3 ms·
What exactly is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life that he spent trying to build a unified field theory ? The rest of the physics community at the ti
by manquer 11mo ago
What exactly is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life that he spent trying to build a unified field theory ? The rest of the physics community at the time(and even largely now) did not share his ideas, maybe grand unified theory is possible maybe not, but getting stuck with it without a lot of progress did happen?
I would have thought of all examples this would be less controversial, it had nothing to do with politics or ideology or religion, it was an entirely technical belief, he felt chasing.
In an alternative reality he may have switched to another area of study after hitting dead ends with unified theory with better results.
It is not for us to say or expect what luminaries do, it is privilege for us they do share anything at all, but it is not also true we do lose a bit when such brilliant minds do get sidetracked ?
- peterfirefly 11mo ago> is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life There's also the extremely important EPR paper from 1935, twenty years before his death. He certainly didn't stop producing useful science just because he felt it was a good idea to explore ideas that didn't work out. What is truly embarrassing is stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F
- manquer 11mo agoI only said he became far less productive for his level of talent not that he completely stopped contributing. I kept away from political examples as it inevitably gets contentious[1] I was just trying to highlight the challenge that talented would have on one hand have strong faith in their intuition at the same time be able to change their mind when presented with overwhelming evidence. [1] still got downvoted smh
- uxcolumbo 11mo agoHow do you define socialism? I see ppl throw around this term without ever defining it. They probably mean a soviet style central government , which of course is terrible. Einstein was merely talking about looking after your people. Carl Sagan as well. The government is there to ensure the system is running healthy and enables its citizen to thrive and prosper. But instead we have a system that is extractive and funnels resources and power to the top. Einstein was basically warning about what is happening now. We are the richest country in the world yet we let ppl die or starve if they don’t have money. Our system does not follow capitalism the way it was defined. It’s been totally corrupted by the Epstein class and if people don’t push back against this corruption then we are straight to a future as depicted in Elyisium.
- tome 11mo agoThe article explains what Einstein meant by socialism: "Einstein concludes that these problems can only be corrected with a planned economy where the means of production are owned by society itself"
- hgomersall 11mo agoIt seems clear he understood it was a tricky problem, and writing at the time many of the potential problems were not apparent: "Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?"
- hgomersall 11mo agoYeah, I wasn't aware of that writing but I read the Wikipedia article and what it describes seems spot on to me.