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Freeman Dyson Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#111

Post by FiatLuxDave »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #43
gwern wrote: post #24

Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity: "Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning." TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no particularly good reas…

I am not sure how long it'd take to become socially acceptable, but I would bet we could make robotic tails for the elderly to help with balancing... accelerometer, motors and a few counterweights, controller and battery.

Make them look like dinosaur tails, sell them with a dinosaur hat, market them through grandkids!

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#113

Post by bori5 »

gbronner wrote: post #21
astrophysician wrote: post #5

About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…

I've met him and his other daughter. They are/were wonderful people. There were a lot of "solutions" using nuclear weapons looking for a problem. There was a proposal to blow a new canal through nicaragua, to blast harbors into Alaska, etc. My roommate's father showed me his paper that anticipated fracking: drill a deep well in oil shale, through a small nuclear weapon in the bottom, blow it up and watch as the press…

In a similar vein there’s a story and YouTube video of Russians plugging an out of control burning oil well with a small nuke.

Edit. It was a gas well here’s the link https://youtu.be/S57Xq03njsc

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#114

Post by paulddraper »

jes5199 wrote: post #78
josephpmay wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is mindblowing. I don't think I've ever heard an argument for free will on a sub-atomic level. It never crossed my mind that that was a position someone could conceivably hold. But it's weirdly comforting- it almost feels religious- and I'm now thinking about how that would affect emergence.

I don't know where I first heard that view, but I've long thought it was the only one that was plausible - where else could free will come from? is it supposed to sneak into physics somehow at a higher level?

I think most physicists are either religious ("sneaks in at a higher level"), or believe that free will does not exist; from a physics perspective you are no different than the smartphone in your pocket.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#115

Post by jeremyjh »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #107
whatshisface wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another plausible view is that it never sneaks in. Nondeterminism would only lead to free will if the mind somehow controlled the nondeterministic outcomes. We know the brain can't do that, so it's clearly a metaphysical question if you want to go further (the mind would have to be an agent distinct from the brain.) The answer to a metaphysical question is not always "no," but you will never be able to prove it.

I don't get this argument. If your mind deterministically makes a given decision in a given circumstance then that's what your mind decided to do. Another mind would make a different decision. That seems like your mind determined the outcome and that sounds like free will?

The decision is the result of mechanical interactions of the atoms your brain is made of. Unless the mind controls the atoms it’s simply a projection of them. A lot of people are uncomfortable with that idea, but this discomfort is also only a projection and the atoms don’t give a damn about it. Where is the freedom exactly?

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#117

Post by whack »

jes5199 wrote: post #82
melling wrote: post #28

Started writing "later” in life: “Life begins at 55, the age at which I published my first book,” he wrote in “From Eros to Gaia,” Never got his PhD. Taught physics at Cornell. Thoughts on climate change: "Relishing the role of iconoclast, he confounded the scientific establishment by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man-made climate change as “tribal group-thinking.” He doubted the veracity of the climat…

I think Dyson was misunderstood in his criticism of climate science - he admitted that he didn't study the science itself, but he was concerned about how the scientific culture in the field seemed to be working

From his quotes, it sounds like he had a pretty strong opinion on climate science, and wasn't commenting merely on "cultural" topics.

> Indur Goklany has done a careful job, collecting and documenting the evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence... I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind... How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?

http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#119

Post by aaronharnly »

astrophysician wrote: post #5

About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…

Some friends invited him to dine with us as undergrads at Princeton – he came, was sparkling and smart, told us about his eccentric "metabolism before replication" ideas about the origin of life, and was just wonderful to listen to and talk with. He is a true intellectual hero of mine, and the world is much poorer for his absence.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#120

Post by didericis »

whatshisface wrote: post #91
hirundo wrote: post #17

"When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories" "We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for…

Those points may have been true when he said them. "The models are bad" becomes less true over time. Also, since the ice age was so bad for humans, it's forgivable that a non-expert would think that going further in the same direction could be helpful.

I think it’s unfair to call Dyson a non-expert. Climate science was not his speciality, and he was humble about his relation to it and quick to point out that there are people more familiar with the current state of the field than him, but he was involved in important early climate studies. From Wikipedia:

> Around 1979 Dyson worked with the Institute for Energy Analysis on climate studies. This group, under Alvin Weinberg's direction, pioneered multidisciplinary climate studies, including a strong biology group. Also during the 1970s, Dyson worked on climate studies conducted by the JASON defense advisory group.

There have been lots of advances in modelling complex systems, but it’s notoriously difficult to find models that work beyond a short timeframe. Dumb simple models often work better than cutting edge, complicated, much more realistic ones simply because there are less variables to get wrong. And every time you make an advance, the assumed accuracy of the model’s long term predictions needs to be reset: if model A predicted 1 year accurately, and you improved it so model A.1 predicted the next year accurately, you don’t have a model that accurately predicted 2 years; there is still only 1 unknown year that was predicted, and A.1 was just as accurate/inaccurate as model A at predicting that unknown year whether or not it took that past year into account.

We’ve seen how easy it is for sophisticated and complex models of chaotic systems like the stock market to fail despite people’s faith in them. His point seems as prudent now as back then; I think some systems are a lot more complicated than we’d like, and that we should have enough hubris to acknowledge that and be constantly testing our assumptions against empirical data.

He didn’t dismiss the value of models in helping understand chaotic systems, he was just wary about their long term predictions. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, only that they should not be taken as Gospel for anything beyond a fairly short time frame.

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