Brian Skinner

"All who have passed the age of 30 are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance"
-George Orwell

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

I guess I'm on the other site now.
Give me a heads-up (here or there) if you want me to follow you there.

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@InnaVishik https://t.co/E9FupCLZ2V

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

I've invented a new metric for assessing scientific productivity:
"Z-index" = # of your papers with exactly zero citations
My Z index is 7.

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@bballbreakdown attention: @shootintheskeat

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@Thinkwert Glad to find a fellow non-enjoyer of Moonrise Kingdom.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is in a league of its own in my opinion.

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@LauraDeming There's lots of great ongoing work on this question! I'm happy to answer questions about it to the extent that I can, if you have any.
https://t.co/qWZGJNcJbt

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

There is lots of great ongoing work in physics on exactly this question: when does the ergodic hypothesis (e.g., entropy maximization) hold and when does it not? In other words, when does thermodynamics work and when does it not?

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

Here is a talk by me on one variant of this question.
It turns out that if you subject a collection of particles to random dynamics, but you force them to conserve their center of mass, then they will only obey ergodicity if their density is high enough
https://t.co/4kQcnctekT

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

There is lots of great ongoing work in physics on exactly this question: when does the ergodic hypothesis (e.g., entropy maximization) hold and when does it not? In other words, when does thermodynamics work and when does it not?

[Laura 🌲 ⛰️ @LauraDeming]

I don't...buy the ergodic hypothesis in stat mech. Any recs for how to get comfortable (even empirical?)

Seems just obviously not something that follows from first principles - unless it's like every system is noisy and that's why? But aren't there attractor trajectories that would kinda violate it?

Stat mech would be so much easier if I believed in statistics, lol

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

Harvard. PEPFAR. LIGO. Basic science. And dozens of other crown jewels of not just the US, but of humanity. And one extremely corrupt man and his cronies and enablers are attempting to partly or totally destroy them

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@michael_nielsen One of my favorites, which for some reason consistently surprises people, is that Mormonism has no hell (in the sense of a permanent resting place). The lowest level of afterlife is still incomparably wonderful compared to mortal life.

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@michael_nielsen Some things that Mormons believe, which strike me as "singular" if not surprising:
- God is not omnipotent. He has a physical body and a wife
- It is not possible to sin before age 8
- The Garden of Eden was in Missouri (https://t.co/WmD46EdlO8)

[Sandeep Joy @The_Correlator]

Watching electronic ice melt | Science
https://t.co/ozJjmv0jCG
I’m delighted to share a perspective I co-authored with Brian Skinner (@gravity_levity), highlighting an exciting new experiment that captures quantum melting in a disordered 2D Wigner solid.

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@Chris_arnade in what sense is this irrational? I think even the Rationalists (well, most of them) would easily concede that this is a net positive action

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@alexeyguzey lol I hate to break it to you, but what this really says is that you have the literary tastes of a 19 year old

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@gregeganSF @SBSOnDemand I've been trying hard to find this in the US!

[John Hollinger @johnhollinger]

"Gut Biomes win championships" - Nico Harrison

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@alexeyguzey the buried lede is that every single one is a sequel

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@ctrlcreep Heaven and Hell have similar energy density, but in Hell the energy is dissipated as heat while in Heaven it is efficiently directed into work toward the Divine Purpose

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@ArindamPhysics Turns out that the "Feynman only published 37 papers" factoid is not really true (see this tweet and following thread)
https://t.co/JN0FChExca

[Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen]

@gravity_levity It's not really true, except for very narrow meaning of publications: https://t.co/HDIW2kynxV

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@ArindamPhysics I learned during the process of job interviewing, when the work I presented in my job talk was accused of being "trivial", that "topologically trivial" has become conflated with "intellectually trivial"

[Physical Review X @PhysRevX]

We’re celebrating #IYQ2025 with monthly #quantum science collections. March’s edition explores measurement-induced quantum phase transitions — where measurement competes with internal evolution, triggering a phase transition in entanglement structure.

🔗 https://t.co/C2ZcaH5SxE

[Brian Skinner @gravity_levity]

@InnaVishik The utility of photovoltaics seems possible precisely because the science is so boring: it's the same p-n junction that we've had since the 1940s.
The more interesting the science, the more skeptical one must be of claims of utility.