John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Personally I don't know from Sam on either hypothesis. I'm just wondering for all things seeming equal, when do we get receptivity from the HN community and when to anticipate the knives coming out? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696559
Having said that, your question still stands, I suppose I’m just thinking it ought to be phrased differently? why does one article trigger more engagement than others, and why does one article trigger more engagement with certain subsets of the HN population? (Whereas your phrasing could seem to suggest there are monolithic grand narratives that describe what “The HN community thinks”)
>monolithic
Yes it would be unfair of me to interrogate as if the comment-base was a monolithic whole. So perhaps not monolithic, but still probably manifesting more shared responses to stimuli than the wider population at large. I definitely feel there's a distinct HN 'meta-personality', as I believe another replier re. organelles was alluding to. While forum moderation probably also shapes that to a degree, the meta-personality feels more the result of shared professional technical training (and knowing that others in the community are of like training, very very broadly speaking).
Trying to determine when or why a dynamical system like this goes to a specific state is Sisyphean if I put a word to it.
Novelty and memes play a part as well. If skepticism propagates faster around an idea (say Penrose's proposal) you'll get uncritical thinkers parroting. Same thing happens for the acceptance of ideas that often have no basis in reality.
It does seem like there are often strange attractors (loosely speaking), steady-states, collapse states etc that the heterogenous commenting population display organically.
Sure, many of us seek acceptance from the group, but also, as an idea gets traction, I think it just gets harder to have an original idea.
It’s like trying to remember how a song goes while another one is playing, and I see it on HN threads (like this one!) often.
This isn’t a “both sides” issue, it’s two separate physicists and two separate theories about different areas of physics.
They're both touching on consciousness. Wheeler's participatory universe (least several paras of the article) & Penrose's (& coauthor's) microtubules.
Penrose was (just days ago) on Theory of Everything talking about whether consciousness affects observation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPH-SzWF46w&t=83s (tl;dw: he doesn't think it does.) Later in the same video, he actually comes down pretty hard on the participatory universe, without naming Wheeler or using the word 'participatory' (at least post-editing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPH-SzWF46w&t=287s
Wheeler, on the other hand, does not claim that quantum mechanics is wrong or incomplete, but suggests an interpretation of the equations. So in my mind they are taking very different approaches.
I watched the later part of the video you linked where Penrose describes the thought experiment with the planet without any conscious agents. He describes wave function collapse as an objective process that is "caused" by conscious measurement. Whereas my understanding of Wheeler's ideas is that wave function collapse is a subjective process.
I think Penrose is almost in the same bucket as the panpsychic philosophers: assuming that consciousness is the important thing and trying to construct a universe in which it is emergent in certain complex things in a more concentrated way.
Personally I don’t think we even have a definition of what consciousness is and we are using it as a place holder for some property of observation that we haven’t quite nailed yet.
And when it tackles the possibly-bunk issues, it makes no concrete claims; it presents them in an anthropological manner. There is nothing to rebut.
Well... not all hypotheses are equal! I'm not necessarily a fan of Wheeler's "participatory universe" either, but I would note a few important differences:
- Orch-Or claims to explain the origins of consciousness and free will. This overlaps with philosophy, which is concerned with what it means to explain consciousness. And philosophers generally have responded with serious criticisms.
- Orch-Or relies on specific biological assumptions e.g. about the robustness of quantum coherence in brain matter. In fact it is not merely metaphysical but is in principle falsifiable, which is a good thing! However, physicists and neuroscientists have found a lot of these assumptions to be unreliable.
- Orch-Or appears to be based on a misunderstanding of Godel's Theorem and computationalism, as has been pointed out by mathematicians and computer scientists.
- The Participatory Universe is effectively an interpretation of quantum theory. It just guides us in understanding the ontological statuses of the object in the theory. In this it is similar to Everettian (many worlds) type hypotheses. Orch-or goes much further and I would regard it as a modification of quantum theory. In this it is similar to objective collapse type hypoetheses.
When I was looking for this, I failed to find or agree with anything conclusive for either side. Admittedly, I am not knowledge enough to be a good judge. Do you have any pointers?
There is also the "Criticism" section of the Wikipedia page on the Penrose-Lucas argument: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose%E2%80%93Lucas_argume...
Those and the citations therein look like a good starting point.
It’s more palatable when we consider not the observation, but the information that was collapsed out of the superimposed states at the time of the observation. The universe uses lazy evaluation, and things only happen when they have effects on other things, and what we see as past depends on what we observe now, as both need to be consistent with each other.
I’ve always encoded it thus:
“All matter is information, all information is functional, and perception is therefore the lazy evaluation of the universe.”
In the Greg Egan edition of this thesis, the speed of light emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe, and new forms of consciousness are encountered living within the algebraic structure of the cosmos.
Brilliant.
> The universe uses lazy evaluation […]
That’s only a sensible notion if you assume that time exists outside of the universe instead of being part of it. Wheeler’s idea of space-time being non-fundamental suggests the latter.
"Wheeler pointed out that when these assumptions are applied to a device of interstellar dimensions, a last-minute decision made on Earth on how to observe a photon could alter a situation established millions or even billions of years earlier."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser
That's not to say that this is "proof" but I think this is where the notion is most directly apprehended.
After almost a century of discussions between smart people, the physics consensus has steadily inched away from Copenhagen.
That said, that doesn't mean lazy evaluation isn't happening. You just can't use lazy evaluation to "explain" wavefunction collapse, it's more the other way around, that collapse can be a lazy evaluation trick. It'd describe only this simulation and say nothing about outer reality (thus no longer works as evidence for or against the simulation hypothesis, it's just a consistent part of the story given that it's true).
- The observer effect, quantum entanglement and wavefunction collapse --> lazy evaluation
- Speed of light --> speed of causality to resolve the object interaction problem O(n^2)
- Quanta of energy, Planck's length --> discretization of reality to limit computational precision
- Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics --> reality is implemented with mathematics
- Parsimonious physics --> simple physical rules are less computationally expensive to evaluate
- Entropy --> stability of the simulation and a guaranteed "wind down"
But something like ‘lazy evaluation’ could provide a bridge between the two views. A choice is made AND a physically compatible path is observed as if it were always so from the past to the present.
Personally, I think of the universe is alive with choice and we do get to participate.
PS. I kept a copy of Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps on my nightstand as a kid - it filled me with fascination. Thanks Kip!
I bristle at this because there is obviously a massive amount of probabilistic programming methodology and stochastic simulation techniques out there, but at the end of the day in terms of connotation you are probably correct…
1. The laws of the universe require unimaginable power, knowledge, and precision to implement. Its Creator must have these traits.
2. It doesn’t fail. Everything humans build requires maintenance but still fails. That this universe runs with a 100% reliability rate shows its maintainer’s power, knowledge, and perfection. It also shows He is sustaining us every second. He’s thinking about and caring for His creation.
3. Humans appear hardwired to seek who God is. So, the Creator wants us to look for them.
4. Even as children, humans have basic notions of love, justice, and are relational. The Creator is a relational, moral being who wants them to think like that.
5. All life passes through genes that carry some appearance and behavior. The higher creations raise their offspring. The Creator designed us to bear children who we teach. We’re creators in a way, too.
6. Many claim the Creator reveals Himself to them. One had objective proof, power, and outcomes that back that up (eg GetHisWord.com). The Creator has purpose for us which He helpfully shares. Jesus also lived it, too, in the same flesh before dying for our sins.
Just these six suggest that, in contrast to gaming, our world is run by God who has power, omniscience, morals, and a relationship with His people. So, that says the way to win is to be close to Him (Jesus) while playing the game by His rules. Also, to enjoy learning how it works which is endlessly deep and fun. :)
In contrast, a game engine or computer doesn’t compare mostly because of how the universe works perfectly despite billions upon billions upon billions of interactions. It can’t be overstated how unlikely that is based on all observations of reality. It’s truly astounding.
An easy test would be to find human machines that have 100% reliability without design or maintenance. Then, strong arguments that they'll remain that way for thousands to billions of years with no intelligent intervention. If you wouldn't believe that, why would you believe an atheist that says the universe's superior machinery was likewise undesigned, is unmaintained, and is accidentally perfect? That goes against everything we've observed.
We also have a guess on the computational requirements which are mind-boggling. Just simulating tiny molecular or quantum systems with total accuracy, if it's even happened, takes a ton of computation. Every sub-particle or force in the entire universe running at the same time is unimaginable computation. Plus, the Creator makes them all work exactly as desired with the same, observed patterns. We can't get cellular automata to work like we want but the Creator is directing a universe of simple interactions to cause specific behavior, global and local?
God is the best theory for these observations. That also makes Him the most interesting of all beings in existence. Since we know Him, we also worship Him on top of it. That's acquired through non-scientific means, though. He supernaturally imparts it to those who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's more phenomenological but indirectly observable.
This very much might be a failing, short lived universe. Why do you think that it isn't? Keep in mind that when we run simulation we do not usually run them in real time where one of our days equals one day in a simulation.
> If you wouldn't believe that, why would you believe an atheist that says the universe's superior machinery was likewise undesigned, is unmaintained, and is accidentally perfect? That goes against everything we've observed.
It doesn't go against anything we observed. We did not observe that the universe is a machine nor that it is perfect. All that we observed is that the universe is as it is.
> We also have a guess on the computational requirements which are mind-boggling. Just simulating tiny molecular or quantum systems with total accuracy, if it's even happened, takes a ton of computation. Every sub-particle or force in the entire universe running at the same time is unimaginable computation. Plus, the Creator makes them all work exactly as desired with the same, observed patterns. We can't get cellular automata to work like we want but the Creator is directing a universe of simple interactions to cause specific behavior, global and local?
Those computational requirements exists within our universe but if we are talking about a simulation or a creator what seems like an impossible computational requirements... maybe this universe is being ran on a their version of a calculator.
The implications of this logic create problems for the Judeo-Christian stance. Absolute morality goes out of the window and a few other things with it as well.
The logic wouldn't create a problem for us due to the weight of our source, the Word of God. Whatever counters it would need perfect character, prophecies that came true, miraculous power, historical evidence, and global impact on most people groups. Then, his followers would have to experience similar things on top of transformed lives. If not, his views remain pure speculation with nothing backing them like most religions and philosophies. Not threatening at all. :)
Granted, that style of reasoning also has a long tradition in philosophers like Descartes, Berkeley, etc. Descartes famously postulates that "God is not a deceiver", and that we are dealing with a benevolent God. You make the same assumption. Back then, there had to be a God, because the church would have showed people how the afterlife looks like pretty quickly. I don't understand what necessitates such a stance today.
In any case: as long as you argue from the conclusion backwards, we can spare some ink and leave this be.
I thought my original comment had a link. We have a huge weight of evidence of various types to support God’s Word being from God. There’s usually more types for that than most beliefs people express on HN that are accepted. So, I start with that as a foundation much like proof assistants build on a core logic.
https://www.gethisword.com/evidence.html
To test your assertion, we can do simple comparisons that Christians often do to justify their beliefs. For instance, you equated our use of the Bible to Descartes stating an opinion. Did Descartes live a perfect life, claim to speak for God, and perform miracles to prove that? Did he come back from the dead? Do his followers experience unlikely transformations and life events in response to praying to Descartes? Do they get healings in the hospital verified by doctors by asking Descartes to heal the person? Would the people I’ve seen who were miracle healed have done better with Descartes?
When a philosopher or scientist counters Christ or His Word, we can just go down the list to find they don’t come close to refuting them. Christ wins the trustworthiness competition. Then, we trust Him based on that.
I would consider switching sides if the others met the same criteria. They’d have to claim to receive visions from God, their predictions come true precisely, work miracles, come back from the dead, have perfect character (trustworthy), and I’d have to get promised results following them. If not, “let God be true and every man a liar” when they contradict.
I find real science doesn’t contradict my faith, though, since it’s a pursuit of truth which God wants us to pursue. Most of it is OK or it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. I can enjoy it all. :)
Since you are adding these observation in the context of the universe being a simulation none of the above need to be true. The one who designed the universe did not necessarily have the knowledge to implement (code the universe), build the hardware that it runs on or built the power source that is powering it all.
Why did you jump to the conclusion that it is only one person/being doing everything?
> 2. It doesn’t fail. Everything humans build requires maintenance but still fails. That this universe runs with a 100% reliability rate shows its maintainer’s power, knowledge, and perfection. It also shows He is sustaining us every second. He’s thinking about and caring for His creation.
How do you know that it doesn't fail? What would failure even look like? Wouldn't something like the heat death of the universe signify its failure?
How do you know that the universe runs with 100% reliability?
Why mention that everything that humans build requires maintenance when even the universe, by your own words, requires maintenance by its creator?
> 3. Humans appear hardwired to seek who God is. So, the Creator wants us to look for them.
Humans appear hardwired to seek explanations to phenomena. So much so that when they can not logically explain a phenomena they will make up an explanation. Isn't this more logical than your statement, if not, why?
In your point 4 and 5 you are just saying because some facts of the universe thus god.
> 6. Many claim the Creator reveals Himself to them. One had objective proof, power, and outcomes that back that up (eg GetHisWord.com). The Creator has purpose for us which He helpfully shares. Jesus also lived it, too, in the same flesh before dying for our sins.
Did not share it with me. Why?
Re reliability. We know what we can observe. We see the machinery doing billions of billions of things with perfect consistency. The amount of interactions required is staggering. Whereas, humans quit trying to prove code correct after many 10,000 lines.
The being is either keeping it running without failures being possible (God’s power) or is doing the equivalent of preventative maintenance. Both are logically possible.
Re hardwired. That is a good hypothesis. I’d counter along C.S. Lewis’s lines that some things we seek aren’t merely imaginative. We have a strong, unique urge for specific things we need or are critical to our species, like food or sex. Those urges are tied to objective, real things. Our urges for God, love, and justice are just as strong and global. That’s because we’re designed for it.
Re: how do I know. Well, there’s multiple forms of knowledge. They include evidentiary (eg historical), phenomenological (eg sensation of pain), logical, empirical, and revelatory. That last one is important because we can’t really know anything outside the universe unless told by those outside it. That God chose to reveal Himself to His creation solves some big problems we could never solve without that.
“ Did not share it with me. Why?”
He did. He works through people who carry His message of reconciliation, the Gospel. It was in the quote:
His Word says God draws us to Him, faith is a gift, it comes by hearing His Word, and (per Jesus) His sheep hear His voice. If people are humble, and truly seeking Him, He supernaturally tells them the message is true. Convicted of their sin, they have a choice to make that determines if they face eternal punishment or receive the mercy of eternal life.
God could’ve made it hard. He could’ve required people to be geniuses, know important people, be star athletes, or live perfectly on their own. Instead, Christ paid the price for our sins. Then, gave anyone who acts on a simple message to be saved. Anyone who shares that message might pull others out the fire, too.
Believe, repent, and live for and like Him. He’s worth it. Hell’s not.
That's a crazy assertion to me. Is this something proven using experiments or your conjecture? I would think a pebble floating in deep space, not interacting with anything, would still exist. If you go out there you would see it having a position and velocity. That information has to be preserved and processed continuously to ensure that an observer after 10000s of years still sees a consistent state.
but not at the same time!
Basically, is it true that nothing exists until we observe it with high enough focus that the information it contains builds its own reality. If this is true then does it mean that I need to wear my glasses all the time to experience reality and when I leave them on my desk I'm slipping thru an unfocused stream of information that only loosely defines a reality because I am unable to adequately focus on those things that I need to be observing, therefore they aren't quite definable phenomena.
And also the wildly speculative conjecture that our universe will be retroactively created by a super intelligent AI in the precise manner necessary to facilitate its own existence, from which it follows that we exist for the express purpose of creating it. (If anybody knows the source I might have stolen this one from please let me know.)
Nick Land interprets Roko's Basilisk as "retrochronic AI infiltration".
Did you end up finding what you were referring to? None of the other comments actually match that
There is no "remote synchronization" mechanism between observers. All observations are independent, and when an observation is made, the other outcomes are not discarded, they continue "running in parallel" until another observer comes along. That is to say, from the perspective of other observers, you and your measures are also an observation they have to make (and thereby collapse).
That's a fairly strong claim when referring to one of the greatest physicists and deepest yet wide ranging thinkers of the 20th century.
The longer I live the more I appreciate Kurt Gödel’s proof that we can never know everything about the universe.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-202007...
If the emulation is contained inside the universe being emulated, do you think the emulated universe includes the emulation contained within it? Does the emulation now contain another emulation? If so, now many emulations?
You can undoubtably run it at less than realtime, and might even be able to find a way to scrub fwd/rev through time to the interesting bits.
The bigger issue is how to store the data. If the universe is compressible we might be able to store it and operate on it. If it's not sanely compressible then we either need to use a large chunk, or all of, the universe's matter/energy to store the state of our emulator and any inhabitants of our universe would need to file written complaints in advance at Alpha Centauri if they did not consent to being subsumed into the Giant Grey Blob(tm).
As those black holes degrade via Hawking radiation over however many quadrillions of quadrillions of year, without gravitationally bound superstructures of any kind, eventually all fundamental particles will be causally disconnected from all others, permanently.
What then does it mean to "emulate the universe inside the universe itself?" How do you emulate a single fundamental particle with only a single fundamental particle? What is the distinction between the emulation and the real thing? The real thing has nothing else to interact with, so it can't compute. It's state can't be measured because there is nothing to measure with.
In short, I hesitate to speculate about what can and can't be done with the universe because what the universe even is will change quite drastically over long enough spans of time.
If you could emulate it then you could access and see into all the parts of our universe which are currently unobservable. Of course, if you could emulate it sufficiently you should be able to scrub the timeline into the future and visit Milliways too.
I suppose an empty universe represents itself. Or you could have a universe with matter distributed in the shape of https://xkcd.com/688/
And in order for that symbol to exist (be expressed / thought of / conceived), it must be a part of some other existing universe that allows that...
An assembly quine is an odd thing to even ponder.
Ultimately, if you can't write a Quine directly in logic gates, which you can't because no microprocessor can output another microprocessor, you need something external to the "universe" of the language.
You only need an interpreter for that language.
It really doesn't matter what Turing-complete language you choose; they can all be implemented in terms of each other, so as soon as you have your quine one language you could as well do it any other.
So I just don’t see how any of these theories are attractive prospects, the infinite regress seems even more severe than superdeterminism theories.
It’s quite a shame this man got stuck on something that may be literally impossible to prove.
And then he died before he could figure it out. All we have left are little strands of his thoughts.
Compare Gravitation (the bible) and its boldness, inventiveness and playfulness with the sterile presentation of most theoretical physics textbooks before and after.
Anyway, he failed to bring on a new paradigm for "deep" physics. The intersection of geometry and quantum mechanics seems to be as elusive and mysterious as ever. But hope produced all our mental breakthroughs and, who knows, it may do so again.
Total pedantipoint but the book's title is Gravitation of which he was one of three authors.
Indeed, but the other two (Charles Misner and Kip Thorne) were Wheeler's former students.
As a mathematician, I'd love if anyone here knew the context
So if Wheeler is saying the universe comes out of quantum observation, then the connection seems to be a self-referential Strange Loop of consciousness/observation/participation along the lines of "we're just the universe observing itself"
So if sub-matter quantum-woo is just information juggling, then it's the ability to have self-referentiality that makes for some interesting properties.
So why leave it solely to the mathematicians.
[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-202007...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.07331
Gödel's undecidability theorems and the search for a theory of everything
"I investigate the question whether Gödel's undecidability theorems play a crucial role in the search for a unified theory of physics. I conclude that unless the structure of space-time is fundamentally discrete we can never decide whether a given theory is the final one or not. This is relevant for both canonical quantum gravity and string theory."
Holographic principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle :
> The existence of such solutions conflicts with the holographic interpretation, and their effects in a quantum theory of gravity including the holographic principle are not yet fully understood.
How do we know it doesn’t? The whole wavefunction collapse and single world is an untestable and unprovable assumption.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4. This cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial.
5. To create the universe, this cause must possess intentionality and decision-making capabilities.
6. Therefore, the cause of the universe is a personal, immaterial being: God.
And here "object" is quite vague, I would assume almost all of the specifications would be unrecognizable as such to a human.
You can slap a hypercomputational simplicity prior on that if you want, but that probably militates against the object being God, because I wouldn't expect God to be "simple" under that definition.
1. Occam's Razor favors explanations with the fewest entities.
2. A single cause requires fewer assumptions than multiple causes.
3. Therefore, a singular cause is more parsimonious than a plural cause.
4. A singular cause ensures consistent intentionality and unified purpose.
5. Multiple causes would necessitate coordination and could result in conflicting intentions.
6. Therefore, the cause of the universe must be singular.
[0]: Not the same as the previously mentioned simplicity priors, as you brought up Occam's you must think God fits into logic.
That would in theory give priors for the probability of the "object" that fits the criteria given.
Sure, you can go into infinite regress arguments, but they hit both of our arguments just as hard.
As well as all the other hypotheses we can't meaningfully differentiate from it, almost none of them recognizable as your "God".
There is nothing that comes into existence without a cause. From your innermost creative thoughts to a spot of mold on bread, to a new leaf on a tree, to the seemingly random emergence of a rain storm - all have a beginning and all have a cause.
Have you experienced something different?
But anyway, if there's a singularity (or suitable singularity-replacement) in both the future and the past you might be able to use something like Hawking's No-Boundary Condition theory to claim P2 is false.
Not that I do, but P2 is not rock-solid from a logic standpoint.
2) Since we exist, something had to have lead to us
3) The thing that lead to us was either lead to in turn, or "just existed"
4) If you don't accept that something can "just exist", that leads to infinite regress (before A there was B, before B there was C... on to infinity)
5) It's not too presumptuous to prevent infinite regress by saying "the universe" is what "just existed".
Since the possibility of the universe "just existing" was established by the previous reasoning, you can think if that's a reasonable stopping place when it comes to predictive power.
Hawking suggested it was though the "projection" he used for making the argument was complex and and don't fully understand it.
As far as I can tell, his argument was that the universe appearing to have a beginning was "merely" thermodynamic, and in the final quantum theory the beginning and the end would be closed, making the universe fully self contained. (Something about gravitational entropy fully canceling out all other entropy, making the universe sum to zero, with both the "beginning" and the "end" summing to the exact same value as each other (zero)).
Regardless, P1 is still required to make Craig's KCA work, because P2 is compatible with the universe just happening.
Editing to account for your later comments:
>There is nothing that comes into existence without a cause. From your innermost creative thoughts to a spot of mold on bread, to a new leaf on a tree, to the seemingly random emergence of a rain storm - all have a beginning and all have a cause.
That isn't quite the same scenario. The sort of causation we observe (which is actually compatible with no causation, a la Hume) is more like shuffling around of existing matter and does not translate to direct evidence for or against the hypothesis that something can come into existence uncaused.
I think when you combine the scientific evidence with the logic and continue down that line, you can make a good faith argument for an intelligent creator.
If you take quantum field theory, all reality spawns somehow out of immaterial fields without any cause.
Others from Advaita stream of thought have arrived at a place where the absolute is not God at all and don’t need physics to reason about that. In their terms we are all God with a problem of mistaken identity. Reality is already timeless, deathless.
1) theoretically there are a huge number of explanations that fit the evidence, possibly an infinite number
2) almost none of them will contain your God
Done.
You can argue about what system should should be used to assign credibility to those explanations, but I'm not sure if you're read up on various Bayesian and non-Bayesian prior systems.
If you want to enter more evidence or argue priors you can, but in the argument's current state it's highly effective.
We don't know if P2 is actually true (in fact, there is growing suspicion that the big bang was merely the beginning of the current phase of our universe).
Also, your P4 contradicts your P1, and the rest is speculation.
Not everybody accept this interpretation of this experiment!!
I came across MTW’s “Gravitation” as a student in the 70’s and it inspired a positively unreasonable desire to own a copy just because it looked so beautiful. Couldn’t afford the doorstop of a book at that time but happily it is still in print 50 years later.
Although, frankly, whenever I see the Quanta URL I tend to skip straight to the comments. It's too verbose to my taste, I just want to understand what the discovery is about, get an understanding of the substantive details without too much prerequisite knowledge, and understand the impact on other research and possibly on applications. But I start reading the article, and it always reads like a biography. The writing is excellent, but I'm afraid I don't always have the time for the literary angle. I am willing to spend a while understanding it but focusing on the meat of the science, the peripheral story comes after if I'm curious.
Exactly because of the more literary prose that I know I will enjoy but need the time to appreciate. Also, I don't think I've ever had to spend more than 10 minutes to read one of their articles, it's time well spent, or maybe I'm just nostalgic for longer-form magazines that I miss from my younger years.