CN Yang

CN Yang

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I have a question about Physicists eating at me. Why is X more famous than Yang where X is not equal to Dirac, Einstein and a few others?

11:01 PM · Oct 6, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I find what CN Yang says about the mid-1970s so important that I keep a constant lookout for any tid-bit about the experiences of 1975-7.

11:25 PM · Oct 6, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I find this tale of a Chinese scientific journey of the ages passing through El Cerrito deeply moving: http://bit.ly/YangChern

11:35 PM · Oct 6, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

"If you can sense vaguely, some of this beauty, do not let go. ... Mills and I ....we saw the beauty." - http://bit.ly/2l6i1q

12:16 AM · Oct 7, 2009

2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

1/ APRIL FOOLS' SCIENCE: Theory into Practice.

I was challenged by someone as to why I wasn't taking my own medicine referenced in the sub-tweet below this April 1st. Ok. Here goes.

What I believe about the universe that is quite different and why I don't talk about it much... https://t.co/RjqRGc5J9m

4:54 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

2/ When I was around 16-17, I learned of a story that fascinated me much more than it seemed to captivate any other mathematician or physicist. It was the story of the discovery of the "Wu-Yang" dictionary around 1975-6, involving 3 super-minds: Jim Simons, CN Yang & Is Singer.

5:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

3/ What was learned was that the Quantum of Planck, Bohr & Dirac was built on an internal Geometry, just as surely as General Relativity was built on an external geometry of space-time. Only the two geometries weren't the same! One was due to B Riemann; the other to C Ehresmann.

5:07 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

4/ Further the 2 geometries had different advantages. Riemann's geometry allowed you to compress the curvature & measure the 'torsion' while Ehresmann's encouraged "Gauge Rotation"... as long as you didn't do either of those two things. So I asked could the geometries be unified?

5:14 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

5/ This would be a change in physics' main question. Instead of asking if Einstein's gravity could fit within Bohr's quantum, we could ask "Could Einstein's structures peculiar to Riemann's geometry be unified & rotated within Ehresmann's?" The answer was almost a 'No!'

Almost.

5:23 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

6/ While physicists said the Universe was known to be chiral, I came to believe it was fundamentally symmetric. While we seemed to observe there being 3 or more generations of matter, I came to believe that there were but 2 true generations, plus an improbable "imposter." etc...

5:37 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

7/ In short a great many things had to be slightly off in our picture of the world in the 1980s to get the two geometric theories into a "Geometric Unity." Then in 1998, it was found that neutrinos weren't massless! This started to tip the scales towards the alterations I needed.

5:45 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

8/ In short the April 1st "trick" that is being played on me is that I see a *natural* theory where chirality would be emergent (not fundamental), the number of true generations would be 2 not 3, there would be 2^4 and not 15 Fermions in a generation, and the geometries unify.

5:49 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

9/ I spoke on this nearly 5 years ago; I have been slow to get back to it as I found the physics response bewildering. I have now decided to return to this work & to disposition it. So over the coming year, I'll begin pushing out "Geometric Unity" (as a non-physicist) to experts. https://t.co/ICSXdNs9D2

6:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

END/ I am sorry that this was a bit technical for lay folks and not technical enough for experts, but it's twitter. I may begin to say more in the weeks and months ahead that may be clarifying.

If you are interested, do stay tuned. Until then, I thank you for your time.

6:06 AM · Apr 2, 2018

2019

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

My personal & overly condensed view of mathematics and physics in the 20th century would be summarized like this.

Mathematics began as a stool on the three legs of Algebra, Calculus, and Geometry where the last appeared to many to be the weakest leg. It turned out otherwise.

5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Repeatedly we find that any important problem from math or physics which we consider to be outside geometry/topology has a hidden geometrical nature to it. And there are only so many times you fall for that before you start to see geometry absolutely everywhere.

5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

As for Weinberg, he is one of three people I can make the case for as our “Greatest Living Physicist”. I’ve met him. But he still has big bets which are undecided (e.g. asymptotic safety). Witten is somehow even smarter but less accomplished in standard predictive theory. But...

5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I would say the one who awes me most is...CN Yang. I don’t understand why I never hear his name as candidate. He has at least 3 of the greatest achievements: chirality for the weak force (w/ Lee), non-Abelian maxwell theory (w/ Mills), and the bundle revolution (w/ Simons/Wu).

5:53 PM · Nov 23, 2019

2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Dear @michaelshermer,

Thanks for this. Very sober. I myself also don’t find the authenticated videos so far released compelling. But I do find your challenge of “no isolated discontinuous innovation” quite interesting!

Might I propose a friendly debate among friendly skeptics?

Michael Shermer

@michaelshermer

Dear @EricRWeinstein Please see my argument for why UAPs cannot be foreign assets capable of physics & aerodynamics attributed to UAPs that if true would be decades or centuries ahead of us. History shows no nations/companies of comp development so lag. https://quillette.com/2021/06/03/understanding-the-unidentified/

10:13 PM · Jun 12, 2021

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

First of all, I am concerned that the paradigm of being scientifically or technologically “centuries ahead” is all wrong. This came up in a phone call with our buddy @SamHarrisOrg.

Q: How many centuries ahead is 1952-3 from 1900? I’d have guessed “many” (not .5) and been wrong.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Next challenge: doesn’t your line of reasoning prove that “Renaissance Technologies” is either a fraud or a front? Their Medallion Fund is otherwise a long term unbreached secret, discontinuous from any other know investment fund seemingly thousands of years ahead of competitors.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Now I’ve had the odd question about Renaissance (front not fraud) for just this reason. But either way, it’s either a counter example to your claims on discontinuous innovation if it is merely a fund or a counter-example to your secrecy claims if it is our secret physics program.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Next: there are really two metrics on innovations.

Metric I: How big the incremental jump in difficulty.

Metric II: How big the jump in what is unlocked.

The great fear is that a small jump measured by 1 leading to an ENORMOUS jump in as measured by II.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

You are, to me, arguing powerfully that certain people can’t exist: Rodney Mullen, Edward Van Halen, Bob Beamon, Dick Fosbury, Hiroji Satoh, Satoshi Nakamoto, etc.

They all exhibited the “a little unlocks a lot” paradigm with Zero-Day exploits that were each decisive.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

And that brings us to theoretical physics. Beginning around 1982 , the son of the world’s top employed anti-gravity researcher(?!) of the 1950s turned in what may be the most impressive 15yr output in the history of the subject by my estimation. How can I begin to explain this?

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

It’s not physics exactly. But Edward Witten w support from a small number of folks rewrote Quantum Field Theory as geometry. If Einstein geometrized gravity, then Witten geometrized Quantum Field theory (everything else).

Now, all that change has so far unlocked exactly nothing.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

But it’s not that nothing happened in physics. While we were pretending that string theory was working, Witten & Co revolutionized our mathematical framework. Think of it as an enormous amount of unrealized gains. Pent up genius & power looking for its 1st application to the 🌎.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

If you gave us E Witten, J Simons, I Singer, CN Yang, M Atiyah, D Quillen & G Segal, in a quiet program in 1975, I could argue that they didn’t need much more. In fact you don’t need all 7 but for the sake of argument I can make the case using this. But Witten is the main engine.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Now let me show you how I could get discontinuous innovation if I were China or Russia. I don’t know those systems as well so I’ll use the US example.

We know most of the top minds. We pretend that there is a lot of subjectivity about this for social reasons but China wouldn’t.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

If I thought like CCP, I’d create a lavish secret theoretical physics program modeled on the Russian Sharashka system. The key would be to get it to look like something else. A boring Tech company or some weird Chinese fund to disguise the reason for the secretive lavish campus.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

[Digression: If the US were smarter, we’d do it by setting up a mythic secret $B hedge fund that employs top differential geometers, theoretical physicists & ML experts by a national lab & an off brand university w/ inexplicably strong geometry & physics. But enough crazy talk..]

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

If CCP could today repeat what Witten (& friends) did building off Geometric Quantum Field Thy, the US would have Zero clue what it unlocks. Even by your own incrementalist theory. It might unlock absolutely nothing. Or passage to the stars via additional degrees of freedom. 🤷‍♂️

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

One last point. I released such a theory. Could well be wrong.

But I can tell you I should have received a call from DOE. Because calls are cheap and relevant trained PhDs are *very* finite. The US should track every geometer, General Relativist, and Particle Theorist working.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

You don’t have to take a position on me or GU. You can ask Wolfram or Lisi or Barbour or Deutsche or anyone outside the system whether such calls are placed. They are not. No one *in* the system believes in wild discontinuous change from *outside* the system. As per your article.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Which is to say we’re not monitoring. Maybe we think that’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. Maybe we think that a Grisha Perelman of physics is impossible.

How much does a phone call cost if a researcher is wrong vs not bothering if they’re right? Price the Type I & II error. Nuts.

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Discontinuous innovation is always unlikely. But never impossible.

We are both skeptics. But this UFO story is weird beyond belief Michael. I can’t think of a single story to fit to these reports I’m hearing about.

I welcome your thoughts. As always.

Warm regards,

Eric

5:40 PM · Jun 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

There were three candidates for world’s greatest living theoretical physicist as I saw it:

A) CN Yang
B) Steven Weinberg
C) Edward Witten

Weinberg was the favorite of many people I respect. I found his writing style to somehow be both clear and impenetrable at the same time.

1:12 PM · Jul 24, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

But what we just lost is one of our few links back to fundamental physicists who did….words fail me…actual work on the physics of the 🌎 we live within.

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that sometime in the last 20 years, we stopped even trying to do fundamental work.

1:12 PM · Jul 24, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I met Steven only once. It was an unremarkable interaction. My impression was that he was so smart that he knew to get out of High Energy Theory for the most part. He dutifully defended string theory at times but voted with his feet and his offbeat ideas like Asymptotic Safety.

1:12 PM · Jul 24, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

I have a very strong emotional connection to Witten’s work and Yang’s. Weinberg always struck me as immensely powerful, but I could never get the sense of “That’s Weinbergian”. That is stylistically rare.

A total genius. But one that I couldn’t understand well enough. Alas. RIP

1:12 PM · Jul 24, 2021

2022

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Pay attention to this. The CCP is watching us destroy our own technical infrastructure. If I were the PRC I would start shopping for top academics who are alienated from their own western Universities.

Yau is an extraordinary mind. Time to wake up.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3175081/chinese-born-maths-genius-leaves-harvard-help-china-become

4:36 PM · Apr 21, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

It may begin with academicians of Chinese origin, but we are mistreating our research system & researchers so badly that it will not be too difficult for Yau to bring over non-Chinese with a promise of being left alone, well paid, fully funded and free from social engineering.

4:36 PM · Apr 21, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Yau is effectively an anchor tenant. The two comparable Chinese mathematicians/physicists have been SS Chern & CN Yang at this high level.

Mark these words: this is a big deal. If China knows how to play this properly, we are going to see our STEM edge frittered & lured away.

4:37 PM · Apr 21, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

Do I blame China? Ha.

No. I envy them.

The only thing we have going for us at the moment is that they haven’t moved more quickly and boldly with more resources. And it’s just a matter of time. We are being idiots.

One man’s opinion anyway.

4:37 PM · Apr 21, 2022

2023

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

It is an interesting question as to who inspires us in physics. Here is a list of 20th century giants whose work inspired me that might work as protagonists with interesting stories that deserve to be considered along with the best known Einstein/Hawking/Oppenheimer/Etc.:

CN Yang (with Lee and Simons)
Paul Dirac
Ernst Stueckelberg
Madame Wu
David Bohm
Abdus Salam
Ken Wilson
Emmy Noether
Ettore Majorana
Carlo Rubio
Shin'ichirō Tomonaga
Lev Landau
Simon Van der Meer
Freeman Dyson
Julian Schwinger
Paul Ehrenfest
John VonNeumann
Feza Gursey
Wolfgang Pauli
Louis and Edward Witten
Hans Bethe
George Sudarshan
Vera Rubin
Gerard 't Hooft

Not all of those stories are…uh…simple.

Would be curious to hear names from others.

4:54 AM · Jul 23, 2023

Sam Altman

@sama

i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that.

let's get that movie made!

(i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.)

5:48 PM · Jul 22, 2023

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

But let’s face facts: inspiration is not the issue. Fundamental Physics needs to be a good life. What is holding us back is:

A) Terrible Pay.

B) Worse Odds of Survival

C) Decoupling of Success at Physics from Success in Physics

D) The Matthew Effect.

E) Math and Physics Pricks

F) Tyranny of large programs over individuals.

G) Multi Decade Stagnation

H) Un Scientific And even Anti-scientific behavior.

I) The Matilde Effect

J) The Sudarshan Effect

K) Ethics Collapse

L) Needlessly long pedagogical sequence (e.g. intro physics -> Classical Mechanics -> Grad Classical Mechanics -> Symplectic Geometry) driven by history.

M) Socializing physics into a team sport in areas dominated by individuals and iconoclasts.

N) Tolerance for Program level failure (e.g. *obsessive* use of toy model physics to evade a reckoning).

O) Intolerance for individual error and failure by those in programs.

P) Failure to reward early contributions (e.g. *Abelian* Chern Simons QFT).

Q) Atrocious MSM journalism distorting the public understanding.

R) Relentless discussion of woo physics in public and 3-5 real topics (e.g. somebodies cat).

S) Learned Helplessness coming from over-learning Ken Wilson.

T) Inability to support motherhood of female physicists.

U) Inability to keep physics marriages easily together with jobs.

V) DEI loyalty oaths and loss of autonomy.

W) Flooding of markets with disposable labor and abuse apprenticeship as labor.

X) Kicking up on attribution.

Y) Overpaying for cherry topping.

Z) Fetishizing the quantum when innovation in classical field theory remains the heart of QFT.

4:55 AM · Jul 23, 2023

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

But lastly, if outsiders want to fund and fix movies, you will find that going to the “Leading physicists” won’t work. Peer review can’t work when the leadership *is* the problem. You get more failure.

You need to hold meetings where you get disagreement. So choose the leaders and iconoclasts with great care. Patrick Collison isn’t terrible at this. B+. Best I have ever seen. Start there. Good luck. 🙏

4:55 AM · Jul 23, 2023

Eric Weinstein

@ericweinstein

So you have my list. It is incomplete and idiosyncratic. I’d love to have your corrections and additions.

So….Where is yours? Thanks again.

5:14 AM · Jul 23, 2023

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