meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Fun watching extremists call other people extremists this week.

In response to the likely-upcoming ruling that will say that there is not a constitutional right to abortion, idiots are saying that it is something like it will make women undergo "government-mandated pregnancy." Which is strange, since abortion access will not change in thirty-seven states, and in the thirteen states that have laws on the books that will outlaw abortion none of them seem to have legislated the conscription of fertile women into government-run brothels for the purposes of repopulating the countryside.

For now, of course.

It's strange that they're acting up. They knew this was coming, the court has been turning more and more into a committee of talmudic judges rather than the Anglican bishops of fifty years ago. And Roe v. Wade has been acknowldged to be bad law for all fifty of those years. As long as there were enough high priests to overrule the scholars, Roe would stand. The very fact that this ruling has been batted around in the courts for so long, including for decades where it was certain that it wouldn't be overturned, indicated that it was an unstable position. And they didn't do anything to help themselves in the meantime.

Now, rather than just demonizing people, maybe people who care will have to talk to each other. But, seeing as everyone gets the story wrong most of the time, I doubt it.

Still, will the the 13 bans survive? Will more states restrict abortion? Will Texans travel to Juarez to pop their buns and scrape out their zombie rabbits, a la the trip to TJ in "The Abortion: A Historical Romance 1966?"

------

Also, Canadians are Scary. Entrepaneurial YouTube Marxists still freak me out. That's what I get for listening to a Canadian analyze American TV accents.

Damn! It gets worse as it goes on. I'm not letting YouTube run while I grade anymore.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Want to complain about Matt Yglesias trying to read tea leaves in the noise of a chart.

Instead will complain that Amazon is trying to get me to buy steel gauntlets and pirate pants.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
I just read the Timaeus, and I think everyone should be required to do so.

For every possible thing where he could have gone wrong, he did.

It's obviously not allusion, it's obviously not allegory. But Plato does prove the universe doesn't have feet or hands. He says nothing about the universe's genitalia. Plato's Greek, not French. He explains the harmonics of the mixtures of primitive substances to create different materials. He gives instructions on how to create a soul, and why something with a soul needs a face.

More importantly, Plato discusses many topics that are scientific in nature. That is, topics that are not amenable to discovery by thought. Questions that require the interrogation of the natural world to answer. How do the senses work? What are things made of? What makes some spicy? sweet? sour? In all of them, there's no empirical investigation, just a kind of language game that tries to deduce how the world works by thinking.

And that's why everyone should read it.

Plato is one of the greatest, most influential people to ever have lived. Yet, the Timaeus is full of shit. Nothing that he talks about in the book is worth mentioning. If Plato can go wrong when he doesn't carefully and explicitly pitch his investigations with spikes of experiment, what chance do you have that your ideas won't collapse on you in the middle of the night when its least convenient?
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Today I e-mailed an academic economist based off of listening to an old (2019) interview he did. He'd said he wasn't aware of any use that physicists made of philosophers of physics. Since I've been so surprised in the past year or so about just how much physicists working in quantum foundations (and similar topics), I thought I'd drop him a quick e-mail with an example of how these two groups are working together. I addressed him as "Dr. C..." Earlier in the month, I e-mailed a doctor because I'd seen an interesting series of lectures that I thought he might be interested in because of some old podcasts he'd done. I addressed him as "Dr. G..."

In neither case was I trying to get anything out of the person. I just dropped them a note, which they'll probably ignore.

Since R. died of a heart attack in January, I've gotten many e-mails from fans. They all call me "J..," not "Dr. R..." or "Prof. F..." or whatever. I might not have noticed (I certainly didn't previously), but again, I'd just sent out a random note to someone a few hours before I received a sympathy note from someone else (a problem with asynchronous communication is that you get to relive any public calamity every few weeks for a year).

I don't think that I'm more personable than either of the people I wrote to. My students certainly don't think that.

How familiar should you be with a total stranger that you never met?

------

I'm annoyed by a recent review of the podcast, and I've gotta bitch somewhere:

hvfdgbjk 04/06/2022
They did r... dirty!

How disrespectful. No mention of R...’s passing or tribute to him. On to the next episode. How cold!


I wrote a blog post within a week of R.'s death, and when I released the last episode with him (about a month later), I both gave a him a farewell (at the end) and linked to my post and his obituary in the show notes. I feel that doing anything more would be performative grief, and therefore psychopathic.

And yes, if I were to see someone put out a long, drawn-out memorial episode of a podcast, I would think less of them, because they'd be capitalizing on their "friend's" death. The quotes, of course, because psychopaths who perform grief in public have no real friends, just assets.

Once more, I need to find these jerks so I can knock out some teeth. Like I did to most of the usenet.

You should lose one tooth for every lie you tell about someone else, even if that lie is because you didn't check to see that you were right.

Scare

Mar. 4th, 2022 07:05 pm
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Watching porn, and twitter overlayed half the video (and only the video) for some reason. Didn't know what was going on, so I checked twitter to make sure it didn't post the nasties I was watching.

People might have found out that I am in the 80% of men who watch pornography.

What a scandal that would be.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Re-listening to EconTalk podcasts with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, author of The Logic of Political Survival [Amazon] and its popular rewrite The Dictator's Handbook [Amazon, Recommended]:

  1. Democracies and Dictatorships
  2. The Economy of Power


Bueno de Mesquita's analysis of politics is hard-nosed, cynical, and hilarious. Worse, it's probably most correct. His example of foreign aid is the simplest way to look at this. We think that foreign aid goes to help poor individuals in poor dictatorships so they can live better lives, but when the money is tracked very little gets to the people we think the aid is for. Most of that money is extracted by the government at the ports. The money is taken for two reasons, the first to keep money away from the people and the second to bring money to the dictator. The money is kept from the people to keep them laboring, the money goes to the dictator so he can pay off his cronies (and keep power). And this is how aid agencies like it. This is because the aid comes with policy strings, and the dictator does keep his policy promises (which a democracy might not). The outside organization gets concessions, the dictator gets his money, and the people are no worse off than before. No one loses.

That this requires a beard of altruism is interesting, and reminds us of the bootleggers and Baptists parable from Bruce Yandle. The commissioners of a county have a vote coming up on whether to repeal its blue laws. There is a strong opposition by the Baptists, who definitely think you shouldn't drink on the Lord's day. ...

Since I need to work on a physics and politics class over the summer, while listening to the discussion, I wondered where his ideas could fit in. Here are some:
  1. How does science get funded in a democracy? [Who are the bootleggers? Who are the Baptists?]
  2. Does the incentive structure of science work in a similar way?
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
The following is a work in progress that will be moved when completed.








Physics I.5 Principles must be opposites, properties are composed of principles, and each principle contains both itself and its opposite.


That is, if lightness is a principle, then darkness is also included in the principle. This is a very Greek way of thinking. When the women pray for peace in the Homeric Hymns, they pray to Ares. ...(I had two other examples in mind. What were they?)... This dualism in purpose, light-dark, beauty-ugliness, and so on, was common for four centuries before Aristotle and a few centuries after him.

But, it doesn't really show up in modern science. For the most part, the opposite of having a property (charge, mass, size) is really not having it.

The closest I think you can get is antimatter in the Standard Model. But, that's not really an opposite (except in the most explosive of ways), really it's an alternate, left-handed form of the same thing.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Met a math professor while walking to a student club last Friday.

"Are you going to the philosophy club?" He asked. I said I didn't know that it was a philosophy club, but it was where I was going. The topic was "information" and how to get it. I never did get the chance to make any "Prisoner" references.

When we went there, the student leading the discussion read the "mission statement" for the club, which I'd heard at a previous meeting. I thought it odd that they read a mission statement. I don't think any club I was ever involved with in college even had a mission statement. Of course, I went to college at a place and time where most of the clubs met in bars (and sometimes ended up in clubs). This mission statement has a strange phrase in it, "we all all equal here, we leave our titles at the door." On the previous occasion I was there, the club commissar --or CEO or whatever he is that his club has a mission statement-- mentioned that it was written to put students at ease because they were sometimes reticent to engage with their professors.

I had gleaned from the newsletter that this particular meeting was organized around the idea of information and how to get it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the information they were interested learning how to find was information on abortion, racism, and teaching history.

And strangely, that meant that the conversation went off on a tangent almost immediately.

After holding back for a while, I started trying to ask questions of the students to get thing back on track, back towards how to gather the information the students should be looking for to discuss a question on this topic. The mathematician wasn't saying much, but he's a mathematician and even more introverted than I am.*

And then the first of the twins** came in.

I didn't know her. I wasn't really sure if she was a student or not. She looked a little old for a student, but not old enough to date. And immediately, she started lecturing. "You have to be careful with these conversations..." it became clear she was a professor. I tried to get the conversation back on track once or twice, and almost got the students talking again, but the second twin came in. This one I knew and disliked from meetings, and she teaches a class immediately after mine in the same room three days a week. She's a talker, just like the other twin proved to be. And of course the last person you want in a meeting is someone who presents a stream of inclinations as thoughts, at least if you want a chance to grab lunch.

The twins then started to trade soliloquies. They may have riffed a little on the previous five minute monologue, but it wasn't a conversation. It was a tag team lecture. They were hectoring the students on what they "had to do" in order to talk about the topic. Who are the right scholars to talk about abortion and racism? [None] What should the tone be? [Nasal] Not topics for students to discuss among themselves. "These issues are too big for you." Topics to be imposed by twenty-eight year-old high priestesses.

The mathematician tried to throw in a suggestion somewhere, but it disappeared into the linguistic aether.

I was bored. I took the first opportunity to leave, and when I got up the mathematician got up with me.

We did talk mildly on the way back to the office (our offices are in the same hall). We agreed the students were doing pretty well until the meeting was hijacked. He thought that most of what the twins were suggesting could be accomplished just by choosing something to read instead of a topic. I thought the twins needed to go to great books discussion leader training to learn to ask questions rather than pontificating all the time.

The CEO came in a little after we left, he said, and the twins were discussing whether we (the mathematician and I) had been offended by the reading of the mission statement. And they continued talking for two and a half hours. The strange thing is, the twins showed me why the mission statement was read, they showed me why it had such a strange phrase, and they showed me that the phrasing was far too weak. Student clubs are for students.

I haven't seen the second twin all week, although she usually gets to her class early. I'm hoping that I scared her off.

This week, I didn't get the newsletter.(*4)

______________________
* While visiting a lab in NYC one summer, a graduate student introduced me to his girlfriend by saying "F. is an extrovert, he's always talking to people about what they're doing." I told this to some friends when I got back to NOLA, and they couldn't drink their beers through their laughter for the next five minutes.

** Obviously, they aren't twins. That would be hot.(*3) Instead, they're both eerily similar human beings. Upper middle class mid-westerners, $50k+ private schools as undergrads (English, History), big state schools for grad school, and under 30. But, their personalities put them squarely in the Future Karens of America club.(*5) Very exclusive.

(*3) The twins at the coffee shop are really very hot. And their names are alliterative. Even hotter.

(*4) No one did. 24 hr+ internet outage on campus. The topic seems to have changed to rhetoric from abortion.

(*5) That didn't keep the twins from ogling me the whole time. I don't know if it's because they thought I was offended or just my enticing, manly musk that paradoxically attracts women who hate men, or ar least who hold Ph.D.'s (same thing?).

Move

Feb. 13th, 2022 11:50 am
meanwright: Max the Juggling Clown (Clown Commando)
"I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking here from the unceded land of the Wangal people of the Eora nation."

How hypocritical is this?

If you:
(1) Acknowledge someone's right to ownership of land, and that
(2) They have not given you permission to occupy it

And you:
(3) Stay there, but
(4) Acknowledge that you're squatting,

You have:
(5) Absolved yourself from meaningful responsibility, and so
(6) Don't need to do anything positive to rectify the situation.

"I would like to acknowledge that without permission I am eating the lasagna that I found in the refrigerator when I broke into John's apartment."

John therefore should be particularly pleased by this, and not at all angry. And he sure as hell shouldn't expect you to (1) get out of his apartment and (2) stop eating things from his refrigerator.

If you think you're living on "unceded land," land someone else has the rights to, you should move to a place you think that you have a right to live. If the government thinks they have the rights, then you have the legal duty to leave; if you think they have the rights, then you have the moral duty to leave. It is much worse to remain in the second case. If you remain when you think someone else has the rights, then you are a psychopath.

Or poor. But poor people don't talk like that, only upper class and upper-middle class people do (or, people who think they have the rights to the property).

At least, if you believe it, instead of just perform it.

This one is easy.

Nitwit.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
This post has moved to a slightly more respectable forum.
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

Thoughts on Bostrom's thoughts on anthropic reasoning and the multiverse hypothesis. I'm really just motivated by reading Anthropic Bias here. I've made some (literal) illustrations related to the Doomsday Argument that I'll share later.

The following line, which was supposed to be part of this post, fell out because I took to long to finish it.

The only reason what we believe we are special, that we have this free will that robots don't, is because God is such a bad engineer.[6],[7]

____________________________
[6] Although Leibniz is correct that we can't really make such an assessment about God's inventions. We don't have a complete list of the trade-offs that were involved in Creation.

[7] Subsequent to writing this sentence, I was listening to a podcast interview with a philosopher of consciousness, wherein consciousness was broken into two parts: decoding inputs and self-monitoring of state. I had just modified my Super Spinner class participation chooser the night before so that it would check the time (decoding input) and switch rosters in between classes, if necessary (self-monitoring of state). That is, the program continuously monitors its own state (which class roster is loaded?) and compares it to the ideal state (which class roster should be loaded?) based on the time. This satisfies all the requirements for consciousness based on the discussion in the podcast, but it cannot be what was meant. 200 lines of code cannot be conscious if consciousness is so special. But no matter how I try to amend the axioms, I can think of a program or system meets the criteria.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
31. The Iliad, Homer
30. A Legacy of Spies, John Le Carre
29. The Secret Pilgrim, John Le Carre
28. The Eyes of the Overworld, Dick Vance
27. The Greek Epic Cycle, Malcolm Davies
26. The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton
25. How the West Was Won, Louis L'Amour
24. The Game's Afoot! Game Theory in Myth and Paradox, Alexander Mehlmann
23. An Introduction to Hilbert Space and Quantum Logic, David W. Cohen
22. The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, David Rose
21. Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, Roger Zelazny and Robert Scheckley
20. Enumerative Geometry and String Theory, Sheldon Katz
19. The Greek Alexander Romance
18. Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, Paul Dirac
17. The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
16. Call for the Dead, John Le Carre
15. Smiley's People, John Le Carre
14. Zulu Terror: The Mfecane Holocause 1815-1840, Robin Binckes
13.The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
12. Bendigo Shafter, Louis L'Amour
11. Marine Physics, R.E. Craig
10. The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark
9. Quantum Physics, Mini-Black Holes, and the Multiverse
8. The Honorable Schoolboy, John Le Carre
7. Stories from Ancient Canaan, Coogan and Smit, eds.
6. The Haunted Mesa, Louis L'Amour
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carre
4. Matagorda, Louis L'Amour
3. The Looking Glass War, John Le Carre
2. Over on the Dry Side, Louis L'Amour
1. A Murder of Quality, John Le Carre
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
So, I just finished John Le Carre's Smiley novels. I may or may not have mentioned that I started reading them because I'd seen another Malcolm Gladwell interview where he mentioned some books he liked. Now, I wouldn't have tried another set of books after reading those Jack Reacher books, but since I had picked up a copy of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold when I was on an Alec Guinness kick, I gave it a try. And I loved it. It was grim, at times it was ponderous, and it ended in the worst way possible. I loved it.

I was lucky. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is the best of John Le Carre's Smiley novels. Smiley is Le Carre's most famous character, but he appeared in only nine novels. And in many of them, like 1950's "Poirot" novels, George Smiley only plays a small role. The Spy is one of those. If I didn't know that there was a man called Smiley that was important, I would have thought he was just a minor character that was there solely to have, in a fit of administrative assiduity, blown the main character's cover.

In fact, of the first four books, Smiley only plays a major role in A Call for the Dead (1960), the first novel that rightfully failed to make Le Carre famous. The next novel, A Murder of Quality, had Smiley as a consultant to an ex-spy who ran into a murder mystery at an English private school, and was equally undistinguished. The nice thing about having a poor freshman showing is that there won't be a sophomore slump (if you get a second chance). But The Spy was astounding, and it rightfully made Le Carre famous. In The Looking Glass War, about a particularly poorly planned operation, Smiley is the helpful agent of a sister service whose role it is to help them fail.

The next three novels are the famous ones, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honorable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. And they are rightly celebrated. The cycle is about George Smiley's chess game with the Soviet agent Karla, which includes a highly placed mole in Tinker (apparently Le Carre coined the term "mole"), a proxy war in Indochina for the Schoolboy, and a direct operation against Karla in People. And although they're not page turners, they are excellent novels, and they all feature George Smiley.

The final two novels, written after the fall of the Berlin Wall, are the remembrances of two other characters from the earlier novels. The Secret Pilgrim (1990) is the better of the two, and it describes several adventures of single character during the cold war, with Smiley mainly appearing in the framing story. A Legacy of Spies (2017) follows a similar structure, although there is only one story -- a different perspective on the events of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, that of the puppeteers rather than the marionettes. The events of the book in some ways condemn Smiley morally, as Le Carre is wont to do, while exonerating him operationally. And rather undermining the older, very good novel.

However, it does have a wonderful line, which I paraphrase: there isn't thief in history whose ideal haul is a shitload of books.

After all that, I would suggest The Spy Who Came in from The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. If you like those, finish up the Karla trilogy (with The Honorable Schoolboy being a bit of a lull, but not bad), and The Secret Pilgrim. And the other, read if you still want more.

Other Books, 2021 )
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
YES! Of course I will!

Obviously special relativity is wrong, and everyone has failed to notice why!

How can elementary particles not be beads sliding along tinker toys faster than the speed of light?

Send it to me, ASAP!

* * *

I was listening Michael Shermer interviewing Steven Koonin on Sunday, and they started commiserating about getting e-mails from people who had a brand new theory of physics. I remember my professors at Metro State complaining about them. And I couldn't remember the last time one came to me.*

I felt left out.

I felt so sad.

I felt so alone.

Not even the lunatics thought I was good enough to play with them.

Then yesterday morning when I got into work, what was waiting for me? Someone who wanted me to read his self-published article and comment on it on my podcast! I wouldn't call it a hum, nor a dinger, but it was a theory of the universe from top to bottom that absolutely wound't work! Unfortunately, we do have some standards (to keep ourselves in check) which basically say that we only discuss published articles, so I can't indulge him.** I think I'll suggest that he submit it to Nature or Science.

But finally, the lunatics want me!

They want me!

ME!
____________________________
* Although someone sent me a very strange book/box combination with odd toys that were supposed to prove something or other about the universe a few years ago -- very kind.

** Should I do an interview show called "Your Crazy Ideas" "The Crankfiles?" Whenever I get one of these, I can read the paper(*3) and burn the author for an hour.

(*3) These essays do tend to be long and convoluted (keep your LSD-informed depiction of the machinery that drives the universe under five pages, please), so maybe not.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
[Computational Biophysicist] Building an automated physics student

[Mexican Transsexual] Rock-n-Rolling at Dive Bars

[Antique Dealer] Construction techniques for stage backgrounds and carnival floats

[Education Executive] Psychology of homework management systems

[Chemistry Professor] Mathematics for ranking complexity of mathematics classes

[Interdisciplinary Head] Building an automated physics student, and shop talk

[Spider Therapist] The economics of tarot, and production methods for varieties of tofu

+ I was inadvertently flashed during class.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
This is a work in progress that will be moved in the future.
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I hate discussing something in terms of a definition, but in the following, I'd like to think a little about what an operation definition is, and to do so I'd like to talk a little about three operational definitions of my acquaintance that I think are looking at different concepts. And to do so in order of appearance, without jumping around like an electrified frog, I'll need something to compare them to. So, I'll use the American Psychological Association's definition:

A description of something in terms of the operations (procedures, actions, or processes) by which it could be observed and measured.


Not at all awful. I think it's at least compatible with what I have in mind for a good operational definition. But, to me, something may be missing. So I'd like to look at an operational definition of critical thinking, another of life, and a third for temperature in order to come to grips with what I'm looking for.

In "Naturalizing Critical Thinking," the authors summarize a 2020 report on critical thinking that felt an "operational definition of critical thinking should be provided [1]." This definition is "the capacity of assessing the epistemic quality of available information and -- as a consequence of this assessment -- of calibrating one's confidence in order to act upon such information." This is said to be operational because it tells us the benefits of critical thinking and "has implications" for teaching it. The idea behind an "operational definition" here seems to be that the definition is useful in some way to the authors.

Assessing epistemic quality and calibrating confidence seem to me to be vague ideas, although they could be made quantitative. But it doesn't feel like something that would help either guide designing a course or its materials, nor does it feel like a reasonable barometer for exploration of the idea. Despite its vagueness, it is still prescriptive.

In "The Origins of Life," the author looks for an operational definition of life that



In "Teaching Introductory Physics," Arons describes an operational definition as a definition related to a measurement process, a definition that doesn't explain what something is, but is nevertheless a good way to measure it. How you measure it is what it is. The purpose of the operational definition is have a standard way of exploring a concept to help you understand its inner workings. And you can then discard the operational definition when you understand the phenomenon.

Arons' example is temperature.

The ancient had no temperature. There was hot. There was cold. It was just how you felt. It was a subjective assessment, and there was no real comparison of the two -- it was just another "I know it when I see it" definition, like water. Not much can be done with it, scientifically. By the 16th century, the thermoscope had been invented -- a device that used the expansive properties of materials to vary the buoyancy of small balls when the temperature changed. When the volume of a ball changed, its buoyant force would change, and so a ball that sank at a lower temperature would rise to the top of a vessel when the water warmed up. Several of these balls could be made, and a relative degree of hotness or coldness could be inferred from which balls were floating and which balls were not.

On Thursday, the high will be Yellow with a change of rain.

But this didn't help with the physics of temperature.

The first real thermometers came into use at that time. ...




What I want in an operational definition of life is a definition like that.

_____________________________________________
[1] American Psychological Association, Online Dictionary. https://dictionary.apa.org/operational-definition

[2] Pasquinelli, E., M. Farine, A. Bedel, and R. Casati, "Naturalizing Critical Thinking: Consequences for Education, Blueprint for Future Research in Cognitive Science." Mind, Brain, and Education 15, 168 (2021).

[3] Fleischaker, G. R., "Origins of Life: An Operational Definition." Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. 20, 127 (1990).

[5] Arons, A., "Teaching Introductory Physics."
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
This is a work in progress that will be moved in the future.
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One of the problems in physics that has eluded solution for almost a century is producing a synthesis of general relativity with quantum mechanics that would put all of the fundamental forces on the same footing. This is not for lack of trying. Early attempts by Einstein, Dirac and others were probably doomed to failure, since a reasonable view of quantum field theory would take decades to produce, but Today, there are several stable, competing theories for a description of gravity that is in some way quantum-compatible. Although they don't agree, and they don't give us a way to experimentally distinguish between them, they suffer from a more existential issue.

Quantum gravity is unnecessary.

Unlike the quantization of electrodynamics,1 for which integration was required by the physics of the time, no such requirement exists for the quantization of gravity.2,3 The compatibility of the theories is all that is necessary. As long as you can do quantum field theory on a curved manifold, you've satisfied the requirements of physics as we know it today.

And you can.

But just because the rewriting of gravitational theory as a quantum theory isn't necessary, that doesn't mean that quantum gravity is undesirable. There are various rationales as to why you would want to have a quantum theory of gravity. And the different stable theories of gravity -- string theory, loop quantum gravity, and asymptotic gravity -- highlight different reasons why you would.

The current purpose of string theory, as a theory of everything, is to explain all of physics in a single formalism. That is, it puts all matter and all forces on the same footing. This is a very desirable situation: the fewer kinds of things there are that make up the universe, the less ultimate explanation is required for the big questions like why is there a universe? and how did the universe come to be? String theory’s answer to this is that every particle is represented by an object that is mathematically analogous to string. Some of these strings have two loose ends, like photons, and some of these strings are fully connected, like gravitons. However, only some force carriers are massless: photons, gravitons, and the mythical Yang-Mills particle. The graviton is this particle of gravity.

Loop quantum gravity has a much less grand purpose. It only wishes to create a quantum theory of gravity. However, it does so with the understanding that a theory of gravity, since the advent of general relativity, is a theory of space-time. There are good reasons to think that there would be a minimum size for a particle: the Schwarzschild radius of a non-rotating black hole is proportional to the mass of an object, and the Compton wavelength of an object is inversely proportional to its mass. Therefore, there must me a minimum extent of the particle, in a way. Loop quantum gravity imagines that the distance between intervening positions in space is on the order of this cross over, called the Planck length, and that the connections between these positions form a random network describe a possible spacetime. To complicate things, theorists envision that spacetime is a quantum superposition between all possible networks called a spin foam. The spin foam is the structure of space time.

So, we have at least two good reasons that we might want to have a quantum theory of gravity. We’d like to put all particles on the same footing, have all forces be aspects of the same thing. Also, we’d like to have a theory of the structure of space-time that reflects what we know about quantum mechanics, rather than being an addition to it. However, just having these rationales, no matter how psychologically appealing, is not a reason why physicists need to construct a theory of quantum gravity.

This came to my mind when reading a paper on quaternion-quantum gravity by Maia, Silva, and Carvalho.4 The authors presented a theory that created a quaternion force-particle and showed that satisfied several constraints required for quantum gravity theories. Then, at the end, it thankfully described the picture of the theory held by the authors as graviton objects moving on an undefined classical background. This puts it on par with the rationale made visible by string theory, but without the stronger theoretical background.4 In this view, the curvature of space-time is just an artifact of the particle gravity theories.

But without a strong Bohr-Rosenfield requirement for such a concrescence between quantum mechanics and gravity, we do need to keep the possibility that it cannot be done in mind. However, this has its own set of problems, practical problems. I don't know to what level the difficulties Dirac discussed in his Lectures on Quantum Mechanics [Amazon] have been overcome, but I don't think they all have (and I'd love some references that tell me I'm wrong, if you have them). Although it is possible that too much is made of this point: interference from gravitational interactions has been seen experimentally, despite everything I was led to believe as an undergraduate (or just reasonably came to believe from the way things were described).

As cool as quantum gravity is, it just might not exist.


____________________________
1 This was a famous result from Neils Bohr and Leon Rosenfield. See N. Bohr and L. Rosenfield, "On the Question of the Electromagnetic Field Strengths," Kgl. Danske Vidensk. Selsk., Mat.-Phys, Med. 12, 8 (1933).

2

3 Although in his book Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli both shows how many of the best minds in physics have thought QG is necessary (Einstein, Dirac, Feynman, Weinberg, Wheeler, Penrose, Hawking, t'Hoofts...) and he as a very suggestive block entitled "The Gravitational Field Needs To Be Quantized" in Table B1, I couldn't find a reason deeper than the rationales given here when searching through it just now (I couldn't find the table for a few minutes, either: I thought I was going insane; for some reason I thought it was in chapter 10). Neither could I find a deep reason in The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation. However, I don't remember where I read that there was a need for quantizing the electric field. I think it was in one of the Physics Frontiers episodes. But, I'm sure didn't look up the reference.

4 Maia, M.D>, S. S e Almeida Silva, and F.S. Carvalho, "Quaternion-Loop Quantum Gravity;" Foundations of Physics 39, 1273 (2009). [arXiv]. This paper mysteriously appeared in my mailbox with a number of other papers, some on quantum gravity and some quaternion mathematics. I still don’t know who put them there. Most, but not this one, were published. So, although I don’t know who it is, someone out there thinks this is a good idea. It wasn’t the quaternion guy in math. I already asked him.

5 I'd remembered that string theory is built, like the Standard Model, on a Minkowski space from somewhere. This was going to go on a little farther because I couldn't remember exactly where I got that idea. Thankfully, in looking for the rationale for QG in Rovelli's book, I found a reference for that. I really like the LQG formulation better, and that's one of the reasons. Although I like t'Hoofts' stuff too, I just really don't understand it yet.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Sexual harrassment training today.

Interesting rule: grad students on a stipend will be automatically fired (and expelled?) if they screw an undergraduate. Really, if they break up with an undergrad. Like statutory rape, it's only illegal when you break up: as long as everything's rosey, there's no reporting and so no crime. But, when you break up, charges are pressed, texts are shared, and you're screwed.*

Funniest slide: quid pro quo means "this for that." Title IX Gestapo Girl** can't say "tit for tat." Not the first time I've run into this. Or that.

I bought Y. a figurine of two titmice (titmouses?) several years ago from Swarovski, or whatever it's called, and the saleslady was unable to help me because she couldn't say the word "titmouse," probably because she was told by her grandmother that no tit may touch her lips.

Scariest part: faculty are automatically fired for not reporting Title IX violations. So don't tell me about how much fun you had sucking an undergraduate's cock, or I'll be forced to report you to the sex Stasi.

A strange thing is that the "bystander training" tells students to come to professors without mentioning that they're required to report such things to the relevant judicial office on (main) campus. So they might think they're not going to the highest office, they might not think the people involved will be subject to the harshest sanctions, but they are.

I liked the previous school;s line better: "Stay out of student's private lives. You're not a clinical psychologist. You're not qualified to help."

I am now going to get back to drawing rabid wild jungle tits assaulting giant snakes in public.

* Not mine. Mine are all business. "Leaving now eta 7:30."

** Don't I wish. If she wore a tight, stylized Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS uniform and carried a riding crop, the training would have been three orders of magnitude more memorable.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior by David C. Rose

This is the most interesting book (or talk) on ethics that I've read in a while. It's written by an economist, and when he talks about morality Rose has a very pragmatic goal: the growth of generalized trust. Rose argues, after Frank, that culture is an important aspect of why markets work. And, most importantly, people have to believe that most other people are trustworthy enough to carry out contracts with minimal supervision. If people aren't that trustworthy, then people won't trust each other because of opportunists. And, large scale free exchange will not happen.

Review )

So, to ensure a working economy in a large country capable of ensuring the welfare and encouraging the dreams of its citizens, Rose concludes that good acts should be viewed as voluntary and consequentialist and moral prohibitions should be viewed as mandatory and universal. These moral prohibitions (as opposed to the good works) need to be evaluated through the desire to produce a population that is trustworthy enough that people will extend trust to every who hasn't proven themselves untrustworthy, rather than the more common case which is the reverse. The way in which we try to evaluate the prohibitions is in whether if they were widespread, would they prevent opportunism, not if they would make people happier.

Again, this is the most interesting book I've read on ethics since Mill, although I never really bought utilitarianism.


* But really, how petty, stupid and mean do you have to be to look for insults in other people's habits, e.g., the students who were offended by the use of "那个." You should hear Y. go off on that one.

** And, if you have a moral dilemma like that, if you feel you need to get other people's approval of a choice, you probably already know that what you're pulled towards doing is wrong and you're just looking for that one rationalization that will put you over the edge. The hard thing to do is usually the right thing.

*** In the middle of this are some great examples. I don't know what of. Madagascar, I guess.

Other Books, 2021 )
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
...to fall asleep, so it can rob you.

I've been looking at more innumerate analyses of how well you can do selling your own art. The general idea, as usual, is that some people do well, so you can, too. Too many people sell like this, because people want it. This guy's advice, like many others, follows the drivel given out by "The One Sentence Persuasion Technique:"

People will do anything for those who:

(1) Encourage their dreams,
(2) Justify their failures,
(3) Allay their fears,
(4) Confirm their suspicions, and
(5) Throw rocks at their enemies.

...and this uncritical advice causes a lot of heartbreak (and probably makes the world a worse place [see (3)-(5)]). I've talked about how this inauthentic method makes me wretch in my let's plays, and maybe I'll type something more general up at some other time, but

"Take advice from the people who have the results that you want."

This is good advice.

If you want to make money, look at how people make it. If you want to get a poem published, talk to people who publish poems. This is absolutely essential if you want to achieve success: know what the most common paths to success in your field are.

This isn't enough, though. Try other things, too. There are niches out there that you may find that aren't being explored, or are being explored poorly. Try stuff, it might work.

"Don't listen to anybody who tells you that you can't do it."

This is bad advice.

There are two kinds of people who have important stories, the successes and the failures. Unfortunately, we see the successes more than the failures, and miss out on the problems. Every step of the way.

Knowing how their failed, knowing their stories will both help you navigate possible hardships and gird you for failures, because it is definitely not true that...

"For every failure, there's a success."

This is horrible advice.

Especially in artistic and creative fields, but also in any field with a low barrier to entry and a high possibility for prestige, there are dozens if not hundreds of failures and unknowns out there. And for every success, there are ten that did everything right. And a hundred that did almost everything right.

As people are able to reach more and more people with their work, as there are more and more ways to sell that work, the top performers earn more and more. There are actors who make commercials earn more today than the best actors in the country made in the 1870s, even comparatively, let alone someone like Robert Downey, Jr. But, as this happens, two things occur: more people want to become actors and a greater percentage of the money goes to the top earners.

So, even if we're lucky and more people can earn a living through their art, an even greater percentage of aspirants will fail -- and many people who would have excelled in the past will fail now. Just look at the NFL.

And when the public loses interest in an art, like poetry and novels, the money for the mid-level practitioners dries up quickly.


I want people to succeed, but when people roll the dice and don't succeed at unlikely occupations, they often blame other people, they often feel other people are biased against them, and this leads to bad outcomes for themselves, and when there are enough of them, for society as a whole.

Dinnertime.
meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
...is one of my favorite pornographic tutorials.

I am looking for a copy of the Iliad that I can actually read. I have at least two already. One leather bound one that I won't read in the tub, and one I picked up in a second hand store in 1992 which, I think, was translated into English from a Meiji-era Japanese edition by a dyslexic, monolingual German in the trenches on the Western Front. Best way to learn how to surrender.

Sim. Heroditus, except I just can't find my Heroditus.

I really want Cowboys and Amazons to be historically accurate. Almost as accurate as it is hot.
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