I remember 10-15 years ago seeing him say humans have stopped evolving and knew he was not worth listening to
Isn't that true though? Humans haven't had selective pressure in a long time. Any given person's odds of being able to have a child that lives to adulthood are (fortunately) too high for natural selection to occur. In addition, the factors determining the number of children someone has are almost entirely non-genetic
The fact that evolution is happening much more randomly or with different pressures from before doesn't mean it has ceased. The human race will still change slowly over time, and what can you call that but evolution?
the idea that we have no selective pressures is false. there are many things that stop fetuses from developing. chemicals, drugs, unlucky genetics, unlucky timing, viruses, illness, etc. this is a very real form of selective pressure. its just a lot of these rejected fetuses go poof before the women even realize theyre pregnant
Evolutionary pressures like selection happen on every level, from genetic to individual to social. There's pressure on an individual baby to survive, as there's pressure on a mother to keep a child alive, as there's pressure on a social group to keep its mothers and babies alive. It's a common misconception to frame evolution as only happening on an individual genetic scale.
Additionally, mortality isn't the only evolutionary pressure. For example, the ability to reproduce is a pressure, as is the ability to raise young who live long enough to reproduce, as is the ability to raise young who raise young who live long enough to reproduce.
Not to mention noticeable shifts usually take hundreds of generations to manifest, with the exception of very strong selectors like malaria and sickle cell.
The steep overall drop in human fertility (sperm counts in particular, worldwide) is a selective pressure.
Did something happened recently involving string theorist? Cuz suddenly everyone is piling on them as frauds
As somebody who interacts with physicists every day, I can say string theory has been considered unscientific for several decades. Lee Smolin, for example, the originator of Loop Quantum Gravity, wrote a scathing indictment of string theory called " The Trouble With Physics ," much like the string theory critique in "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit. Likewise, string theory was one of many targets in " Lost in Math, " by Sabine Hossenfelder.
The real nail in the coffin in the community's opinions of string theory came when the Large Hadron Collider failed to discover any new physics whatsoever, as so many GUT and SUSY promoters expected it would . Instead, it confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson as the standard model predicted.
In fundamental physics, we have the standard model gauge group and Einstein's field equations . Everything else is so far fruitless. However, we know that our picture can't be complete, for two reasons. First, we don't have a quantum theory of gravity , so QM and General Relativity don't work together mathematically. And second, Quantum Mechanics is incomplete, and has no definition of a measurement nor physical explanation for wave function collapse .
signals for gluinos and/or light neutralinos and/or charginos are expected
:so-true::reddit-logo:
much like the string theory critique in “Not Even Wrong” by Peter Woit.
Unrelated to the discussion, but this man's website whips ass. No fuckin' around, just the links.
And more on topic, I really like this little gem in the footer.
The bazinga spectrum between multiverse magical thinking and simulation magical thinking is exhausting. In both cases, the bazingas use the magical thinking to justify acts of cruelty and power fantasies that they wanted to do anyway. :debord-tired:
The multiverse has nothing to do with string theory; it's from quantum physics.
Your understanding of the multiverse might be missing some information.
The idea of a multiverse is not original to quantum mechanics or to string theory. It probably originated with ancient Greek philosophy, but may be even older than that. It is not a scientific idea; it is a religious notion.
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics postulates a multiverse to explain the problem of wave function collapse, but this is not a scientific notion either. Quantum mechanics has many "interpretations," none of which make any testable predictions. The many-worlds case argues that since from a quantum state of many vectors only one vector will be measured, that technically all the vectors are measured, just in different universes.
Leonard Susskind, who likes this interpretation, postulated that the same was true of the many vacuum states of string theory. And he also tried to convince people that this explains the cosmological constant because applying the anthropological principle to a multiverse would imply we would only exist in a universe with an appropriate cosmological constant. I don't have to say that this isn't a scientific notion, because we left all science behind several kilometres ago.
Your understanding of science might be missing some information. Just so you understand, something isn't "not science" just because you don't agree with it or understand.
The specific idea of the multiverse being discussed is from quantum physics, and has nothing to do with religion. And to be clear, the multiverse appears in the math of quantum mechanics, regardless of interpretation. Interpretations are just about whether there is some unknown mechanism that stops the multiverse becoming "real".
Also, plenty of interpretations do make testable predictions.
The mathematics of quantum mechanics cannot be said to imply the existence of the multiverse without an interpretation. Just think about it, the Copenhagen interpretation, for example, doesn't require a multiverse.
That's the whole point of interpretations. Math doesn't NECESSARILY tell you something about nature.
The idea of a multiverse in quantum mechanics is an interpretation.
And I say the multiverse isn't a scientific notion because it's unfalsifiable. This is one of the necessary qualities of scientific hypotheses. Individual multiverse models may be falsifiable, and some of those may be scientific models, but no evidence exist that any of these models are correct.
The math absolutely implies a multiverse without an interpretation. The Copenhagen interpretation is one of those interpretations I mentioned that proposes that some mechanism exists that destroys other parts of the wave function to prevent the multiverse becoming "real".
It is also unfalsifiable to claim that matter that slips past the cosmological horizon continues to exist outside of the observable universe, should we thus also conclude that any discussion of reality outside our hubble volume at all is inherently not science?
You're just describing a wave function as a multiverse . The measurement problem remains unsolved, and therefore nobody can observe a wave function. Call that inner product of vectors in a Hilbert Space a multiverse if you will, but I don't think we can call it anything until we have a solution to the measurement problem.
That's where interpretations come in. What is the physical relationship between nature and the wave function? Nobody knows. But interpretations guess and postulate .
Yes, the idea that there is a point beyond which we cannot see is unfalsifiable, because no matter how far one looked, one could always claim that one simply hadn't looked far enough. (It is worth noting that this is the starting point of Bayesian reasoning, which underlies much of modern science. It is the minimum assumption. The maximum assumption would be that everything known now is the extent of all that exists.) However, the cosmological considerations are about something else. It is observed that the universe is expanding . Our cosmological model to explain this is based on General Relativity with a positive cosmological constant .
And if we assume General Relativity is correct (we don't have to, but nobody has found anything better ), one of its predictions is a Cosmological Horizon at a particular place with respect to any point in the universe. This isn't testable, but it's a prediction of a testable theory (General Relativity) and that theory is the simplest, most successful we have in fundamental physics.
Idk I've always been a hater because they all give off grifter vibes. Gonna lean into it
I saw this video in my recs, maybe others saw it or she is making a response to something else that brought it into the discourse.
Yeah same but seems like a response to idk what so I'm not hearing one hour of something I don't get
So I ended up seeing it and it's fine it explains the whole thing tho it says "by the 2010s the general public understood string theory was a fraud" and I wasn't aware of it
I didn’t know you can just research made up phenomena as a career
I regret to inform you about the field of economics.
He's been around since at least the early 00's and was on just about every pop-sci show or documentary. Even ones that had nothing to do with physics (for example, see @Spike's comment about him perpetuating the myth about humans not evolving anymore). I'm not sure why he made the rounds more than any other pop-sci talking head, but I suspect because he was actually the worst available option when it came to explaining concepts because everything he said was just one cliched soundbite after another.
He was also vehemently anti-nuclear power during the last decade or so in which that could have made a difference in climate change, so I kind of low key resent him
the myth about humans not evolving anymore
Not since 1989 and the End of History. Everything stopped happening because the Good Guys Won.
String theory dominated theoretical physics research for a few decades before falling by the wayside.
No it didn't, it dominated theoretical high energy physics, but that's not even close where most theorical research went. Condensed matter theorists and biophysics theorists dominated theoretical physics realistically. Hell, that's probably the reason why the Higgs boson discovery was fundamentally based on existing theoretical work within condensed matter physics.
I saw a video on youtube a couple weeks ago about how String Theory is basically a giant joke that has no possible experiments that can prove or disprove it.
Like, not EVERY single thing that went into it was bullshit, but a ton of it was. And the hype about it from the 80's through the 2010's was intentionally fraudulent.
Let's say this is true. If quantum computers could fact check chatgpt, then why would I bother asking chatgpt when I could just ask the quantum computer?
It's not true. I think whoever wrote this is muddling quantum computers (a kind of specialised hardware, not ready for production) with quantum logic (a kind of maths which can be implemented on existing hardware). (And also muddling quantum logic with fuzzy logic.)
Quantum logic allows non-binary (true/false) outcomes, so it can give results a little like the last line says (gradations of correct, partial correct). Although that description sounds more like a description of fuzzy logic than quantum logic.
Both are kinds of nonaristotelean logic (don't have binary true/false states), but fuzzy logic is more about gradation ("this statement is 61.3% true"), whereas quantum logic is more like "this statement is both true and false".
The near-future of AI is in combining Deep Neural Nets (like ChatGPT) with logic engines. DNNs are good at recombining data to form new output; logic engines are better at truth-seeking. DNNs alone are prone to hallucination; they generate content but don't anchor that to the facts. This could maybe be partially fixed using DNN techniques, but it's something logic engines just do better.
To answer your question, you'd need the DNN to generate naturalistic language.
A tech tool to evaluate whether another program is accurate may be more accurate but less legible to a layman.
If a high school dropout Harry Potter fanfic writer that runs a billionaire-funded mind control fetishizing sex pest cult can be called an "AI expert" then I suppose string theory being humored as long as it has isn't quite as ridiculous by comparison. :edgeworth-shrug:
He's talking about Eliezer Yudkowsky, a self-identified "researcher" that is one of the most well known spokespersons of the effective altruism / longtermism bullshit. "billionaire-funded mind control fetishizing sex pest cult" is an accurate description of the same.
AI will self check like crap-it-all-ists and fascists self check. Here's my junk charts and cherry picked refrences therefore I'm the victor - also I de-ranked and in some cases actively censor the majority of studies that prove my masters wrong.
Checkmate liberals! :blue-check:
As with every technology based savior philosophy, the person claiming it's going to solve all our problems fails to recognize who will fund and then ultimately control said technology. Quantum computers will be used to scry the variable decision making process of humans and predict behavior to promote a more robust oppression in service of the capitalist class.
Quantum Computers will be used to generate Superpositional Apes and trade them at superluminal speeds in a market composed entirely of non-deterministic currencies.
Probably still better than being a quant though. At least he's not destroying the economy and planet. Fucking insane the way capitalism wastes talent
The sixth sally, or how Trurl and Klapaucius created a [Maxwellian demon of the second order] to defeat the pirate Pugg
