What, Why & How do we Know ?
Fundamentally – What do I know? Black holes ain’t so black, and science ain’t so different from the humanities. Singularities have horizons crammed with information. Nothing objective is more fundamental than the information available. This is a summary of recent work ostensibly on quantum gravity and the role of humans more generally in the science … Continue reading “Fundamentally – What do I know?”
Harris Podcast with Sean Carroll [Aside – Identity Politics topic – previously talking past each other with Ezra. Apart from better management of conversations with specific Q’s requiring A’s, main Harris lesson is to avoid agendas of extremists left or right. Convincing an extremist that they may be wrong is a counterproductive waste of effort. … Continue reading “Sam Harris & Sean Carroll – Raw Notes”
“It makes meaning the child of physics. Physics itself, however, according to this view, is also the child of meaning.” – John A Wheeler’s Meaning Circuit (1986). I love the way Wheeler wrote his papers!! @phalpern pic.twitter.com/xZDL93foaH — Rohit Kulkarni (@RoAKulkarni) April 10, 2018 “Physics is the child of meaning” Oh yes. Information is more … Continue reading “Physics as the Child of Meaning – John Wheeler (1986)”
Always seen the multiverse idea as nothing more than a thought experiment, a kludge, a total cop-out if seen as representing or explaining anything like reality, (pretty much the same as Schroedinger’s Cat in that respect). By adding a massively complex explanation – whole new universes of infinite posssibility – to answer simpler problems and … Continue reading “The Multiverse Kludge”
The early version of this Edward Witten interview by Natalie Wolchover – since corrected – was criticised for suggesting his M-Theory was the only current model (with any worthwhile credibility) attempting to unify quantum and gravity fields. His idea of (M-em)branes combining multiple string theories in multiple dimensions beyond 3 is now 22 years old. What … Continue reading “Emergence from Quantum Information”
Discounting the intellectual snobbery that this is about Dan Brown, as indeed the reviewer himself suggests, it is worth a read. The headline is: “Dan Brown’s New Novel Pushes Atheism and Endorses Intelligent Design … Wait …What?“ I’ve not digested the whole yet (and there are secondary references to follow-up) but my own position is … Continue reading “Teleology Without a God”
A collection of interesting links I’ve had bookmarked for a while: YaĂŻr Pinto in Aeon: When you split the brain, do you split the person? The Divided Brain is an important topic to understand better, too easily dismissed amid misunderstood myths. Ben Medlock in Aeon: The body is the missing link for truly intelligent machines. … Continue reading “The Tensions Between Science and Psychology – recent bookmarks”
A bookmarking post only. Interesting to me as an one-time fluid-dynamicist, and I’ve mentioned the parallels before between Navier-Stokes et al in Fluid Dynamics and more fundamental physics. Especially point-based (Boscovich), quantum-loop-based (Rovelli) and integrated-information (IIT). Just capturing the link here. “fluid dynamics, is surprisingly pivotal to understanding some of the most elementary constituents and … Continue reading “Why Fluid Dynamics is not boring?”
There was a time when I followed John Brockman’s Edge regularly, it was a great way to pick up relationships between living thinkers you already knew and admired and others you didn’t, from across unlimited intellectual fields. The great thing about the annual Edge Question is that apart from the open question, there is no … Continue reading “Hidden Concepts – Edge 2017 – Let’s play Connections instead of Bulldog”
I am at last reading and considering this TLS piece in which Tim Crane presents the Papineau / Dennett exchanges on Dennett’s “From Bacteria to Bach and Back”. I’ve had it bookmarked for over a week and so far made only passing references. Tim Crane’s a professional, I’m an amateur, when it comes to the … Continue reading “A New Species of Mind-Matter Explanation”