Chemical Rockets
On X
2021
I am not looking to âEscape Earthâ. I want to escape running a single undiversified experiment in human consciousness survivability.
Where I appear to differ w @elonmusk is just that I donât yet see the claimed diversity benefit from Mars via Rockets. But I may not get his plan.
Open to other ideas of course. Just havenât heard enough that sound plausible.
The idea that we canât spend money on trying to diversify humanity beyond one planetary surface with nukes, bio hacking & climate issues until we have solved problems here is ludicrous.
By the same token, rockets canât be the answer to spacefaring. Our solar neighborhood sucks.
Physics may not work, but new physics is our best hope. And we donât even believe that story anymore.
Itâs as if weâve got one really nice house, one shack and one lean-to. Itâs like deciding that if the US doesnât work out we can move to Rockall if we just spruce it up or Sealand.
And thatâs not even the main problem. The problem is even *that* is not sufficiently diversified.
Iâm usually see @elonmusk as one of the few seeing our long game. This feels bizarre so Iâm not getting something.
Why do #BTC only to undo it in the face of the easily foreseeable? This and focus on Rocket propulsion(?) over fundamental physics are 2 things I clearly donât get.
*I
So I get taking #btc. And I get not taking #btc. But not doing it to undo it over energy(?) concerns.
With Rockets, you can maybe get Mars/Moon for planetary diversification. Thatâs *not* enough even *if* you get it done (a huge âifâ).
Relativity is what must be superceded.
Makes sense. I guess. Sorta. Itâs just super disappointing that we arenât focused on actually saving ourselves.
And slightly bewildering. If not @elonmusk who?? Jim Simons? Yuri Milner? Anyone?
There is no one with both the vision & money to organize this.
Oh well. Onward...
My issue has been âHow can the richest man worried that we have to preserve human consciousness focus on Rockets(?)&Mars, when he has a physics background & the ability to personally lead an attack on getting beyond Einsteinâs limits?â
Thinking: âSo, survival isnât real either?â
I mean obviously our government and science establishment should be the ones leading this...but that currently makes no sense in their degraded states.
The universities could do it. But they are too degraded.
Perhaps China is the only capable player left in the game. Sad if so.
I think thatâs great. Where we differ is that I donât think Earth, our Moon & Mars plus space stations connected by rockets give us much real diversity. Itâs barely doable. But assume you could make it work. I would want to run 1000s of uncorrelated experiments as most will fail.
Letâs be clear about this weird sounding issue.
@elonmusk is one of the only minds properly focused in public on the issue of the current danger to human consciousness from having all known intelligent life in the universe on a single terrestrial surface. His top idea: rockets.
But yes, he believes. In fun. In hope. In ending the epidemic of learned helplessness that has infected everyone else. So Iâm a pretty die hard Elon supporter. Not because I agree w/ everything. But he gets **the** big issue right. We need to end the single correlated experiment.
And if we are stuck in this solar system with the physics we know there is only one good surface and two marginal ones.
Faster than light spacetime travel is bullshit. But going beyond Einstein is not.
Itâs unbelievably hard, but everything Elon does is hard. Like hope.
But because Elon is so smart, I donât discount the idea that he isnât interested in finding out if post-Einsteinian physics for some reason. I just doesnât add up to me, but maybe he knows something I donât. But north of $100B w/ his knowledge of physics, he could change it all.
Now he may have a reason. But I have never heard him address this so it just makes no sense to me. No one is taking the need to go beyond Einstein seriously so we are pretty much trapped here in this solar system with the physics we know. That means three terrestrial surfaces.
So on the main issue we agree. The second issue is where we differ. A multi multi billionaire (12 digits!) as smart as Elon w a physics background could diversify & place a small 2nd bet on rendering General Relativity a mere effective theory by single handedly fixing physics.
I just want to know why no one asks this question. Lex could do it. Joe could do it. But he doesnât seem to address it so I have no idea what is going on. Itâs not some special insight of mine. Our best hope for his stated dream is new physics. And making physics rich is cheap.
And the two multi billionaires I believe have the best technical chops to do this are Jim Simons and Elon Musk. But no one wants to build institutions that can do this because our institutions havenât worked well enough since the Apollo program. So, Iâm hopeful he gets asked.
Now that doesnât strike me as a small ask. Itâs a big bill. But it is also our best hope. Imagine COVID was radioactive fallout from a serious nuclear exchange and compute half lives. Or imagine a climate disaster.
Elon shouldnât have to do this. But government canât anymore.
Imagine you wanted to pay 2m salary to all the top 50 theorists in the world for 10 years to get them all to move to a couple of centers to free them from careerist temptations so they could at last swing for the fences. The salaries would be about 0.005 of current net worth.
- OccupyMars is good, but #FreeThePhysicists isnât even as popular as #FreeTheNipple or #FreeBeer
Take a look around you. Much as I love it, this place is likely going to blow.
Elon is right: time to diversify. And we need to have fun if we are going to be saving ourselves. đ
There isnât much left that works in this area. Iâm still betting on Elon making sense. Itâs one of our last really good hopes. And returning fun and mischief to public spirited scientific attempts to âpreserve the light of human consciousnessâ is something Iâm 100% behind.
Either way I want to encourage him. But I want to know why rockets over physics. Why not both? Why is a physics guy w a HUGE risk appetite not trying to do for Einstein & his speed limit what Einstein did for Newtonâs Gravity? If you know the answer, Iâd love to know it as well.
@finaltoe Physics is subject to survivor bias in a system of perverse incentives. We induce physicists to work within failed paradigms if they want to eat or house their families. Itâs an insane thing to do. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we take away their independence.
@jetpen No one sane wants to have to lean on time dilation for the reason you state.
But I *formally* agree.
@AndrewS65627884 Sure: @elonmusk, you have an open invitation to talk whenever you want. In confidence if preferable. On a podcast if desired.
No reply needed. Keep doing you.
@agoonforhire Thank you for this!
Itâs not that Iâm not interested in stewardship of planet earth. Itâs that we canât rid ourselves of people who should *never* have power achieving god-like ability to screw up everything. Like the @EcoHealthNYC and/or PRC may have with their virus tinkering god-complex in Wuhan.
COVID could be climate destruction. It could be ocean poisoning. It could be nuclear fallout. It represents how what happens in one location will no longer stay there. It will get everywhere.
At this point we have physics, rockets & isolation if we want to avoid one shared fate.
What do PostEinsteinian physics, @elonmuskâs Mars agenda & the still COVID-free super remote Island of St Helena have in common?
COVID is a test showing there to be almost no true diversity on đ left. They are 3 paths to escaping our shared fate when our human leaders screw up.
Iâm overjoyed that St Helena has made it this far with 5k souls, flights, shipping & no Covid. But their strategy can work with viruses in a way it cannot with nuclear fallout. Plus, theyâre not truly self sufficient in any way.
The rich planning escapes arenât thinking clearly.
So thatâs a large part of why tiny St Helena, @SpaceX and theoretical physics should be watched by all of us. Iâm happy if Elon puts his eggs in SpaceX but if he is serious about what he says on saving humans, it is crazy not to save all of theoretical physics as a side project.
That leaves post-Einsteinian physics. And our theoretical physics community isnât really even doing fundamental physics anymore as a focus of research. They do physics adjacent mathematics and call it physics if they want to be employed and keep their jobs. And no one steps in.
Stewardship has so-far worked w/ @StHelenaGovt and Covid. Itâs just very extreme and hasnât been effective at isolating larger land masses. Good luck trying to stop billions of people around the world tinkering with the twin nuclei of Cell & Atom as they get easier to manipulate.
So I hope this explains why, in part, Iâm focused on physics, but am also keen on St Helena and @spacex / @elonmusk as well. I even care about people trying to upload us into silicon. Everyone working on diversifying away from a shared fate has my admiration. No matter how crazy.
We need our physics community to work with 4 dimensional, 1+3 signature three generation models again and to stop pretending that they are doing physics when they work exclusively on toy models over a career. And we need to insulate them. Itâs insane to nickel & dime our top đ§ s.
@Liv_Boeree Iâd look at @peterwoit, @garrettlisi, @stephen_wolfram, Nima, @DavidDeutschOxf, @FQXi, @penrose, @JulianBarbour, myself and others who are trying new things. @DrBrianKeating and Curt Jaimangul are talking about this on their podcasts. @skdh seeks to be a counterweight to hype.
@PeterMcCormack @Breedlove22 You don't need to hustle.
@Liv_Boeree @peterwoit @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DavidDeutschOxf @FQXi @penrose @JulianBarbour @DrBrianKeating @skdh Anytime Liv.
@elonmusk, point blank: why not save the independence of physics so that it can attempt not to break the speed of light, but to render Einstein an *effective* theory. We canât use rockets to do much. We are talking pennies to you. I just donât get it. Why is this even an ask????
Finally. (Yes)**100
We should talk. But you should also be talking to @stephen_wolfram, @DavidDeutschOxf, @notevenwrong (Woit), Penrose, @garrettlisi, Julian Barbour, to say nothing of Nima, Lisa, Ed, Juan, Nati, etc. Our window is closing from groupthink and neglect.
But you do you. And good luck!
$100m for theoretical physics. Just explain to me why this isnât obvious. Do rockets all you want.
I simply donât believe that $10B is worth that much to you. Surely you have bigger dreams for your own fieldâs hope of solving the problem you talk about all the time.
It may be a waste of money. But it is far more likely to render Einsteinâs speed limit irrelevant in a deeper theory, than it is to terraform Mars and stay in this regime of hopelessness. You could dwarf the @the_IAS. Send a jolt of optimism to end the postmodern nonsense.
Dms open.
@ProNaif No. GR is âTrueâ but as an effective theory. We donât know what happens in a deeper theory.
@ProNaif He knows this.
@benkellyreid The biggest issue is committing to a diverse portfolio of research programs over time.
The less cash, the less time & diversity. So even $1000 dollars helps. But not that much because you want to say âHereâs a commitment that allows a community to take longterm collective risk.â
@benkellyreid If someone says âyou are fully funded for 2 yearsâ I donât know that the recipient takes risk.
Tell someone âYou and 5 colleagues are fully funded for 10 years at levels that cover your opportunity costs.â It gets more expensive given the skill set and itâs use in finance/CS.
@ks_kulk I would imagine. But many people think Relativity is an absolute theory rather than an effective one. Itâs very weird.
@bryce_waddell @stephen_wolfram @DavidDeutschOxf @notevenwrong @garrettlisi Wildly disagree. Resource constraints kept old programs alive which could not make contact with physical reality well past their exploratory honeymoon periods. It is almost 40 years since the G-S anomaly cancellation result. Yet, here we are.
@CameronSepahi @bryce_waddell @stephen_wolfram @DavidDeutschOxf @notevenwrong @garrettlisi When did this happen? Show me. I must have missed that one.
@CameronSepahi @bryce_waddell @stephen_wolfram @DavidDeutschOxf @notevenwrong @garrettlisi Open to this. But letâs not declare victory just yet.
@elonmusk Do you yourself have a fundamental theory? Do you have a theory group working on a T.O.E.?
It would make sense with your background and attempts to keep us from self-extinguishing. If it is quiet, there is no need to answer. If not, it would be great to know. Thx.
@very_real_guy @elonmusk He had made other noises. Mostly itâs rockets, crypto, batteries and engineering. But there is more going on. He clearly knows that Mars ainât gonna be sufficient. I canât shake the feeling he deeply gets it at another level from public Elon which is more cryptic and chaotic.
@NotoriousMHB @elonmusk People always say thatâŠÂ ;-) https://t.co/MuRZC2IFIb
@very_real_guy @elonmusk Elon and I barely intersect despite many common friends and colleagues. Donât know him at all so I canât comment. But he has dropped more than one knowing comment about advanced physics theory (e.g. 6-dimensional superconformal field theory) like he is signaling. Maybe nothing.đ€·ââïž
Iâve been perfectly consistent to the point of perseveration. And we are here now.
The Portal wasnât a show. The show was just the vehicle. Go listen again. Start with the essay in front of the Ross Douthat episode maybe.
I canât help you. Many want to play games. I donât. đ
Twin Nuclei Problem:
COVID-19 Furin Cleavage Site: likely to do with understanding the Nucleus of the cell and its Nucelic acids.
Russia Invading Ukraine: a thermonuclear nation weaponizing the strong force fusion of the other nucleus (of the atom).
I understand many of you canât handle the idea that we BOTH have to support our leadership in a crisis AND *simultaneously* pressure them to step aside as too old, out of touch and militarily / technically incapable of handling the Twin Nuclei Problem.
Maybe follow someone else.
COVID and Russia as the Twin Nuclei Problem: listen again with fresh ears and an open mind.
@jbdaughtry Will not be the first time. But, as someone who has talked about civil disobedience and pressuring the octogenarians to resign, consider what I am saying.
@nostaticzone @elonmusk No. He is partially aware (Iâm told) and physically knowledgeable, but curiously focused on rockets. At least so far.
Feel free to say such insulting things powered by semiconductors, transmitted over the WWW, encrypted by Elliptic Curves, carried to you via Electromagnetic Radiation after 70 years of peace brought to you by the Teller Ulam design while you navigate by GPS.
It sounds so clever.
Time to see whether we can diversify off this planet via physics rather than rockets. Onwards.
2022
It is far more likely that we will voyage the cosmos using new science, than that we will make Mars inhabitable using rocketry.
It canât be clearer. I canât be clearer.
Get science back on track.
Itâs time to try, because itâs time to leave.
We are the first people in hundreds of years to allow known physics to crush our spirit at scale. We made one crazy bet on string theorists 40yrs ago and suddenly we now all give up? I wish I understood this better. Never, never, never give up.
How strangeâŠ.well, back to work.
@cornettd We will build tunnels.
We will build chemical rockets.
That is not in doubt.
Only the other part is in doubt.
@jimmyjandal @elonmusk With Putin in Ukraine? I would restart it in a heartbeat to discuss how we really get off this one sphere to diversify our bet. Not my call however.
Under Newton, we were free to explore the cosmos: 1686-1905.
Einstein then enforced house arrest to our solar system:1905-Now.
@elonmusk then said chemical rockets could get us 2 more spheres w Newtonian laws.
But survival hinges on going *beyond* Einstein, not back to Newton.
Iâm not going to complicate the basic story with caveats. Thatâs the basic plot.
Either there is freedom to leave based on new ideas, like GU, or the Einsteinian restrictions will persist.
If they persist; we probably can mildly elongate survival here by decades via wisdom.
But if we can leave to explore the universe by going beyond Einstein, anyone else out there can visit.
This brings us to UFO/UAP. Assuming a distribution of life in the cosmos:: some life is behind us in science, with others ahead.
A (loose) argument then links UAP to survival:
If life is abundant & weâre not the top of the hierarchy (which is reasonable to me), Iâd guess that UAP would be here if that is possible in Einsteinâs successor theories. The absence of UAP is strong but *inconclusive* proof that Einsteinâs restrictions persist in all theory.
Hence my interest in UAP. UAP from distant worlds would be a strong indication that it is possible to diversify our shared risk which is that all known technological life is dependent on one atmosphere linking our three main existential risks:
A) Climate
B) Pathogen
C) Radiation
So if #ufotwitter ever wanted to know why I didnât take #UFO seriously, it was because I thought it was *preposterous* given lack of evidence.
And if #ScienceTwitter wants to know why I spun on a dime, itâs because it IS linked to the post-Einsteinian physics of our survival. đ
@sneakin @elonmusk
@White_Shadow81 I chose alphabetical.
@HaackRick @White_Shadow81 Lexicographical order is âFealtyâ?!
Take a walk outside brother. Not everything is politics. Promise.
@HaackRick @White_Shadow81 Is PCR a Straussian critique of Fauciâs COVID response?
Or is PRC a message to Chinese handlers in Beijing?
We should ask @realclearpolicy. ;-)
@MimeTravel Iâm not. But there is only one way to find out.
2023
Hereâs a little secret. Some (e.g. @elonmusk) search for good human beings who are also great interviewers when their reach is still *small*.
I encourage such hosts not to ask the same questions everyone else does. I then try to help them get bigger by giving them new material.
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As for high âcloutâ podcasts: a good guest remembers who helped them and publicly acknowledges it. The following people really helped me get reach early on.
@tferriss
@samharrisorg
@rubinreport
@joerogan
@bariweiss
@benshapiro
Etc.
Too many of us forget who invested early.
In my world, @joerogan is quietly one of the most generous people in podcasting. Ask anyone. He offered early on to do my podcast. I never wanted to have him on early because heâs SO big. I thought I would build it up first organically before having him on, as he did JRE.
Another weird thing is that the ideal guest is someone you can help get reach who is NOT a household name. I started The Portal with two monster guests. But my 3rd guest was pretty obscure. Why? Because he is wildly important to me: @timurkuran, a super innovative economist.
How do you signal early on that youâre a great podcast investment? I donât knowâŠbut Iâll give you my favorite question when I started that seemed to work ok: âWhat are you tired of talking about & what should I research that you are dying to discuss but somehow never get asked?â
So here is my advice for what it is worth: clout mattersâŠbut NOT the way people assume. The guests you want, mostly want to help you get good and get big. They will do your podcast as a non-transactional investment in you and your future. But you need to be investment worthy.
And thanks for *always* being a great and generous friend. Generosity beats Clout every time because it is so rare in social and new media where mean is everywhere.
Remember: the beginning is the romantic phase. The best part. Canât wait to see what you do. Good luck Nicole!đ
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@Bill_LessThan3 @elonmusk I donât know him, but he is the only person I know who gets the need to diversify humanityâs planetary habitats and is willing to say it in public. So that makes him a pivotal human to me, despite the many flaws we all have. Myself included.
My issue is about chemical rocketry.
@DrDrhello10 My wife @PiaMalaney is senior economist at INET & a Harvard PhD.
@noatishby brought âIn Treatmebtâ to the US & is Israelâs Special Envoy.
@LeahLamarr is killing it as a standup comedian specializing in lighting fast unscripted crowd work.
Etc.
Try lifting each other up, Dr.?
@DrDrhello10 @PiaMalaney @noatishby @LeahLamarr Honest question: How do we stop the epidemic of amazing accomplished women cutting each other down? Okay. I also see dramatic necklines. But I see entrepreneurs. Authors publishing in @Nature. Film makers.
And I see women enjoying themselves as women. And? So? Help me get this.
@Vihmunhoz Like ambush journalism but as a podcast?
@rationaloptmist @elonmusk Huh. People tell me they love our interviews together. Which one of them is lousy?
Pretty sure I was at MIT too. And I am pretty clear that I was interviewed by Lex at MIT in the library building. Didnât seem to be fake.
@armysman30 @tferriss @SamHarrisOrg @RubinReport @joerogan @bariweiss @benshapiro @glennbeck Thanks friend!
@NicoleBehnam @elonmusk When invited.
@DrDrhello10 @PiaMalaney @noatishby @LeahLamarr @Nature *Treatment
in the above.
@witchcliff @DrDrhello10 @PiaMalaney @noatishby @LeahLamarr @Nature Let me ChatGPT that for you:
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@DrDrhello10 @PiaMalaney @noatishby @LeahLamarr Wow. Hard core.
Well good luck to you doctor.
Today May be Considered the 50 year Anniversary of the Stagnation of Particle Physics.
Today Feb 1 marks the appearance of Kobayashi & Maskawa's englargment of the Cabibo Angle to the three generation 3x3 CKM matrix.
That should be cause for celebration. So let us celebrate!
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Unfortunately, it also marks the end of what we can be certain actually is physics.
Imagine if Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" was still the #1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 & Tony Orlando and Dawn were singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon". That, in a nutshell, is fundamental phsyics.
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To be clear, It is not as if there are no Nobel Laureates recognized for fundamental discoveries in particle theory left. I believe we are down to the last 8. Half of them are in their 70s. One in his 80s. Three are nongenarians. Yes. It's that bad. And we're not honest about it.
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So I am celebrating today by pointing out the obvious: maybe it isn't a good idea to have people who haven't made contact with actual fundamental physics telling everyone else what they must and must not do to be members of a club that no longer works according to normal science.
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When you hear about "Peer Review" in this field, you have to understand that the field stopped working. Without nature telling us, we don't actually know who the physicists are any more. We have no idea who is a fundamental physicist. All we know is that what we do doesn't work.
What fundamental physics really is, is (approximately) captured by the table below. In short, if someone is below the age of 70, they may have proven their brilliance and mathematical ability, but they have not proven any ability to make contact with reality as theorists.
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So what went wrong? I will be talking about my understanding of the stagnation this year at a different level. But the single greatest threat to fundamental physics in my estimation is something called "Quantum Gravity" which was really born 70 years ago around 1953.
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I will point out that our experimentalists are in FAR better shape. The massive nature of neutrinos, discovery of gravitational waves, the Higgs field, Intermediate Vector Bosons, Accelerating Expansion of the Universe/Dark Energy are all major successes over the last 50 years.
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To put it bluntly, it is not just that Quantum Gravity doesn't work. It's that you can't comfortably question Quatnum Gravity because the failed investment is on a scale that I think is difficult for us to contemplate. It includes StringTheory, Loop Quantum Gravity, AdS/CFT etc.
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Next Year, will be 40 years of failure for modern StringTheory to ship a product. To be clear and STEELMAN the argument for strings, it *is* a remarkable framework. It is REAL math. It teaches us things no other framework has.
But, it *destroyed* the culture of honest physics.
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It is time to hold conferences dedicated to the issues of groupthink in physics. Why wont our leading voices admit failure? We don't know. Previous generations wanted their students to succeed. But String Theory is dominated by boomers who seem oblivious to danger.
We spent almost 80% of this time being told that ST was a 'Piece of 21st Century Physics that fell into the 20th Century.'
Uh. Bullshit. That is an excuse. It's not clear that it's physics at all.
It's a "Failed piece of 20th Century Physics still hanging around in the 21stC".
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So by all means, let's celebrate. But it is time to ask new voices for wild, dangerous and irresponsible ideas. Peer review failed. Quantum Gravity Failed. Community norms failed. And soon there will be NO ONE LEFT proven to be able to play this game. So what do we do?
If we're going to truly wrestle w/ dark matter, or dark energy, or UAP that supposedly violate our laws of physics (e.g. General Relativity) we can't afford a leaders projecting their fears that THEY have wasted their lives, credibility and students careers on "Quantum Gravity".
Let's put resources in new avenues, theories and theorists that have yet to fail. The next time you hear a theorist telling you about quantum gravity, the multiverse or String theory or Loops or Supersymmetry or AdS/CFT, etc. Ask them the following dangerous question:
As someone who has tried to ask this question, I can tell you that mostly the big programs have granted themselves a science equivalent of 'dipolmatic immunity' from the standards they impose on their intellectual competitors. But from today forward, we must end that game.
We need to spend perhaps 5yrs asking "If the leaders have not succeeded for FIVE DECADES in moving beyond the Standard Model, then why are they leading this field and directing the resources, research, and path forward? What if we listened to those who the leadership push aside?"
"If you haven't succeeded in 50-70 years, what other theories would be viable if we relaxed the standards you have imposed on your competitors given that your theories do not seem to work? What if your Quantum Gravity were subjected to such standards? Would QG be quackery?"đ
Let's honor those who tried before by bringing the same energy they once brought to the attempt to learn our place in the universe. Happy to be corrected. But this is an emergency if we're ever going to go beyond chemical rockets and use physics to take our place among the stars.
"I remember when rock was young...đ¶"
Let's get that energy back, by any means necessary.
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@Pennywi25761697 Many. What areas?
@Seggitorial @martinmbauer Maybe you didnât get the point of Embedded Growth Obligations. Itâs a single point of failure problem. Itâs not a million different problems.
@nu_phases @martinmbauer I actually really enjoyed your list. It was quite varied. It included changes in the understanding of the techniques (e.g. RG) and other advancements. And, as you hint at, it dovetails with my point about the stagnancy of fundamental theory. I do not think all physics stagnated.
@nu_phases @martinmbauer And as per the Renormalization Revolution, a non fundamental result can unlock further fundamental ones as we saw after the late 40s. YM QFT wasnât built in a day after all.
But my point stands along side your point. We donât seem to be able to push the fundamental physics. đ
@Pennywi25761697 For Classical Mechanics, from a math perspective I liked Arnoldâs book.
Physicists all seem to use Jackson for E&M. But I would learn the bundle theoretic version where Maxwell becomes a single equation. GR I found Shlomo Sternbergâs papers and Books very helpful. Or Wald.
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@Pennywi25761697 Also, I have been wanting to check out @seanmcarrollâs books and lectures on introductory topics. He is usually very clear and extremely good at explaining things. I might even start there, but I personally havenât gotten there as of yet so I canât say for sure.
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@elewrockjazz Bring that brain of yours from the keyboard to the black board and weâll get it done.
@elewrockjazz Seconded
Are we still trapped here in this solar system, even after assuming complete knowledge of physics? What do you think?
Q: Given full knowledge of physical law, the Cosmos well beyond the reach of rockets is likely:
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@elonmusk @ZihangDai @xai Finally: science beyond chemical rocketry! Just skipped physics and leapfrogged to AI apparently. Wild.
@5adcru @elonmusk @ZihangDai @xai I am assuming that one of the primary targets of this effort will be physics and resolving the possibility of interstellar travel through basic physics research beyond Einstein.
@asmotek @elonmusk @ZihangDai @xai Nah.
2024
Long digression ahead. Please skip if not generally interested in interplanetary/interstellar issues.
We should hold a competition: who can figure out how to best make this argument and not sound crazy to the general public?
If I were to try to steelman what I find odd about Musk's position, I would say that anyone this smart is tempted to use Mars and Rockets to make "Interplanetary" *not* sound like "Interstellar".
Perhaps I have been uncharitable if this is the case. It seemed self-evident to my mind that anyone smart enough to be able to see the necessity of moving to interplaentary objectives would gamble mostly on post-Einsteinian physics and not rockets as the Moon and Mars are totally inadequate to diversify our risk and that rockets get us little else.
But maybe the issue is that Musk truly understands people and that he has found the best argument to make interplanetary not sound insane. I admit, that I never considered that the point of SpaceX is a gateway to getting normal people to dream about what I have termed "restoring an indefinite human future" which was lost due to thermonuclear innovations of the 1950s.
If humans were rational, a "go for broke" emphasis on finding the theory or theories beyond General Relativity would be our top priority. But somehow this apparently makes no sense to ordinary people who cannot contemplate that the speed of light may not be the last word in a larger theory that contains GR as an effective limit in the sense of field theory.
I listened to this and wondered: is it simply so hard to imagine interplanetary human life as a top funding priority for ordinary people, that Musk has worked backwards from people and not forward from 'interstellar'? After all, his idea of making dorky electric cars cool by emphasizing speed was more about people's cognitive distortions around making EV not sound like golf carts or boring battery specifications.
The thing I never understood was Musk's own zero allocation to post-Einsteinian physics. The best I can figure under this rubric is that someone could believe that the optimal research strategy is to first make make planetary diversification to avoid extinction sound as normal as possible. Mars already sounds crazy and he is clearly struggling here to make the world's most important point.
Sorry to bother many of you with this digression. But I was just touched by how hard it was for him obviously struggling to find any way possible to make such an important point seem sensible. If I have gotten him wrong on this point, then I understand better why he avoids interstellar post-einsteinian physics.
Said differently, perhaps he has figured out that man's first priority is convincing his fellow man that the only sane strategy for long term human survival through diversification is to make the sane goal of interstellar diversification not sound crazy to the people at scale.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is a difference in strategies and that "Occupy Mars" is syntatic sugar for ordinary humans who cannot contemplate interstellar diversification outside of a movie theater. If so, I understand where the difference in emphasis lies.
I may still disagree given my perception of the urgency, but I never considered the idea before seeing this clip. Which, under any circumstance, was my mistake.
I donât think that is right. That is the argument that sounds slightly right. If a grizzly bear is starting to snarl from 100 meters, I donât pick up and comit to the first twig I see. I scan the forest floor and environment while there is still time to think.
But thanks. I got your point.
@DrBrianKeating Since Saint Helena is a great isolated island to practice making a small colony truly independent on a terraformed Mars, why is he not there practicing?
That is not the point my friend. See what I did there? It is a portfolio problem With many zero allocations to be explained.
A question that I find fascinating:
Do you think man is more likely to settle, Terraform and thrive on Mars via advances in Chemical Rockets or advances in Post-Relativity physics?
I don't think it's a slam dunk either way. What do you think?
Humans will first settle Mars via:
I should say that this formulation is inspired by @elonmusk. I myself never focused on Mars. I have never thought much about making our Moon or Mars habitable via Rockets. It seems marginally possible and I have very little to contribute on that issue.
But if I am focused only on the stars, then there is no known engineering problem to solve. And if Elon is focused solely on engineering problems, then we aren't going to the stars without a breakthrough in science. They are simply too far away.
The question then really revolves around the fact that Mars seems BARELY doable...but POSSIBLY doable...with modern engineering alone. A scientific advance might change everything (e.g. economics, degrees of freedom). Or it might prove to us that in every successor theory to Einstein the Speed of Light problem will remain the practical barrer to the stars if it persists to the ultimate Lagrangian. It can't be said until the next theory is proposed, discussed and accepted.
No one knows the answer to the question posed above. I certainly do not and I do not believe Musk does either. But it explains why I believe we need a portfolio of options to get to interplanetary civilization. Even the search for UFOs which may be totally pointless.
But if we don't try, I fear that we perish here with all we have accomplised. Earth is not our home. It is our womb and eventually our tomb. It cannot be otherwise with the world we have built.
Per aspera (and perhaps Mars), ad astra.
My personal guess is that terraforming mars via rockets is too hard a problem. I personally feel we are more likely to find a scientific way out of this solar system and find new exoplanets that are better suited.
But itâs a guess. No one knows. Hence the question on the region of overlap: Mars. We waste time talking past each other .
@JSVoutilainen If you had meaningful post Einsteinian physics and engineering it might make sense to practice using it with a local target.
2025
Many of you are asking me to comment on this video.
I was trying very hard not to do so.
@skdh has not been treated properly by the physics community in my opinion. We are generally in agreement and I recommend her.
She is now bigger by herself than all of @bgreeneâs World Science Festival. And I believe that she has to think through these comments at her new scale.
Bottom Line: @skdh is far more in the right than her critics will acknowledge. But she is now at a new scale and these remarks are misleading in my opinion.
Fundamental Physics is, to me, what Mars and Rockets are to @elonmusk: manâs only hope for long term survival.
My belief is that @skdh is now so negative based on her egregious treatment at the hands of her community that her righteous position is actually endangering physics itself in the era of @DOGE.
I would consider debating her as a friend to give a more positive view.
Her and my tormentors in physics are our enemies basically because they are precarious. And precarious scientists are dangerous. Should we starve them or pay them?
@skdh and I agree that there are a lot of shitty physics folks behaving badly. Sabine is closer to saying cut off the bad scientists. I am closer to saying âWe have a Fauci problem in physics. Get rid of the means by which our âFaucisâ control us by making their colleagues precarious. Wealth is the solution to the ethics crisis in physics. The physics community that brought you the wealth of the modern world cannot be controlled by our Fauciâs. Honor the community by freeing them from economic tyranny and the problem gets solved in a positive manner.â
I despise the cowardly enemies of science, and of Sabine. In my opinion they are bullies and cowards really only because they were wrongly made precarious.
We desperately need our physicists. Free them. Pay them. Free them from our Fauciâs.
I would be happy to debate Sabine (and @bgreene, @seanmcarroll, @michiokaku and others) on this. Itâs literally life and death to me in the long term [See my pinned tweet.] and Sabine is wildly too negative here. Happy to defend this.
đ
I love this place. You see it in everything I talk about.
It is 100 percent serious. I donât want to go to Mars. I want our descendents to survive.
So far as I understand it, @elonmusk is motivated by Mars because he doesnât see physics as viable. So Mars motivates an engineer. It can be attacked today without a change in Einsteinian physics or cracking the Standard Model. He must find physics enervating as it hasnât moved.
I have the inverted reaction. Everyday I think about physics because I think it is doable. In fact, I think we will occupy Mars from Post Einsteinian physics before we get their with chemical rockets. I cannot explain why we have come to opposite conclusions.
I wish we were holding debates and conferences about what we can do to beat the clock as we have billions of eggs in one basket. But it isnât sci fi. I just spoke about the Dark Energy in a physics department.
We are going to attack this one way or the other. And we need more people daring to take this seriously in public.
Our top priority on earth is as clear to me as can be: we must do everything in technical fields to restore our indefinite human future that was lost in November of 1952.
I honestly donât know how anyone comes to a different conclusion. And if @elonmusk and I ever debate it out, I will move to his project if he can convince me chemical rockets are the way to go. I would like to think he would do the same if he became convinced that a change in our laws of physics is likely to work first.
Itâs not about ego. Itâs not about science fiction. It is nakedly about one thing: loving humanity and the quest to restore an indefinite future. And traverse the cosmos.
If no one laughed when you said that, wouldnât you agree that this is the most marvelous use of a life? I think you would.
Then ignore the laughter. Think about it. I trust you will come to the same conclusion.
Thanks!
And, praytell, how would you know what is possible? What princpie are you referring to?
Do you think Einstein is the last word?
Have you tried really thinking this through? I guarantee you that you have not.
We are going to crack physics. Count on it or give me the incredible odds as a wager that come from such a silly negative definitive perspective, so that I and others like me may enrich ourselves from the hubris and defeatism of naysayers on the journey to hope and exploration.
Give me real odds and terms so that we can structure a bet that we are about to crack physics.
I try to be professional and scientific in my enthusiasm, but Iâm not above financially bankrupting all those who dare discourage work on this most central of problems.
Letâs have some fun. No?
My guess is that isnât exactly it. He avoids funding physics which is a huge piece of clue.
think he knows what is up. I donât want to undercut his strategy in public. I think he knows things he doesnât say. Which is fine.
The only thing is that he is making it all about mars. And he knows it is not. It is ultimately about physics and science and not mars and engineering.
But @elonmusk knows things that I do not about the 6Mâs:
Markets
Marketing
Motivation
Money
Men
Mars
so I continue to listen.
Spacetime is the map we have confused for the territory for >100Yrs.
We donât live in spacetime.
Itâs time to put away Strings and Toy models if we are to go beyond General Relativityâs gravity.
The Solar System is an Escape Room.
And itâs time we set out for new worlds.
Scientists and mathematicians urgently need a cutting edge post-Einsteinian Engineering project, the way Mars needs a chemical rocket project.
This is our womb, not our home.
Clouds gather.
Itâs time to leave.
@sluitel34 Bingo.
@sluitel34 GeodesicâŠin GR.
Energy-MomentumâŠin GR.
ExpensiveâŠin GR.
I hear you. We are realistically trapped if we are in GR.
We arenât in GR. That is what I am saying.
@sluitel34 Nope. Everything until the after the dash I totally agreed withâŠbut then it went wrong.
Weâll do quantum computing.
We can do quantum information.
Weâll try fusion.
Weâll fund String Theory.
Weâll do space exploration.
Weâll celebrate chemical rockets.
Weâll have space stations.
Weâll talk meta-materials.
Weâll launch telescopes.
All to starve fundamental physics.
Mark my words: âAnything-But-Physicsâ.
And I badly want to eat those words.
But weâll literally do anything around advancing physics that does not amount to advancing theoretical physics.
Thereâs an âAnything But Actual Theoretical Physicsâ force field shielding us from GR+SM.
Has anyone else noticed how consistent this is? Anyone?
Anything that sounds like theoretical physics, but isnât fundamental physics gets a green light.
This is glaring at this point.
Unmistakeable.
@noah_vandal No
@FreedomR10156 Exactly. It all sounds physicsish.
@beffjezos This is, in my opinion, and with all due respect, rationalization of what is.
We canât get physics back because of X. And X is always bullshit. Always changing.
Respectfully.
@beffjezos I know. I see the same reality.
But we arenât allowed to succeed I think. @pmarca seems to have stumbled on evidence of a deep truth.
2026
I am going to try to say this once clearly at scale. Many people have developed an @elonmusk fetish where they donât take inspiration from Elon to go out and change the world. They wait for Elon to do it. Including in science.
They are now just waiting for Elon to build robots to do all science.Thatâs a defeatist demotivating bet. Itâs anti human.
@elonmusk is astounding. But he is not a research scientist, just as a world altering research scientist like Einstein is not Elon Musk. Einstein could NEVER have done what Musk did. Impossible. They are different intelligences.
So when it comes to science, you canât just mumble âWell, we have Elon!â No shade against Elon, but Itâs a total non-sequitor. Itâs like saying âWe donât need to worry about food or ammunition or shelter because we have an abundant source of the worldâs cleanest water!â
The reason Elon is building rockets to go to Mars despite a slogan of âAd Astraâ is because the SCIENCE hasnât progressed to a point where a world class Technologist / Engineer / Buisness Visionary knows how to dream practically beyond the Moon, Mars and Earth.
And if you just canât think beyond Elon, this about it this way: we are failing Elon.
Elon is part of an ecosystem involving markets, research, engineering, education. supply chains, government, etc. He is not the whole system. And science is at the center of that system. He is able to do what he does because earlier generations invested in planting the trees of science from which he harvests the fruit of technology.
Lastly, betting the worldâs future on one flesh and blood human being to be able to do everything seems like a mental illness to me. And Iâm pretty sure Elon would agree.
Heâs smart, after allâŠ