@ananyo
Chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences. 'The Man from the Future', on the unparalleled influence of John von Neumann, available everywhere. Subscribe to my substack, Confections & Refutations https://ananyo.substack.com
Formalising a well-cited 20-year old physics paper on the stability of the two Higgs doublet model in Lean invalidates the main theorem! "It ... raises the uncomfortable question of how many physics papers would not pass this higher level of scrutiny."
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2603.08139
STFC funding for particle physics, nuclear physics, and astronomyโwhich falls under โcuriosity-drivenโ scienceโto be reduced to 70% of its 2024โ25 budget. This is how you cripple the UKโs scientific and economic future. www.science.org/content/arti...
Intriguing review by @ananyo.bsky.social of a recent history of maths www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The team behind 'The Man Who Knew Infinity' is reuniting to make a new film honouring Maryam Mirzakhani! Ken Ono and Manjul Bhargava (who collected his Fields Medal in the same year as Mirzakhani) are associate directors, Matt Brown writer/director! โค๏ธโค๏ธโค๏ธ๐ ๐ ๐
infinityfilmsmirzakhani.com
We interviewed maths prof Edward Frenkel in Faraday's old rooms on 12 Dec. The video's just out!
Highlights:
29:52 Why self-knowledge is key to avoiding malevolent AI
35:06 Will AI make mathematicians redundant?
56:41 The remarkable effectiveness of physics in maths
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMTX...
In one of the weirder "charity visits" I've ever done, we cracked out some maths last week! Bonus point/s if you know what's going on in these calcs*
Notice that the mathmos there are technically "charity workers", a dopey phrase sometimes used by journos to cover the vast diversity of this sectorโฆ
Four academics from different fields will explore how his ideas continue to shape contemporary thinking across physics, AI, economics, and sustainability. Followed by a reception with Hungarian delicacies and wine. It's free! Details and sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/can-we-sur...
Seventy years after John von Neumannโs essay โCan We Survive Technology?โ, the questions he posed feel more urgent than ever. On Thursday 4 December, I'm chairing an expert panel discussion at the Hungarian Embassy in London on what that essay means to us now. You're invited!
Folks! Amazon.com has done it again! Kindle edition of 'The Man from the Future' on sale for less than $5! That's 75% off. Want to find out what the fuss over John von Neumann is really about and what he actually did? You can now for $4.80!
www.amazon.com/dp/B098TYZN6...
The director of the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and I interviewed one of the most restless and original talents in science last weekโคtheoretical physicist and innovator Stephen Wolfram!
Watch out for the rapidfire round!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SD9...
A video of the whole event is now on YouTube! youtube.com/watch?v=8SD9...
Stephen Wolfram is such a legend, I wasn't sure what to expect! But he was gracious and charming, as well as totally fascinating. He even enjoyed my mean rapidfire questions, which he had 90 secs each to answer!
"So Stephen, Is there a God?"
Will post video of the event soon!
x.com/London_Inst/...
...peculiarity of Bengali culture, I highly highly recommend Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake'. (In fact all of her books but this one relates to the whole familial nickname thing)
...it's still rare that I come across another Ananyo IRL. I've encountered some online and am LinkedIn buddies with another Ananyo Bhattacharya who keeps being asked whether he wrote The Man from the Future (he's got a PhD from MIT). My family call me by my nickname--'dahk nam'. On that...
LOL. I tell people to pronounce it ON-ON-OH. This is not how it is pronounced in West Bengal. However, since it's mostly non-Indians that say my name, it seemed almost like an affectation demanding it be pronounced in the Bengali manner (specially when growing up in the North)....
Of course! Let me know when you want to drop by!
Thanks Caroline! Iโm not looking for another job (certainly not a temporary position). Thereโs younger hungrier writers out there. Alex! Come into the London institute for mathematical sciences with Alok and tim c one Friday! Drinks from 5pm every week.
Not quite everything. Just everything important ๐
Was Gรถdel's second incompleteness theorem really von Neumann's? Part I
ananyo.substack.com/p/was-godels-sโฆ
Was Gรถdel's second incompleteness theorem really von Neumann's? Part II
ananyo.substack.com/p/was-godels-s๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ
Despite many arguing we shouldnโt care who exactly did what in science, people seem to care very much. Arguably science wouldnโt progress in its current state unless a scientist could establish priority for a discovery.
Second, thereโs strong evidence that von Neumann had a proof of the second incompleteness theorem, which Gรถdel never proved. Moreover when von Neumann informed Gรถdel of this, Godel misled von Neumann to prevent him scooping him.
The research reveals, first, that von Neumann suggested to Gรถdel that he transform his first incompleteness theorem from a statement in logic to one in number theoryโhugely amping up its significance.
Iโve removed paywalls from two substack posts on recently unearthed evidence of von Neumannโs contributions to Gรถdelโs Incompleteness theorems. This work was published after โThe Man from the Futureโ came out, so wasnโt in the book.
Links below ๐๐พ
The 1943 paper which Andreessen correctly states describes the core tech underlying modern AI is McCulloch and Pitts's โA Logical Calculus of the ideas Imminent in Nervous Activityโ, which I talk about in TMFTF.
McCulloch and Pitts paper
historyofinformation.com/detail.php?i...
Eavesdropping on von Neumann, Turing and Oppenheimer would be great fun though VN and Oppie โstalked each other like alley catsโ at Princeton according to one contemporary.
VN WAS more interesting than Oppie. Obviously.
See also
ananyo.substack.com/p/oppie-and-...
Many thanks to Marc Andreesen for name-checking 'The Man from the Future' in a Hermitix podcast episode, resurfaced by a16z!
Listen here
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...
Thank you!
Explanatory maths/theoretical physics journalism is hard, important and underfunded. Wish the UK had a @simonsfoundation.org that backed proper, in-depth maths/theory communication with cold, hard cash.
9. Finally, to appreciate just how good all this reporting is, compare and contrast to the utterly useless wiki article on the geometric Langlands.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometr...
