The Death of Quanta Magazine
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The Death of Quanta Magazine
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#2Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically:
> "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds."
Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but it's ultimately a general readership magazine, not an academic journal. I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model. Whatever that is.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not disputing that the Quanta article is factually deficient - although I don't have the relevant specialist knowledge to understand why. I am disputing that this marks the "death" of the magazine.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#3> It falls so far below any journalistic standard that the magazine is dead to me.
I'll be honest. I found it very hard to read beyond this line. I powered through though.
Here's the tldr: It's a rant about details in one specific article.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#4I'm sad to say I used to really like Quanta magazine pieces but I've become adept at knowing immediately from a Hacker News discussion title (the direct links, not this one) that it's about a Quanta piece, and it's going to be a letdown when you drill in.
I'm not sure if they've become more clickbaity or less discriminating, or if it's just me moving on. I'm guessing from the article - however ranty - it's not my imagination.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#5AdS == Anti de Sitter space == A universe with nothing in it.
These physicists assume a universe with nothing in it, then populate it with physicists and quantum computers and wormholes.
This is like claiming to have the most beatiful differential equations that explain perfectly the weather on earth. You say "ok, let's test these beautiful equations." But it turns out that the equations so beautiful to look at have no perfect solutions. So you need to make absurdly symmetrical assumptions to arrive at a usable solution, like assuming no atmosphere. Then, with no atmosphere your equations explains the earth's atmosphere perfectly well. With beautiful mathematical gimmicks, of course. With an assumption of a universe with nothing in it your equations explain everything in that universe with nothing in it.
Physics is neo-scholasticism powered by the marketing skills of the practitioners. This episode about wormholes proves the corruption of academic physics.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#6Unfortunately the commodification of physics discoveries, packaged in order to wow laypeople who would be bored by any accurate explanation, is just getting worse and worse every year, to the point that I've noticed a vast increase in the number of clueless crackpot laypeople that try to interact with me (I now block them on sight).
Personally, I think it comes from a deep lack within a lot of humans now: they are scared of the future and bored of the present. They want to go to Mars or live out their sci-fi dreams, because they do not have any meaning right now. I won't speculate on the reasons for this, because I'm sure there are many, but the end result is that they are desperate for crazy sounding physics discoveries, because it placates their desire for extreme technological progression. Technology and science have become almost like a God, something people don't understand but that they have faith that it will elevate humanity to a point beyond its current, seemingly stale, state. Of course, where there is a desire for that, media companies will try to fulfil it.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#7Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically: > "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds." Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but i…
This is not some "glossing over some details for a lay audience" situation. It is not a lack of depth. It makes ridiculous claims, fundamentally misrepresenting what this research is, to make it sound cooler and more interesting. This is one of the worst pieces of science journalism I've ever seen.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#8Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically: > "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds." Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but i…
Then leave the original paper as something only appealing to experts. Totally lying about it in order to make it more broadly appealing is pretty bad.
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#9> It falls so far below any journalistic standard that the magazine is dead to me. I'll be honest. I found it very hard to read beyond this line. I powered through though. Here's the tldr: It's a rant about details in one specific article.
The context is that this is causing a big amount of chaos in the physics community, with a lot of high profile (and/or popular) physicists calling it out. It isn't just one guy's rant. Even my research group is talking about it
Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine
#10I cannot comment on the content of the article, but the title and the author have changed, unfortunately I cannot find an update in the article. Comments seem to be off.