Year: 2004

As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me.

Science and Ultimate Reality is the book of a conference celebrating the 90th birthday of John Archibald Wheeler. My contribution is called It From Qubit and is about the various ways in which computation is, and, importantly, is not, fundamental in physics. It also contains a contribution by Bryce DeWitt called The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, and several other interesting articles.

Some people get depressed when they find out how huge the universe is. They feel tiny and insignificant and think that nothing matters in this world.

That makes no more sense than getting depressed when you find out that cows are bigger than you. What is the big deal about bigness? A cow is much bigger than you, but it is a ridiculous animal and you are a valuable person. You know it’s a cow. It doesn’t know anything. it just stands there eating grass (grass!) and mooing. And if it were bigger, that would only make it more ridiculous.

I think that is a complete refutation of the idea that the size of the universe makes us insignificant, or is depressing any other way.

Here’s an interesting little manifestation of the connection between knowledge and wealth. Thanks to the wonderfully low transaction costs that the internet has made possible in certain areas of the economy, people are making money by correcting the spelling of other people hundreds of miles away whom they do not know and need not even consult.

My answer to the Edge question 2004, What Is Your Law? is here.

A preprint of my new paper Qubit Field Theory is available here.