How I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fiction
nature.com
nature.com
bookofjoe harvests content and posts from many sources, he's one of the many people contributing to the inbound firehose of links and stories.
Not sure how or why this got bumped to the top ten; maybe people see "sci fi" and/or "ivory tower" and a piece of content will get engagement? TBH it reads a little like a publisher's fluff piece, or a writing assignment given to a high schooler.
Some of the commentary is enlightening - she says "Writing fiction is about telling stories and it’s about people and human interaction" This is something you learn when Shakespeare is brought out in elementary school. This is something you should learn if you pay the slightest bit of attention to the stories you read, if the authors are N. K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin and Becky Chambers, Dan Simmons, and Ray Bradbury, who she mentions in the article.
Any good author writes stories about people; the great ones tap into our expectations and take us for a ride, bringing us to unexpected insight, or opening our eyes to a new constellation of human variables. The authors she mentions are almost universally well known for insight into what makes people tick.
This seems like an aspirational fluff piece intended to market the non-fiction book and land the author an advance so she can write fiction. This isn't intended as a criticism; god knows we can all use whatever we can get. She's apparently in a position with connections that allowed her to get such an article published about her; maybe one of her friends is a publisher or editor, or author? Whatever it is, she hasn't written her fiction book yet, so maybe she needs a breakout of some sort.
This is one of the weirdest pieces of content I've seen land on the front page, almost like a personal blog leak or something. I hope she gets a huge boost and gets to chase her dream.
The headline for this story is particularly bad - I also expected her new book to be a sci-fi novel, and am much more interested in her short stories than a book about the Drake Equation.
George Costanza was way ahead here:
I think it is more likely Miller's law [0], that is the average number of "registers" a human mind has [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%27s_law#In_psychology [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...
The golden-age optimistic science fiction placed humans on a stage in the future with aliens, and confronted both with challenges on a far greater scale than earth. The implication that today's problems would surely be solved, was not only a nice escapism but also helped to form a fundamental mindset for the solution of said problems. From terraforming other planets to thinking about carbon dioxide globally, from a war with aliens to seeing the futility of wars on earth. From the absense of actual capitalism or communism on that distant colony in space that lived in harmony, to being open minded about new solutions in everyday politics.
It does not seem clear if pessimistic science fiction, from an author not from the "ivory tower" but the trenches of education in community college, written with an educational message front and center, can have the reach and cultural impact as the stories from the past. Will the classroom in space convince where the daytime job didn't?
Of course like any genre, "polemic first" has things that occasionally transcend their genre even so, but those are also as always the exceptions, and authors really shouldn't put all their chips on being one of those exceptions. If anything the odds are probably worse than most.
CC: Hollywood, Disney. You'd be better propagandists if you paid more attention, much more attention, to stories.
Some sci-fi seeks to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses to imagine other possibilities.
Other sci-fi slightly exaggerates the flaws and assumptions of our world, and tries to logically extend them into a future in which they make even less sense, to demonstrate their absurdity.
Still other sci-fi creates a world exactly like ours except with one significant technological advance, and tries to imagine where we'd go with that.
Still other sci-fi takes what we know of how humans behave, puts them in completely unfamiliar settings, and uses those settings to explore the nature of people, rather than focusing on the technology.
And some sci-fi, arguably the most fun, if not necessarily the most educational merely starts "Wouldn't it be cool/weird/fucked up if..." and just keeps going until it runs out of steam.
Oh, just noticed it's nature.com
I actually had Seveneves and Termination Shock in mind, as more "optimistic" novels.
Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right?
Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
Sovereignty residing in the people is not a feature of a republic. The only thing that defines a republic is that it isn't a monarchy.
If it's a republic and the government is elected by a democratic process, then it's a "democratic republic". And you don't need a republic to have a democratic state either: the UK and Japan are examples of this (both are monarchies).
https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitut...
Coming from a post US "Washminister* system (Australia) the US "Little King" looks very much a daft arrangement as exemplified by the inability to fire a POTUS for poor performance | losing support, etc.
We retained a symbolic monarch as a "nominal" head of State to bind the notion of a country over the transient seatings of Government but seeded very little in the way of real effective power to that monarch.
As a country we've swapped Prime Ministers (politically equivilant here to a US President) on a dime wothout skipping a beat in managing the country.
Think what you like about the effectiveness of the US system, but it's not a monarchy in any way, shape, or form. A monarchy requires power (or at least a position that's supposed to have power, as most modern monarchies are really just figureheads) to be inherited. Sure, once in a while US presidents get to that position partly because of family connections (FDR, GWB), but that's nothing like the way an actual monarchy operates.
Clearly these were crazy people far divorced from reality as we know it modern times:
During the ratification debates, Antifederalists charged that the President would become an elected monarch, that cabals would develop to ensure his reelection, and that the presidential veto power would be abused. They further feared that presidential power to grant pardons would allow the president to conspire with others in treasonable activities with impunity.
It’s just a retort that American conservatives like to say whenever American liberals mention how undemocratic/unfair the electoral college or the senate is. There’s no real historical substance to the phrase. It only became common to hear after the 2000 and 2016 elections where republicans won the presidency but received fewer total votes, the same scenario which almsot happened in 2020 and could very well happen in 2024.
The primary system can choose candidates however they wish -- the Constitution does not specify the method [1]. A Democratic challenger to Biden this time was blatantly refused ballot access in many states. Backroom deals can cause good candidates to drop out and support worse candidates (see Buttigieg dropping out in 2020 and supporting Biden, and then Biden appoints him SecTrans). Kamala Harris was among the worst performers in the 2020 Democratic primary, but for some reason she was chosen (not elected, mind you, but chosen by Biden's team) as Biden's running mate, so now the Democrats have no good choices.
The Electoral College is winner-take-all in many places and the congressional districts are often gerrymandered to completely eliminate representation of the minority party. For example, Nashville had a Democrat representative, but after redistricting the city was split like a pizza among three mostly rural GOP districts to completely eliminate its member of Congress [2]. It is the capital of the state and largest city but has no member of Congress now.
I'm glad you have such a positive view of US democracy, but many of us living here are extremely worried about our trajectory.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri...
2. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/na...
Although I agree this could happen in other economic system too, in a communist system it could be simply an order from above for example.
Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
> Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use.
Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible.
I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade.
It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged.
Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else.
In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly.
Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor.
I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.
I also disagree with this depiction of Golden Age science fiction. Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy were doing this well during this period.
George Lucas was considered a genius for "allegedly" copying this film scene-for-scene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
https://archive.org/details/the-hidden-fortress (1960*, Akira Kurosawa)
The original film was entertaining, and still worth a gander... unlike the poorly generated article =3
All jokes aside, what's on that whiteboard looks pretty complex for a community college. It might be soul sucking to be working there after getting the PhD in astrobiology. So perhaps writing is a relief valve, and I wish her the best of luck at it.
(I do have a friend who teaches at a CC, The subjects are pretty basic: algebra and high school calculus. But he told me he really enjoyed the fact that every student wants to be there, so pays attention and does the homework).
For myself, I tend to prefer fantasy, over SF. SF tends to have Big Ideas, and the characters are there to help the Big Idea strut its stuff.
In fantasy, the characters are usually the fulcrum of the story, and the world is built around their stories.
Politics is small. Exploring the edges of reality is large.
Anyway I like Asimov's classification, social scifi is political: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsimovsThreeKind...
A lot of sci-fi instead seems to recontextualize common human issues into an environment where existing political pre-conceptions can be avoided. Obvious examples are things like the half black/half white episode[1] of Star Trek TOS or "Measure of a Man"[2] from Star Trek TNG. These are pretty highly regarded episodes and neither really has anything to do with the Federation of Planets or its political system (in fact there are very few episodes that deal with these topics). Instead they're explorations of racism and what it means to be human/sentient.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefi...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_(Star_Tre...
TOS went there a little. STD goes there all day.
Why would someone who wants to be taken seriously as a scientist pose in front of something like that?
It's a staged picture, but most hero shots are. I'd say this is worse than most, but not by much. Check out the rest from the series:
https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=career-q-and-a
Also, pretty sure she's leaning into the "Mrs. Frizzle" vibes.
The central equation on the whiteboard is actually the Drake equation [0] which as per TFA is the subject of her next book. So it at least is directly relevant.
The photographer needs a nice photo, she needs the article to sell books and not get traped again in the ivory tower. Eveyone is happy. It's part of the job. Like politician using a suit and smiling. (Aparently smiling people with suits don't steal or start random wars.)
I looked at the equations, they look correct but so unrelated that made me chuckle. I imagine she was chuckling while writing them. I'm not sure if there were one or two persons writing that, probably one (but two persons writing random (correct) equations is more fun).
The equations have a nice flow, the space/kerning and vertical aligment are correct. It looks like whoever wrote them understand the equations. [1] It's not a proof that she is a genius, but it's small bonus point for me.
The last "2" in a^2+b^2=c^2 is too low, it looks like she made a mistake guessing the space necesary to write the equation and had to make a emergency correction. It happens to the best. Anyway, it's horriblely unrelated to the other equations [chuckling], almost trolling.
If I have to guess, she first wrote the Drake equations as a sibling comment says, it's in the center and very well written. The photographer asked for more equations, so she added the gravitational force equation. Then another and another. And then some equations in between.
It's very difficult to write something meaningful on the spot. I'd need like 15 mitutes to thing what to write and perhaps another 15 to write it. So a random wall of equations is silly but difficult to avoid.
[1] A few years ago we had two exams that were identical. One of them had a similar good flow, but the other had the same numbers/symbols in almost the same position, but they were horrible aligned, like if someone just copy the number/symbols without understanding anything at all.
From left to right then top to bottom:
1. No idea. Based on the E sub λ, the use of Planck's and Boltzmann's constants, and the e^(hc/λkt)-1 I'd guess its the energy of something at wavelength λ and temperature t. I don't recall ever seeing energy have a factor of 1/λ^5 before college was over 40 years ago so I might have forgotten.
2. Momentum change required to change the speed of a mass by Δv?
3. No idea on the one for dt/dλ. Nothing from the left appears explicitly on the right.
On to the second row.
4. Pythagorean theorem.
5. No idea.
Next row
6. The Drake equation.
7. Definition of average velocity.
Next row.
8. Position of free falling object in a 1 g uniform gravitational field in a vacuum.
Next row.
9. Something thermodynamic.
10. Newton's law of gravity.
11. Looks like half of this is blocked by her head, but given that it is next to Newton's law of gravity, and has 8 Pi G in it which also appears in general relativity a lot, and that it has on the right side the ratio of jerk to acceleration (assuming a is acceleration), I'm going to guess something to do with relativistic gravity.
Next row.
12. No idea.
13. The most famous equation in the world.
14. Newton's second law.
15. Too much is cut off.
Final row.
16. Seems to be calculating the ratio of successive terms of some sequence. Partly cut off but can see Planck and Boltzmann constants so guessing we are back at thermodynamics. I'll go out on a limb and guess it has something do with entropy.
16. Too much is cut off.
The whiteboard contains several famous physics equations. Here are the ones I can identify:
1. *Einstein's field equations (General Relativity):* \[ E = \frac{8\pi G}{3} \left( \rho + \frac{\Lambda}{8\pi G} \right) \] \[ R_{\mu\nu} - \frac{1}{2} R g_{\mu\nu} + \Lambda g_{\mu\nu} = \frac{8 \pi G}{c^4} T_{\mu\nu} \]
2. *Planck's law:* \[ E = h\nu \] \[ E = \frac{hc}{\lambda} \]
3. *Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics):* \[ i\hbar \frac{\partial \psi}{\partial t} = \hat{H} \psi \]
4. *Lagrangian mechanics:* \[ L = T - V \] where \( T \) is kinetic energy and \( V \) is potential energy.
5. *Newton's law of universal gravitation:* \[ F = G\frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2} \]
6. *Friedmann equations (Cosmology):* \[ \left(\frac{\dot{a}}{a}\right)^2 = \frac{8\pi G}{3} \rho - \frac{k}{a^2} \]
7. *Coulomb's law:* \[ F = k_e \frac{q_1 q_2}{r^2} \]
8. *Boltzmann's entropy formula:* \[ S = k_B \ln \Omega \]
9. *Maxwell's equations (Electromagnetism):* \[ \nabla \cdot \mathbf{E} = \frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0} \] \[ \nabla \times \mathbf{B} - \mu_0 \epsilon_0 \frac{\partial \mathbf{E}}{\partial t} = \mu_0 \mathbf{J} \]
10. *The cosmological equation:* \[ \ddot{a} = -\frac{4 \pi G}{3} (\rho + 3p) a + \frac{\Lambda}{3} a \]
11. *Thermodynamic identity:* \[ dU = TdS - PdV \]
This collection of equations spans various domains of physics, including quantum mechanics, general relativity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and cosmology.
The only ones that got right are 5 and 6 that are 10 and 11 in the GP numbering. 5->10 was an easy one. 6->11 was one of the equations we coudn't identify, but ChatGPT got correctly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations
3. Laplacian in spherical coordinates???
5. Conservation of energy in fluids. Preasure P + Kinetic 1/2 ρ v^2 + Potential ρ g h = ...
9. Probably something about a blackbody radiation like 1.
11. I agree it's related to gravity, but I'm not sure.
12. Velocity of an object a when there is constant aceleration "a" (for example with a constant force like friction) after it moved a distance Δx
15. Energy of photons when an electron changes the orbit in Hidrogen. (Is it the Bohr equation?)
16. No idea, or actualy too many ideas that make no sense.
17. Also, no idea, or actualy too many ideas that make no sense (it has G, T and h ¿¿¿Hawking radiation???)
1. Blackbody radiation per unit wavelength.
2. Momentum.
3. Not sure. Quantum harmonic oscillator? Orbital mechanics?
4. Pythagorean theorem.
5. Bernoulli's equation.
6. Drake equation.
7. Velocity.
8. Ballistic/projectile motion.
9. Blackbody radiation per unit frequency.
10. Newton's law of gravity.
11. One of the Freidman equations for cosmological expansion.
12. Velocity of an accelerating object over some distance.
13. Einstein's mass-energy equivalence. (The memorable half, at least.)
14. Newton's second law.
15. Not sure, but I have a feeling that's one of the terms of the Ricci curvature. Maybe the classical limit?
15E. Edit: Whoops, nope, it's the Rydberg constant from the Rydberg formula for atomic energy levels. (Thanks gus_massa!)
16. Not sure. Reminds me of population inversion, so I'd guess stable state population of some quantum transition.
17. Not a clue.
[1][9] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/505909/frequency...
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relati...
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_curvature
She was probably asked to, knew that the photographer probably has a much better idea of what the publication wanted than she did, and so did what was asked.
She would not have worried about it making it hard to take her seriously because she almost certainly knows that everyone who she needs to have take her seriously has seen hundreds of similar articles with their accompanying similar photos and know how that works. Many have probably themselves been in "whiteboard of equations" shots or the also popular "in front of overstuffed bookshelf" shots.
They obviously aren't what you would find in any university class, where you do things like derivations and don't just write random formulas on the blackboard. So it is a staged picture just trying to show off to people who don't know any better.