Tag: philosophy
-
Making it all up
The relationship of quantum physics and language The great CERN physicist Ian Bell once wrote a short reflective paper called “Speakable and unspeakable in quantum physics”. He introduced this paper by quoting the opening of Koestler’s Sleepwalkers: “the manner in which some of the most important individual discoveries were arrived at reminds one of a
-
The other AI
It is often assumed that AI, quantum physics and quantum computing are in some way linked. They are not. It is true that quantum science has informed the development of better conventional chips and conductors, but this is like saying that it has helped to develop better internal combustion engines (which is also true). Quantum
-
A new ontology for quantum physics
Abstract This note outlines a “probability-field” interpretation of quantum mechanics. The proposal takes standard mathematics —especially the path-integral—as a direct description of reality rather than of hidden objects. In this view, probabilities themselves are the primitive ontology: physical reality is a dynamically evolving field of structured probability. Measurement means a momentary local stabilization of one
-
Effect and Cause in Creative Physics
Normally, when we think about cause and effect, we try to understand what causes an event, and then we use that understanding to manipulate and predict future events. So when an accident happens we look for a reason, and then we try to use that knowledge to prevent future accidents. Equally, if somebody makes a
-
Still The Truth
Our relationship with truth is becoming increasingly problematic. This is because we associate truth closely with facts. We might go to fact checkers to discover if information is true. But if it isn’t, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Meanwhile events like climate change, which appear to be empirically true, are ignored. Worse, most
-
The Rabbit Hole Problem
The recent Apple test on AI models (see Guardian report here) reports that “these models fail to develop generalisable reasoning capabilities”. What does this mean?Imagine a huge Easter egg hunt. There are a billion rabbit holes, each one a billion miles long, with billions of branches. The egg hunt requires you to find a single
-
Quantum physics in ten short paragraphs
These are the only things you need to know about quantum physics unless you are a physicist or a mathematician. These facts explain all the so called mysteries of quantum physics. Nothing weird or inexplicable happens. Waves are waves of probability. Particles are never waves. The probabilities of the positions of particles are entangled mathematically.
-
The Quantum Mechanics of Marketing
This is an essay I wrote a while ago. It is in draft form but contains some useful ideas Marketing theory is not in a good place. On the one hand we have data analytics, whose practitioners are driven by hard functionality. This crushes creative thinking, for which the only credible theoretical opposition to this
-
woke/unwoke
I notice something strange about the use of the word ‘woke’. It is used to identify people who are imagined to be opposed to people who use it. So you hear something like “I have nothing against x people, but I won’t tolerate the fact that they won’t tolerate anyone who is in fact against
The Swiveller 