Category Archives: Uncategorised

Boris Tsirelson died on the 21st of January 2020 in Switzerland, via assisted suicide after being diagnosed with high grade cancer. It is with great sadness that I type these news. I never met him personally, but I appreciate his … Continue reading →

Last week a bomb landed on the arXiv: Ji et al. posted a proof that MIP*=RE which implies, among other goodies, a solution to Tsirelson’s problem. I’m speaking here as if their proof actually holds; I can’t check that myself, … Continue reading →

I just signed the #unter1000 pledge to not fly to destinations that are under 1,000 km away, and I encourage every reader to sign as well. We, scientists, need to set an example. We understand better than most the dire … Continue reading →

About three years ago, on 21.03.2016, I made a bet with Miguel Navascués. At the time superconducting qubits were in their infancy: devices based on them had very few qubits, and quite shitty ones at that. Nevertheless, I was sure … Continue reading →

Yesterday I saw with disappointment a new paper on the arXiv by Hossenfelder and Palmer, Rethinking Superdeterminism. There they argue that physics took a wrong turn when we immediately dismissed superdeterminism; instead it is a solution to the conundrum of … Continue reading →

Last week a friend of mine, Felipe, left written the following equation in the blackboard of the coffee room: \[ \frac{a}{b+c} + \frac{b}{c+a} + \frac{c}{a+b} = 4,\]asking for a solution with positive integers. It was a harmless sort of nerd … Continue reading →

I have just been to Perimeter Institute, by generous invitation of Thomas Galley. I gave a talk there about my recent-ish paper, Probability in two deterministic universes. Since I have already blogged about it here, I’m not writing about it … Continue reading →

This post hast little to do with physics, let alone quantum mechanics; I’m just writing it because I saw reports in the media about a study done by three German professors that had the incredible conclusion that electric vehicles emit … Continue reading →

Philosophers really like problems. The more disturbing and confusing the better. If there’s one criticism you cannot levy at them is that they are not willing to tackle the difficult issues. I have argued with philosophers endlessly about Bell’s theorem, … Continue reading →

Philip Ball has just published an excellent article in the Quanta magazine about two recent attempts at understanding the Born rule: one by Masanes, Galley, and Müller, where they derive the Born rule from operational assumptions, and another by Cabello, … Continue reading →