Nick has moved to Mathstodon @internic@qoto.org
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Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
@badastro sounds a bit hot...and full of radiation.
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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Flu surges in Louisiana as health department barred from promoting flu shots
Flu is rising around the country, but Louisiana is well ahead of the curve.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/flu-surges-in-louisiana-as-health-department-barred-from-promoting-flu-shots/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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Honda and Nissan to merge, Honda will take the lead
if the deal goes through it would create the world's third-largest OEM in 2026.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/12/honda-and-nissan-to-merge-honda-will-take-the-lead/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
@davidsuculum Right. While I haven't spent much time looking into those historical sources, I agree that my impression is that they weren't necessarily entirely consistent. But I'm assuming some more contemporary folks must have tried to defend something in the ballpark of this view (one that includes state reduction caused by measurements), something orthodox-ish.
I think a more contemporary account would also be more valuable because it would hopefully incorporate our understanding of environmentally-induced decoherence, which we only started getting a handle on in the 70s and 80s.
@grimalkina It's awful you had to do that, but unfortunately not surprising. It seems shockingly common that people effectively have to be their own doctor and then continuously fight the nominal doctor to get the proper care. I used to have a lot of faith in medicine until I and people I was close to actually had more interaction with doctors.
Perversely, I have an excellent veterinarian who is thoughtful, thorough, well-informed, and always open to discussion, so my cats have gotten much better medical care than most humans I know. I keep trying to figure out how to convince her to expand her practice to great apes. Also she takes it in stride when I show up for appointments with graphs (or food intake, weight, etc.). 😅
@_thegeoff I feel like I heard about it and then forgot again. Bookmarked this time. Thanks!
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In this 5th year of Covid my wife will once again be nurse double shifting both Christmas and New Years due to staff illness & disease breakout among residents requiring more nurses to adequately care. All the while her employer restricting PPE AND demanding less overtime due to 'costs'
The disconnect is staggering
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I was reading back through my logs I kept over the past two years of medical appointments and it's so so much more depressing than I actually remember on the daily
Just note after note like: "reported the pain and was told no next steps" "tried to get this inhaler prescription fixed for two months while the office refused to call the pharmacy" "specialist dismissed the possibility of hypoxia" "it turns out it was hypoxia"
@_thegeoff Ah, good, this brings out that I need to clarify my question and thinking. So, in the MWI, I think you can in principle give a reasonable answer to question like "when is a measurement considered to have occurred" or "when does a measurement process become irreversible?"
In principle you can define a Hamiltonian for the system being measured and the measuring apparatus, describing their energetic structure, as well as an interaction Hamiltonian that describes the way in which they interact and how strongly. You can then use the Schrödinger equation to predict how that setup evolves in time.
Say that the system to be measured has a property, say the z-component of the magnetic moment m_z, and the measuring apparatus has some internal "pointer" variable u that records the value. The apparatus starts in some default pre-measurement state u=u_0, and then the Hamiltonian will cause the pointer variable u to evolve based on the value of m_z, u -> u_- for m_z = -1/2 and u -> u_+ for m_z = +1/2.
If the system starts in a superposition of m_z = -1/2 and m_z = +1/2 then the Schrödinger equation causes the system to evolve into an entangled state where the possibilities m_z = -1/2, u = u_- and m_z = 1/2, u = u_+ are in a superposition. This occurs over a finite time (given by the Hamiltonian), and once it has occurred another apparatus that measures the same system will no longer see a coherent superposition of the states m_z = +/- 1/2. The measurement becomes irreversible on a timescale given either by the Hamiltonian of the measuring apparatus (if it's sufficiently big) or on a timescale given by its coupling Hamiltonian to its environment (the latter being what then divides the Universe into branches).
Of course, for a macroscopic apparatus you can't actually do the exact math for any of this, and the complexity of the measuring apparatus and the shortness of the timescales may mean that you can't practically test this theory, but at least there is an answer in principle.
So what I'm looking for is a similarly detailed accounting of this measurement process using a more orthodox interpretation.
@JohnLAlford I haven't, but I do listen to the Mindscape podcast, also by @seanmcarroll, where I think many of the same ideas have been discussed. Carroll is also a proponent of MWI, which means I like a lot of what he has to say, but what I'm looking for here is actually sort of the opposite: what's the best argument that can be made in favor of the more conventional interpretation(s) of QM.
@_thegeoff I guess I'd say that generally in order to talk about measurement you sort of have to implicitly choose an interpretation (because it really affects how you describe things), even though the math then turns out to be the same (setting aside the really difficult cases like mesoscopic systems or the wavefunction of the Universe).
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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Periodic reminder that Mark Everett (of the band Eels) did a documentary about his father's (Hugh Everett III) groundbreaking work on quantum theory, and it's touching, fascinating, and completely free to watch.
https://vimeo.com/58603054
@_thegeoff Does that course actually grapple with the "problem of measurement" (i.e. questions like under what specific circumstances state reduction occurs, etc.)? That would be surprising for what appears to be an intro course.
A question for all the physicists and physics enthusiasts on the Fedi: What is the best exposition you've seen of something approximating the Copenhagen Interpretation or a relatively orthodox view of quantum measurement? That's intentionally a bit vague (because people even seem to disagree a bit about what these words mean), but I'm definitely excluding things like MWI or Bohmian mechanics here.
Ever since I first read "The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" by Dewitt, I have been a subscriber to the MWI. I was essentially following the maxim of Arthur Conan Doyle, "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth;" The MWI was the only interpretation of QM that ever seemed internally consistent to me.
But I sometimes wonder if I just haven't seen a really good presentation of a more orthodox view. People who subscribe to something that might be called the orthodox or Copenhagen Interpretation often don't really seem to think the topic merits serious discussion, so perhaps that's why they don't make very convincing arguments. Is there a really good version of these ideas that I've been missing?
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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85-year-old painter loses life savings to NFT art dealer scam
December 6, 2024
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=85-year-old-painter-loses-life-savings-to-nft-art-dealer-scam
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I don't know if that mattered as much as I once thought it did. Although, I'm still hopeful that change will come along.
After seeing how the migration from X to BlueSky has worked I'm more convinced than ever that "big accounts" matter. People want to be able to follow the people they are interested in or enjoy and THAT will move users. Interface isn't that important.
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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cw: racism, coopting of genetics for racist goals
Difficult but important reading
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.4925
"We have been engaged since 2015 in a project about the uses of scientific research by white nationalists and far-right political movements, and we contend that a “citizen science movement” now drives much scientific racism"
@erik @NicoYozone Also, given how much of GoT is clearly patterned on renaissance Europe, Elizabeth I of England comes to mind.
@johncarlosbaez @skotchygut I recognize that I'd often productive to pursue a line of mathematical reasoning without nailing everything down rigorously, and in science we have empirical evidence to keep us from straying too far, but I think it is worthwhile to recognize that there is value in rigorous work where it's possible.
Nick has moved to Mathstodon
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It’s time for a special holiday Bridgy Fed status update!
Since last time, we’ve been working mostly on getting A New Social off the ground and on Bridgy Fed internals. Specifically, my development focus for a while now has been cost cutting. I fund Bridgy Fed myself right now, which I’m happy to do, but it costs more to run than it should, probably by 2-3x or so.
(We do plan to fundraise for A New Social eventually and fund Bridgy Fed there instead! Including individual donations, among other sources. Stay tuned for more news when we have it.)
In the meantime, I’ve been pushing the optimization boulder uphill, making slow progress. I’m currently struggling with one big issue: getting caching working in ndb, our ORM.
ndb can cache both in memory and in memcache. We configure it to do both, but it doesn’t seem to be using memcache in production, and I’m not even sure it’s caching in memory there either. If you have experience with ndb, Google Cloud Datastore, Memorystore, or related tools, please take a look and let me know if you see anything obviously wrong!
This also means that I haven’t had much time to spend on features, bug fixes, or other user-visible updates. I’m the only developer on Bridgy Fed right now, and I’m only part time. I’d love help! It’s entirely open source, so if you’re interested, check out the open issues, feel free to dive in, and ping me on GitHub if you have any questions!
Having said that, I have done a bit besides cost cutting since last time:
Generate link previews (aka embeds) on Bluesky.
Launch Threads support! Just via normal ActivityPub, nothing special, but I worked with them a fair amount on interop.
Improve sign-up flow for web => Bluesky bridging.
Try harder to redirect fediverse @-mentions of bridged users to their web site or Bluesky profile.
Reduce confusion on the home page sign-up form by detecting web sites that are already fediverse instances.
Let fediverse accounts re-enable the bridge even if they disabled it before October.
Improve interop with Friendica, Hubzilla, Misskey/Sharkey, Sharkey, WordPress Friends plugin, and GoToSocial.
Improve authorization to prevent a cache poisoning attack.
Improve DNS scaling for Bluesky handles.
Populate the discoverable and indexable flags on bridged ActivityPub actors.
Misc bug fixes for web sites on www subdomains.
Fix rare bug where we occasionally missed bridging posts or other interactions to Bluesky.
Fix rare bug where we occasionally missed bridging deletes.
Continued debugging of accounts bridged into Bluesky that occasionally get stuck and stop bridging.
Lots of docs improvements.
As usual, feel free to ping us with feedback, questions, and bug reports. You can follow the now label on GitHub to see what we’re currently focusing on. See you on the bridge!
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Moved to Mathstodon.xyz
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
