Podcast appearances and mentions of eugene wigner

Many of us have plenty of experiences with math, especially when we were younger. Perhaps some of your memories of what math was like for you in school are unpleasant, to say the least. Yet there are many people who are passionate about mathematics, especially Christians who see mathematics as the God-given language by which we can better understand not only the physical world around us, but God Himself. Naturalism has no real answers for why mathematics is so useful and even beautiful and practical not only for doing science, but in our everyday lives. And how are beauty and mathematics linked? What do beauty and math tell us about God Himself? This week we wrap up our conversation with youth leader, math professor, friend of Watchman Fellowship and Christian apologist Paige Lehrmann. Paige will share with us her passion about mathematics, beauty, and how we can incorporate them in our defense for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). Paige Lehrmann is the Director of Student Ministries at St. Andrew's Community Church in Oklahoma City and a student at Dallas Theological Seminary. She earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Mathematics from Oklahoma Baptist University, where she completed an interdisciplinary thesis on the Trinity. Paige went on to pursue graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Oklahoma and has taught as an adjunct professor at Mid-America Christian University. She has presented at apologetics conferences on topics such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and theistic arguments from beauty. Through her work, she hopes to help others think deeply about faith, truth, and the beauty of the Gospel.You may contact Paige via email at Paige.lehrmann@gmail.com. Free Resources from Watchman Fellowship Atheist New Testament scholar Dr. Bart D. Ehrman: www.watchman.org/Ehrman  Atheism: www.watchman.org/Atheism  Latter-day Saints: www.watchman.org/Mormonism Panpsychism: https://www.watchman.org/files/ProfilePanpsychism.pdf The New Age Movement: https://www.watchman.org/profiles/pdf/newageprofile.pdf Hinduism: https://www.watchman.org/staff/jwalker/ProfileHinduism.pdf Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/FreePROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (around 700 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: www.watchman.org/NotebookSUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/GiveApologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © 2025 Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

Besteht das Universum aus Mathematik? Sind wir selbst nur Mathematik? Und was soll das überhaupt heißen? Mehr zur Theorie des mathematischen Universums erfahrt ihr in der neuen Folge der Sternengeschichten. STERNENGESCHICHTEN LIVE TOUR 2025! Tickets unter https://sternengeschichten.live Wer den Podcast finanziell unterstützen möchte, kann das hier tun: Mit PayPal (https://www.paypal.me/florianfreistetter), Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/sternengeschichten) oder Steady (https://steadyhq.com/sternengeschichten)

How much more physics is out there to be discovered? Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with physicist, professor, and rockstar Brian Cox, to discuss everything from the Higgs boson, life beyond our planet, and the fundamental forces that guide our universe.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/our-world-of-particles-with-brian-cox/Thanks to our Patrons Anthony Sclafani, Alejandro Arriola-Flores, Brian Christensen, Allen Baker, Atlanta Gamer, Nigel Gandy, Gene, Lisa Mettler, Daniel Johansson, Sunny Malhotra, Omar Marcelino, yoyodave, Mo TheRain, William Wilson, ChrissyK, David, Prabakar Venkataraman, PiaThanos22, BlackPiano, Radak Bence, Obaid Mohammadi, the1eagleman1, Scott Openlander, Brandon Micucci, Anastasios Kotoros, Thomas Ha, Phillip Thompson, Bojemo, Kenan Brooks, jmamblat@duck.com, TartarXO, Trinnie Schley, Davidson Zetrenne, and William Kramer for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Simon DeDeo's inquiry takes on the most immense topics: astrophysics, history, epistemology, culture. He brings the precision of a physicist, the capability of a data scientist, and the sensibility of a philosopher to thinking about how we live our lives; and his polymathic life might be the example we need to make sense of the world we are walking into, one requiring an evolution to our way of studying and understanding.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:David Spergel (08:40)The Santa Fe Institute (14:10)The Village Vanguard in New York City (16:30)The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem by Mark Steiner (24:30)Murray Gell-Mann (25:00)"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner (26:00)"The civilizing process in London's Old Bailey" Klingenstein et al (27:30)Michael Tomasello (31:50)Michael Palmer "Lies of the Poem" (34:50)Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel (37:20)Gregory Bateson "Where is the mind?" (40:20)The CANDOR corpus (42:50)Judith Donath on Origins (48:10)Marshall McLuhan (49:00)Science of Science (49:10)"New and atypical combinations: An assessment of novelty and interdisciplinarity" (49:10)Helen Vendler (51:20)The Anxiety of Influenceby Harold Bloom (53:00)C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)The Scientific Landscape of Human Flourishing (58:00)eudaimonia (58:30)thumos (59:00)Lightning Round (01:04:50)Book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth Passion: exerciseHeart sing: narrativeScrewed up: teaching and mentoringFind Simon online:WebsiteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Episode: 3071 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Sciences.  Today, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

Física Cuántica: Investigadores de la Universidad de Princeton han alcanzado un hito en la física cuántica al visualizar, por primera vez, el cristal de Wigner     El cristal de Wigner es una forma de materia compuesta exclusivamente por electrones. Este logro, publicado recientemente en la revista Nature, confirma una teoría propuesta por primera vez hace casi un siglo por Eugene Wigner. El hallazgo valida décadas de especulaciones y estudios indirectos. Además, promete acelerar el desarrollo de tecnologías cuánticas avanzadas, proporcionando nuevas vías para explorar fenómenos cuánticos inusuales y estados de la materia previamente inaccesibles.      Cambio Paradigmático en la Comprensión Científica      Contexto Histórico del Descubrimiento: Eugene Wigner, un físico teórico y profesor en Princeton, propuso en los años 30 que los electrones podrían, bajo ciertas condiciones extremas de frío y baja densidad, organizarse espontáneamente en una configuración cristalina sin necesidad de núcleos atómicos. Este concepto desafiante planteaba que la repulsión mutua entre electrones podría ser suficiente para formar un "cristal de electrones", una idea que se alejaba radicalmente de la teoría convencional que atribuía la formación de cristales a la atracción entre átomos.      Detalles del Problema y su Investigación: A lo largo de las décadas, capturar visualmente un cristal de Wigner se mantuvo como un desafío formidable. Las observaciones indirectas sugerían su existencia, pero los resultados podían estar influenciados por imperfecciones atómicas en los materiales experimentales. Por lo tanto, el equipo de Princeton empleó grafeno extremadamente puro y técnicas avanzadas de microscopía de efecto túnel para minimizar cualquier influencia de imperfecciones, lo que les permitió observar y confirmar la formación de cristales de Wigner directamente.      Análisis de Resultados y su Impacto: Los investigadores descubrieron que los cristales de Wigner exhiben una estructura triangular y que esta configuración puede ser manipulada ajustando la densidad de electrones. Esta capacidad de sintonización prueba de manera concluyente la teoría de Wigner. Además, destaca la estabilidad y la adaptabilidad de los cristales de Wigner, ofreciendo potenciales aplicaciones en el diseño de dispositivos electrónicos cuánticos y en la exploración de nuevas fases cuánticas de la materia.      Referencias a Otros Casos Similares: Este descubrimiento es comparable con otros momentos trascendentales en la física, como la primera detección de las ondas gravitacionales o la confirmación experimental del bosón de Higgs, que igualmente confirmaron teorías fundamentales tras décadas de búsqueda. Al igual que estos avances, la visualización del cristal de Wigner proporciona una nueva herramienta fundamental para estudiar y manipular la materia a un nivel cuántico profundamente fundamental.      Para quienes estén interesados en explorar más sobre estos temas, recomiendo el pódcast El Siglo 21 es Hoy, disponible en ElSiglo21esHoy.com. Este pódcast discute la intersección entre la ciencia moderna y la tecnología, con episodios que cubren desde avances en física cuántica hasta aplicaciones tecnológicas emergentes.     

In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to tell a creation story that rivals the most fantastical mythologies, yet he does it while remaining grounded in a philosophical rigor that announces a radically new way of thinking the world. Here, Phil and JF try unravel the layers of the dialogue, revealing how Plato's vision of a divinely ordered cosmos echoes through the corridors of esoteric thought from antiquity to modern times. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Plato, [Timaeus](https://hackettpublishing.com/history/history-of-science/timaeus](Donald Zeyl Edition) Earl Fontenelle, The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (https://shwep.net/podcast/platos-timaeus/) The Book of Thoth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Thoth) Graham Hancock, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock) British journalist Hesiod, Theogony (https://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodTheogony.html) Hermes Trismegistus, {Emerald Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmeraldTablet) Pierre Hadot, (https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/), scholar of classical philosophy Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) Jean-Pierre Vernant, _The Origins of Greek Thought (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-origins-of-greek-thought-jean-pierre-vernant/7729742?ean=9780801492938) Lionel Snell, SSOTBME (https://www.amazon.com/SSOTBME-Revised-essay-Ramsey-Dukes/dp/0904311082)

Episode: 2963 What is a paradox? No such thing, once we understand!  Today, paradoxes.

From January 2015. In 1960 physicist Eugene Wigner wrote a paper on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'. Christian philosopher William (Bill) Lane Craig was developing arguments concerning the ‘applicability' of mathematics as evidence for God as part of his wider research on abstract objects. Bill interacted with atheist/agnostic philosopher Daniel Came on whether the remarkable ability of maths to describe the universe we live in is evidence for a transcendent designer. • Subscribe to the Unbelievable? podcast: https://pod.link/267142101 • More shows, free eBook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • For live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For online learning: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow

In this wide-ranging interview, Scott Michael Stenwick and Harper talk about everything between John Dee and quantum mechanics, by way of Eugene Wigner and the Falkland Islands. Scott is an author, blogger, esotericist, software developer, information technology consultant, and speculative fiction enthusiast. He writes fantasy and science fiction, and non-fiction books on the Western Esoteric Tradition. He also contributes to non-fiction anthologies that cover topics related to magical practices and esoteric spirituality. Read more about Scott on his websites ScottStenwick.com and Blogspot.  And buy the book we discussed here or on Amazon here.   

In this episode, Madeline Shepley chats with Fr. Paul Gabor, SJ, a Jesuit exoplanet astronomer working for the Vatican observatory. During this conversation, they chat about what it was like to grow up in communist Czechoslovakia, the importance of knowing history, what inspired him to become a priest and become a Jesuit, his journey from merely intellectual to personal faith, his typical day to day, his exoplanet work, doing science as a dialog with God, intellectual humility, and much more!During the course of their conversation, they make many references which you can explore. Some of these references include the Footprints in the Sand poem, The Unreasonable of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Eugene Wigner, the CoRoT 7b exoplanet, and part 2 of a 2016 interview he did.Feel free to like, subscribe, and share the episode! Follow us on Instagram! @sbltfpodcastDon't forget to go out there, and be a light to this world!

Philip K. Howard is a longtime leader of government and legal reform in the United States. Amid the current political turmoil, Howard has set his sights on the remorseless increase in the power of public employee unions. This is a thread linking public sector pension shortfalls; local, state, and federal government bureaucratic dysfunction; outdated public infrastructure that costs far more to improve than in comparable nations; and the struggles between parents and teachers’ unions on issues from student masking to curriculum development. Howard’s guiding star is to hold government accountable to the citizens it is intended to serve.In this episode of the Serve to Lead Podcast, Howard discusses his efforts to reform public sector collective bargaining—including an innovative project to challenge its constitutionality. He also explores the evolution of the legal profession, including the decline of the lawyer-statesman ideal. Philip K. Howard’s latest book is Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left (W.W. Norton & Company, January 2019). His 2010 Ted Talk has been viewed over 650,000 times.Howard is also the author of the best-seller The Death of Common Sense (Random House, 1995), The Collapse of the Common Good (Ballantine Books, 2002), Life Without Lawyers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), and The Rule of Nobody (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014). He writes periodically for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other publications. In 2002, Howard founded Common Good, a nonpartisan national coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America. His 2015 report “Two Years, Not Ten Years” delineated the economic and environmental costs of delayed infrastructure approvals, and has been endorsed by leaders of both major political parties.The son of a minister, Philip K. Howard got his start working summers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner and has been active in public affairs his entire adult life. He is a prominent civic leader in New York City and has advised national political leaders on legal and regulatory reform for three decades, including Vice President Al Gore and numerous governors. He is Senior Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP. Howard is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School, and lives in Manhattan with his wife Alexandra. They have four children.The Serve to Lead podcast has recently moved to Substack (and continues to repopulate in updated settings). It can be accessed in the usual formats, including:Apple Podcasts | Amazon Audible | Amazon Music | Google Podcasts | iHeart | Spotify | Stitcher | Podchaser | TuneIn Reference to Patrick J. Shiltz, “On Being a Healthy, Happy, and Ethical Member of an Unhealthy, Unhappy, and Unethical Profession,” Vanderbilt Law Review, Volume 52, Issue 4, 1999. Image: Covington & Burling LLP Get full access to The Next Nationalism at jamesstrock.substack.com/subscribe

How likely is it that we live in a simulations? Are virtual worlds real? In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves' are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philosophers begun to assess the statistical probabilities that our shared reality could in fact be some kind of representation rather than a physical place. As we become more open to these possibilities, other difficult questions start to come into focus. How can we create a common language to talk about matter and energy, that bridges the simulated and simulating worlds. Who could have created such a simulation? Could it be an artificial intelligence rather than a biological or conscious being? Do we have ethical obligations to the virtual beings we interact with in our virtual worlds and to what extent are those beings and worlds ‘real'? The list is long and mind bending. Fortunately, to untangle our thoughts on this, we have one of the best known philosophers of all things mind bending in the world, Dr. David Chalmers; who has just released a book ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy' about this very topic. Dr. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specialising in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. He's the founder of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference' at which he coined the term in 1994 The Hard Problem of Consciousness, kicking off a renaissance in consciousness studies, which has been increasing in popularity and research output ever since. Donate here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Short Intro 06:00 Synesthesia 08:27 The science of knowing the nature of reality 11:02 The Simulation Hypothesis explained 15:25 The statistical probability evaluation 18:00 Knowing for sure is beyond the reaches of science 19:00 You'd only have to render the part you're interacting with 20:00 Clues from physics 22:00 John Wheeler - ‘It from bit' 23:32 Eugene Wigner: measurement as a conscious observation 27:00 Information theory as a useful but risky hold-all language tool 34:30 Virtual realities are real and virtual interactions are meaningful 37:00 Ethical approaches to Non-player Characters (NPC's) and their rights 38:45 Will advanced AI be conscious? 42:45 Is god a hacker in the universe up? Simulation Theology 44:30 Simulation theory meets the argument for the existence of God from design 51:00 The Hard problem of consciousness applies to AI too 55:00 Testing AI's consciousness with the Turing test 59:30 Ethical value applied to immoral actions in virtual worlds The difficulty of simulations within simulations References: Hans Moravec - Pigs in cyber space 1992 Eugene Wigner ‘Remarks on the mind and body question' 1961 David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen ‘Consciousness and the Collapse of the Wave Function' NPC becomes conscious in ‘Free Guy' movie dir. Shawn Levy, with Ryan Reynolds NPC torture in ‘USS Callister' Black Mirrors 4th series, Episode 1 The Turing test for subjective conscious experience Robert Nozic's ‘the experience machine' thought experiment Future of Life: Max Tegmark's Organisation to reduce existential risk from new technology

John Von Neumann was born in Hungary at the tail end of the Astro-Hungarian Empire. The family was made a part of the nobility and as a young prodigy in Budapest, He learned languages and by 8 years old was doing calculus. By 17 he was writing papers on polynomials. He wrote his dissertation in 1925 he added to set theory with the axiom of foundation and the notion of class, or properties shared by members of a set. He worked on the minimax theorem in 1928, the proof of which established zero-sum games and started another discipline within math, game theory. By 1929 he published the axiom system that led to Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory. And by 1932 he'd developed foundational work on ergodic theory which would evolve into a branch of math that looks at the states of dynamical systems, where functions can describe a points time dependence in space. And so he of course penned a book on quantum mechanics the same year. Did we mention he was smart and given the way his brain worked it made sense that he would eventually gravitate into computing. He went to the best schools with other brilliant scholars who would go on to be called the Martians. They were all researching new areas that required more and more computing - then still done by hand or a combination of hand and mechanical calculators. The Martians included De Hevesy, who won a Nobel prize for Chemistry. Von Kármán got the National Medal of Science and a Franklin Award. Polanyl developed the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science. Paul Erdős was a brilliant mathematician who published over 1,500 articles. Edward Teller is known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, working on nuclear energy throughout his life and lobbying for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. Dennis Gabor wrote Inventing the Future and won a Nobel Prize in Physics. Eugene Wigner also took home a Nobel Prize in Physics and a National Medal of Science. Leo Szilard took home an Albert Einstein award for his work on nuclear chain reactions and joined in the Manhattan Project as a patent holder for a nuclear reactor. Physicists and brilliant scientists. And here's a key component to the explosion in science following World War II: many of them fled to the United States and other western powers because they were Jewish, to get away from the Nazis, or to avoid communists controlling science. And then there was Harsanyl, Halmos, Goldmark, Franz Alexander, Orowan, and John Kemeny who gave us BASIC. They all contributed to the world we live in today - but von Neumann sometimes hid how smart he was, preferring to not show just how much arithmetic computed through his head. He was married twice and loved fast cars, fine food, bad jokes, and was an engaging and enigmatic figure. He studied measure theory and broke dimension theory into algebraic operators. He studied topological groups, operator algebra, spectral theory, functional analysis and abstract Hilbert space. Geometry and Lattice theory. As with other great thinkers, some of his work has stood the test of time and some has had gaps filled with other theories. And then came the Manhattan project. Here, he helped develop explosive lenses - a key component to the nuclear bomb. Along the way he worked on economics and fluid mechanics. And of course, he theorized and worked out the engineering principals for really big explosions. He was a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission and at the height of the Cold War after working out game theory, developed the concept of mutually assured destruction - giving the world hydrogen bombs and ICBMs and reducing the missile gap. Hard to imagine but at the times the Soviets actually had a technical lead over the US, which was proven true when they launched Sputnik. As with the other Martians, he fought Communism and Fasciscm until his death - which won him a Medal of Freedom from then president Eisenhower. His friend Stanislaw Ulam developed the modern Markov Chain Monte Carlo method and Von Neumann got involved in computing to work out those calculations. This combined with where his research lay landed him as an early power user of ENIAC. He actually heard about the machine at a station while waiting for a train. He'd just gotten home from England and while we will never know if he knew of the work Turing was doing on Colossus at Bletchley Park, we do know that he offered Turing a job at the Institute for Advanced Study that he was running in Princeton before World War II and had read Turing's papers, including “On Computable Numbers” and understood the basic concepts of stored programs - and breaking down the logic into zeros and ones. He discussed using ENIAC to compute over 333 calculations per second. He could do a lot in his head, but he wasn't that good of a computer. His input was taken and when Eckert and Mauchly went from ENIAC to EDVAC, or the Electronic Discrete Variable Calculator, the findings were published in a paper called “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” - a foundational paper in computing for a number of reasons. One is that Mauchly and Eckert had an entrepreneurial spirit and felt that not only should their names have been on the paper but that it was probably premature and so they quickly filed a patent in 1945, even though some of what they told him that went into the paper helped to invalidate the patent later. They considered these trade secrets and didn't share in von Neumann's idea that information must be set free. In the paper lies an important contribution, Von Neumann broke down the parts of a modern computer. He set the information for how these would work free. He broke down the logical blocks of how a computer works into the modern era. How once we strip away the electromechanical computers that a fully digital machine works. Inputs go into a Central Processing Unit, which has an instruction register, a clock to keep operations and data flow in sync, and a counter - it does the math. It then uses quick-access memory, which we'd call Random Access Memory, or RAM today, to make processing data instructions faster. And it would use long-term memory for operations that didn't need to be as highly available to the CPU. This should sound like a pretty familiar way to architect devices at this point. The result would be sent to an output device. Think of a modern Swift app for an iPhone - the whole of what the computer did could be moved into a single wafer once humanity worked out how first transistors and then multiple transistors on a single chip worked. Yet another outcome of the paper was to inspire Turing and others to work on computers after the war. Turing named his ACE or Automatic Computing Engine out of respect to Charles Babbage. That led to the addition of storage to computers. After all, punched tape was used for Colossus during the war and and punched cards and tape had been around for awhile. It's ironic that we think of memory as ephemeral data storage and storage as more long-term storage. But that's likely more to do with the order these scientific papers came out than anything - and homage to the impact each had. He'd write The Computer and the Brain, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Continuous Geometry, and other books. He also studied DNA and cognition and weather systems, inferring we could predict the results of climate change and possibly even turn back global warming - which by 1950 when he was working on it was already acknowledged by scientists. As with many of the early researchers in nuclear physics, he died of cancer - invoking Pascal's wager on his deathbed. He died in 1957 - just a few years too early to get a Nobel Prize in one of any number of fields. One of my favorite aspects of Von Neumann was that he was a lifelong lover of history. He was a hacker - bouncing around between subjects. And he believed in human freedom. So much so that this wealthy and charismatic pseudo-aristocrat would dedicate his life to the study of knowledge and public service. So thank you for the Von Neumann Architecture and breaking computing down into ways that it couldn't be wholesale patented too early to gain wide adoption. And thank you for helping keep the mutually assured destruction from happening and for inspiring generations of scientists in so many fields. I'm stoked to be alive and not some pile of nuclear dust. And to be gainfully employed in computing. He had a considerable impact in both.

Why do logic and mathematics work so well in the world? Why do they seem to describe reality? Why do they they enable us to design circuit boards, build airplanes, and listen remotely to handsome and charming podcast hosts who rarely go off topic? To answer these questions, we dive into Chapter 9 of Conjectures and Refutations: Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?. But before we get to that, we touch on some of the good stuff: evolutionary psychology, cunnilingus, and why Robin is better than Batman. References: Ben on Do Explain with Christofer Lovgren (https://www.doexplain.org/episodes/311-nonuniversal-explainers-with-ben-chugg) Debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8&ab_channel=HarvardUniversity) between Spelke and Pinker Very Bad Wizards discussing the paper "Oral Sex as Infidelity detection" (episode (https://www.verybadwizards.com/216), paper (https://www.toddkshackelford.com/downloads/Pham-Shackelford-PAID-2013.pdf)). [Sturgeon's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law#:~:text=Sturgeon's%20law%20(or%20Sturgeon's%20revelation,science%20fiction%20author%20and%20critic.) Eugene Wigner's paper (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) The Unreasonable Effective of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. Stoic versus Aristotilian logic. Here (https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/196Stoicism/notes/StoicLogic.html) is a nice discussion of the differences between the two. Rob Wiblin's tweet (https://twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1345800502093766657) that all probabilities are subjective probabilities (in an otherwise very good thread). Buhler's three functions of language: (i) Expressive, (ii) Signaling, and (iii) Descriptive. See the "Organon Model" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organon_model#:~:text=B%C3%BChler's%20work%20influenced%20Roman%20Jakobson,the%20representation%20function%20(Darstellungsfunktion)). Piece (https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/06/youre-probably-not-galileo-scientific-advance-rarely-comes-from-lone-contrarian-outsiders/) on Brett Weinstein and Ivermectin. Quotes: _“The indescribable world I have in mind is, of course, the world I have ‘in my mind'—the world which most psychologists (except the behaviourists) attempt to describe, somewhat unsuccessfully, with the help of what is nothing but a host of metaphors taken from the languages of physics, of biology, and of social life.” _ _“In so far as a calculus is applied to reality, it loses the character of a logical calculus and becomes a descriptive theory which may be empirically refutable; and in so far as it is treated as irrefutable, i.e. as a system of logically true formulae, rather than a descriptive scientific theory, it is not applied to reality.” _ Send us the most bizarre use of evolutionary psychology you've seen at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

We often talk of explanation in the context of empirical sciences, but what about explanation in logic and mathematics? Is there such a thing? If so, what does it look like and what are the consequences? In this episode we sit down with professor of philosophy Mark Colyvan and explore How mathematical explanation differs from explanation in the natural sciences Counterfactual reasoning in mathematics Intra versus extra mathematical explanation Alternate logics Mathematical thought experiments The use of probability in the courtroom References: - The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) by Eugene Wigner. - Proofs and Refutations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#:~:text=Proofs%20and%20Refutations%3A%20The%20Logic,characteristic%20defined%20for%20the%20polyhedron.) by Imre Lakatos. Mark Colyvan (http://www.colyvan.com/) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney, and a visiting professor (and, previously, Humboldt fellow) at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. He has a wide array of research interests, including the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, decision theory, environmental philosophy, and ecology. He has authored three books: The Indispensability of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow (Oxford University Press, 2004, co-authored with Lev Ginzburg), and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Special Guest: Mark Colyvan.

Sabia que as bandas de Heavy Metal roubaram o estilo aos cientistas?  Sabia que a matemática é a linguagem de tudo o que nos rodeia? Sabia que o Einstein afinal era bom aluno, tinha (também) mau humor e não recebeu o Nobel pela Teoria da Relatividade? Sabia que os buracos negros não têm efectivamente cabelo? A Joana Marques, com a ajuda do Vítor Cardoso, ficou a saber tudo isto e muito mais.REFERÊNCIAS E LINKS ÚTEIS:Metropolis: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/A Possible Failure of Determinism in General Relativity, Harvey Reall: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/6The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, Eugene Wigner:https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdfVisualização de buracos negros:https://earthsky.org/space/black-hole-visualization-from-side-schnittman-goddardA ciência em Portugal: https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/36/a-ciencia-em-portugalLimites da ciência: https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/874/limites-da-cienciaPortugal e o espaço: https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/1186/portugal-e-o-espacoA ciência no século XXI, oportunidades e ameaçashttps://www.ffms.pt/conferencias/detalhe/2331/a-ciencia-no-seculo-xxi-oportunidades-eameacasThe hole picture, Vitor Cardoso, Nature Physics Reviews 2019https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-019-0119-2?proof=tNature Astronomy, edição de Janeiro 2019, sobre buracos negroshttps://www.nature.com/collections/dbechdjfigJOANA MARQUESNasceu em Lisboa em 1986. Toda a gente sabe que os nativos do signo Virgem são fadados para o sucesso. Infelizmente Joana é Capricórnio e não percebe nada de astrologia. Quando era mais pequena queria ser pintora, felizmente mudou de ideias. Assim que começou a aprender a escrever percebeu que o “foturo paçaria pur aí”, depois aprendeu que se escrevia “futuro passaria por aí” e nunca mais parou. Começou a trabalhar como guionista em 2007, chegou à rádio em 2012, à maternidade em 2016 e 2020. Gosta de viver cada dia como se fosse o primeiro, e observar o mundo como se tivesse acabado de cá aterrar. VÍTOR CARDOSOVítor Cardoso é Físico Teórico no CENTRA, professor Catedrático e presidente do Departamento de Física do Instituto Superior Técnico. A sua investigação incide sobre astrofísica e gravitação, em particular a física do espaço-tempo curvos, ondas gravitacionais e buracos negros. Publicou um livro e cerca de 200 artigos em revistas internacionais. A sua investigação foi distinguida 2 vezes pelo European Research Council. Em 2015, recebeu a Ordem de Santiago D'Espada, pelas suas contribuições para a ciência. Lidera o GWverse, um consórcio internacional de mais de 30 países e centenas de cientistas, dedicado ao estudo de ondas gravitacionais e burac

How do you make a molecule? We've talked before on the TomorrowScale podcast about the challenges facing chemists–the “synthesis barrier.” The creation of novel materials and the discovery of small molecule drugs is a labor-intensive, iterative process. Exploring new chemical space requires chemistry know-how, ingenuity, and brute force experimentation. It was thought that the chemical space is too vast, and the problem too multifactorial for machine learning to make much headway to unlock nature's recipe book. And then, suddenly, it wasn't. PostEra uses machine learning to power a Chemistry-as-a-Service offering that hopes to accelerate drug discovery. On this episode we'll meet Dr. Alpha Lee, Chief Scientific Officer, and Aaron Martin, CEO, two of three founders of PostEra. We discuss their work developing novel machine learning models that have demonstrated significant step-change improvements in the state of the art on chemistry-related and binding prediction data science tasks. Dr. Lee's research, starting from his lab at the University of Cambridge, includes a model that “speaks chemistry” [1], a graph neural network model that handles uncertainty in low data environments [2], and another that leverages the statistics of random matrices to tease the signal from the noise [3]. What is the future of chemistry? Listen to find out. “We are in a position similar to that of a man who was provided with a bunch of keys and who, having to open several doors in succession, always hit on the right key on the first or second trial. He became skeptical concerning the uniqueness of the coordination between keys and doors.” - Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (1960) This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs. PostEra: https://postera.ai PostEra COVID-19 Moonshot: https://postera.ai/covid “Crowdsourcing drug discovery during a pandemic” letter in Nature Chemistry [1] Molecular transformer (Schwaller et al 2019) [2] Random matrix discriminant (RMD) (Lee et al 2019) [3] Bayesian graph convolutional neural networks (GCNN) (Zhang and Lee 2019) Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale Listen on Your Favorite Podcast App The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. The views expressed by the host and guests are their own, and the content of this show should not be considered legal, tax, or investing advice. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tomorrowscale/support

Join the Episode after party on Discord! Link: https://discord.gg/ZzJSrGP New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question Link: https://www.space.com/quantum-paradox-throws-doubt-on-observed-reality.html If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion. We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics — one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity — that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality. Quantum mechanics vs. common sense Take a look at these three statements: •When someone observes an event happening, it really happened. •It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices. •A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this “locality”.) These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true — or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level. Quantum mechanics works extremely well to describe the behavior of tiny objects, such as atoms or particles of light (photons). But that behavior is … very odd. In many cases, quantum theory doesn't give definite answers to questions such as "where is this particle right now?" Instead, it only provides probabilities for where the particle might be found when it is observed. For Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the theory a century ago, that's not because we lack information, but because physical properties like "position" don't actually exist until they are measured. And what's more, because some properties of a particle can't be perfectly observed simultaneously — such as position and velocity — they can't be real simultaneously. Observer - In 1961, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner devised a thought experiment to show what's so tricky about the idea of measurement. He considered a situation in which his friend goes into a tightly sealed lab and performs a measurement on a quantum particle — its position, say. However, Wigner noticed that if he applied the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this situation from the outside, the result was quite different. Instead of the friend's measurement making the particle's position real, from Wigner's perspective the friend becomes entangled with the particle and infected with the uncertainty that surrounds it. Chinese rocket booster appears to crash near school during Gaofen 11 satellite launch Link: https://www.space.com/china-launches-gaofen-11-satellite-rocket-crash.html A Chinese Long March 4B rocket successfully launched a new Earth-watching satellite Monday (Sep. 7) but the booster's spent first stage narrowly missed a school when it fell back to Earth, witness videos show. The Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China, at 1:57 p.m. local time (1:57 a.m. EDT, 0557 GMT). It carried the powerful Gaofen 11 (02) Earth observation satellite, an optical observation satellite capable of returning high resolution images, showing features as smaller than 3 feet (1 meter) across. Amateur footage posted on Chinese social media site Weibo following the launch apparently shows the first stage of the Long March 4B falling to Earth and exploding into a cloud of orange smoke. The footage was captured near the Lilong village, Gaoyao Town in the Luonan county of Shaanxi province, according to its author. One piece of footage appears to be taken from a school yard with children's voices audible and a plume of smoke visible in the distance. The Long March 4B first stage uses a mix of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for propellant. Contact with either could bring serious effects on health. China's main state-owned space contractor said in January it would aim for around 40 launches in 2020, with commercial launch service providers additionally carrying out their own missions. SpaceX says its Starlink satellite internet can download 100 megabits per second, and 'space lasers' transfer data between satellites Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-says-its-starlink-satellite-internet-can-download-100-megabits-per-second-and-space-lasers-transfer-data-between-satellites/ar-BB18GPrW?li=BBnb7Kz In private beta testing of its Starlink internet satellites, SpaceX says it has found low latency and high download speeds of 100 megabits per second. "Space lasers" also transferred hundreds of gigabytes of data between two Starlink satellites during a test, the company said. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. SpaceX says early tests of its rapidly growing fleet of internet-providing satellites are yielding promising results. Internal tests of a beta version of internet service from the company's Starlink project show "super low latency and download speeds greater than 100 [megabits] per second," Kate Tice, a SpaceX senior certification engineer, said during a live broadcast of a Starlink launch on Thursday. "That means our latency is low enough to play the fastest online video games, and our download speeds are fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once and still have bandwidth to spare," Tice added. The Starlink initiative eventually aims to send tens of thousands of broadband satellites into orbit, blanketing Earth in affordable, high-speed internet. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that he hopes Starlink will get rural and remote regions online. Already, the company has launched more than 700 satellites. Tice also announced that SpaceX recently completed a test of two orbiting satellites that are equipped with inter-satellite links — informally known as "space lasers." This technology enables Starlink satellites to transfer data directly to each other in orbit, instead of beaming it to the ground and back. "With these space lasers, these Starlink satellites were able to transfer hundreds of gigabytes of data. Once these space lasers are fully deployed, Starlink will be one of the fastest options available to transfer data around the world," she said. Show Stuff Join the episode after party on Discord! Link: https://discord.gg/ZzJSrGP The Dark Horde Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-dark-horde The Dark Horde, LLC – http://www.thedarkhorde.com Twitter @DarkHorde or https://twitter.com/HordeDark Support the podcast and shop @ http://shopthedarkhorde.com UBR Truth Seekers Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/216706068856746 UFO Buster Radio: https://www.facebook.com/UFOBusterRadio YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggl8-aPBDo7wXJQ43TiluA To contact Manny: manny@ufobusterradio.com, or on Twitter @ufobusterradio Call the show anytime at (972) 290-1329 and leave us a message with your point of view, UFO sighting, and ghostly experiences or join the discussion on www.ufobusterradio.com Mail can be sent to: UFO Buster Radio Network PO BOX 769905 San Antonio TX 78245 For Skype Users: bosscrawler

Join the Episode after party on Discord! Link: https://discord.gg/ZzJSrGP New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question Link: https://www.space.com/quantum-paradox-throws-doubt-on-observed-reality.html If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion. We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics — one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity — that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality. Quantum mechanics vs. common sense Take a look at these three statements: •When someone observes an event happening, it really happened. •It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices. •A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this “locality”.) These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true — or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level. Quantum mechanics works extremely well to describe the behavior of tiny objects, such as atoms or particles of light (photons). But that behavior is … very odd. In many cases, quantum theory doesn't give definite answers to questions such as "where is this particle right now?" Instead, it only provides probabilities for where the particle might be found when it is observed. For Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the theory a century ago, that's not because we lack information, but because physical properties like "position" don't actually exist until they are measured. And what's more, because some properties of a particle can't be perfectly observed simultaneously — such as position and velocity — they can't be real simultaneously. Observer - In 1961, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner devised a thought experiment to show what's so tricky about the idea of measurement. He considered a situation in which his friend goes into a tightly sealed lab and performs a measurement on a quantum particle — its position, say. However, Wigner noticed that if he applied the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this situation from the outside, the result was quite different. Instead of the friend's measurement making the particle's position real, from Wigner's perspective the friend becomes entangled with the particle and infected with the uncertainty that surrounds it. Chinese rocket booster appears to crash near school during Gaofen 11 satellite launch Link: https://www.space.com/china-launches-gaofen-11-satellite-rocket-crash.html A Chinese Long March 4B rocket successfully launched a new Earth-watching satellite Monday (Sep. 7) but the booster's spent first stage narrowly missed a school when it fell back to Earth, witness videos show. The Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China, at 1:57 p.m. local time (1:57 a.m. EDT, 0557 GMT). It carried the powerful Gaofen 11 (02) Earth observation satellite, an optical observation satellite capable of returning high resolution images, showing features as smaller than 3 feet (1 meter) across. Amateur footage posted on Chinese social media site Weibo following the launch apparently shows the first stage of the Long March 4B falling to Earth and exploding into a cloud of orange smoke. The footage was captured near the Lilong village, Gaoyao Town in the Luonan county of Shaanxi province, according to its author. One piece of footage appears to be taken from a school yard with children's voices audible and a plume of smoke visible in the distance. The Long March 4B first stage uses a mix of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for propellant. Contact with either could bring serious effects on health. China's main state-owned space contractor said in January it would aim for around 40 launches in 2020, with commercial launch service providers additionally carrying out their own missions. SpaceX says its Starlink satellite internet can download 100 megabits per second, and 'space lasers' transfer data between satellites Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-says-its-starlink-satellite-internet-can-download-100-megabits-per-second-and-space-lasers-transfer-data-between-satellites/ar-BB18GPrW?li=BBnb7Kz In private beta testing of its Starlink internet satellites, SpaceX says it has found low latency and high download speeds of 100 megabits per second. "Space lasers" also transferred hundreds of gigabytes of data between two Starlink satellites during a test, the company said. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. SpaceX says early tests of its rapidly growing fleet of internet-providing satellites are yielding promising results. Internal tests of a beta version of internet service from the company's Starlink project show "super low latency and download speeds greater than 100 [megabits] per second," Kate Tice, a SpaceX senior certification engineer, said during a live broadcast of a Starlink launch on Thursday. "That means our latency is low enough to play the fastest online video games, and our download speeds are fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once and still have bandwidth to spare," Tice added. The Starlink initiative eventually aims to send tens of thousands of broadband satellites into orbit, blanketing Earth in affordable, high-speed internet. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that he hopes Starlink will get rural and remote regions online. Already, the company has launched more than 700 satellites. Tice also announced that SpaceX recently completed a test of two orbiting satellites that are equipped with inter-satellite links — informally known as "space lasers." This technology enables Starlink satellites to transfer data directly to each other in orbit, instead of beaming it to the ground and back. "With these space lasers, these Starlink satellites were able to transfer hundreds of gigabytes of data. Once these space lasers are fully deployed, Starlink will be one of the fastest options available to transfer data around the world," she said. Show Stuff Join the episode after party on Discord! Link: https://discord.gg/ZzJSrGP The Dark Horde Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-dark-horde The Dark Horde, LLC – http://www.thedarkhorde.com Twitter @DarkHorde or https://twitter.com/HordeDark Support the podcast and shop @ http://shopthedarkhorde.com UBR Truth Seekers Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/216706068856746 UFO Buster Radio: https://www.facebook.com/UFOBusterRadio YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggl8-aPBDo7wXJQ43TiluA To contact Manny: manny@ufobusterradio.com, or on Twitter @ufobusterradio Call the show anytime at (972) 290-1329 and leave us a message with your point of view, UFO sighting, and ghostly experiences or join the discussion on www.ufobusterradio.com Mail can be sent to: UFO Buster Radio Network PO BOX 769905 San Antonio TX 78245 For Skype Users: bosscrawler

50 years ago this week, 4 students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State. But nobody can agree on who fired first. And the only man who knows the truth is a car salesmen who lives on a mountain. Covered Topics: Kent State, Terry Norman, National Guard, Kent State Shootings, My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, Pontius Pilate, Objective Truth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eugene Wigner, Massimiliano Proietti, Perspectivism, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, William SchroederFurther Reading:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y5cftds7-8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN7PUy8ZrQEhttps://www.sciencealert.com/watch-how-repetition-creates-an-illusion-of-truthhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40129https://web.archive.org/web/20080516080032/http://www.tbo.com/life/kentstate.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Normanhttps://dks.library.kent.edu/cgi-bin/kentstate?a=d&d=dks20101116-01.2.2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R9QROhm1Sk Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode features a conversation with James Franklin. Dr. James Franklin is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales in Australia and founder of the “Sydney School” in the philosophy of mathematics. He completed his PhD in 1981 at the University of Warwick, on algebraic groups. Since 1981 he has taught in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales. His research areas include the philosophy of mathematics and the formal sciences, the history of probability, Australian Catholic history, the parallel between ethics and mathematics (work for which he received the 2005 Eureka Prize for Research in Ethics), restraint, the quantification of rights in applied ethics, and the analysis of extreme risk. He’s authored several books including topics from one we talked about extensively on the podcast entitled An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science and Quantity of Structure, which was published in 2014. In my study of philosophy, I remember coming across the topic of mathematical objects. What are they? Are they just useful fictions or do they reveal something deeper about reality? How and why is the language of mathematics so incredibly precise and sometimes even predictive of empirical discovery, what Eugene Wigner called the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics"? In this podcast, Jim and I discuss his background and academic interests, and jump right into the incredible accuracy and even predictiveness of mathematics, and how Aristotle’s view of mathematics differs from the nominalist and Platonic views of mathematics. Is mathematics invented or discovered? If invented, and just useful fictions, how is this language so incredibly precise and perhaps prophetic? If discovered, how do we have access to these timeless and prophetic truths – how do they relate to reality, and what does that say about reality? In this podcast, Jim and I discussed these topics, but also how they relate to morality and metaphysics in general – and the problems that a traditional materialist and skeptic faces vs. a Platonist – and how Aristotle’s metaphysics may thread the needle on a “just right” realism. So please, enjoy the conversation between yours truly and James Franklin.

Mário Figueiredo é professor catedrático no Instituto Superior Técnico, e coordenador de área e líder de grupo no Instituto de Telecomunicações. As suas área de trabalho são a aprendizagem automática, o processamento e análise de imagens e a optimização. Recebeu várias distinções e prémios internacionais e, desde 2014 até ao presente, tem integrado a lista anual "Highly Cited Researchers", sendo o único português das áreas da engenharia ou ciências da computação com esta distinção. Como tinha prometido há poucos episódios, regresso ao tema Inteligência Artificial. Mas não foi só disso que se falou nesta excelente conversa com Mário Figueiredo, que não é um investigador qualquer. É um dos académicos mais citados a nível mundial na investigação em Machine Learning, processamento de imagens e optimização, técnicas que têm aplicação, por exemplo, na medicina ou na interpretação de imagens de satélite. Mas não é só à investigação académica que o Mário se dedica. É também, como vão perceber, um divulgador de ciência nato e alguém gosta aplicar a mesma curiosidade e espírito analítico de cientista a pensar uma série de questões diferentes. Isto, para além de ser um ouvinte do podcast, o que me honra muito.  A conversa tocou numa série de pontos, como é habitual. Começámos por falar da revolução que a chamada Ciência de Dados trouxe nos últimos anos e das enormes implicações que tem no mundo de hoje. Ciência de Dados não é mais do que análise de dados, mas desenvolveu-se imenso nos últimos anos, em resultado de duas revoluções paralelas: uma é a enorme expansão na quantidade de dados disponíveis (os chamados big data), outra são os desenvolvimentos que tem havido em machine learning, uma área que veio revolucionar a Inteligência Artificial. Com estes algoritmos conseguimos hoje programas que aprendem automaticamente a detectar padrões e conseguem tirar conclusões úteis a partir de uma enorme quantidade de dados. Outro aspecto de que falámos é o impacto destes avanços não só na economia e na sociedade, mas também na própria ciência, que passa a ter uma ferramenta complementar à matemática. Daí que um grupo de cientistas da Google tenha escrito um artigo com o título provocador ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data’, uma resposta a um ensaio famoso do físico Eugene Wigner sobre a ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’. À boleia desta discussão, passámos o resto do episódio no tema mais geral da Inteligência Artificial. Têm havido enormes progressos nesta área, nos últimos anos, sobretudo à boleia da dita Machine Learning, que tem conseguido superar os seres-humanos, numa série de tarefas que até aqui achávamos não estarem ao alcance de um computador, como traduzir línguas, conduzir carros ou mesmo gerar fotografias, credíveis, de caras de pessoas que não existem na realidade!  No entanto, na visão do convidado, estes progressos continuam a ocorrer em tarefas específicas, e nada garante que estejam a contribuir de alguma forma para criar Inteligência Artificial capaz de autonomia e de pensar como um ser humano. É uma visão provocadora e especialmente interessante porque é saudavelmente diferente da posição de Arlindo Oliveira, com quem tinha falado sobre este tema anteriormente.  Assumindo que a inteligência humana é de facto diferente, a grande questão que ressalta daqui é o que é especial, então, no cérebro humano?  Para David Deutch é “a capacidade que os humanos têm para gerar novas explicações para um determinado fenómeno”. Este físico britânico tem um artigo muito interessante sobre o tema, de que falamos ao longo da conversa e que podem encontrar na descrição do episódio.  Portanto, no curto-prazo, parece mais provável que a Inteligência Artificial continue a complementar, e não a substituir, a Inteligência Humana. E, por coincidência, foi precisamente no dia em que gravámos esta conversa que Elon Musk anunciou os progressos que tem feito na Neuralink, a empresa que criou para desenvolver interfaces entre o cérebro e um computador, e que ele acredita vir um dia a permitir fazer uma espécie de ‘fusão’ entre o cérebro humano e os sistemas de IA. Obrigado aos mecenas do podcast: Gustavo Pimenta; Eduardo Correia de Matos João Vítor Baltazar; Salvador Cunha; Ana Mateus; Nelson Teodoro; Paulo Peralta; Duarte Dória; Tiago Leite, Joana Faria Alves Abílio Silva; Tiago Neves Paixão; João Saro; Rita Mateus; Tomás Costa; Daniel Correia, António Padilha, André Lima, João Braz Pinto, Tiago Queiroz, Ricardo Duarte, Rafael Melo, Alexandre Almeida, Carmen Camacho, João Nelas Vasco Sá Pinto, Luis Ferreira, Pedro Vaz, André Gamito, Henrique Pedro, Manuel Lagarto, Rui Baldaia, Luis Quelhas Valente, Rui Carrilho, Filipe Ribeiro, Joana Margarida Alves Martins, Joao Salvado, Luis Marques, Mafalda Pratas, Renato Vasconcelos, Tiago Pires, Francisco Arantes, Francisco dos Santos, João Bastos, João Raimundo, Hugo Correia, Mariana Barosa, Marta Baptista Coelho, Paulo Ferreira, Miguel Coimbra, Pedro Silva, António Amaral, Nuno Nogueira, Rodrigo Brazão, Nuno Gonçalves, Duarte Martins, Pedro Rebelo, Miguel Palhas, Duarte, José Carlos Abrantes, Tomás Félix, Vasco Lima, Carlos Martins, Ricardo Delgadinho, Marise Almeida; Gonçalo Martins, José Galinha, João Castanheira, Marta Madeira, Joao Pinto, Francisco Vasconcelos, Rui Passos Rocha -> Torne-se também mecenas do podcast, a partir de 2€, através do Patreon!   Referências abordadas na conversa: Livro ‘The Attention Merchants, de Tim Wu  Artigo do convidado: O Impacto e o Ensino da Ciência de Dados How the constant flow of data is revolutionising biology Debate Richard Dawkins & Bret Weinstein - Evolution The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data - Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira, Google The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery - Tony Hey Stewart Tansley Kristin Tolle Artigo ‘Artificial Intelligence, The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet’ - Michael I. Jordan España, el segundo país con mayor esperanza de vida de la OCDE How close are we to creating artificial intelligence? - David Deutsch John McCarthy; Norbert Wiener António Damásio sobre Inteligência Artificial  Nature: Whole-animal connectomes of both Caenorhabditis elegans sexes Deep-Learning Machine Listens to Bach, Then Writes Its Own Music in the Same Style Livros recomendados: O Início do Infinito - David Deutsch Uma qualquer colectânea de contos de autores clássicos russos Elon Musk unveils Neuralink’s plans for brain-reading ‘threads’ and a robot to insert them Bio: Mário Figueiredo é professor catedrático no Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, e coordenador de área e líder de grupo no Instituto de Telecomunicações. As suas área de trabalho são a aprendizagem automática, o processamento e análise de imagens e a optimização. Recebeu várias distinções e prémios internacionais e, desde 2014 até ao presente, tem integrado a lista anual "Highly Cited Researchers", sendo o único português das áreas da engenharia ou ciências da computação com esta distinção.

Learn about a version of Schrödinger's cat that might break quantum physics; a study hack that makes you think about how you study; and why you’re not as mysterious as you think you are, thanks to a cognitive bias called asymmetric insight. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Adding a Second Cat to Schrödinger's Cat Experiment Might Break Quantum Physics This Study Hack From a Stanford Researcher Gets A's out of B+ Students Asymmetric Insight Is Why You're Not as Mysterious as You Think You Are Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!

科技最前沿，主要从丘孔语论比较感兴趣的几个领域来谈论科学科技，可能涉及天文、物理、互联网/IT、人工智能/Ai、数码/手机、编程、大数据、商业大佬、创新创业创客、化学、医学、养生、心理学、灵性等领域；认识天地，开阔思维，重塑自我。不要说我涉猎太广泛，只是人生认识自我的过程太过漫长，我们只能先广纳外，然后求诸内，探索着，迷茫着。微信扫码，可以关注公众号丘孔语论，期望与你做更深的交流。映象网 2017-03-03 08:20我们的大脑里发生着什么？新浪科技讯 北京时间3月3日消息，据国外媒体报道，没有人了解意识到底是什么，以及意识如何运作。同样的，也没有人完全了解量子力学的原理。二者之间，是否存在着某种超越巧合的联系？量子力学是物理学家用来描述宇宙中最微小物质的理论。“我无法定义真正的问题所在，因此我怀疑不存在真正的问题，但我并不能肯定不存在真正的问题，”美国物理学家理查德·费曼（Richard Feynman）在谈到量子力学的困惑和悖论时如此说道。不过，他这番话或许也可以用来描述同样令人纠结的意识问题。一些科学家认为，意识是什么的问题已经有了答案，也有人认为意识仅仅是一种幻觉。然而，更多的人认为，我们根本就不知道意识到底来自哪里。长期以来，意识之谜一直困扰着科学家，一些研究者甚至尝试用量子力学来对其进行解释。意料之中的是，这一主张总是受到外界的质疑：用一个未解之谜来解释另一个未解之谜听起来很不可取。不过，这样的想法并非看上去那么荒谬，而且也不是研究者的一时兴起。双缝实验是一种岩石光子或电子等微观物体波动性和粒子性的实验粒子可以处于两种状态首先，思维在早期量子理论中扮演着不容忽视的角色——这让物理学家感到很不愉快。其次，量子计算机被认为能完成普通计算机无法做到的任务，这让人想到，大脑也能做到一些人工智能无法做到的事情。“量子意识”虽然广受嘲讽，但并不会消失。量子力学是目前用来描述原子和亚原子世界的最佳理论，也被认为是现代物理学的支柱之一。量子力学中最广为人知的谜题或许是这样一个现象：量子实验的结果会因为我们选择测量哪种粒子的性质而发生改变。当这种“观察者效应”首次被量子物理学的先驱注意到时，他们感到非常困惑。这似乎推翻了所有科学背后的基础假设：存在一个与我们完全无关的客观世界。如果世界是根据我们是否观察以及如何观察而运作的，那么“现实”的真正含义又是什么呢？这些研究者中，有些人不得不做出“客观性”其实是一种幻觉的论断，并认为意识必须被允许在量子理论中扮演一个主动的角色。对其他人而言，这完全讲不通。当然，爱因斯坦也曾经抱怨道，月亮只有在我们看它的时候才存在！现在，一些物理学家推测，暂且不论意识是不是会影响量子力学，事实上，意识可能正是源自量子力学。他们认为，我们需要借助量子理论才能完全理解大脑运作的机制。可能是这样吧，或许因为量子物体能同时出现在两个地方，所以量子大脑也能同时拥有两个互相排斥的想法？这些观点都纯粹是猜测，量子物理学是否在意识的运作中扮演着重要角色，我们还不得而知。不过，如果不考虑其他，这种可能性本身就显示了量子力学会不可思议地促使我们思考。展示思维在量子力学中如何发挥作用的最著名例子当属“双缝实验”。想象一束光照在一块具有两条狭缝的不透明屏幕上，一些光会穿过狭缝，抵达另一块屏幕。光可以被视为一种波，当波从两条狭缝穿过之后，它们会互相干涉。如果它们的波峰相同，就会达到加强的效果；如果波峰和波谷重合，它们就会互相抵消。这种波的干涉被称为衍射，会在后一块屏幕上形成一系列明暗交替的条纹，分别是相长干涉和相消干涉的区域。尤金·维格纳奠定了量子力学对称性的理论基础物理学家兼数学家罗杰·彭罗斯这一实验在两百多年前就被用来展示光具有波的行为特征，远早于量子力学的出现。双缝实验还可以用量子粒子（如电子或组成原子的其他微小带电粒子）来做，结果十分违反我们的直观感觉：这些粒子呈现出类似波的行为特征。也就是说，当一束粒子穿过两条狭缝时也会发生衍射，产生干涉图案。假设这些量子粒子是一个一个地穿过狭缝，它们也是一个一个地到达屏幕。很显然，并没有什么东西会让这些粒子在运行路线中发生干涉——然而最终的结果就是会出现干涉条纹。这样的结果暗示我们，每个粒子会同时穿过两条狭缝，并且与自己发生干涉。这种“同时经过两条路径”的状态被称为“叠加态”。接下来便是真正不可思议的地方。如果在其中一条狭缝中（或者就在狭缝之后）放置一个探测器，我们就可以知道任意一个粒子是否穿过这条狭缝。然而，此时干涉现象就会消失。只是观察一个粒子的路径——即使观察行为没有干扰粒子的运动——结果就发生了改变。物理学家帕斯库尔·约当（Pascual Jordan）曾经在20世纪20年代师从量子物理学大师尼尔斯·玻尔（Niels Bohr），他曾这样描述：“观察不仅会干扰需要被测量的东西，而且会创造它……我们迫使（一个量子粒子）接受了一个确定的位置。”换句话说，“我们自己制造了测量结果。”如果确实如此，“客观真实”似乎就不再存在了，但情况其实更加诡异。如果自然的行为变化取决于我们是否“观察”，那我们可以尝试一些小把戏，使自然亮出底牌。为了做到这一点，我们可以测量一个粒子在双缝实验中的路径，但只在它穿过狭缝之后进行测量。届时，这个粒子应该已经“决定”好要选择一条路径还是同时走两条路径。美国物理学家约翰·惠勒（John Wheeler）在20世纪70年代提出了这样的思想实验，而在下一个十年就有人进行了这个“延迟选择”实验。实验中采用了很聪明的技术方法，对量子粒子（光子）的路径——此时应该已经做出了单一路径或叠加态的选择——进行了测量。实验的结果正如玻尔所预测的那样，我们的测量是否延迟其实并没有什么不同。只要我们在光子到达探测器之前进行测量，结果就是注定的，所有干涉都会消失。大自然似乎不仅“知道”我们在观察，而且知道我们想要去观察。在这些实验中，无论我们在何时发现了一个量子粒子的路径，它的可能路线就会“塌缩”到单一的明确状态。此外，延迟选择实验的结果显示，纯粹的观察，而非测量引起的任何物理干扰，就可以导致塌缩。但是，这是否意味着真正的塌缩只会发生在测量结果映入我们意识之中的时候？20世纪30年代，匈牙利物理学家尤金·维格纳（Eugene Wigner）接受了这种可能性。“顺理成章地，对物体的量子描述受进入我意识中的意念所影响，”他写道，“在逻辑上，唯我论可能与目前的量子力学相吻合。”惠勒甚至提出，生命的存在，包括所有具有“观察”能力的生命，可能已经使之前众多可能的“量子过去”转变成了实在的历史。惠勒称，从这个角度而言，我们从宇宙一开始就成为了参与者。用他的话说，我们生活在一个“参与性的宇宙”中。到了今天，物理学家在如何最好地解释这些量子实验的问题上并没有达成一致，在某种程度上，怎么解释还要取决于你。无论如何，我们都很难忽视这样的暗示：意识和量子力学之间存在着某种联系。从20世纪80年代开始，英国物理学家罗杰·彭罗斯（Roger Penrose）就提出，意识和量子力学之间的联系也可以作用于另一方向。他指出，无论意识能否影响量子力学，或许量子力学本身就包括在意识之内。彭罗斯问道，假设我们的大脑中存在能对单个量子事件作出反应并改变状态的分子结构，那这些结构能否转变为叠加态，就像双缝实验中的粒子？在神经元受电信号触发进行交流的过程中，是否会出现这样的量子叠加态？彭罗斯称，这是有可能的。我们能够同时保持看似矛盾的精神状态，这并非什么古怪的感觉，而是实实在在的量子效应。毕竟，人类大脑所能处理的认知过程目前还远在计算机之上。或许我们还能进行某些计算任务，是使用传统数字逻辑的常规计算机所无法胜任的。在1989年出版的《皇帝新脑》（The Emperor‘s New Mind）一书中，彭罗斯首次提出了人类认知中的量子效应。这一构想被称为“Orch-OR”，是“协同客观崩现”（orchestrated objective reduction）的缩写。彭罗斯认为，所谓“客观崩现”，即量子干涉的塌缩和叠加态是一个真实的、物理性的过程，就像气泡的破裂一样。彭罗斯还指出，引力是日常事物——从我们所用的桌椅到宇宙中的行星——不表现出量子效应的原因所在。他认为，比原子大得多的物体不可能达到量子叠加态，因为它们的引力效应会迫使两种不相容的时间-空间形式实现共存。彭罗斯与美国物理学家斯图尔特·哈默洛夫（Stuart Hameroff）一起进一步发展了Orch-OR理论。在1994年出版的《意识的阴影》（Shadows of the Mind）一书中，彭罗斯提出，在量子认知中涉及的结构可能就是被称为“微管”的蛋白质聚合物。微管存在于人体大部分细胞中，包括大脑中的神经元。彭罗斯和哈默洛夫认为，微管的振动可以吸收量子叠加态。量子态粒子可能具有不同的自旋不过，并没有证据表明这一过程是完全不可能的。一些报道称，在2013年的一些实验中，微管中存在量子叠加态的说法获得了支持。但事实上，这些研究并没有提到量子效应。此外，大多数研究者认为，Orch-OR理论已经被2000年的一项研究所否定。物理学家马克斯·铁马克（Max Tegmark）的计算结果显示，与神经信号传递有关的分子的叠加态甚至无法维持足够的时间，使信号传递出去。由于量子退相干这一物理过程的存在，诸如叠加态等量子效应很容易消失。量子力学中，量子相干性会因为与外在环境发生量子纠缠而随着时间逐渐丧失。在温暖、潮湿的环境中，比如活细胞内，退相干现象的发生极其迅速。神经信号是一种电脉冲，是由带电的源自经过神经元通路而产生的。马克斯·铁马克的计算显示，如果其中一个原子处于叠加态并撞上神经元，其叠加态会在不到10-18秒内就会消失。相比之下，神经元发出电信号的时间是其至少1016倍。根据这些结果，有关大脑中存在量子效应的说法受到了广泛质疑。然而，彭罗斯不为这些质疑所动，他还是坚持Orch-OR假说。另一方面，尽管铁马克预测了细胞中极快的量子退相干过程，但其他研究者已经发现了生物中存在量子效应的证据。一些研究者争论称，依靠地球磁场导航的候鸟会利用量子力学，绿色植物在利用光合作用制造糖分的时候也会用到量子力学。与此同时，认为人类大脑可能会运用量子力学的说法依然存在，并且出现了另一个非常与众不同的观点。意识是一个很深奥的谜题在2015年发表的一项研究中，加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校的物理学家马修·费希尔（Matthew Fisher）提出，大脑可能含有某些特定分子，能维持更加稳固的量子叠加态。他特别指出，磷原子的原子核可能就具有这种能力。磷原子在活细胞中无处不在，它们通常以磷酸根离子的形式存在，1个磷原子会与4个氧原子结合。这些离子是细胞内的基础能量单位。细胞的大部分能量储存在三磷酸腺苷（ATP）分子内。ATP分子由腺苷和三个磷酸基组成，当其中一个磷酸基脱离时，就会释放出能量供细胞使用。活细胞内具有将磷酸根离子组合起来并使其分解的分子机制。费希尔提出，两个磷酸根离子可能会出于一种特殊的叠加态，称为“纠缠态”（entangled state）。磷的原子核具有一种被称为“自旋”的量子性质，这使它们更像是微型的磁体，两极指向特定的方向。在纠缠态中，一个磷原子核的自旋取决于另一个磷原子核的自旋。换句话说，纠缠态是一种涉及不止单个量子粒子的叠加态。费希尔称，这些原子核的量子力学行为很可能会在人类的时间尺度上抵抗量子退相干过程。他同意铁马克的计算结果，认为量子振荡（如彭罗斯和哈默洛夫所假定的）会受到周围环境的强烈影响，并且“几乎随即退相干”。但是，原子核的自旋并不会与周围环境发生强烈的互相作用。很显然，磷原子核自旋时的量子行为也必须受到“保护”，以免因退相干过程而过快消失。费希尔称，如果磷原子整合形成了“波斯纳分子”（Posner molecule），那这种情况是可能的。波斯纳分子是由6个磷酸根离子和9个钙离子组成的集群。有证据表明，这种分子集群可以存在于活细胞中——尽管现在还远未有确切结论。费希尔称，在波斯纳分子中，磷原子的自旋可以抵抗退相干达一天左右的时间，甚至在活细胞中也是如此。这意味着它们可能会影响大脑的运作。这一假说认为，波斯纳分子可以被神经元吞噬。一旦进入神经元内部，波斯纳分子就能通过分解并释放钙离子来触发神经元将信号发送给另一个神经元。由于波斯纳分子处于纠缠状态，神经元发出的电信号可能也因此纠缠在一起：或许可以称之为一个“想法”的某种量子叠加态。“如果原子核自旋的量子过程真的存在于大脑中，那它很可能十分常见，几乎每时每刻都在发生，”费希尔说道。我们并不了解思维如何运作我们的意识是怎么运作的？费希尔最初是在开始思考精神疾病的时候想到这一假说的。“三、四年前，当我决定探索锂离子在精神疾病的治疗中到底有没有显著效果时，我踏入了大脑生物化学的领域，”费希尔说道。含锂药物广泛用于躁郁症的治疗，具有一定效果，但没有人真正了解其中的机理。“当时我并没有在寻找量子物理学的解释，”费希尔说道。但是不久之后，他翻到了一篇论文，里面报道了含锂药物对大鼠行为的不同作用取决于锂元素的不同形式——又称同位素。这一现象实在令人困惑。从化学上来说，不同的同位素有着几乎相同的反应特征，因此如果锂发挥作用的方式与传统药物一样的话，那它的同位素应该也具有相同的作用。费希尔意识到，不同的锂同位素，其原子核可能具有不同的自旋特征。这一量子性质可能影响了锂药物的作用。例如，如果锂取代了波斯纳分子中的钙，那锂的自旋可能会“感受”并影响磷原子的自旋，从而干扰磷原子的纠缠。如果确实如此，就可以解释锂为什么可以用来治疗躁郁症了。目前，费希尔的假说还只是一个有趣的想法，未经证实。不过，有好几种方法可以用来验证这个假说，首先就是验证波斯纳分子中磷原子的自旋能否长时间保持量子相干性。这正是费希尔下一步的目标。当然，费希尔也十分谨慎，不希望自己与早先有关“量子意识”的观点联系在一起。他认为这些观点充其量只是高度推测性的假说。物理学家们很不习惯在量子理论中发现自己。大部分研究者希望把意识和大脑隔离在量子理论之外，或许反之也亦然。毕竟，我们甚至都不知道意识是什么，更别说用一个物理理论来描述它了。现在还出现了一种热衷“量子意识”的风潮，宣称量子力学可以用来解释心灵感应和心灵遥控等现象。然而，这些对真正的科学研究并没有帮助，造成的结果反而是，物理学家往往羞于在同一个句子中提到“量子”和“意识”。不过，暂且把这些放在一边，我们应该看到“量子意识”其实有着相当长的历史。量子理论发展的初期就有了“观察者效应”和有关思维作用的假说，从那时开始，量子力学中就很难排除意识的部分。一些研究者甚至认为我们永远都无法做到这一点。2016年，最著名的“量子哲学家”之一、英国剑桥大学的阿德里安·肯特（Adrian Kent）推测，意识可能会以微妙但又可以可探测的方式改变量子系统的行为。肯特对于这一假说十分谨慎。他说：“在尝试明确地表述关于意识的问题时，并没有令人信服的原因让人相信，量子力学就是那个正确的理论；量子理论的问题也不能确定与意识的问题有关系。”不过，肯特也表示，我们很难单纯用量子物理学之前的理论来描述意识，包括意识可能具有的所有特征。一个特别令人困惑的问题是，我们的意识能体验到非常独特的感觉，比如红色或烤培根的气味。除了那些视觉受损的人之外，我们都知道红色是什么样的，但我们无法交流这种感觉是什么，物理学上也无法告诉我们红色应该是什么样的。类似这样的感觉被称为“感受性”（qualia）。我们将这些感觉视为外部世界的统一特征，但它们其实只是我们意识的产物——这一点很难解释。事实上，哲学家大卫·查默斯（David Chalmers）在1995年就将此称为意识的“研究难题”。“每一次对意识和物理学之间关系的思考都会陷入深深的麻烦之中，”肯特说道。这也促使他提出，“如果假设意识能改变（尽管可能是很轻微和微妙）量子可能性，那我们就可能在意识演化的问题上取得一些进展。”换句话说，意识可能真的会影响测量的结果。这么说来，我们就无法明确地界定“什么是真实”。但是，意识可能会影响我们在量子力学中进行观察时各个可能结果出现的机会，以一种量子理论本身无法预测的方式。肯特表示，我们或许能用实验方法寻找这些效应。肯特还勇敢地估计了发现这些效应的概率，他说：“我觉得或许有15%的概率可以说，某些与意识有明确关系的东西会导致量子理论出现偏差；在未来50年里用实验方式探测到这一结果的概率或许有3%。”如果这一切最终成真，那我们对物理学和意识的认识必将发生重大的改变。（任天）

Brian Clegg’s Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) is a compact, very readable, and highly entertaining history of the development and use of mathematics to answer the important practical questions involved in advancing civilization. The question “Are Numbers Real?” is a terrific way to attack the problem so compellingly stated by the physicist Eugene Wigner what accounts for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the natural and the man-made Universe? Some of Clegg’s journey from the basics of counting through the intricate mathematical structures currently being used to explore reality will be familiar to the experienced reader. But even such a reader will find new insights and pleasures in the book and for those just starting out on their intellectual journey, Are Numbers Real? Is a superb introduction to mathematics, science, and that branch of philosophy devoted to exploring the nature of reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Clegg’s Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) is a compact, very readable, and highly entertaining history of the development and use of mathematics to answer the important practical questions involved in advancing civilization. The question “Are Numbers Real?” is a terrific way to attack the problem so compellingly stated by the physicist Eugene Wigner what accounts for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the natural and the man-made Universe? Some of Clegg’s journey from the basics of counting through the intricate mathematical structures currently being used to explore reality will be familiar to the experienced reader. But even such a reader will find new insights and pleasures in the book and for those just starting out on their intellectual journey, Are Numbers Real? Is a superb introduction to mathematics, science, and that branch of philosophy devoted to exploring the nature of reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1960 physicist Eugene Wigner wrote a paper on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’. Christian philosopher William (Bill) Lane Craig has recently been developing arguments concerning the ‘applicability’ of mathematics as evidence for God as part of his wider research on abstract objects. Bill interacts with atheist/agnostic philosopher Daniel Came on whether the remarkable ability of maths to describe the universe we live in is evidence for a transcendent designer. For Bill Craig & Reasonable Faith : http://www.reasonablefaith.org. For Daniel Came: click here For more faith debates visit www.premierchristianradio.com/unbelievable Join the conversation: Facebook and Twitter Get the MP3 podcast of Unbelievable? http://www.kaltura.com/api_v3/getFeed.php?partnerId=618072&feedId=1_jlj47tkv or Via Itunes

Philip K. Howard is a prominent attorney and commentator. He's the Founder and Chair of Common Good and author of the classic, "The Death of Common Sense" and author of the new book, "The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government.”   Howard discusses whether it's worth it for people to trust the government. He shares his thoughts on how the government has made people inept.    Howard believes legal rigidity strangles common sense solutions to our problems. The Constitution was drafted in only 10 pages, yet so many modern bills are thousands of pages long. Howard explains how life would be without lawyers.   Philip K. Howard is a well-known leader of government and legal reform in America. His new book, The Rule of Nobody (W. W. Norton & Company, April 2014), has been praised by Fareed Zakaria as “an utterly compelling and persuasive book that, if followed, could change the way America works.” His Ted Talk has has been viewed by almost 500,000 people.     Philip is also the author of the best-seller The Death of Common Sense (Random House, 1995), The Collapse of the Common Good (Ballantine Books, 2002) and Life Without Lawyers (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).     In 2002, Philip formed Common Good, a nonpartisan national coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America. Philip writes periodically for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the News Hour, Today, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose, and numerous other programs.     The son of a minister, Philip got his start working summers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner and has been active in public affairs his entire adult life. He is a prominent civic leader in New York City and has advised national political leaders on legal and regulatory reform for fifteen years, including Vice President Al Gore and numerous governors. He is a Partner at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP. He is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School, and lives in Manhattan with his wife Alexandra. They have four children.   Find out more about Philip K. Howard at www.philipkhoward.com.    Visit Common Good at www.commongood.org.