There is much discussion about whether AI programs should be called conscious. Most of us believe that there is a fundamental difference between human intelligence and that of machines: no matter how good an AI program becomes at showing behavior that suggests that it is conscious, the program is not conscious.
On the other hand…
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Extra dimensions pop up everywhere in physics. From string theory to attempts at unifying general relativity with quantum theory. But how can it be that we can’t see them?
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“Do not try and solve the paradox; that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no paradox.”*
The laws of Newton are symmetrical in time while the entropy of a closed system always increases – creating an arrow of time. How can it be that the laws describing particles are the same whether we go forward or backwards in time, while a law describing the same system macroscopically is very different in terms of past and future?
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Today I started a lecture series about Einstein’s relativity theories. I started explaining things about basic geometry, so we talked about the postulate of the parallels first described by Euclid of Alexandria: if you draw a straight line on a piece of paper (l in the image on the right) and a point (p in the image) next to it, then there can be only one straight line through this point which does not intersect the line we started with (the dashed line) – there is only one parallel.
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Recently I visited a conference at the university of Delft dedicated to quantum technology and philosophy. Among physicists working with quantum information, it has become more and more fashionable in the past few decades to say that information is physical. Is that a sensible claim?
(more…)Some time ago I have given a “pub lecture” (the lecture was both public and in a pub) about Einstein, Newton and relativity. Below is an abstract of the lecture.
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