Isadore Singer
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Ed Witten has no Nobel Prize.
Now tell me again how this era's physics just feels different because we are too close to it.
So @orzelc the Quetion is: "Is this likely the first era of fundamental physics that could produce a 55+ Witten nonlaureate?"
My friend @orzelc asks: "do you consider Wheeler to be in Witten's class?" Short answer is no. But I never went 1-1 with a young Wheeler.
The nonphysicist disagrees w/ @orzelc. Wheeler lived through the whole build up of the Standard Model. Ed would have pounced repeatedly.
To @orzelc: in your life you'll see Paris and the Taj Mahal. Make sure you meet all the great minds. Go see Ed. He's part human.
And what about Jim Simons? Other than Chern Simons he did amazing stuff. Wu-Yang ...and that holonomy theorem of Berger was first rate.
Anyone else appreciate that Jim Simons redoing Berger's list of holonomy groups to prove intrinsic sphere transitivity? An artist's theorem.
Someone else I admire: Dan Freed at Austin. Dan never gets all the credit he deserves. Every paper nails some loose end for the community.
In Econ. Krugman is the master chef who can start with deadly pufferfish and dependably prepare elegant fugu thats safe to eat.
Scientists' scientists: Isadore Singer, giant of geometry and mathematical physics. Video:
Sometimes people take pride in being self taught. But in my case this is defensive.
I would have been honored to have been a part of a chain. I just never found my mentor in time. Isadore Singer should have been my advisor.
Here is Herbie on Miles Davis:
If you arenāt lucky enough to find a master, as Herbie says, who can lead you to your own voice, you need to be your own advisor and there are so many problems youāll have to overcome because you are always living in your own blind spot.
Itās an inferior road. But itās possible.
I donāt know that Iāve spoken publicly about it like this. So Iām trying it out. This is real Kung Fu Panda stuff.
It bothers me that Raoul Bott is listed as my supervisor on my Wikipedia entry. He wasnāt.
What he was, was my hero who rescued me. A far more impressive role.
Iām considering telling the story but Iāve never felt comfortable telling it in public. We oddly resent those who rescue us; Iāll never know if I could have done it alone. Knowing me, he essentially tricked me into accepting help to spare me the wound to my pride. A great man. š
Tom Lehrer
Noam Elkies
@LauraDeming
@MarcusduSautoy
@patrickc
@lishali88
@peterthiel
@thegoodtomchi*
@SamHarrisOrg
@joerogan
@tylercowen
@MsMelChen
James Simons
Jared Diamond
@StephenAtHome
@tferriss
@FutureJurvetson
@naval
Jimmy Kaltreider
@mkonnikova
@pmarca
Etc...
[no family]
Who's the most knowledgeable person you can think of? Think of "knowledgeable" as 2D space: it factors in both horizontal breadth across a wide range of topics and vertical depth within those topics. Who are some people whose knowledge covers an extraordinary amount of 2D space?
Freeman Dyson
@brookedallas
Sydney Coleman
@adamgazz
@balajis
@stephstem
Kevin Harrington
Jordan Greenhall
Daniel Schmachtenberger
@nntaleb
@annakhachiyan
@seanonolennon
@DavidYezzi
Raoul Bott
@DouglasKMurray
@jordanbpeterson
Isadore Singer
R Gomory
R Feynman
And on & on & on...
Isadore Singer & Raoul Bott worked in almost exactly the same area. They collaborated with exactly the same people. They worked in adjacent zip codes (02138 vs 02139). They both had claims to the "greatest topological theorem" of the 20th century.
They never co-authored a paper.
I've known only three minds personally who I'm convinced will be discussed 1000 years from now if humans survive: James Watson, Raoul Bott and Isadore Singer (I met Atiyah & Witten but did not know them).
Is & Raoul however both collaborated on my rescue in Graduate school.
Perhaps with both of these giants now gone it is time to tell my story. I'm not sure. I have never told it publicly in full. But they both are heroic men beyond being great minds.
Had they surmounted their personal difficulties their collaborations could have changed the world.
They worked down the same street. I was at times a ping pong ball they sent back & forth between Building 2 at MIT & Harvard Science Center rm 508 (I think) along a 45 minute walk. I very much respected that they chose not to air any difficulties. They had respect for each other.
One reason I largely kept quiet about my story is respect for both men. They both defended and believed in the system. But, in part they believed in it BECAUSE they were so powerful that they could act as an underground railroad when that system failed:
So, in part, I'm their collaboration. Raoul was not my advisor. He had no real idea what I was doing. But he was far more than that. Is was my shtarker. My ace in the hole. They worked as a team to help me; their failure to talk directly was the main clue I had of anything amiss.
Lastly, there is the matter of my wedding. Is came to our event but I didn't invite Raoul. I did not understand what he had done for me. It is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. When the internet tries to insist to me that I am his student, I want to tell them what happend.
The truth is that I would have been proud to be the student of Raoul Bott. I would have a storied lineage to claim.
The truth is Raoul gave me his name for a self-advised thesis. And like a fool I resented it. Yet how much greater is the man who lends his last name to a Bastard.
In any event. I miss Is very much, but never expected to see him again. And I'm wrestling w the idea that I'm now free to tell my own story after 25yrs of saying very little in public. One of the reasons I don't take kindly to internet warfare is that I have large debts to pay.
The more I subject myself to mindless politics, catfighting, shadowbanning & trolling, the harder it is to fight for others/myself and to pay the debts to the giants who rescued me along my way. I don't know how I'd have done w/o them.
But I needed to grow this voice to do it.
Lastly, I used to have a relationship to a very different @nytimes. Thus when I read Is' obituarty I was shocked to see @julierehmeyer's beautiful tribute including my own quotes on Is. It made me sad to think about how much has been lost. Sadly, those quotes came from long ago.
If you haven't read her piece, I think it is quite moving even though it is no more than a sketch. End.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/science/isadore-singer-dead.html
[Not to be crass: but I can usually tell within the 1st minute what is happening to the throttling of my tweets: this is not being widely seen. I'm trying to say something meaningful about a departed friend @jack. Could you please take a personal interest & stop the throttling?!]
Dear @michaelshermer,
Thanks for this. Very sober. I myself also donāt find the authenticated videos so far released compelling. But I do find your challenge of āno isolated discontinuous innovationā quite interesting!
Might I propose a friendly debate among friendly skeptics?
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/
First of all, I am concerned that the paradigm of being scientifically or technologically ācenturies aheadā is all wrong. This came up in a phone call with our buddy @SamHarrisOrg.
Q: How many centuries ahead is 1952-3 from 1900? Iād have guessed āmanyā (not .5) and been wrong.
Next challenge: doesnāt your line of reasoning prove that āRenaissance Technologiesā 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.
Now Iāve had the odd question about Renaissance (front not fraud) for just this reason. But either way, itās 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.
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.
You are, to me, arguing powerfully that certain people canāt exist: Rodney Mullen, Edward Van Halen, Bob Beamon, Dick Fosbury, Hiroji Satoh, Satoshi Nakamoto, etc.
They all exhibited the āa little unlocks a lotā paradigm with Zero-Day exploits that were each decisive.
And that brings us to theoretical physics. Beginning around 1982 , the son of the worldās 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?
Itās 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.
But itās 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 š.
Now let me show you how I could get discontinuous innovation if I were China or Russia. I donāt know those systems as well so Iāll 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 wouldnāt.
If I thought like CCP, Iād 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.
[Digression: If the US were smarter, weād 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..]
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. š¤·āāļø
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.
You donāt 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.
Which is to say weāre not monitoring. Maybe we think thatās 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 theyāre right? Price the Type I & II error. Nuts.
Discontinuous innovation is always unlikely. But never impossible.
We are both skeptics. But this UFO story is weird beyond belief Michael. I canāt think of a single story to fit to these reports Iām hearing about.
I welcome your thoughts. As always.
Warm regards,
Eric