonus video poll

I keep forgetting to log into Patreon and actually vote. The fact that if you and I and one other person had voted for Maxwell then Angela wouldn't have needed to make the Sabine one? Tragedy.

Angela's Choice! Angela's Choice! Angela's Choice! Three cheers for Angela's Choice! Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Thing is, writing (speaking) is a complicated thing, The writer/speaker is juggling a lot of objectives, often in mutual conflict. Reaching her audience is #1. Who they are must be always in her mind. For a creator lucky enough to be "an influencer" like Sabine, the goals are much the same as "the algorithm" that we sometimes demonize that selects the social media posts that we "might" be interested in. Is there something like "should be" implied? Or is it just more or less manipulation based on an extremely good, & highly successful, prediction of their effect on us? I could point out that English is not Sabine's native language. But that's a dangerous thread to pick at. I don't think it's explanatory in this instance. Let me merely suggest that lack of care might not be the operative choice Sabine is making. She carefully chooses her words to fit her purposes. P.S. Let me add, please, that arguing against the academic establishment, but then "accidentally" tarring the entire label of "Science" with it, is one example of a rhetorical fallacy called Mott & Bailey that is increasingly relevant in modern discourse, against which most critical readers are not adequately schooled. You give Sabine a pass bc you "know what she meant". If I could advise you, I would suggest not to attribute a motive of making an innocent mistake, to Sabine's IMO likely very deliberate word choices.

I think this comment kinda sums it all up, in a way, doesn’t it? In unrelated news, please do Sabine.

Cut that out! Don't waffle after people much like you have told you what you need to know to make your mind up. Just take our word for it. Sabine used to be a science communicator. Now she's poison. End of. That's my opinion. But I was a reader of Sabine's blog years before she made a video channel. I know who we lost. Sabine isn't that person anymore.

Kibitzing, but "quantum theory texts" is too vague. Your suggestions for "where to start" are advanced topics. Eg, for quantum computing, all you need is linear algebra. That's a starting point. You definitely can't do squat in QM without calculus. If that's not in your bag yet, that'd be the place to start. If differential equations sounds scary, that has to be next. And so on. I can help more if you follow up with better precision. Also, look for Dr. Collier's earlier videos on physics books & how to learn physics.

Yes, but please let your observation that she's shitting on science suffice. If you upvoted that topic, what "as many times as you like" really means is you can still un-upvote. Please do that. Everyone! Thanks!

How about no, don't waste our precious Dr. Collier talk time on this "juicy" but worthless nothing-we-can-do-about-it topic? Please un-upvote. That's my opinion, but Dr. Collier has said as much. Thanks in advance.

Dr. Collier has just now said there's basically nothing to explain. Please accept her word. Please un-upvote. Yes, you can still take that vote back.

imo it will be a very boring video with 'obviously this person makes money shit talking a thing, built a business, and must continue to do it for cash' there isn't much there lol. wouldn't be main channel video

Well. I don't know what I'd do if I were in Dr. Collier's place. I think the poll is an example in miniature of the big problems we're experiencing not for the first time in our 250 years, only more acutely than ever before, I feel. This democracy has been so warped by technology enabling it to achieve its limits, that it is suffering from metal fatigue & is failing the test of this moment like no other time that it has faced. Our little corner of reality, of Angela's channel, is a toy model exposing for us how the wants of the many can serve to impede the idealistic visions of the few. To be clear, I am not a physicist. I am a fan of the subject. I took the Theoretical Minimum classes. We were encouraged to believe we could understand key things about the work real physicists do at sort of the same level as them. We will get the gist. Maybe not enough to contribute work to working physicists, but not excluding so much of the technical detail that our understandings would be misleading if we should spread them to the rest of the non-expert public. In short, we could become physics communicators. We were also encouraged to outright start to call ourselves "physicists". I would have taken another path had I wanted to be able to call myself that. I am a dilletante. All that said, people with a strong enough interest in physics to have a passing knowledge of the math, & the theory, & have some command of the evidence, & continue to retain an abiding interest in new discoveries, new abilities, & the bright future of the living subject of physics... um, we are a market niche that slips thru the cracks. Materials for the serious student truly dedicated to becoming a working physicist are opaque & full of the technical capabilities. The intuitions to hold all the ideas while staying sane, this is a task largely left up to the student. You will know the facts. If you can't make sense of them, you will drop out. OTOH, skipping over the not-quite-physicists, all the at-large market for intuitive understanding of what physicists are up to, needs the technical details dumbed down, bc that audience has such a small bandwidth to give up to this one subject. You don't know (and I do) what's wrong with the description of the Higgs field you've been sold. You don't know that the story you've been fed about Hawking radiation is a toy model of a technical discussion that's only slightly more complicated. But the real explanation is not suitable for your market segment. I can't tell you how hard it was for me to dig up a sufficiently dumbed down picture of the actual physics we find in the minds of physicists. Enter Dr. Collier's channel. The reason Maxwell came in second is bc a certain batch of people like me have come here seeking an oasis in the desert. We used to be fans of Sabine. Along with Matt Strassler. For both of them, the realities of their life & their career have changed their course. I certainly don't begrudge them that. I don't like the Sabine as I know her now. But both Matt & Angela are wonderful people. I want them to have the life & career in physics that they aspire to. Talking about Maxwell, as opposed to talking about Sabine, would (we hope) help us to understand the struggles of even a genius expert in physics exploring new physics before the maturity of the subject area makes it easy to assimilate & compress into one easily-digested story. We know the equations. We have solved the problem-set problems. We want to know the thought process, to let us see what's going on underneath & inside the formulas. How we can think of the physics with the full intuitive power of getting the physics properly. With our GROK dialled up all the way. The public at large is never going to be exposed to this level of knowing physics. But in some sense, we are like those rich folks who think capitalism is morally satisfying. Who just want to rid themselves of the injustice of taxes stealing their hard-won wealth. Who don't believe they ever felt the warmth of "the common good" in their life's experiences. Don't believe any attempts to share their deserved privilege with undeserving masses is justifiable. Like them, bc as their viewpoint is numerically small in the one-person/one-vote landscape, so too is my viewpoint amid the public who have so many bigger fish to fry. Like them, I too will be a minority interest for as far into the future as we can reasonably imagine. We seek our way to paradise. For me, that might be Dr. Collier. For rich people, the answer seems to be, to bend the obsolete rules of our democracy up to & past its breaking point. Please tell me my cause is not lost. Or, disillusion me. As matters sit, I'm still rooting for Dr. Collier.