Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Yesterday I watched the live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Live action remakes of anime (or anime inspired) shows has been a dodgy proposition over the years, with the 2010 attempt for this franchise being a stark example. I actually enjoy most of them, but historically I'm an outlier. (I should note that … Continue reading Avatar: The Last Airbender: the live actioning
SMBC on how to get access to the secrets of reality. Click through for source and red button caption: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/secrets-2 I guess this is philosophical comic sharing week for me. Somewhat related, I've been slowly working my way through Sean Carroll's The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: space, time, and motion. I know a lot … Continue reading How to study reality
What is the difference between magic and science? It's been a while since I shared an Existential Comic. This one gets at a question we've discussed before, although it's been several years. What exactly is the distinction between the physical and non-physical, in this case between science and magic? Credit: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/537 Corey Mohler, the author, has a … Continue reading Existential Comics: the philosophy of magic
Cosmic voids may cause dark energy, or at least provide an explanation for the Hubble tension. A team of Iranian scientists have proposed that dark energy may not be something inherent to space itself, but the result of cosmic voids, vast regions of the universe between galactic superclusters and filaments with relatively little matter.  Paul … Continue reading Cosmic voids and dark energy
Another year, another 41 posts and 1600 comments. I reminisced about the blog last month on the tenth anniversary post, so I'll spare you any more of it this time. I just want to thank all of you, my online friends, for the interesting conversations we've had this year. I'm looking forward to the next year's discussions and … Continue reading Merry Christmas
A new approach for reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics proposes adding some randomness in general relativity, making it less deterministic on small scales. For several decades, physicists have been trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories, despite each having been empirically validated to several decimal places, contradict each other. The problem … Continue reading What would randomness in general relativity mean?
In this video, Matt O'Dowd tackles the issue of probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. A quick reminder. The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that quantum particles move like waves of possible outcomes that interfere with each other, until a measurement happens, when they appear to collapse to one localized outcome, the … Continue reading Many-worlds, probabilities, and world stacks
My first post on this blog was ten years ago this week. I almost missed the anniversary, but WordPress reminded me about it earlier in the week. I originally started the blog in 2013 for two main reasons. First, I did NaNoWriMo in 2012, but a week into November in 2013, it was obvious I … Continue reading The blogging experience at ten years
https://philosophyandfiction.com/2023/11/01/pigs-and-truffles-giveaway/?page_id=7569 Tina Lee Foresee, a longtime fellow blogger, has a new book coming out: Truth & Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible, by her and her husband, Neal Weiner. From what I understand, it will be on the relationship between language and belief. She's working to promote the book, which is what the pig hunt … Continue reading Tina’s new book on language and belief
This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it. As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, … Continue reading Hello Fediverse!
SelfAwarePatterns 