Should I become a scientist or a philosopher?!

This entry and its proceeding one will be two of the most interesting posts I’ll ever publish in my weblog. The reason is that these posts aim to clarify the crucial criteria, one needs to consider when he wants to decide between becoming a scientist or a philosopher when he is young; say in the age between 18 and 22. Nevertheless, despite my career in science, these criteria have never become clear enough even for me! Here I have asked Amyr Anvary, a friend in philosophy side, to write an article describing why he is more interested in philosophy. In the next post I’ll explain the reasons I preferred science for myself.

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I have always been more drawn to Philosophy than Science. That is because I find philosophical cognition more authentic and genuine. in order to explain my viewpoint and this make this post easier to read I decided to talk about what I think Philosophy is (Part One), discuss Science in contrast with Philosophy (Part Two) and name two reasons why I think scientific cognition is neither complete nor satisfying (Part Three) separately.
1.
Although people usually define Philosophy by its ‘subjects of concern’, I am more comfortable with my own definition (which is of course a work in progress). Philosophy is a unique way of talking about potentially everything using reason and intuition and coming to a result with which one can rest satisfied. I purposefully use the word ‘talking’ –and not thinking or study- because I believe Philosophy is a form of discourse. This does not necessarily mean that a philosopher is talking -directly or indirectly- to someone. What I want to imply is that Philosophy is a language-dependant phenomena and it happens with motives of communication. The uniqueness that I pointed out in my definition of Philosophy is because of doubt. Same as Science and unlike engineering, Doubt is a crucial method in Philosophy and since you don`t have a ‘unified reality’ -in a philosophical sense- to measure yourself with, doubt plays a more important role in Philosophy than Science.
2.
Science and Philosophy have more in common. They are both concerned with understanding of Nature, the difference is that in order to understand Nature Science tries to understand how it works but Philosophy takes a more ‘ontological’ approach. Meaning that while the main objective of Science is to understand Nature, Philosophy tries to use what is so far grasped about Nature and talk about concepts like existence and reality. Especially in recent decades Philosophy has been influenced by Science more than ever. Philosophical ideas also play a big role in evolution of Science; since many of scientific assumptions are backed up by huge philosophical backgrounds. Let us discuss this further.
Any scientific cognition takes place in a well defined consistent and arguably complete axiomatic system. Meaning there are fundamental and mostly philosophical concepts on which our further definitions and theories depend. How are these propositions, which we label as axioms or assumptions, philosophical? To answer this let me point out the difference between two kinds of axiomatic systems. In a mathematical axiomatic system such as Euclidean Geometry or Group theory axioms are interchangeable with other proposition within the system. These axioms have been selected from a bunch of basic propositions because they contain all the information we need in order to define the structure of our system. They can be replaced by other propositions. Galois came up with most of fundamental definitions and statements of Group theory without even formalizing axioms of Groups. But in Newtonian mechanics, for example, existence of space without quantification is assumed. ‘Existence of space without quantification’ is a statement which cannot be replaced by any proposition within the Classical Mechanics. Beside axioms, in a scientific axiomatic system, some other propositions are assumed (consciously or not). Even though this sort of assumptions might look like physical statements but they are backed up by many controversial philosophical ideas, some of these assumptions include determinism, causality and existence of mathematical discipline beneath any physical phenomena. Any scientific revolution happens exactly by challenging these philosophical assumptions. That is why I think any scientific cognition evolves in a world provided by philosophical ideas.
3.1
How is reducing a phenomenon to mathematical formulae providing us with some sort of satisfying cognition? Science has proved to be successfully able to predict and use Natural phenomena. But how is this helping us understanding Nature?
3.2
In 17th century René Descartes used the term res extensa (thinking subject) in opposite of res cogitans (read physical reality); although his intentions were towards discussing individualism somewhere along the way he formalized something much deeper and more profound, by separating the thinking subject and the physical reality, Philosophy and Science became two separate entities and went their separate ways. As a result Science became incapable of knowing itself and even scientifically understanding itself. This is the main reason behind the creation of some schools of Philosophy such as epistemology or phenomenology.

Quote of the day

Quantum mechanics is much like religion. In both cases you have to believe in some unseen facts. As soon as you see them, there are no morals!

NINJAS vs PROFESSORS

PhD Comics is one of the greatest sources which best fits nerds’ interests. Have fun

 

Participation in Simulating the Climate Change and Quantum Computing

There are many programs on the web which allow you to volunteer computing power for a range of scientific ventures, which they need a huge computational resource, powered by BOINC. Among these, there are two programs that I feel responsible to invite you to take part.

The first one “is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century”, as they say. If you are interested in using your idle computer to help calculate global warming then log on to www.climateprediction.net .

The second one is the D-Wave’s AQUA (Adiabatic QUantum Algorithms). Whether you believe they have a quantum computer or not you can take part in this very low cost but important project. Once D-Wave collects the results of the simulations and processes the information, it will compare the simulation against an actual run of its latest quantum computer, which should be completed in the next few months. If the figures match up, then D-Wave will have shown that it really has a quantum machine. “Either the hardware will agree with the prediction or it won’t,” Mr. Rose said. “If it doesn’t agree, then you don’t have a quantum computer. On the other hand, if the data tracks the predictions, you have smoking gun evidence that what you built is a quantum computer.”

An engineer’s point of view on the difference between science and application!

Couple of weeks ago, I had an exciting debate on some points in my previous entry with Mehrdad. He is offering us his insight on the matter science and engineering. Although I am not totally in agreement with him, I’m putting his article here without any changes as a good respond to my post. He is, indeed, a super genius who will be discovered soon! However, he has some unfair judgments here! Ha-ha!

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It’s been a relatively long time since Sina asked my idea about his blog post on theory and application. I decided to write a guest post on this blog to argue about his point but due to time constraints, I was not able to do so until now.

Traditionally, -since I have an argumentative personality- I’ll start counter-arguing from an engineering standpoint and try to make theory look absolutely obsolete as soon as I face these kind of posts! While most people think of me as a theory-hater, I don’t hate theory at all; therefore, I decided to write this blog post from a realistic and unbiased, point of view. After all, I don’t want to say what I don’t really believe in!

I’m not going to discuss theory and practice in general. I think Sina’s post primarily compares engineering and science as academic disciplines, and by science he means theoretical sciences. However, there is a point that makes me feel he named all good things “science” and all bad things “engineering!” I don’t want to argue with Sina’s blog entry word by word since it’s not really the place. Comments are there for a reason. I want to keep this post’s independence.

I have a different idea on theoretical sciences and engineering. I believe the difference between science and engineering is just like the difference between computer science and biology. They are two sciences pursuing two different goals. Engineering relies on pure science just like physics relies on math. To be a great physicist, you don’t have to be the best mathematician in the world, but you have to be good at it nonetheless. You don’t have to prove pure mathematical theorems, but you should know their existence to use them in the best way possible. Of course, physics and math are related, but they have different set of goals to accomplish. Does it make one of them better than the other? It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Both of them, directly or indirectly, will try make the world a better place to live in, but in dramatically different ways.

Engineering is just like physics. To be a great engineer in a specific field, you have to know what’s going on in the underlying science. What are the theoretical solutions to a specific problem you’re working on. You should have enough expertise in theory to use it in real world applications, but you don’t have to be the best theoretician. As an engineer, you have to be constantly in charge of what’s happening in the theory world and see how you can apply it to the specific problem. In theory, you can abstract away a large sum of constrains which do exist in the real world to make your model simpler to work on. In practice, you have all the constraints in your way. Engineering is the science of integrating a variety of theoretical solutions to different problems to provide a complete solution to a specific real world problem. I think it’s a science, just of a different kind. If you want to be a good engineer, you have to know how to make good decisions, how to make trade-offs. In theory, you can be an idealist. This is the biggest difference between theory and practice in my opinion. In theory, you imagine the world you’re working on. You set the limitations. You define a problem and solve it. In practice, you are not the problem setter. You don’t control the constraints. They do exist and you should find a way to circumvent them. To do so, you require a broader set of skills. You should be able to be good at managing people and resources. You have to be good at communicating to understand problems. You should know a diverse set of solutions, advantages and disadvantages of them and be able to choose between them to get the possible result. It’s a blend of management, psychology and the underlying science. You use all of them as a tool to accomplish the result you need.

Basically, I feel it’s impossible to draw a strict line between different fields of science in general. This seems to be true about science and engineering. In fact, most scientific studies in the history are motivated by real world needs. Number theory is the only field I know that’s improved without having any practical application for years. There might be more fields that I don’t know of, but I’m pretty sure there are much more the other way around!

That was my general point of view about engineering as a science. I think they are separable to some extent, but not completely. And if you separate them, you get two different but related objectives. This particularly cannot make any of them worse or better than the other one. Choosing one is solely a matter of personal preference.
I don’t believe pure science is more magical either. Ask anyone, going to the moon is more magical or just thinking for yourself that you have a teleportation device that can take you to the moon in an instant!
While theoretical sciences will infuse engineers with great ideas to solve a new set of problems every day, building real stuff can directly help sciences to experiment. Yes, engineers are always trying to make things cheaper. But making them cheaper might be the only way they can happen. Most large scientific projects need money to happen! Look at the LHC! Without engineers to make it as cheap as it already is, it would’ve never happened. This is a simple example. The success of the Internet is directly related to the fact that computers and communication channels are really cheap. Even if you were the world’s richest man and you could buy anything you wanted, you couldn’t use a fax machine if you were the only one who could buy it! So making things inexpensive is a big deal! It makes things happen that otherwise would never existed.

You might ask, so if you don’t have any problems with theory, why you look like hating it so much? I don’t hate theory in general. Even though, I like to see real impact of what I do as soon as possible, sometimes I like theory. I like abstract concepts. I like imagination. What I hate is though, the fact that theory, just like applied methods, gets old. If an applied technique gets old, it’ll be clear that there’s a better way to do so, and since a better way probably costs less, everybody would like to use it. Or at least they’ll know it’s old. This is not true with theory. People usually stick with classical theories for so long. The cost of doing so is usually underrepresented. Specially in academic communities, relying on classical theories is very common. We should know that theories can get old. Even if the fundamental thing doesn’t get changed, the way you look at it can change. It can be improved. We shouldn’t study what’s been thought for 30 years. People do it and say it’s a fundamental thing that doesn’t change. It’s like math! I think even the most abstract science, mathematics, has undergone major changes in the history. The notations, the way we express things, the way we write functions. They change constantly. They are inspired by the change in the real world, the advent of computers and much more; and that’s for the most abstract of all sciences! More applied sciences, such as computer science should change more frequently. This is why I look like I hate theory. In fact, I don’t hate theory. It’s a good thing. What I hate is studying old theories. Sure, it’ll be great for a history major! But for a computer scientist, it’s a deathly thing. You want to study the theory of operating systems!? Why should you look at things that existed 50 years ago. You should look at what we use today. The theory we use today. You want to study databases from a theoretical perspective?! You gotta look at what exists nowadays. It’s not necessary the same thing that existed 30 years ago. Though they might be similarities, many things gets old and useless and new things come along. They do affect the theory as much as practice.

As Sina said, the brilliance of theory is being boundless. When you study theory, you should not bind yourself to specific borders. If you do, as done in our universities, you’ll remove the whole good point and you’ll end of with absolute bullshit which I do hate!

My talk on AQC

In 2rd December, I’ll give a talk on AQC in Sharif University of Technology. I am planning to first describe the original paper of Farhi et. al. and then a little about the power of quantum systems on a line by Aharonov, Kempe and Gottesman. Finally, I will describe how it is robust against noise. Do you guys think it is good enough for a 1-1/2 hour talk in a physics department?

Why Do I Prefer Theory to the Application?

I think I’m too lazy that I didn’t have any post for a long time! To prove this laziness, I am deciding to build this entry upon your own ideas. Here is the matter we are going to discuss:

People who know me for a long time remember that I have been in the engineering side before! I started my scientific activities with electrical and electronic engineering. Then I moved to the mechanical engineering, busy with micro-aerial flapping vehicles. I was in the middle of the way when analyzing the mechanical parts guided me to mathematics and computer science. As far as I was going into the theory side, I found it more exciting and gradually decided to become a theorist! But why? Why did I prefer philosophy and theoretical sciences to the application?

First of all let me describe that there is a huge difference between experimental sciences and application/ engineering! Engineering is “The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property”; as the American Engineers’ Council for Professional Development defines. However, experimental sciences are the form of sciences that need measurement and manipulation devices and machinery, but it is still science. We have to think of this apart from engineering.

Let’s go back to our own topic. In this post I have mentioned five reasons to answer why I prefer science! They are namely, curiosity about the fabric of things, complexity, adventure of seeking new phenomena, simplicity (from the production point of view) and the friendlier atmosphere.

The simplest insight ever, tells that philosophy asks “What is something (say existence, knowledge, mind, etc)?” Science asks (fundamentally) “How and why things happen/come to reality?” and engineering asks “How to build and make it inexpensive?” Thus at the beginning of the way it divides engineers from the people who are curious about the fabric of things. Scientists and philosophers cannot leave such questions away and just utilize them to build things.

Another difference is that basically, theoretical sciences are more rigorous than the applications. This order of precision causes it to be more complicated and more sophisticated that makes it a suitable choice for a complicated mind! At this stage we have to recognize that this complexity is not in contradiction with simplicity and elegance of a scientific theory, this is just a comparison with a problem in engineering!

Sciences deal with quantizing mystical subjective and objective phenomena, while engineering at most is able to use those phenomena to build things! There is no magic in engineering! This can be a good reason for a scientist who is doing research for its excitement to choose a theoretical science!

Science in some sense is easier to handle and in this particular occasion this is a good thing! In engineering it is possible (mostly in the fields that deal with physical devices) that you have designed everything perfectly but a small out of order piece that is beyond your ability to observe or predict, makes everything not functioning at all! A bunch of boring trial and error job is needed to fix that part! However, in science if you have done your calculation and measurement well, you’ll get a convincing result.

Moreover, in the scientific community (apart from the developing countries and some few other cases) you are very friendly to your competitors and you can share your ideas and benefit their advices. Nevertheless, in the engineering side you always have to be conservative and careful that you do thing before the others to be able to get more fund!

Umm … There are many! But I have to go now! Would you help me count more differences that make theory more exciting than application?

Reality and the Physical Theory

Some of you guys know that I was in IISSQI08 for the last two weeks. For me, this summer school was a great achievement in two ways: first, taking part in some fantastic lectures on quantum computing given by eminent international professors and secondly, having brilliant conversations with these lecturers and some new friends. One of these conversations was with David Gross who is a positivist physicist.

The conversation started just after his talk. He finished the talk by explaining the GHZ experiment and the Bell’s inequality to conclude that nature cannot have a deterministic AND local description.

Sina: It can only show that nonlocality cannot have a classical description. What if someday we had a local and deterministic physical theory which is not classical?

David: Like what? Look… This would be a classical theory and since you think classically you are not able to realize it! I can accept if somebody brings a physical theory that is deterministic (X)OR local. But it can’t be both deterministic AND local!

(At that time I couldn’t remember the Multiverse theory to bring an example. Actually, I by myself am not yet convinced by this theory. However it could be a good example of non-classical local and deterministic theory)

Sina: Assuming you are right, so the theory of everything won’t give us any better result than unification of the four forces! It is still indeterministic and is not able to describe the reality of nature!

David: This is the same mistake that Einstein did! You think that e physical theory must satisfy these conditions to be a complete description of reality. However, I believe that the nature is essentially not deterministic and a theory which claims to describe everything must be indeterministic too. Although classical mechanics is working well in classical sizes, but it is an approximation of the reality and it is not true to be considered as theory that is capable of making precise predictions.

Sina: Do you also believe that classical propositional logic is also imprecise?

David: You are entering a dangerous field, ha-ha… No! Why should I say such a thing?

Sina: Because of the intuition one can get from observing the relationship between physics and mathematics. Everything in physics has a counterpart in mathematics and vice versa! It can be seen in the relationship between physics and mathematics. Just like non-Euclidean geometry and relativity!

David: It was a great example. Here is where no one has an answer! No one knows why! But it doesn’t mean that we are allowed to build such a relationship. A counter example is that you deal with finite numbers in physics but you have infinity in mathematics.

Sina: There are some physicists who believe the universe in infinite. On the other hand there are mathematicians (intuitionistic logicians) who do not believe in infinity!

David: But you can image the largest length in a finite world while the largest number does not make sense in mathematics!

Sina: OK! Then if our universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics and in this theory there shouldn’t be any assignment to any object that is not yet measured, how do you answer this paradox: A star is born out of reach of any conscious observer. Two thousand years later, when we see the light we analyze it and find out that the star was born 2000 years ago, when nobody saw it!

David: This is the state of the star at time t=0

So the state of the system at this time is

Then at t=1 is

Finally at t=2000 you get

There is a superposition of you when you saw the star and the other you. One who is able to measure you from beyond your system will see you in one of these states with a certain probability and the other state in another probability!

The observer must stand out of the system.

Sina: But when I saw the light I realized that the star was born when I couldn’t see!

David: Physical theory doesn’t answer the questions like “when things happened”. It just gives predictions about the nature. You want to know: what really happened?! However, I want to know: what will I observe? I would be very happy if someone could answer the first question, but I believe that no one will do that! So I prefer to choose the second question.
There are people on your side. If you want to choose the first question I suggest you read David Deutsch’s book: The Fabric of Reality.

(I took his advice and just ordered the book from Amazon)

Tradition, culture, bullshit!

Some of our routines are absolutely incomprehensible for me and each time I look deep inside of them I get more confused! You have seen many of them in everyday life! They are more visible in traditional and developing societies. They are mainly been imposed in two ways: Legislative rules and culture. Examples of the first type are easier to recognize. It may be funny for you to know that drinking alcohol, regardless of the volume and other conditions, will take you into custody in Iran! Let’s analyze it: this is my throat. Here is my own room with my own friends who are happy to be with me. This is a glass of wine… I drink the liquid that is in this glass and just this one… WHAT? YOU GONNA ARREST ME?

However, this is not the issue. I am inviting you to think of the matter of culture in this way. Culture is a set of social rules that everybody within the society is obliged to accept! It is all the values shared by the society and if you neglect them, they will call you abnormal! In Iran, as an example, you are abnormal if you are a man and wearing a skirt! You are abnormal if you call a person, older than you, using a singular pronoun! (Note that we have both plural and singular pronouns for second person in Persian. However it is polite to use a plural pronoun, even if he or she is single). You are abnormal if you laugh too much… These examples were at the lowest levels of social behaviors. Sometimes culture prevents you from reaching your greatest wills! Once a friend (Azadeh), who is a fan of culture, brought me an example to show culture is a necessary thing for any society. She told me that eliminating culture and letting people do what they want to do is like wishing a place in which people can both play football and study Quantum Computing in a same time! My answer is no! In fact, if I want to model culture as a rule of football and Quantum Computing, I will say for example, having a culture in a society is like a city in which everybody always are playing football and there is no room to study Quantum Computing! Maybe I am male but wish to wear a skirt! Where should I go?!

Nevertheless, you may ask if culture is nonsense, then why it has came into existence and why it remained powerful? The answer is convergence! Two fire-flies, which are asynchrony flashing, will flash synchrony if you put them together! A group of people who are walking around a circle will synchronize their footsteps, if you play a rhythmic drum-like sound for them. People do the same in a greater manner in their societies and call it culture!

While on one hand I demand that culture is bullshit. On the other hand, I also believe that it can’t be removed from any society! There are three reasons. Firstly, as I have discussed above, the rule of convergence will not let us do so! Second, culture is flag of a nation and unfortunately since we are not totally globalized, your nation and nationalism are tools of power! You will lose your obvious rights if you do not belong to anywhere! Third, ordinary people, not the elites, need a set of rules to control them!

So in one sentence I conclude that culture, like tradition and legislative rules, hobbles us. Nonetheless, it is natural and unavoidable!

Dwave’s 200mm wafer?

What the hell is that in Geordie’s blog?