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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • He didn’t pretend Reagan was better?

    I didn’t vote to reelect Jimmy Carter. Union friends and Democrats alike pleaded with me. “It’s the most important election of your life! You have to vote for Carter!” Not me. I was already aware by then of the impacts that failed politicians and their politics can have on your life. My one little vote didn’t matter anyway, since after almost four years of the Carter presidency just about everyone I knew — and worked with — was voting for Ronald Reagan, an even worse alternative, anyway. If they were voting at all.

    Sounds more like he didn’t vote. Like much of the left (in both of these elections), he gave up entirely on the government and saw it as an other/enemy rather than something that could be reformed through a vote.


  • It’s not really communication. They ‘know’ because they become part of the same wave function. The wave function of the system is

    |psi1 psi2> ± |psi2 psi1>

    Note that if the ± is a plus, then exchanging psi1 and psi2 yields the exact same equation. If it’s a minus, you get a negative sign out front. Electron systems have a negative sign because of the spin statistics theorem (I don’t understand that part, so you can look it up if you want—it involves field theory iirc) Now, if electrons are exactly the same (indistinguishable), then exchanging them will yield the exact same wave function, leading to

    |psi1 psi2> - |psi2 psi1> = |psi2 psi1> - |psi1 psi2>

    The only solution here is |psi1 psi2> - |psi2 psi1> = 0

    But recall that |psi1 psi2> - |psi2 psi1> describes the system as a whole. So this system is prohibited by quantum mechanics, and there’s no way for two electrons to have indistinguishable states (be in the same place at the same time).