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. After a brief stint outside of academia, he has now returned to research on quantum computing at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), while keeping an interest in the foundations of 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 Consider the lobster. Rigidly separated from the environment by its shell, the lobster’s world is cleanly divided into ‘self’ and ‘other’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’. One may suspect that it can’t help but conceive of itself as separated from the world, looking at it through its bulbous eyes, probing it with antennae. The…
by Jochen Szangolies Who Are You? I want you to take a moment to reflect on the answer that first came to mind upon reading this question. Was it something related to your job? Are you a baker, a writer, a physicist, a construction worker? Or did you start thinking about your passions—the things you…
by Jochen Szangolies Aristotle characterized humans as zoon logon echon, the rational animal. In general, we like to believe that our opinions are formed through reason—that we have arrived at them by means of a process of weighing the alternatives, selecting that which we deem most appropriate. This implies a certain mutual intelligibility—I might not…
by Jochen Szangolies Thomas Bayes and Rational Belief When we are presented with two alternatives, but are uncertain which to choose, a common way to break the deadlock is to throw a coin. That is, we leave the outcome open to chance: we trust that, if the coin is fair, it will not prefer either…
by Jochen Szangolies J Richard Gott and the Fall of the Berlin Wall J Richard Gott, now an astrophysicist famous for the notion that the universe might have created itself by reaching back through time, visited the Berlin Wall in 1969, while an undergraduate at Harvard. There, he made the following prediction (paraphrased): The Wall…