Abdul

Physicists: please consider signing this open letter of support: nottinghamphysics.github.io/Open_Letter/ The University wants to cut a third of academic and related staff from the School of Physics and Astronomy. As well as astronomy & particle cosmology, we also do world-leading research in cold atoms, condensed matter and medical imaging, and were 2nd only to Cambridge across the last 3 REFs.

Something's badly wrong with science research funding. Incremental progress is funded – quite right too. Fads are funded – inevitable because of fallibilism. But attempts to make fundamental progress aren't – that's a slow-motion catastrophe.

One reason to learn effective field theories is to understand how these two statements don’t necessarily contradict each other

@RuxandraTeslo Liberalism and its discontents by Francis Fukuyama covers very similar ground and is more recent.

If I enjoyed Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent, what else should I read on the same topic (the decline of civic conception of freedom and the rise of voluntarist one etc)?

@TambourineManDN @BevansAdvocate Which boxes are you ticking?

@BevansAdvocate @quantum_abdul

Happy birthday Rawls, please send this to any remaining haters

@TambourineManDN Yuck latour

This might be one of the most amazing papers I have ever read. Completely shifts how you think about things! Everyone should read it

I wrote an article with @quantum_abdul and @avramidou to put the implications of Panpsychism in the context of fundamental physics. This article was written for an essay competition, but it is publicly available now. #Physics #scicomm marysroom.substack.com/p/could-consci…

@avramidou Call me Santa, because I got just the right theory for you 😎

dear santa, i would like a realist, unitary, local quantum theory that is consistent with experimental results 🎅🏼

@luscofusch @LatFilosof This is super cool! I didn't know she was that influential in her field. She helped me structure a project on philosophy of physics and was also an assessor for a progression review. She was erudite and extremely kind with her time. Good to see her name here!

Naomi Thompson. For three reasons. First, better than anyone else, she makes one of the most technical and abstract topics in philosophy, metaphysical grounding, feel like the most ordinary, everyday stuff. You can watch some of her talks on the topic on youtube to see this for yourself. Second, the relevance of her contributions to contemporary analytic metaphysics is undeniable. More than anyone else, she pressed the epistemic problem of treating metaphysical explanation as a guide to metaphysical grounding. She was also the first to map the logical space for antirealism about grounding. Third, her development of grounding fictionalism was the first to show how we can retain all the discursive advantages of grounding talk while remaining neutral about its objective status. Finally, she was a member of my PhD committee, and it was one of the best experiences I have had in academic philosophy. She was exceptionally kind, and whenever she identified a problem in my arguments, she offered the most constructive criticism possible to strengthen them, even when that meant I had to drop an entire chapter. That is the kind of collaborative spirit I would like to see in more academic philosophers.

Who is your favourite currently alive philosopher and why? Mine is probably Joe Schmid. Not as experienced as the older philosophers (self explanatory), but his raw intelligence, curiosity, academic rigour and quality of writing at his young age inspires me each day.

@katherineveritt That is an interesting perspective! In your opinion are these two distinct states in 3-d space? Do you also accept unique outcomes in qm post measurement?

Existing in two ontologically distinct states at once

@avramidou Its what I do with Bohmian mechanics, the strategy works!

if you dislike a product that relies on network effects, ignoring it is more effective than negatively commenting on it. otherwise you effectively provide free advertisement.

@coecke Jermey and Harvey are still around even if retired. Among current faculty James Reed is doing excellent work on philosophy of spacetime/GR and Chris Timpson on qm.

@Philip_Goff Collapse theories slightly deviate from the data and make different prediction than standard qm

The Copenhagen "interpretation" isn't a theory. But many worlds, hidden variables, spontaneous collapse, consciousness collapses the wave function, etc. are all theories. Problem is it's hard to know which is true because they all explain the data!

Could machines ever be conscious? AI prompts us to revisit foundational questions in philosophy of mind: marysroom.substack.com/p/introducing-…

@Hassaan_PHY @stringking42069 :/

In an episode of Phymaths podcast, I am having @stringking42069 as a guest. Since this is an anonymous account, I would be sending him questions (and follow ups) and convert his answers into speech. What questions do you have for him? Lemme know. #physics #scicomm

@PhysInHistory No

Is the universe conscious of itself? ✍️

@avramidou @CERN Is Q 🍀 Emmy Nother? 👀

Found my old @CERN playing cards, where the face cards are some of the greatest quantum-relevant scientists. Haven't figured them all out yet...

@maria__violaris @TOEwithCurt This is awesome! more people need to know about PBR. Looking forward to it!

Excited to chat with @TOEwithCurt, host of the Theories of Everything podcast, about Bell’s theorem and more quantum no-go results! All these theorems reveal counterintuitive aspects of what quantum theory (and even its potential successor theories) tells us about reality.

A lot of people are posting their thoughts on the physics Nobel prize. And I’m jet lagged and can’t sleep. So why not me too. First off, John Hopfield is a physicist, an outstanding one, whose work then branched out in various directions. Geoff Hinton is not. 1/