Timeline for Freeman Dyson's approach to string theory [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 6, 2022 at 1:10 | history | edited | Aidan Rocke | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edit due to Gerry Myerson
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| May 6, 2022 at 0:24 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | @Aidan, the spurious quote has been removed from the St Andrews site, on my advice. By the way, is "Big Bag" supposed to be "Big Bang"? | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 20:23 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | As I said: if you want to ask speculative questions which are less about mathematics and more about ontology/physics, such as "the mathematical structure of the universe emerged from an information-theoretic singularity" please do so separately from the question "Was Freeman Dyson guided by physical intuitions that could have convinced top-notch quantum field theorists of his generation, such as Richard Feynman?" which Carlo has answered. Then those questions can be addressed on their own merits. | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 16:16 | comment | added | Aidan Rocke | @GerryMyerson at present there are a number of reputable sources of mis-attribution, including: mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Erdos/quotations | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 13:30 | comment | added | Aidan Rocke | @GerryMyerson thank you for the clarification. This quote is sometimes shared with amusement by Probabilistic Number Theorists in relation to the fact that Mark Kac asserted that the prime numbers appear to play a game of chance ,as well as the Pair-Correlation Conjecture. This quote appears to have developed a life of its own so it would be an error in equal measure to erase it from memory, as it would be to attribute it to Erdős. | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 13:21 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | Better: see Babai, Pomerance, and Vertesi, The Mathematics of Paul Erdos, Notices of the AMS, Volume 45, #1, January 1998, pages 19 to 31, math.dartmouth.edu/~carlp/PDF/paper114.pdf The story is on page 20. | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 13:05 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | The quote about the primes is often attributed to Erdos, but in fact Carl Pomerance made it up as something that Erdos and Kac could have said. See, e.g., twitter.com/3blue1brown/status/1427708831174303744 | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 10:31 | history | closed |
Gerry Myerson Alex M. Timothy Chow Yemon Choi Emil Jeřábek |
Opinion-based | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 8:37 | comment | added | Aidan Rocke | @YemonChoi these insights are the particular reasons why I consider Dyson's hypothesis relevant. In particular, it is worth noting that the theory of modular forms potentially enters mathematical physics via the analysis of the Pair-Correlation conjecture. | |
| Apr 27, 2022 at 8:35 | history | edited | Aidan Rocke | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
provided reasonable justifications for complementary insights
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| Apr 27, 2022 at 0:54 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I’m voting to close this question because of the speculation "I wonder whether it may not be equally sensible to reconcile quantum theory with the facts of probabilistic number theory where probabilistic events are of a deterministic and frequentist nature" which seems like it should be a separate and much more speculative question than the one answered by @CarloBeenakker | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 13:20 | comment | added | Aidan Rocke | @TimothyChow the answer provided by Carlo Beenakker corresponds precisely to the question I asked. | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 12:50 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | Voted to close; though the topic is interesting, I agree with Gerry Myerson that the question is too vague and open-ended (unless the only question is the literal question of whether Dyson was guided by physical intuition, which Carlo Beenakker seems to have answered). | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 11:33 | answer | added | guest troll | timeline score: 10 | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 9:13 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Apr 24, 2022 at 8:54 | history | edited | YCor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
formatting, changed tags
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| Apr 24, 2022 at 7:58 | vote | accept | Aidan Rocke | ||
| Apr 24, 2022 at 6:44 | answer | added | Carlo Beenakker | timeline score: 22 | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 2:14 | history | edited | Aidan Rocke | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added a bit more motivation
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| Apr 24, 2022 at 1:54 | comment | added | Aidan Rocke | @GerryMyerson at the present moment, a number of influential theoretical physicists(besides Jeffrey Harvey) are taking Freeman Dyson's proposed research program seriously. Historically, behind any serious research program in theoretical physics there are important clues which are a bit more than random speculations. | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 1:49 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 27, 2022 at 10:35 | |||||
| Apr 24, 2022 at 1:46 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | How can anyone here know what would have convinced Feynman of ... of what, exactly? For that matter, how can we know what physical intuitions guided Dyson? The MO format is really not suited for hypothetical speculations. | |
| Apr 24, 2022 at 1:11 | history | asked | Aidan Rocke | CC BY-SA 4.0 |