Skip to main content

Home/ Advanced Concepts Team/ Group items tagged politics

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
1More

http://netvideo.nyu.edu:8080/sdpgen/nyutv/Remarque_Tony_Judt_Stream.mov - 1 views

netvideo.nyu.edu/...Remarque_Tony_Judt_Stream.mov politics
shared by LeopoldS on 24 Jan 10 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 24 Jan 10
     
    probably giving away some of my own political views with this post, but very well expressed view of 20th century political history ...
5More

Climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't rise... - 5 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...emperature-risen-15-years.html climate temperature
shared by Dario Izzo on 20 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 20 Sep 13
     
    This is becoming a mess :)
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 20 Sep 13
     
    I would avoid reading climate science from political journals, for a less selective / dramatic picture :-) . Here is a good start: http://www.realclimate.org/ And an article on why climate understanding should be approached hierarcically, (that is not the way done in the IPCC), a view with insight, 8 years ago: http://www.princeton.edu/aos/people/graduate_students/hill/files/held2005.pdf
  • Dario Izzo on 20 Sep 13
     
    True, but fundings are allocated to climate modelling 'science' on the basis of political decisions, not solid and boring scientific truisms such as 'all models are wrong'. The reason so many people got trained on this area in the past years is that resources were allocated to climate science on the basis of the dramatic picture depicted by some scientists when it was indeed convenient for them to be dramatic.
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 20 Sep 13
     
    I see your point, and I agree that funding was also promoted through the energy players and their political influence. A coincident parallel interest which is irrelevant to the fact that the question remains vital. How do we affect climate and how does it respond. Huge complex system to analyse which responds in various time scales which could obscure the trend. What if we made a conceptual parallelism with the L Ácquila case : Is the scientific method guilty or the interpretation of uncertainty in terms of societal mobilization? Should we leave the humanitarian aspect outside any scientific activity?
  • Dario Izzo on 20 Sep 13
     
    I do not think there is anyone arguing that the question is not interesting and complex. The debate, instead, addresses the predictive value of the models produced so far. Are they good enough to be used outside of the scientific process aimed at improving them? Or should one wait for "the scientific method" to bring forth substantial improvements to the current understanding and only then start using its results? One can take both stand points, but some recent developments will bring many towards the second approach.
1More

Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism - Nature Neuroscience - 0 views

www.nature.com/...nn1979.html BIO social politics
shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    There are neuronal correlates for political views.
1More

Robert Newman's History of Oil - 2 views

video.google.com/videoplay history oil politics fun
shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Apr 11
     
    as discussed at lunch: "Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years - but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, he places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion."
1More

A Political History of Apollo | The Planetary Society - 2 views

www.planetary.org/...litical-history-of-apollo.html technology science space
shared by koskons on 14 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • koskons on 14 Aug 19
     
    Another entry by the Planetary Society for the Apollo 11 50th anniversary, this time a podcast series on its political background.
5More

Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past - 6 views

www.wired.com/...cliodynamics-peter-turchin INF science
shared by johannessimon81 on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS and Dario Izzo liked it
  • johannessimon81 on 10 Apr 13
     
    Asimov's Foundation meets ACT's Tipping Point Prediction?
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Dario Izzo on 12 Apr 13
     
    Good luck to them!!
  • Luzi Bergamin on 12 Apr 13
     
    "Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past". GREAT! And physicists probably predict the past with data from the future?!? "scientists and mathematicians analyze history in the hopes of finding patterns they can then use to predict the future". Big deal! That's what any scientist does anyway... "cliodynamics"!? Give me a break!
  • LeopoldS on 16 Apr 13
     
    still, some interesting thoughts in there ... "Then you have the 50-year cycles of violence. Turchin describes these as the building up and then the release of pressure. Each time, social inequality creeps up over the decades, then reaches a breaking point. Reforms are made, but over time, those reforms are reversed, leading back to a state of increasing social inequality. The graph above shows how regular these spikes are - though there's one missing in the early 19th century, which Turchin attributes to the relative prosperity that characterized the time. He also notes that the severity of the spikes can vary depending on how governments respond to the problem. Turchin says that the United States was in a pre-revolutionary state in the 1910s, but there was a steep drop-off in violence after the 1920s because of the progressive era. The governing class made decisions to reign in corporations and allowed workers to air grievances. These policies reduced the pressure, he says, and prevented revolution. The United Kingdom was also able to avoid revolution through reforms in the 19th century, according to Turchin. But the most common way for these things to resolve themselves is through violence. Turchin takes pains to emphasize that the cycles are not the result of iron-clad rules of history, but of feedback loops - just like in ecology. "In a predator-prey cycle, such as mice and weasels or hares and lynx, the reason why populations go through periodic booms and busts has nothing to do with any external clocks," he writes. "As mice become abundant, weasels breed like crazy and multiply. Then they eat down most of the mice and starve to death themselves, at which point the few surviving mice begin breeding like crazy and the cycle repeats." There are competing theories as well. A group of researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute - who practice a discipline called econophysics - have built their own model of political violence and
  • Luzi Bergamin on 17 Apr 13
     
    It's not the scientific activity described in the article that is uninteresting, on the contrary! But the way it is described is just a bad joke. Once again the results itself are seemingly not sexy enough and thus something is sold as the big revolution, though it's just the application of the oldest scientific principles in a slightly different way than used before.
3More

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system | Science | Th... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...er-higgs-boson-academic-system phy physics publications
shared by LeopoldS on 08 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 08 Dec 13
     
    what an interesting personality ... very symathetic Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered "productive" enough.

    The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.

    He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."

    Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.

    Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize - and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".

    Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "

    By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."

    Higgs revealed that his career had also been jeopardised by his disagreements in the 1960s and 7
  • Thijs Versloot on 10 Dec 13
     
    And the follow up by Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals
  • LeopoldS on 12 Dec 13
     
    interesting one - Luzi will like it :-)
3More

A Formula for Happiness - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-formula-for-happiness.html happiness social sciences
shared by LeopoldS on 15 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 15 Dec 13
     
    beati pauperes spiritu :-) "Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men; only about a fifth consider themselves very happy." I think that there are many factors missing there that are just not asked possibly such as altruism as a source for happiness ...
  • johannessimon81 on 16 Dec 13
     
    According to The Beatles "Happiness is a warm gun"... To each his own, I guess. :-)
  • Paul N on 16 Dec 13
     
    It really depends on one's values really. If your values don't follow the standard vanilla flavor then it all breaks down.
5More

Why Randomly-Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy - Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...26488 CMS politics Ig Nobel
shared by Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • If Pluchino sounds familiar, it's because we've talked about him and his pals before in relation to the Peter Principle that incompetence always spreads through big organisations. Back in 2009, he and his buddies created a model that showed how promoting people at random always improves the efficiency of the organisation. These guys went on to win a well-deserved IgNobel prize for this work.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.1224: Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency
  • Luzi Bergamin on 10 Mar 11
     
    I think I start to understand why Italian politics does so horribly bad...
  • LeopoldS on 10 Mar 11
     
    ... because they don't follow this rule!
  • Dario Izzo on 11 Mar 11
     
    According to the authors we have four types of people in the parlement: 1) intelligent people whose actions produce a gain for both themselves and for other people. 2) helpless/naive people in the top left quadrant whose actions produce a loss for themselves but a gain for others; 3) bandits whose actions produce a gain for themselves but a loss for other people. 4) stupid people in the bottom left quadrant produce a loss for themselves and also for other people. According to the above definition it is clear that their model does not apply to the italian parlament where we only have stupid people and bandits.
10More

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 - 6 views

www.shell.com/...shell_energy_scenarios_2050 energy future forecast politics economy climate_change
shared by Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11
     
    just in case you were feeling happy and optimistic
  • ...7 more comments...
  • Francesco Biscani on 09 Mar 11
     
    An energy scenario published by an oil company? Allow me to be sceptical...
  • Joris _ on 10 Mar 11
     
    Indeed, Shell is an energy company, not just oil, for some time now ... The two scenarii are, in their approach, dependant of economic and political situation, which is right now impossible to forecast. Reference to Kyoto is surprising, almost out-dated! But overall, I find it rather optimistic at some stages, and probably the timeline (p37-39) is unlikely with recent events.
  • Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11
     
    the report was published in 2008, which explains the reference to Kyoto, as the follow-up to it was much more uncertain at that point. The Blueprint scenario is indeed optimistic, but also quite unlikely I'd say. I don't see humanity suddenly becoming so wise and coordinated. Sadly, I see something closer to the Scramble scenario as much more likely to occur.
  • LeopoldS on 12 Mar 11
     
    not an oil company??? please have a look at the percentage of their revenues coming from oil and gas and then compare this with all their other energy activities together and you will see very quickly that it is only window dressing ... they are an oil and gas company ... and nothing more
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    not JUST oil. From a description: "Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies." Of course revenues coming from oil are the biggest, the investment turnover on other energy sources is small for now. Knowing that most of their revenues is from an expendable source, to guarantee their future, they invest elsewhere. They have invested >1b$ in renewable energy, including biofuels. They had the largest wind power business among so-called "oil" companies. Oil only defines what they do "best". As a comparison, some time ago, Apple were selling only computers and now they sell phones. But I would not say Apple is just a phone company.
  • LeopoldS on 14 Mar 11
     
    window dressing only ... e.g. Net cash from operating activities (pre-tax) in 2008: 70 Billion$ net income in 2008: 26 Billion revenues in 2008: 88 Billion Their investments and revenues in renewables don't even show up in their annual financial reports since probably they are under the heading of "marketing" which is already 1.7 Billion $ ... this is what they report on their investments: Capital investment, portfolio actions and business development Capital investment in 2009 was $24 billion. This represents a 26% decrease from 2008, which included over $8 billion in acquisitions, primarily relating to Duvernay Oil Corp. Capital investment included exploration expenditure of $4.5 billion (2008: $11.0 billion). In Abu Dhabi, Shell signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to extend the GASCO joint venture for a further 20 years. In Australia, Shell and its partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the Gorgon LNG project (Shell share 25%). Gorgon will supply global gas markets to at least 2050, with a capacity of 15 million tonnes (100% basis) of LNG per year and a major carbon capture and storage scheme. Shell has announced a front-end engineering and design study for a floating LNG (FLNG) project, with the potential to deploy these facilities at the Prelude offshore gas discovery in Australia (Shell share 100%). In Australia, Shell confirmed that it has accepted Woodside Petroleum Ltd.'s entitlement offer of new shares at a total cost of $0.8 billion, maintaining its 34.27% share in the company; $0.4 billion was paid in 2009 with the remainder paid in 2010. In Bolivia and Brazil, Shell sold its share in a gas pipeline and in a thermoelectric power plant and its related assets for a total of around $100 million. In Canada, the Government of Alberta and the national government jointly announced their intent to contribute $0.8 billion of funding towards the Quest carbon capture and sequestration project. Quest, which is at the f
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    thanks for the info :) They still have their 50% share in the wind farm in Noordzee (you can see it from ESTEC on a clear day). Look for Shell International Renewables, other subsidiaries and joint-ventures. I guess, the report is about the oil branch. http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/downloads/files/all_shell_sr09.pdf http://www.noordzeewind.nl/
  • LeopoldS on 16 Mar 11
     
    no - its about Shell globally - all Shell .. these participations are just peanuts please read the intro of the CEO in the pdf you linked to: he does not even mention renewables! their entire sustainability strategy is about oil and gas - just making it (look) nicer and environmentally friendlier
  • Joris _ on 16 Mar 11
     
    Fair enough, for me even peanuts are worthy and I am not able to judge. Not all big-profit companies, like Shell, are evil :( Look in the pdf what is in the upstream and downstream you mentionned above. Non-shell sources for examples and more objectivity: http://www.nuon.com/company/Innovative-projects/noordzeewind.jsp http://www.e-energymarket.com/news/single-news/article/ferrari-tops-bahrain-gp-using-shell-biofuel.html thanks.
16More

Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen - 10 views

launch.is/...dangerous-project-weve-ev.html bitcoin p2p money disruptive
shared by Luís F. Simões on 16 May 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • After month of research and discovery, we’ve learned the following:1. Bitcoin is a technologically sound project.2. Bitcoin is unstoppable without end-user prosecution.3. Bitcoin is the most dangerous open-source project ever created.4. Bitcoin may be the most dangerous technological project since the internet itself.5. Bitcoin is a political statement by technotarians (technological libertarians).*6. Bitcoins will change the world unless governments ban them with harsh penalties.
  • The benefits of a currency like this:a) Your coins can’t be frozen (like a Paypal account can be)b) Your coins can’t be trackedc) Your coins can’t be taxedd) Transaction costs are extremely low (sorry credit card companies)
  • An individual with the name -- or perhaps handle -- of Satoshi Nakamoto first wrote about bitcoins in a paper called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • * We made this term up to describe the “good people” of the internet who believe in the fundamental rights of individuals to be free, have free speech, fight hypocrisy and stand behind logic, technology and science over religion, political structure and tradition. These are the people who build and support things like Wikileaks, Anonymous, Linux and Wikipedia. They think that people can, and should, govern themselves. They are against external forms of control such as DRM, laws that are bought and sold by lobbyists, and religions like Scientology. They include splinter groups that enforce these ideals in the form of hacktivism, such as the takedown of the Sony Playstation Network after Sony tried to prosecute a hacker for unlocking its console.
  • Ma Ru on 17 May 11
     
    Sounds good!
  • ...9 more comments...
  • pacome delva on 18 May 11
     
    wow it's frigthening! it's the dream of every anarchist, every drug, arm, human dealer! the world made as a global fiscal paradise... the idea is clever however it will not replace real money because 1 - no one will build a fortune on bitcoin if a technological breakthrough can ruin them 2 - government never allowed parallel money to flourish on their territory, so it will be almost impossible to change bitcoin against euros or dollars
  • Nicholas Lan on 18 May 11
     
    interesting stuff anyone read cryptonomicon by neal stephenson? similar theme.
  • Luís F. Simões on 18 May 11
     
    :) yes. One of the comments on reddit was precisely drawing the parallels with Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash / Diamond Age / Cryptonomicon. Interesting stuff indeed. It has a lot of potential for misuse, but also opens up new possibilities. We've discussed recently how emerging technologies will drive social change. Whether it's the likes of NSA / CIA who will benefit the most from the Twitters, Facebooks and so on, by gaining greater power for control, or whether individuals are being empowered to at least an identical degree. We saw last year VISA / PayPal censoring WikiLeaks... Well, here's a way for any individual to support such an organization, in a fully anonymous and uncontrollable way...
  • tvinko on 18 May 11
     
    One of my colleagues has made a nice, short write-up about BitCoin: http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html
  • LeopoldS on 18 May 11
     
    very nice analysis indeed - thanks Tamas for sharing it!
  • pacome delva on 20 May 11
     
    mmm I'm not an expert but it seemed to me that, even if these criticisms are true, there is one fundamental difference between the money you exchange on internet via your bank, and bitcoins. The first one is virtual money and the second one aims at being real, physical, money, even if digital, in the same way as banknotes, coins, or gold.
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 20 May 11
     
    An algorithm wanna-be central bank issuing untraceable tax free money between internet users? not more likely than the end of the world supposed to take place tomorrow, in my opinion. Algorithms don't usually assault women though !:P
  • LeopoldS on 21 May 11
     
    well, most money is anyway just virtual and only based on expectations and trust ... (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply) and thus if people trust that this "money" has some value in the sense that they can get something of value to them in exchange, then not much more is needed it seems to me ...
  • pacome delva on 23 May 11
     
    @Leopold: ok let's use the rigth words then. Bitcoin aim at being a currency ("physical objects generally accepted as a medium of exchange" from wikipedia), different than the "demand deposit". In the article proposed by Tamas he compares what cannot be compared (currencies, demand deposits and their mean of exchange). The interesting question is wether one can create a digital currency which is too difficult to counterfeit. As far as I know, there is no existing digital currency except this bitcoins (and maybe the currencies from games as second life and others, but which are of limited use in real world).
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 23 May 11
     
    well of course money is trust, and even more loans and credit and even more stock and bond markets. It all represents trust and expectations. However since the first banks 500 years ago and the first loans etc. etc., and as well the fact that bonds and currencies bring down whole countries (Greece lately), and are mainly controlled by large financial centres and (central) banks, banks have always been on the winning side no matter what and that isn't going to change easily. So if you are talking about these new currencies it would be a new era, not just a new currency. So should Greece convert its debt to bitcoins ;P ?
  • pacome delva on 23 May 11
     
    well, from 1936 to 1993 the central bank of france was owned by the state and was supposed to serve the general interest...
1More

'Terrorist Facebook' - the new weapon against al-Qa'ida - World Politics, Wo... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-against-alqaida-1774041.html mosaic theory facebook terrorism
shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 31 Aug 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 31 Aug 09
     
    Intelligence agencies are building up a Facebook-style databank of international terrorists in order to sift through it with complex computer programs aimed at identifying key figures and predicting terrorist attacks before they happen.
1More

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (33MB) - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf forecast
shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Interesting not for the US securtiy point of view but some forecasting on technologies and politics of the future
1More

What's at Stake in the Surveillance Debate in Congress - 0 views

www.wired.com/...circuitcourt_1023 politics technology
shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    not science at all .... of concern?
1More

energy utilities paying attorneys to help prevent regulation - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...ce-with-attorneys-general.html energy politics NRG
shared by LeopoldS on 07 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 07 Dec 14
     
    where real power sits ...
2More

Calling Bullshit - 2 views

callingbullshit.org/index.html science
shared by Alexander Wittig on 27 Feb 17 - No Cached
LeopoldS and jcunha liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 27 Feb 17
     
    A college course at University of Washington on "Calling Bullshit". We should invite them to give a lunch lecture at ESA... Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences. While bullshit may reach its apogee in the political domain, this is not a course on political bullshit. Instead, we will focus on bullshit that comes clad in the trappings of scholarly discourse. Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to: * Remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet. * Recognize said bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it. * Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bullshit. * Provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bullshit. * Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit. We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Mar 17
     
    love it: "Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit - and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit. We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument."
1More

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities - 0 views

www.pnas.org/...1210722109.full.pdf statistics inf data politics
shared by LeopoldS on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 24 Sep 12
     
    Nice paper ...
2More

Billion-euro brain simulation and graphene projects win European funds - 1 views

www.nature.com/...cts-win-european-funds-1.12291 brain graphene
shared by Luís F. Simões on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 24 Jan 13
     
    winners of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship competition (informally) announced
  • Ma Ru on 24 Jan 13
     
    Hopefully the money wasted on the brain project will be offset by the gains on graphene... When I heard the proposals presentations on fet11 conference back in 2011, the graphene project was my bet.. Although its motivations were mostly political ("everyone else is working on graphene so if Europe won't do something, we'll soon be far behind"), in contrast to other projects it appeared to have well defined tangible objectives and gave hope of actually delivering something.
6More

The Higgs, Boltzmann Brains, and Monkeys Typing Hamlet | The Crux | Discover Magazine - 7 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...ains-and-monkeys-typing-hamlet science space
shared by santecarloni on 01 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • santecarloni on 01 Nov 12
     
    good luck with this....
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 01 Nov 12
     
    Nice article, actually! It summarizes in "human readable format" why and how too many cosmologists and string theorists just went bozo...
  • pacome delva on 13 Nov 12
     
    really ! this article should go for the ignobels ! http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3778 I wonder which substance theorists are taking... I will avoid...! but really this is very preoccupating: "complex structures will occasionally emerge from the vacuum as quantum fluctuations, at a small but nonzero rate per unit spacetime volume. An intelligent observer, like a human, could be one such structure." Is this a new alternative to Darwinism...??? a support to creationism ?? How can a physicist can write such non-sense ?
  • pacome delva on 13 Nov 12
     
    and this is published in PRD !!!
  • Luzi Bergamin on 13 Nov 12
     
    In 1996 Sokal hoaxed sociologists with his famous nonsense text on political implications of quantum gravity. Can one play a similar game with "researchers" on Boltzmann brains, multiverses, string landscapes or similar? I doubt, this is just reality satire that can't be topped.
  • LeopoldS on 13 Nov 12
     
    Poor Boltzmann ...
1 - 20 of 66 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page