Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How do you remember large amounts of information indefinitely without making a sustained, concerted attempt to do so? The system I have developed so far is to maintain a series of detailed notes which I refer to periodically whenever I want to recall things. But these notes have become almost prohibitive in length, and read any section of these notes infrequently enough and it's like the information is Teflon-coated, things become difficult to recall very quickly and this is especially true after I've made concerted attempts to cram new information into my head. It gets displaced by other things and the topics I want to learn (and argue) about are typically topics which are quite deep.
This is partially for the sake of helping me make persuasive cases in real life. It's something I've been trying to do more of for the past half-year, and it is at least part of the reason why I am participating less on social media now (other reasons for this include personal stuff, such as a family member having a stroke - this has put things into perspective a little bit and has made me deprioritise spending as much time on political screaming matches on the internet as I used to).
It would also be nice to get tips on how to handle real-time debate. I think I've generally been doing well and think I've been able to marshal a good amount of evidence in favour of the claims I make, but sometimes I trip up because I'm still not acclimatised to the dynamics of real-time debate and haven't yet grown fully accustomed to the unique characteristics of that specific debate format. Online, the speed of information recall is less of an issue simply because you can take time to refresh your memory, compose your thoughts, smooth out any holes, etc, before putting out the best version of your argument you possibly can. In real life, discussions are very scattershot and claims and counter-claims get thrown around all the time, questions get posed to you that you aren't always capable of recalling the answer to, and you need to remember and consolidate all the information you have in your brain in order to cope with it. No mistakes or hesitations or God forbid admissions of "I don't 100% remember at the moment, but I think..." are allowed, or your credibility slips. You have to be very careful with the words that come out of your mouth, and momentary slips in concentration can be fatal to your persuasiveness.
I would like to debate as well as I possibly can, and while that's easier online (you just have to put in a lot of detailed work, which I can do) in a real-time setting the demands and pressures are different.
I simply read it once and remember it for the rest of my life (unless it is a specific number. I can only remember ratios or formulas without trying hard; so I try to cast numbers I need to store as ratios of each other).
I am simply built different. Built autistic, if you will.
I don't know why I have the speed of light in meters per second memorized down to the standardized value, but I'm sure it'll come useful when I'm inevitably thrown into an uplift isekai.
Do you know what a "meter" or a "second" is, though?
Heading off on a tangent, one thing that annoys me about (most) uplift isekais is that the authors know less about physics (etc) than their characters do, and their worlds act on highschool (or simpler) physics as well.
As an example, Delve has a scene where the main character calculates the elastic energy stored in a bow at different draw lengths (fortunately, the draw force is linear). He has a magic measuring stick, so getting meters and seconds (and therefore probably kilograms as well) is possible, but the results are insane to anyone who has done a physics experiment: It is exactly two points of damage per joule of calculated energy input. A second trial had a 2.5% error. Either the System doesn't care about the arrow as a physical projectile, or else the energy lost to the limb mass, air resistance, dampening in the material, etc. "coincidentally" line up and cancel each other out.
As a counterexample, Ar'Kendrithyst has a scene where the main character doesn't know about the (low) hardenability of austenitic stainless steel, but his teacher does.
Also, I'll recommend https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silver/silverbullets.shtml for an author's quest to cast silver bullets.
I know that a meter is approximately 1/millionth of the length of a Great Circle on Earth (or so I remember, I haven't checked yet).
Assuming the world was earth-like, that could help.
As for a second, no I can't think of any easily conserved phenomenon I could represent it in.
Your own height? Should get you within 1% or so. The "one 10 millionth of the way from the equator to the pole" will get you more accuracy, if your isekai destination is an actual alternate earth and not just an earth-like planet, but in that case "24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute" might get you even more precision on the time front, and then you can do either stuff with pendulums or with rotating mirrors depending on the tech level of your destination.
Not that I've spent any time thinking about this, ha ha why would I have put a lot of thought into this.
You seem unusually prone to being nerd sniped, but is that really a bad thing when the world rewards being a talented nerd so much these days? Haha
You certainly put a lot more effort into things than most posters here, myself included!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
1/40,000,000 of the Great Circle (10,000 km from pole to equator through Paris set the standard, IIRC)
Aside from the obvious fraction of a day, there aren't really any easy ways of precisely rederiving the second without modern technology. If you know what a meter is and are in a 1 g gravity field, then you can build a 1 meter long pendulum which has a period of about 2.006 seconds. If you have perfect pitch, then the second is 440x the period of middle A. Other than that, you're out of luck as far as I can tell. It's not like you're going to be looking at any cesium atoms in your spare time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link