Paper on Einstein's inventions

A new paper:

Times magazine selected Albert Einstein, the German born Jewish Scientist as the person of the 20th century. Undoubtedly, 20th century was the age of science and Einstein's contributions in unraveling mysteries of nature was unparalleled. However, few are aware that Einstein was also a great inventor. He and his collaborators had patented a wide variety of inventions in several countries.

The article gives a nice accounts of Einstein's invenstions and patents.

The account of Einstein's life includes the usual myths, such as this account of his most famous paper:

3. On the electrodynamics of moving bodies, Annalen der Physik 17 (1905) 891-921.

This is the first paper on special relativity. It drastically altered the century old man’s idea about space and time. In Newtonian mechanics they have separate identities. In Einstein's relativity, space and time are not separate entities rather one entity called space-time continuum. Continuum because in our experience there is no void in space or time. Identification of space-time as an entity required that bodies moving with velocity of light or near need a different mechanics, relativistic mechanics rather than the Newtonian mechanics. Intermingling of space and time produces few surprises, e.g. a moving clock tick slowly (time dilation), a moving rod contracts (length contraction),
strange laws of velocity addition etc.

Almost all of this is wrong. It was not the first paper on special relativity, as it has little in conceptual advance from Lorentz's 1895 paper. It did not combine space and time. Length contraction was proposed by FitzGerald in 1889, and Larmor discussed time dilation in about 1999 1899. Poincare had the velocity addition formula a couple of months ahead of Einstein.

The author does correctly point out that nobody thought that Einstein's 1905 paper was any big deal at the time. It was considered just an explanation of Lorentz's theory, and special relativity became popular are a result of Minkowski developing Poincare's ideas. Einstein's paper had almost no influence on the development and acceptance of special relativity.

Looking for new quantum axioms

Philip Ball writes a Quanta mag essay:

The Flimsy Foundations of Quantum Mechanics ...

Scientists have been using quantum theory for almost a century now, but embarrassingly they still don’t know what it means.

Lubos Motl adequately trashes it as an anti-quantum crackpot article, and I will not attempt to outdo his rant. I agree with him.

Instead, I focus on one fallacy at the heart of modern theoretical physics. Under this fallacy, the ideal theory is one that is logically derived from postulates, and where one can have a metaphysical belief in those postulates independent of messy experiments.

Ball writes:

But this so-called rule for calculating probabilities was really just an intuitive guess by the German physicist Max Born. So was Schrödinger’s equation itself. Neither was supported by rigorous derivation. Quantum mechanics seems largely built of arbitrary rules like this, some of them — such as the mathematical properties of operators that correspond to observable properties of the system — rather arcane. It’s a complex framework, but it’s also an ad hoc patchwork, lacking any obvious physical interpretation or justification.

Compare this with the ground rules, or axioms, of Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which was as revolutionary in its way as quantum mechanics. (Einstein launched them both, rather miraculously, in 1905.) Before Einstein, there was an untidy collection of equations to describe how light behaves from the point of view of a moving observer. Einstein dispelled the mathematical fog with two simple and intuitive principles: that the speed of light is constant, and that the laws of physics are the same for two observers moving at constant speed relative to one another. Grant these basic principles, and the rest of the theory follows. Not only are the axioms simple, but we can see at once what they mean in physical terms.

What are the analogous statements for quantum mechanics?

Ball is wrong on many levels.

Quantum mechanics does have a simple set of axioms like special relativity. See the Dirac–von Neumann axioms:

In mathematical physics, the Dirac–von Neumann axioms give a mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of operators on a Hilbert space. They were introduced by Dirac (1930) and von Neumann (1932).

Einstein did not really tidy up the equations for light. He did not simplify Maxwell's equations at all, in that 1905 paper.

Poincare's long 1905 paper did that. He wrote them in 4-vector form on spacetime, and proved that they were covariant with respect to the Lorentz transformation group. He gave a 4D action formula for electromagnetism, thereby giving an alternate proof of covariance. Einstein did none of that, and did not even understand it until maybe ten years later, if ever. Later H. Weyl and others explained that electromagnetism is just the field theory you get from an external circle symmetry group.

The real problem with Ball's essay is what infects everyone in quantum gravity, string theory, black hole information, multiverse, and other such fields. It is a belief that all of physics must be derived from metaphysical principles or axioms, without real-world experiments. It is the modern equivalent of medieval theologians wanting to deduce everything from the Bible.

Physics has always advanced from experiments, and not from metaphysical/axiomatic thinking. The proponents of the latter approach always point to Einstein's 1905 special relativity paper, but their historical analysis is always wrong.

My book, How Einstein Ruined Physics, details all of this.

Are black holes about information?

Christian Wuthrich writes:

Information theory presupposes the notion of an epistemic agent, such as a scientist or an idealized human. Despite that, information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, physics at very high energies, or generally with the physics of situations in which even idealized epistemic agents cannot exist. ...

Physicists working in quantum gravity diverge rather radically over the physical principles that they take as their starting point in articulating a quantum theory of gravity, over which direction to take from these points of departure, over what we should reasonably take as the goals of the enterprise and the criteria of success, and sometimes even over the legitimacy of different methods of evaluation and confirmation of the resulting theories. Yet, there is something that most of them agree upon: that black holes are thermodynamical objects, have entropy and radiate, and thus that the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for the entropy of a black hole must be recovered, more or less directly, from the microphysics of the fundamental degrees of freedom postulated and described by their theories.1 Yet none of this has ever been empirically confirmed.

It is funny how these physicists talk about information as if it is something real, and then talk about what it has to be inside a black hole, where there is no possibility of any observation.

Furthermore, this seems to be a core postulate of quantum gravity. The quantum gravity theorists think that they can be the new Einstein, adopt some silly postulates like this, and deduce what is going on at the center of a black hole.

Meanwhile, a new YouTube video on Why Black Holes Could Delete The Universe – The Information Paradox already has about 3 million views. That is very rapid growth for a physics video. This is as viral as it ever gets for quantum mechanics.

The slick video says:

According to the theory of quantum mechanics, information is indestructible. It might change shape, but it can never be lost.

For example, if you burn a piece of paper, you get ash. That ash will never become paper again. But, if you were able to carefully collect every single carbon atom in the ash, and measure the exact properties of the smoke and heat radiating from the fire, you could, in theory, reconstruct the paper. The information of the paper is still in the universe. It is not lost, it is just hard to read.

The video goes on to describe black holes, and discuss whether information gets lost in black holes.

No the theory of quantum mechanics does not say that information is indestructible. The common textbooks do not say it. Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, and Feynman never said it. Nobody got a Nobel Prize for it. No experiment ever confirmed it.

Instead, we have some goofy physics popularizers who do not believe in time, or believe that time is reversible, or who deny that the past causes the future, or believe in many-world interpretation, or other such nonsense. They notice that if you reverse time in the Schrodinger equation, and take the complex conjugate, then you get the same equation. That has been obvious for 90 years.

It is also obvious that when you burn a piece of paper, the info on it is lost.

And the application to black holes is just more nuttiness, as no one knows what is inside a black hole.

Update: Here is another new article on how everything is information:

Wheeler said the universe had three parts: First, “Everything is Particles,” second, “Everything is Fields,” and third, “Everything is information.” In the 1980s, he began exploring possible connections between information theory and quantum mechanics. It was during this period he coined the phrase “It from bit.” The idea is that the universe emanates from the information inherent within it. Each it or particle is a bit. It from bit. ...

It’s important to note that most physicists believe that matter is the essential unit of the universe. And information theory’s proof is limited. After all, how would you test for it?

If the nature of reality is in fact reducible to information itself, that implies a conscious mind on the receiving end, to interpret and comprehend it. Wheeler himself believed in a participatory universe, where consciousness holds a central role. Some scientists argue that the cosmos seems to have specific properties which allow it to create and sustain life. Perhaps what it desires most is an audience captivated in awe as it whirls in prodigious splendor.

Modern physics has hit a wall in a number of areas. Some proponents of information theory believe embracing it may help us to say, sew up the rift between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Or perhaps it’ll aid in detecting and comprehending dark matter and dark energy, which combined are thought to make up 95% of the known universe. As it stands, we have no idea what they are. Ironically, some hard data is required in order to elevate information theory. Until then, it remains theoretical.

At least the article admits, buried in the silliness, that this is a fringe theory that no one can test.

High-dimensional quantum encryption

Science Codex reports:

High-dimensional quantum encryption performed in real-world city conditions for first time

For the first time, researchers have sent a quantum-secured message containing more than one bit of information per photon through the air above a city. The demonstration showed that it could one day be practical to use high-capacity, free-space quantum communication to create a highly secure link between ground-based networks and satellites, a requirement for creating a global quantum encryption network.

Quantum encryption uses photons to encode information in the form of quantum bits. In its simplest form, known as 2D encryption, each photon encodes one bit: either a one or a zero. Scientists have shown that a single photon can encode even more information -- a concept known as high-dimensional quantum encryption -- but until now this has never been demonstrated with free-space optical communication in real-world conditions. With eight bits necessary to encode just one letter, for example, packing more information into each photon would significantly speed up data transmission.

"Our work is the first to send messages in a secure manner using high-dimensional quantum encryption in realistic city conditions, including turbulence," said research team lead, Ebrahim Karimi, University of Ottawa, Canada. "The secure, free-space communication scheme we demonstrated could potentially link Earth with satellites, securely connect places where it is too expensive to install fiber, or be used for encrypted communication with a moving object, such as an airplane."

As detailed in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research, the researchers demonstrated 4D quantum encryption over a free-space optical network spanning two buildings 0.3 kilometers apart at the University of Ottawa. This high-dimensional encryption scheme is referred to as 4D because each photon encodes two bits of information, which provides the four possibilities of 01, 10, 00 or 11.

This is useless. There is no shortage of photon, and we can currently send terabits of data thru networks optically.

They send 2 bits of data a few hundred feet. To be useful, they would have to send many many orders of magnitude more data, and they also have to hope that someone invents a quantum computer that can be turned into a router. Current routers costs $20 and send 100s of megabits per second. Even with a $50M quantum computer, you would be lucky to get a few kilobits per second.

I am posting this because of the buzzword escalation. It is not enuf to claim "quantum encryption". This claims "high-dimensional quantum encryption". Sounds impressive, right?

Science writer on facts with no scientific significance

If you were a respectable science writer, affiliated with a respectable university and a respectable left-leaning science magazine, and you were a closet Nazi, what would you do? If you expressed any Nazi opinions, you would be fired and never get work as a science writer again.

You would denounce Nazis with silly and stupid arguments. Better yet, you would parody the arguments of your leftist overlords.

SciAm's John Horgan writes:

But Chomsky has expressed abhorrence for research into cognitive differences between different groups. In his 1987 book Language and Problems of Knowledge Chomsky wrote: “Surely people differ in their biologically determined qualities. The world would be too horrible to contemplate if they did not. But discovery of a correlation between some of these qualities is of no scientific interest and of no social significance, except to racists, sexists and the like.” ...

Damore and his supporters present themselves as heroic champions of free inquiry in an era of stultifying political correctness. But when you suggest that white males are biologically superior to other groups, you are sticking up for those who hold power and denigrating those who lack it. You are feeding our society’s corrosive sexism and racism. That makes you a bully, not a hero, especially if you are a white male yourself. You deserve to be fired.

So only certain races are able student certain aspects of biology, but it would be racist to let all races tell the truth!

Leftists hold all the academic power today, so no one in academia should express leftist views as that would be sticking up for those who hold power!

One should not be criticizing Google, because that would be picking on the powerless!

If someone publishes a theory of biological superiority, then no one should refute it, because it is better to bully the guy into silence, and then make a statement against bullying!

Makes sense to me, if Horgan is a closet Nazi. Ditto with Chomsky.

Scott Aaronson has a somewhat different approach. He keeps reminding us that he agrees 98% with the Leftists, and parrots their Trump-hating epithets, but he cannot go all the way:

And therefore I say: if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues, then Steven Pinker deserves to be fired from Harvard for the same offense. ...

the argument would be this:

If the elites, the technocrats, the “Cathedral”-dwellers, were willing to lie to the masses about humans being blank slates — and they obviously were — then why shouldn’t we assume that they also lied to us about healthcare and free trade and guns and climate change and everything else?

We progressives deluded ourselves that we could permanently shame our enemies into silence, on pain of sexism, racism, xenophobia, and other blasphemies. But the “victories” won that way were hollow and illusory, and the crumbling of the illusion brings us to where we are now: with a vindictive, delusional madman in the White House who has a non-negligible chance of starting a nuclear war this week. ...

I fantasize that, within my lifetime, the Enlightenment will expand further to tolerate a diversity of cognitive styles — including people on the Asperger’s and autism spectrum, with their penchant for speaking uncomfortable truths—as well as a diversity of natural abilities and inclinations.

No, I don't think that the Ctrl-Left will tolerate real-talkers.

One comment says:

I was struck by the juxtaposition of two of the author’s remarks:

“I believe it’s a tragedy that the current holder of the US presidency is a confessed sexual predator, who’s full of contempt not merely for feminism, but for essentially every worthwhile human value. I believe those of us on the “pro-Enlightenment side” now face the historic burden of banding together to stop this thug.”

“Any comment, from any side, that attacks people rather than propositions will be deleted. I don’t care if the comment also makes useful points: if it contains a single ad hominem, it’s out.”

No attacks on people you say? I guess consistency really is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Pres. Trump is not a "confessed sexual predator". I assume that Aaronson just says this stuff so he will not get ostracized by his fellow leftists.

This is just what closet Trump supporter would say. He would just babble inconsistent anti-Trump epithets without any substantive arguments. He is like a professor in a Communist country who has to sprinkle Marxist slogans in his writings get stay in the good graces of the Communist authorities. In today's leftist groupthink academic world, Aaronson only dares to deviate from the Ctrl-Left orthodoxy in trivial ways.

Google and genetic determinism

There is a new wave of articles on biologial determinism, such as this:

As far as deterministic claims go, Damore’s are redundant — he could have just copy-pasted the text of one of thousands of these written in the early 20th century — and also milder than many. In the past few centuries, the same line of argument has been used to argue for the racial superiority of whites, the inferiority of women, and to justify transphobia. ... Still, biologically deterministic arguments like his can easily slip into eugenicist doctrines of yore.

This is rebutted here, with much more scientific detail here.

Biological determinism is not necessarily even important to Damore's points, as noted by a commenter:

Whether the observed differences between men and women are culturally determined or biologically hardwired or some combination of the two is, for the matter at hand, completely irrelevant. This is the population that companies recruit their employees from, and even if the differences would go away if children would grow up in some gender-neutral utopia, it cannot be expected of a company to change society in such a manner in a time frame that is relevant for their hiring process right now.

Furthermore, I would not WANT a company, especially an extremely powerful one that basically provides large parts of the infrastructure for our communication, to be active in social engineering, without any accountability to the public. This sort of thing cannot possibly end well, especially if the people in charge have put on their ideological blinders and casually dismiss the current state of science (and anyone foolish enough to bring it up in the hope that simply being correct will protect him). ...

Ignore human nature at your own peril. It’s better to be aware of it, and to try to channel it into productive activities, than to deny and suppress it.

For strange political reasons, the Ctrl-Left believes that preferences for sexual relations are genetically determined, while gender identity can be voluntarily changed.

The research says that most human traits, such as abilities, interests, and personalities, are 50-80% heritable. Most of the rest has unknown influences, and you can call it choice or free will if you want. Cultural influences may also have a role.

If men and women are different before they walk into Google's door, then we would expect differences in their employment data. Whether those difference are genetic, otherwise innate, from family influence, from the larger culture, or from pure free will, is outside the control of Google and foolish for Google to try to do anything about it. For individual employees, Google has no way of knowing how he or she may have been influenced.

So all this talk of genetic determinism misses the point.

If you truly don't believe that there are any differences between men and women, and that all people have the same aptitudes and interests and other traits needed in employees, then Google should just be able to hire anyone and train them to undo whatever cultural conditioning they have. Google doesn't do that, of course. It has an overwhelming preference for Asian men as they readily adapt to a caste system where everyone acts and thinks as he is told.

Damore tells his story in the WSJ:

Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and keeping discussion confined within certain limits. As Noam Chomsky once observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” ...

In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment. ... Those most zealously committed to the diversity creed—that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same—could not let this public offense go unpunished.

Taleb attacks historian and philosopher

I mentioned that Massimo Pigliucci was a scientist before becoming a philosopher specializing in pseudoscience,
but perhaps I should have explained. He is one of those leftist ideological evolutionary biologists who denies that there is any such thing as human races.

N. N. Taleb blasts him here, after some controversy about the racial make-up of the Roman Empire.

A philosopher of science, Massimo Pigliucci tried to jump in on the Mary Beard debate from twitter comments, not seeing the argument, writing the highest ratio of BS commentary over original text (only a few tweets). Had he understood anything about statistics he would have worried about the high noise signal ratio.

My point is here. His …

I got angry with him because a philosopher should not engage in strawman arguments. It would be bullshitting [clearly in the Franfurt sense of the word]. Yet he did it. My issue with Beard was representativeness: you do don’t mess with people’s perception of the past. He went off about scientism, something I spent my life fighting using probability limits.

Pigliucci gives his side here.

Nowhere did Beard claim that the presence of dark skinned individuals was “typical” in Roman Britain. She only stated that there was such presence, period. For that kind of modest claim, and despite Taleb’s disdain for it, “anecdotal” evidence is enough.

So I guess that if there was at least one dark skinned Roman, then that justifies a BBC cartoon portraying Romans as dark-skinned.

The larger issue is that Pigliucci is offended by any discussion of the racial make-up of Roman since he does believe that races exist, or that we should talk about them if they do.

If you think Pigliucci is nutty, here is a worse example in Slate:

It was argued to me this week that the Google memo failed to constitute hostile behavior because it cited peer-reviewed articles that suggest women have different brains. The well-known scientist who made this comment to me is both a woman and someone who knows quite well that “peer-reviewed” and “correct” are not interchangeable terms. This brings us to the question that many have grappled with this week. It’s 2017, and to some extent scientific literature still supports a patriarchal view that ranks a man’s intellect above a woman’s. ...

Most saliently in the context of the Google memo, our scientific educations almost never talk about the invention of whiteness and the invention of race in tandem with the early scientific method which placed a high value on taxonomies — which unsurprisingly and almost certainly not coincidentally supported prevailing social views. The standard history of science that is taught to budding scientists is that during the Enlightenment, Europe went from the dark ages to, well, being enlightened by a more progressive mindset characterized by objective “science.” It is the rare scientific education that includes a simultaneous conversation about the rise of violent, imperialist globalization during the same time period. Very few curricula acknowledge that some European scientific “discoveries” were in fact collations of borrowed indigenous knowledge. And far too many universally call technology progress while failing to acknowledge that it has left us in a dangerously warmed climate. ...

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a particle physicist, philosopher of science at the University of Washington, and editor in chief of the Offing. Follow her on Twitter.

So some Europeans a few centuries ago invented "whiteness" and race, but did not invent any objective science. All their science was stolen indigenous peoples. The article sounds like a joke, but it is not.

(I sometimes to post comments on Pigliucci's blog, but he arbitrarily deletes comments he does not like.)