Tag Archives: reality

Books

A universe without mathematics is beyond the scope of our imagination

Mathematics is the language of the universe. (Shutterstock)

Peter Watson, Carleton University

Almost 400 years ago, in The Assayer, Galileo wrote: “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe … [But the book] is written in the language of mathematics.” He was much more than an astronomer, and this can almost be thought of as the first writing on the scientific method.

We do not know who first started applying mathematics to scientific study, but it is plausible that it was the Babylonians, who used it to discover the pattern underlying eclipses, nearly 3,000 years ago. But it took 2,500 years and the invention of calculus and Newtonian physics to explain the patterns. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rx-5dCXx1SI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Science Magazine looks at Babylonian clay tablets that contained mathematical formulas that are a precursor to calculus.

Since then, probably every single major scientific discovery has used mathematics in some form, simply because it is far more powerful than any other human language. It is not surprising that this has led many people to claim that mathematics is much more: that the universe is created by a mathematician.

So could we imagine a universe in which mathematics does not work?

The language of mathematics

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that you cannot discuss a concept unless you have the language to describe it.

In any science, and physics in particular, we need to describe concepts that do not map well on to any human language. One can describe an electron, but the moment we start asking questions like “What colour is it?” we start to realize the inadequacies of English.

The colour of an object depends on the wavelengths of light reflected by it, so an electron has no colour, or more accurately, all colours. The question itself is meaningless. But ask “How does an electron behave?” and the answer is, in principle, simple. In 1928, Paul A.M. Dirac wrote down an equation that describes the behaviour of an electron almost perfectly under all circumstances. This does not mean it is simple when we look at the details.

For example, an electron behaves as a tiny magnet. The magnitude can be calculated, but the calculation is horrendously complicated. Explaining an aurora, for example, requires us to understand orbital mechanics, magnetic fields and atomic physics, but at heart, these are just more mathematics.

But it is when we think of the individual that we realize that a human commitment to logical, mathematical thinking goes much deeper. The decision to overtake a slow-moving car does not involve the explicit integration of the equations of motion, but we certainly do it implicitly. A Tesla on autopilot will actually solve them explicitly.

When overtaking a car, a Tesla will explicitly calculate what a human driver processes implicitly. (Shutterstock)

Predicting chaos

So we really should not be surprised that mathematics is not just a language for describing the external world, but in many ways the only one. But just because something can be described mathematically does not mean it can be predicted.

One of the more remarkable discoveries of the last 50 years has been the discovery of “chaotic systems.” These can be apparently simple mathematical systems that cannot be solved precisely. It turns out that many systems are chaotic in this sense. Hurricane tracks in the Caribbean are superficially similar to eclipse tracks, but we cannot predict them precisely with all the power of modern computers.

However, we understand why: the equations that describe weather are intrinsically chaotic, so we can make accurate predictions in the short term, (about 24 hours), but these become increasingly unreliable over days. Similarly, quantum mechanics provides a theory where we know precisely what predictions cannot be made precisely. One can calculate the properties of an electron very accurately, but we cannot predict what an individual one will do.

Hurricanes are obviously intermittent events, and we cannot predict when one will happen in advance. But the mere fact that we cannot predict an event precisely does not mean we cannot describe it when it happens. We can even handle one-off events: it is generally accepted that the universe was created in the Big Bang and we have a remarkably precise theory of that.

Designing social systems

A whole host of social phenomena, from the stock market to revolutions, lack good predictive mathematics, but we can describe what has happened and to some extent construct model systems.

So how about personal relationships? Love may be blind, but relationships are certainly predictable. The vast majority of us choose partners inside our social class and linguistic group, so there is absolutely no doubt that is true in the statistical sense.

But it is also true in the local sense. A host of dating sites make their money by algorithms that at least make some pretence at matching you to your ideal mate. In a TED talk, futurist Amy Webb shows that mathematics actually works in dating algorithms.

A universe that could not be described mathematically would need to be fundamentally irrational and not merely unpredictable. Just because a theory is implausible does not mean we could not describe it mathematically.

But I do not think we live in that universe, and I suspect we cannot imagine a non-mathematical universe.

Peter Watson, Emeritus professor, Physics, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Celebrities, Crypto, Entertainment

Kim Kardashian: Marketing Genius or crypto cash-out?: Kim K Alt-coin ad getting unwanted attention from UK

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

What is the deal with Ethereum Max?  

A post on the celebrity’s instagram stories back in June is now getting some unwelcome attention from the head of U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority Charles Randell.  

Randall called out Kim Kardashian West, in particular, in a speech to the Cambridge International Symposium on Economics Crime as he discussed risks in crypto and the needs for token regulation.

Here’s an excerpt from his speech: “Which brings me on to Kim Kardashian West. When she was recently paid to ask her 250 million Instagram followers to speculate on crypto tokens by ’joining the Ethereum Max Community‘, it may have been the financial promotion with the single biggest audience reach in history.”

The concern is that her ad could have easily been confused with Ethereum.”Ethereum Max” is a newer token created by unknown developers. More importantly the price peak, to date, for the not-ethereum coin coincided with Kim’s Instagram ad going live. She is rumored to receive up to $1 million or more per Instagram post.

Despite the name and the similar look of the logo, its is not affiliated with any of the developers behind the already well established Ethereum digital currency known as “Ether” or ETH. 

Not only that, but her massive payday for boosting the coin coincided with a price crash for the token immediately thereafter. A classic pump-and-dump scenario.

It is unknown if the E-Max founders and her client, or even she herself “double-dipped” and sold on the bump she and her ad orchestrated, but that, along with the potential victims that bought at the high and subsequently were left holding the bag, are exactly what the questions are all about.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) cautioned against “hype” in the marketing of cryptocurrencies, particularly new tokens backed by celebrities that may end up being fake, as reported in The Guardian.

This is where is the big issue arises since this problem is a fairly common one, generally because crypto names are sometimes not copyrighted, and therefore there can be many look-a-likes, and these can often be riddled with higher risks, etc. 

The speculative token hasn’t officially been deemed a scam, however it is quite common for social media influencers to get paid large sums of money by the developers of scam products and services, with little regard to those being “scammed” (that is to say, the general public targeted with the ads) or the total amounts of money lost in “pump-and-dump” schemes. 

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Business, Climate Solutions

Young PR and Ad Professionals Demand Industry Ditch Fossil Fuel Clients

Photo Credit/ Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona / Unsplash

“You had a future, and so should we.”

That’s the first line of an open letter released Tuesday by 71 young professionals and students in the advertising and public relations industry calling for an end to contracts with fossil fuel companies, given their significant contributions to the climate emergency.

“The biggest threat to our future is climate change,” they write. “The world’s 20 biggest polluters are fossil fuel companies, with the entire energy sector responsible for creating 75% of carbon emissions. They are blocking necessary and urgently needed climate action.”

“And our industry is helping them do it,” the young professionals continue. “We’re angry. We’re afraid. And we refuse to sit back and watch it happen.”

The letter is clear in its demand:

“We, tomorrow’s leaders, call on all agencies, from the holding companies to the independent shops, to stop working with fossil fuel clients. This means oil giants as well as the alphabet soup of trade associations and front groups.”

– 71 Young Professionals

“No more marketing climate denial and disinformation” or “setting up fake front groups,” the letter adds, further calling for an end to “amplifying lies about how action will hurt the economy” and “greenwashing oil, gas, and coal companies, aiding them in their attempts to dodge pollution safeguards and block meaningful change.”

The signatories urge everyone in the industry—especially agency heads, founders, and leadership teams—to take a stand against continuing to work with polluters, emphasizing that the climate emergency is already taking a toll.

“We won’t be able to reduce, reuse, recycle our way out of tomorrow’s catastrophe—because it is already happening today,” says the letter, which is open for new signatories through the end of the week. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen the devastating impacts of climate-related disasters, like record-breaking wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes. Bold action is needed, at all levels and segments of society. The time has come for our industry to do its part.”

Fires are devouring swaths of the Western United States, forcing evacuations and shutting down every national forest in California. On Sunday, Hurricane Ida, a “poster child for a climate change-driven disaster,” slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, killing at least four people, leaving more than a million without power amid widespread destruction, and sparking calls for President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.

“At some point in the recent past, climate change was something that was happening in some distant future, and maybe of little concern to most people. Well, that distant future is now today—everyone will experience climate change as a series of horrific front-page photos and videos until they themselves are taking those photos and videos. It’s no longer some abstract threat,” letter leader Joe Cole toldCommon Dreams.

Cole is strategist working with Clean Creatives, a campaign supported by Fossil Free Media that pressures ad and PR agencies to drop fossil fuel accounts.

The letter comes as the New York Times is under fire for allowing fossil fuel industry advertising, thanks to a new campaign and reporting by climate journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter HEATED.

As Atkin reported Monday:

[A] new activist campaign to pressure the Times to stop creating and running fossil fuel ads is launching today. Called Ads Not Fit to Print, the campaign argues that fossil fuel advertisements endanger Times readers’ health in the same way now-banned cigarette ads did—and likely, even more.

“What the Times is doing right now is shameful,” said Genevieve Guenther, whose group End Climate Silence is spearheading the campaign. “On one hand, they’re trying to seem like part of the reality-based community who acknowledges the climate crisis and wants to solve it. On the other, they’re doing everything they can to keep the fossil fuel economy going because it is one of the sources of their own power and they believe in it.”

Activists aren’t the only ones taking issue with this practice, either. In conversations with HEATED over the last week, several current and former Times newsroom employees expressed concerns about the paper’s practice of creating and running fossil fuel ads. Their concerns ranged from undermining the Times‘ own climate reporting, to harming Times readers’ health, to aiding industry attempts to mislead the public about the deadly effects of fossil fuels.

Cole highlighted energy giants’ contributions to planet-heating pollution and told Common Dreams that “these clients are represented by some of the most storied ad agencies in the world like BBDO, Edelman, Ogilvy, and WundermanThompson.”

“These ads go on to be featured in some of the most prominent real estate around the world, from billboards to the NYT,” he said. “Although the tobacco industry was and is responsible for a personal health crisis, the fossil fuel industry is killing the entire planet.”

Praising Times journalists’ work on the climate emergency, Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn tweeted that “the paper should stop doing them—and all of us—a disservice by continuing to make and run ads for fossil fuel corporations.”

In a statement about the letter Tuesday, Cole said that “any time our industry starts to change for the better, it is through a combination of outside and internal pressure. I believe in the power of young professionals in our industry—the leaders of tomorrow—to hasten the necessary transition away from fossil fuel clients.”

The strategist pointed to recent findings that July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded and asserted that “it’s no longer acceptable for agency executives to ignore the damage their work with fossil fuel clients is doing to the planet.”

He argued that “even a single contract with a client like BP, Shell, or Exxon can wipe out the impact of an agency’s sustainability pledge. If agencies are serious about not only protecting the future of their young staff, but recruiting them in the first place they need to begin by transitioning away from fossil fuel work and rejecting new contracts.”

“The people signing this letter truly are the leaders of tomorrow,” Cole added, “and if agencies want to remain relevant, and attractive places to work for top young talent, they need to end their work for the worst polluters on the planet.”

Originally published by JESSICA CORBETT on Common Dreams via Creative Commons

This post has been updated with additional comment from Joe Cole.

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Entertainment, Movies, Videos

Best of the new arrivals Coming to Netflix in June

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Which new series and films are looking like a good bet to stream this month

These days, it seems at times like finding something worth watching, and, more importantly, devoting precious free time to, can be a challenge. Sure, you can just randomly try the next thing in your recommendation queue and take your chances.

We’ve all been there; a tried and true classic we know is pretty good but we’ve seen it three times or a new item, marketed hard by the platform, but of unclear quality or interest. Sometimes you find a gem, by sheer luck. Other times it takes some deep digging to come upon an acceptable risk profile. The last thing we want is to get twenty minutes into a film, or worse yet, a unknown series, and have to “abort plan” due to low quality or just a theme that doesn’t tickle our fancy.

With some luck, and based on prior research and experience, the recommendations below might fit the bill. “Lupin” was a bonafide smash hit and, as any who devoured the first season can attest, once hooked, this series is a top notch binge-fest. Hopefully season two will turn out to be as good.

Based on prerelease buzz, the cast, the concept and the trailer, “Awake” looks quite interesting so far. A bit in the direction of “Bird Box” another big success for Netflix, it will be the differences, rather than the similarities that will be the test.

“Sweet Tooth” is already stirring discord among reviewers and the press. Perhaps due to the “sacred” and known DC Comic origin, and the pedigree of the production team, while the critics wariness could be warranted, it’s interesting enough to give this one a good test run before discounting it out of hand…

Lupin: Part 2– Netflix Original Series – 6/11:

Assane’s quest for revenge against Hubert Pellegrini has torn his family to pieces. With his back to the wall, he now has to think of a new plan, even if it means putting himself in danger.

Awake – 6/9:

Chaos ensues after a global event wipes out all electronics and takes away humankind’s ability to sleep. But Jill (Gina Rodriguez), an ex-soldier with a troubled past, may hold the key to a cure in the form of her own daughter.

Sweet Tooth – 6/4:

Based on the beloved DC Comic, and Executive Produced by Susan Downey & Robert Downey Jr., Sweet Tooth is a post-apocalyptic fairytale about a hybrid deer-boy and a wandering loner who embark on an extraordinary adventure. All episodes of Sweet Tooth premiere June 4th, 2021, only on Netflix.

Workin’ Moms (Season 5) – 6/15

Warm, loyal PR executive Kate and her longtime friend, no-nonsense psychiatrist Anne, attend a judgmental mommies’ group, where they meet timid IT tech Jenny and blindly optimistic real estate agent Frankie. The four quickly form an unlikely friendship, sharing struggles of urban motherhood filled with the chaos of toddlers, tantrums, careers, and identity crises, all while trying to achieve the holy grail: a sense of self. 

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Entertainment, Movies, Videos

Check out these new Netflix titles that are live starting this Weekend

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Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Netflix

It’s nearly June and that means new films and shows to stream on Netflix

Every month a kind of sudden house cleaning happens these days at Netflix. out go the “old” but sometimes classic films and in come a batch of new shows and movies. Sometimes a new season of an established show like The Kominsky Method, now already starting season 3, or a long term binger like Lucifer already at season 7!

Also there’s a film that’s only now getting to Netflix’s streaming availability like Collateral Beauty, which admittedly has a funny name, what? Is it like “American Beauty but with collateral? Or do collateral “damage” victims suddenly get very beautiful? Well, with Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Keira Knightley all showing up, perhaps it’s worth a bit of your time to try to solve that riddle.

The Kominsky Method – Season 3:

The third and final season is here. The show will be leaving with a bang with six Emmy nominations. Although its often sad to see a great series end, with the finality of any show, you are able to binge 1-2-3 seasons all in one go. Another bonus is the all-star cameos for the season which include Morgan Freeman and Barry Levinson.

The show follows the once-famous, now aging acting coach Sandy Kominsky played by Michael Douglas. Alongside him his longtime agent Norman Newlander played by Alan Arkin. The two navigate their later years together and all the crazy curveballs thrown out them, all the while, keeping each other laughing.

Lucifer- Season 5 / Part 2 :

Don’t sleep on Lucifer. It does not disappoint. Netflix picking up the show when it was cancelled from Fox appears to be right on the money. The show has been doing so well that Lucifer will be renewed for a 6th season. Fans know that it has felt like a considerably “long” time since the Part 1 of Season 5 initially dropped on Netflix (back in August 21, 2020). Now the final half of the season, with another 8 episodes will be available May 28.

The show, which originally was released in 2016 aired on Fox until 2018. The series follows, well, Lucifer Morningstar, the original fallen angel, who becomes dissatisfied with spending his life in hell and comes to live in Los Angeles. Lucifer runs the nightclub LUX as well as working as a consultant to the police. He loves indulging in the pleasures of women, drinking and nightlife. Yet after a murder takes place outside his club, something changes him, awakening the buried feelings of what he thinks is compassion and empathy, ultimately begging Lucifer to wonder if there is hope for HIS soul. 

Collateral Beauty:

The 2016 drama/romance film is another title dropping on the streaming platform Friday. I honestly had not heard of the movie, yet there are some big name stars that definitely make me interested to add this to the weekend watch cue. The cast includes: Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Keira Knightley.

The movie follows, Will Smith who plays a successful New York executive, who after suffering a tragic loss, retreats from his life. As a way to search for meaning, he begins to write letters addressed to Love, Time, and Death. The notes end up bringing about unexpected and revealing responses to how love, time and death connect to every human being on Earth.  

Dog Gone Trouble:

If you are looking for more of a light and fluffy, feel-good, goofy movie, look no further. The animated film was originally released in 2019 under the title “Trouble”. Netflix acquired the rights under the new name “Dog Gone Trouble”.  

A pampered dog name Trouble has his world turned around when his owner passes away and he finds himself lost. He has to figure out how to survive big-city life and all the adventures that come along with it.  Voices by Big Sean, Lucy Hale, Wilmer Valderrama, Snoop Dogg, Betty White.

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Entertainment, Movies, Videos

Last call to watch these Movies before they leave Netflix by February 28th

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Going, going, soon to be gone!

With the incredibly ambitious 2021 lineup for Netflix, that boasts 71 titles this year alone, means that the streaming platform has to make way for a fresh slate of incoming TV show and movies.  

However, even as they add so many new titles, each month, a few dozen movies are no longer available to watch. Before the start of the new month, check out the library of titles below that will be gone by March 1. This list has a variety of genres, both newer and classic oldies. So check the list and there are some of these titles you haven’t seen yet, now is the perfect time, before it’s too late!

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2 Alone in Paris (2008)

28 Days (2000)

A Perfect Ending (2012)

A Walk to Remember (2002)

All About the Benjamins (2002)

Always a Bridesmaid (2019)

An Interview with God (2018)

Are We There Yet? (2005)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Don Verdean (2015)

Easy A :

https://trailers.apple.com/movies/sony/easya/easya-tlr1_h1080p.mov

Goodfellas:

Gran Torino (2008)

Haunting on Fraternity Row (2018)

Haywire (2011)

Kill Hitler! The Luck of the Devil (2015)

LA 92 (2017)

Little Nicky (2000)

My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Friendship Games (2015)

Night Fare (2015)

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Oceans Thirteen:

https://trailers.apple.com/movies/wb/oceans_13/oceans_13-tlr2a_h1080p.mov

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

Retribution (2015)

Room for Rent (2017)

Saving Mr. Banks:

https://movietrailers.apple.com/movies/disney/savingmrbanks/savingmrbanks-tlr1_h1080p.mov

Shuddhi (2017)

Sleepover (2004)

The Gift (2015)

Wakefield (2016)

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