The Death of Quanta Magazine(mateusaraujo.info)
mateusaraujo.info
The Death of Quanta Magazine
https://mateusaraujo.info/2022/12/01/the-death-of-quanta-magazine/
30 comments
Especially science magazines for the general public have a duty to be as factually correct as possible.
This is not only a duty towards the general public, as they should not be deceived and deserve truthful reporting on these subjects. But it is also a duty towards the scientists, as they deserve that their results are presented fairly and accurately towards non-experts.
I have been generally impressed with quanta, as they usually try very hard (far more than most of their genre) to actually report accurately. Scientific reporting is hard, the knowledge gaps between reporter, scientists and audience are usually very large and explaining an extremely difficult concept to non-expert audience is very challenging. But this is no excuse to publish outright nonsense and to be honest publishing outright nonsense was not what I was expecting from quanta.
I have been generally impressed with quanta, as they usually try very hard (far more than most of their genre) to actually report accurately. Scientific reporting is hard, the knowledge gaps between reporter, scientists and audience are usually very large and explaining an extremely difficult concept to non-expert audience is very challenging. But this is no excuse to publish outright nonsense and to be honest publishing outright nonsense was not what I was expecting from quanta.
> just someone getting upset about lack of depth
There’s a difference between a lack of depth and a fabrication.
> relevant specialist knowledge
It’s pretty simple to understand the gist of the problem: modelling something and actually creating it are different things.
> “death” of the magazine
The above notwithstanding, yes, one execrable article cannot kill a publication.
There’s a difference between a lack of depth and a fabrication.
> relevant specialist knowledge
It’s pretty simple to understand the gist of the problem: modelling something and actually creating it are different things.
> “death” of the magazine
The above notwithstanding, yes, one execrable article cannot kill a publication.
> It’s pretty simple to understand the gist of the problem: modelling something
I also think that there is a difference between modelling something, and sparsifying the model calculations so far that what you have left is 164 steps of 2-bit logic gate operations to a 9-bit register.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05424-3
I also think that there is a difference between modelling something, and sparsifying the model calculations so far that what you have left is 164 steps of 2-bit logic gate operations to a 9-bit register.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05424-3
Quanta themselves also put out a few posts on their Mastodon account about how they've changed the wording, and about how they assign credibility: https://mstdn.social/@QuantaMagazine/109439420826151490
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This is not some "glossing over some details for a lay audience" situation. It is not a lack of depth. It makes ridiculous claims, fundamentally misrepresenting what this research is, to make it sound cooler and more interesting. This is one of the worst pieces of science journalism I've ever seen.
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Then leave the original paper as something only appealing to experts. Totally lying about it in order to make it more broadly appealing is pretty bad.
The paper is still there on the Nature website. I assume experts would go to that. Notwithstanding the difficiencies in the Quanta article, it does at least try to examine something that lay readers would otherwise probably not be aware of.
behind a paywall, neither available on arxiv nor scihub
> I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model
But that's the problem. Most people don't understand the underlying science, so they rely on science journalism to distill and explicate complex topics without simplifying and distorting to the point they lose any relationship with the truth. In this case, the writer has failed in their task; they've written a load of nonsense that actively undermines a reader's ability to comprehend the topic—in short, it's bullshit.
But that's the problem. Most people don't understand the underlying science, so they rely on science journalism to distill and explicate complex topics without simplifying and distorting to the point they lose any relationship with the truth. In this case, the writer has failed in their task; they've written a load of nonsense that actively undermines a reader's ability to comprehend the topic—in short, it's bullshit.
I'm not disputing that the Quanta article is factually deficient - although I don't have the relevant specialist knowledge to understand why. I am disputing that this marks the "death" of the magazine.
Purely speaking for myself, but I could tell it was metaphorical.
Given the "magazine" is still operating, and that I read some of the article.
A plain reading of the first four or five paragraphs doesn’t tell me that this is a calculation.
I meant that the magazine is not literally dead, but in the sense of "dead to me".
Not death of magazine. Correct.
But is the distinction between calculation and experiment really specialist knowledge?
But is the distinction between calculation and experiment really specialist knowledge?
barry-cotter(1)
> I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model. Whatever that is.
The particular details aren't important; the problem is "model of X" is not the same as "X". In this case the model happens to be using a quantum computer, and X happens to be (some specific variety of) wormhole.
A couple of analogies:
Writing `new Particle { mass = 0; charge = 0; spin = 2; }` on a computer does not mean gravitons have been discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
The UK cannot avoid an economic recession by pouring water into MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
The particular details aren't important; the problem is "model of X" is not the same as "X". In this case the model happens to be using a quantum computer, and X happens to be (some specific variety of) wormhole.
A couple of analogies:
Writing `new Particle { mass = 0; charge = 0; spin = 2; }` on a computer does not mean gravitons have been discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
The UK cannot avoid an economic recession by pouring water into MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
I agree. Every magazine and newspaper leaves a stinker occasionally. It's not the end of the world. The "it's dead to me because of this one bad article" standard will leave one with no magazines and no newspapers that are worthy.
More important, however, is that the OP's blog post (as I sense it), is actually mimicking hyperbolic attitude of the article it's complaining about. I suspect that Quanta is not "dead" to the author.
Is this his way of b-slapping the editors?
More important, however, is that the OP's blog post (as I sense it), is actually mimicking hyperbolic attitude of the article it's complaining about. I suspect that Quanta is not "dead" to the author.
Is this his way of b-slapping the editors?
"Every magazine and newspaper leaves a stinker occasionally. It's not the end of the world."
May be not but just the same it's an overly-prevalent trend nowadays. For instance, New Scientist is notorious for hyping up stories that amount to little more than our current/general understanding of them—and or the Mag's cover stories or articles' headings are often outright misleading. New Scientist didn't do this decades ago (well, certainly not to the same extent).
Then there's the perennial problem of the sweeping statement without references or further explanation: new phenomena, complex processes etc. are just stated as if it was taken for granted that everyone already understands them in the way we understand, say, what a gram is. This is damn annoying as understanding the article hinges on actually understanding these skipped-over points.
It's not only New Scientist but others too including Quanta that engage in the practice but New Sc. is a past master at it. It seems to me the main reason for this is that the many journalists who engage in the practice don't actually understand the matter themselves and this is why they skip over such explanations (and or they're rewriting stories from press releases without first fully researching them, etc.).
Moreover, either editors are asleep at the wheel for allowing the practice and or they're under commercial pressures to print such crap—profit being more important than science news.
May be not but just the same it's an overly-prevalent trend nowadays. For instance, New Scientist is notorious for hyping up stories that amount to little more than our current/general understanding of them—and or the Mag's cover stories or articles' headings are often outright misleading. New Scientist didn't do this decades ago (well, certainly not to the same extent).
Then there's the perennial problem of the sweeping statement without references or further explanation: new phenomena, complex processes etc. are just stated as if it was taken for granted that everyone already understands them in the way we understand, say, what a gram is. This is damn annoying as understanding the article hinges on actually understanding these skipped-over points.
It's not only New Scientist but others too including Quanta that engage in the practice but New Sc. is a past master at it. It seems to me the main reason for this is that the many journalists who engage in the practice don't actually understand the matter themselves and this is why they skip over such explanations (and or they're rewriting stories from press releases without first fully researching them, etc.).
Moreover, either editors are asleep at the wheel for allowing the practice and or they're under commercial pressures to print such crap—profit being more important than science news.
Please don't misrepresent the OP. The writer does not say he is "upset about lack of depth". His claim is that the Quantum article contains wildly false information.
Specifically, he claims a simulation was presented as an experiment.
Specifically, he claims a simulation was presented as an experiment.
“It falls so far below any journalistic standard that the magazine is dead to me.”
Author explains the “death” in the fifth sentence of the opening paragraph.
Author explains the “death” in the fifth sentence of the opening paragraph.
Nobody (not even me) cares about the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model except a handful of scientists.
Blogpost uses clickbait and overblown reaction to complain about clickbait and overblown reporting.
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I agree it's rather sad to see such an over-the-top presentation in Quanta. Staying more grounded would definitely serve their longer term credibility.
Perhaps surprisingly, NYTimes did better this time: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/physics-wormhole-...
They quote Scott Aaronson:
“The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.”
Perhaps surprisingly, NYTimes did better this time: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/physics-wormhole-...
They quote Scott Aaronson:
“The most important thing I’d want New York Times readers to understand is this,” Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing expert at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in an email. “If this experiment has brought a wormhole into actual physical existence, then a strong case could be made that you, too, bring a wormhole into actual physical existence every time you sketch one with pen and paper.”
As a mathematician I can say that all math articles I have read so far in Quanta Magazine have been excellent and they deserve praise! This one article might have missed the mark, but the topic is inherently difficult to write about to a lay audience.
As an (ex-)physicist who did minor QC research, I'm very annoyed at the sensationalism. I do typically enjoy Quanta, their sensationalism is usually less severe, and the intuition they givd is decently aligned when I (sometimes) dive deeper.
To further the damage said article was picked up by mass-market newspapers and circulated widely
The net result of all this ad-driven virality madness is the degradation of trust in obscure but important societal contracts: 1) that academics at the cutting edge of human knowledge can self-regulate through peer-review not only the integrity of a piece of work (not an obvious issue in this case) but can also place its importance and relevance against the entire body of prior knowledge and 2) that journalists disseminating scientific / technical information can act as a check and balance to remedy any deficiencies in 1) instead of amplifying and aggravating them
It feels like we have entered a downward spiral of ever more shrill claims competing for attention in world crushed by low-quality information overload.
The net result of all this ad-driven virality madness is the degradation of trust in obscure but important societal contracts: 1) that academics at the cutting edge of human knowledge can self-regulate through peer-review not only the integrity of a piece of work (not an obvious issue in this case) but can also place its importance and relevance against the entire body of prior knowledge and 2) that journalists disseminating scientific / technical information can act as a check and balance to remedy any deficiencies in 1) instead of amplifying and aggravating them
It feels like we have entered a downward spiral of ever more shrill claims competing for attention in world crushed by low-quality information overload.
I am pretty sure the newspapers all picked up on the press releases rather than on the quanta article. For example, the article in the NY Times [0] appeared on the same day (and is also much better IMO).
And, for what it's worth, I do not share your pessimistic outlook. I think a lot of excellent science and science reporting is taking place every day.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/physics-wormhole-...
And, for what it's worth, I do not share your pessimistic outlook. I think a lot of excellent science and science reporting is taking place every day.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/physics-wormhole-...
It's definitely one of the worst articles they've published, on the grounds of expecting them to demystify science with their journalism rather than mystify it -- which is what every other publication on the planet does.
I read it in its entirety to see if there was any justification for its write up. As with all tabloid journalism, the caveats are at the end where you find out the "bridge principle" from QC-to-Wormhole requires assumptions that are non-physical.
Everyone is well aware that non-physical assumptions to the equations of physics can produce arbitrary magical effects (eg., perpetual motion, etc.).
The whole structure of the article was something I'd expect from "tabloid science" and I expect Quanta will get a lot of push back from it; and hopefully not do it again.
I read it in its entirety to see if there was any justification for its write up. As with all tabloid journalism, the caveats are at the end where you find out the "bridge principle" from QC-to-Wormhole requires assumptions that are non-physical.
Everyone is well aware that non-physical assumptions to the equations of physics can produce arbitrary magical effects (eg., perpetual motion, etc.).
The whole structure of the article was something I'd expect from "tabloid science" and I expect Quanta will get a lot of push back from it; and hopefully not do it again.
I'm sad to say I used to really like Quanta magazine pieces but I've become adept at knowing immediately from a Hacker News discussion title (the direct links, not this one) that it's about a Quanta piece, and it's going to be a letdown when you drill in.
I'm not sure if they've become more clickbaity or less discriminating, or if it's just me moving on. I'm guessing from the article - however ranty - it's not my imagination.
I'm not sure if they've become more clickbaity or less discriminating, or if it's just me moving on. I'm guessing from the article - however ranty - it's not my imagination.
Looks like Quanta Magazine changed the title of the article after publication. I guess they did get some push back on the original article.
Original title (dec 1.): "Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [1]
Current title (dec 2.): "Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [2]
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221201021130/https://www.quant...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221202022713/https://www.quant...
Original title (dec 1.): "Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [1]
Current title (dec 2.): "Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [2]
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221201021130/https://www.quant...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221202022713/https://www.quant...
Two things can be true at the same time: one, quanta magazine is the best publication out there when it comes to popularizing recent advances in fundamental physics and mathematics; and two, this article was bad.
If we are allowed to base our opinion of a publication on one article, should I declare that Mateus Araújo's blog is dead to me?
If we are allowed to base our opinion of a publication on one article, should I declare that Mateus Araújo's blog is dead to me?
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Schrödinger's magazine?
Only if these two things were mutually exclusive. But in reality, the underlying assumption is a false dichotomy.
The article is brilliant until observed.
Journalism is about trust. In a sense, scientific magazines are only as good as their worst articles. My opinion just shifted from "if it's in Quanta, it's probably correct" to "I need to fact-check everything they say".
This article is particularly bad, but I can't remember the last time I saw a Quanta article that didn't grossly misrepresent the research.
Unfortunately the commodification of physics discoveries, packaged in order to wow laypeople who would be bored by any accurate explanation, is just getting worse and worse every year, to the point that I've noticed a vast increase in the number of clueless crackpot laypeople that try to interact with me (I now block them on sight).
Personally, I think it comes from a deep lack within a lot of humans now: they are scared of the future and bored of the present. They want to go to Mars or live out their sci-fi dreams, because they do not have any meaning right now. I won't speculate on the reasons for this, because I'm sure there are many, but the end result is that they are desperate for crazy sounding physics discoveries, because it placates their desire for extreme technological progression. Technology and science have become almost like a God, something people don't understand but that they have faith that it will elevate humanity to a point beyond its current, seemingly stale, state. Of course, where there is a desire for that, media companies will try to fulfil it.
Personally, I think it comes from a deep lack within a lot of humans now: they are scared of the future and bored of the present. They want to go to Mars or live out their sci-fi dreams, because they do not have any meaning right now. I won't speculate on the reasons for this, because I'm sure there are many, but the end result is that they are desperate for crazy sounding physics discoveries, because it placates their desire for extreme technological progression. Technology and science have become almost like a God, something people don't understand but that they have faith that it will elevate humanity to a point beyond its current, seemingly stale, state. Of course, where there is a desire for that, media companies will try to fulfil it.
All popular articles about quantum physics are in a way bullshit, false and misrepresentation.
Because the only way to accurately talk about quantum physics is to show the math and only talk about that. The famous "shut up and calculate".
You can't have it both ways, you either accept gross misrepresentations in the popular science press, or you just don't have popular science press.
Because the only way to accurately talk about quantum physics is to show the math and only talk about that. The famous "shut up and calculate".
You can't have it both ways, you either accept gross misrepresentations in the popular science press, or you just don't have popular science press.
Yeah, this is how I feel when I read the actual research papers behind these sensational articles.
“Quantum teleportation achieved!”
Hmm, looks like a unitary operator was applied to a tensor product state.
“Virtual particles pop in and out of existence!”
Hmm, looks like a mathematical technique to perturbatively approximate a very large unitary operator.
“Time crystals!!!”
Cool, the unitary operator has some symmetries.
“The cat is dead and alive!”
So the state the unitary operator acts upon can be represented as a mathematically convenient linear combination of two other states. Great?
“Quantum teleportation achieved!”
Hmm, looks like a unitary operator was applied to a tensor product state.
“Virtual particles pop in and out of existence!”
Hmm, looks like a mathematical technique to perturbatively approximate a very large unitary operator.
“Time crystals!!!”
Cool, the unitary operator has some symmetries.
“The cat is dead and alive!”
So the state the unitary operator acts upon can be represented as a mathematically convenient linear combination of two other states. Great?
If anyone is looking to learn some actual physics instead of media crit, it would be worthwhile to sit down with the wikipedia pages for the AdS/CFT correspondence and the black hole information paradox. There’s a lot of things you can learn about the nature of quantum gravity. Some of it is built on assumptions about nature, of course, which leads a lot of people to assume that the enterprise is built on a house of cards, but even this is worth really digging in to. You may find that in fact there are only a few assumptions about reality that need to be made, and that removing any one of them is harder than you might think.
And AdS/CFT is genuinely fascinating. It’s a type of theoretical construct that’s quite unique in the history of physics. So it’s very hard to talk about it in English sometimes! That’s partly what happened in this Quanta article. AdS/CFT asserts an equality between two very different systems (here, the quantum system is identified with the wormhole) in an extremely complex and nonlinear way. Does this mean that the quantum system is a wormhole? It’s a harder question than it appears on the surface.
And AdS/CFT is genuinely fascinating. It’s a type of theoretical construct that’s quite unique in the history of physics. So it’s very hard to talk about it in English sometimes! That’s partly what happened in this Quanta article. AdS/CFT asserts an equality between two very different systems (here, the quantum system is identified with the wormhole) in an extremely complex and nonlinear way. Does this mean that the quantum system is a wormhole? It’s a harder question than it appears on the surface.
Is it that hard to talk about?
A tangle in the interior of a cylinder loses information when viewed on the boundary because you lose a dimension (ie, the shadow cast by string around a light bulb as you see it on the lamp shade). You then have to allocate probabilities to pseudoknot resolutions (ie, guesses about crossings). So you end up with something that looks like continuous geometry on the inside and quantized statistics about interactions on the boundary.
Entanglement looks like taking two filaments in a plasma globe and moving one in a circle around the other. Their ribbons are now tangled. (As a 2+1-D analog.)
A tangle in the interior of a cylinder loses information when viewed on the boundary because you lose a dimension (ie, the shadow cast by string around a light bulb as you see it on the lamp shade). You then have to allocate probabilities to pseudoknot resolutions (ie, guesses about crossings). So you end up with something that looks like continuous geometry on the inside and quantized statistics about interactions on the boundary.
Entanglement looks like taking two filaments in a plasma globe and moving one in a circle around the other. Their ribbons are now tangled. (As a 2+1-D analog.)
Respectfully, your metaphor doesn’t bear any similarity to the way AdS/CFT works. In AdS/CFT there are dual quantum systems with no information loss. A bit more precisely, the correspondence relates the partition functions of quantum gravity in AdS with the partition functions of conformal fields. This implies the existence of a map between the two, which in this case happens to be extremely complex and nonlocal.
Another way of saying it is that the two descriptions are different representations of the same object. There is no projection or information lost in switching between descriptions.
Another way of saying it is that the two descriptions are different representations of the same object. There is no projection or information lost in switching between descriptions.
Yes — that non-locality on the surface is because the braiding structure is non-local when projected.
You are correct and I misspoke:
You don’t lose the information, it becomes non-local on the surface — and so if you’re building a model of the interior from a local sampling of the surface, you get a statistical model built on pseudoknots (again, like a shadow from a lamp).
You are correct and I misspoke:
You don’t lose the information, it becomes non-local on the surface — and so if you’re building a model of the interior from a local sampling of the surface, you get a statistical model built on pseudoknots (again, like a shadow from a lamp).
I think it proves my point that AdS/CFT is hard to talk about :) I’ve still got mixed feelings about the lamp/shadow analogy but thanks for the clarification.
Sure — just one last thought:
The thread-lamp model isn’t arbitrary; ultimately, we’re looking for some kind of tangle model that rescues geons. So we’re going to need something that looks like continuous tangles on the inside and Feynman diagrams on the outside.
The thread-lamp model isn’t arbitrary; ultimately, we’re looking for some kind of tangle model that rescues geons. So we’re going to need something that looks like continuous tangles on the inside and Feynman diagrams on the outside.
>The problem is, if they write such bullshit about topics that I do understand, how can I trust their reporting on topics that I do not?
Funny how this is true for basically all of science and yet so many popsci authors get away with it, because the vast majority of the audience will not be experts in the field. If you want the true story you'll always have to read the original paper (though sometimes even Nature lets bs slip through) and absolutely ignore the common media articles about it. Complaining that articles for the masses are not adequate recitations of real research is like complaining that water is wet. It's kind of the whole deal. This stuff is supposed to sound intriguing and generate clicks, not push the research itself ahead or inform real experts.
Funny how this is true for basically all of science and yet so many popsci authors get away with it, because the vast majority of the audience will not be experts in the field. If you want the true story you'll always have to read the original paper (though sometimes even Nature lets bs slip through) and absolutely ignore the common media articles about it. Complaining that articles for the masses are not adequate recitations of real research is like complaining that water is wet. It's kind of the whole deal. This stuff is supposed to sound intriguing and generate clicks, not push the research itself ahead or inform real experts.
Yeah, but "creating a wormhole" is laying it on a bit thick, even someone who is only remotely familiar with physics will find this statement highly suspicious - I mean, even in Star Trek, they didn't manage to create a wormhole, they only used one (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_wormhole).
In line with research of the past years this has moved from being absurd to being somewhat debatable. With the ER=EPR conjecture (which this paper heavily references) for example, you could theoretically argue that it's easy to create wormholes - in fact it happens everywhere all the time. The problem is that those are not Star Trek type wormholes that let you move macroscopic matter across galaxies, but everyone outside the field immediately thinks of them thanks to decades of scifi popculture. The wormholes that Susskind et al. are talking about are much more modest.
Magazines are for showing off ones political or philosophical affiliations, not to be informative.
I saw that wormhole article and something in it triggered the bs detector. Those discoveries are often made by a big team in a big lab, the article only named one researcher.
IMHO Quanta is far from the most respectable source of science news, since their articles tend to be very sensationalist, but in this case Quanta is not to blame, as the article it was published in Nature, but publications in big magazines are becoming more and more political, and less about real science.
IMHO Quanta is far from the most respectable source of science news, since their articles tend to be very sensationalist, but in this case Quanta is not to blame, as the article it was published in Nature, but publications in big magazines are becoming more and more political, and less about real science.
AdS == Anti de Sitter space == A universe with nothing in it.
These physicists assume a universe with nothing in it, then populate it with physicists and quantum computers and wormholes.
This is like claiming to have the most beatiful differential equations that explain perfectly the weather on earth. You say "ok, let's test these beautiful equations." But it turns out that the equations so beautiful to look at have no perfect solutions. So you need to make absurdly symmetrical assumptions to arrive at a usable solution, like assuming no atmosphere. Then, with no atmosphere your equations explains the earth's atmosphere perfectly well. With beautiful mathematical gimmicks, of course. With an assumption of a universe with nothing in it your equations explain everything in that universe with nothing in it.
Physics is neo-scholasticism powered by the marketing skills of the practitioners. This episode about wormholes proves the corruption of academic physics.
These physicists assume a universe with nothing in it, then populate it with physicists and quantum computers and wormholes.
This is like claiming to have the most beatiful differential equations that explain perfectly the weather on earth. You say "ok, let's test these beautiful equations." But it turns out that the equations so beautiful to look at have no perfect solutions. So you need to make absurdly symmetrical assumptions to arrive at a usable solution, like assuming no atmosphere. Then, with no atmosphere your equations explains the earth's atmosphere perfectly well. With beautiful mathematical gimmicks, of course. With an assumption of a universe with nothing in it your equations explain everything in that universe with nothing in it.
Physics is neo-scholasticism powered by the marketing skills of the practitioners. This episode about wormholes proves the corruption of academic physics.
Newtonian space == a universe with nothing in it, which is then populated with fictitious continuous rigid bodies. Yet we use it to build bridges.
Physics is about models. Some are useful. AdS/CFT is useful. I know this because I spent the time to study it in grad school, rather than dismiss it out of hand.
Physics is about models. Some are useful. AdS/CFT is useful. I know this because I spent the time to study it in grad school, rather than dismiss it out of hand.
No offense, but choosing "The Death of Quanta Magazin" as the title for a rant about clickbaiting is quite ironic.
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Agreed. I've read too many long-form Quanta articles that when I open one without realizing it, quickly close it. I don't know who values long articles without substance or earnest attempts at relating to the underlying science. There's also large unrelated pictures interspersed with the too-wide-margin-padded text. Not my cup of tea either.
I still follow Quanta Magazine, but I kind of moved from it to SciTechDaily, which while still imperfect, generally has a direct link to the scientific article for which, if they have done their work correctly, is easier to follow after the blog article about it.
The positive side effect is that I am reading scientific articles more often since I'm doing this.
The positive side effect is that I am reading scientific articles more often since I'm doing this.
Magazine makes a misstep and then someone goes into a rant on how it "Magazine died"
Seems like it went much more clickbait than the original article. Nobody reading QM would take that headline literally.
Talk about an overreaction.
Seems like it went much more clickbait than the original article. Nobody reading QM would take that headline literally.
Talk about an overreaction.
> For me the worst part of the video was at 11:53, where they showed a graph with a bright point labelled “negative energy peak” on it. The problem is that this is not a plot of data, it’s just a drawing, with no connection to the experiment. Lay people will think they are seeing actual data, so this is straightforward disinformation.
This is exactly how I interpreted that part of the video [1], and it makes me feel sad because Quanta is the only kinda pop-science magazine I enjoy reading.
As a lay parson, when it comes to quantum mechanics I have to use my own set of heuristics to identify quackery: this Quanta's video checks almost all my indicators of low quality quantum woo - I don't like to say this about someone's else work but just the aesthetics reminds me to pseudo-scientific documentaries.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg
This is exactly how I interpreted that part of the video [1], and it makes me feel sad because Quanta is the only kinda pop-science magazine I enjoy reading.
As a lay parson, when it comes to quantum mechanics I have to use my own set of heuristics to identify quackery: this Quanta's video checks almost all my indicators of low quality quantum woo - I don't like to say this about someone's else work but just the aesthetics reminds me to pseudo-scientific documentaries.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg
This is why I’ve slowly migrated from general readership magazines to reading only academic papers. No-doubt their readership has increased, but I am no-longer these publications target market.
I don't like Quanta because of the exaggerated sensationalized clickbait titles. It makes it seem like it's aimed at people who want to tell themselves that are smart or into science.
I cannot comment on the content of the article, but the title and the author have changed, unfortunately I cannot find an update in the article. Comments seem to be off.
Author is still Wolchover (as of my click a few seconds ago). Not sure what you're seeing.
Their podcast "the joy of why" is still top notch.
I am beginning to think that advertising is the most toxic element of our environment. Click bait is a way to present something that makes it impossible not to ignore. "Biden and Trump Get Into Food Fight at Restaurant". Behind the click bait is so often lies, deception or garbage, that our brains now conclude that anything behind click bait is trash.
If advertising is your business model, then you can make more money with click-baitization. Here's looking at you WAPO and NYT.
If, with good reason, we cannot trust the supposed sources of good information, even HN, then our ability to build common understandings and actions is destroyed. Why, it is almost like our political system would be destroyed.
If you want to destroy an ant colony, the simplest method is just to prevent interfere with the mechanisms they use to collaborate. Single ants, even mobs of ants cannot survive. Of course we are not ants and we can survive even when our systems of collaboration are destroyed.
(fixed phrasing in edit)
If advertising is your business model, then you can make more money with click-baitization. Here's looking at you WAPO and NYT.
If, with good reason, we cannot trust the supposed sources of good information, even HN, then our ability to build common understandings and actions is destroyed. Why, it is almost like our political system would be destroyed.
If you want to destroy an ant colony, the simplest method is just to prevent interfere with the mechanisms they use to collaborate. Single ants, even mobs of ants cannot survive. Of course we are not ants and we can survive even when our systems of collaboration are destroyed.
(fixed phrasing in edit)
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> The problem is, if they write such bullshit about topics that I do understand, how can I trust their reporting on topics that I do not?
See also the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2021/01/18/gell-mann-amnesia/
See also the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2021/01/18/gell-mann-amnesia/
It's a variant of the classical story https://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1623
Though, it seems in this case some scientists who pushed the narrative were dishonest too.
Though, it seems in this case some scientists who pushed the narrative were dishonest too.
> It falls so far below any journalistic standard that the magazine is dead to me.
I'll be honest. I found it very hard to read beyond this line. I powered through though.
Here's the tldr: It's a rant about details in one specific article.
I'll be honest. I found it very hard to read beyond this line. I powered through though.
Here's the tldr: It's a rant about details in one specific article.
The context is that this is causing a big amount of chaos in the physics community, with a lot of high profile (and/or popular) physicists calling it out. It isn't just one guy's rant. Even my research group is talking about it
Sure, and I don't have any issue with that.
But this blog post literally says "The death of Quanta Magazine", and in the same breath talks about "journalistic standards".
But this blog post literally says "The death of Quanta Magazine", and in the same breath talks about "journalistic standards".
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> "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds."
Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but it's ultimately a general readership magazine, not an academic journal. I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model. Whatever that is.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not disputing that the Quanta article is factually deficient - although I don't have the relevant specialist knowledge to understand why. I am disputing that this marks the "death" of the magazine.