It’s Not Science Fiction Anymore: The Connection Between Quantum Computers, Teleportation, and Time Crystals (Plus, a Little History)
The long-term promise of reliable quantum computing is hard to overstate. Its potential to cure disease, create much-needed material breakthroughs, and even solve big problems like climate change is not technological bluster, it’s a real possibility. Time crystals are an entirely new form of matter in which particles move forever and don’t lose energy.
The History of Pi (π) – Approximate Past and Quantum Future
Representations of pi (π) help scientists use values that are close to the real thing without having to store a million digits. Creating a new pi required using a series, which is a structured set of terms that either converge to a single expression or diverge. In a new study, physicists use principles of quantum mechanics to build a new model of the abstract concept of π. Or, more accurately, they built a new model that happens to include a cool new representation of π. But what does this mean, and why do we need different representations of π?
Japanese NGO Nihon Hindankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
The 2024 Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese public organization Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating that nuclear weapons should never be used again.” “The outstanding efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the ‘nuclear taboo.’ It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” the official press release said.
Literature Prize awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang “for her richly poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life.” The writer became the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. South Korean writer Han Kang is the 18th woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2016, she won the Booker Prize for her novel The Vegetarian.
Three US citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Economics
The laureates studied the different political and economic systems brought in by European colonizers. As the committee noted, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson “helped us understand differences in well-being across countries.” They demonstrated the importance of institutions for a country’s prosperity and developed theoretical tools that can explain why differences in institutions persist and how institutions can change.
$1 million to anyone who solves one of the 7 hardest math problems in the world – The Riemann Hypothesis
Major breakthroughs in mathematics and science are usually the result of many people working over many years. In 2000, seven mathematical problems were awarded $1 million each, and only one has been solved to date.
Russian philosophy. Ancient Rus’. Romanticism. Slavophilism and Westernism. Philosophy and power
Ancient Russia and philosophy. Any philosophy is a special type of rationality. It combines the functions of scientific knowledge of the world and a worldview that cannot be reduced to just reproducing a certain picture of the world, but includes religious, axiological, ideological attitudes in people’s behavior. But philosophy cannot be reduced to moral didactics, the function of which can be performed by both religion and folk wisdom. In philosophical knowledge, a rational attitude to reality prevails. In addition to the general range of philosophical questions – about what is and what should be – philosophy must assume a unity of method and a developed system of concepts.
Steven Pinker. Destruction of myths about man. Pseudo-evolutionary reverse engineering
The discussions about the relationship between the mental and the physical, discussed in the previous chapters, can be classified as a metaphysical part of the modern philosophy of consciousness. Despite the undoubted productivity of such discussions, some philosophers express doubts about the possibility of achieving positive results in this area and provide arguments in favor of their point of view. For example, K. McGinn believes that the human mind, which arose through the process of natural selection, is simply not designed to resolve questions of this kind.
John Searle. The representational aspect of the concept of intentionality. Mental states
John Searle was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1932. He studied at the University of Wisconsin from 1949 to 1952 and then went to Oxford, where he remained until 1959. That year, he defended his doctorate, returned to the United States, and settled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has worked for more than four decades. In 1967, Searle became a professor at the university and two years later published his first book, Speech Acts: Essays in the Philosophy of Language. It was followed by a number of other monographs and collections of articles, including Expression and Meaning: Studies in Speech Act Theory (1979), Intentionality: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (1983), Mind, Brain, and Science (1984), Rediscovering Consciousness (1992), The Construction of Social Reality (1995), The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), Consciousness and Language (2002), and Mind: A Brief Introduction (2004). Of particular note is Searle’s 1998 book Consciousness, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World, in which he attempted to bring together the main themes of his research.
Daniel Dennett. The functionalist part of the theory of mind. Intentional attitude
Philosophy in the 20th century was dominated by language studies. Gradually, this bias became increasingly pronounced. Being and consciousness dissolved in language, and the world turned out to be a huge text without an Author or a semantic center. Western thought was threatened by relativism and the “deconstruction” of rationality. However, in the last decades of the 20th century, radical changes took place in the philosophical climate. Philosophy was again in demand for its positive function. This was partly due to the rapid development of communication tools and the integration of the world community, which forced people to think about “human universals” against the backdrop of many cultural differences.