måndag 20 mars 2017

Climate Change Programmes: Waste of Money

The Independent and The Guardian reports:
  • Donald Trump's budget director calls efforts to combat climate change "waste of money".
  • The budget proposal calls for deep cuts across various federal agencies responsible for different climate change actions.
This means a historic shift from inhuman irrational political ideological extremism of CO2 climate change hysteria to science, rationality and humanity.

All the people of the world can now celebrate that there is more than enough fossil energy on this planet, which can safely be harvested and utilised under controllable environmental side effects, to allow virtually everybody to reach a good standard of living (under the right politics). 

The industrial revolution was driven by coal and the boost of the standard of living during the 20th century in the West was made possible by the abundance of oil and gas.  Without CO2 hysteria this development can now be allowed to continue and bring more prosperity to the people, as is now happening on large scale in China and India.

Wasting money on actions without meaning and effect is about the most stupid thing a government can do and that will now be put to stop in the US as concerns energy production (if not on military...)

It remains for the EU to come to the same conclusion...and that will come even if the awakening will take some time...

PS Note the shift of terminology from "global warming by CO2" to the more neutral "climate change", motivated by the lack of warming in the "hiatus" of global temperatures during now 20 years. If "stopping climate change" was the issue, the prime concern would be to stop the upcoming ice age.  But that is not on the agenda, maybe because nobody believes that this is within the range of climate politics...the only thing that could have an effect would be massive burning of fossil fuel under the belief that it can cause some warming... 

söndag 19 mars 2017

The World as Analog Computation?!

                                     Augmented reality by digital simulation of analog reality.

Sabine Hossenfelder expresses on Backreaction:
  • No, we probably don’t live in a computer simulation!
as a reaction to the Simulation Hypothesis:
Sabine starts her discussion with
  • First, to get it out of the way, there’s a trivial way in which the simulation hypothesis is correct: You could just interpret the presently accepted theories to mean that our universe computes the laws of nature. Then it’s tautologically true that we live in a computer simulation. It’s also a meaningless statement.
And she gets support from Lubos Motl stating:
  • Hossenfelder sensibly critical of our "simulated" world.
Is it then meaningless to view the World as the result of analog computation? I don't think so, with arguments presented at The World as Computation.

The main idea is that if the world is an analog computation, then it may well be possible to simulate the world by digital computation, and if that is possible we may perhaps better understand and control the world to our benefit. 

And the other way: If the world is not analog computation, then chances for simulation by digital computation are slim, and then what? 

Recall that the basic principle of classical rational deterministic physics is to view the evolution of the world as the result of sequential analog computation as transformations of inputs into outputs according to laws of physics. In short: The World as a Clock according to Laplace. Or more precisely, The World as a Clock of Infinite Precision, since the laws of physics are supposed to be satisfied exactly.

Sabine's standpoint is logical as an expression of the complete collapse of classical rational deterministic physics in the spirit of Laplace into the irrational quantum world of modern physics without determinism, for which the idea of input-output computation no longer is valid. The non-computational aspect of quantum physics comes out in the multi-dimensional form of Schrödinger's equation, which makes it impossible to solve by digital computation. 

But the complete collapse of rationality/determinism in modern physics is a serious blow to physics as science and I have sought a way to avoid collapse by modifying Laplace's dictum into The World as a Clock of Finite Precision and by giving Schrödinger's equation an alternative three-dimensional form as realQM, both inviting to simulation by digital computation.  

Sabine's post expresses the paralysis created by the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics presenting a world which is not understandable and therefore not computable and therefore not understandable...a world view which we do not have to accept because there are alternatives to explore...

There is no evidence that we live in a computer simulation (because the world is not digital), but there is much evidence that an analog world can be simulated by digital computation, and that opens endless possibilities of enhancing the analog world by simulated worlds as augmented reality...




torsdag 9 mars 2017

Regeringen Beslutar om Programmering i Matematikämnet

Regeringen har idag beslutat om förtydliganden och förstärkningar i bland annat läroplaner, kursplaner och ämnesplaner för grundskolan och gymnasieskolan:
  • Syftet är att tydliggöra skolans uppdrag att stärka elevernas digitala kompetens.
  • Programmering införs som ett tydligt inslag i flera olika ämnen i grundskolan, framför allt i teknik och matematik.
  • Ändringarna ska tillämpas senast från och med den 1 juli 2018. Huvudmännen kommer att kunna välja när de ska börja tillämpa ändringarna inom ett ettårigt tidsspann från och med den 1 juli 2017.
Nu återstår att fylla detta med konkret innehåll. Om det skall bli något annat än bara en tom åtbörd, fordras massiv vidareutbildning av särskilt lärare i matematik. 

Mitt bidrag för detta ändamål finns i form av Matematik-IT. 

Det finns starka konservativa krafter inom matematikutbildning från grundskola till universitet, som inte vill medverka till att bredda matematikämnet med programmering.  

Det finns starka krafter inom datalogi att ta hand om programmeringen i skolan enligt en princip av "datalogiskt tänkande".

Matematikämnet står därmed inför det vägskäl som präglat hela mitt akademiska liv: 
  1. Förnya/utvidga traditionell analytisk matematik med programmering = Matematik-IT.
  2. Bevara traditionell matematikutbildning och låt inte programmering störa bilden.
Regeringen har bestämt att 1. skall gälla, medan akademin lutar åt 2.  Vad är bäst för Sveriges elever? Digital kompetens med eller utan matematik? Matematik med eller utan programmering? Kampen går vidare...