Sean Carroll

Gonna be really upset if my ultimate demise results from my inability to remember which thing I'm supposed to do if it's a black bear, and which I'm supposed to do if it's a grizzly bear.

Thanks!

Also, most self-identified panpsychists are less about “computation is everywhere” than “mind is the fundamental ontological category.”

There are interesting arguments that thinking is not the same as computation. Eg recent papers by @anilseth.bsky.social and @neddo.bsky.social

assets.super.so/68d1c369-feb...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It's frustrating that we are getting technologies that really will transform our lives, and we should be thinking carefully about what that means, but the possibility of thoughtful discussion is being squelched by a stream of soul-crushing visions and wild hyperbole coming from Silicon Valley.

I'm a huge fan of Liberal Currents. The writers there offer an ideal combination of an intellectual defense of liberal values with a clear-eyed view of the challenges of the current political moment.

Why Machines Learn — Anil Ananthaswamy “Through Two Doors at Once  offers beginners the tools they need to seriously engage with the philosophical questions that likely drew them to quantum mechanics.” — Science ( full review here ...

Anil's book on the subject makes a great holiday gift.

anilananthaswamy.com/why-machines...

Title card for Mindscape Podcast episode with Anil Ananthaswamy.

Mindscape 336 | Anil Ananthaswamy @anilananth.bsky.social on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI. Everyone is talking about AI these days, why not impress your friends with some math? #MindscapePodcast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

Hmm, this could be a whole cinematic multiverse. Falling Down triggered by Cloudflare going down; Falling Down trying to get two-factor authentication to work; Falling Down trying to get an iTunes playlist to play on Sonos...

Also, people like money. The idea that people stop being interested in acquiring more money once they've reached a certain amount doesn't seem to have much empirical support.

But you could be all-knowledgeable! Your job is to never let us know.

One of the great things about being a scientist with an interview-style podcast is that I get to "play dumb" and ask questions that I'm supposed to know the answer to. Nobody has to know whether I actually do know the answer.

It's Friday, and apparently bluesky is ready for this fun revelation:

Dinosaurs lived on the other side the Galaxy.

Our #NaturalPhilosophy Symposium drew to a close with a panel discussion amongst the Day Three plenary speakers: Melanie Mitchell, Emily Adlam, Chris Kempes, Jenann Ismael, Simon Levin, and Michael Tomasello. It was moderated by Betsy Ogburn of Johns Hopkins.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ9Z...

Scary to think that maybe it is.

Hadn't heard that last part! But of course Gibbs and Boltzmann had written down basically the same formula as well.

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com.

We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans.

washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Then we began to explore the measurement formalism -- also named after von Neumann. We set up, but didn't quite have time to carry out, how to treat a measuring apparatus as a quantum system and entangle it with something we're trying to measure.

And today in #QM1 we calculated the entropy of some density matrices. The quantum entropy formula is named after John von Neumann, who as I mentioned in class "is all over this stuff." We showed that zero entropy means the system is in a pure state, nonzero entropy means it's a mixed state.

College is such a precious opportunity to do real thinking in a variety of fields. Always thrilled to see when students make an effort to take advantage of it.

I don't think it's any different than in a single stochastic world.

I hear you.

Can’t game the system. Maxwell’s Demon has inside info, you don’t. Always equal chances of energy going up or down.

Energy Non-Conservation in Quantum Mechanics We study the conservation of energy, or lack thereof, when measurements are performed in quantum mechanics. The expectation value of the Hamiltonian of a system can clearly change when wave functions ...

All true.

arxiv.org/abs/2101.11052

I think part of the motivation for Zurek’s quantum Darwinism is to address questions like this. Info about the state of a decohered system is stored redundantly in the environment, which helps stitch together a common reality on each branch.

It's hard to convey that some questions are truly difficult to answer (what are the moral implications of multiple worlds?) whereas others are completely straightforward if you just do the math (where does the energy come from?). Have to ask the students to trust you a bit, which I like to minimize.

Today in #PhilosophyOfCosmology we rolled up our sleeves and thought about the metaphysical implications and puzzles associated with Many-Worlds. How many worlds are there? Where does the energy come from? Which future self will I be? Stuff like that.

The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and that more than 400,000 U.S. troops died fighting against in World War II, as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.

Now that’s a lede.

Story by @taracopp.bsky.social and @michelleboorstein.bsky.social.

Read here: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Thank goodness. Don't let the ramblings just be noise in the background.