More-crap-ter Projection
I thought about assembling a kind of anti-Sequence reading list about quantum mechanics, a view from outside the cult shit that the Sequences try to drown you in, with their bad history, caricatured philosophy and mathematics that ranges from turgid to incorrect. The trouble is that a better understanding is not written all in one place, and even the good papers don't necessarily convey the everything Yud taught you is wrong emotional hook. The literature does not lead to cracking many smiles, though I did appreciate Adrian Kent's eel remark in this book review.
Some papers that have a bit more zing than average:
- L. Catani et al., "Why interference phenomena do not capture the essence of quantum theory," Quantum 7 (2023), 1119.
- K. Camilleri and M. Schlosshauer, "Niels Bohr as philosopher of experiment: Does decoherence theory challenge Bohr's doctrine of classical concepts?," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 49 (2015), 73–83.
- D. Howard, "Who invented the “Copenhagen Interpretation”? A study in mythology." Philosophy of Science 71 (2004), 669–682.
- C. Chevalley, "Why do We Find Bohr Obscure?." In Epistemological and Experimental Perspectives on Quantum Physics (Springer, 1999), 59–73.
And, if you really want to dive into the waters and open your eyes below the surface:
- N. Bohr, "The Causality Problem in Atomic Physics." In New Theories in Physics (International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1939), 11–30.
His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other.
Illustrations by the dck pck AI
Today seems to be another day on which archive dot fuh just refuses to load. Anyone able to see it?
Obviously, it's easier to tear down firewalls with the extra fingers.
That's just common sense.
I think that's it — it's the one Timnit Gebru linked to back in February which prompted the old!SneerClub discussion I mentioned, and Molly White's newsletter links to the same place.
A link to what?
(The link in the Substack post is to the Wikipedia page for the Crooks result, disguising — intentionally or not — the fact that the writer is just smashing together science words.)
"I dig a pony ... Well, you can penetrate any place you go / Yes, you can penetrate any place you go / I told you so"
That blog post irritates me in multiple directions every time I am reminded of it. The wrongness is so layered that any response I attempt degenerates into do you even Bloch sphere, bro before I give up and find something more worthwhile to do with my life.
When I was a teenager, I read every novel by Isaac Asimov, including those that I could only find in second-hand bookshops (A Whiff of Death, Murder at the ABA and The End of Eternity). I read most of his short fiction, too; I didn't hunt down the ephemera that had never been anthologized, but I did visit the archive at the Boston University Library and find the movie plot outline that he wrote at the request of Paul McCartney. On the nonfiction side, to mention only the thickest books. I read his Chronology of Science and Discovery in sixth grade, and I followed it up with Asimov's Chronology of the World and his two-volume guides to Shakespeare and the Bible both.
It's not that I fail to understand where LessWrong is coming from. It's that I actually grew up to become a scientist.
Since I don't think that one professor's uploads can furnish hundreds of billions of tokens... yeah, that sounds exceedingly implausible.