Personal news: I'll be leaving Caltech at the end of the next academic year. Caltech is great, and I've known wonderful people there. They would be happy for me to stay (as far as I know!), but this specific position is no longer a good fit for me, so I've decided to move on.
I honestly don't know where I will be next - there are possibilities, but various wave functions have not yet collapsed. But I'll still be writing physics papers and philosophy papers, hopefully doing real research in more interdisciplinary areas as well, from whatever perch.
And writing, talking, podcasting, etc. And still an external professor at Santa Fe. Things will be pretty much unchanged from an outside-world perspective. But it does mean I'm not taking on students or postdocs at the moment, sorry about that.
When I moved to Caltech, I had three goals: continue to do high-quality theoretical physics; expand my research into totally other areas (philosophy, biology, complex systems...); and make a bigger impact in the public sphere (writing, speaking, etc).
I'd give myself grades of B+, C-, and A in those three areas, respectively (relative to my personal expectations). It's time to get more serious about the interdisciplinary-research thing, which is extremely important to me.
I'm old enough to know what I want to do, and I'm eager to expand my professional-level intellectual work into new areas. Exciting!

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More from @seanmcarroll

4 Jan
Idea: space-opera show where the crew is constantly forced to choose between saving people they love and serving the greater good. They choose loved ones every time, like existing shows. Twist is that every time, disaster follows and thousands die.
I mean, if the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, the few are going to get the short end of the stick from time to time, right? Let’s give that trolley problem some bite.
(Yes I know some shows do this.)
Read 4 tweets
22 Nov 20
It just seems so *reasonable* to say "there might be some evidence, just let the process play out," whether the claim is "there was massive voter fraud" or "UFOs are alien visitors." But in many cases (like these) it's not reasonable at all.
Background knowledge matters. Truth claims don't float out in a vacuum, each to be judged independently. We know something about elections and the strategies of certain actors; we know about technology, perception, and motivated reasoning. That knowledge should inform our priors.
People valorize a certain puzzle-solving kind of intelligence. And solving puzzles is important. But the ultimate goal isn't to be clever, it's to be correct. For that, knowing what information to pay attention to and what ideas to take seriously is more relevant.
Read 7 tweets
11 Nov 20
Hugh Everett's birthday! Pioneer of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Let us celebrate by thinking about ontological extravagance. I will do so by way of analogy, because I have found that everyone loves analogies and nobody ever willfully misconstrues them.
We look at the night sky and see photons arriving to us, emitted by distant stars. Let's contrast two different theories about how stars emit photons.
One theory says, we know how stars shine, and our equations predict that they emit photons roughly uniformly in all directions. Call this the "Many-Photons Interpretation" (MPI).
Read 10 tweets
10 Nov 20
Most entertaining part of current mess are the folks saying *they’re* not crazy stolen-election conspiracy theorists, but shouldn’t we investigate the crazy claims seriously, because questions have been raised, right?

(Not entertaining at all, actually.)
Hopefully it will count against the credibility of such folks going forward. The naughty pleasure of being an edgy contrarian can be much more gratifying than common sense and clear-eyed evaluation of the evidence.
An infinite number of things could be true. Good judgment entails knowing which are worth taking seriously.
Read 4 tweets
9 Nov 20
Mindscape Episode 122 | David Eagleman on Tapping Into the Livewired Brain. #MindscapePodcast
preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/1…
David is a prolific author, inventor, and TV presenter, as well as neuroscientist. His new book is Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain.
indiebound.org/book/978030790…
Read 4 tweets
3 Nov 20
My rough election-watching algorithm tomorrow:

* If either PA or FL are called for Biden, he'll win.

* If both PA and FL are called for Trump, he'll win.

* If they're both delayed, but Texas is called for Biden, he'll win.

Otherwise we're in for a long night/week/month.
These are far from certainties (T could win both PA and FL but Biden somehow wins both Georgia and North Carolina, for example), but I think a decent calibration of expectations.
Also, scrap the Electoral College, it's absurd.
Read 4 tweets

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