I have many friends who are much less intelligent than I who are attending "better" schools for infuriatingly trivial reasons. Getting good grades has as much to do with intelligence as it does with your ability to take tests--unless you come across a really good teacher. Forget about dreams of elitist schools (for now) and find/start a project to build a knowledge base around. Make sure it's something you have the resources for and also is big enough to require you to learn new subjects. This project will serve as your point of reference for "building" new learning habits quite organically around. It will tell you what, how, why, and with whom you will learn with versus vague ideals and arbitrary academia romanticism dictating your future. However, realize the project itself is merely a crutch for your brain to grow stronger on--you will eventually outgrow it and require a new one. Walk into a professor's office, they are very lonely and love attention, and I guarantee you they are working on something you could define as a "project" and would love to point you in the right direction. Most have to in order to keep their jobs. Undergraduate students have a hard time understanding that they need some sort of internal locus and not their friends and teachers in order to be intelligent--but they eventually catch on to this like you have just now. The hardest part will be the sacrifices you'll have to make and endure in every imaginable facet of your life; you'll have to cut a lot of loose ends (bad habits/routines) off from your life. Eventually, though, you'll find your path to enlightenment and it's always one with heart and is rarely found but more so stumbled upon (hint: always within close proximity of powerful computers and by path I mean nerd and by stumbled upon I mean HN). Only then, once found, will you know if you will need to attend a particular school or not. (good music helps to rewire your brain and the subsequent lonely spells; cats are smart because they're curious, not the other way around; also, the smarter you get the more you laugh...muhahahah)
...sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. - Morpheus
I have to disagree. Just because "results where in 5-space and up you can see and exist in all time simultaneously" appears to be "wacky" doesn't mean it's not possible. It's simply not part of your definition or interpretation of your current existence, which makes the 4th dimension seem out of place.
Again, there's a huge difference between 4D space and 3D spacetime. Both are 4-dimensional mathematical spaces, but the visualization is completely different.
"Time is the fourth dimension" is the single most damaging sentence for your understanding of time and space.
To have an n-dimensional spacetime where time is not the nth dimension makes no sense.
1) Although videos are visual aids by definition, it wasn't suggesting that a human could visualize any dimension except the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd I believe; this is why mathematicians must use numerical expressions (iterated for the nth time on HN) because human cognition is inextricably tied to interpreting perceptual data within the 3D Cartesian plane. 2) It is a youtube video. 3) Node (n-2) of this one was merely suggesting rather matter-of-factly that confusion is a weak conjecture. 4) I really don't disagree on node (n-1) because any spatial dimension can be parametrized possibly dispelling the "4th" part. I'm assuming your beef is that time breaks down in 5D (or 4D depending on who's counting) because it ceases to move in one direction? 5) If the former is true, Poe's Law still holds, and no matter what, I plea the 5th on further comment of this submission other than god forbid an innocent observe this video and enter into the nth dimension with an error margin of +-D. ;)
> "Time is the fourth dimension" is the single most damaging sentence for your understanding of time and space.
The video didn't expand on the person living in a 2D space example ... if such of thing would be possible, he would be able to explain the presence of a third dimension using time (going so far as to consider time as being the third dimension).
he would be able to explain the presence of a third dimension using time
NO! Absolutely not! 2D spacetime does not look like 3D space at all!
In 3D space, I can take a 2D angle bracket, flip it in the third dimension, and get its mirror image. This will seem like magic to 2D creatures. In 2D spacetime, I can do no such thing. No matter how long I wait (i.e. move in the third time dimension), the angle bracket won't transform into its mirror image.
In 4D space, I can take a 3D right-hand glove, flip it in the fourth dimension, and get a left-hand glove. This will seem like magic to 3D creatures. In 3D spacetime I can do no such thing. No matter how long I wait, a right-hand glove will never transform into a left-hand glove.
Do you understand?
Do you see how adding time to n-dimensional space does absolutely nothing to explain n+1 space?
That's because dimensions are not ordered. There is no first dimension, or second, or third. For a flatlander, time is what he perceives as a third dimension. Depth may be a fourth dimension. If you wanted to do the same trick to you, you would have to flip yourself in a non-time higher dimensional space. I think any dimensional space would do.
But it's early in the morning and I haven't had breakfast. Talk to you when my brain joins me.
To perceive time as a dimension is useful because it helps you realize you actually perceive four dimensions the same way a flatlander perceives three.
because it helps you realize you actually perceive four dimensions the same way a flatlander perceives three
Absolutely not. We perceive time as time and space as space. The concept of spacetime does not help us understand or visualize higher dimensional spaces at all. It only confuses the issue, which is exactly the original complaint against the video this whole discussion is about.
Edit: One more example: Can you visualize the difference between a 3D cube moving in time, and a 4D cube moving in the 4th dimension? If you project the 4D cube down to 3D, it will look like a double cube that twists itself inside and out, but the 3D cube moving in time will just look like a 3D cube. Spacetime does not help you understanding 4D space.
Any europeans here on HN? I had a german professor last semester tell me many schools/teachers don't require students to buy specific textbooks and do homework problem sets in Europe. They just expect their students to understand the material, turn in good labs or essays, and pass the tests. He was obviously criticizing that american college students are spoon-fed their education.
Indeed. I live in the UK and had no need to buy a single text book throughout my degree (Computer Science). There were usually a few equivalent suggested books for each module. We were free to purchase or borrow any of them or use other sources such as online material.
I bought half a dozen books because they were interesting beyond the course itself, mostly just used the library and online material though.
Each country is different, the German model sounds good.
Here in the UK, you don't buy textbooks until college/university... at school they are provided by the school; apart from that detail sounds more similar to the american system though.
It seems a lot of people are concerned about HN turning into other communities. How is this avoidable? Require everyone to debug a snippet of code before registering or logging in? I personally wouldn't mind this.
Don't worry about it and it's all good. HN is self-balancing. I've been here for 884 days according to my profile, and I've always been hearing these worries since day 1. Somehow, thankfully, HN works. It has not turned into Reddit, Digg, or MySpace regardless of what people say. Yes, it has changed over time, no it's not a worse place.
Yeah, kind of thought so--a little diversity can be refreshing imo. I noticed that HN redirects you to a previous submission if you use the same url. Perhaps the same could be done if you post something with the same url used on a previous reddit or digg submission.
True. I realized this a while ago and my life is a lot less confusing. I've dabbled in media long enough to know it's more magic than reality. When you need to find, shoot, and edit a piece in less than 24 hours on a limited budget the truth stretches as much as your dollars do (this varies on whether your producer is Lucifer himself or not). Long story short I'm not involved in media anymore, you should spend your time on things you hate loving versus things you love hating, and read HN.
...sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. - Morpheus