Groucho Marxism
Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics
Category: Science
-
It is now generally accepted by most (although not all) people that promoting and delivering Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) is a good idea. But what exactly do we mean by ED&I? The usual definition given is something along the lines of: ‘equality’ means ensuring everyone has the same rights and opportunities, regardless of their…
-
Bigfoot, also commonly referred to as Sasquatch, is a large, hairy creature said to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Proponents for the existence of Bigfoot have offered various forms of evidence to support the creature’s existence, including anecdotal claims of sightings, as well as photographs, video and audio recordings, and…
-
The theory of relativity comprises two physics theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. These theories transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century, superseding a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton. Einstein published the theory of special relativity in 1905, building on many theoretical results and empirical findings…
-
One of the most surprising things about the Epstein files, to me at least, has been the number of eminent scientists who are implicated. These include cognitive scientist Joschua Bach; neuroscientists Edward Boyden and Mark Tramo; linguist Noam Chomsky; computer scientists David Gelernter and Marvin Minsky; psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Kosslyn, and Steven Pinker; physicists…
-
In a previous blog post I derived discrete versions of two key equations in quantum mechanics: the canonical commutation relation between position and momentum, and the Schrödinger equation. I did this by considering a particle moving in discrete time and space where time was taken to be imaginary. The eagle-eyed reader would have noticed a…
-
The American physicist Richard Feynman once famously remarked: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” The point Feynman was making is that quantum mechanics is strange, weird, counter-intuitive, and that some questions about it cannot or should not be asked. However, this strangeness disappears if we are willing to accept…
-
Scientific socialism is a term popularized by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to describe their socio-political approach, which aims to apply the scientific method to the analysis of society. It contrasts with utopian socialism by basing itself upon material conditions instead of conceptions and ideas. Thus, scientific socialism takes a materialist approach to the analysis…
-
The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30, will be held in Brazil from 10 to 21 November. In this context, COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and refers to the annual meeting of the nearly 200 countries that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At…
-
The principle of stationary action is a great unifying principle of physics, and is usually presented in a continuous-time framework. In this blog post I will attempt to present a discrete-time formulation of the principle in accordance with the materialist conception of physics I put forward in a previous blog post. Let x(t) denote the…
-
Language is arguably mankind’s greatest invention. It has enabled us surpass other large-bodied predators like lions and wolves in our ability to command the environment. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that our senses are pathetically weak compared with other species. Could these two facts related? That is, could it be that…
-
In a previous blog post I suggested that some ideas in physics that seem strange when formulated in a continuous framework based on infinite sets make more sense in a discrete framework based on finite sets. In this blog post I will attempt to flesh this out in more detail. Consider a particle moving in…
-
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? As we all know, this question has no answer, but it is instructive to think about why it has no answer. The reason, as we all intuitively understand, is that there isn’t a linear relationship between chickens and eggs; rather, there is a feedback loop between the…
Groucho Marxism 