Ph.D. (2020). Fulbright Scholar (2016 & 2007). Topological Quantum Field Theory. Formalizing the Geometric Structure of Phenomenal Experience. ☸️⚜(- )
Joined June 2020
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8 Aug 2025
this is humanities phd level math
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In the latter half of this very interesting talk, Neil Turok discusses ghost fields, (±) indefinite metrics, and Krein space. Worth a listen!
H/T @PeterMorganQF
youtu.be/VlP-12yc2f8?si=1kMc…
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Physicists and mathematicians working with GPT 5.5-Pro: how/when do you switch from Standard to Extended Thinking (or vice versa), or do you always keep it in one or the other mode?
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I think contemporary Anglophone philosophy of mind needs a richer vocabulary. (Dharmakīrtian) Buddhist metaphysical idealism is not identifiably "panpsychist" in the contemporary idiom—for many reasons, including the absence of anything like the combination problem.
Jun 4
I used to believe in panpsychism, but now I’m not too sure.
Take an electron, for example. It simply doesn’t have enough representational capacity to encode complex feelings (and, frankly, no need).
Where and how would it represent pain, pleasure and all the gamut of emotions and qualia that make up our world? Even if it encodes basic valence somehow, how is the readout happening and is it influencing behaviour.
In retrospect, panpsychism seems significantly handwavy. The binding problem - how simple qualia bits combine to produce our rich experience - is a showstopper.
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Along these lines, Dharmakīrtian "Mind Only" (cittamātra) idealism is arguably "physicalist" in the contemporary idiom: for Dharmakīrti, mental events are ontologically real, causally efficacious particulars that behave according to the same basic Abhidharmic rules as particles.
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May 22
Little known fact: in the qualifying exam, all aspiring condensed matter physicists must sign an oath affirming that 'more is different.'
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
We were lucky to hear from Cumrun Vafa himself about this line of research (yesterday in Leuven). The message was clear: we can break all SUSY in 10d string theory and compute in the strongly coupled regime if one is willing to be courageous and think out of the box
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
May 18
A great breakdown, and if I may add: the team behind @inspirehep are beyond lovely and knowledgeable and absolutely willing to help. I’ve been praising them for years.
May 18
Today in "Will explains things to people who have a vested interest in not understanding them," let's talk about INSPRE-HEP. 1/
help.inspirehep.net/knowledg…
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Excited to share my submission for the #CORE1 competition by @TOEwithCurt!
My video explores how the mathematical assumption of positive-definiteness might be the real root of the cosmological constant problem.
Watch it here:
youtube.com/watch?v=Dkb04sAW…
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Things that are simultaneously true about the new @arxiv policy:
1) Gresham's Law → LLM slop is an existential threat to reputable, curated preprint servers
2) Not every reputable preprint server ought to be curated (see, e.g., Zenodo and OSF.io)
3) Publishing preprints is, in theory, supposed to be a service provided for the scientific community
4) Most published preprints are, in practice, line items on a CV, benefiting their author(s) but not the scientific community as such
5) The underlying systemic problem driving the flood of LLM slop from otherwise-reputable scientists (i.e. not counting cranks or crackpots here) is insufficient funding for science, not enough jobs for scientists, totally broken hiring/promotion processes, and so on. Overall the situation is a Mexican standoff arms race.
6) Lifetime ban on pre-publication as punishment for a single instance of accidentally including harmless LLM artifacts ("if you want, I can...") is Draconian and deleterious to scientific progress. It's OK for preprints to include innocent mistakes and oversights—that's why the "pre-" is there.
7) "People" who commit severe LLM-specific research misconduct, at the level of including hallucinated data tables (or equivalent), should be subjected to corporal punishment and/or drawn and quartered.
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
May 13
I knew so many people who would confide in me about the abuse they were being subjected to by university administrators. Some of it involved bad faith efforts to document alleged poor performance as a pretext for eventual termination. Other times it involved false allegations and kangaroo courts. Sometimes it was a combination of both.
A couple ultimately sued, but most left quietly. They were too afraid of being publicly named and subjected to online mobs and reputational destruction. If a university declared someone was unwelcome, that alone was often enough for the person to be effectively canceled. Many signed NDAs, often in exchange for relatively small severance payments.
These were people drawn into academia by the promise of a calling, intellectual freedom, and a lifetime career.
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
These are the same firms that when they are in litigation, they can lie, cheat, and steal, and when you bring it to the judge's attention, you get lectured on "being civil"
May 7
So which Big Law firms leaked in the huge Insider Trading Gang case? Went through cross-referencing and believe I've identified Latham, Goodwin, Willkie Farr, Sidley Austin, Weil Gotshal, and Wachtell. Stunning array of very expensive lawyers. justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/thirt…
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Tired: "Form (rūpa) is Emptiness (śūnyatā); Emptiness is Form."
Wired: "Matter (rūpa) is Vacuum (śūnyatā); Vacuum is Matter."
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
Apr 29
The reason you don’t see many people publicly naming names is because the cost is high - for example a legal dispute can take years to resolve and cost millions of dollars. You have to pick your battles, and most people know they’ll be on their own if it turns into an all out fight.
Apr 29
Who has irreproducible work?
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Meanwhile, the Swampland Seminar Series (H/T @StringSwamp!) quietly powers ahead with brilliant papers every other week
Apr 29
The most lucrative career in string theory is declaring it dead every two weeks. At this point, there’s probably more money in complaining about it than we spend funding the research
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Alexander Yiannopoulos retweeted
Apr 19
Your local nonprofit university has a hedge fund, a venture capital arm, a sports and entertainment franchise, a real estate empire, a luxury resort, and a hospital that sues patients and threatens to sue scientists, along with a business model that leaves teenagers in six-figure debt.
But sure, treat it like a public charity.
Apr 18
Your local “nonprofit” hospital has a hedge fund, a private jet fleet, a bond rating, and a collections department that sues cancer patients. But sure, tax them like a soup kitchen.
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What is "an observer"
?
Mar 29
Some of Renato Renner's own PhD students refused to work on his result because it disturbed their sense of self.
What he proved (with Frauchiger): quantum mechanics, applied consistently to the physicists who use it, generates flat contradictions… for the quantum observers themselves.
Renner himself went from many-worlds to QBism to what he calls "no man's land." curtjaimungal.com
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