Mugwort

Physics doesn't need another Einstein. Einstein explained Brownian motion, the Photoelectric effect, created special relativity and general relativity, the cosmological constant, helped found quantum mechanics, served as an invaluable critic of quantum mechanics. Then he foundered. Einstein never accepted particle physics, refused to follow new developments and became a dinosaur. This sadly is what most "physicists" are doing today, the followed in Einstein's footsteps, mostly the dinosaur part.

What does physics need? The world doesn't know. Nobody knows but someone will do it, someday in a manner no one else thought possible or could really anticipate. In fact, that's not entirely true but new developments will happen and only a handful of people will be in the loop. Lorenz, Poincare etc. e.g. laid some vital groundwork for relativity.

My own two cents on the matter is that we really don't understand our theories well enough and are badly in need of a firmer foundation. The situation is analogous to calculus before Weierstrass, Cauchy, Dedekind and Cantor.

Of course, mathematics wasn't completely stuck just because calculus wasn't fully developed. Probability and non-Euclidean geometry were stunning developments which predated a truer understanding of real numbers.

So it is with physics right now. Unification, strings, etc. isn't working out so well right now. Quantum computing is now a thing and Quantum mechanics is enjoying a second revolution not unlike the General Relativity Renaissance led by Penrose, et. al.

We can't predict the future. We don't know the sequence things we need to take the next step in AI or even if there is one. Will some form of deep learning be all we need? Probably not but possibly yes.

Physics is right where it should be. Frustration is part of the process. We're feeling some pain because our approach isn't working. Instead of having answers to everything maybe we should focus on better questions.

Hilbert and Courant is BY FAR the best mathematical physics book in existence. No contest. Boas and all the others are good, even very good. H & C beats them by a kiloParsec.

Isn't this the tipping point when a company crosses the line, becomes a monopoly, restricts consumer choices, and suffocates competition by leveraging the entire playing field? We've been through that before. Sad to see Apple of all companies turn evil.

I'm definitely going to listen to the Lex Fridman lectures simply because I enjoyed his interview with Judea Pearl so much.

We also passed 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Best decade ever for sealing peoplekind's fate.

That can't possibly be true, not while Trump is president.

Is Hacker News fake news? Many times people post things that would make a real expert roll their eyes. There are some smart people here but also lots of inaccurate information.

Is anyone out there simply unaware of the "fake news" phenomenon. Are we so inured that we cannot differentiate BS from the real thing and need to be protected? I don't think so. Everyone KNOWS. People aren't that stupid. Why wasn't lying us into the Iraq war considered fake news?

It's a matter of degree. Everything is shades of grey. Google has become a very dark shade of grey.

Google started out as a tech company and then later became a part of the US Deep State (Prism program). I think any good the company was doing will be long overshadowed by this unfortunate relationship. Eric Schmidt bears the greatest responsibility for moving Google in this direction. The revelations of Julian Assange basically demolished the myth of "Don't be evil". Google was revealed as a company that in fact did much evil. Seeing Julian slowly die in prison on false rape charges while Google profited immensely helping destroy whatever was left of our digital rights and privacy certainly didn't help the company's image. I wanted to like Google. I liked Google from the beginning and then the ugly reality chipped away at their reputation until if found myself making awkward excuses for Google and doing all sorts of self deceptions and mental contortions to rationalize what they were doing. Then it became too much. I realized a good company can go bad and that's exactly what they did. Why? Who knows but size and unprecedented success have something to do with it. I don't think you can ignore the Behemoth factor but still, they are responsible for their conduct. I wouldn't want to be either of these men and I can't imagine anybody who loves technology and things that hackers care about like digital freedom and privacy continuing to hold Google if high esteem. Google has become a force for evil. It's an unpleasant truth.

Very nice article. I'm intrigued by the Khovanov homology and its relation to the geometric Langlands program. I don't know any knot theory yet but fortunately I know quantum mechanics, quantum fields theory, statistical mechanics and algebraic topology. So maybe this is a game I can learn to play someday.