Category Archives: Favorite Old Posts

The title of the posting is that of Nima Arkani-Hamed’s public lecture last week at the IAS, with the spelling that of the title at the beginning of the video (available here, lower resolution version here). The bulk of the … Continue reading →

One reason for this posting is that exchanges in the comment section of the previous one led me to look into some history, and I found some odd and possibly interesting facts I hadn’t previously known. So, part of this … Continue reading →

There’s a well-known list of high-profile problems in fundamental theoretical physics that have gotten most of the attention of the field during the past few decades (examples would be the problems of quantizing gravity, solving QCD, explaining dark energy, finding … Continue reading →

In recent years, interest in quantum field theory among mathematicians has gone through ups and downs, in a sub-field dependent manner, as ideas rooted in quantum field theory have turned out to be mathematically useful in a variety of contexts. … Continue reading →

It turns out that the Future of Humanity Institute has a blog, and I’m being attacked there by Robin Hanson for my criticism here of the “Simulation Argument” as not science and not belonging in the NYT Science Times. In … Continue reading →

The high point of Friday’s string cosmology workshop here in New York was Witten’s lecture on his new ideas about 2+1 dimensional quantum gravity. I’ll try and reproduce here what I understood from the lecture, but this (2+1 d quantum … Continue reading →

I noticed recently that George Johnson will be journalist in residence and giving a talk on Friday at the KITP in Santa Barbara about “The String Wars”. Somehow I don’t really think that it’s a good thing that this is … Continue reading →