Ashutosh (Ash) Jogalekar is a scientist and science writer based in Boston, USA. He has been blogging at the “Curious Wavefunction” blog for more than ten years, and in this capacity has written for several organizations including Scientific American, Nature and the Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates. His literary interests specifically lie in the history and philosophy of science. Email: ashutosh.jogalekar [at] gmail.com
by Ashutosh Jogalekar When people hear that we should empathize with our adversaries, the reaction is often uneasy. Empathy sounds like softness. It sounds like moral compromise, even capitulation. Why should we try to understand those who compete with us, oppose us, or even threaten us? The confusion lies in a simple mistake. Empathy is…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Earlier this week, European investigators concluded that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been killed with epibatidine, a toxin unknown in Russia’s natural environment and ordinarily found only in the skin of small, brilliantly colored frogs native to the rainforests of South America. If that conclusion is correct, a molecule shaped…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot Robert Kurson closes Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 with a deceptively simple scene. Decades into the twenty-first century,…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar There has long been a temptation in science to imagine one system that can explain everything. For a while, that dream belonged to physics, whose practitioners, armed with a handful of equations, could describe the orbits of planets and the spin of electrons. In recent years, the torch has been seized by…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar In every generation, young people find causes to champion. Today’s students rally against wars in foreign lands, the environmental record of large companies, the entanglement of Silicon Valley with the Pentagon and China, or the human rights policies of nations like China. These are important causes. In a free country like the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia. By James Bradley By the time Henry Luce’s LIFE magazine was churning out colorized visions of a democratic, Christian China under the steady hand of Chiang Kai-shek, the die had already been cast. Not in Beijing or Nanjing but in Washington…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Eighty years ago on August 6, 1945, a blinding flash of light changed the world forever. The shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been with us ever since. Scientists struggled to make sense of the milennial force they had unleashed on the world. While science had always had some political implications, the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar After World War II ended, there began a running debate between American scientists and the American government about how to properly wield the fearsome nuclear power that America had discovered and unleashed. The government believed that this power could be hoarded and used by the U.S. to play geopolitical games in which…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar There are physicists, and then there are physicists. There are engineers, and then there are engineers. There are government advisors, and then there are government advisors. And then there’s Dick Garwin. Richard L. Garwin, who his friends and colleagues called Dick, has died at the age of 97. He was a man…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people of a nation to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with their Executive, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, a decent…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar AGI is in the air. Some think it’s right around the corner. Others think it will take a few more decades. Almost all who talk abut it agree that it applies to a superhuman AI which embodies all the unique qualities of human beings, only multiplied a thousand fold. Who are the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Drugs for mental illness are notoriously hard. Human biology is complex, and the brain is even more complicated. We now have a good understanding of the basic mechanisms of neurotransmission, but the drugs we have for treating disorders like depression, anxiety and psychosis are often “spray and pray” approaches, either targeting the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar In October last year, Charles Oppenheimer and I wrote a piece for Fast Company arguing that the only way to prevent an AI arms race is to open up the system. Drawing on a revolutionary early Cold War proposal for containing the spread of nuclear weapons, the Acheson-Lilienthal report, we argued that…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The Founding Fathers aren’t much in fashion among liberals these days. A good friend of mine has been trying to get a novel about Thomas Jefferson published for three years. He has approached more publishers than he can care to name, publishers of all sizes, reputations and political persuasions. He tells me…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The visionary physicist and statesman Niels Bohr once succinctly distilled the essence of science as “the gradual removal of prejudices”. Among these prejudices, few are more prominent than the belief that nation-states can strengthen their security by keeping critical, futuristic technology secret. This belief was dispelled quickly in the Cold War, as…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Bill Gates has long been one of the world’s leading optimists, and his new documentary, “What’s Next,” serves as a testament to his hopeful vision of the future. But what makes Gates’s optimism particularly compelling is that it is grounded not in dewy-eyed hopes and prayers but in logic, data, and an…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar How do we regulate a revolutionary new technology with great potential for harm and good? A 380-year-old polemic provides guidance. In 1644, John Milton sat down to give a speech to the English parliament arguing in favor of the unlicensed printing of books and against a proposed bill to restrict their contents.…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Recently the Biden administration has clamped down on so-called “forever chemicals” which are thought to potentially cause diseases in human beings and damage to the environment. As with any molecule, the basic chemical structure and properties of these compounds are responsible for their function. In this video I break down some of…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Once again the world faces death and destruction, and once again it asks questions. The horrific assaults by Hamas on October 7 last year and the widespread bombing by the Israeli government in Gaza raise old questions of morality, law, history and national identity. We have been here before, and if history…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar As the saying goes, if you believe only fascists guard borders, then you will ensure that only fascists will guard borders. The same principle applies to scientists working on nuclear weapons. If you believe that only Strangelovian warmongers work on nuclear weapons, you run the risk of ensuring that only such characters…