FUN THINGS I'VE DISCOVERED ON THE INTERNET THAT ARE KEEPING ME AWAKE

And can now keep you awake too.

Some late evening this past week, I stumbled across an article called Life is a Braid in Spacetime (on Tumblr, if I had to hazard a guess). Understanding absolutely nothing about theoretical physics, I was immediately impressed by the article's MIT-professor author, Max Tegmark (who is also known in scientific communities as "Mad Max", just FYI, though I will refer to him as Max for the sake of politeness). Max's main claim to fame is his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis -- in his words: "I argue that not only spacetime, but indeed our entire external physical reality, is a mathematical structure, which is by definition an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time." In this particular article, Max attempts to reconcile this view with a messier, less reducible part of universe -- life. To do this, Max imagines each elementary particle of a living being as a thread through spacetime (this is where he gets the imagery of the braid -- see below).

If the image does not settle all your questions, Max offers this rather pithy summary: You're a pattern in spacetime.

I am rather charmed by the suggestion, but I have more questions than ever.

WHO IS MAX? Can we trust him on a matter this important? Splendid questions, dear reader. I, too, have no way of gauging the goodness of theoretical physicists. I have to rely on poorly sampled metadata. Take, for example, this post on the blog, Not Even Wrong. It's rather scathing. Peter Wolt (the blog post author) seems to question Max's membership in the the scientific community (and I can't help but feel that perhaps he does too far in making those suggestions about Max's relationship with his mathematician father). BUT THEN, BUT THEN: here is Max co-authoring a blog post about risk (mis)management in AI research (and the resulting threats to humanity, if singularity is reached) with STEPHEN FREAKING HAWKING (and others). In the Huffington Post. In anticipation of the weekend debut of the then fun, new Johnny Depp movie, Transcendence. Do you think they collaborated on a draft by Google Drive? Did one of them write it, and the others just okayed it? Did Stephen Hawking Google Max before agreeing to work with him? Is this a rare collaboration amongst foes or fun side project for friends??

It's worth noting that Max is one of the co-founders of the Foundational Questions Institute and the Future of Life Institute (which is working with Elon Musk to fund research to keep AI "beneficial"). I don't know what this could possibly mean for Max as a physicist, but hey, the man's got street cred. Max also wrote a paper in 2014 called, "Consciousness as a State of Matter" (read more here). That deserves repeating: CONSCIOUSNESS as a state of MATTER. The abstract uses the word "eigenbasis", so someone else will have to explain the full meaning of this work to me.

Okay, and he made fun of himself on Facebook. Well, technical Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal made fun of him first and he posted it. Maybe Max is pretty okay. At least, he knows.

Did my internet journey end there, you may be wondering (and possibly wishing). NO. It turns out that the magazine that posted Max's "Life is a Braid..." article is FULL of clickbait for Rashida. A sampling of their other work:

It's a freakin' goldmine. You could easily lose weeks (or the better part of a morning) in there. Is the content actually robust scientific journalism? I don't know that I care anymore.

P.S. Several sites (including the good ol' NYTimes) have pointed out that Nautilus received funding from the John Templeton Foundation, an organization viewed by some as having a religious agenda. Um, I'll just leave that thought here.

P.P.S. I went back into my internet history to try to find the post that started this all. Here's the quote that triggered this madness: "Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."

ANOTHER ITEM OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE & UTMOST RELEVANCE

Perfection. Impossible to watch just once. (Source)