Comments on: Humankind’s Basic Picture of the Universe

By: Scott Aaronson on the String Wars | Cosmic Variance

Scott Aaronson on the String Wars | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:04:37 +0000

[...] Scott Aaronson, well-known around these parts for thinking that a priori constraints on conversations with super-intelligent aliens are more important insights into the fundamantal workings of the universe than dark energy and the holographic principle, is suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome. He has visited the Stanford high-energy theory group (intellectual hotbed of agressive Landscapism), given an interesting talk on Computational Complexity and the Anthropic Principle, and discovered to his bemusement that string theorists are quite open-minded and reasonable people! When faced with an interesting new idea, they are even willing to consider it! And their objections to Loop Quantum Gravity seem to be based on physics, rather than just prejudice! Who would have thought? (Also linked from Not Even Wrong.) [...]

By: admin1

admin1 — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:03:27 +0000

An inventory of what the universe is made of.

So far there have been 76 comments about the religious statement quoted above in the name of physics which is the religion of our time. I bet that none of the commentators can tell or care to distinguish why this is a religious statement. To me it is not surprising that Doctors of Philosophy who are the direct descendants of pre-Newtonian scholastic Doctors comment about one of the oldest scholastic/religious concepts of all time. This is also a proof of how Doctors are doctoring the internet, but why are others who are not Doctors of Philosophy contributing to the religious speculation in the name of science? I understand this is physics, the way reading the mind of god is physics, but it is not science.

By: Plato

Plato — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:59:22 +0000

Even a well trained cosmologist might have missed the importance of numerical relativity? Even good mathematical equations need their counterparts transferred to the screen for the views that are sometimes just locked in the mathematicains mind. Even a good artist can help sometimes.

Escher?

http://www.supercomputingonline.com/images/displaywall.jpg

Whether such a “quantum computer” can realistically be built with a value of L that is large enough to be of practical use is a topic of much debate. However, the mere possibility has led to an explosive renaissance of interest in the host of curious and classically counterintuitive properties associated with entangled states. Other phenomena that rely on nonlocal entanglement, such as quantum teleportation and various forms of quantum cryptography, have also been demonstrated in the laboratory

By: Plato

Plato — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:41:09 +0000

Edward Witten:

One thing I can tell you, though, is that most string theorist's suspect that spacetime is a emergent Phenomena in the language of condensed matter physics.

By: A former student

A former student — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:15:02 +0000

Scott,
Thanks for the link. I agree with you that either situation would be tremendously exciting and
have fundamental physical implications. Personally, I am hoping for the first – I rather like the idea of decoherence as a limiting process. But they don’t fall into your 30 year timeline . BTW,
I am not sure that limitations due to decoherence would imply that quantum mechanics is false
or that there is a fundamental source of decoherence. It may be a statistical consequence, like with entropy in classical statistical systems?. I think this alone would be of great importance.

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:57:06 +0000

Pauli,

The dotcom revolution is nothing compared to what is coming

By: W. Pauli

W. Pauli — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:22:21 +0000

This is why “computer science” is more fundamental than physics.

Not to mention the dotcom revolution…

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:56:57 +0000

Richard,

We are in fact part of this universe. The question is why. I mean, the brain is a formally describable system, and therefore defines (in the Tegmark ensemble) a universe in its own right.

This is why “computer science” is more fundamental than physics. In physics you just postulate a universe and try to find the fundamental laws. If, on the other hand, you assume that an ensemble of all posible worlds exists, then many more questions can be raised that don’t make sense in traditional physics.

By: W. Pauli

W. Pauli — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:56:24 +0000

Yeah, who cares about neutrinos? What are they good for anyways? Higher topos are the real thing.

By: Rob Knop

Rob Knop — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:43:40 +0000

Scott, re: post #67 : if you keep saying stuff like that, I’m gonna have to be forced to re-evaluate my idea that computer science is a subdiscipline of math, and start wondering if it’s physics instead. And you know that the last thing a good red-blooded American ever wants is to be forced to re-evaluate his preconceptions.

Of course, “quantum computing” has that quantum in its name already.

Re: Hamitonians with arbitrary numbers of free parameters : is that really something realistic to worry about? In math and physics, when we get to large numbers of particles we go to continuum treatments. Thus, calculus, thus, field theory.

-Rob