tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.comments2024-03-18T06:11:04.848-07:00The Curious WavefunctionWavefunctionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comBlogger3063125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-79915956251803946492023-09-03T08:31:11.388-07:002023-09-03T08:31:11.388-07:00Good question. In the second chapter he tackles “s...Good question. In the second chapter he tackles “suitable” head on when he starts talking about ensembles. Will find out soon enough.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-78844096378909358892023-09-03T04:03:12.739-07:002023-09-03T04:03:12.739-07:00"the average behavior ... suitably chosen ......"the average behavior ... suitably chosen ... may be much easier to treat ...". Without the "suitably chosen", is this more than a first order mean field approximation, which will not be empirically adequate in the typically more interesting physical cases when higher-order approximations come into play?<br />The "suitably chosen" seems to me to raise the game enormously, because if we get the "suitably" right, that becomes in itself a higher-order approximation. But now I have two questions about your reading of how Tolman presents how we can create or find a good suitable choice: how ad-hoc are his suggestions? Is there any kind of choice that he proscribes, and for what reason?<br />Whether you feel that these are worth answering or not —now or later, as you read more— in any case I love that this is from 1938. I can see why you've chosen this as a good historical starting point and I look forward to what else you will have to say as your reading progresses.Peter Morganhttps://twitter.com/PeterMorganQFnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-63299597869878814812023-07-04T16:04:52.054-07:002023-07-04T16:04:52.054-07:00Great list , Nehru's Glimpses of World History...Great list , Nehru's Glimpses of World History is good addition, if you can consider it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-44818008298645588992023-06-21T12:53:23.707-07:002023-06-21T12:53:23.707-07:00Curiously, I could not get through "Annals of...Curiously, I could not get through "Annals of the Former World"! I have enjoyed some of McPhee's other books, though, especially "The Control of Nature" and "The Curve of Binding Energy".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-70566096117921661202023-06-20T03:35:07.588-07:002023-06-20T03:35:07.588-07:00Great lists! Two recommendations you may have read...Great lists! Two recommendations you may have read, but aren’t on your list: John McPhee’s "Annals of the Former World" and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “God in Search of Man”. Thanks again for sharing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-42807996627406125492023-06-13T20:34:59.470-07:002023-06-13T20:34:59.470-07:00Von Neumann was quite a powerhouse of ideas. I rea...Von Neumann was quite a powerhouse of ideas. I read that transcript of the 1948 talk, and some of it was remarkably familiar and up to date while some of it was disorienting. Numerical analysis as we know it barely existed back then. It wasn't needed. Error correcting codes barely existed. Claude Shannon was just starting to publish his work on information theory. The transistor was introduced that same year. Meanwhile, I am typing this on a computer that can do billions of operations per second with an error rate so low that its designers barely needed to account for it in its design. Sometimes progress appears glacial, then one reads something like this and realizes how much has happened in 75 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-63876768746980841972023-05-27T10:05:30.370-07:002023-05-27T10:05:30.370-07:00Is there any area of modern science that von Neuma...Is there any area of modern science that von Neumann hasn't influenced? A man from the future, indeed!Thanassishttps://psaltisa.github.io/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-27556599585615884782023-05-19T20:33:42.716-07:002023-05-19T20:33:42.716-07:00Hey Ash,
Really an interesting post! Have been a l...Hey Ash,<br />Really an interesting post! Have been a long time follower of your blog posts here and on other platforms like 3quarksdaily. Just wondering, if there's any way to interact with you over email? Vijay Mocherlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06280009836255106483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-62387885039888871622023-05-19T20:32:37.705-07:002023-05-19T20:32:37.705-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Vijay Mocherlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06280009836255106483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-53670369191722629532023-04-11T06:33:00.787-07:002023-04-11T06:33:00.787-07:00Wonderful!Wonderful!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-10119092364433277692023-04-10T13:01:36.697-07:002023-04-10T13:01:36.697-07:00Thank you! This essay combines some of my most fa...Thank you! This essay combines some of my most favorite things: chemistry, redwoods, moths, and meaning. I wish my father were still alive to read it -- he taught me to love science, meaning, and nature. I imagine you are just a great a father to your little girl!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-18837577460568803682023-03-20T13:26:03.428-07:002023-03-20T13:26:03.428-07:00Beautiful
Thanks for posting.Beautiful <br /><br />Thanks for posting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-81186157858912149832023-01-27T16:23:27.977-08:002023-01-27T16:23:27.977-08:00"China will have to be brought to the bargain..."China will have to be brought to the bargaining table and every attempt will have to be made to ensure that they play fair"<br /><br />The problem isn't China. Look in the mirror.<br /><br />The USA is no longer 'agreement capable'. No one trusts it, nor should they: it has already defaulted on its fiduciary responsibilities to three separate countries.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-58410971954081984912022-09-06T16:20:20.345-07:002022-09-06T16:20:20.345-07:00I have always believed that religion should be per...I have always believed that religion should be permitted, just as long as it is practiced behind closed doors by consenting adults.samadamsthedoghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01310722213367887375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-13374939957778988142022-07-06T01:59:38.786-07:002022-07-06T01:59:38.786-07:00Really amazing review on the book. Thanks for shar...Really amazing review on the book. Thanks for sharing such fabulous review. <a href="https://www.fundayholidays.com/package/kerala-tour-packages/" rel="nofollow">kerala tour packages</a>Amanda Wilsonhttps://www.fundayholidays.com/tourist-places/kerala/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-2526071026485182542022-06-27T00:31:12.530-07:002022-06-27T00:31:12.530-07:00One of THE most important things for children to l...One of THE most important things for children to learn is how to swim. In fact, in Australia, it should be a competency required for citizenship [Most people from Asian countries cannot]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-39284115749383323312022-04-03T11:44:32.343-07:002022-04-03T11:44:32.343-07:00At the moment, I feel like we are more the ants th...At the moment, I feel like we are more the ants than the aphids. But maybe that's going to reverse at some point ...Felixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05138335803929997277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-34824912639385895302022-04-03T04:08:15.416-07:002022-04-03T04:08:15.416-07:00Shouldn't it be Man as "Machine Tickled A...Shouldn't it be Man as "Machine Tickled Aphids"?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16708809461262327393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-16575191088127041202022-02-10T12:44:36.919-08:002022-02-10T12:44:36.919-08:00Do the authors define what they mean by "mind...Do the authors define what they mean by "minds"?Sukumarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05381935998173471835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5877722025171599662022-02-10T06:20:36.467-08:002022-02-10T06:20:36.467-08:00"People who are depressed are well known to l..."People who are depressed are well known to lack a feeling of control over their environment. In extreme cases this feeling can lead to significantly reduced mortality and death from suicide." -- should that be "increased"? Are you intending to say that "In extreme cases <i>a feeling of control over the environment</i> can lead to significantly reduced mortality and death from suicide." whereas I'm finding it hard not to read your wording as "In extreme cases <i>lacking a feeling of control over the environment</i> can lead to significantly reduced mortality and death from suicide." or as "In extreme cases <i>depression</i> can lead to significantly reduced mortality and death from suicide." (the latter two both seeming wrong)? My trouble is, I think, that I'm confused about what the rules of grammar say the referent in the previous sentence for "this feeling" should be. I've worked myself round to seeing that as a professional writer you are probably using the rule right, but it still seems weird.<br />Sorry!!! That bugged me!<br /><br />I worry that "When brains interact they create both mind and culture" does not acknowledge enough that it is not only a brain as a whole that interacts. The brain is composed of many parts that I suppose interact with each other and with parts of other brains no less than they interact as a whole with other brains. We can't speak too simplistically of there being speech and auditory centers in the brain, because interactions and feedback in the brain are so constant, but as a first approximation we might say that when my speech centers try to articulate an idea that comes from another part of the brain, it is the auditory center of another brain that applies a first pass at hearing what was said, passes that first pass to the rest of the brain, and so on. If a brain is part of a group of brains in a society and only attains mind and culture by being a part, a cell seems equally part of a group of cells in a brain.<br />Sorry, again, but this is part of me endlessly trying to rethink the multiple relationships between different ways to "fragment" a whole in "A source fragmentation approach to interacting quantum field theory", https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.04412, which is strange enough that I hardly know how to tell people about it. Hence the endless trying to rethink. I've likely tried to tell you about it before, because your writing often sets me off.<br /><br />Ha! As I was about to hit "Publish" it occurs to me that parts of words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, books, and libraries speak to each other as parts as well as also as a whole speaking as a whole, but in an author's decided sequence is not the only way to read and certainly not the only way to understand. Thereby achieving a full circle of sorts with the first paragraph of this comment.Peter Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06075268176382429701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-89970335744042478762022-01-21T05:10:43.889-08:002022-01-21T05:10:43.889-08:00The 'advantage' of using machine learning ...The 'advantage' of using machine learning is that it allows so-call researchers to concentrate on the minutia of the machine learning fitting rather than learning the application domain or collecting more data. The result is fake research, such as https://shape-of-code.com/2021/01/17/software-effort-estimation-is-mostly-fake-research/Derek Joneshttps://shape-of-code.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-87964952887402816852022-01-21T04:50:48.269-08:002022-01-21T04:50:48.269-08:00Lovely, but I want to push back a little against y...Lovely, but I want to push back a little against your final paragraph's "efforts that try to supplement machine learning by embedding knowledge of the laws of physics or biology in the algorithms are likely to work".<br />What I think this means in software terms is that some algorithms are prioritized over others? Taking that as a starting point despite its flaws, that's fine for routine discoveries that are in tune with existing theory, but it will make some radical discoveries more unlikely if they need only a short sequence of low priority algorithms but need a long sequence of many high priority algorithms, in a given system of priorities. Not all radical discoveries will be made more unlikely by a given choice of priorities, but this seems to create a specific probability density over different rat runs through the discovery space.<br />I don't understand machine learning well enough, and I even more don't understand QML well enough, to feel that you're mistaken in your claim, and I can certainly feel the power of your analogy with Rutherford's claim (in the last clause of your last sentence) that discoveries about Uranium salts a century earlier would not have fallen on a theoretical landscape that would have been as fertile. I'll end, weakly, by saying only that "are likely to work" is a probabilistic claim, so I suppose it requires probabilistic argument to support it: for one choice of prioritization it will be true ("true" in whatever probabilistic sense we favor) for a given discovery, for another I suppose it will not. Implicitly or explicitly, we prioritize, but the consequences are so complex that I suspect it is only by experiment that we will discover which prioritization is good for which discovery.Peter Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06075268176382429701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-27944933534604378982021-12-30T16:14:47.242-08:002021-12-30T16:14:47.242-08:00There were x number of deaths in the civil war. T...There were x number of deaths in the civil war. That x are more often dying from infection rather than directly dying from high velocity lead poisoning. In WW2 the y number of individuals dying was far less from infection, due to the antibiotics and other pharmaceutical compounds. geoavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05067198961206614791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-28027081426248380242021-12-30T16:10:20.247-08:002021-12-30T16:10:20.247-08:00Especially when leaded gasoline and ozone destroyi...Especially when leaded gasoline and ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbon are credited with a single chemist, Thomas Midgley. He inflicted stupidity on the entire world, followed with increased risk of skin cancer. Perhaps the moral standard lower than his is perhaps tobacco scientists with individual years lost in the millions, and as more data is released, energy companies scientists that have had data with increased carbon dioxide and and resultant temperatures that impacts all people on the planet.geoavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05067198961206614791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5483919755079481872021-12-30T10:12:00.819-08:002021-12-30T10:12:00.819-08:00I'm slightly confused by the idea of a 200% d...I'm slightly confused by the idea of a 200% death toll.DThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03573629759647894295noreply@blogger.com