Then I spend about 30 minutes forcing myself to do whatever task until it no longer is forced.

Ok, HOW do you “force yourself”? I can do it for tightly aligned tasks, for a short period, but burn out rapidly. Back at university, I managed to induce heart arrhythmia pushing myself this way.

It also doesn’t help with the initiator issue. HOW do you get yourself moving in the first place? I can reliably do it a couple of times a day, but day to day life needs more than that for basic maintenance.

Oh, and don’t get me wrong, I’m functional, but it runs me at my mental limit all the time. Parenting pushed that to the next level. I’m permanently riding the knife edge of burnout.

I sometimes get some amusement with people with this attitude. Just play the ‘How’ game.

Basically, ask them, as earnestly as possible, HOW do you focus? You’ll likely get some rote answer, that’s when you start digging. Acknowledge the obvious bit and drill into the difficult bit. They will quickly be left stuttering with a “you just do it” type response. See how long you can keep it going.

The more honest, earnest and even slightly desperate you are, the funnier it becomes. They just told you they have the secret to fix your life, but now won’t share it. WHY won’t they share?!?

Spiders don’t have to eat their mate. The female just tends to be hungry, after mating. The male is snack sized, right there, and of no further use.

Apparently, when trying to breen endangered spiders, they make sure the female is well fed prior. It gives the male a chance to make a quiet getaway.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.

• Will Rogers

It did though. Hitler could have gone after Britain and france earlier. However, he thought Britain was staying out of things, and so played more safe and slow. This brought Britain the time it needed. Hitler honestly didn’t expect Britain to declare war on him, and that slowed his assault on that front. If WW2 had gone serious even 6 months earlier, Britain would have been in serious trouble. The RAF would have collapsed under the luftwaffa, and WW2 would have been very different. Appeasement traded lives for time.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a dick move, and threw others under the tanks tracks to save Britain. It’s also worth noting that this is not what Trump is trying to do. He’s just being a boot licker to the most powerful person who will talk to him. Appeasement at least had a positive goal.

Appeasement can work, just not in the obvious way. It’s like throwing steaks at a pack of hungry wolves. It won’t slow them for long, but it might give you enough time to find the shells, and load the shotgun.

What Trump is doing doesn’t even rise to the level of appeasement. He’s just begging like a whipped dog to his master.

To his credit, Chamberlain wasn’t as bad as he’s made out. When he implemented his policy of appeasement, Britain was not actually capable of meaningfully resisting nazi Germany. He basically brought time to bring Britain back to a war footing. When it became obvious to the public that war was coming, he fell on his sword. This cleared the way for Churchill to take charge, without significant infighting. He also inherited Britain on a far better war footing, and even then it was a close thing.

Basically, Chamberlain knew his plan wouldn’t work long term. He took one “for king and country”, likely knowing how it would be perceived. I can at least respect him for that.

https://youtu.be/KHJbSvidohg

devil’s advocate, it does have some logic to it.

• An ambiguous report of an unconscious person could be the result of a crime/attack. Having the police turn up quickly helps with that significantly.

• As others have said, the police could have been faster to respond.

• Some people, when coming out of a fit, etc, can be aggressive. E.g. A friend is, apparently a “puncher” when she comes out of a general anaesthetic. She makes it a point to warn the nursing team, when possible. She’s still given out a few black eyes. Having police respond makes sense. They are, supposedly, trained in safe handling of an aggressive person. This makes them ideal for containing someone till their brain reboots, and stops panicking.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the officers here forgot their duties and training. I’m often horrified to hear how american police tend to operate. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see much of in most developed countries.

You could detect decoherence in the system, that doesn’t indicate a human observer, however.

That process is, however, used to protect cryptographic keys, transfered between banks. A hostile observer collapses the state early. The observer gets the key instead of the 2nd bank, which is extremely conspicuous to both banks.

We can observe the end result. E.g. observing the screen only, and you get wavelike behaviour. When you also observe the slit, the wavelike behaviour disappears, and it seems particle like.

Both end in an observation, 1 has an extra observation.

Depends on how you are observing it photons impart energy and momentum. The true, detailed explanation is a lot more convoluted, it’s all wave interactions, in the complex plane. However, digesting that into something a layman can follow is difficult.

The main point I was trying to get across is that there is no such thing as an independent, external measurement. Your measurement systems minimum interaction is no longer negligible. How that is done varies, but it always changes the target and becomes part of the equations.

We know how it works, we just don’t yet understand what is going on under the hood.

In short, quantum effects can be very obvious with small systems. The effects generally get averaged out over larger systems. A measurement inherently entangled your small system with a much larger system diluting the effect.

The blind spot is that we don’t know what a quantum state IS. We know the maths behind it, but not the underlying physics model. It’s likely to fall out when we unify quantum mechanics with general relativity, but we’ve been chipping at that for over 70 years now, with limited success.

Observer here doesn’t mean the same as the layman meaning. It’s anything that interacts with the system while it’s developing.

Interestingly, it actually can be used for a presence detector, at least in a sense. You can use it to transfer cryptographic information. If no-one is listening in, about half your sent numbers are wrong, but you can agree on what ones. However, if someone is listening in, all your data gets randomised.

They actually now use this system to transfer information between banks. They send a random stream of 0s and 1s over a fibre optic cable. They then send (semi publicly) which bits made it properly. If someone spliced into the fibre, they would get the encryption data, but the target bank would not! They know instantly that something is wrong.

For those confused, it’s worth noting the difference between observed as a layman concept and as a quantum mechanical one.

In QM, to observed is to couple the observer to the “system” being observed. Think of it like “observing” your neighbour, over a fence using a BB gun. When you hit flesh, you know where your neighbour is. Unfortunately, the system has now been fundamentally changed. In a classical system, you could turn down the power, until your neighbour doesn’t notice the hits. Unfortunately, QM imposes fundamental limits on your measurements (heisenburg and his uncertainty principal). In order to observe your neighbour accurately, you need to hit them hard enough that the will also feel it and react differently.

QM behaves in a similar way. Initially, the system is just a single particle, and is not very restrained. This allows it to behave in a very wave like manner. When you observe it, the system now includes the whole observation system, as this coupling propagates, more and more atoms etc get linked. The various restraints cause an effect called decoherence. The system behaves ever more like a classical physical system.

In short, a quantum mechanical “observer” is less sneaky watching, and more hosing down with a machine gun and watching the ricochets.

Theories can be a stepping stone to other theories. Until we explore those chains, we don’t know if there is anything useful at the end.

E.g. initially, lasers were a solution looking for a problem. An interesting quirk possible due to some interesting bit of physics.

Maths explores idea spaces. Much of that is purely of interest to other mathematicians. However, it sometimes intersects with areas of interest to other scientists, at which point it becomes extremely useful.

Meds definitely change mine. My wife will sometimes notice I’ve forgotten to take my medication before I do.

I like both versions of me, but their usefulness is task dependent.

Depression can be a symptom of adhd. At least in women, depression and anxiety are more common than hyperactivity.

Unfortunately, some GPs fixate on 1 or 2 symptoms. That’s where having a checklist is useful. It shows patterns, not just individual symptoms.

Given the mention of NHS on the sign, this is focused on the UK.

Step 1. Note down the various reasons you think you might have adhd. Also include times that it has actively had a negative effect.

Step 2. Make a GP appointment.

Step 3. At your appointment, explain that you would like a referral for a mental health assessment, since you believe you have adhd. The note previously can either act as a prompt for yourself or just give them to the doctor. They were mostly to crystalise your thoughts and stop you going blank at the appointment.

Congratulations, you are now on the (very slow) path to a diagnosis. There are methods to speed it up, but even if you just passively follow instructions, you should get there.

Different countries will have slightly different systems, but the broad approach should still work. For our American friends, you have our commiserations.

The key is that it can be both. Pushing the “your kids are screwed” message doesn’t seem to be working. If hyping up Americans with patriotic messages gets them moving, I don’t see that as a bad thing.