popularizations of quantum mechanics & string theory: c/d, s/d

dammit

Fabric of the Cosmos?
The Elegant Universe?
Dancing Wu-Li Masters?
The Road to Reality?

i tried an elegant universe years ago, but got distracted.

also: isn't string theory perpetually on the verge of being debunked?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Bleep_lg.jpg

lame

i've never met a single person who liked this sort of thing who wasn't full of shit

isn't string theory perpetually on the verge of being debunked?

-- gbx, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 6:40 PM

quite possible. i don't know much about this stuff.

string theory is perpetually on the verge of being FALSIFIABLE you mean
it would have to tell us something useful first in order for it to be able to be debunked

i've never met a single person who liked this sort of thing who wasn't full of shit
word

people only talk about this at coffee shops and in nerve.com personal ads

i've never met a single person who liked this sort of thing who wasn't full of shit

-- omar little, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 6:42 PM

i read "dancing wu-li masters" a few years ago and turned into a new agey douchebag.

then i got into a fight with a guy who loved "what the bleep do we know" while i thought it was utter bullshit.

The Elegant Universe is very good, though probably rather out of date by now.

Actually, as I understand it, next year, with the completion of the latest particle accelerator, could be the year when a lot of string theory gets proven.

The popularization is probably a good thing, as long as no one ever watches that fucking dreadful awful evil FUCK YOU "What the Bleep Do We Know" ever again.

alright like 14 xposts.

next up: tesla's death ray

i actually like this sort of thing but i am full of shit

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/Prince_of_Darkness_film.jpg/200px-Prince_of_Darkness_film.jpg

http://www.ghostofaflea.com/archives/RobertAntonWilson.jpg

what the bleep do we fuck

fuck that guy xpost

or not

i applaud how string theorists whimsically fite amongst themselves abt how theres like either 12 or 15 weird little balled up dimensions deep down in there somewhere.

xp: "maybe"

the trippy deep-thinking academic is an excellent ttype of guy.

I think there might be a couple of experiments involving gravity wave detection that supposedly could prove some parts of string theory

i don't think string theory has even been bunked yet.

yah i read some other kind of physicist being all: more like string conjecture lol

new yorker article on string theory:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/02/061002crat_atlarge

this is one of the better books i've read about quantum physics' possible implications for consciousness, etc. without degenerating into new age horse shit (they give "What the Bleep Do We Know" and its ilk a sound debunking):

http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/019517559X

What pisses me off about "What the Bleep Do We Know" is that it takes the genuine philosophical and scientific questions posed by some interpretations of quantum physics and uses it as an excuse to validate crap like people's claims to be reincarnated princesses of Atlantis and other shit like that.

EXACTLY. People with no background in physics use it for all their BS metaphysics. Really upsets me.

I personally find discussions of quantum implications for consciousness to be woefully insipid since the probabilistic nature of the universe (oh right except for when it collapses into our observed macroscopic experience of the world) and the nature of the problems we imagine it causes for consciousness (oh right "free will" except for when we go and look at how decisions are actually made outside of a laboratory) serve to illustrate more gaps in our knowledge of both, the only interesting conclusion to draw is that we don't know what we're talking about, oh and well what omar said

last person i had a conversation about this with moved her hands about her head and gazed off into the distance at a non-extant fixed point and generally came off like the worst sort of empty-headed intellectual. she had a stare like that runaway bride or the cover of that hybrid cd.

wait dude wait I just realized we are just living in one set of electron positions from a multiversal superposition of all electrons ever

these people read a lot of sedaris and really love the music of david gray*

*weak generalization

explain tombot : O

or *does it* explain tombot??

oh man it is just like crisis on infinite earths

This thinking is like the first time I got stoned and was riding my bike over a bridge, got terrified I'd crash into something, and consoled myself by saying my bike actually wasn't touching anything on a molecular level. ie retarded and foolish

xxxxxx-post to tombot

very true, but we're forced make do with what little knowledge (in the grand scheme of things) we've gained. it's better than not thinking about it at all, imho.

i have read about string theory and branes and talked to physicists but i'm not gonna say i understand it. trying.

i'm partial to particles

i can get as long as it's stated conceptually with nicely colored graphs and dumb metaphors. i'm a total math dunce.

Man I thought latebloomer was joking about the Atlantian princess shit. I hate this movie even more now.

very true, but we're forced make do with what little knowledge (in the grand scheme of things) we've gained. it's better than not thinking about it at all, imho.

no I have no problem with using the discussion as a way to point out where the gaps are. but making up multiverse interpretations and other such unfalsifiable shit out of those gaps is no better than explaining a naturally self-immolating dictamnus albus as a telegram from the head office

there's a fine line between science and scientology with this

lol there is never a fine line between science in scientology

AND scientology

I personally find discussions of quantum implications for consciousness to be woefully insipid since the probabilistic nature of the universe (oh right except for when it collapses into our observed macroscopic experience of the world) and the nature of the problems we imagine it causes for consciousness (oh right "free will" except for when we go and look at how decisions are actually made outside of a laboratory) serve to illustrate more gaps in our knowledge of both, the only interesting conclusion to draw is that we don't know what we're talking about, oh and well what omar said

-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7:27 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

it sounds like the question you're really asking is "what the bleep do we know?"

Nothing like going out of a theatre and hearing some ponce on a cell saying, "OH my GOD, you have to see What the Bleep." ahahahahahaha

Wasn't the movie was funded by some cult-ish group? the Temple of Mon Mothma or some shit?

I actually have a fondness for wacky metaphysical speculation and quackery when it's posed playfully as a sort of what-if kind of thing rather than as someone's personal dogma. Which is why I always liked Robert Anton Wilson (the old dude pictured way upthread if anyone was wondering), he had fun with the whole thing. Also drugs, woo.

xx-post

yeah, i wasn't defending any particular interpretation, just saying that as you said "the discussion can point where the gaps in our knowledge are" etc. and that the value of that can be overshadowed by all the other stuff.

ooooo slocki you dirty motherfucker

haha

ooh i see what did there lol

Wasn't the movie was funded by some cult-ish group? the Temple of Mon Mothma or some shit?

yessir

I like Lee Smolin and Paul Davies and David Bohm. Bohm especially for "Order and Creativity".

I couldn't care less about new age-y reincarnation channelling malarkey

this book is a lot of fun

Paul Davies used to be my supervisor. He is a very good and pretty fair writer. Any of his popular stuff is worth reading. I'm not sure he has anything on either string theory or QM, although I know he was thinking more about string theory when I last spoke to him.

Like most non-string theorist physicists, I am pretty skeptical about string theory's progress since the early 90s. I haven't read The Elegant Universe, but I saw the TV show and thought it was great. He's honest about the problems and gaps and suprisingly clear about the theory itself.

If you're particularly keen on digging into the string theory controversy that's been getting attention for the last couple of years (beyond El Tomboto OTM in this thread except the stuff about gravitational waves being related, which is all you really need to know) then start with Lee Smolin's Trouble With Physics. For the pro-string view, read Lisa Randall's Warped Passages. For a very partisan and relatively technical polemic, Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong is a ripping yarn.

I think Steven Hawking's popular work is that is so unclear as to be positively damaging to anyone's understanding, and it's a real shame it's as popular as it is. I seem to remember him covering some of this in his BHOT. I don't think this is a particularly unusual view among physicists who've read it.

Avoid John Gribbin. His books are a waterfall of nebulous, gee-whizz bullshit.

The best book on QM is Feynman's QED. Everyone should read it. It's four chapters, ~150 pages, and like drinking a massive glass of ice cold water. It's very accessible, but there are not bong hit talking points.

It's very accessible, but there are not bong hit talking points.

-- caek, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 9:00 PM

Perfect. Thanks, man.

Feynmann anything is great reading

ooh yeah Feynman too, forgot to mention him.

I can't stand Stephen Hawking.

I'll third (fourth?) the Feynman praise.

I've aways had that problem with Hawking too.

you guys all read the challenger appendix right?

(off topic - eh)

can someone explain Hawkin's popularity? Is it just the backstory that makes him appealling to so many?

Partly the back story, and partly because he was the first person to write a popular account of post-standard model physics, I think.

i'm still not through Warped Passages, but it does lay things out well - still though, not exactly easy stuff
(oh man btw interview with randa11 fell through in the worst way i've ever had an interview fall through, like her crapped out cell phones in europe at 11pm crappy. had to admit defeat. ended up interviewing someone abt experimental particle physics and higgs-boson instead. which was neat. will not hold grudge against warped passages or multidimensional universssse tho)

Yeah, I remember you saying a big interview had gone weirdly, and I figured it was that one. Bogus.

I haven't read her book yet. I'm starting with Woit's one, which is probably the worst possible place. The debate being conducted in popular writing/online is like the culture wars though. What a waste of a lot of smart people's time.

which is more dope guys:

higgs boson
gravity waves
practical applications of quantum entanglement

I vote 3, 2, 1 in that order.

I heard a great thing about the Higgs, which is not of itself that interesting to me. One of the motivations for spending billions on the LHC at Cern is that it was claimed that it the only experiment that can confirm the existence of the Higgs. Of course this is bollocks, as it seems Fermilab is about to prove, by, y'know, discovering the Higgs. This will be a disaster for the LHC (a bigger disaster than them being a year+ late). I lolled.

re: quantum mechanics & string theory,

still DFKDFC

the Cern guys might not get the same level of glory but science won't suffer for it. I think the whole attitude that getting there first being the only thing that matters is terrible, but it is what it is.

I think I go with a tie for 2nd between higgs and gravity waves.

It's not just a glory thing. They lose credibility with governments, which is what they're really worried about. With experiments this size, they are totally dependent on their good will.

(100% accurate description of government funding of particle physics which you may already have seen: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/scientists_ask_congress_to_fund_50)

Quantum entanglement is definitely the most awesome thing, and once it gets going practically, shit is going to get interesting. I have been thinking about this recently because of the lodestone resonator in Philip Pullman's books (which, incidentally, weave QM into the story better than anything I've ever read).

full-duplex secure wireless point-to-point for 0 watts

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/Scientist-Ask-Jump.jpg
omg

haha "science ends"

hahahaha

too many funny things

i'm blogging taht

Sometimes the Onion is amazing.

A lot of science begins to generate.

Can I get the link to your blog please, rrrobyn?

Super-Heated Science

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/Astronomers-Discover-C.jpg

it's just my radio show blog - i haven't been updating it enough as i'd like to re: news stories and other things, just the show, but: http://freeradicalsradio.blogspot.com/

(i totally did just blog abt the onion thing haha)

xpost...

Oh holy fuck Hoos thanks for that link! It confirms everything I suspected and more.

On the film's Web site FAQ, the filmmakers answer the question of whether "Bleep" is a recruitment film coyly, stating that "the short answer is no. During the making of the film (originally to be titled 'Sacred Science') it was decided that what was important was the message, not the messenger -- whoever that may be. Some people may be inspired to check out RSE, and some people may be inspired to major at MIT in quantum teleportation." (At press time, MIT was not yet offering such a major.)

I've been fighting with my mom in law for three years about this movie, which she thinks is MUST SEE ZOMG WILL CHANGE LIFE, and finally I get to empirically Grinch her! mwahaha

haha I totally fought with my mom about this movie. my wife initially sided with my mom and made us rent it and then quickly recanted about 20 minutes in.

I'd also like to recommend Rudy Rucker's book on the 4th dimension, it is not explicitly about QM/strings but is scientifically sound, funny, and enlightening.

bump this

I've run out of popular QM and string theory books. For cosmology, I always recommend Our Cosmic Habitat by Martin Rees, which is short, amazingly clear, and correct as you'd expect from the president of the Royal Society.

A Very Short Introduction to Maths by Tim Gowers is a great book too. I've always been a bit shaky on what _pure_ mathematicians do despite knowing lots, and it's this book that allowed me to finally figure it out. No mathematical background whatsoever required. It's clearer than most pop physics books. He has a slightly unusual perspective on what mathematical objects (numbers, operations, functions, spaces, etc.) _are_. Usually I find that sort of foundational stuff a waste of time, but in the case of explaining pure maths to none-mathematicians it's really effective.

Not a book, but John Baez's TWF is always worth a look: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html

Revive please. Scienticians represent, never forget.

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbon is probably a pretty good layman's intro.

But it's been a while since I read it.

Ian Stewart's Letters to a Young Mathematician is a downright fucking inspiring introduction to high math, math careers, learning about math, and of course mathematicians. It's written all Screwtape Letters-stylees, lucid and entertaining, too.

Better yet is my main man A. K. Dewdney's Beyond Reason, described like so on his website:

"Some will find the plunge from the media-inspired we-can-do-anything spin into the cold water of mathematical reality somewhat bracing. There are things we cannot do and things we cannot know. The book explores eight examples, altogether. We cannot square the circle, nor can we travel faster than light. We cannot compute some functions quickly, or others at all. We cannot have perpetual motion machines and we cannot predict the behaviour of a chaotic system (including the weather). Finally, we cannot prove some theorems, even if they happen to be true, and we cannot predict the positions and speeds of elementary particles at all! The reasons for all these impossibilities lie in mathematics itself."

Has the best & most concise explanation of quantum mechanics I've ever read. The book is better written than that blurb, BTW.

Oh, Jesus, Deewdney's now a 9/11 skeptic! I feel like my heart has been ripped out and bored to death with hearsay and conjecture. I am seriously Bummed Out.

The best book on QM is Feynman's QED. Everyone should read it. It's four chapters, ~150 pages, and like drinking a massive glass of ice cold water. It's very accessible, but there are not bong hit talking points.

-- caek, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 22:00 (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

The four chapters were originally four lectures, which were transcribed and edited for publication. You can watch the lectures themselves here (Realplayer required ;_;)

http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

Very well worth four hours of anyone's time (although you could get through the book in that time too, if you'd prefer).

haha i keep expecting it to turn into 'goodfellas'!
i mean, his suit, his voice!

site is great

he says "in-der-es-ding"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero/index.html

NOVA two parter on the physics of absolute zero, starts tonight, you should watch if you are in the U.S. I saw it on BBC4 earlier this year and it was great. Part 1 = up to quantum era (which is perhaps more interesting personality-wise), part 2 = sexy quantum bong-hit era (which is still awesome).

none of these books are as good as the notices of the american mathematical society, which is my favourite magazine ever and free online: http://www.ams.org/notices/

and a total champ for using Lucida Bright on its mast-head.

http://images.cafepress.com/product/226065516v2_240x240_Front.jpg

http://whyfiles.org/siegfried/story48/

the new scientist story on unparticles was ridiculous

I hate it when they come out with big particle physics/cosmological cover stories and the article amounts to "this could either explain everything or not exist at all"

yeah i read that the other day and was kinda "uh"

Every time I read New Scientist I feel like throwing it across the room, but I do like it -- it's a bit like a Martin Amis book in that respect. That unparticle thing smells of bullshit, but I'm out of my depth. Various co-authors/citing authors/cited authors make me nervous.

http://www.atf.gov/kids/graphics/art_contest/dsc_554820%25.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKxzXAQJvB8

haha music for 18 musicians came on itunes while I was watching that and it was like whoa

http://io9.com/372115/trippiest-twilight-zone-episode-becomes-a-movie

Surprised that wasn't written by Philip K. Dick - that's his kind of time travel paradox

why do i recognise that name?

ah, I Am Legend

you certainly are now

http://www.physics.harvard.edu/about/Phys253.html

What a bro.

is this some sort of egghead rickroll?

haha!

"It is a good book in the sense that it contains few false statements"

historically significant popularization of atomic theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Los_Alamos_Primer

Finally read this after having it bookmarked since April 2006:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/apr/01/scienceandnature.richarddawkins

It's great. I liked this bit:

If we understand science merely as a band of light moving through time, advancing on the darkness, and leaving ignorant darkness behind it, always at its best only in the incandescent present, we turn our backs on an epic tale of ingenuity propelled by curiosity.

The Faber Book of Science he recommends is indeed excellent. Brilliant range of stuff and short enough selections to make it good bathroom reading.

Has anyone read "Antonio Damasio's hypnotic account of the neuroscience of the emotions in The Feeling of What Happens"?

(That's an Ian McEwan article about The Selfish Gene, btw, not Dawkins ranting about something tedious)

Biographical note: on my university application to study physics I spent a paragraph arguing that Selfish Gene is a better book than Brief History of Time. I did this to be contrary in the way that goes over well at Oxford during admissions, but it's true.

I always thought Gene was a pretty nice guy, and while not altruistic, not as greedy as he's made out to be.

Ban Gene.

apparently asking people shit is "crowd sourcing" now, but this is a solid list:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/01/the-crowd-sourced-reading-list/

Haha, I got a little too into this stuff some years back. Oh, those were times. I used to get frustrated because all the books would go off on all the dippy implications, on and on, right in chapter one, but I had all these really fundamental questions I wanted to know about still, and I was just so impatient. I mean it's hard to have OMG REVELATIONS when I don't even understand 98% of the theory. I remember enjoying QED cuz Feynman cut a lot of that shit out and just got to the point.

i've come across a lot of novel theories about how to MAGIC (or MAGICK if you prefer) is a quantum phenomenon, very OMNI-magazine wish-fulfillment shit from half-smart escapists / law-of-attraction "The Secret"-type shit for popular science nerds

The taxonomy of popularizations discussed in this article is nonsense, but the article is full of good points, e.g.

Explaining quantum theory, for instance, seems both to require and to shipwreck metaphors — for what is “down there” just does not behave like what is “up here”. A common tool is to anthropomorphize, personifying elements of the quantum world. Certain books, such as George Gamow’s Mr Tompkins Explores the Atom, use such anthropomorphic metaphors guilelessly, trusting the reader to recognize the difference between what is literal and what is not. Others, especially the “new-age” accounts, tend to deliberately blur that difference for their own ends. These include Zukav, who moves from a claim about the role of observation on atomic systems to the claim that “physics has become a branch of psychology”.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/38460

Also, can't really think of anywhere else to put this, but I enjoyed this piece about post-culture wars/Sokal science studies: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7234/full/458030a.html

Seems like a great argument for shit-canning the whole science studies enterprise, if they're only now just getting round to realising that Thabo Mbeki's policies might have been a bad thing.

Some saw this as a justified blow against Western imperialism, given that the safety and efficacy of the treatment cannot be proven beyond doubt.

Really? I mean really? Not just some cranks, but people worth mentioning in an article about science studies?

The hard problem for social studies of science is to show why, although he was right in logic, he was wrong for all practical purposes.

Or, the easy problem for anyone with half a clue.

But the view gained from the Internet is not always the view developed within the scientific community.

HOLY SHIT STOP THE PRESS

It seems a decent enough article to me, even where Collins is stating what ought to be obvious. If Science Studies has been prone to faddishness - shock horror - I don't think that invalidates the usefulness of meta-thinking about Science.

Meta-thinking about science is fine, I'm just astonished that apparently up until now they've been doing it in such a dunder-headed way.

Whenever a scientist, acting in the name of science, cheats, cynically manipulates, claims to speak with the voice of capitalism, the voice of a god, or even the voice of a doctrinaire atheist, it diminishes [...] science

Another gem from the book of No Fucking Way

oh a btw that bit about doctrinaire atheist doesn't fit and is a typical attempt to seem relevant.

what ought to be obvious = what is obvious to many scientists. Ok sure this message needs to be dissemanited much more widely, but the article to me shows that science studies has so far been worse than hopeless at this.

dissemanited i can spell really

Here's a far better article about the role of science in policy making:
http://www.environmentmagazine.org/March-April%202009/Nisbet-full.html

ledge, relax. that nature article isn't about the role of science in policy making. it's a rather abstract article about changes within the culture of an academic discipline which is notoriously crazy.

The craziness certainly comes across. But so does the idea that science has a role to play in policy making (true), that it is important how we delineate that role (also true), and that doing so is part of the remit of science studies. If the Enivornment Magazine article is an indicator of the state of science studies, then fine. If the Nature article is more representative then I fear for us all.

"fear for us all"? really?

hey caek im assuming u saw this: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13361472 do u have any ops on how credible it is?

i fear for you my child.

ledge u mad & i cant really figure waht about

lamp, interesting. i'm saying not very credible, but that's based on snobbery rather than knowing the science very well. the field is truly crazy and sociopathic though, so anything is possible.

haha reading it i was lol 80s revival hits the hard sciences but it does seem like such a wonderful pipe dream

i could get behind reviving this

http://starringthecomputer.com/snapshots/real_genius_hp_150_1.jpg

(yes max, we know)

this is a nice article on: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13403121. this is the collision between clusters of galaxies they're talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster

okay QPhysics and stuff, I've just about had it. I'm finally labelling you in the drawer "joseph matheny and RAW and Tim Leary and etc etc and basically people who do love physics but have had too many magic mushrooms and don't know when to quit".

ie, drawer closed and you mean nothing to me anymore.

recommended reading: http://www.amazon.com/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/0393076369

I enjoyed this - a bit long but fairly entertaining and yes I may have had more or less the same misconception. I especially liked the bit about covalent bonds at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkHFXZvRNns

The experiment is not intended to be actually performed on a cat, but rather as an easily understandable illustration of the behavior of atoms. Experiments at the atomic scale have been carried out, showing that very small objects may exist as superpositions; but superposing an object as large as a cat would pose considerable technical difficulties

place the cat in quantum superposition u cowards