[erlang-questions] At what point am I "playing compiler"

[John Haugeland]

Er, yes.  Did you think that was the literal and complete equation, or
in any way complete enough for actual use?  I thought it was common
knowledge that newspapers had cut constants out of the real thing
until it was useless in active context.  The reduced form people have
heard is unable to cope with basically any circumstance that anyone
would actually want to use the equivalence for.

E^2 - (pc)^2 = (m_0 c^2) ^2 is the simple case four-vector mass energy
equivalence, which is satisfactory for bodies at rest and bodies in
constant motion (ie not accelerating/decelerating).  I apologize; I'll
use simpler examples next time.



On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:42 AM, mats cronqvist <masse@REDACTED> wrote:
> John Haugeland <stonecypher@REDACTED> writes:
>
>> This is a bit like quoting e=mc^2 : there are actually a bunch of
>> things removed from that in order to make it brief and pithy enough to
>> use as a rule of thumb.
>
>  E=mc**2 is a rule of thumb? Intriguing.