The n-Category Café

Not really, yet. I’ve only looked at it a couple of times. At first I was impressed, then I began to get a bit scared that they were going for flash — a “hip, edgy” look, rather than substance.

I guess you saw Greg Egan’s blistering comments over on Cosmic Variance — not about Seed, but perhaps apropos:

What’s lame is when intellectuals (or anyone else) aspire to be “hip” and “edgy” — notions that are, rightly, wholly owned subsidiaries of the Coca Cola corporation. If algebraic geometers want to skydive nude into South American war zones on the weekends, that’s fine with me, but let’s not make it compulsory. Ninety-nine percent of worthwhile intellectual achievements are made by people who had the courage to swim against the tide of adolescent conformity that gave us fans of Hunter S. Thompson. Instead of trying to make academics fashionably interesting, it would be infinitely preferable to encourage and celebrate the independence of mind of those who don’t give a shit what anyone thinks is cool.

Trivia question: which Egan novel mentions phosphoric acid, and why?

No, I haven’t seen Brian Hayes’ article ‘Sorting the Genome”. Like Christine Dantas, I enjoyed the American Scientist article on the dog genome. I like dogs and think it’s an interesting question to determine how many times wolves (or other canids) have been domesticated. Of course it’s hard to tell exactly what this question means, which is one reason it’s interesting.

To say something nice about New Scientist for a change, I should add that they recently published this piece (albeit, somewhat ironically, available in full only to subscribers) by Jim Giles on Eric Dezenhall and PRISM, matters much discussed on The n-Category Café. They’re also running a blog thread on this topic, though to date there have been few comments on it, none of them of much interest.

Hi, Greg!

Bet the NS editors are chortling if they noticed your renewal!

Have you seen the latest issue of New Scientist? Is there by any chance some kind of article claiming that Anderson and Nieto conclude in their recent review that the alleged Pioneer effect “most likely represents new [fundamental] physics”? Reason I ask: I happened to spot a news release from NS (hmm… so “news mags” can put out “news releases”? apparently they can and do)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/ns-tkt081606.php
which purports to be an interview of Anderson and Nieto (the press release attempts to cite http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608087, but Anderson and Nieto have written several more recent eprints which seem more relevant to the subject of reviewing the alleged effect.)

The news release reads in part “The researchers say that while it is possible that an overlooked effect from ordinary physics might account for the anomalies, something more exotic could also be involved. For example, the spacecraft trajectories could be influenced by the presence of dark matter in the solar system, says Nieto. Or maybe the laws of gravity need reworking.” After further discussion of the views of Anderson and Nieto, the press release continues “Not everyone is convinced the Earth fly-by anomaly points to new physics” which is followed by a quotation from Myles Standish. Well, you sort of have to read the whole thing to see why I think the press release suggests that Anderson and Nieto believe that the so-called “Pioneer effect” most likely “points to new physics”, while some of their colleagues demur.

If so, my problem is that the most recent review by Anderson and Nieto http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0709.3866 actually states the OPPOSITE view! The last paragraph reads in part: “We therefore have to conclude that it is unlikely that the Pioneer anomaly is caused by new physics”, adding “Stay tuned”. The abstract mentions radiant heating as a likely cause. Anderson and Nieto do stress that “new physics” has nonetheless not yet been decisively ruled out, which seems fair enough to me.

So is this yet another example of a misleading sensationalist slant in an NS article? Or did Anderson and Nieto really say one thing to NS and quite the opposite to their professional colleagues (and other arXiv readers)? Or have they “flipped” within the past few months? (If so, THAT might be mildly newsworthy.)

By the way, right now I don’t much care if we actually INCREASE New Scientist publication by calling out that NS has become a sort of National Enquirer of science “reporting”. The important thing is to ensure that NS is not quoted by major newspapers/media as an authoritative source which provides accurate reporting on current science.

Greg Egan wrote:

an article on Boltzmann brains … which insists that the correct way to estimate cosmological parameters is to take into account the fact that if there were a large number of such conscious beings in the far future, it would “violate the Copernican principle” by making non-Boltzmann brains like us atypical

The funniest thing about this Boltzmann brain baloney is that after convincing themselves that randomly self-forming assemblages of particles having experiences just like ours are not only possible but predominant in an infinite universe, people still seem perfectly sure that they aren’t examples of this phenomenon — and then go ahead to draw conclusions based on both these ‘facts’. For example, the conclusion that the universe can’t really be infinite.

Let us not discuss this further here.