My gpa gave me an Escher print book; loved it. Wish I still had it
A man walks into a tailor shop in ancient Greece with a pair of torn pants. The tailor looks at the pants and asks, “Euripides?” The man replies, “Yes. Eumenides?”
But how many cretins are liars? That...is the question. What I always found mind-bending and fascinating to think about as a kid (and now, too) is the idea of the universe being infinite. Like, how could it be that there's no end to something. But then, if there WAS an end... what's beyond that end?! Nothing? But what's nothing? Vacuum? No matter how you flip it, the answer warps your brain a bit.
Yes! I have always enjoyed thinking about infinities and the paradoxes they bring. I think this is a great way for kids (adults too, but especially kids) to stretch those growing brains!
I didn't get into Sandman until much later, but that style was really cool. And, I wasn't exposed to skateboarding like the other kids around, but I did (of course) dive into punk rock anyway. I was (and still am) much more on team Minor Threat, but we are close cousins in many ways!
The modern equivalent is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics...as exemplified by the oft-ridiculed and usually misunderstood Schroedinger's Cat...😂
Is that really a paradox, or just a misinterpretation of how to look at reality? We have to be careful: this is a rabbit hold we can probably both spend hours down!
So it’s both; Einstein disagreed with the Copenhagen interpretation (his famous quote “God does not play dice with the universe” is about that) and he and Schrödinger devised the thought experiment to show the problems with projecting quantum effects a la the Copenhagen interpretation into the macro world. The problem is the Copenhagen interpretation’s predictions have kind of stood up…like quantum entanglement, which Einstein considered action at a distance and therefore impossible.
So the real paradox is the duality of quantum nature as exemplified by the conjoined variables of position and momentum, plus the observer effect…
Maybe the double-slit experiment might be the better paradox, then?
I honestly think it's the same thing. It's all fields at the end of the day, or at least that's a very helpful framework so that we get to the whole "no dice throwing" thing while still having an uncertain outcome. The field was always there, but it manifested in something by way of an interaction of some sort.
I've been on about "It From Bit" lately - Shannon's idea that information is the fundamental building block, not energy. Maxwell's demon gives us a hint that energy and information may be manifestations of the same phenomenon, and if not, they're clearly intertwined.
RQM + QFT + It from Bit are the coolest ideas right now, all kind of orbiting the central concept of emergence.
Ah Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory!😂 I should have gotten that; i thought it was some modern analysis technique like Big Data…
Correct me if I’m wrong but in Relativity we can’t distinguish “fields” from “curved space” so the distinction is one of convenience/interpretation?
Whereas in Quantum Theory the collapse of the probability function based on an observer is due to the conjoined nature of the variables considered…so it’s not a question of convenience but a property of the system?
Again, I’m 35 years out of date with all this…
And you were right…I took you down a rabbit hole, but this stuff is so interesting!
I have much, much further for us to go down here, but it's a lot to write and type. I'm gonna do my best to summarize and present all this stuff in a piece eventually, and then we can really talk about these ideas in earnest! In Erniest?
Anyway, I look forward to having a lot of fun thinking about this stuff with you and hopefully a few others who are game to jump in. The further we go, the more physics touches philosophy, something I never wanted to do when I was younger... but philosophy is often where theoretical science originates.
I don’t know what “RQM + QFT + It from Bit” are but I delved in to Information Theory in graduate school, specifically attempts to link information theory to thermodynamics and specifically the Second Law. That is, increasing information equates to increased Entropy. This is true in that the most informational message in terms of pure metrics (say, Shannon-Wiener) is one that has no repitition of elements. The problem with all those attempts, at least back then (early 90s) is that in order to explain complexity one typically has to reverse the relationship between information and entropy (the nature of complexity is repetition; think fractals or the Mandelbrot set).
A more fruitful approach seemed to be to look at increased complexity increasing the set of elements in the information system, which in turn would generate more information through even more possible combinations, etc (the way structural complexity in organisms has led to large localized order but at a much greater increase in overall system entropy). In my time no one was doing that, though it’s possible someone has in the last 35 years!😂
I’m thinking that I shouldn’t’ve read this before my morning caffeine kicked it. The arguments twisted like a “who’s on first” telling 😂 then I read the comments from Daniel. I may have to go back to bed and start this day over…
My gpa gave me an Escher print book; loved it. Wish I still had it
A man walks into a tailor shop in ancient Greece with a pair of torn pants. The tailor looks at the pants and asks, “Euripides?” The man replies, “Yes. Eumenides?”
Ancient Greek dad jokes!
But how many cretins are liars? That...is the question. What I always found mind-bending and fascinating to think about as a kid (and now, too) is the idea of the universe being infinite. Like, how could it be that there's no end to something. But then, if there WAS an end... what's beyond that end?! Nothing? But what's nothing? Vacuum? No matter how you flip it, the answer warps your brain a bit.
Yes! I have always enjoyed thinking about infinities and the paradoxes they bring. I think this is a great way for kids (adults too, but especially kids) to stretch those growing brains!
I have to wonder if "Cretan" is the source of the modern word "cretin" (i.e, idiot).
I wondered the same thing, and the answer is actually even more interesting. It probably derives from "Christian."
I won’t embarrass myself by admitting how long I stared at this animation. I had Escher’s stairs on a t-shirt in high school.
Did you ever see this?
https://goatfury.substack.com/p/learning-to-draw
There's an Escher-inspired drawing I did when I was like 16 or so. I was VERY into Escher and ideas like his.
Me, too! I didn’t think anything was cooler than Escher, or as cool — maybe Sandman comics and Tony Hawk and Fugazi. Those were my top 4 at age 16.
I didn't get into Sandman until much later, but that style was really cool. And, I wasn't exposed to skateboarding like the other kids around, but I did (of course) dive into punk rock anyway. I was (and still am) much more on team Minor Threat, but we are close cousins in many ways!
The modern equivalent is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics...as exemplified by the oft-ridiculed and usually misunderstood Schroedinger's Cat...😂
Is that really a paradox, or just a misinterpretation of how to look at reality? We have to be careful: this is a rabbit hold we can probably both spend hours down!
So it’s both; Einstein disagreed with the Copenhagen interpretation (his famous quote “God does not play dice with the universe” is about that) and he and Schrödinger devised the thought experiment to show the problems with projecting quantum effects a la the Copenhagen interpretation into the macro world. The problem is the Copenhagen interpretation’s predictions have kind of stood up…like quantum entanglement, which Einstein considered action at a distance and therefore impossible.
So the real paradox is the duality of quantum nature as exemplified by the conjoined variables of position and momentum, plus the observer effect…
Maybe the double-slit experiment might be the better paradox, then?
I honestly think it's the same thing. It's all fields at the end of the day, or at least that's a very helpful framework so that we get to the whole "no dice throwing" thing while still having an uncertain outcome. The field was always there, but it manifested in something by way of an interaction of some sort.
I've been on about "It From Bit" lately - Shannon's idea that information is the fundamental building block, not energy. Maxwell's demon gives us a hint that energy and information may be manifestations of the same phenomenon, and if not, they're clearly intertwined.
RQM + QFT + It from Bit are the coolest ideas right now, all kind of orbiting the central concept of emergence.
Ah Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory!😂 I should have gotten that; i thought it was some modern analysis technique like Big Data…
Correct me if I’m wrong but in Relativity we can’t distinguish “fields” from “curved space” so the distinction is one of convenience/interpretation?
Whereas in Quantum Theory the collapse of the probability function based on an observer is due to the conjoined nature of the variables considered…so it’s not a question of convenience but a property of the system?
Again, I’m 35 years out of date with all this…
And you were right…I took you down a rabbit hole, but this stuff is so interesting!
I have much, much further for us to go down here, but it's a lot to write and type. I'm gonna do my best to summarize and present all this stuff in a piece eventually, and then we can really talk about these ideas in earnest! In Erniest?
Anyway, I look forward to having a lot of fun thinking about this stuff with you and hopefully a few others who are game to jump in. The further we go, the more physics touches philosophy, something I never wanted to do when I was younger... but philosophy is often where theoretical science originates.
I don’t know what “RQM + QFT + It from Bit” are but I delved in to Information Theory in graduate school, specifically attempts to link information theory to thermodynamics and specifically the Second Law. That is, increasing information equates to increased Entropy. This is true in that the most informational message in terms of pure metrics (say, Shannon-Wiener) is one that has no repitition of elements. The problem with all those attempts, at least back then (early 90s) is that in order to explain complexity one typically has to reverse the relationship between information and entropy (the nature of complexity is repetition; think fractals or the Mandelbrot set).
A more fruitful approach seemed to be to look at increased complexity increasing the set of elements in the information system, which in turn would generate more information through even more possible combinations, etc (the way structural complexity in organisms has led to large localized order but at a much greater increase in overall system entropy). In my time no one was doing that, though it’s possible someone has in the last 35 years!😂
I’m thinking that I shouldn’t’ve read this before my morning caffeine kicked it. The arguments twisted like a “who’s on first” telling 😂 then I read the comments from Daniel. I may have to go back to bed and start this day over…
Yeah, I’m gonna have to come back to that later in the day 🤣
I have like 30 more of these whenever you're ready! This is mainly how I put myself to sleep every night.
Just in case you want to play some more, this has to be one of my all time most fun things to play with: https://goatfury.substack.com/p/ms-pac-man-and-infinity