Jochen Szangolies studied physics in Germany at the university of Siegen, completing his diploma in 2012. His thesis was developed into a book, published by Springer in 2015 under the title 'Testing Quantum Contextuality - The Problem of Compatibility'. He obtained his PhD at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Düsseldorf in 2016, working in the Quantum Information group. He has since left academia, but continues to pursue his research interests, publishing on the foundations of quantum physics and the philosophy of mind. He enjoys to travel, and carries on meditating without ever really getting better---but figures that's why they call it 'practice'. Email: jochen.szangolies [at] gmx.de
by Jochen Szangolies A proposition, like “it’s raining outside”, can either be true or false—it might be the case that it actually rains, or not. It is then seductive to think that somebody uttering such a proposition is doing nothing but making a factual claim, and in doing so, either tells the truth, or not.…
by Jochen Szangolies There seems no obvious link between tall war-tales, shared among a circle of German aristocrats in the 1760s, and quantum mechanics. The former would eventually come to form the basis of the exploits of Baron Münchhausen, the partly fictionalized avatar of Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, famous for his extravagant narratives,…
by Jochen Szangolies Whenever I use words like ‘reality’, ‘truth’, or ‘existence’, I feel an almost irresistible urge to mark my vague sense of unease by liberal application of scare quotes. After all, what could such words even mean? They seem to denote concepts too vast and simultaneously slippery to be pinned down by a…
by Jochen Szangolies Sunil Rao, one half of the leading duo of the novel Prophet by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blanché, has a gift: he can tell trick from truth. Any fake is immediately obvious to him; any false statement revealed as such upon hearing it. Much more than a human lie detector, his abilities…
by Jochen Szangolies It’s no fun being sad. Indeed, great swaths of our culture seem aimed at fencing our little emotional gardens off against the intrusion of sadness, seeding them instead with what we think will germinate into little joys, grand hopes and profound happiness. ‘The pursuit of happiness’, after all, is enshrined in the…
by Jochen Szangolies In the previous column, I wrote about how forces originate from quantum mechanics, using the electric force as an example. Rather than being caused by ‘virtual’ particles being tossed back and forth, which is a picture that seems alluringly intuitive, but ultimately misleads more than it clarifies, a better way is to…
by Jochen Szangolies The ubiquity of a phenomenon sometimes causes its mystery to grow stale. Consider the strange lines along which a magnet orients iron filings in its vicinity: what we take in stride would, if experienced afresh, seem like the purest magic. Indeed, humble iron is probably the closest we get to genuine sci-fi…
by Jochen Szangolies I would not consider myself a particularly ‘outdoors’ sort of person. Much of my work and leisure is spent in front of one screen or another, or between the pages of a book (less of the latter than I’d like, at that). However, in those last years lost to COVID-19, I, like…
by Jochen Szangolies The simulation argument, most notably associated with the philosopher Nick Bostrom, asserts that given reasonable premises, the world we see around us is very likely not, in fact, the real world, but a simulation run on unfathomably powerful supercomputers. In a nutshell, the argument is that if humanity lives long enough to…
by Jochen Szangolies The previous column left us with the tantalizing possibility of connecting Gödelian undecidability to quantum mechanical indeterminacy. At this point, however, we need to step back a little. Gödel’s result inhabits the rarefied realm of mathematical logic, with its crisply stated axioms and crystalline, immutable truths. It is not at all clear…
by Jochen Szangolies TWA Flight 702 left New York at 7 AM on Monday, Feb. 4 1974, to arrive in London at 7 PM—some 40 minutes early. We know this thanks to the meticulous note-taking habits of visionary physicist John Archibald Wheeler, coiner of such colorful terms as ‘quantum foam’, ‘wormhole’, ‘superspace’ and ‘black hole’.…
by Jochen Szangolies Time presents itself, depending on the context, under two different modalities: cyclical and linear. Linear time moves always forward, carrying us from past to present, ever towards an uncertain future; while circular time, the time of clock hands, sunrise and sunset, and recurring seasons, sees us back again at our origin. These…
by Jochen Szangolies Picture the internet circa late 2000s, during the heyday of New Atheism: virtually everywhere, it seemed, people were embroiled in a grand crusade for truth, a final showdown of faith versus reason, religion versus science, revelation versus empiricism. On both sides, fallacy was the weapon of choice: demonstrate the logical error at…
by Jochen Szangolies On May 11, 1997, chess computer Deep Blue dealt then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov a decisive defeat, marking the first time a computer system was able to defeat the top human chess player in a tournament setting. Shortly afterwards, AI chess superiority firmly established, humanity abandoned the game of chess as having…
by Jochen Szangolies There has been no shortage of articles on this year’s physics Nobel, which, just in case you’ve been living under a rock, was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. Why, then, add more…
by Jochen Szangolies The only thing worse than a good argument contrary to a conviction you hold is a bad argument in its favor. Overcoming a good argument can strengthen your position, while failing to may prompt you to reevaluate it. In either case, you’ve learned something—if perhaps at the expense of a cherished belief.…
by Jochen Szangolies The world is a noisy place. No, I don’t mean the racket the neighbor’s kids are making in the back yard. Rather, I mean that, whatever you encounter in the world, probably isn’t exactly what’s actually there. Let me explain. Suppose you’re fixing yourself a nice cocktail to enjoy on the porch…
by Jochen Szangolies The arbor porphyriana is a scholastic system of classification in which each individual or species is categorized by means of a sequence of differentiations, going from the most general to the specific. Based on the categories of Aristotle, it was introduced by the 3rd century CE logician Porphyry, and a huge influence…
by Jochen Szangolies At the close of the 20th century, the logical end-point of physics seemed clear: unify all physical phenomena under the umbrella of a single, unique ‘Theory of Everything’ (ToE). Indeed, many were convinced that this goal was well within reach: in his 1980 inaugural lecture Is the end in sight for theoretical…
by Jochen Szangolies The world we inhabit is a world of objects. Wherever we look, we find that it comes to us already disarticulated into cleanly differentiable chunks, individuated by certain properties: the mug on the desk is made of ceramic, the desk of wood; it is white, the desk black; and so on. By…