@MarkusQ @RalphStefanWeir It’s interesting that the people who have Nobel prizes in see that there are two bits of maths, and the bit that connects them (at the “collapse” is mostly a mystery.
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Simon Adams
12.3K posts
Simon Adams
@si_ad
Faulty human, under repair.
Devon, UK Katılım Mayıs 2011
154 Takip Edilen357 Takipçiler
Ex-physics major, non-practicing, but I believe she's correct.
There's nothing in the math that says anything about an observer, conscious or otherwise; that's something that was added in the process of trying to explain the math in everyday language, and was a tactical mistake.
Thus there's no reason to privilege the hypothesis of a "conscious observer" over myriad other things that could have been added. They could have mentioned the moon instead*, in which case you would have said "Name one time the two-split result occurred on a planet with no moon. I'll wait" instead. And it would have been just as silly.
* The gravitational rabbit hole would have been an awful choice because it's fraught with complexity and hard to get your head around. Using an observer was far more appealing intuitively, but unfortunately most of the intuitions it fostered were actively misleading.
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"And no, you don't need a conscious observer for this." Name one time the two-split result occured but no conscious observer was ever aware of it. I'll wait
Sabine Hossenfelder@skdh
The double slit experiment is the probably most misunderstood experiment ever. I have no idea who created the myth that if you 'look' at one of the slits, then the particles (photons/electrons) stop behaving as waves. It's wrong! They of course STILL behave as waves! Because particles are also waves, always. Photons and electrons make a self-interference EVEN ON A SINGLE slit. Don't believe it? Below an actual measurement from a laser diffracting on a single/double slit from Wikipedia. What happens if you measure which slit the particle goes through is that you get no interference between BOTH slits. And no, you don't need a conscious observer for this. Believe it or not, there have actually been experiments where they had people literally look at a double slit to see if that makes any difference and the answer is no, it does not. The entire mystery of the double slit is in the path of the particle TO the double slit. Because it seems that the particle must "know" whether it WILL be measured at one of the slits before it even gets there. It must "know" whether to go through both or just pick one. Seems like the future influences the past? Not really, it just means you have a consistency condition on the time evolution.
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You can often understand what drives the UK left by identifying which works of fiction are driving that particular policy, and in which way they have understood it.
You get times where they admit this unironically, like here supporting abortion of a fully viable, fully grown human child on the basis of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. Often the fiction that drives them is based in (and on) the US, is about issues that specifically affect the US, and of course ‘The Handmaid’s tale’ is set in a New England context of New England Puritans. However, post-revolution Iran was as least as big an influence on the book as were the US Puritans.
So we have an extreme policy being implemented in the UK, inspired by fictional imaginings of an extremist Puritanism that we never actually had in the UK (despite Oliver Cromwell etc), seemingly without any awareness that the biggest inspiration for the fiction is an Islamist society (which we don’t have despite the efforts of the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the MAB etc).
LBC@LBC
'The Handmaid's Tale was meant to be science-fiction, not a manifesto for a future government!' Although steps towards de-criminalising abortion have been taken, @stellacreasy warns people not to let their guard down, and keep fighting.
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I don’t think anyone can be surprised that the likes of @dcsandbrook doesn’t get this, as it goes against the whole ‘post WWII consensus’ framing. The agreements around the UN and the declaration of rights was essentially three post-Christian powers (or verging on post-Christian) wrapping their assumed Christian principles into a deliberately un-Christian new world order. This turn - from assumed ideals based essentially on Christianity into something claimed to be neutral - was always a blind spot. It ended up being grounded in nothing, and comprised of states essentially grounded in nothing. Everything became abstract, arbitrary and purely emergent from treaties, laws and charters, rather than anything transcendent.
As such it all contains the seeds of its own fall, because it treats corrupt despots that murder and torture their citizens, the same as countries that believe in and try to follow the ideals. And that’s why the UN is almost as ineffective as the League of Nations. It’s arguably only the existence of the nuclear bomb that has concealed these flaws in terms of large scale wars. The west has now used this same model and these same assumptions internally at a national level, and at some point both the international and the national elements will unravel as those foundational assumptions are exposed to those who don’t give a damn about your post Christian assumptions.
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“Islam is uniquely undigestible for the secular mind” said @holland_tom. But neither @dcsandbrook nor @TomSwarbrick1 nor many others have understood the context.
Context is important:
youtu.be/wjp3p8VGLIY
YouTube
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@LeapfrogMark @christopherhope I dare you to performing a Passion Play in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei, Maldives etc..
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@christopherhope What on earth is Nick Timothy going to make of all the Passion Play enactments taking place through the streets across the country this Easter - and God forbid he chances upon an open air carol concert this Christmas.
Abingdon, England 🇬🇧 English
NEW Attorney General Lord Hermer - one of the country’s most senior Jewish politicians - wades into the row over Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square, saying: “Nick Timothy has said that mass prayer in public places is an act of ‘domination’. But when he and Kemi Badenoch were questioned about his appalling views, they seemed to only have an issue with Muslim events.
“Timothy and Badenoch’s comments beg the question – would they have a problem if I as a Jewish man, were praying in public? Or is it just Muslim prayer they find offensive, and contrary to ‘British values’?”
“The Conservative Party, like Reform and Tommy Robinson, is seeking to divide Britain. Instead, they should be celebrating our brilliantly welcoming and diverse country.” More at @GBNEWS.
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Isn’t it far more significant than that? There is no such thing as rights from or in Islam. It’s only very westernised Muslim countries that have any concept of religious toleration.
Try having a Christian march in KSA, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei … or even the Maldives. You would certainly be arrested and prosecuted, and probably put to death in several of them.
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@spectator It has only ever been the ‘to a degree similar’ that has in reality allowed religious toleration and this is as it should be. The whole ‘rights’ thing is actually delusory.
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I approve of the large Muslim prayer meeting held in Trafalgar Square on Monday. But I would not want such a thing to happen more than once a year. I do not agree with Nick Timothy that it was an ‘act of domination’.
But I am glad that his comments have caused a debate: we should be thinking about these things without fear of censure.
✍️ Theo Hobson
Article | spectator.com/article/why-mu…
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Maybe I should have given up tweeting about fairies for Lent, but I have no sylph control
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The framing of everything via the Nazis always seems strangely reminiscent of the requirement for Muslims to travel to Mecca to throw a stone at the devil, to circle around the temple to the pagan god. Perhaps that is what connects Islam with the far left, symbolised as hatred of the west?
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@si_ad @LMSChairman We remember the Nazis attitude to disability, mental health and non-productivity.
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Peers voted on party lines to an astonishing extent. Very surprising for a non-party political issue. When did abortion become a core Labour committment?
Adrian Hilton@Adrian_Hilton
The House of Lords voted to decriminalise abortion for women who terminate their own pregnancy, right up to birth. Conservatives and Bishops supported Baroness @MoncktonR's amendment to remove this provision from the Bill; Labour and LibDems opposed. Depraved, ideological evil.
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@holland_tom I was always torn between the two sides of the argument here. At least now, when I’m stuck in a jam on the A303 by Stonehenge, there is a Tom Holland doll I can stick pins into..
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A great day.
Huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to the campaign against the Stonehenge Tunnel.
Especially in my thoughts today is Kate Fielden, who first recruited me to the Stonehenge Alliance.
Wishing she was still with us.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/m…
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Simon Adams retweetledi
The Iran war and the Shi ‘a martyr complex telegraph.co.uk/gift/710d22126…
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@LMSChairman It’s cruelly ironic that attempts to produce utopia on earth through ideology always tend towards mass slaughter of citizens instead. Always “for the greater good”. Also sad that we have not realised this yet. What does it take??
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@si_ad Compulsory euthanasia for being expensive. Then for wrongthink.
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A rare case of a news report on energy that reports actual data with context. And yes it’s true, Norway have had sane governments for year, unlike the UK. And @Ed_Miliband has increased our CO2 emissions by blocking new North Sea gas. Even the government admits that overseas LNG is “significantly more carbon intensive” than UK gas - around ~400% higher.
Taz@ItsTaz1989
This is a really good report by Ed Conway on Britain's gas & oil industry & what our options are: youtube.com/watch?v=eDr0Z1…
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With authoritarian countries like China, the Vatican has a difficult task in dealing with a state that wants to control people’s minds. The compromise was perhaps understandable given the alternatives, but in reality, to China, it was a cynical way to reinforce their control.
Sir Edward Leigh MP@EdwardLeighGB
Persecution of Christians in China is intolerable. The promise of reconciliation offered by the 2018 agreement between the Vatican and China has not been realised. In some diocese the division has deepened. The state controlled 'patriotic association' exercises extensive control.
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But that’s the whole problem, short term easy gains that work while the reliable base is there, but become fragile once it’s all renewable without inertia. Even when producing too much energy, as we saw in Spain and Portugal recently.
Even ignoring all the problems like inertia, and needing far more total capacity to handle how unreliable production is, there are many years before the renewable utopia of plastic covered fields and valleys, and £billions spent on battery farms etc, so we still need gas for a long time. Norway realises this and is developing new North Sea fields that they will then sell to us. From fields that we could be drilling, helping supply constraints, balance of payments etc,
More than all of these is basic risk management, which our government and the civil service do poorly. There are many events which have happened before and will happen again, and our current energy policy is oblivious to these. This includes everything from a Carrington level (or worse) CME, to a Tambora level volcano eruption. Both of these will happen at some point, and whilst the former would impact grid equipment like transformers and substations, the latter would mean we would have an energy crisis and a food crisis at the same time.
We just seem focussed on ideology, whilst having a complete lack of both tactical and strategic planning in terms of the big picture.
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@si_ad @KathrynPorter26 @jonburkeUK The incentive offered to nuclear is larger, and lasts for longer. The main difference is that the much bigger fixed price incentive for nuclear has so far delivered zero MWh. The smaller, shorter fixed price incentive for wind and solar has displaced lots of gas MWh for years.
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U.K electricity is pegged to the wholesale price of gas.
You’d think the Shadow Energy Secretary would know this?
If you cared, you’d break the link between gas prices and renewables and campaign to prevent 40% private profits on generation across the board.
But you won’t.
Claire Coutinho@ClaireCoutinho
Why do we pay some wind farms THREE TIMES the market price of electricity? 75% our wind and solar power gets a huge mark up on the wholesale price. This can never, ever be cheap. Our Cheap Power Plan would cut these rip-off subsidies for good. MAKE ELECTRICITY CHEAP.
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Simon Adams retweetledi
The purpose of scientific statement is the elimination of ambiguity, and the purpose of symbol the inclusion of it….Symbol endeavours, as it were, to be that of which it speaks, and imitates reality by the multiplicity of its significance.
— Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images 19
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I think that goes too far, and misses the importance he placed on the common good?
From my understanding, Aquinas says that retribution as punishment restores the order of justice disturbed by the crime, and that punishment has a role of protecting society insofar as punishment restrains evil and serves the common good.
He also says that if a person is “dangerous and infectious to the community”, killing him can be lawful for the sake of safeguarding the common good (like amputating a diseased limb to save the body).
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It is not postliberal to be ‘tough’ on crime. That was Blair. Punishment
as either retribution or deterrence are both liberal modern views. Kant or Bentham. For Aristotle and Aquinas punishment is either curative medicine or economic restitution. That’s what postliberals think.
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Yes true, but it all adds together. The total subsidies for renewables is far higher, for a far lower consistent base load. With government will and sensible regulation (as well as fair comparisons on total costs as nuclear has to include), we would have a fat healthier balance between the two.
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@si_ad @KathrynPorter26 @jonburkeUK Hitachi know a thing or two about building nuclear and would have looked at our regulatory regime before sinking £££ into Wylfa. They walked not because the regulations changed, but because the economics spooked them.
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@MYirrell @MichaelNazirAli If you believe that Christ is the ground of truth itself, why would you say things that are so clearly nonsense. Have you read the creed said at every mass? Have you read the liturgy? I’m not interested in people who are not interested in the truth.
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@si_ad @MichaelNazirAli Those executed under Elizabeth were traitors, made so by the bishop of Rome.
Rome had long ceased to be Christian, while some within it were saved the organisation had departed the Faith. Christians left that corrupt apostate organisation.
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In the NT, all believers are called οι άγιοι. The apostle are also called holy and the new Jerusalem too is called holy. BTW, the best title of the Bishop of Rome is ‘servant of the servants of God’.
Damian Thompson@holysmoke
‘Holy Father’ is not remotely blasphemous but the title can sometimes seem inappropriate. I stopped using it about a decade ago but started again last May.
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Yes which tells a story of root causes being ignored. Our regulatory framework and the regulator are part of the problem - increasing costs and delivery times massively and unnecessarily. Another is lack of commitment and determination from successive governments. Countries that really want to build nuclear at scale do, and do it quicker and cheaper than we do.
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@si_ad @KathrynPorter26 @jonburkeUK And that last builder EDF, their head of finance resigned in protest at the decision to go ahead with the UK HPC build.
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