Physical science

Where were the “hundreds” of students who stormed the building and barricaded themselves inside? Police went in and nobody came out. I expected a stream of people in handcuffs but nothing. Something is off here.

Update: UCI school officials just confirmed the building was never occupied.

Growing up I never fully appreciated the importance of learning history in school. However, more and more I see just how essential it is to understand our country's past.

I have seen many students and people post online about how the encampment was completely acceptable until they attempted to block off the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall. They say that a protest should not interfere with the university's ability to function. This was even the same opinion held by our Chancellor, Howard Gillman. However, I disagree.

In high school, we learned about the long history of protests in America. A main goal of an effective, nonviolent protest is to disrupt the normal function of every day lives so that people have to pay attention. This is represented through every one of America's social justice movements.

Personally, I think the movement that connects the strongest with what happened yesterday was the "Sit-in Movement" from the Black Civil Rights Movement. Sit-ins were an essential form of protest, where students and community members would simply sit in a building (school or business) that continued to enforce segregation until they removed the racist policy. These sit-in protests played a vital role in getting support for black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement, and directly led to desegregation in many areas.

I know that we can all agree that the Civil Rights Movement was essential for bringing America towards being a more just and fair country. And Sit-ins were a part of the foundation of this movement. They are the peak representation of American freedom and are an effective form of peaceful, nonviolent protest.

In my opinion, those who are currently outraged by the attempted blocking of the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall would be the same people in the 1960's to be outraged by Sit-ins done by black activists during the Civil Rights Movement. So I would recommend that if you thought the students got too out of control, to possibly reconsider your viewpoint with this context.

If you have any opinions, feel free to comment them down below and I may read them. Please avoid any form of bigotry, including Antisemitism and Islamophobia. Thanks.

Some simple sources about the history of the Sit-in Movement:

Encyclopedia Britannica:

Wikipedia:

My short bio: Currently, I am the Deputy Director of Science of Argonne National Laboratory and Pritzker Director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME). I joined the IME from the University of California, Berkeley. A pioneering researcher in biomolecular engineering and nanotechnology, I specialize in the manipulation and measurement of the surface properties of polymers – materials that consist of long, flexible chain molecules.

I graduated from Northwestern University in 1973 an began my academic career in 1977 at the University of Minnesota where I served as Shell Distinguished Chair in Chemical Engineering, Earl E. Bakken Professor of Biomedical Engineering and head of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

My Proof:

Thank you all so much! I really enjoyed this time with all of you. You are well-informed and curious. We are constantly growing so please follow our progress at

Well what can I say. Mourning for the loss of the trees that gave us a lot of shades while waiting for bus 25/32/33 during burning sunny days. It's so painful to see so many trees at MSU being cut down this year.

I have a lot of free time, and I have often thought that I could spend several years just studying the relevant literature around AGI safety, but then I fear I would just waste my time on something that is about as useful as the medieval theology along the lines of "how many angels fit on the head of a pin". I say this as someone who has donated thousands of dollars for AGI safety and who thinks it's important, but very risky in terms of how useful or not so useful it might be. The fact that Yudkowsky and others at Machine Intelligence Research Institute don't hold much hope for AGI safety research producing anything useful quickly enough is one major factor in my thinking.

AB 257 establishes fast food worker councils, ie committees of actual McDonalds etc workers, to regulate the industry, establishing minimum wages, better conditions, scheduling, benefits etc. If you like worker power and unions, want the people who make you that late night taco bell to not be under constant financial stress and physical exploitation, you should support this law. It was signed by the governor a couple weeks ago. Predictably, corporations have mobilized against it, and are funding this petition to overturn it. If the petition gets enough signatures, it will be on the 2024 ballot and they’ll be able to dump hundreds of millions of dollars in ads.

On Thursday I was walking out of class in the Physical Sciences building and saw the petition guys. I often sign them, but when I read what it was doing I was horrified. I decided to stay and convince students not to sign the petition. (By the way in the two times I’ve done this, I’ve talked to at least two dozen students and only one ended up signing the petition). They did not like this, started filming me, saying I was committing election interference, that they’ll get me expelled, that they were gonna call security. Yelling, cursing, whining. I stay there for about twenty minutes then leave. I pretty immediately called the dean’s office to set up a meeting.

This morning I got a reply from the Santa Cruz County Clerk’s office confirming that I had broken no laws. I show up again today, and the same thing pretty much happened, except this time one of the men tried to violently grab my bike, later claiming that i was blocking the access to the table (it’s like 20 ft long at least). I also learned that they are making $10 a signature (!!!) I then had my meeting with the dean’s office and am currently in the process of holding them accountable for their harassment and assault. not gonna say too much more about that but needless to say the dean’s office confirmed i had broken no laws or student policies and i have a first amendment right to show up anytime i want to protest a petition i disagree w.

while they’re still on campus i implore all of you not to sign the petition. i will show up whenever i can (bc honestly it’s pretty fun) but i can’t be there all the time.

i’m also happy to answer questions or add context but this post is already going way too long

tl:dr the signature gatherers outside the physical sciences building are being paid $10 a signature to overturn the most transformative worker rights legislation of our life time. they are also weak pathetic bullies who assaulted me, touched my property, and threatened to call the cops on me and get me expelled. a lawyer, the county clerk, and the dean’s office are all on my side

edit: some extra context

if you regret signing the petition, you have until december to mail a form in to your county elections office. is the form for santa cruz. if you’re registered in your home county, google “request to withdraw your signature from petition” + county name. the title of the petition is “statewide referendum on ab 257”

update:

they also table at the quarry and porter quad, possibly stevenson dining hall

one of them called me a faggot today (i have eyewitness testimony proof)

they called the cops on me, but the cops just let me go without even a warning, because I’ve done my due diligence and know all the relevant laws and student conduct codes

the deadline to submit your withdrawal of signature is THIS DECEMBER not 2024, i regret the error

There are several threads that mention this great flashcard set, but I found these other flash cards from Quizlet very helpful as well to skim or cram:

Notes:

Tips:

1. Don't get so caught up on sound waves, mechanical waves, longitudinal, transverse etc, I overspent like 1 1/2 hours on waves.

2. Focus on understanding/cramming gamma rays, light rays etc, and elastic collision.

3. Make sure to learn sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic differences, and it would be wise to understand pressure differences.

4. This course has a lot of fluff/padding, the PA & OA are honestly much easier than Applied Probability and Statistics, and easier than Applied Algebra (although I did cram Applied Algebra in less than 7 hours to pass its PA and OA).

5. A lot of C165 is common sense, that's the best thing.

6. Don't wait too long after passing PA to do the OA, just a few hours after passing the OA and I already think I've forgotten a decent chunk of what I crammed.

(yes these people exist).

I can't even talk to women without mentioning thermodynamics or the wave equation.

How do I bring my quantum rizzics to the next energy level?

I’m looking to see if there is a data science "category" that focuses on physical phenomena (i.e. physics, math, chemistry etc) instead of data science methods used when analyzing human behavior (like voting tendencies or purchasing habits). I know that both areas can use the same machine learning models, but I'm curious to know if the physical sciences tend to benefit from a certain "category" of data science methods.

Am I right in assuming that our approach to data science in the physical sciences can be different than our approach to data science in the "softer" sciences like psychology and sociology? If so, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and any potential references to already existing literature that relates to the topic.

Thanks in advance!

Just doing it for the pure introspective rush. I have my playlist, a scratchpad, my guitar, and reddit. Still, I have never done acid, and I think I might be able to help those with inquisitive minds......

So go ahead, fire away, eager young minds.

EDIT I took two hits ~ 10:00 pm, and its 10:27 pm right now. I am still not experiencing any sensory or perception distortions. Should be coming on soon?

EDIT 10:55 now... nothing exciting. Textures are the same. My eyes seem to be a little slow.

EDIT 11:11.... shapes still appear to be the same. The New Belgium Blue Paddle pilsner in my glass tastes like beer. My depth perception seems to be varying from thought to though.

EDIT 11:37 I feel a little restless now. Jessica is playing on my playlist. I want to move, but when I get up, I can't think of what to do. Too restless. A little bit of a hot flash. No visual alteration.

EDIT 11:50 - Shadows on the wall are noticeably changing in size. Shapes seem exaggerated. Long seems longer, short seems stubbier. I may go outside.

EDIT 12:02 - Went outside. Damn tree frogs are loud as hell. I was slightly amused with the various nightlife in my backyard, but I go out there everynight. Nothing profound. I'm actually enjoying sitting here in my living room listening to music, watching the shadows dance on the wall. It seems to only be shadows that I am perceiving differently, esepecially since there are multiple light sources in the room.

EDIT 1:18 - Muscles feel strange. Brightness and dark kind of fade in waves. Nothing really melting yet. I stopped the playlist, too. The silence is not welcome.

EDIT 2:05 - Maybe my last edit. I feel very awake, and typing is starting to get hard. I feel that I could talk and have a normal conversation. I keep thinking that it is raining outside, and every time I look I am just creeping my neighbors out. No rain.

EDIT 2:07 - I'll try to answer my inbox as I get questions. It feels like my time perception is starting to be {a;e}ffected

EDIT 3:44 - I am feeling much better. I've had a few more beers, listening to music. Mellowing out.

EDIT 4:41 - Well, I think I am down for the count. Whatever effect I was previously feeling has been replaced by that o-so-joyous feel of tons-of-brew.

EDIT 6:35 am - Still feeling strange. It's been a weird night. Not exactly what I was expecting, but when it comes to life, your mileage may vary.

I am relatively better. I may get a shower, drink some coffee, take the dog for a walk, and head into work. I didn't sleep at all, nor was I tired.

All in all, for science, I would say experiment = success. I am still alive. No groundbreaking deep insights. Maybe some mary jane will help next time. That said, I still prefer mdma over LSD, everything else equal.

Now, I have to add that everyone's experience is relative. I received some comments that suggested I was not dosing at a high enough level. Someone suggested alcohol may dim the effects. I have never been so disconnected that I could not function, with any drug I have tried. I will gladly do another AMA with a much higher dosing in the future.

Feel free to follow up if you are getting into your workday with more questions. I will try to keep answering all day. I'll let the communal interest dictate my own.

The trivia questions at both the bars I've tried so far are pretty heavy on American pop culture, entertainment and sports, which is understandable and fun enough, but "general knowledge" to me involves a relatively equal mix of a broader range of topics, something like the questions you'd get in a game of Trivial Pursuit.

We invite everyone to the online research colloquium by Max Welling from the University of Amsterdam. Participation is free.

When: 26 October, 16:20 (GMT+3 / Moscow time)

Title: Is the next deep learning disruption in the physical sciences?

Join:

Abstract:

A number of fields, most prominently speech, vision and NLP have been disrupted by deep learning technology. A natural question is: "which application areas will follow next?". My prediction is that the physical sciences will experience an unprecedented acceleration by combining the tools of simulation on HPC clusters with the tools of deep learning to improve and accelerate this process. Together, they form a virtuous cycle where simulations create data that feeds into deep learning models which in turn improves the simulations. In a way, this is like building a self-learning computational microscope for the physical sciences. In this talk I will illustrate this using two recent pieces of work from my lab: molecular simulation and PDE solving. In molecular simulation we try to predict molecular properties or digitally synthesize molecules with prescribed properties. We have built a number of equivariant graph neural networks to achieve this. Partial differential equations (PDEs) are the most used mathematical model in natural sciences to describe physical processes. Intriguingly, we find that PDE solvers can be learned from data using graph neural networks as well, which has the added benefit that we can learn a solver that can generalize across PDEs and different boundary conditions. Moreover, it may open the door to ab initio learning of PDEs directly from data.

About the speaker:

Prof. Dr. Max Welling is a research chair in Machine Learning at the University of Amsterdam and a Distinguished Scientist at MSR. He is a fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and the European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) where he also serves on the founding board. His previous appointments include VP at Qualcomm Technologies, professor at UC Irvine, postdoc at U. Toronto and UCL under supervision of prof. Geoffrey Hinton, and postdoc at Caltech under supervision of prof. Pietro Perona. He finished his PhD in theoretical high energy physics under supervision of Nobel laureate prof. Gerard ‘t Hooft.

Is the degree to which we can have knowledge of provisionally true hypotheses different between the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc.) and the social sciences (psychology, sociology, etc.)?