RECOMMENDED
Memento
film by Christopher Nolan | 9/10
1984
book by George Orwell | 8/10
Good Omens
book by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman | 7/10
Idoru
book by William Gibson | 7/10
more recommendations
ARTICLES
71 articles by this user (15.5% of 464 articles)
Living at the Fulcrum
"We are living at the most important time in human history..."
Chasm City: a review
"I'm starting to really enjoy
Alastair
Reynolds' books."
2002: A Snail's Odyssey
"A brush with the numinous..."
The Birth of the Elench List
"While we're writing fan-fiction..."
Yet Another Attempt to Explain Quantum Mechanics
"What are the key differences between classical and quantum mechanics?"
Free Will and Explanatory Levels
"My take on "free will" is that it's a useful shorthand."
Argument against an afterlife
"The close correlation of conscious experience with neural activity in
the brain makes the existence of an afterlife extremely unlikely."
Feynman Diagrams
"Feynman diagrams are the basic computational tool used by particle
physicists."
Towards the Singularity
"We can only dimly discern the shape of the future, but one strong
possibility is that it will contain a Vingean Technological
Singularity."
Strange Attractions
"You just can't tell who you'll love and who you won't."
The Life of Rich, Part 1.3
"The clockwork universe."
The Life of Rich, Part 1.1
"The frayed edge of memory."
The Subjective Horizon
added 2001 june 25
Future | 1 comment
"Will our civilisation ever establish colonies around other stars?"
ASCII Art: Mona Lisa
"With apologies to Leonardo Da Vinci..."
When are various Culturniks most active?
"Graphs showing the variation in mean activity of individual Culturniks
over the course of the day."
When is the List most active?
"A graph showing the variation of the average activity of the List over
the course of the day."
VBHT17: The Einstein Field Equations, Part 2
"An account of the Einstein field equations focusing on physical rather
than geometric aspects."
VBHT18: Big Bang Cosmologies
"The basic framework for the physics of the universe on the largest
scales is the family of homogeneous, isotropic cosmological models,
the so-called Big Bang models."
Wormholes and Spaceships
"By transporting wormhole mouths with relativistic spacecraft, we can
build bridges to far away regions of space and time"
Immortality
"Should we strive for immortality?"
Extending the Mind
"Are we close to the limits of possible modes of thought and
experience?"
Wormholes and Time Machines
"Why shouldn't Rich be trusted with wormholes?"
Hilbert Spaces
"A brief description of a type of vector space that's useful in quantum
mechanics."
Rich's Theory of Consciousness
"Why do we experience only some things consciously?"
Is there more than physics?
"Matt said that when his mind generates a sentence there's more than
physics going on, and I replied..."
Relativity, FTL, Wormholes and Causality
"So how do these concepts fit together?"
Searle's Chinese Room
"What's Searle's Chinese Room argument against strong AI?"
Immortality and Evolution
"Would immortality halt evolution?"
Review: Radiohead live
"One of the best bands of our times showcase new songs from
Kid
A and
Amnesiac as well as playing more familiar but no
less wondrous songs.."
Review: The Smashing Pumpkins live
"As the curtain falls we bid you all goodnight..."
Spaceship Combat
"What would realistic spaceship combat be like?"
The Pumping Lemma
"Are all languages regular languages?"
The Planck Length
"Is the Planck length the scale on which spacetime breaks up into foam?"
Objective Randomness
"What's the experimental evidence for objective randomness?"
Charge, Parity and Time
"An important theorem in quantum field theory is the CPT theorem, which
says that reversing the space and time coordinates and interchaning
matter and antimatter leaves all physics the same."
Strings and Things
"A brief account of supersymmetry and string theory."
VBHT0: Overview
"This is the short essay that started off the whole Very Brief History
of Time..."
The Prisoner's Dilemma
"A brief description of a simple yet profound problem in game theory."
The Calculus of Differential Forms
"A mathematical formalism that extends the usual vector calculus."
The Hyperconnected Universe
"A possible but wildly optimistic future..."
Brendan's Expiry Date
"So do Brendans come with a built-in expiry date then?"
The Weirdness of the Future
added 2001 june 21
Future | 2 comments
"What is a minimum bound on how weird the future will be?"
Ontology in the Age of Simulation
"Might we be living in a simulation?"
Disjointed Mutterings About Quantum Mechanics
"More babbling about the formulism of quantum mechanics than any
Culturnik would ever want to read..."
Gamma Ray Bursts
"Gamma ray bursts are mysterious events that are among the most
energetic phenomena in the universe."
Extra Dimensions?
"Physicists just love the idea of extra dimensions. This article is a
brief account of the history and nature of this idea."
The Higgs Boson
"What does this mysterious particle have to do with mass and why is it
important?"
Vacuum Energy
added 2001 june 21
Physics | 1 comment
"An account of vacuum energy, zero-point energy of quantum fields and
the cosmological constant"
The Three Body Problem
"The problem of calculating the motion of three interacting particles
is harder than it looks..."
Interminable Babbling About Consciousness
"Is it possible to migrate your consciousness onto other hardware?"
VBHT16: The Einstein Field Equations, Part 1
"The Einstein field equations are the equations are the equations
linking the geometry of a spacetime to its matter and energy content."
VBHT15: Symmetries and Conservation Laws
"A brief discussion of Noether's theorem connecting symmetries of the
laws of physics with local conservation laws."
VBHT14: Fields
"An account of the idea of classical field equations."
VBHT13: General Relativistic Spacetime
"A description of the curved spacetime of general relativity."
VBHT12: The Equivalence Principle
"The fundamental principle of general relativty, the relativistic
theory of gravitation, is that uniform gravitation and uniform
acceleration are indistinguishable."
VBHT11: Curved Spaces
"A digression into the geometry of curved spaces, a subject that will
prove important in general relativity."
VBHT10: Quantum Field Theory
"An outline of the theory that unites special relativity and quantum
mechanics."
VBHT9: Quantum Nonlocality
"Quantum systems can influence each other over spacelike intervals -
faster than light!"
VBHT8: Indistinguishable Histories, Part 2
"A description of the emergence of classical mechanics as an
approximation to the sum-over-histories formulation of quantum
mechanics."
VBHT7: Indistinguishable Histories, Part 1
"A discussion of the Young's slits experiments and the interference of
indistinguishable histories in quantum mechanics."
VBHT6: Quantum Mechanics
"The second great revolution in modern physics in outline."
VBHT5: Variational Principles
"A brief discussion of the Principle of Stationary Time in optics and
the Principle of Least Action in mechanics."
VBHT4: Special Relativity
"A description of the new Minkowskian spacetime of the special theory
of relativity, including its causal structure, the metric and Lorentz
transformations"
VBHT3: The End of Galilean Relativity
"An account of the experiments carried out in the 19th century that
undermined the Newtonian description of space and time."
VBHT2: Coordinate and Proper Time
"A careful discussion of two different meanings of time that coincide
in Newtonian physics but that are different in relativity."
VBHT1: Newtonian Spacetime
"An outline of the view of space and time before the development of the
theories of relativity."
So what if neutrinos have mass?
"Neutrinos are one of the varieties of elementary particles. For a long
time it was thought that they were massless. Recently, evidence that
neutrinos have mass has been uncovered. What does this mean for
physics?"
book by Vernor Vinge | 9/10
book by Greg Egan | 9/10
book by Greg Bear | 9/10
book by Aldous Huxley | 9/10
book by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler | 9/10
book by Dan Simmons | 9/10
film by Christopher Nolan | 9/10
book by David Mitchell | 9/10
book by Bruce Sterling | 9/10
book by Olaf Stapledon | 9/10
book by Gene Wolfe | 9/10
book by Iain Banks | 9/10
book by Alfred Bester | 9/10
book by Alfred Bester | 9/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 9/10
book by H G Wells | 9/10
book by George Orwell | 8/10
book by Walter Miller | 8/10
book by Vernor Vinge | 8/10
book by Alastair Reynolds | 8/10
book by Iain Banks | 8/10
book by Greg Egan | 8/10
book by George Stewart | 8/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 8/10
book by Masamune Shirow | 8/10
book by Philip Pullman | 8/10
book by Bruce Sterling | 8/10
book by Olaf Stapledon | 8/10
book by Vernor Vinge | 8/10
book by William Gibson | 8/10
book by Greg Egan | 8/10
book by Larry Niven | 8/10
book by Iain Banks | 8/10
book by Ursula Le Guin | 8/10
book by Dan Simmons | 8/10
book by Ursula LeGuin | 8/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 8/10
book by Ken Macleod | 8/10
book by H G Wells | 8/10
book by Iain Banks | 8/10
book by Iain Banks | 8/10
book by Iain Banks | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 7/10
book by Ken Macleod | 7/10
book by Orson Scott Card | 7/10
book by Iain Banks | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 7/10
book by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman | 7/10
book by Frank Herbert | 7/10
book by William Gibson | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 7/10
book by Arthur C. Clarke | 7/10
book by David Brin | 7/10
book by Iain Banks | 7/10
book by Ken Macleod | 7/10
book by Neal Stephenson | 7/10
book by Arthur C. Clarke | 7/10
book by Robert Heinlein | 7/10
book by Ken Macleod | 7/10
book by Ken McLeod | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 7/10
book by Michael Swanwick | 7/10
book by Iain M. Banks | 6/10
book by John Varley | 6/10
book by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle | 6/10
book by Niven, Pournelle, & Barnes | 5/10
more recommendations
71 articles by this user (15.5% of 464 articles)
Future
Book Reviews
Miscellanea | 2 comments
Fiction
Quantum Theory | 1 comment
Quantum Theory
Philosophy | 1 comment
Philosophy
Particles
Future
Fiction
Listees
Listees
Listees
Listees
Future | 1 comment
Culture, The
Art
Listees
Listees
VBHT
VBHT
Relativity
Future
Future
Relativity
Quantum Theory
Philosophy
Philosophy
Relativity
Philosophy
Biology
Music Reviews
Music Reviews
Science Fiction
Computers
Particles
Quantum Theory
Particles
Particles
VBHT
Game Theory
Mathematics
Future
Listees
Future | 2 comments
Philosophy | 1 comment
Quantum Theory
Astrophysics
Physics
Particles
Physics | 1 comment
Physics
Philosophy
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
VBHT
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Particles