This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Okay, I know I said I would stop, but now I have a serious problem here. You seem to interpret everything absolutely literally. "Can you" can absolutely be a request. Wonderful thing about language. It's malleable. It doesn't have to exclusively mean one thing and one thing only. When I say "Hey, can you help me with something?" I don't necessarily mean "If you are able to, you must help me" I mean "If you are okay with it, then you can help me."

Likewise, when I said I'm "not thinking about being polite" it doesn't mean i'm striving to be rude and completely disregarding the other person. It means that first on my mind is the subject at hand. Asking for help. Which, yes, is not about the other person. How selfish of me.

And no, you haven't specifically called me a dick, but it sure feels like you're trying to imply such a thing. Or trying to make me look like one. I don't give a fuck how important you think the word 'please' is, but I certainly care that you're interpreting my words in such a way that both suits your needs and kind of pisses me off.

Oh and I like how you've got an edit in there basically saying HOW DARE YOU TRY TO STOP THIS ARGUMENT EARLY, I HAVE ISSUE WITH YOUR ENDING OF THIS. No, it doesn't make it immune to scrutiny, but let's go back to the issue of politeness. I wanted to drop it. You didn't.

So could we please just drop this bullshit?

All frustrations aside, I like the core of this conversation. (here I'm interpreting the "bullshit" cyber mentioned as the needless conflict associated with a interesting topic.)

Personally, while I'm not certain I struggle with humility or politeness per se, I do very much struggle with its neighbor encouragement, and in a broader sense "saying things that make people feel good"

Politeness and "please" in particular fall under this category. When the spirit of "please" (I say "spirit of" because I do agree with cyber in that there are many ways to convey the gratitude and appreciation generally contained in the magic word) is absent in a request, it gives the impression that the requestee is in some way inferior to the requester, like a boss speaking to their employee or a customer barking at a cashier. Nobody likes that! Some just tolerate it better than others.

I do think the privilege of the Internet has fostered a sense of entitlement in those who are used to its contet, just like with any privilege or luxury that lasts for long enough. The semi-anonymous nature of the Internet also contributes to this "rudeness". People see names or usernames of individuals, but from an initial association those names are little more than brand names or logos. There absolutely is a learning curve for fully grasping that those names represent real genuine human beings.

I'm still somewhere on that learning curve. I like to think I'm farther along than I was a few years ago, but even now I have realizations that surprise me.


When I ask someone for something, I'll generally try to emphasize that the project is of low importance compared to their daily lives, that they do not need to stress over it, and that I would really appreciate seeing it done. I'll try to complement their previous work, and let them know why I am requesting this from them and not somebody else. (this isn't like a formula, I'm just trying to think about what I tend to do) Of course the degree that I go into varies with the degree of the request.

I'm curious of you guys' other ways of asking for things, or letting people know that you appreciate them. (If they finish, how do you respond in a way that lets them know how impressed/thankful you are? Are there people you've really felt good after you finished something for them? Someone who asked and thanked well?

sometimes i ask a question using "may i" but forget to say "please" and then i'm momentarily confused when people ask me to ask more properly. otherwise i have NO OPINION on this topic and am just going to copy the other person so don't expect any more than 3 sentences out of me. (but DO expect me to say "please" to you in the future, sup freq)

I've got a fair bit of cultural conditioning that, for the longest while, made me feel straight-up guilty when having to bother another person to ask them for assistance. It's like an actual aversion, and until quite recently I was positively demure around people I didn't know that well, assuming despite all evidence to the contrary that they were exceptionally busy people with no time for me.

As such, my view on the whole debate's a bit screwy; "thanks" is nigh-automatically appended to anything I say. Even answering things like "would you like a bag for your groceries?" ("Nah, thanks though, I've got this one")

I think I prefer "Thanks" to "Yes, please" because of that whiny little "eeeee" in "please". I get the perception there's a fair bit of sarcasm and counter-sarcasm entrenched in the word, too, which leaves me too uncertain whether saying "please" would be misconstrued as some kind of attempt at sarcastic, overtly pandering good manners. I dunno. My head is weird.

More often for requests, I use "would you..." or "could you..." or append whatever I need done with "hey, do you have a minute" or "could I ask a favour?"

I know, grammatically, that last one is still rather flaccid, not to mention I'll get the occasional smartass who's all "you can, but will you" or whatever. I feel it breaks the ice in a similar-ish way though, and it seems to work for me???

I say "Much obliged marm" and then don a ten gallon hat and ride off into the sunset.

I've always hated snide and entitled people the most. You should never expect people to interpret "implied" messages or intentions between your words, you should try to be as literal as possible. Specially when asking someone to go out of their way for you.

I think i mentioned once in IRC how much i enjoyed receiving polite requests in that other forum when i helped around the mirror site thing. It makes fulfilling the request enjoyable, they make you feel glad you're helping out such a nice person.

My politeness is as implied as what it is I'm asking

I just go up to people and stare at them until they know exactly what I want and are impressed by my manners

EDIT: I'm now implying that we talk about the Higgs Boson cause the LHC found it under the couch

Strictly speaking, they found its poop and bite marks in the old apple someone had dropped down there.

They're getting close, though!

On one hand, jubilance*! We've cracked another layer of mystery and made history! We've peeled back another layer of the universe and proven that it was the right thing to do. We've made textbooks even fuller and more outdated!

On the other hand, a small, sad feeling that another piece of the puzzle is in place. Rigorous theorems have built themselves up to an apex that we see ever-more clearly, and in our hearts we long for the hammer that knocks loose a brick or dislodges a theorem, or even strikes a foundation.

And of course, there's always supercollider proton bowling.

*it's a word now >:3

I didn't look into it because reading is for nerds. As I understand based on headlines, the existence of God has been proven and journalism is a sham

Ooooh look, a mexican hat potential!

SpoilerShow

That aside though, I really do like the mexican hat potential as an easily understandable analogue to spontaneous symmetry breaking - it's right up there with the balanced-pencil metaphor, but more mathematically applicable.

uuurrrr

scienceagen...rising...

The mexican hat potential is a mathematical model of the spontaneous symmetry breaking that occurred in the first moments of the universe. The Higgs particle, so recently discovered, plays a vital part in this model.

Imagine a hemispherical bowl.

Drop a marble into the bowl.

Where does the marble settle? The answer is, of course it settled in the bottom of the bowl, at the lowest point of its gravitational potential. This point, for our purposes, we'll consider it zero. So the marble moved down its potential to a stable minimum, and we'd be reasonable to suggest that that would be zero, no?

But...but what if our bowl wasn't a perfect hemisphere? What if it had bumps and dents? What if it had a bump in the center - or to look at it another way, what if there was a circular trench dug around the center point?

What we have then is the mexican hat potential! If we place a marble in the center, the zero point, then what we have is a symmetry. Everything is balanced, as long as nothing is disturbed, and the system is at a zero point.

But it's not going to be much longer. Quantum fluctuations are growing, disturbing the marble every which way, until -

It rolls off the center point and settles in a stable, non-zero end state. This is known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. For another example, imagine a pencil balanced on its point. As long as it's balanced, it's perfectly symmetrical - if you were looking at it from above, you couldn't say it was pointing anywhere (aside from down. But this is a metaphor). But it can't keep this state of affairs up, and falls over. Now, if you look at it, it's clearly pointing in a direction, and is no longer symmetrical. Not only that, the direction it points in is completely random, but once it has fallen there's no moving it again.

Now, if you link up the Higgs to the picture - the Higgs Boson generates or carries a field known as the Higgs Field, which pervades through space and gives matter its mass. If you imagine the Higgs Field being the mexican hat potential, and the boson being the marble -

IN THE BEGINNING, THE HIGGS WAS BALANCED ON ZERO POINT, AND NOTHING HAD MASS.

AND LO, LIKE THINGS THAT DON'T HAVE MASS, THEY PROCEEDED TO MOVE REALLY FAST!

LIKE, REALLY FAST. SPEED OF LIGHT FAST. AND THEY CREATED THE UNIVERSE BEHIND THEM! (Certainly it can't be said that it's possible to observe anything ahead of them, because you know, speed of light)

BUT THEN THE HIGGS DROPPED INTO A STABLE NON-ZERO STATE AND THEN EVERYTHING HAD MASS D:

AND SO IT WAS THAT INFLATION ENDED.

AND THE UNIVERSE BEGAN TO SLOW ITS EXPANSION.

IT'S STILL SLOWING DOWN TODAY!

But then one of the spacefaring races used their shrink ray on space to make it smaller so that the planets could talk.

Man, stuff like this really shows how lacking my knowledge of physics is. I try to read through news articles about it and understand it but really it's like trying to skip to the end of a book and understand what is happening without knowing anything about the other characters or why they're important or why the resolution or conflict was there in the first place. As much as I respect physics, I have continually been baffled by it. Maybe it's time to go back to the part of the book I left off last, see what the deal is.

What is the deal with this guy?

Aw man, I loved Space Jam!

Are we going to green egg and ham this?

Are we going to green egg and slam this?

Wait, where does Grand Slam Breakfast: Dr. Seuss addition come into this.

B-B-BB-BBALL

MUSCLES

WINNING SMILE

BLACKATTACK

THREEPOINTSTUFFEDGOALBASKETSHUTDOWN

KAZAM!

WOULD YOU LIKE THEM WITH THE BEST?
WOULD YOU LIKE THEM WITH THE REST?

Oh hello ten years ago what are you doing here

That is pure electricity

ten

ten years ago? but

it's so nineties.

it's so nineties

I'm only seventeen WHY DO I FEEL SO OLD

okay I want a list of every single song that has both of the words "slam" and "jam" in the chorus.

So much Jam.

This was essentially inevitable