this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"

Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.

Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.

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See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.



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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Only in its future. Probably you’d have to find the electron precisely at the end of its timeline.

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

So I have to destroy 2 electrons to fuck over causality.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How could you destroy 2, if there's only one?

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That's why it would fuck over causality. If I destroyed 1 that could be the natural end of the electrons "life" of bouncing back and forth through time. I would need to destroy a 2nd which would then have to be the same electron from earlier in it's timeline.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Ah, you're viewing it as a timetravellers' dilemma.

My view was more that we're an observer in the lagrangian solution to the differential equation we call life. The electron, being a constant in the equation. Remove the electron, you alter the equation, therefore destroying known life.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Careful, reality might just destroy you instead to avoid the paradox. I suspect that's how it avoids all of the paradoxes if time travel is possible in a single timeline universe. And this idea isn't compatible with the multiple timeline time travel idea (otherwise the electron will end up in a different timeline each time it jumps backwards).

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

If you destroy it, that will be the end of its timeline

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To destroy every other quantum state of the single electron, wouldn't you need to destroy it at its beginning state? The end state would be at/just after the heat death of the universe, so it wouldn't really make any difference then.

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

The end state doesn't have to be at the end of time if the electron can travel backwards in time. It can go to the end, head back towards the beginning, and get destroyed somewhere in between.

Strictly speaking it would have to get destroyed at some point, or at least have something stop it from going back and forth, otherwise the universe would be all electron.