Alright, I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted, so let me get everyone up to date. The school year has started and I’m taking a number of advanced math courses, which of course requires a lot of math proofs.
I’ve always approached math proofs as a sort of “construction” exercise…like masonry for the mind. The problem is that I’m of the Homer Simpson School of masonry.
Anyways, in my spare time I’ve been doing things like quantizing the Newton-Cartan theory (canonically), finding the canonical conjugate momentum to the Cartan tetrad using the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian then working out the consequences of this (and comparing them to loop quantum gravity), and of course pursuing women.
Something rather interesting, which Dr. Woit has been angry about, is that materialism is kind of…being completely abandoned by String theorists. Indeed, Lubos Motl has boasted this! Call me “old fashioned” (or, if you are one of those rapscallion kids, “old school”), but isn’t materialism one of those foundations of Western science?! You know, along with causality and formal logic?
Coincidentally, I have been arguing a lot with philosophers (damn philosophers!) about what is “antiscience”. They would like to believe that criticizing a scientific hypothesis without providing a suitable alternative hypothesis is scientific…but this is comparable to saying, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, “You’re a <insert profanity here>!” Then refusing to speak with this friend any further. A philosopher brought up his crack pot idea that it is “society/culture/ethics” which really influence the behavior of particles and matter…and after an experiment of thinking very hard for him to physically disappeared, he remained. Thus I scientifically disproved his hypothesis, but he doesn’t believe me :-\
I don’t understand why Americans are so afraid of science. Which brings me to a funny anecdote. The other night I was dragged to the see “The Passion of the Christ”…against my will, as you would expect. I got kicked out for being too vocal. When the lights darkened and the movie was about to begin, I said loudly “I wonder if this will have a happy ending?” I owe this witticism to Groucho, of course. Then several scenes later, someone is riding a horse, and I ask again loudly “What? He isn’t riding a dinosaur? This isn’t very accurate according to the Bible.” Finally when Jesus was arrested, I asked “Wait, then when did he bury the dinosaur bones?” I guess not everyone there liked my views.
