The mathematician and the oracle
On August 24, Levent Alpöge (@__alpoge__) posted on X.com that they had solved a maths problem with Claude’s help in a way that was contrary to a human proof of it, albeit a reputedly unsatisfactory…
epistemology
Science journalism, expertise and common sense
On March 27, the Johns Hopkins University said an article published on the website of the Centre For Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP), a Washington-based think tank, had used its logo without permission and…
Some notes on empiricism, etc.
The Wire published a story about the ‘atoms of Acharya Kanad‘ (background here; tl;dr: Folks at a university in Gujarat claimed an ancient Indian sage had put forth the theory of atoms centuries before John Dalton…
Has ‘false balance’ become self-evidently wrong?
Have we finally entered a period wherein awareness of the fallacies of AGW-denial has matured enough for false-balance to have become either deliberate or the result of mindlessness?
Discussing some motivations behind a particle physics FAQ
Particle physics is in the middle of a quandary. Let’s use it to catch up on all that we’ve missed.
Of small steps and giant leaps of collective imagination
The Wire July 16, 2015 We may all harbour a gene that moves us to explore and find new realms of experience but the physical act of discovery has become far removed from the first…
A future for driverless cars, from a limbo between trolley problems and autopilots
By Anuj Srivas and Vasudevan Mukunth What’s the deal with everyone getting worried about artificial intelligence? It’s all the Silicon Valley elite seem willing to be apprehensive about, and Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom seems to be…
Can science and philosophy mix constructively?
Quantum mechanics can sometimes be very hard to understand, so much so that even thinking about it becomes difficult. This could be because its foundations lay in the action-centric depiction of reality that slowly rejected…
Bohr and the breakaway from classical mechanics
One hundred years ago, Niels Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons go around a nucleus at the centre like planets in the Solar System. The model and its implications brought a…
A clock without a craftsman
Curiosity can be devastating on the pocket. Curiosity without complete awareness has the likelihood of turning fatal. At first, for example, there was nothing. Then, there was a book called The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol.…