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Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#51

Post by tsimionescu »

yubblegum wrote: post #15
dabiged wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget snap, crackle and pop, and quantum teleportation. Physicists get a failing grade for naming things.

You mean post quantum, theoretical physics. Up to 19th and early 20th, physicists somehow knew how to name things. It is possible that the nature of the beast itself has changed and it attracts a different kind of mindsets ...

Color charge and the strange and charm quarks are not post-quantum theoretical physics, are they?

There's also other areas where a current of picking simple names instead of greek/latin terms was popular for a while at least - Shannon named the smallest unit of information a "bit" after all.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#52

Post by tsimionescu »

dwroberts wrote: post #12
sigmoid10 wrote: post #3

>In holographic theories, physicists may have traced the pliability of space-time to its quantum roots ...ah yes holography again. Not to say that all these insights from it are completely worthless, but unless we actually find a holographic dual of our universe instead of AdS spaces (which are the opposite of our universe if anything), this whole field is starting to feel more like a jobs program for mathematicians…

> this whole field is starting to feel more like a jobs program for mathematicians out of new ideas. So sick of seeing phrases like this. Science is not business. It is not about producing results that you personally think are important. It is understanding the nature of the universe for the sake of it.

Science and math are not the same thing, though. The concern is that physics, a science, has been sliding too much into math research - specifically talking about the foundations of particle physics.

That is, the concern is that instead of studying the real world, theoretical physicists are spending more and more time studying mathematical constructs and their properties.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#53

Post by seanhunter »

apothegm wrote: post #14

That is an incredibly unfortunate term to use for the phenomenon.

I agree, although there is a long tradition of terrible naming in the sciences.

One of the most boring and yet egregious examples imo is "Random Variable". So named because

- they aren't random and

- they aren't variables.[1]

A "random variable" is actually a measurable deterministic function from the set of possible outcomes of some experiment to the real numbers. But you can see why the name "random variable" is confusing to people.

[1] https://cyril9227.github.io/random-variables/ and elsewhere.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#54

Post by an0malous »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #19
soco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... Your worries are a bit late, there's already a huge amount of new age conspiracy bull about quantum healing with wave function collapse, microtubule alignment and biophotons - quality all-you-can-eat word salad buffet.

Blame Roger Penrose for the microtubule bullshit. Ironically, he's the opposite of new age, dude won a Nobel prize.

Maybe, just maybe, an eminent physicist who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us. At the very least his ideas deserve consideration instead of ridicule and dismissal.

Also as far as I know, Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason and resort to name calling, you’re not being rational you’re just being dogmatic and censoring ideas.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#55

Post by bawolff »

an0malous wrote: post #54
CuriouslyC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame Roger Penrose for the microtubule bullshit. Ironically, he's the opposite of new age, dude won a Nobel prize.

Maybe, just maybe, an eminent physicist who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us. At the very least his ideas deserve consideration instead of ridicule and dismissal. Also as far as I know, Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason and resort to name calling, you’re not being rational you’re just being dogmatic and censoring ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#56

Post by SkyBelow »

echelon wrote: post #32
Terr_ wrote: post #2

> a measure of quantumness known as “magic.” This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... > They had worked out a way of running software on a classical computer that would mimic a quantum task. When it comes to using a regular computer to mimic (read: fake) the execution of an exotic program/API for nonexistnet future hardware, I highly recommend the humorously titled talk: "Temporally…

Is any of this experimentally testable in the real world? Would gravity or spacetime under these definitions behave differently and yield something we can observe? Or is this fancy math modeling that looks nice on paper, but that we won't be able to test until we become a Kardashev type III civilization?

Does the model need to offer new testable hypothesis if it provides a way of explaining existing results that current models can't?

If it is competing against another model that does both that and offers new testable hypothesis (which experiments match), the other model is the clear winner. But lacking that, if no other model explains all existing data, is new testability really necessary when it is the only model that currently explains all existing tests?

That said, aren't most of theoretical models only contenders for such, as in they haven't been expanded to actually explain all testing results, only that, as far as they have been expanded, there are no contradictions yet? So they need physicists to expand them, but if the model is wrong, the effort might largely be wasted, and we have some models that there is disdain for not because they contradict existing experiments, but because they have eaten too many careers without showing value in return?

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#57

Post by SoftTalker »

Terr_ wrote: post #2

> a measure of quantumness known as “magic.” This naming-proposal couldn't possibly cause any problems down the line... > They had worked out a way of running software on a classical computer that would mimic a quantum task. When it comes to using a regular computer to mimic (read: fake) the execution of an exotic program/API for nonexistnet future hardware, I highly recommend the humorously titled talk: "Temporally…

I had assumed it was a play on the saying "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" but I didn't see that in the article.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#58

Post by an0malous »

bawolff wrote: post #55
an0malous wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, just maybe, an eminent physicist who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us. At the very least his ideas deserve consideration instead of ridicule and dismissal. Also as far as I know, Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason and resort to name calling, you’re not being rational you’re just being dogmatic and censoring ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

Again, if you disagree with Penrose’s idea, just explain your disagreement. It’s so ironic how you’ll call it bullshit and link to some pop culture skeptic idea with no scientific backing to try and undermine an idea in defense of “real science”

> Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been.

https://paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#59

Post by boutell »

api wrote: post #44
echelon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any of this experimentally testable in the real world? Would gravity or spacetime under these definitions behave differently and yield something we can observe? Or is this fancy math modeling that looks nice on paper, but that we won't be able to test until we become a Kardashev type III civilization?

As far as I know it’s the latter and that’s a big problem for physics. A lot of stuff like string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc. require energies that would take a particle accelerator the diameter of the solar system or something nuts like that. Without tests it’s just pretty math that can be coaxed into agreeing with reality but that proves nothing. Physicists try to indirectly test all the time via cosmologica…

I believe there was a science fiction story all the way back in the early '80s describing a scenario where physics gets reclassified as a soft science or an art form because it is no longer feasible to prove anything.

Re: Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity

#60

Post by boutell »

stogot wrote: post #43
echelon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any of this experimentally testable in the real world? Would gravity or spacetime under these definitions behave differently and yield something we can observe? Or is this fancy math modeling that looks nice on paper, but that we won't be able to test until we become a Kardashev type III civilization?

These wild ideas eventually arrive in textbooks as if they were tested, proven with none of the nuance or contradictory evidence

Do they though? Are physics textbooks putting forward some version of string theory from the 1990s as proven fact?
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