Water

Near the conclusion of this excellent blogpost:<p>&quot;We live in a semi-barbaric age where science is probing the finest details of matter, space and time—but many of the discoveries, paid for by taxes levied on the hard-working poor, are snatched, hidden, and sold by profiteers.&quot;

the deadpan &quot;gunther eigen&quot; joke got me :) i thought it was going to be a great new addition to the list of &quot;things that sound like descriptive names but were actually named after people&quot; (e.g. google&#x27;s &quot;page rank&quot;) but it was just the author pulling our legs.

I used to be a huge fan of John Baez when I was an aspiring theoretical physicist and into category theory. His weekly finds in mathematical physics column was my HN before HN.<p>Didn&#x27;t read the post but I wonder whether it relates to this &quot;photomolecular effect&quot; discussed here? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;17Y82tJDk2o?si=YjJAIhP3MkF8N6pT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;17Y82tJDk2o?si=YjJAIhP3MkF8N6pT</a><p>The high level idea of reducing the cost per molecule of breaking those hydrogen bonds by having whole groups of molecules evaporate makes sense to me.

Not completely related, but I think about the fundamental physics of water a lot, primarily when referencing the chaotic nature of reality.<p>Do we have a mathematical model to predict the properties of water (or other chemical compounds)? How can we predict a chemical mixture is wet? Can it ever be known or is the computation complexity such that it is impossible to calculate inside a computer?<p>Questions that I transpose onto understanding consciousness ...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bower.sh&#x2F;consciousness-is-wet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bower.sh&#x2F;consciousness-is-wet</a>

(2013)<p>Good read though!