What if I told you there was a well-known, 100-year old theory of gravity that reproduces all empirical successes of Einstein’s general relativity, and may solve a who’s who of major oustanding problems in theoretical physics?
Its called Einstein-Cartan theory, or sometimes Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble (ECSK) theory. By the way, the eponymous Kibble is my “physics grandfather” - my PhD supervisor’s PhD supervisor.
Academics who code are, I think, somewhat known for their less than stellar creations. I have certainly written code that I would prefer didn’t see the light of day. A recent example that attracted a great deal of attention is Professor Neil Ferguson’s CovidSim. As the name suggests, it is a simulator of COVID-19 transmission that works by creating artificial agents representing people and environments that they interact with, in much the same way as the SimCity series of games but without the funky graphics. It was the basis of a paper that is credited with fundamentally altering the course of the UK’s COVID-19 policy. The paper predicted that even under the optimal ‘mitigation’ strategy that was considered, the peak surge capacity of ICU beds in the UK would be exceeded 8-times over due to the pandemic. As of the date of writing, it has 3,910 citations.
Milton Friedman was a Nobel prize-winning economist whose ideas became deeply influential both inside and outside academia. He broadly advocated for free markets with minimal government intervention. For example, he opposed the military draft, minimum wage laws and occupational licensing, and supported school vouchers and legalisation of drugs and prostitution. He was an advisor to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and he is widely thought of as the intellectual father of the ideology of neoliberalism.
There are models for just about anything you can think of. Fundamental physics, economic markets, epidemics, brain function, climate, click-through rates, animal behavior, election outcomes, to name a few. There’s a universe of possibilities for ways to model any given phenomenon, and only a few small hidden oases in an otherwise barren desert. What’s a model-builder to do?
I have decided to take a philosophical turn with this blog, because why the Dickens not. Philosphers love doing useless crap (just kidding, I heart you guys), so in that spirit I have converged upon the ultimate philosophical waste of time: Does god exist?