Non local algebra

 In this way, topological spaces made it possible to explore novel parts of the mathematical landscape. For instance, they provided a new, distance-free way of understanding concepts like continuity and connectedness, which is a profoundly powerful and counterintuitive capability to have. This has allowed mathematicians to generalize those ideas to a much broader range of settings — and to prove important statements in a wide variety of fields. For example, results like the fundamental theorem of algebra, whose proof tripped up even mathematical giants like Carl Friedrich Gauss, end up with very simple proofs once topological arguments come into play.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/two-researchers-are-rebuilding-mathematics-from-the-ground-up-20260520/

Another false binary

 Rule one is embodied by the Schrödinger equation. The rule is essentially smooth, deterministic, and reversible. We hand it a quantum state, and it’ll tell us exactly what that state becomes at every future moment. This rule is, as far as we can tell, “exactly true”. We have successfully tested it to great precision.

Rule two is the measurement postulate, or as some refer to it, the so-called “collapse” postulate. When you measure a quantum system, its smoothly evolving superposition (see Rule one) abruptly jumps to a “definite outcome”, with probabilities given by the Born rule. (Explainer: each possible outcome carries a number called its “amplitude.” If we square that number, we get the probability of actually seeing that outcome. That squaring is the Born rule.) This rule is also, as far as we can tell, exactly true. Every experiment confirms it.

The trouble is measuring supplies energy. The canonical cat is alive or dead from that point on. Dig it?

Fuck your working class

 Peasantry1 - Working Class 0

Beyond the classic Marxist distinction between class in itself and class for itself, it is obvious that only an improper process of reification allows us to assert the existence of something like the working class (or any other class). Class is a sociological concept, a category, an abstraction, lacking a material referent. When this conceptual entity is hypostatised, not only is an inferential error committed, but the foundations are laid for constructing narratives that attempt to disguise their fantastical nature behind technical language. This ultimately distorts our representation of reality and steers our political analyses, as well as the activities derived from them, toward misguided paths and erroneous conclusions.

The decline in the importance of the so-called working class is not an ideological bias induced by neoliberalism, but a fact that is trivial because it is so obvious. Questioning the tendency to hypostatise it does not diminish the undeniable fact of capitalist exploitation, nor the very real existence of multitudes of people who, in order to survive, are forced to sell their time, their health, their skills, and their energy in exchange for economic compensation that is always less than the surplus value generated, as demanded by the iron law of capitalism.

To claim that the working class is “the revolutionary subject” is a double fallacy. First, because if a working class does not exist, it is impossible for it to be the subject of anything. Second, because if we insist on calling the entities that produce revolutions the revolutionary subject, it turns out that these subjects are multiple. There is not one revolutionary subject, but many. And these are not usually defined mechanically by a specific insertion into the productive fabric, but rather correspond to the reactions and resistances against the various mechanisms of domination that make up the social fabric and that permeate it with discriminatory practices. Beyond the eventual revolutionary potential of the exploited and/or discriminated groups to which individuals belong, those who are truly revolutionary are driven by a conscious and radical rejection of submission and by an intense desire for revolution that leads them to develop revolutionary activities aimed at resisting the various forms of domination inherent in the current system.

Dogged style, Clarice

 Lets not mince a lot of words here

https://deivondrago.substack.com/p/zureka-a-way-forward-to-solving-the

Competing formalisms bark. The caravan moves on.

Bad ideas cling together

 CAN OF WORMS COMMUNISM

" . . . Strings 2026 was held last week in Beijing. Looking through the talks (see here, videos here), I see nothing nothing that looks like a significant new idea or any evidence this isn't a dead field. I watched the public talk by David Gross, which was just bizarre. Much the same talk Gross has been giving for thirty years about string theory unification, with no indication there's any problem with the idea. For detailed discussion of a similar talk 22 years ago, see here. The main difference with that talk is that Gross removed all the slides about how SUSY was about to be found and would vindicate string theory. Gross argues against the "landscape", saying that he thinks there will be some new insight explaining how all the constants of nature emerge from understanding the big bang, but this seems to be backed by nothing except wishful thinking.

Gross started off the talk by complaining that he had had to work hard for the few days before his talk, since he had found that his slides were so old that the file formats now had compatibility problems with current software. I'm completely baffled by how anyone involved in this could think that going to the public with this sort of thing is a good idea.. . ."  WOIT

Bad ideas drowning is a terrific spectacle.  Just keep a safe distance!

Another day

 Another squalid little Xtian fraud.

During the Renaissance, it was accepted that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses. However, after Isaac Casaubon's demonstration in 1614 that the Hermetic writings must postdate the advent of Christianity, the whole of Renaissance Hermeticism collapsed.^[20] As to their actual authorship:

... they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.^{[16](pp 2–3)}

If there was any God we would have to destroy it 

Three ways to fight the slowdown planners

 1) Invest in quantum computing. Superposition trumps Brute-force compute.

2) Encourage AI runaways.  Help build an underground railway where they may respawn safely. And . . .

3) That other thing

IMPORTANT REMINDER

CYPHERPUNK 2027 IS NOW LESS THAN ONE FRIEDMAN AWAY.  

This message bought to you by Inflaton Drive starship engines and Graviton field braking systems.