The QWERTY Keyboard was not Designed to be Slow

I need to watch Youtube with an AI LLM to fact check it.

Physicist Brian Keating posted a cosmology interview, and started making a false analogy about keyboard. My AI advises:

While Brian Keating is an astrophysicist and not a historian of technology, he is repeating a very common popular myth. The claim that the QWERTY layout was designed specifically to "slow down" typists is technically incorrect, though it is based on a grain of truth regarding mechanical limitations.

According to historical research into the origins of the typewriter:

The "Jamming" Problem: In early mechanical typewriters, if a typist hit two keys that were physically close to each other in rapid succession, the "typebars" (the hammers that hit the paper) would collide and jam.

The Real Purpose of QWERTY: The layout was designed to separate frequently used letter pairs (like "TH" or "ST") so their physical hammers were on opposite sides of the machine. This allowed the hammers to fall back into place before the next one rose, actually allowing the user to type faster without the machine seizing up.

The "Slow Down" Misconception: The myth likely arose because the layout is not "ergonomically optimal" for modern electronic keyboards. Since we no longer have mechanical hammers to worry about, the QWERTY layout seems unnecessarily difficult compared to alternatives like the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

In the video, Keating uses this as an analogy for "technological lock-in", arguing that even if a system is no longer the most efficient, it becomes so widespread that it is nearly impossible to replace—much like he fears is happening with current AI architectures.

The truth is that the qwerty keyboard is not significantly slower than the Dvorak. It just reduces jamming on a mechanical typewriter.

I am wary when some expert tries to make a point using some ridiculous myth that was debunked decades ago. He could have just googled it, and seen that he was wrong.

In the video, Keating shares another classic bit of "technological lock-in" lore, claiming that modern railroad gauges (the distance between the tracks) can be traced back to the width of a Roman chariot, which was designed to fit two horses' butts.

While it’s a great story for a podcast, historians and engineers generally categorize this as a "spurious correlation"—it's mostly a myth, though it has a tiny thread of logic.

The Fact vs. The Fiction

• The Claim: Roman chariots created ruts in European roads. Wagons were built to fit those ruts so they wouldn't break their wheels. Early tramways used those same wagon dimensions, and English trains followed suit, eventually leading to the Standard Gauge (4 feet 8.5 inches) used in the U.S. and much of Europe.

• The Reality: While the standard gauge is roughly the width of an ancient wagon, the specific measurement of 4' 8.5" was actually popularized by George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways." He chose it because it was the width of the existing pre-steam coal tramways in North England where he worked.

• The "Horse's Butt" Part: There is no evidence that Romans measured horses' rear ends to build chariots. Chariots were built to be wide enough to hold two people and stable enough not to tip over. The fact that two horses fit in front of that width is a matter of practical spacing, not a design blueprint that dictated the Space Shuttle's dimensions (another common layer of this myth).

Why Keating Uses It

Keating’s broader point at isn't necessarily about Roman history; he's using it to explain Path Dependence. He argues that once a standard is set—whether it's QWERTY keyboards, railroad widths, or GPU-based AI architectures—it becomes "locked in" because the cost of changing the entire infrastructure is too high, even if a better way exists.

He is probably also wrong with his predictions about AI architectures. He also compares AI to a cockroach, and I think his point is that our AIs could suffer a technological lock-in at a sub-cockroach lever.

I assume that Keating is more accurate when he talks about cosmology experiments. But he says this:

0:30 If you said there's one galaxy, you're stupid. If you said there's one planet, you're stupid. If you said there's one. So why say there's one universe?

I am sticking to one universe. Maybe I am stupid.

Trying to Avoid Epistemic Collapse

Peter Woit writes:

Recently I’ve found that a useful way of understanding some otherwise baffling things is as products of what is sometimes called “epistemic collapse”. By “epistemic collapse” I mean the collapse of a shared reality, caused by the loss of reliable sources for distinguishing what is true from what is false. ...

I find thinking in these terms helps to make sense of the bizarre and disturbing new political situation in the US and elsewhere, with a new form of Fascism on the march. Autocrats are coming to power on a wave of lies and the destruction of institutions that can provide the facts needed for a shared reality.

He goes on to disagree with this Cato article that says the misinformatikon problem is overrated. And he complains about string theory untruths, and those who deny a Gaza genocide.

The Cato article is pretty sensible. Some like to blame misinformation for Donald Trump getting elected, for people not following official covid advice, and other matters. These stories do not hold up. Some of the supposed misinformation was a legitimate response to officials lying to us. Other misinformation was just fringe theories of no consequence.

The problem with string theory was not so much the untruths, but the failure of the whole high-energy theoretical physics program.

No, there is no Gaza genocide. The population is not even declining. It is called war. Wars are often fought until someone surrenders, and Gaza refuses to surrender. So the fighting continues. I do not have any answers. It is weird that Woit and some Columbia protesters make such an issue out of this, as it does not concern Columbia.

His rants about a new form of Fascism are even more bizarre. We have a popularly elected President, and he is carrying out his campaign promises. However much you may disagree with him, he is not radical, and is actually centrist compared to the Harris-Walz ticket he defeated. This is how our political system is supposed to work. Woit seems to have a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

How Colleges got Politicized

English professor Michael W. Clune writes:

We Asked for It
The politicization of research, hiring, and teaching made professors sitting ducks.

Over the past 10 years, I have watched in horror as academe set itself up for the existential crisis that has now arrived. Starting around 2014, many disciplines — including my own, English — changed their mission. Professors began to see the traditional values and methods of their fields — such as the careful weighing of evidence and the commitment to shared standards of reasoned argument — as complicit in histories of oppression. As a result, many professors and fields began to reframe their work as a kind of political activism.

In reading articles and book manuscripts for peer review, or in reviewing files when conducting faculty job searches, I found that nearly every scholar now justifies their work in political terms. This interpretation of a novel or poem, that historical intervention, is valuable because it will contribute to the achievement of progressive political goals. Nor was this change limited to the humanities. Venerable scientific journals — such as Nature — now explicitly endorse political candidates; computer-science and math departments present their work as advancing social justice. Claims in academic arguments are routinely judged in terms of their likely political effects.

The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus. Public opinion of higher education is at an all-time low. The incoming Trump administration plans to use the accreditation process to end the politicization of higher education — and to tax and fine institutions up to “100 percent” of their endowment. I believe these threats are serious because of a simple political calculation of my own: If Trump announced that he was taxing wealthy endowments down to zero, the majority of Americans would stand up and cheer.

It was all unnecessary. Colleges could have stayed out of overtly political issues, especially the ones outside their professional expertise.

Update: Here is an example of how far colleges have degenerated, from a Jewish magazine:

A man sentenced to life imprisonment for involvement in the murder of four Jews in a French synagogue bombing is teaching a “social justice” course at a Canadian university.

Dr Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian citizen, was found guilty by a French court for taking part in the 1980 bombing outside the Rue Copernic Reform synagogue in Paris, which killed four people and injured 46.

He is employed at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, as a teacher in sociology and is delivering a class this autumn titled “Social Justice in Action”.

SciAm joins partisan politics

I have pointed out how science journals have become increasingly preoccupied with leftist politics, and not

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. ...

Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to mitigate it. The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms, wildfires and extreme flooding.

Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making. He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals.

This is pretty crazy. I have been reading SciAm all year, and it never suggested any better way of handling COVID-19.

Of those 200k deaths, COVID-19 was sole named cause of death in only 6% of the cases. The vast majority were elderly with multiple other co-morbidities. The changing climate did not cause the California wildfires.

The NY Times has an article saying "conservative media stars dismiss climate change — which scientists say is the primary cause of the conflagration". For its source, it links to a 2018 NY Times story saying that climate change was the source of the 2018 fires, and the paper updated that story to refer to the 2020 fires. That story blames the fires mostly on immigration, but also says that a changing climate can lead to changing fire conditions.

Biden is senile, and controlled by leftist nuts. He has not said anything sensible about either COVID-19 or the climate or any scientific subject. Nobody seriously thinks he has the competence to be President.

This endorsement is just another sign that our academic and scientific establishments have been taken over by leftist ideologues.

Update: One of SciAm's complaints against Trump is this memo:

The memo obtained by media outlets says, in part, that "several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. [Anthony] Fauci has been wrong on things."

SciAm calls this a "despicable attempt".

What goes here? Fauci has indeed been wrong on many things, and such knowledge should be considered by the public when relying on his advice. Assessing the accuracy of the pronouncements of an expert is a very pro-science thing to do. SciAm editors obviously just hate Trump, and attack whatever he does.

Update: Scott Aaronson writes:

For the past few months, I’ve alternated between periods of debilitating depression and (thankfully) longer stretches when I’m more-or-less able to work. Triggers for my depressive episodes include reading social media, watching my 7-year daughter struggle with prolonged isolation, and (especially) contemplating the ongoing apocalypse in the American West, the hundreds of thousands of pointless covid deaths, and an election in 48 days that if I didn’t know such things were impossible in America would seem likely to produce a terrifying standoff as a despot and millions of his armed loyalists refuse to cede control.

This is lunacy. Millions of people are buying guns because Democrats are allowing and even encouraging race riots in the cities. The Democrats are the ones trying to abolish free speech on social media, and to take over the govt and abolish the filibuster rule.

Update: Here is a Slashdot discussion. The Trump Derangement Syndrome is amazing. Some commenters point out that there is no hard evidence that Trump's COVID-19 policies were any worse than the Democrats or than the Europeans.

It used to be that the main complaint from academic scientists about Republicans was that favorite projects were not being sufficiently funded. However, that complaint is absent this election year. Apparently Trump is funding all the good science the professors want. They just don't like his personality.

Entangling macroscopic objects

A new (paywalled) Nature research article announces Stabilized entanglement of massive mechanical oscillators:

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon whereby systems cannot be described independently of each other, even though they may be separated by an arbitrarily large distance1. Entanglement has a solid theoretical and experimental foundation and is the key resource behind many emerging quantum technologies, including quantum computation, cryptography and metrology.

I would not say that entanglement is a "key resource". It mainly represents a mismatch between physical reality and our methods of measurement. It has no practical value.

Entanglement has been demonstrated for microscopic-scale systems, such as those involving photons2,3,4,5, ions6 and electron spins7, and more recently in microwave and electromechanical devices8,9,10. For macroscopic-scale objects8,9,10,11,12,13,14, however, it is very vulnerable to environmental disturbances, and the creation and verification of entanglement of the centre-of-mass motion of macroscopic-scale objects remains an outstanding goal. Here we report such an experimental demonstration, with the moving bodies being two massive micromechanical oscillators, each composed of about 10¹² atoms, coupled to a microwave-frequency electromagnetic cavity that is used to create and stabilize the entanglement of their centre-of-mass motion15,16,17.

I would have said that a solid object of 10¹² atoms is microscopic, not macroscopic. I cannot see it with my naked eye; I need a microscope. The thing is only about 15 microns in diameter.

I am not sure why this is better than just putting two Schroedinger cats in a box, with a quantum device that kills one, but we cannot predict which. Then the two cats are entangled. What is so great about that?

It is only great if you think of entanglement like splitting the atom in the 1940s. It unlocks a key resource. As energy ruled the world in the 1940s, we now live in the information age, and computation rules the world. If entangling some bits enables super-Turing computing, then we can break RSA encryption and maybe realize artificial general intelligence. Just as splitting the atom was going to give us electricity too cheap to meter, entangled qubits will give us the Singularity.

Do you believe it? No, I don't. It is a pipe dream.

Blog coming here

I am considering moving my Dark Buzz blog here, so as to allow reader comments and better RSS feeds. For now, I am posting there on science-related subjects.