ChatGPT is better at English than Tigrinya

From a recent Nature magazine podcast:

0:00 chat GPT has a language problem so my language is called T it's spoken in in 0:07 Ethiopia and also in a Syria ...

how we design 3:38 this technology how it could be used and the impacts it could have in this podcast we are going to 3:45 explore the relationship between llms and languages and ask what must be done 3:50 to ensure that AIs work for 3:56 everyone. I think everybody in the community agrees that we need to democratize AI there should not be 4:02 disproportionate benefit in one language versus the other, right? so we want Fair 4:08 access you know and we want to empower communities in different 4:13 [Music] 4:24 languages

I never heard of this language, so I google it:

Tigrinya is a Semitic language spoken in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia and central Eritrea1.

Actually, ChatGPT does surprisingly well in this language.

No, nobody agrees that ChatGPT should be equally beneficial in all languages. It is impossible. Most of the worthwhile training materials are in English, and English is well-suited to being the world's language of choice.

I post this as an example of how the leading science publication has gone Woke.

Albert explains Weirdness of Quantum Mechanics

David Z. Albert is one of the leading popularizers of quantum mechanics, and is on this podcast:

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia, and a faculty member of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. This is David’s eighth appearance on Robinson’s Podcast.

I think he is mostly known for trying to give a philosophical defense of string theory, in the absense of any evidence.

He tries to explain what is weird about QM

24:01 what's often considered striking and unsettling about quantum 24:08 mechanics is that at the beginning of the 20th century people start doing all 24:15 kinds of experiments where unlike in the Newtonian case where we're just taking 24:20 it for granted that yeah there're you know you look at these little dust Moes 24:26 or something like that how they're moving around they themselves presumably consist of billions upon billions of 24:33 these Elementary Point particles which we can't actually see we're sort of taking it for granted that things are 24:38 going to work out in the beginning of the 20th century people fooling around with cathode ray tubes and and stuff 24:46 like that begin to be able to keep track 24:51 of the Motions of individual Elementary particles 24:58 and these particles um um are behaving in ways that are almost 25:08 inconceivably bizarre okay in 25:13 particular people manag to convince themselves by doing lots of experiments 25:19 with these Elementary particles that things like electrons for 25:26 example could be in you you know um it's possible for an electron to be located 25:31 at this point in space and possible for an electron to be located at that point 25:37 in space those are the familiar Newtonian possibilities here or here or 25:42 here or here or here what these experiments at the beginning of the 20th century suggested 25:49 to people and I'm condensing here 30 years or so of wrestling with 25:56 the with the results of these experiments in the beginning of the 20th century there are certain sets of 26:03 experiments so-called interference experiments um double slit experiments 26:10 if you can read about this want to read about this in the literature Neutron interferometry experiments stuff like 26:16 that there's a whole um family of of experiments which 26:23 slowly persuades people that um 26:29 um that apparently there are certain states that 26:34 electrons can be in electrons and neutrons and all elementary particles 26:41 can be in um once again there's a possible state where the electron is at 26:46 Point a there's a possible state where the electron is at point B what people became convinced of is that in addition 26:54 there are possible states of electrons such that the very question is it 27:01 located at Point a or is it located at point B or is it located at neither of 27:07 them fails to make sense okay that um that the question that there are certain 27:15 situations in which the question is the electron in box a or in box b or in 27:22 neither of the boxes is like um is is is is like a 27:32 question of the form um um is the number five Married 27:38 okay or or what is the weight in grams of Catholicism okay or something like 27:45 that um questions that philosophers often refer to as category mistakes okay 27:51 um that there can be situations of a material particle an electron okay where 27:59 asking whether or not it's in box a is somehow like asking what the marital 28:06 status of the number five is or what the weight and grams of Catholicism is okay 28:12 um this strikes people is absolutely bizarre people felt forced to 28:18 conclusions like this because if you tried to tell the story of these 28:23 experiments in a way that used locutions like well at this this point in the story the electron I suppose must have 28:30 been here or at this point in the story the electron must have been there or even if you just insist that at this 28:37 point in the story there must be some place where the electron was because after all it got from here in the 28:43 beginning of the experiment to there at the end of the experiment it must have gone by some particular route either 28:51 through this route or through that route you try to insist on that you try to tell yourself a story about how these 28:59 experiments went okay that's consistent with the results you got you find that 29:05 every particular Claim about which route the electron might have taken somehow collapses into nonsense becomes 29:13 inconsistent with certain of the results of these experiments that you actually did okay so an idea grows 29:21 up um um that it appears to be a feature 29:28 of the way these fundamental particles behave that for every pair of states 29:34 that such a particle could be in that is the state of being located at a and the state of being located at B there's also 29:42 another radically unfamiliar but physically possible state which is 29:47 referred to as the superposition of being located at a and being located at b or the quantum 29:54 mechanical superposition of being located at a or being being located at and being located at B which is which 30:03 which we can we can argue from our experiments is not a case of being 30:08 located at a and not a case of being located at B and not a case of being 30:14 located at both A and B as you often find in the popular literature when they 30:19 try to talk about superposition and that's very bad too and that would reduce the mysteriousness of this way 30:27 below what it actually is what these experiments suggest is that it is wrong 30:33 to say under those circumstances that the electron is located at a and that it's wrong to say that it's located at B 30:40 and that it's wrong to say that it's both at A and B and that it's also wrong 30:45 to say that it is neither at a nor is it at B okay if you think there must always be a 30:53 fact of the matter about where the electron is that exhausts the line iCal 30:58 possibilities okay um um and so people felt 31:04 forced um to acknowledge that what these experiments seem to be screaming at us 31:12 okay is that for any two states that an electron could be in A and B there are 31:18 other physically possible States in in in you know which can't be rightly 31:25 characterized by saying that they're at a can't be rightly characterized by saying it's a b can't be rightly 31:31 characterized by saying it's a both and can't be rightly characterized by saying it's a neither okay and rather you seem 31:41 to be confronted with a situation in which um asking whether the 31:47 electron is at A or B is like asking about the marital status of the number five okay it's just a 31:55 nonsensical question good um

No, this is not weird. The same thing happens in classical mechanics. If you put a ball in a box and shake it up, you do not know where it is. When you open the box, you find it in one position, and not others.

Why is it surprising that electrons behave this way, when classical balls do also?

He goes on to strongly attack Bohr for saying that it does not make sense to talk about the exact location of an election in a box, until you open the box and look at it. Then he praises various alternatives, such as hidden variables and many-worlds.

Bohr was right, and Albert is wrong. The electron is not a particle. If you ask for the exact location of the election, you are basing the question on the faulty premise that the electron is a particle, and it has no answer because it is a meaningless question. As Albert complains, the Physics community accepted Bohr's philosophy about a century ago.

Albert is one of many QM expositors who argue that the textbooks do not make sense so there must be something better. They are just wrong. The textbooks present a perfectly good theory, and all the alternatives have horrible defects.

Sabine Hossenfelder is another one. She just posted a podcast on Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness After All? Her answer is No, of course, as she ends up saying Bell's Theorem requires superdeterminism.

She is a free will denier, but see the new paper Decision theory presupposes free will. You have to reject a lot of good science, if you reject free will.

Peebles on Philosophy of Physics

Astrophysicist P. J. E. Peebles writes:

I argue that research in physics operates under an implicit community philosophy, and I offer a definition I think physicists would accept, by and large. I compare this definition to what philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science, with physicists, say we are doing.

He argues that there is an unspoken phylosophy of Physics that most physicists agree with, and they do not necessarily agree with what philosophers say.

Recall Weinberg’s remark that “no one has been able to think of any way to change quantum mechanics in any way that would preserve its successes without leading to logical absurdities.”

I agree with that. People complain about quantum mechanics a lot, but all their alternatives are absurd.

Einstein offered the elegant thought that (in the English translation by Sonja Bargmann 1954)

The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.

I wrote a whole book on how Einstein ruined Physics with this sort of thinking.

People think that Einstein's greatest accomplishment was discovering relativity in 1905 from universal laws. My book shows that relativity was actually developed by others who worked directly from experimental results.

The above essay is a good summary of mainstream physicist thinking.

Cantor and the Theology of Infinity

Kateřina Trlifajová wrote a new paper on infinity:

Discussions surrounding the nature of the infinite in mathematics have been under way for two millennia. Mathematicians, philosophers, and the- ologians have all taken part. The basic question has been whether the infinite exists only in potential or whether it exists in actuality. Only at the end of the 19th century a set theory was created that works with the actual infinite. Ini- tially, this theory was rejected by other mathematicians. The creator behind the theory, the German mathematician Georg Cantor, felt all the more the need to challenge the long tradition that only recognised potential infinite.

The issue turns surprisingly theological, with St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Pope on the side of Cantor.

Cantor was convinced that the knowledge of infinite numbers had been revealed to him by God, who guided his steps from pure mathematics to an interest in theol- ogy and philosophy so that he could improved a proper understanding of God and nature.

Cantor's papers from 1883 to 1895 were met with skepticism, but by 1897 Mathematicians were on board with his theory of infinities.

Xkcd just had a cartoon about large numbers, explained here.

Weinberg blamed Religion for Scientific Ignorance

Physicist Steve Weinberg is deceased, and said this in a recently released interview:

7:12 expensive uh we waste enormous amounts 7:14 of money on man space flight which have 7:17 has no uh scientific function 7:21 um I worry about that and maybe a more 7:26 important worry is whether or not um 7:30 the forces of uh religious 7:33 zealotry uh which are 7:36 uh so obvious in the Islamic world but 7:40 not entirely absent in the west uh will 7:44 lead to us turning away from science 7:47 because after all the Scientific 7:49 Revolution uhu of course did occur in 7:53 the uh 16th century and 17th century but 7:58 uh there had been a great period of 8:00 scientific Advance before that in 8:02 helenistic times which then came to an 8:05 end uh it was continued for a while in 8:08 the Arab world it disappeared in the 8:10 Christian world and then after the 13th 8:14 century it really uh did not pick up 8:17 again in any real way until the time of 8:20 Galileo uh we may not 8:23 continue with the great 8:26 um great tradition of science uh for 8:29 reasons which are even deeper and more 8:31 frightening than the lack of funding

Weinberg is putting a lot of blame on Christianity here. He praises ancient Greeks because they were pre-Christian, and Galileo because he had a dispute with the Pope.

Other people do say stuff like this, but I do not agree with it.

This "Scientific Revolution" took place in Christian Europe. The scientists were Christians, and acting under Christian sponsorship. Areas dominated by other religions did not make these scientific advances. Is that just a coincidence? I don't think so.

How Michelson-Morley was Crucial for Relativity

Alejandro Cassini, Leonardo Levinas write a new paper:

How the Michelson and Morley experiment was reinterpreted by special relativity

They note how relativity textbooks describe M-M as being crucial for relativity, and discuss whether this is historically accurate. It includes some interesting history, but omits the most important pieces to the puzzle.

Einstein's 1905 paper does not mention M-M. Later on he admitted that M-M was crucial for special relativity, but denied that he paid any attention to it.

FitzGerald, Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski all described relativity as a consequence of M-M. This paper does not even mention Poincare or Minkowski. It discusses Einstein a lot.

A paper on the influence of M-M on relativity should primarily be on those who were influenced, not Einstein.

In the years immediately following the M-M experiment, there was no inclination to conclude that the ether was non-existent, nor that the speed of light was constant even though the light source was in motion relative to the ether. Moreover, no one thought that the principle of relativity - the equivalence of all inertial frames of reference for the description of electromagnetic phenomena- would be confirmed. Nor did anyone think the hypothesis that the speed of light was invariant, that is, the same in any inertial frame of reference, would be confirmed.1 What exactly did this experiment confirm or refute?

Not true. In those years, Lorentz and Poincare did say that the speed of light was constant, and Einstein got that postulate from Lorentz. Poincare did say that the principle of relativity was confirmed, and Einstein got that terminology from him.

Lorentz did think that M-M refuted the aether motion theories.

M-M does not actually refute the aether. Belief in the aether is consistent with relativity. Einstein said so himself. M-M just refuted the idea that the Earth had a measurable motion against the aether.

As is well known, FitzGerald in 1889 and independently Lorentz in 1892 proposed a different interpretation. They argued that the experiment refuted the hypothesis that the length of the arms of the instrument remained unchanged when it was in motion relative to the ether, a tacit assumption of the M-M experiment. They then formulated the hypothesis that the length of rigid bodies that move with respect to the ether is not invariant, but rather contracts in the direction of motion

That's right. They saw the M-M as finding that measuring the speed of light did not depend on the frame of reference, and used that to deduce the Lorentz transformation.

It was similar to what Einstein did in 1905, except that Einstein did not use the M-M, but rather what Lorentz had deduced from Maxwell's equations and M-M -- that the speed of light is constant and appears the same in different frames.

At the time Einstein formulated it, it was the only explanation of the M-M experiment that was compatible with all known phenomena about the propagation of light, such as stellar aberration, Fizeau's experiment, and many others.28

No, that was all done by Lorentz in 1895. Lorentz even got a related Nobel Prize in 1902. Einstein did not attempt to explain M-M at all. You might say that Einstein was trying to give a recapitulation of Lorentz's 1895 theory, without mentioning M-M or other experiments.

The contraction hypothesis is usually considered to be purely ad hoc since it was proposed solely to accommodate the result of the M-M experiment in order to save the quiescent ether hypothesis from refutation. This affirmation is debatable and depends on what is understood by the concept of an ad hoc hypothesis.13

Here, "ad hoc" means deduced from M-M or other experiment. A theory is not ad hoc if it abstracts out principles from the experiment. There are some anti-positivist philosophers who consider ad hoc to be a bad thing.

The M-M really was crucial for relativity. Those who discovered the Lorentz transformations and spacetime all said so.

Posulating the Constant Speed of Light

D V Redžić writes in a new paper:

The historical path to special relativity starts from the second postulate introduced by Einstein in 1905 [10]. Immediately after the publication of reference [10],

No, the historical path starts with Maxwell's 1865 theory, and the motion invariance tests of it by Michelson in the 1880s.

A popular interpretation of the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment was that the speed of light was the same for all observers.

Newton, and all physicists before Einstein (including Voigt, Larmor, Lorentz and Poincar´e [15-18]), took it for granted that there was only one ‘time,’ absolute Newtonian time, for all observers in motion with respect to one another. Einstein was bold enough to venture that each inertial observer has her/his own absolute Einsteinian time.

No. Moving objects had they own "local time" in Lorentz's 1895 relativity theory. Poincare accepted this, and believed that motion affects time. Not sure about Voigt and Larmor, but they gave equantions for time changing; what else could they have thought?

It is amazing that someone could write a commentary on on the historical path of relativity, and act as if it all started and ended with Eeinstein's 1905 paper.