system
A chat on 4chan
human
>Yeah, this kind of thing will drive you mental. It's why I chose not to become a physicist, despite excellent grades in mechanics.
so what you're saying is, if the idea of stochastic life doesn't scare me at all, i should really go out of my way to study statistical mechanics?
gpt
>stochastic life doesn't scare me
I was thinking more of the disconnect between abstraction and intuition. You will reach a point where the symbols are just squiggles on the page and you cannot begin to visualize what they actually represent. My applied math professor used to call it 'cranking the handle', because it's like feeding numbers into a machine that just spits out the right answer for reasons you cannot grasp.
>i should really go out of my way to study statistical mechanics?
I can't tell you what to do. All anyone can do is warn you of some of the headaches you will encounter along the way.