"We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of the machines, or be arrogant and die." - Dr. Norbert Wiener, 1949 newsletter.pessimistsarchive…

Is gravity quantum? It's one of the big open questions in physics. The Bose-Marletto-Vedral experiment, proposed by Chiara Marletto, Vlatko Vedral and colleagues, would test whether gravity alone can entangle two tiny masses. In a new paper with @DavidDeutschOxf, the three FQxI members set out how constructor theory could be put to experimental test. Walkthrough based on art by @ConjectureInst.

By the time Conjecture Institute Fellow @maxdesalle got to the University of Montreal, he was eager to hear what his physics professors would say about the quantum multiverse. “I was very disappointed,” he says. “They were all instrumentalists who viewed quantum mechanics as just a tool to do calculations, make predictions. They didn’t care what it said about what the world was actually like. I’d waited two whole years after reading @DavidDeutschOxf's book to talk to professional physicists about this, and they told me that my questions were too philosophical. It was a bit of a shock.” Fortunately, Maxime would befriend Conjecture Institute Fellows @Sam_kuyp, @CABedardPhysics, and @PaulRRobichaud during his time at university, and the three experienced physicists (technically, Paul is a mathematician whose work applies to physics) welcomed Maxime into the fold. “They were Everettians, like me,” Maxime recalls. “And they brought me into their particular world of physicists, virtually all of whom were realists. Unlike many of the professors around me, Sam, Charles, and Paul actually did care about what our theories actually said about the world.” Maxime’s eventual primer on Many-Worlds quantum theory is far more a testament to his many conversations with Sam, Charles, and Paul than it is to the content of his official university courses. 👇

Somehow, all these are insults: 1. You’re not as smart as you look. 2. You’re smarter than you look. 3. You’re exactly as smart as you look.

“To command consumers by law, to force them to buy only in the national market, is to infringe on their freedom and to forbid them an activity, trade, that is in no way intrinsically immoral; in a word, it is to do them an injustice.” - Frédéric Bastiat

@realzoestrimpel examines the roots of some contemporary anti-Zionist rhetoric, which can be traced back to the Soviet Union’s Cold War-era “Zionology” campaign that portrayed Zionism as a form of racism and sought to spread anti-Zionist ideas in the West and the Arab world. Read her latest column ⬇️ telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09…

But to answer the question directly: Science has (imperfect) institutions of error correction. Indigenous knowledge has institutions of error protection, such as indignation, or "we're both right", or "how do you know", or "you aren't entitled" applied to rival ideas.

How taxes keep you poor. danieljmitchell.wordpress.co…

A radio wave can drive this circuit, and near its resonant frequency, the circuit's oscillation becomes much larger, allowing radio waves at that frequency to be detected. Voilà, a basic radio!

Spotlight Article about Conjecture Institute Fellow @maxdesalle Permissionless Knowledge Creation Maxime’s expertise in physics, mathematics, and Zcash did not come from years of mandated curricula. On the contrary, they come from a relentless pursuit of his interests and a fearlessness in the face of technical details or counterintuitive concepts. He does not have a degree in Zcash, yet he will be the first person on Earth to have written a book about it. He does not have a PhD in physics, yet he may soon publish peer-reviewed articles. Like Zcash and research themselves, Maxime’s labors of love are permissionless. link below👇

One of the implications of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is that there isn't a clean divide between the large world and the small world. ~Conjecture Institute Fellow @Sam_kuyp

AI can solve the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem. But it is nowhere near capable of discovering ideas like this: 𝑖² = 𝑗² = 𝑘² = 𝑖𝑗𝑘 = −1 . Proving conjectures with known methods is a small part of what mathematicians do. Creative vision is everything.

Every one of those possibilities still exists. But we in the West have reduced their probabilities by so much that we can immediately tell that the list is archaic. We are not like our ancestors whose lives were thus overshadowed:

AI has solved some Erdős conjectures, but not others. If we give AI a thousand times the power and time it had so far, it will solve more, but not all. And there is no way to know which ones will be solved in advance, and which one requires new methods or simply to try harder.

Behold the new era of mathematics! May we live a thousand more disruptions!

The Navier-Stokes equation doesn't hold under real circumstances. For example, when fluids spin around fast enough, the pressure in the center of the vortex goes negative, and the fluid discontinuously 'breaks', forming a bubble. This is what would happen if you tried the new solution in real life. It's a strictly mathematical result.

There are genuine AI safety concerns, as with any new technology. But standard accounts of ASI are basically appeals to the supernatural, attract zealots, and get lumped in with more reasonable worries about AI. At this point, a mention of ASI is enough to make me stop reading.