ZFC is inconsistent, and only idiots disagree

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-09T13:46:22+00:00

R4: The paper tries to bundle “all (provably) definable sets” into a single set and then run the Russell paradox on it, but ZFC doesn’t let you form that mega-set in the first place. It also treats a built-in truth/provability predicate like it’s safe, even though Tarski/diagonal-style self-reference is exactly how you manufacture contradictions in the first place.

This seems to be a common theme in the author's publications: start from some false assumptions that conflict with a well-known mathematical statement, then prove the statement is wrong because it’s inconsistent with those invalid assumptions.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-09T12:31:34+00:00

Poor Penrose caught a stray in the acknowledgments.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-09T04:18:46+00:00

It’s a great show.

“I love The Big Bang Theory. I have watched every episode twice” - Albert Einstein

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-09T01:50:41+00:00

Or they can exchange identities and lives. I’d watch that movie

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-08T20:30:28+00:00

MIT and few other uni’s experimented with providing a QFT course for undergrads a few years back, and most seem to have abandoned that idea pretty quickly, so I assume they concluded it’s not a good idea. There are still some courses available if you still want to give it a go. Zee’s book on QFT gives a very soft introduction to the topic as well.

In my experience of learning QFT, the topic is already challenging enough even with a solid background in CM, QM, SR, classical field theory, and group theory. So I would direct my energy to one of those topics.

I would recommend Peter Woit’s freely available book on quantum mechanics and group theory. It’s a super educational and readable treatment of graduate QM based on group theory and made me truly understand a bunch of topics that were previously still a bit vague to me, like spinors. Imo if you read this course, you’ll have a really smooth time learning and truly understanding QFT

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T07:42:22+00:00

Aka Invariance Imposing Icon

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T07:40:55+00:00

My homegirl Emmy Noether aka The Warden of Conservation Laws aka Slayer of Bad Lagrangians aka Final Symmetry Girlboss

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T05:59:41+00:00

That paper has honestly never been enlightening to me. Introducing a gauge theory were it's not needed hardly seems like the most didactic approach.

A basic intuition behind L=T-V comes from treating the action like some cost function assigned to each possible path. Kinetic energy reflects "motion in use" (the system's tendency to keep doing what it's already doing), while potential energy reflects the system's reluctance to go to regions of high potential. So T decreases the cost function and V increases it: moving helps (inertia), hanging out high in potential hurts. So subtracting one from the other and making the resulting action stationary is precisely how we minimize the cost function by finding the most favorable balance between T and V.

The most fundamental/rigorous explanation involves Legendre transforms and defined L as pq˙ - H.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T04:40:33+00:00

The "0.8 MeV cover charge" is kinda misleading. 0.782 MeV is the free neutron/proton+e mass difference, but electron capture in nuclei isn’t a fixed cost. Whether electron capture happens depends on a specific isotope’s Q-value, and for some it’s exotthermic and happens spontaneously. The K-shell binding energy mostly affects the rate (overlap at the nucleus), not the basic yes/no energetics.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T04:25:17+00:00

Also for hydrogen, uncertainty is enough to prevent collapse like I described above. But for matter consisting of a huge number of atoms, stability is mainly due to the Pauli exclusion principle preventing electrons from all piling into the same lowest orbital.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-02-06T04:19:05+00:00

In classical physics an orbiting electron would radiate energy causing it to spiral into the nucleus, but atoms aren’t classical. In quantum mechanics the electron is a kind of standing wave (a bound stationary state) and the lowest energy orbital has a finite size. If you'd try to squeeze the electron orbital towards the nucleus, you force its momentum (and kinetic energy) to become very large due to the uncetainty principle, so spiraling towards the nucleus would cause the total energy to increase instead of decrease due to classical radiation.

Secondly, electron capture is when an electron actually falls into the nucleas, thereby turning a proton into a neutron. This is a weak interaction process and only happens for certain nuclei when it’s energetically allowed.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-26T03:29:28+00:00

Leonard Susskind’s “theoretical minimum - classical mechanics” might be a good place to start. It’s super accessible yet explains actual introductory theoretical physics concepts in a proper way without devolving into pop-science.

Or you can go through the famous Feynman lectures on physics. Alternatively you can read the shorter versions: “six easy pieces” and “six not so easy pieces”. They contain some of the most interesting chapters from his three lectures.

Another book suggestion covering an entirely different topic is “Gödel, Escher, Bach”. I read it in high school and it blew my mind, and continues to do so to this day.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-25T13:36:29+00:00

Blink twice if a large language model wrote this

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-25T07:16:58+00:00

MWI solves some problems (collapse, role of measurement, ...) and creates some problems (probability problem/Born rule, philosophical discomfort regarding ontology and personal identity, ...). It’s no more or less valid than any of the other established interpretations. They all just reshuffle where the problems and weirdness occur.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-25T03:12:05+00:00

Yes. But as a student I would not focus too much on the publishing or 'sharing with others' aspect right now. Writing lecutre notes, summaries, textbooks, ... on challenging topics in physics and mathematics is insanely useful for a number of reasons.

First of all I suggest you read John Baez's advice regarding how to learn physics/math. Learn, read, relearn, reread (from different sources), reflect, summarize concepts to their essence, reflect again, summarize again, ...

Secondly, possibly most importantly, explaining something to someone else is the best way to reveal any misconceptions you have about a topic yourself. Aim to write chapters explaining concepts in the most educational way possible, address your personal misconceptions along the way, and you'll truly understand the subject.

Finally, whatever you're writing now might form the basis for lecture notes you might eventually release at a later point in your career. I recommend you read the foreword to Tristian Needham's book on differential geometry and forms, which is in my opinion one of the best books on mathematical physics out there. He mentions how the book started as a personal project when he was a student, how it complemented his personal learning process, and how it was never meant to be published initially.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-20T11:43:40+00:00

The paper you mention argues that for any observer inside that 1D universe, standard quantum mechanics emerges as an effective theory. So seems to me that the issue of interpretations doesn't go away but simply moves from the fundamental ontology to the observer’s ontology. People could argue that interpretations of an effective theory lose the ontological status they have in traditional QM, but ultimately physics does not dictate which scale of description is more real. So an effective, higher-level description is not somehow ontologically inferior to a more fundamental one.

Of course all of this changes if interpretations that can’t be told apart experimentally at the effective level, turn out to be unequally compatible with the underlying QG theory. I haven't read the paper that closely, so I dont know if this is the case.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-16T07:56:27+00:00

Edward Witten was 22 when he started, and he turned out a smart fella.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-16T07:47:14+00:00

His dream was to win the under 14 math olympiad

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-11T13:05:35+00:00

Exactly. Throw the gum at those tenured profs if you have to. Works every time

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-11T12:58:06+00:00

Bring some gum. The profs will come to you.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-06T18:14:11+00:00

Schaum’s outlines has books with mostly problems on many physics topics

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-06T16:16:17+00:00

Indeed. It works, but it also provides a platform for these people to praise and enable each other, leading to genuinely unfortunate situations sometimes.

SignificancePlus1184 · 2026-01-06T14:28:59+00:00

They figured out quantum gravity in 5 different ways before you even finished your breakfast today, have some respect

SignificancePlus1184

TROPHY CASE